The Sixth Commandment (6 page)

He stared at me.

“I reckon it was that hot-pants wife of his,” he said grimly.

He was silent then, just standing there staring at me. It seemed to me he was trying to decide whether or not to say more. I waited. Finally he made up his mind …

“You know what they’re doing out there?” he demanded. “In that laboratory of theirs?”

He pronounced it almost in the British manner: la
bor
atory.

I shrugged. “Biological research,” I said. “Something to do with human cells.”

“Devil’s work!” he burst out, so forcibly I felt the spittle on my face. “It’s devil’s work!”

I sat up straight.

“What are you talking about?” I said harshly. “What does that mean—devil’s work?”

“That’s for me to know,” he said, “and you to find out. Thank you kindly for the drinks.”

He actually tipped that checked hunting cap to me. I watched him drag away.

I finished my drink, paid my tab, stalked out of the bar. That country breakfast had been enough; I didn’t feel up to lunch. Went into the hotel lobby. Thumbed through magazines in a rack near the cigar counter. Waited until there were no customers. I wanted to talk to her alone.

“Hello, Millie,” I said.

“Hi there!” she said, flapping her lashes like feather dusters. “Enjoying your visit to Coburn, Mr. Todd?”

So she had asked the desk clerk my name. I wondered if she had asked my room number, too.

“Lousy town,” I said, watching her.

“You can say that again,” she said, eyes dulling. “It died fifty years ago, but no one has enough money to give it a decent burial. Can I help you? Cigarettes? A magazine?
Anything?”

She gave that “anything” the husky, Marilyn Monroe exhalation, arching her back, pouting. God help Constable Ronnie Goodfellow.

“Just information,” I told her hastily. “How do I get to Dr. Thorndecker’s place? Crittenden Hall?”

I tried to listen and remember as she told me how to drive east on Main Street, turn north on Oakland Drive, make a turn at Mike’s Service Station onto Fort Peabody Drive, etc., etc. But I was looking at her and trying to figure why a hard, young Indian cop had married a used woman about five years older than he, and whose idea of bliss was probably a pound box of chocolate bonbons and the tenth rerun of “I Love Lucy.”

When she ran down, I said, foolishly, “I met your husband this morning.”

“I meet him every morning,” she said. Then she added, “Almost.”

She stared at me, suddenly very sober, very serious. Challenging.

I tried to smile. I turned around and walked away. I didn’t know if it was good sense or cowardice. I did know I had misjudged this lady. Her idea of bliss wasn’t the boob tube and bonbons. Far from it.

I found my car in the parking area, and while it was warming up, I scraped the ice off the windshield. Then I headed out of town.

I remember an instructor down in Ft. Benning telling us:

“You can stare at maps and aerial photos until your eyeballs are coming out your ass. But nothing can take the place of physical reconnaissance. Maps and photos are okay, but seeing the terrain and, if possible, walking over it, is a thousand times better.
Learn the terrain.
Know what the hell you’re getting into. If you can walk over it before a firefight, maybe you’ll walk out of it after.”

So I had decided to go have a look at Dr. Telford Thorndecker’s terrain.

By following Millie Goodfellow’s directions, with a little surly assistance at Mike’s Service Station, I found Crittenden Hall without too much difficulty. The grounds were less than a mile east of the river, the main buildings on the hill that had once belonged to Al Coburn’s daddy.

The approach was through an area of small farms: stubbled land and beaten houses. Some of the barns and outbuildings showed light between warped siding; tarpaper roofing flapped forlornly; sprained doors hung open on rusty hinges. I saw farm machinery parked unprotected, and more than one field unpicked, the produce left to rot. It was cold, wet, desolate. Even more disturbing, there was no one around. I didn’t see a pedestrian, pass another car, or glimpse anyone working the land or even taking out the garbage. The whole area seemed deserted. Like a plague had struck, or a neutron bomb dropped. The empty, weathered buildings leaned. Stripped trees cut blackly across the pewter sky. But the people were gone. No life. I ached to hear a dog bark.

The big sign read Crittenden Hall, and below was a small brass plaque: Crittenden Research Laboratory. There was a handsome cast iron fence at least six feet tall, with two ornate gates that opened inward. Inside was a guard hut just large enough for one man to sit comfortably, feet on a gas heater.

I drove slowly past. The ornamental iron fence became chain link, but it entirely enclosed the Thorndecker property. Using single-lane back roads, I was able to make a complete circuit. A lot of heavily wooded land. Some meadows. A brook. A tennis court. A surprisingly large cemetery, well-tended, rather attractive. People were dying to get in there. I finally saw someone: a burly guy in black oilskins with a broken shotgun over one arm. In his other hand was a leash. At the end of the leash, a straining German shepherd.

I came back to the two-lane macadam that ran in front of the main gate. I parked off the verge where I couldn’t be seen from the guard hut. I got out, shivering, found my 7x50 field glasses in the messy trunk, got back in the car and lowered the window just enough. I had a reasonably good view of the buildings and grounds. The light was slaty, and the lens kept misting up, but I could see what I wanted to see.

I wasn’t looking for anything menacing or suspicious. I just wanted to get a quick first impression. Did the buildings look in good repair? Were the grounds reasonably well-groomed? Was there an air of prosperity and good management—or was the place a dump, rundown and awaiting foreclosure?

Dr. Thorndecker’s place got high marks. Not a broken window that I could see. Sashes and wooden trim smartly painted. Lawn trimmed, and dead leaves gathered. Trees obviously cared for, brick walks swept clean. Bushes and garden had been prepared for the coming winter. Storm windows were up.

All this spelled care and efficiency. It looked like a prosperous, functioning set-up with strong management that paid attention to maintenance and appearance even in this lousy weather at this time of year.

The main building, the largest building, was also, obviously, the oldest. Probably the original nursing home, Crittenden Hall. It was a three-story brick structure sited on the crest of the hill. The two-story wings were built on a slightly lower level. All outside walls were covered with ivy, still green. Roofs were tarnished copper. Windows were fitted with ornamental iron grilles, not unusual in buildings designed for the ill, infirm, aged, and/or loony.

About halfway down the hill was a newer building. Also red brick, but no ivy. And the roof was slated. The windows were also guarded, but with no-nonsense vertical iron bars. This building, which I assumed to be the Crittenden Research Laboratory, was not as gracefully designed as Crittenden Hall; it was merely a two-story box, with mean windows and a half-hearted attempt at an attractive Georgian portico and main entrance. Between nursing home and laboratory was an outdoor walk and stairway, a roofed port set on iron pillars, without walls.

There were several smaller outbuildings which could have been kitchens, labs, storehouses, supply sheds, whatever; I couldn’t even guess. But everything seemed precise, trim, clean and well-preserved.

Then why did I get such a feeling of desolation?

It might have been that joyless day, the earth still sodden, the sky pressing down. It might have been that disconsolate light. Not light at all, really, but just moist steel. Or maybe it was Coburn and my mood.

All I know is that when I put down the binoculars, I had seen nothing that could possibly count against Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker and his grant application to the Bingham Foundation. Yet I felt something I struggled to analyze and name.

I stared at those winter-stark buildings on the worn hill, striving to grasp what it was I felt. It came to me on the trip back to Coburn. It wasn’t fear. Exactly. It was dread.

After that little jaunt to the hinterland, Coburn seemed positively sparkling. I counted at least four pedestrians on Main Street. And look! There was a dog lifting his leg at a hydrant. Marvelous!

I parked and locked the car. What I wanted right then was—oh, I could think of a lot of things I wanted: vodka gimlet. Straight cognac. Coffee and Danish. Club sandwich and ale. Hot pastrami and Celery Tonic. Joan Powell. On rye. So I walked across Main Street to the office of the Coburn
Sentinel.

It was a storefront with a chipped gold legend on the plate glass window: “Biggest little weekly in the State!” Just inside the door was a stained wooden counter where you could subscribe or buy a want-ad or complain your name was spelled wrong in that front-page story they did on the anniversary party at the Gulek Fat Processing Plant.

Behind the counter were a few exhausted desks, typewriters, swivel chairs. There was a small private office enclosed by frosted glass partitions. And in the rear was the printing area. Everything was ancient. Hand-set type, flatbed press. I guessed they did business cards, stationery, and fliers to pay the rent.

The place was not exactly a humming beehive of activity. There was a superannuated lady behind the counter. She was sitting on a high stool, clipping ads from old
Sentinels
with long shears. She had a bun of iron-gray hair with two pencils stuck into it. And she wore a cameo brooch at the ruffled neck of her shirtwaist blouse. She had just stepped off a
Saturday Evening Post
cover by Norman Rockwell.

Behind her, sitting at one of the weary desks, was a lissome wench. All of 18, I figured. The cheerleader type: so blond, so buxom, so healthy, so glowing that I immediately straightened my shoulders and sucked in my gut. Vanity, thy name is man. Miss Dimples was pecking away at an old Underwood standard, the tip of a pink tongue poked from one corner of her mouth. I’d have traded my Grand Prix for one—Enough. That way lies madness.

Farther to the rear, standing in front of fonts in the press section, a stringy character was setting type with all the blinding speed of a sloth on Librium. He was wearing an ink-smeared apron and one of those square caps printers fold out of newsprint. He was also wearing glasses with lenses like the bottoms of Coke bottles. I wondered about the
Sentinel’s
typos per running inch …

That whole damned place belonged in the Smithsonian, with a neat label: “American newspaper office, circa 1930.” Actually, all of Coburn belonged in the same Institution, with a similar label. Time had stopped in Coburn. I had stepped into a warp, and any minute someone was going to turn on an Atwater Kent radio, and I’d hear Gene Austin singing “My Blue Heaven.”

“May I help you?” the old lady said, looking up from her clipping.

“Is the editor in, please?” I asked. “I’d like to see him.”

“Her,” she said. “Our editor is female. Agatha Binder.”

“Pardon me,” I said humbly. “Might I see Miss, Mrs., or Ms. Binder?”

“About what?” she said suspiciously. “You selling something? Or got a complaint?”

I figured the Coburn
Sentinel
got a lot of complaints.

“No, no complaints,” I said. I gave her my most winning smile, with no effect whatsoever. “My name is Samuel Todd. I’m with the Bingham Foundation. I’d like to talk to your editor about Dr. Telford Thorndecker.”

“Oh,” she said,
“that.
Wait right here.”

She slid off the stool and went trotting back into the gloomy shop. She went into the closed office. She was out in a minute, beckoning me with an imperious forefinger. I pushed through the swinging gate. On the way back, I passed the desk of the nubile cheerleader. She was still pecking away at the Underwood, tongue still poked from her mouth.

“I love you,” I whispered, and she looked up in alarm.

The woman sprawled behind the littered desk in the jumbled office was about my age, and fifty pounds heavier. She was wearing ink-stained painter’s overalls over a red checkerboard shirt that looked like it was made from an Italian restaurant tablecloth. Her feet were parked on the desk, in unbuckled combat boots of World War II. There was a cardboard container of black coffee on the floor alongside her, and she was working on the biggest submarine sandwich I’ve ever seen. Meatballs.

Everything about her was massive: head, nose, jaw, shoulders, bosom, hips, thighs. The hands that held the sub looked like picnic hams, and her wrists were as thick as my ankles. But no ogre she. It all went together, and was even pleasing in a monumental way. If they had a foothill left over from Mt. Rushmore, they could have used it for her: rugged, craggy. Even the eyes were granite, with little sparkling lights of mica.

“Miss Binder,” I said.

“Todd,” she said, “sit down.”

I sat.

Her voice was like her body: heavy, with an almost masculine rumble. She never stopped munching away at that damned hoagie while we talked, and never stopped swilling coffee. But it didn’t slow her down, and the meatballs didn’t affect her diction. Much.

“Thorndecker getting his dough?” she demanded.

“That’s not for me to say,” I told her. How many times would I have to repeat that in Coburn? “I’m just here to do some poking. You know Thorndecker? Personally?”

“Sure, I know him. I know everyone in Coburn. He’s a conceited, opinionated, sanctimonious, pompous ass. He’s also the greatest brain I’ve ever met. So smart it scares you. He’s a genius; no doubt about that.”

“Ever hear any gossip about that nursing home of his? Patients mistreated? Lousy food? Things like that?”

“You kidding?” she said. “Listen, buster, I should live like Thorndecker’s patients. Caviar for breakfast. First-run movies. He’s got the best wine cellar in the county. And why not? They’re paying for it. Listen, Todd, there are lots and lots of people in this country with lots and lots of money. The sick ones and the old ones go to Crittenden Hall to die in style—and that’s what they get. I know most of the locals working up there—the aides, cooks, waitresses, and so forth. They all say the same thing: the place is a palace. If you’ve got to go, that’s the way to do it. And when they conk off, as most of them eventually do, he even buries them, or has them cremated. At an added cost, of course.”