Sins of the Fathers

by Lawrence Block

  He looked at me.

  "Your razor, sir?"

  "I don't see that it matters."

  "Don't you?" I shrugged. "Richie walked in and found his mother dead in a pool of blood. Then, fourteen years later, he walked into an apartment on Bethune Street and found the woman he was living with dead in her bed. Also slashed with a razor, and also lying in a pool of blood.

  "I suppose Wendy Hanniford was a mother to him in certain ways. They must have played a lot of different surrogate roles in each other's lives. But all of a sudden Wendy became his dead mother, and Richie couldn't handle it, and he wound up doing something I guess he'd never been able to do before."

  "What?"

  "He had intercourse with her. It was a pure, uncontrollable reaction. He didn't even take time to take his clothes off. He fell on her and he had intercourse with her, and when it was over he ran out into the streets and started screaming his lungs out because his head was full of the fact that he had had intercourse with his mother and now she was dead. You can see what he thought, sir. He thought he fucked her to death."

  "God," he said.

  I wondered if he'd ever pronounced it quite that way before.

  * * *

  MY headache was getting worse. I asked him if I could have some aspirins. He told me how to find the first-floor lavatory. There were aspirin tablets in the medicine cabinet. I took two and drank half a glass of water.

  When I went back into the living room he hadn't changed position. I sat down in my chair and looked at him. There was a lot more and we would get to it, but I wanted to wait for him to pick it up.

  He said, "This is extraordinary, Mr. Scudder."

  "Yes."

  "I never even considered the possibility that Richard was innocent. I just assumed he had done it. If what you think is true-"

  "It's true."

  "Then he died for nothing."

  "He died for you, sir. He was the lamb for the burnt offering."

  "You can't seriously believe I killed that girl."

  "I know you did, sir."

  "How can you possibly know that?"

  "You met Wendy in the spring."

  "Yes. I believe I told you that the last time you were here."

  "You picked a time when you knew Richie would be at work. You wanted to meet this girl because you were bothered at the idea of Richie living in sin with her."

  "I already told you as much."

  "Yes, you did." I took a breath. "Wendy Hanniford was very strongly drawn to older men, men who functioned as father figures for her. She was aggressive in situations involving a man who attracted her. She managed to seduce several of her professors at college.

  "She met you, and she was attracted to you. It's not hard to imagine why. You're a very commanding figure of a man. Very stern and forbidding. And on top of everything you were Richie's actual father, and she and Richie were living like brother and sister.

  "So she made a play for you. I gather she was very good at getting her point across. And you were very vulnerable. You'd been a widower for a good many years. Your housekeeper may have been very efficient at her appointed tasks, but you certainly couldn't have picked her as a potential sexual outlet. The last time I was here you told me you felt in retrospect that you should have remarried for Richie's sake. I think you were really saying that you should have remarried for your own sake, so that you wouldn't have been vulnerable to Wendy Hanniford."

  "This is all guesswork on your part, Mr. Scudder."

  "You went to bed with her. Maybe that was the first time you went to bed with anybody since your wife died. I wouldn't know, and it doesn't much matter. But you went to bed with her and I guess you liked it because you kept going back. You thought it was a sin, but that didn't change things much because you went right on sinning.

  "You certainly hated her. Even after she was dead you made it a point to tell me how evil she was. I thought at the time you were justifying your son's act. I didn't believe then that he did it, but I believed you thought so.

  "Then you told me he admitted his guilt."

  He didn't say anything. I watched him wipe perspiration from his forehead, then wipe his hand on his robe.

  "That didn't have to mean anything. You might have been talking yourself into the belief that Richie died penitent. Or he could well have admitted it to you because he could have become sufficiently confused after the fact. Everything was jumbled up for him. He told his lawyer he found Wendy dead in the bathtub. A little more reflection and he must have decided that he had killed her even if he couldn't remember it.

  "But the more I found out about Wendy, the harder it was to picture her as evil. I don't doubt she had an evil effect on the lives of certain other people. But why would she seem evil to you? There was really only one explanation for that, sir. She made you want to do something you were ashamed of. And that made you do something more shameful. You killed her.

  "You planned it. You took your razor along. And you had sex with her one final time before you murdered her."

  "That's a lie."

  "It's not. I can even tell you what you did. The autopsy showed that she had had both oral and vaginal intercourse shortly before death. Richie would have had genital intercourse with her, so what you did, sir, was take off all your clothes and let her perform fellatio upon you, and then you whipped out your razor and slashed her to death, and then you went home and let your son hang himself for it."

  I stood up and planted my feet in front of his chair. "I'll tell you what I think. I think you're a son of a bitch. You knew Richie would be home from work in another couple of hours. You knew he'd discover the body. You didn't necessarily know he'd go nuts, but you knew the cops would grab him and lean on him hard. You set him up for it."

  "No!"

  "No?"

  "I was going to... to call the police. I was going to report the crime anonymously. They would have found the body while he was still at work. They would have known he had nothing to do with it, they would have blamed it on some anonymous sex partner of hers. They never would have thought-"

  "Why didn't you follow through?"

  He fought to catch his breath. He said, "I left the apartment. My head was reeling, I was... badly shaken by what I had done. And then I saw Richie on his way home. He didn't see me. I saw him mount the stairs, and I knew... I knew it was too late. He was already on the scene."

  "So you let him go upstairs."

  "Yes."

  "And when you went to see him in jail?"

  "I wanted to tell him. I wanted to... to say something to him. I... I couldn't."

  He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

  I let him sit like that for a while. He didn't sob, didn't make a sound, just sat there looking somewhere into the black parts of his soul. Finally I got up and took a half-pint flask of bourbon from my pocket. I uncapped it and offered it to him.

  He wasn't having any. "I don't use spirits, Mr. Scudder."

  "Think of it as a special occasion."

  "I don't use spirits. I don't allow them in my house."

  I thought about that and decided he wasn't in a position to set rules. I took a long drink.

  He said, "You can't prove any of this."

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "Some conjecture on your part. A great deal of it, as a matter of fact."

  "So far you haven't refuted any of it."

  "No, if anything I've confirmed it, haven't I? But I'll deny having said any such thing to you. You haven't the slightest bit of truth."

  "You're absolutely right."

  "Then I don't see what you're driving at."

  "I can't prove anything. The cops will be able to, though, when I go to them. They never had any reason to dig before. But they'll start digging, and they'll turn something up. They'll start by asking you to account for your movements on the day of the murder. You won't be able to. That's nothing in and of itself, but it's enough to encourage them to keep looking. They've sti
ll got that apartment sealed off. They never had a reason to dust it for prints. They'll have a reason now, and they'll find your prints somewhere. I'm sure you didn't run around wiping surfaces.

  "They'll ask to see your razor. If you bought a new one since then, they'll wonder why. They'll go through all your wardrobe, looking for bloodstains. I guess you had your clothes off when you killed her, but you'll have gotten traces of blood on something or other and it won't all wash out.

  "They'll put a case together a piece at a time, and they won't even need a full case because you'll crack under questioning in no time at all. You'll crack wide open."

  "I may be stronger than you seem to think, Mr. Scudder."

  "You're not strong so much as you're rigid. You'll break. I couldn't tell you how many suspects I've questioned. It gives you a pretty good idea of who's going to crack easy. You'd be a cinch."

  He looked at me, then averted his eyes.

  "But it doesn't matter whether you crack or not, and it doesn't matter whether they put a solid case together or not, because all they have to do is start looking and you've had it. Take a look at your life, Reverend Vanderpoel. Once they start, you're finished. You won't be up there on the pulpit Sunday mornings reading the Law to your congregation. You'll be disgraced."

  He sat for a few minutes in silence. I took out my flask and had another drink. Drinking was against his religion. Well, murder was against mine.

  "What do you want, Mr. Scudder? I have to tell you that I'm not a rich man."

  "Pardon me?"

  "I suppose I could arrange regular payments. I couldn't afford very much, but I could-"

  "I don't want money."

  "You're not trying to blackmail me?"

  "No."

  He frowned at me, puzzled. "Then I don't understand."

  I let him think about it.

  "You haven't gone to the police?"

  "No."

  "Do you intend to go to them?"

  "I hope I won't have to."

  "I don't understand what you mean."

  I took another little drink. I capped the flask and put it back in my pocket. From another pocket I took a small vial of pills.

  I said, "I found these in the medicine cabinet at the Bethune Street apartment. They were Richie's. He had them prescribed fifteen months ago. They're Seconal, sleeping pills.

  "I don't know if Richie had trouble sleeping or not, but he evidently didn't take any of these. The bottle's still full. There are thirty pills. I think he bought them with the intention of committing suicide. A lot of people make false starts like that. Sometimes they throw the pills away when they change their minds. Other times they keep them around in order to simplify things if they decide to kill themselves at a later date. And there are people who find some security in having the means of suicide close at hand. They say thoughts of self-destruction get people through a great many bad nights."

  I walked over to him and placed the vial on the little table beside his chair.

  "There are enough there," I said. "If a person were to take them all and go to bed, he wouldn't wake up."

  He looked at me. "You have everything all worked out."

  "Yes. I haven't been able to think of much else."

  "You expect me to end my life."

  "Your life is over, sir. It's just a question of how it finishes up."

  "And if I take these pills?"

  "You leave a note. You're despondent over the death of your son, and you can't find it within yourself to go on living. It won't be that far from the truth, will it?"

  "And if I refuse?"

  "I go to the police Tuesday morning."

  He breathed deeply several times. Then he said, "Do you honestly think it would be so bad to let me go on living my life, Mr. Scudder? I perform a valuable function, you know. I'm a good minister."

  "Perhaps you are."

  "I honestly think I do some good in this world. Not a great deal, but some. Is it illogical for me to want to go on doing good?"

  "No."

  "And I am not a criminal, you know. I did kill... that girl."

  "Wendy Hanniford."

  "I killed her. Oh, you're so quick to see it as a calculated, cold-blooded act, aren't you? Do you know how many times I swore not to see her again? Do you know how many nights I lay awake, wrestling with demons? Do you even know how many times I went to her apartment with my razor in my pocket, torn between the desire to slay her and the fear of committing such a monstrous sin? Do you know any of that?"

  I didn't say anything.

  "I killed her. Whatever happens, I will never kill anyone again. Can you honestly say I constitute a danger to society?"

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "It's bad for society when murders remain unpunished."

  "But if I do as you suggest, no one will know I've taken my life for that reason. No one will know I was punished for murder."

  "I'll know."

  "You'd be judge and jury, then. Is that right?"

  "No. You will, sir."

  He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair. I wanted another drink, but I let the flask stay in my pocket. The headache was still there. The aspirin hadn't even touched it.

  "I regard suicide as a sin, Mr. Scudder."

  "So do I."

  "You do?"

  "Absolutely. If I didn't I probably would have killed myself years ago. There are worse sins."

  "Murder."

  "That's one of them."

  He fixed his eyes on me. "Do you think I am an evil man, Mr. Scudder?"

  "I'm not an expert on that. Good and evil. I have a lot of trouble figuring those things out."

  "Answer my question."

  "I think you've had good intentions. You were talking about that earlier."

  "And I've paved a road to Hell?"

  "Well, I don't know where the road leads, but there are a lot of wrecks along the highway, aren't there? Your wife committed suicide. Your mistress got slashed to death. Your son went crazy and hanged himself for something he didn't do. Does that make you good or evil? You'll have to work that one out for yourself."

  "You intend to go to the police Tuesday morning."

  "If I have to."

  "And otherwise you'll keep your silence."

  "Yes."

  "Ah, and what about you, Mr. Scudder? Are you a force for good or evil? I'm sure you've asked yourself the question."

  "Now and then."

  "How do you answer it?"

  "Ambivalently."

  "And now, in this act? Forcing me to kill myself?"

  "That's not what I'm doing."

  "Isn't it?"

  "No. I'm allowing you to kill yourself. I think you're a damned fool if you don't, but I'm not forcing you to do anything."

  Chapter 17

  I was awake early Monday morning. I got a Times at the corner and read it over bacon and eggs and coffee. A cabdriver had been murdered in East Harlem. Someone had stuck an icepick into him through one of the air holes in his partition. Now everyone who read the Times would know a new way to score off a cabdriver.

  I walked over to the bank when it opened and deposited half of Cale Hanniford's thousand-dollar check. I took the rest in cash, then walked a few blocks to the post office and bought a money order for a few hundred dollars. I addressed an envelope in my hotel room, put a stamp on it, picked up the phone and called Anita.

  I said, "I'm sending you a couple of bucks."

  "You don't have to do that."

  "Well, to pick out something for the boys. How have they been?"

  "Fine, Matt. They're in school now, of course. They'll be sorry they missed your call."

  "It's never much good over the phone, anyway. I was thinking, I could get tickets for the Mets game Friday night. If you could get them to the Coliseum I could send them home in a cab. If you think they'd like to go."

  "I know they would. I could drive them there with no trouble."

  "Well, I'll see if
I can pick up tickets. They shouldn't be too hard to come by."