God Told Me To

by C. K. Chandler

  “Yet you chose to call it a male.”

  “I suppose I thought that was the best thing to do. The mother didn’t seem upset when I broke the news to her. She didn’t even seem surprised. She referred to the child as him. So I went along with that.”

  “What about the father?”

  “If you mean the husband, I met him only briefly at the time of the delivery. I got the feeling that he was not the father. Naturally, I never mentioned this to Mrs. Phillips. She seemed both possessive of and disinterested in the child. Very resentful of myself or any nurse who had to handle the baby. Yet she didn’t have a name for it. As I recall it was still unnamed when she took it home.”

  “Did she ever return for any postnatal care?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I wonder how the child turned out?”

  “A male or a female. Or something else entirely different. When I find out, I’ll let you know.”

  The obstetrician shook his head. “No. I don’t think I want to know.”

  Though Greenwich Village has a reputation for bohemianism, and is widely thought to be populated by libertines and misfits, it would have been difficult to find a more middle-class, family-oriented man than William Morton. He and his family lived in a floor-through apartment in a fine old brownstone building on West Tenth Street. He was active in community affairs, a member of the VID (Village Independent Democrats club), and the current chairman of his street’s block association. He had his own business, a small printing shop over on Hudson Street that was within walking distance of where he lived.

  He was a most methodical man. His habits were steady as a monument. On his way home from work, he would walk to a Hudson Street saloon known as the Sazarac House and have two mugs of beer. He would never spend more than an hour in the saloon and he always left the bartender a fifty-cent tip.

  Between the Sazarac and his home there was a delicatessen where he stopped at least two evenings a week. The deli stocked his favorite brand of popcorn: Jolly Time blue. He knew the same brand was cheaper in supermarkets, but he felt the elderly couple who owned the deli were nicer to deal with than the A&P. He would also purchase a six-pack of soda and two pints of coffee ice cream.

  William Morton liked few things more than sitting in his favorite chair and watching television with his family. They ate dinner early, within minutes of his arriving home, so that Morton would be free to watch Walter Cronkite read the news. With the exception of Cronkite, he left the viewing choices to his wife and two children, though he did have a preference for wildlife documentary shows.

  Around eight-thirty or nine-o’clock, he would go to the kitchen and either dish out ice cream or prepare popcorn. His family thought that was what he was about to do on this particular night when he rose from his chair and left the living room. But instead of going to the kitchen, he went to a closet and took out a rifle.

  Nicholas hadn’t been home in over a week. Nor had he bathed or showered. He spent his nights in the cheap hotel listening to the police band on a radio and to the sounds of the prostitutes in the room next door. He would lie back on the bed or sit in the single chair, listen, and sip brandy. Normally he kept the lights out and the room would be lit by the flashing, bouncing neons from the street below.

  His days were spent going through the motions of finding Bernard Phillips. He was no closer now than he had been a week ago, but he felt that each day was in some odd fashion drawing him nearer to Phillips. Inevitably, as if their meeting were predestined, he would confront Phillips. The combination of the obstetrician’s remarks and the slashing attack had convinced Deputy Commissioner Hendriks to give him more time on the case. Nicholas, though, was prepared to leave the department if necessary and to continue his search on his own.

  He had told himself his reason for not going home was that he didn’t want Casey to see his wounds. Over the phone he’d told her he had received a couple of minor cuts, nothing to worry about. She had hung up on him.

  He called out to Hempstead once and talked with his wife. He used a pay phone in the hotel lobby, and while speaking with Martha he watched the prostitutes plying their trade. He put a lot of dimes into the phone, but after he hung up he couldn’t remember what they had talked about.

  His facial stitches had been removed today. His face was still stiff and tender and livid scars marked his forehead and cheek. The doctor had wanted the stitches to stay in his hand for another week. Nicholas was impatient and used a razor blade on them. After cutting the sutures with the blade, he used his teeth as tweezers to pull the threads from his flesh.

  He flexed his hand, half expecting it to reopen. Droplets of blood oozed from where the sutures had been. He thought pouring brandy over his hand would stop the oozing. That caused burning but didn’t stanch the blood. He went to the bathroom down the hall from his room and washed the hand in cool water, bound it with a clean handkerchief.

  On the way back to his room an emaciated black prostitute with purple hair and one blind eye propositioned him. She wasn’t attractive. He spotted her for a junkie, and her drug-drained features made it impossible to estimate her age. But he looked her up and down and was tempted. Until she smiled. Her teeth were black and rotten. He pushed past her and went into his room.

  He lay back on the bed and listened to the police band.

  The purple-haired prostitute kept the room next door. Unlike most of the other hookers, who booked by the hour and then took their earnings home to their pimp, this one was a permanent resident. She was too worn for any pimp to want to take her into his stable. About an hour later Nicholas heard her making the squeals of phony passion. For the first time since he’d lived here, he began to fantasize about the sounds. Erotic pictures flashed through his mind. The ugliness of the prostitute heightened his fantasy as much as it repulsed him.

  She was still squealing when the report on William Morton came over the radio.

  The bodies of Morton’s wife and two kids were being removed when he arrived at the West Tenth Street address. He took charge of the case and started interrogating Morton.

  “Can you tell us why you did this, Mr. Morton?”

  Morton’s eyes were red with grief. There was disbelief in his voice, as if he truly didn’t know what he’d done.

  “I did it, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God. Oh my God.”

  “Were you angry with your family?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t even thinking about them. We were watching the TV. A movie, I think.”

  “Did the movie spark anything? Is that what made you go to the closet and get the rifle?”

  “I don’t know. It just occurred to me.”

  “Did it occur to you to shoot your wife?”

  “No. I shot Jerry first.”

  “Your son?”

  “Uh-huh. He was eleven.”

  Morton raised a trembling arm and pointed to a pool of blood on the carpet. It hadn’t dried yet, and there was the imprint of a child’s head and shoulders in the puddle.

  “And when your wife saw you fire?”

  “She wanted to stop me. Then she ran.”

  “You shot her in the back?”

  “And in the head. Twice. I shot her two times.”

  The wife’s blood and bits of flesh and tissue streaked the plaster of a wall.

  The soft, dazed tone of Morton’s voice reminded Nicholas of Harold Gorman’s tone on the water tower. But there was more horror in Morton’s act than in Gorman’s. Harold had killed strangers. Morton killed his family.

  “And then your daughter. What was her name?”

  “Lindsay. She screamed, then she ran into the bathroom. It’s the only room in the house with a lock. I said to her, Lindsay, open the door for Daddy. I said it was a game. Mommy and Jerry are all right. It was only for fun, I told her. The gun is a toy. I said, Come out and I will let you play with it. And I’ll show you how to do the trick. After a while I heard her laugh. She opened the door and came out an
d she was laughing. I was laughing when I shot her.”

  “You didn’t feel any remorse or guilt?”

  Morton shook his head dazedly.

  “I’ll miss seeing them. I’ll never see them again and I will miss them.”

  He looked about the room, at the puddle on the floor and the streaks on the wall. His eyes widened and a glaze appeared to cover them. His mouth curved into a smile very similar to the one Harold Gorman had shown Nicholas. It was what Nicholas had been waiting for.

  “You feel good now, don’t you, Mr. Morton?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t remember ever feeling so good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. I thought I’d do something for him. Do it for all he’s done for us. He’s given us everything and asks for so little. How can I refuse him.”

  “Who?”

  “He wouldn’t have asked me if it wasn’t right. He wouldn’t have asked me to do something wrong. I’m sure he didn’t hurt them. I’m sure they’re with him now. They’re happy. As happy as I felt the moment I did his will.”

  “How did he speak with you? Did you hear his voice?”

  “He guided my hand. I didn’t have to aim. I suppose you think it was too much to ask, but you don’t love God as I do.”

  “You’re a religious man, then?”

  “Not until today. It came all at once. It came and I knew. I met the blond young man and learned.”

  “Was the young man’s name Phillips?”

  “The young man was sent to me. Sent to tell me everything.”

  “Are you saying you spoke with the son of God?”

  “I’m not the first one. In the Bible God told Abraham to kill his son Isaac. Sacrifices to God are nothing new.”

  Nicholas asked, “Did the young man say he was the son of God?”

  “Why do you all look at me as though I’m the first one.”

  “Answer me, Morton. What did he tell you?”

  “Life doesn’t matter.”

  Nicholas grabbed Morton and shook the man. “What did the young man say!”

  “Not down here on earth. Life doesn’t matter at all.”

  Nicholas said loudly, “Answer me!”

  “They are with God now.”

  The detective threw Morton to the floor. He pushed the man’s face into the puddle of blood that bore the child’s imprint.

  “Feel that! Smell it. Taste it. That’s the blood of your son. You blew the back off of his head. Is this what God wanted you to do? Where is the young man? Where?”

  An officer took hold of Nicholas and pulled him off Morton.

  Morton remained on the floor. He started sobbing. When he looked up, his face was wet with blood. The glaze had left his eyes, and he seemed at last to be aware of the murders he had committed.

  “They were so soft. I won’t be able to hold them anymore. Or make them laugh. I used to stand them on my shoulders and walk them to their beds. They weren’t afraid of falling. They weren’t afraid of me.”

  He wept.

  An officer reached down to help him to his feet. At the touch of the officer’s hand, he started and the glazed look returned to his eyes.

  “But they were His children too. I couldn’t refuse Him.”

  Morton was led away.

  Nicholas knew he would find nothing on the premises but he made a cursory search.

  The officer who had pulled him off Morton said, “The guy’s crazy. They’ll put him in a home and he’ll be on the streets in five years. I’m surprised at you losing your temper, Lieutenant. You’ve seen these nuts before.”

  TEN

  The bar was within shouting distance of the old police headquarters building in Manhattan. It hadn’t changed much since the days when it had been a speakeasy. A jukebox and a fifty-star flag were about the only concessions to modernity, and the tunes on the box were twenty-year-old hits by Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Flecks of aged paint occasionally fell from the filthy tin ceiling, and a damp musty odor of disinfectant wafted from the floor.

  Few civilians drank here. It was a place for off-duty cops and retired cops; men who rarely feel at ease when not near others of their profession. Here they could congregate, sometimes pass on a tip to another man, but mostly they just told and retold old embroidered stories. The drinks were cheap, a hard-boiled egg cost a quarter, and for a dollar they could get a large wedge of cheddar cheese with onions and mustard.

  One of the more popular regulars was an ex-vice squad cop named Eddie Cook. He was a sallow-complected man whose hands shook with palsy. He hated the retirement that had been forced on him by health and age. Here he could still feel on the periphery of the job he had worked so long. With the help of whisky to oil his tobacco-scarred voice, he would tell of his experiences, relating various events as if he were a circus performer juggling balls of the past.

  He had been chatting with Peter Nicholas for quite some time when he asked, “What’s the what, laddy? Never knew you to take the grape like I seen you these last days.”

  Nicholas sighed, “Just a case, Eddie.”

  “There’ll always be another case. Don’t let them get to you. Next thing you know you’ll be retired. Lonely and spending your time like me.”

  “Never happen.”

  “Don’t be so goddamn sure. Don’t. No, sir. Damn few of us get ourselves killed. Public thinks we got it made with our pensions. Fuck the public. We get retired and they don’t want to hear from us. Show me an ex-cop, laddy. You show me and I’ll show you a lonely sonofabitch who drinks too much, talks too much, and maybe, just maybe, keeps his hands in things by workin’ as a night watchman.”

  “You working, Eddie?”

  “Not these days. I was watching a construction site over in Jersey last week. Put me with a dog. Goddamn dog damn near bit my leg off. Wouldn’t give me a gun. No, sir. Just a silly-ass dog that kept going for me.”

  Eddie shoved a cigarette into his mouth. His palsied hands had trouble with the matchbook but Nicholas knew better than to offend the old man by lighting his cigarette for him.

  “They still got you teamed with Jordan? That hush-hush job you and him are workin’?”

  Nicholas nodded.

  “Can’t figure how he’s kept in the department. What he does on the street, Willie Sutton didn’t do to banks.”

  “He’s smart, Eddie.”

  “He’s a scumbag. I know guys who like him. Me, I’ll take a good old-fashioned hard-nosed sonofabitch like yourself. Like I was in my day. Do the job, do it good, and fuck the rest.”

  “Jordan’s a better cop than I ever thought.”

  “Oh, yeah? You’re supposed to be partners, right? So how come you got the scars? How come you’re the one sitting here going batty with the booze? By the way, you look like hell.”

  Nicholas picked up his brandy and threw it down his throat. Brandy was served in shot glasses here instead of snifters or ponies. A small trickle of the amber fluid ran down his chin to the jawline. He wiped it away with his palm, and as he did so he felt the bristles of a two-day growth of beard. He called for another drink and bought a whisky for Eddie. Without meaning to, he suddenly blurted the words, “God told me to.”

  “Laddy, I figured you was just buyin’ me a drink for old times’ sake. Didn’t know God had a thing to do with it.”

  “It’s never Jesus. God is what they say.”

  “If God was a cop, the public would give Him half-pay after twenty years and throw Him out.”

  Nicholas swallowed half of his fresh drink.

  “Go easy on that grape. Or they’ll be snatching your gun and have you workin’ bow an’ arrow. Shuffling papers and goin’ to lectures on the evils of hootch.”

  “This case I’m on. A sick, twisted thing. They all say to me, God told me to.”

  Eddie laughed. “Laddy, where you been? There’s always some nut saying that. I’ve even had broads claiming they got laid by the Almighty. Hell, the way some of them looked, it would’ve took a miracle just to ge
t it up for them. I also had broads tell me they were being zapped by death rays from outer space. Stories, laddy, all imagination. When you look into them, you always find it plain didn’t happen. Else it was somebody like a stepfather or teacher, or some authority figure like a doctor or maybe a minister. Teachers are the worst. I bet high school English teachers have popped more cherries than a pitter in a fucking canning factory.”

  “You ever run into one you couldn’t explain?”

  “Not me. But my friend Callaghan, Kevin Callaghan, New Jersey State Police, he had one. Weird. Back in the winter of ’fifty-four. Found a naked broad on the highway. She said she’d started out from Cape Cod and ended there. Said that God did it to her.”

  “That’s twenty-two years ago. It was never explained?”

  “Nope. Remember it clear ’cause my eldest daughter was confirmed at just about the same time. Things about that case they plain couldn’t explain. So they did the next best thing—they forgot about it.”

  “Your friend Callaghan still around?”

  “Don’t know. He’s older than me, believe it or not, so he just might’ve passed on to the great after-hours joint in the sky. You could check it out with the Jersey State PBA. Say hello for me. If he’s still walkin’, he’d no doubt appreciate a bottle of gin.”

  It was raining the morning Peter Nicholas went to the New York Public Library to dig up old newspaper files. A hard Manhattan cloudburst that beat against the pavements in thick, dark drops.

  The steps to the main entrance of the library are guarded by two stone lions. Nicholas chuckled with a grim, ironic humor because he’d remembered the lions’ official names. Patience and Fortitude. Names, qualities, which Bernard Phillips had certainly forced upon Nicholas. The rain whipped against the lions and darkened their marble manes and gave them the appearance of gargoyles. While still attending Fordham, Nicholas often used the library for study. On clear days he would sit on the steps and eat his lunch and watch the pretty girls walk by. A city legend says the lions will roar when a virgin passes them. Nicholas chuckled again—he’d never heard them so much as purr.