The Sixth Commandment (33 page)

The effete youth was first to react to my entrance. He jerked to his feet and glared at me, not knowing whether to shit, go blind, or wind his watch.

Bellamy didn’t pop a capillary.

“Easy, Dicky,” he said soothingly. “Easy now.” Then to me, brightly: “Yes, sir, and how may I be of service?”

I gave them the silent treatment, looking at them, one to the other, back and forth.

“Well?” Bellamy said. “If it’s spiritual advice you’re seeking, my son, I must tell you I conduct personal sessions only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning at twelve noon.”

I said nothing. He leaned forward a little to stare at my shadowed face.

“At the service tonight, weren’t you?” he said in that rich, rolling voice. “In the rear pew, left side?”

“Keen eyes,” I said. “What were you doing, counting the house?”

I had been keeping watch on nervous Dicky. But as I spoke, he relaxed back in his chair, apparently reassured. But he never took his glittering eyes off me.

“If this is a robbery,” Father Bellamy said steadily, “you’re welcome to everything you see before you. Just don’t hurt us.”

“It isn’t a robbery,” I told him, “and why should I want to hurt you?”

That Bellamy was one cool cat. He sat back comfortably, took out a pigskin cigar case, and went through all the business of selecting, cutting off the tip, and lighting it with a wooden match. The whole ceremony took about two minutes. I waited patiently. He took an experimental puff to see if it was drawing satisfactorily. Then he blew a plume of blued smoke at me.

“All right,” he said, “what’s this all about?”

“It’s a grift, isn’t it?” I asked him.

“Grift?” he said perplexedly. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that term.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re in the game. It’s all a con.”

“A con?” he said. “Could you possibly be implying trickery? That I, as an ordained minister of the First Fundamentalist Church of Lord Jesus, am running a confidence game designed to deceive and defraud my parishioners?”

“Tell you what,” I said, “you call the cops and tell them I’m threatening you. I’ll wait right here until they come. No rough stuff, I promise you. Then, when they take me in, I’ll ask them to run a trace. The Feds should have you in their files. Or someone, somewhere. They’ll find out about the outstanding warrants, skips, and like that. Well? How about it?”

He looked at me with a beatific smile, rolling the cigar around in his plump lips.

“Mike, for Christ’s sake!” Dicky cried. “Let’s throw this turd out on his ass.”

“Now, sonny,” I said, “be nice. Have a little respect for a seeker of the truth. How about it, Mr. Bellamy?”

He sighed deeply, running a palm lightly over his billowy white hair.

“How did you tumble?” he asked me curiously.

“You’re too good,” I said. “Too good for the come-to-Jesus scam. With your looks and voice and delivery, I figure you for Palm Beach or Palm Springs, peddling cheesy oil stock. Or maybe in a Wall Street boardroom, trading conglomerates. You don’t belong in the boondocks, Mr. Bellamy.”

The Father smiled with great satisfaction. He raised his brandy snifter to me.

“Thank you for those kind words, sir,” he said. “Did you hear that, Dicky? Haven’t I told you the same thing?”

“Lots of times,” Dicky grumbled.

“But I haven’t asked your name, sir,” Bellamy said to me.

“Jones,” I said.

“To be sure,” he said. “Very well, Mr. Jones. Assuming—just assuming, mind you—that your false and malicious allegations are correct, where do we go from here?”

“Mike, what are you doing?” the organist yelled. “Can’t you see that this crud—”

Bellamy whirled on him.

“Shut your trap!” he said in a steely voice, the black eyes hard. “Just sit there and drink that loathsome mixture and don’t say word one. Understand?”

“Yes, Mike,” the youth said meekly.

“As I was saying,” Bellamy went on blandly, turning back to me, “where do we go from here?”

I was still standing. There were two empty chairs in the room, but he didn’t ask me to sit down. That was okay. Oneupsmanship. You keep a guy standing in front of your desk, he becomes the inferior, the supplicant.

“I don’t want to blow the whistle on you,” I assured him. “You got a nice thing going here, and as far as I’m concerned, you can milk it until you run out of sinners. I just want a little information. Whatever you can tell me about one of your vestrypersons.”

He took a sip of cognac, a puff of his cigar. Then he dipped the mouth of the cigar in the brandy and took a pull on that. He looked at me narrowly through the smoke.

“Are you heat?”

“No. Just a concerned citizen.”

“Aren’t we all?” he said, smiling again. “Who do you want?”

“Mary Thorndecker.”

“Mike, will you stop it?” the damp youth agonized. “You don’t have to tell this creep anything, except to get lost.”

“Sonny, sonny,” I groaned, “can’t you be civilized? The Father and I have reached a cordial understanding. Can’t you see that? Now just let us get on with our business, and then I’ll climb out of your hair, and you can go back to counting the take. Won’t that be nice?”

“Listen to the gentleman, Dicky,” Bellamy rumbled. “He is obviously a man of breeding and a rough but nimble wit. Mary Thorndecker, you said? Ah, yes. A plain jane. And yet I have the feeling that with the advice and assistance of a clever hairdresser, corsetiere, and dress designer, our dull, drab Mary might blossom into quite a swan indeed. Do you share that dream, Mr. Jones?”

“Could be,” I said. “But what I really came to find out is anything you know about her private life, especially her family. Has she ever had one of those private consultations with you on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning at noon?”

“On occasion.”

“And?”

“A very troubled young woman,” he said promptly, staring over my head. “A difficult family situation. A stepmother who is younger and apparently much prettier than Mary. A man who wishes to marry her and who, for some reason she has not revealed to me, she both loves and loathes.”

“And?” I said.

“And what?”

“That’s it? That’s all she talked about in those private sessions?”

“Well …” he said, waving a hand negligently, “she did confess to a few personal peccadilloes, a few minor misdeeds that could hardly be dignified as sins. Would you care to hear them?”

“No,” I said. “And that’s all there is?”

He smoked slowly, frowning in an effort to remember conversations in which, I was sure, he had no interest whatsoever. He leaned forward to pour himself another cognac. I licked my lips as obviously as I could. It won me an amused smile, but no invitation.

“Mike,” Dicky said loudly, “you’ve told this jerk enough. Let’s bounce him.”

“Sonny,” I said, “I’m trying very hard to ignore you, but it’s a losing battle. If you’d like to—”

“Now, now,” Bellamy interrupted smoothly, raising a palm. “There is no room for animosity and ill-feeling in God’s house. Calm down, you two; I detest scenes.” He took another sip of brandy, closing his eyes, smacking his wet lips. Then he opened his eyes again and looked at me thoughtfully. “She did say something else. Ask something else. In the nature of a hypothetical question. To wit: what is the proper course of conduct for a child of Lord Jesus who becomes aware that her loved ones are involved in something illegal? They are, in fact, not only sinning but engaged in a criminal activity.”

“Did she tell you who the loved ones are?”

“No.”

“Did she tell you the nature of the criminal activity?”

“No.”

“What did you tell her to do?”

“I suggested she report the entire matter to the police,” he said virtuously. “I happen to be a very law-abiding man.”

“I’m sure you are,” I said.

I decided not to push it any further; he was obviously tiring. After his physical performance at the church service that evening, considering his age it was a wonder he wasn’t in intensive care.

“Nice doing business with you, Father,” I said. “Keep up the good work. By the way, I put a finif in the plate tonight. You and sonny have a drink on me.”

“Don’t call me sonny!” the infuriated youth screamed at me.

“Why not?” I said innocently. “If I had a son, I’d want him to be just like you.” I paused at the door, turned back. “Father, just out of curiosity, is Mary Thorndecker a heavy mark?”

“She is generous in contributing to God’s work on earth,” he said sonorously, rolling his eyes to heaven.

“Could you give me a ballpark figure?” I asked him.

He inspected the soaked stump of his cigar closely.

“It is a very large ballpark,” he said.

I laughed and left the two of them together. They deserved each other.

I chugged back to Coburn, glad I couldn’t coax any more speed out of that groaning heap, because I had some thinking to do. Up to that moment I had vaguely suspected Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker might be cutting corners in that combined nursing home-research-lab organization of his. I was thinking along the lines of unethical conduct: not an indictable offense but serious enough to put the kibosh on his application for a grant. Something like trying out new drugs without an informed consent agreement. Or maybe persuading doomed patients to include a plump bequest to the Crittenden Research Laboratory in their wills. Nasty stuff, but difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute.

But Mary Thorndecker hinted at something illegal. A criminal activity. I couldn’t guess what it was. I did know it was heavy enough to get Ernie Scoggins chilled when he found out about it. And heavy enough to give Al Coburn the shakes when
he
found out about it.

I must have dreamed up a dozen ugly plots on my way back to Coburn. I had Thorndecker rifling the bank accounts of guests, hypnotizing them into signing over their estates, working on biological warfare for the U.S. Army, trying to determine safe radiation dosages with human subjects, even raping sedated female patients. I went wild, but nothing I imagined really made sense.

I pulled into the parking lot at the Coburn Inn. It was a paved area, lighted with two floods on short poles. They cast puddles of weak yellowish illumination, but most of the lot was either in gloom or lost in black shadow. Still, that was no excuse for what happened next. After the Great Slashed Tire Caper, I should have been more alert.

I parked, got out of the truck, turned to struggle with a balky door lock. The next thing I knew, I was face down on cold cement. That was the sequence: I went down first, and
then
I felt the punch that did it, a slam in the kidneys that spun me around and dumped me. Strange, but even as I realized what had happened, I remember thinking, “That wasn’t so bad. It hurt like hell, but this guy is no pro.” Probably the last thoughts of every man who’s been killed by an amateur.

On the ground, I went into the approved drill: draw up the knees to protect the family jewels, bend neck, cover face and head with folded arms, make yourself into a tight, hard ball. All this to endure the boot you’ve got to figure is coming. It came, in the short ribs mostly. And though it banged me something fierce, there wasn’t any crushing force, and I never came close to losing consciousness. I remember the other guy breathing in wheezing sobs, and thinking he was as much out of condition as I was.

So there I was, lying on my side on a hard bed, curled into a knot. After a few ineffectual kicks to my crossed arms, thighs, and spine, I began to get annoyed. At myself, not the guy who was trying so hard and doing such a lousy job of messing me up.

I recalled an army instructor I had who specialized in unarmed combat. His lecture went something like this:

“Forget about trying to fight with your fists. Forget about those roundhouse swings and uppercuts you see in the movies and on TV. All that’ll get you is a fistful of broken knuckles. While you’re trying the Fancy Dan stuff, an experienced attacker will be cutting you to ribbons, even if you’re a Golden Gloves champ. Rule Number One: hug him. If he’s a karate or judo man, and you stand back, he’ll kill you. So get in close where he can’t swing his arms or legs. Rule Number Two: there are no rules. Forget about fair play and the Marquis of Queensberry. A guy is trying to murder you. Murder him first. Or at least break him. A knee in the nuts is very effective, but if he’s fast enough, he’ll turn to take it on his thigh. A punch to the balls is better. A hack at the Adam’s apple gets good results. If you can get behind him, put two fingers up his nostrils and yank up. The nose rips. Very nice. Also the eyes. Put in a stiff thumb and roll outward. The eyeball pops out like a pit from a ripe peach. And don’t forget your teeth. The human jaw can exert at least two hundred pounds of pressure—enough to take off an ear or nose. Shin kicks are fine, and if you can stomp down on the kneecap, you can get his legs to bend the wrong way. Pretty. Pulling hair comes in handy at times, and fingers bent backward make a nice snapping sound.”

He went on and on like that, telling us what we could do to stay alive. So after taking a series of nondisabling kicks, I peeked out from under my folded arms, and the next time I saw a stylish black moccasin flashing for my ribs, I reached out, grabbed an ankle, and pulled hard. He landed on his coccyx, and his sharp yelp of pain was music to my ears.

Then I swarmed all over him. A hard knee into the testicles. A knuckled chop at his throat. I stiffened my thumb and started for the eyes when I suddenly saw that if I carried through, Edward Thorndecker would need a cane and tin cup.

“Oh for God’s sake,” I said disgustedly.

I dragged myself to my feet, tried to catch my breath. I dusted myself off. I left him lying there, weeping and puking. After my breathing returned to normal, and I had satisfied myself that I had no broken bones or cracked ribs, just bruises and wounded pride, I dug the toe of my boot into his ass.

“Get up,” I told him.

“You keep away from her,” he croaked, in rage and frustration. “If you go near my stepmother again, I’ll kill you. I swear to God I’ll kill you!”

All in that half-lisp of his, sobbed out, coughed out, spluttered out. All in a cracked voice after that hack on his voice box.