The Sixth Commandment (27 page)

“I suppose so.”

“I know so. And you don’t even know who they are, because that city is so big, and they like to keep their names out of the papers and their faces off the TV. They want to be invisible. They can do that in a great big city. But in Coburn, now, we’re small. Everyone knows everyone else. No one can keep invisible. But otherwise it’s the same.”

“You mean a small group of movers and shakers who run things?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “Also, this town’s in such a bad money way—no jobs around, the young folks moving out, property values dropping—that these here people they got to stick together. They can’t go fighting amongst theirselves.”

I stared at him, saw that old, black face deliberately expressionless. It was a mask that had been crumpled up, then partly smoothed out. But the wrinkles were still there, the scars and wounds of age.

“Sam,” I said softly to him, “I think you’re trying to tell me something.”

“Nah,” he said, “I’m just blabbing to pass the time whilst I tidy up in here. Now you get a lot of people in a lifeboat, and they all got to keep rowing and bailing, bailing and rowing. If they don’t want the whole damn boat to go down.”

I thought about that pearl of wisdom for a moment or two.

“Sam, are you hinting that there’s a conspiracy? Amongst the movers and shakers of Coburn? About this Thorndecker grant?”

“Conspiracy?” he said.

“What does that mean—a bunch of folks get together and make a plan? Nah. They don’t have to do that. They all know what they got to do to keep that lifeboat floating.”

“Rowing and bailing,” I said.

“Now you got it,” he said. “These people, they don’t want to get wet, floating around out there in the ocean, boat gone, not a prayer. So they go along, no matter what they hear or what they guess. They
gotta
go along. They got no choice, do they?”

“Self-preservation,” I said.

“Sure,” he said cheerfully. “That’s why you finding it so tough to get people to talk to you. No one wants to kick holes in the boat.”

“Are things really that bad in Coburn?” I asked.

“They ain’t good,” he said shortly.

“Well, let me ask you this: would the ‘best people’ of Coburn, the ones who run the town, would they go along with something illegal, something criminal or evil, just to keep the boat floating?”

“You said it yourself,” he said. “Self-preservation. Mighty powerful. Can make a man do things he wouldn’t do if he don’t have to. Just to hang onto what he’s got, you understand.”

“Yes, I do understand,” I said slowly. “Thank you, Sam. You’ve given me something else to think about.”

“Aw hell,” he said, gathering up broom, mop, pail and rags, “I’d have thought you’d have figured that out for yourself.”

“I was getting to it,” I said. “I think. But you spelled it out for me.”

He turned suddenly, looked at me with something like alarm in his face.

“What did I say?” he demanded. “I didn’t say nothing.”

I turned my eyes away. It was embarrassing to see that fear.

“You didn’t say anything, Sam,” I assured him. “You didn’t tell me word one.”

He grunted, satisfied.

“I got a message for you,” he said. “From Miz Thorndecker.”

“Mary?”

“No,” he said, “the married one.”

I couldn’t tell if his “Miz” meant “Miss” or “Mrs.”

“Mrs. Julie Thorndecker?” I asked.

“That’s the one,” he said. “She wants to meet with you.”

“She does? When did she tell you this?”

“She got the word to me,” he said vaguely.

“Where does she want to meet?”

“There’s a place out on the Albany post road. It’s—”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “A roadhouse. Red Dog Betty’s.”

“You know it?” he said, surprised. “Yeah, that’s the place. It’s got a big parking lot. That’s where she’ll meet you. She don’t want to go inside.”

“When?”

“Noon today,” he said. “She drives one of these sporty little foreign cars.”

“She would,” I said. “All right, I’ll meet her. Thanks again, Sam.”

He told me how to get to Red Dog Betty’s. I gave him five dollars, which he accepted gratefully and with dignity.

I had more than an hour to kill before my meeting with Julie Thorndecker. There was only one thing I wanted to do: I got into the Grand Prix and drove out to Crittenden. I didn’t have anything planned; I just wanted to look at the place again. It drew me.

It was another lost day: someone had destroyed the sun and thrown a gauzy sheet across the world. The sky came right down—you wanted to duck your head—and the light seemed to be coming through a wire strainer, and a rusty one at that. Damp wood smell, and the river, and frosted fields. The melancholy of that place seeped into my bones. The marrow shriveled, and if someone had tapped my tibia, I’d have gone
ting!
Like a crystal goblet.

Nearing Crittenden, I passed a Village of Coburn cruiser going the other way. The constable driving wasn’t Ronnie Goodfellow, but he raised a hand in greeting as we passed, and I waved back. I was happy to see another officer. I was getting the idea that the Indian worked a twenty-four-hour shift.

I drove slowly around the Crittenden grounds. The buildings looked silent and deserted. I had the fantasy that if I broke in, I’d hear a radio playing, see hot food on the tables, smell hamburgers sizzling on the grill—and not a soul to be found. A new
Marie Celeste
mystery. All the signs of life, but no life.

I saw a blue MGB parked on the gravel before the main entrance of Crittenden Hall, and figured it was Julie’s “sporty little foreign car” that Sam Livingston had mentioned. But I didn’t see her, or anyone else.

I drove around the fenced estate. Fields and woods dark and empty under the flat sky. No guard with shotgun and attack dog. Just a vacant landscape. I came up to the cemetery, still rolling gently, and then I saw someone. A black figure moving quietly among the tombstones, not quite sauntering.

There was no mistaking that massive, almost monumental bulk: Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker surveying his domain, a shadow across the land. He was overcoated, hatless; heavy brown hair fluffed in gusts of wind. He walked with hands clasped behind him, in the European fashion. His head was slightly bowed, as if he was reading the tombstones as he passed.

Something in that wavery air, that tainted light, magnified his size, so that I imagined I was seeing a giant stalking the earth. He tramped the world as if he owned it, as indeed he did—at least that patch of it.

He was doing nothing suspicious. He was doing nothing at all. Apparently just out for a morning stroll. But his posture—bowed head, slumped shoulders, hands clasped in back—spoke of deep, deep thoughts, heavy pondering, dense reflection. A ruminative figure.

Even at a distance, seeing him as a silhouette cut from black paper and pasted against a frosty scene, the man dominated. I thought of how we all revolved around him, whirling our crazy, uncertain courses. But he was the eye of the storm, the sure calm, and everyone looked to him for answers.

I had a wild desire to walk alongside him through that home of the dead and ask him all the questions that were troubling me:

Did you shoot your father deliberately, Dr. Thorndecker?

Did you contrive your first wife’s death?

Why did you marry such a young second wife, and how are you able to endure her infidelities?

Why are you obsessed with the problems of aging, and do you really hope to unlock the secret of immortality?

He might, I dreamed, tell me the whole story: father, wife, love, dream—everything. In grave, measured tones, that resonant baritone booming, he would tell me the complete story, leaving nothing out, and the tale would be so wondrous that all I’d be able to say would be, “And then what happened?”

And nothing in his story would be vile or ugly. I wanted it all to be the chronicle of a hero, moving from triumph to triumph. I wanted him to succeed, I really did, and hoped all my doubts and suspicions were due to envy, because I could never be the man he was, never be as handsome, know as much, or have the ability to win a woman as beautiful as Julie.

I had spent only a few hours in the man’s company, but I had come under his spell. I admit it. Because he was endless. I could not get to his limits, couldn’t even glimpse them. The first colossus I had ever met, and it was a chastening experience.

I didn’t want to stop the car to watch him, and after awhile he and the graveyard were hidden behind a copse of bare, black trees stuck in the hard ground like grease pencils. I completed the circuit of Crittenden. As I headed for the Albany post road, the Coburn constabulary cruiser passed me again.

This time the officer didn’t wave.

The place wasn’t hard to find. There was a big red neon poodle out in front, and underneath was the legend:
RED DOG BETTY’S
. Even at noontime the sign was flashing on and off, and there were three semitrailers and a score of private cars parked in the wide blacktop lot. I made a complete circle, and then selected a deserted spot as far from the roadhouse as I could get. I parked where I had a good view of arrivals and departures. I switched off, opened the window a bit, lighted a cigarette.

It was larger than I had imagined: a three-story clapboard building with a shingled mansard roof and dormer windows on the top floor. I couldn’t figure what they needed all that space for, unless they were running games upstairs or providing hot-pillow bedrooms for lonely truckers and traveling salesmen. But maybe those upper floors were something as innocent as the owner’s living quarters.

There were neon beer signs in the ground floor windows, and I could hear a juke box blaring from where I sat. As I watched, another semi pulled into the lot, and two more private cars. That place must have been a gold mine. Over the entrance was a painted sign:
STEAKS, CHOPS, BAR-B-QUE
. I wondered how good the food was. The presence of truckers was no indication; most of those guys will eat slop as long as the beer is cold and the coffee hot.

I sat there for two cigarettes before the blue MGB turned off the road and came nosing slowly around. I rolled down the window, stuck out my arm, and waved. She pulled up alongside, and looked at me without expression.

“Your place or mine?” she called.

Funny lady.

“Why don’t you join me?” I said. “More room in here.”

She came sliding out of her car, feet first. Her skirt rode up, and I caught a quick flash of bare legs. If she wanted to catch my attention, she succeeded. She took the bucket seat next to me, and slammed the door. I lighted her cigarette. Her hands weren’t shaking, but her movements were brittle, almost jerky.

“Mrs. Thorndecker,” I said, “nice to see you again.”

“Julie,” she said mechanically.

“Julie,” I said, “nice to see you again.”

She tried a small laugh, but it didn’t work.

She was wearing a white corduroy suit. Underneath was a white turtleneck sweater, a heavy Irish fisherman’s sweater. Her fine, silvered hair was brushed tight to the scalp. No jewelry. Very little makeup. Maybe something around the eyes to make them look big and luminous. But the lips were pale, the face ivory.

She was one beautiful woman. All of her features were crisp and defined. That heavy suit and bulky sweater made her look fragile. But there was nothing vulnerable in the eyes. They were knowing and, looking at her, all I could see was a gold slave bracelet glittering on a naked ankle high in the back seat of a cop’s car.

“Been here before?” she said absently.

“No, never,” I said. “Looks like an okay place. How’s the food?”

She flipped a palm back and forth.

“So-so,” she said. “The simple stuff is good. Steaks, stews—things like that. When they try fancy, it’s lousy.”

I wasn’t really hearing her words. I was hearing that marvelous, husky voice. I had to stop that, I decided. I had to listen to this lady’s words, and not get carried away by her laughing growls, murmurs, throaty chuckles.

I didn’t give her any help. I didn’t say, “Well?” Or, “You wanted to see me?” Or, “You have something to say?” I just waited.

“I like Coburn,” she said suddenly. “I know you don’t, but I do.”

“It’s your home,” I observed.

“That’s part of it,” she agreed. “I never had much of a home until I married. Also, I think part of it is that in Coburn I’m a big frog in a little pond. I don’t think I could live in, say, Boston or New York. Or even Albany. I know. I’ve tried. I was lost.”

“Where are you from, Julie? Originally?”

“A little town in Iowa. You never heard of it.”

“Try me.”

“Eagle Grove.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I never heard of it. You don’t speak like a midwesterner.”

“I’ve been away a long time,” she said. “A long,
long
time. I wanted to be a dancer. Ballet.”

“Oh?” I said. “Were you any good?”

“Good enough,” she said. “But I didn’t have the discipline. Talent’s never enough.”

“How did you meet your husband?”

“At a party,” she said. “He saved my life.”

She said that very simply, a statement of absolute fact. So, of course, I had to joke about it because I was embarrassed.

“Choking on a fishbone, were you?” I said lightly.

“No, nothing like that. It was the last party I was going to go to. I had been to too many parties. I was going to have a good time, then go back to my fleabag and eat a bottle of pills.”

I couldn’t believe it. She was young, young, young. And beautiful. I just couldn’t make the connection between suicide and this woman with the cameo face and limpid body who sat beside me, filling the car with her very personal fragrance, a scent of warm breath and fresh skin.

All I could think of to say was: “Where was it? This party?”

“Cambridge. Then Telford came over to me. He had been staring at me all evening. He took me aside and told me who he was, how old he was, what he did, how much money he had, how his wife had died a few months before. He told me everything. Then he asked me to marry him.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she said, nodding. “And I said yes—just like that. The shortest courtship on record.”