The Sixth Commandment (4 page)

I opened the flap. A single sheet of white typing paper. I unfolded that. Two words:

“Thorndecker kills.”

T
HE STORM PASSED OVER
sometime during the night and went whining off to New England. When I awoke Tuesday at 7:30, power had been restored; I was able to use the electric shaver I carry in my travel kit. I noticed I had left about three fingers in the brandy bottle, demonstrating massive strength of character.

In daylight, my room looked old-fashioned, but okay. Lofty ceiling, raddled rug, sprung but comfortable armchairs. A small desk, the top tattooed with cigarette burns. Two dressers. The bed was flinty, but that’s the way I like it. Biggest bathroom I had ever seen in a hotel, with a crackled pedestal sink, a yellowed tub on clawed legs, a toilet that flushed by pulling a tarnished brass chain hanging from an overhead tank. A Holiday Inn it wasn’t, but there were plenty of towels, and the steam radiators were clanking away busily.

I took a peek outside. Instant depression. The sky was slate. Patches of sooty snow were melting; there wasn’t a bright color in sight. No pedestrians. No life anywhere. Two of my five windows faced on what I guessed was Coburn’s main street. I made a bet with myself that it was called Broadway. (It wasn’t; it was called Main Street.) I saw the usual collection of small town stores and shops: Ideal Bootery, Samson’s Drugs, E-zee Super-Mart, Bill’s 5-and-10, Knowlton’s Ladies and Gents Apparel, the Coburn
Sentinel,
Sandy’s Liquors and Fine Wines.

Before sallying forth to take a closer look at this teeming metropolis, I spent a few minutes considering what to do about that anonymous billet-doux: “Thorndecker kills.”

I was born a nosy bastard, and all my life I’ve been less interested in the how of things than in the why of people. I’ve had formal training in investigation, but you can’t learn snoopery from books, any more than swimming, love making, or how to build the Eiffel Tower out of old Popsicle sticks.

Experience is what an investigator needs most. That, plus a jaundiced view of human nature, plus a willingness to listen to the palaver of old cops and learn by
their
experience.

Also, I have one other attribute of an effective shamus: I can’t endure the thought of being scammed and made a fool of. I don’t have that much self-respect that I can afford to let it be chipped away by some smart-ass con man. Con woman. Con person.

That dramatic note—“Thorndecker kills.”—smelled of con to me.

In the groves of academe there’s just as much envy, spite, deceit, connivery, and backbiting as in Hackensack politics. The upper echelons of scientific research are just as snaky a pit. The competition for private and federal funding is ruthless. Research scientists rush to publication, sometimes on the strength of palsied evidence. There’s no substitute for being first. Either you’re a discoverer, and your name goes into textbooks, or you’re a plodding replicator, and the Nobel Committee couldn’t care less.

So the chances were good that the author of “Thorndecker kills.” was a jealous rival or disgruntled aide who felt he wasn’t getting sufficient credit. I had seen it happen before: anonymous letters, slanderous rumors slyly spread, even sabotage and deliberate falsification of test results.

And the accusation—“Thorndecker kills.”—wasn’t all that shocking. All research biologists kill—everything from paramecia to chimpanzees. That’s what the job requires. If the note had said: “Thorndecker murders,” my hackles might have twitched a bit more. But all I did was slide the letter into an envelope addressed to Donner & Stern, along with a personal note to Nate Stern requesting a make on the typewriter used. I added the phone number of the Coburn Inn, and asked him to call when he had identified the machine. I doubted the information would have any effect on the Thorndecker inquiry.

That was my second mistake of that miserable day. The first was getting out of bed.

I waited and waited and waited for the rackety elevator, watching the brass dial move like it was lubricated with Elmer’s Glue-All. When the open cage finally came wheezing down from the top (sixth) floor, the operator turned out to be a wizened colored gentleman one year younger than God. He was wearing a shiny, black alpaca jacket and a little skullcap something like a yarmulke. He was sitting on a wooden kitchen stool. He stopped the elevator five inches below floor level, creaked open the gate slowly. I stepped down and in.

“Close,” I said, “but no cigar. How’s life treating you this bright, sparkling morning?”

“It’s hard but it’s fair,” he said, closing the gate and shoving the lever forward. “You checking out?”

“I just checked in.”

“I thought you was one of those drummers the storm drove in.”

“Not me,” I said. I’m here for a few days. Or maybe a few weeks.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “We can use all the customers we gets. My name’s Sam. Sam Livingston.”

“Sam’s my name, too,” I said. “Sam Todd. Glad to meet you, Sam.”

“Likewise, Sam,” he said.

We shook hands solemnly. About this time we were inching past the second floor.

“We’ll get there,” he said encouragingly. “I hop bells and hump bags and gets you room service, if you want. Like a jug late at night. A sandwich. I can provide.”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “What hours do you work?”

“All hours,” he said. “I live here. I got me a nice little place in the basement.”

“Where were you last night when I needed you?”

“Hustling drinks in the saloon, I reckon.”

“You busy, Sam?” I asked. “Many guests?”

“You,” he said, “and half a dozen permanents. It’s not our season.”

“When is your season?”

He showed me a keyboard of strong, yellow teeth.

“We ain’t got a season,” he said.

We both laughed, and I looked down into the lobby as we slowly descended.

The floor was a checkerboard of greasy black and white tiles. There were a few small oriental rugs, so tatty the brown backing showed through. The couches and club chairs had once been sleek leather; now they were crackled, cushions lumped with loose springs. Alongside some of the chairs were round rubber mats with ancient brass cuspidors that had been planted with plastic ferns.

Fat wooden pillars, painted to imitate marble, rose from floor to vaulted ceiling. There was ornate iron grillwork around the elevator shaft and cashier’s cage. Tucked in one corner was a glass cigar counter, presided over by a shimmering blonde wearing a tight turtleneck sweater punctuated by two Saturn nose cones.

The elevator bobbed to a stop. The gate squeaked open. I moved out. I had the feeling of stepping into the past, a scene of fifty years ago, caught and frozen. Old men slumped in dusty chairs stared at me over the tops of newspapers. The clerk behind the desk, another baldy, looked up from sorting letters into cubbyholes. The creampuff behind the counter paused in the act of opening a carton of cigarettes and raised her shadowed eyes.

It was not a memory, since I was too young to recall an ancient hotel lobby like that, smelling of disinfectant and a thousand dead cigars. I could only guess I remembered the set from an old movie, and any moment Humphrey Bogart was going to shamble over to the enameled blonde, buy a pack of Fatimas, and lisp, “Keep the change, thweetheart.”

I shook my head. The vertigo vanished. I was staring at a shabby hotel lobby in a small town that had seen better days none of the citizens could recall. I went to the front desk …

“My name’s Samuel Todd.”

“Yes, Mr. Todd,” the clerk said. “Room 3-F. Everything all right?”

He resembled the night clerk, but all bald men look like relatives.

“Everything’s fine,” I told him. “There was a letter waiting for me when I checked in last night. Could you tell me who left it?”

He shook his head.

“Can’t say. I went back in the office for a few minutes. When I came out, the letter was laying right there on the register. Wasn’t it signed?”

“Didn’t recognize the name,” I lied. “Where can I buy a stamp?”

“Machine over there on the cigar counter. Mailing slot’s next to the door. Or you can take it to the post office if you like. That’s around the corner on River Street. Go out a lot faster if you mail it from there. We don’t get a pickup till three, four this afternoon.”

I nodded my thanks, and walked over to the cigar counter. The machine sold me a 15-cent stamp for 20 cents. Nice business.

“Good morning, sir,” brass head said throatily. “You’re staying with us?”

She was something, a dazzle of wet colors: metallic hair, clouded eyes with lashes like inky centipedes, an enormous blooded mouth, pancaked cheeks. The red sweater was cinched with a studded belt wide enough for a motorcycle ride. Her skirt of purple plaid was so tight that in silhouette she looked like a map of Africa. Knee-high boots of white plastic. Tangerine-colored fingernails somewhere between claws and talons. A walking Picasso.

“Good morning,” I said. “Yes, I’m staying with you.”

I came down hard on the you, and she giggled and took a deep breath. It would have been cruel to ignore that. It would have been impossible to ignore that. I bought a candy bar I didn’t want.

“Keep the change, sweetheart,” I said.

The seediness was getting to me. All I needed was a toothpick in the corner of my mouth, and an unsmoked cigarette behind my ear.

I started for the doorway under the neon Restaurant-Bar sign.

“My name’s Millie,” the cigar counter girl called after me.

I waved a hand and kept going. Women like that scare me. I have visions of them cracking my bones and sucking the marrow.

One look at the Restaurant-Bar and I understood how the Coburn Inn survived without a season. There were customers at all twenty tables, and only two empty stools at the long counter. There were even three guys bellying up to the bar in an adjoining room, starting their day with a horn of the ox that gored them.

A few women, but mostly men. All locals, I figured: merchants, insurance salesmen, clerks, some blue-collar types, farmers in rubber boots and wool plaid shirts. They all seemed to know each other: a lot of loud talk, hoots of laughter. This had to be the
in
place in Coburn for a scoff or a tipple. More likely, it was the
only
place.

The menu was encouraging: heavy, country breakfasts with things like pork sausages, grits, scrapple, ham steaks, home fries, and so forth. I glanced around, and it looked like no one in Coburn ever heard of cholesterol. I had a glass of orange juice (which turned out to be freshly squeezed), a western omelette, hash browns, hot Danish, and coffee. When in Rome …

As I ate, the room gradually emptied out. It was getting on to 9:00
A.M.
, time to open all those swell stores I had seen, to start the business day thrumming. I figured that in Coburn, the sale of a second-hand manure spreader qualified as a thrum.

I was starting on my second cup of coffee when I realized someone was standing at my shoulder. I glanced around. A cop in khaki uniform under a canvas ranchers’ jacket with a shearling collar. His star was on his lapel, his gun belt was buckled tightly. A long, tight man.

“Mr. Samuel Todd?” he asked. His voice was a flat monotone, hard. A pavement voice.

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m parked in a towaway zone?”

“No, sir,” he said, not smiling. “I’m Constable Ronnie Goodfellow.” He didn’t offer to shake hands. “Mind if I join you?”

“Pull up a stool,” I said. “How about a coffee?”

“No, sir. Thank you.”

“No drinking on duty, eh?” I said. Still no smile. I gave up.

He took off his fur trooper’s hat, opened the gun belt, took off his jacket. Then he buckled the gun belt about his waist again. He hung up hat and jacket, swung onto the stool alongside me.

While he was going through this slow, thoughtful ballet, I was watching him in the mirror behind the counter. I figured him for Indian blood. He was sword-thin, with dark skin, jetty hair, a nose that could slice cheese. He moved with a relaxed grace, but he didn’t fool me. I saw the thin lips, squinny eyes. And his holster was oiled and polished.

I had known men like that before: so much pride they shivered with it. You see it mostly in blacks, Chicanos, and all the other put-downs. But some whites have it, too. Country whites or slum whites or mountain whites. Men so sensitive to a slight that they’ll kill if they’re insulted, derided, or even accidentally jostled. Temper isn’t the reason, or merely conceit. It’s a hubris that becomes violent when self-esteem is threatened. The image cannot be scorned. You don’t chivy men like that; you cross to the other side of the street.

“Reason I’m here,” he said in that stony voice, “is Dr. Telford Thorndecker asked me to stop by. Check to see you got settled in all right. See if there’s anything you’re wanting.”

“That’s very nice of you and Dr. Thorndecker,” I said. “I appreciate your interest. But I’m settled in just dandy. No problems. And the western omelette was the best I’ve ever tasted.”

“Introduce you to folks in Coburn, if you like,” he said. “I know them all.”

I blew across my coffee to cool it.

“Thorndecker tell you why I’m here?” I asked casually.

Then I turned to look at him. No expression in those tarry eyes.

“About the grant, you mean?” he said.

“The application for the grant,” I said.

“He told me.”

“That’s surprising,” I said. “Usually applicants like to keep it quiet. So if they’re turned down, which they usually are, there’s no public loss of face.”

He looked down at his hands, twisted his thin wedding band slowly.

“Mr. Todd,” he said, “Crittenden Hall is big business in Coburn. About a hundred people work out there, including the folks in the research lab. Biggest employer around here. They all live hereabouts, take home good paychecks, buy their needs from local stores. It’s important to us—you know?”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand.”

“And with so many local people working out there, it would be pretty hard for Dr. Thorndecker to keep this grant business a secret. He didn’t even try. There was a front-page story in the Coburn
Sentinel
a month ago. Everyone in town knows about it. Everyone’s hoping it comes through. A million dollars. That would mean a lot to this town.”