First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “I remember reading something a man wrote—he was a famous author—and he said if it was definitely announced that the world would end in one hour, there would be long lines before each phone booth, with people waiting to call other people to tell them how much they loved them. I do not believe that, I believe most of us would spend the last hour mourning, ‘Why didn’t I do what I wanted to do?’

  “Because I believe each of us is a secret island (‘No man is an island’? What shit!) and even the deepest, most intense love cannot bridge the gap between individuals. Much of what we feel and dream, that we cannot speak of to others, is shameful, judged by what society says we are allowed to feel and dream. But if humans are capable of it, how can it be shameful? Rather do as our natures dictate. It may lead to heaven or it may lead to hell—what does ‘heaven’ mean or ‘hell’?—but the most terrible sin is to deny. That is inhuman.

  “When I fucked that girl in college, and later with my wife, and all those in between, I found it exciting and pleasurable, naturally. Satisfying enough to ignore the grunts, coughs, farts, belches, bad breath, blood and … and other things. But a moment later my mind would be on my collection of semi-precious stones or the programming of AMROK II. I had enjoyed masturbation as much, and began to wonder how much so-called ‘normal sex’ is really masturbation à deux. All the groans and protestations of love and ecstasy are the public face; the secret reactions are hidden from the partner. I once fucked a woman, and all the time I was thinking of—well, someone I had seen at a health club I belonged to. God knows what she was thinking of. Island lives.

  “Celia Montfort was the most intelligent woman I had ever met. Much more intelligent than I was, as a matter of fact, although I think she lacked my sensitivity and understanding. But she was complex, and I had never met a complex woman before. Or perhaps I had, but could not endure the complexity. But in Celia’s case, it attracted me, fascinated me, puzzled me—for a time.

  “I wasn’t certain what she wanted from me, if she wanted anything at all. I enjoyed her lectures, the play of her mind, but I could never quite pin down who she was. Once, when I called for a dinner date, she said, ‘There is something I want to ask you.’

  “ ‘Yes?’ I said.

  “There was a pause.

  “ ‘I’ll ask you tonight,’ she said finally. ‘At dinner.’

  “So, at dinner, I said, ‘What did you want to ask me?’

  “She looked at me and said, ‘I think I better put it in a letter. I’ll write you a letter, asking it.’

  “ ‘All right,’ I nodded, not wanting to push.

  “But, of course, she never wrote me a letter asking anything. She was like that. It was maddening, in a way, until I began to understand …

  “Understand that she was as deep and moiling as I, and subject, as I was, to sudden whims, crazy passions, incoherent longings, foolish dreams … the whole bit. Irrational, I suppose you might say. If I didn’t lie to myself—and it’s extremely difficult not to lie to yourself—I had to recognize that some of my hostility toward her—and I recognized I was beginning to feel a certain hostility, because she knew—well, some of this was because I was a man and she was a woman. I am not a great admirer of the women’s liberation movement, but I agree men are victims of a conditioning difficult to recognize and analyze.

  “But once I stopped lying to myself, I could acknowledge that she upset me because she had a secret life of her own, an intelligence greater than mine and, when it pleased her, a sexuality more intense than mine.

  “I could realize that and admit it to myself: she was the first woman I had been intimate with who existed as an individual, not just as a body. The Jewish girl from Boston had been a body. My wife had been a body. Now I knew a person—call it a ‘soul’ if it amuses you—as unfathomable as myself. And it was no more logical for me to expect to understand her than to expect her to understand me.

  “Item: We have come from a sweated bed where we have been as intimate as man and woman can be physically intimate. I have tasted her. Then, dressed, composed, on our way to dinner, I grab her arm to pull her out of the way of a careening cab. She looks at me with loathing. ‘You touched me!’ she gasps.

  “Item: She has been tender, sympathetic, but somewhat withdrawn all evening. We returned to her home and, only because I need to use the john, does she allow me inside the door. I know there will be no sex that night. That’s all right with me. It is her prerogative; I am not a mad rapist. But, from the bathroom, I return to the study. She is seated in the leather armchair and, standing behind her, Valenter is softly massaging her neck and bare shoulders with loving movements. Curled in a corner, Tony is watching them curiously. What am I to make of all this?

  “Item: She disappears, frequently and without notice, for hours, days, a week at a time. She returns without explanation or excuse, usually weary and bruised, sometimes wounded and bandaged. I ask no questions; she volunteers no information. We have an unspoken pact: I will not pry; she will not ask. Except about the killing. She can’t get enough of that!

  “Item: She buys an imported English riding crop, but I refuse. Either way.

  “In fact, there is no end to her.

  “Item: She treats a cab driver shamefully for taking us a block out of our way, and tells me loudly not to tip him. Three hours later she insists I give money to a filthy, drunken panhandler who smells of urine. Well …

  “I think what was happening was this: we had started on one level, trying to find a satisfactory relationship. Then, sated or bored, the wild sex had calmed and we began to explore the psychic part of sex in which she, and I, believed so strongly. After that—it proving not completely satisfactory—we went on digging deeper, inserting ourselves into each other, yet remaining essentially strangers. I tried to tell her: to achieve the final relationship, you must penetrate. Is that not so?

  “I must not see her again. I would resolve that, unable to cope with her humanity, and, at the last moment, when I was certain our affair was over, she would call and say things to me on the phone. Oh! So we would once again have lunch or dinner, and under the table cloth, beneath our joined napkins, she would touch me, looking into my eyes. And it would start again.

  “I do owe her one thing: the killings. You see, I can acknowledge them openly. The murders. Daniel, I love you! I know what I have done, and will do, and I feel no guilt. It is not someone else doing them. It is I, Daniel Blank, and I do not deny them, apologize or regret. Any more than when I stand naked before a dim mirror and once again touch myself. To deny your secret, island life and die unfulfilled—that is the worst.

  “I need, most of all, to go deeper and deeper into myself, peeling layers away—the human onion. I am in full possession of my faculties. I know most people would think me vicious or deranged. But is that of any importance? I don’t think so. I think the important thing is to fulfill yourself. If you can do that, you come to some kind of completion where both of you, the two you’s, become one, and that one merges and becomes part of and adds to the Cosmic One. What that might be, I do not know—yet. But I am beginning to glimpse its outlines, the glory it is, and I think, if I continue on my course, I will know it finally.

  “With all this introspection, all this intent searching for the eternal verity, which may make you laugh—do you have the courage to try it?—the incredible thing, the amazing thing is that I have been able to keep intact the image I present to the world. That is, I function: I awake each morning, bathe and dress, in a fashion of careless elegance, take a cab to my place of work, and there, I believe, I do my job in an efficient and useful manner. It is a charade, of course, but I perform well. In all honesty, perhaps not as I did before … Am I going through the movements, marching out the drill? It’s probably my imagination but, a few times, I thought members of my X-l computer team looked at me a bit queerly.

  “And one day my secretary, Mrs. Cleek, was wearing a pants suit—it’s allowed at Javis-Bircham—and I complimented her on ho
w well it looked. Actually, it was much too snug for her. But later in the day, while she was standing by me, waiting while I signed some letters, I suddenly reached to stroke her pudendum, obvious beneath the crotch of her pants. I didn’t grab or squeeze; I just stroked. She drew away, making a small cry. I went back to signing letters; neither of us spoke of what had happened.

  “There was one other thing, but since nothing came of it, it hardly seems worth mentioning. I had a dream, a nighttime dream that merged into a daytime fantasy, of doing something to the computer, AMROK II. That is, I wanted to—well, I suppose in some way I wanted to destroy it. How, I didn’t know. It was just a vagrant thought. I didn’t even consider it. But the thought did come to me. I think I was searching for more humanity, not less. For more human-ness, with all its terrible mystery.

  “Now we must consider why I killed those men and why (Sigh! Sob! Groan!) I suppose I will kill again. Well … again, it’s human-ness, isn’t it? To come close, as close as you can possibly come. Because love—I mean physical love (sex) or romantic love—isn’t the answer, is it? It’s a poor, cheap substitute, and never quite satisfactory. Because, no matter how good physical love or romantic love may seem, the partners still have, each, their secret, island life.

  “But when you kill, the gap disappears, the division is gone, you are one with the victim. I don’t suppose you will believe me, but it is so. I assure you it is. The act of killing is an act of love, ultimate love, and though there is no orgasm, no sexual feeling at all—at least in my case—you do, you really do, enter into another human being, and through that violent conjunction—painful perhaps, but just for a split-second—you enter into all humans, all animals, all vegetables, all minerals. In fact, you become one with everything: stars, planets, galaxies, the great darkness beyond, and …

  “Oh. Well. What this is, the final mystery, is what I’m searching for, isn’t it? I’m convinced it is not in books or beds or conversation or churches or sudden flashes of inspiration or revelation. It must be worked for, and it will be, in me.

  “What I’m saying is that I want to go into myself, penetrate myself, as deeply as I possibly can. I know it will be a long and painful process. It may prove, eventually, to be impossible—but I don’t believe that. I think that I can go deep within myself—I mean deep!—and there I’ll find it.

  “Sometimes I wonder if it’s a kind of masturbation, as when I stand naked before my full-length mirror, golden chains about wrist and waist, and look at my own body and touch myself. The wonder! But then I come back, always come back, to what I seek. And it has nothing to do with Celia or Tony or the Mortons or my job or anything else but me. Me! That’s where the answer lies. And who can uncover it but me? So I keep trying, and it is not too difficult, too painful or exhausting. Except, in all truth, I must tell you this: If I had my life to live over again, I would want to lie naked in the sun and watch women oil their bodies. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  He should have stopped there; it was a logical end to his musings. But he would not, could not. He thought of Tony Montfort, what they had done, what they might do. But the dream was fleeting, flicking away a mosquito or something else that might bite. He thought of Valenter, and of a professor in his college who had smelled of earth, and of going into a women’s lingerie shop to buy white bikini panties for himself. Because they fit better? Once a man on a Fifth Avenue bus had smiled at him.

  He still had the nighttime dreams, the daytime fantasies, but he was aware that the images were becoming shorter. That is, they no longer overlapped from night to day, the “plots” were abbreviated, visions flickered by sharply. His mind was so charged, so jumping, that he became vaguely alarmed, went to a doctor, received a prescription for a mild tranquilizer. They worked on him as a weak sleeping pill. But his mind still jumped.

  He could not penetrate deeply enough into himself. He lied to himself; he admitted it; he caught himself at it. It was difficult not to lie to himself. He had to be on guard, not every day or every hour but every minute. He had to question every action, every motive. Probing. Penetrating. If he wanted to discover … what?

  He soothed an engorged penis in a Vaselined hand, probed his own rectum with a stiff forefinger pointing toward Heaven, opened his empty mouth to a white ceiling and waited for bliss. Throbbing warmth engulfed him, eventually, but not what he sought.

  There was more. He knew there was more. He had experienced it, and he set out to find it again, bathing, dusting, perfuming, dressing, preparing for an assignation. We all—all of us—must fulfill our island life. Oh yes, he thought, we must. Taking up the ice ax …

  “Blood is thicker than water,” he said aloud, “and semen is thicker than blood.”

  He laughed, having no idea what that meant, or if, indeed, it meant anything at all.

  3

  A WEEK OR SO AFTER the death of Bernard Gilbert, Daniel Blank went on the stalk. It was not too unlike learning to climb. You had to master the techniques, you had to test your strength and, of course, you had to try your nerve, pushing it to its limit, but not beyond. You did not learn how to murder by reading a book, anymore than you could learn how to swim or ride a bicycle by looking at diagrams.

  He had already acquired several valuable techniques. The business of concealing the ice ax under his top coat, holding it through the pocket slit by his left hand, then transferring it swiftly to his right hand shoved through the opened fly of his coat—that worked perfectly, with no fumbling. The death of Lombard had been, he thought, instantaneous, while Gilbert lingered four days. He deduced from this that a blow from the back apparently penetrated a more sensitive area of the skull, and he resolved to make no more frontal attacks.

  He was convinced his basic method of approach was sound: the quick, brisk step; the eye-to-eye smile; the whole appearance of ease and neighborliness. Then the fast turn, the blow.

  He had, of course, made several errors. For instance, during the attack on Frank Lombard, he had worn his usual black calfskin shoes with leather soles. At the moment of assault his right foot had slipped on the pavement, leather sliding on cement. It was not, fortunately, a serious error, but he had been off-balance, and when Lombard fell backward the ice ax was pulled from Blank’s grasp.

  So, before the murder of Bernard Gilbert, Blank had purchased a pair of light-weight crepe-soled shoes. It was getting on to December, with cold rain, sleet, snow flurries, and the rubber-soled shoes gave much better traction and stability.

  Similarly, in the attack on Lombard, the leather handle of the ice ax had twisted in his sweated hand. Reflecting on this, he had, before the Gilbert assault, roughed the leather handle by rubbing it gently with fine sandpaper. This worked well enough, but he still was not satisfied. He purchased a pair of black suede gloves, certainly a common enough article of apparel in early winter weather. The grip between suede glove and the roughened leather of the ice ax handle was all that could be desired.

  These were details, of course, and those who had never climbed mountains would shrug them off as of no consequence. But a good climb depended on just such details. You could have all the balls in the world, but if your equipment was faulty, or your technique wasn’t right, you were dead.

  There were other things to consider; you just didn’t go out and murder the first man you met. He cancelled out rainy and sleety nights; he needed a reasonably dry pavement for that quick whirl after he had passed his victim. A cloudy or moonless night was best, with no strong wind to tug at his unbuttoned coat. And he carried as few objects and as little identification as possible; less to drop accidentally at the scene.

  He went to his health club twice a week and worked out, and he did his stretch exercises at home every night, so strength was no problem. He was, he knew, in excellent physical condition. He could lift, turn, bend, probably better than most boys half his age. He watched his diet; his reactions were still fast. He meant to keep them that way, and looked forward to climbing Devil’s Needle again in the
spring, or perhaps taking a trip to the Bavarian Alps for more technical climbs. That would be a joy.

  So there was the passion—just as in mountain climbing—and there was also the careful planning, the mundane details—weapon, shoes, gloves, smile—just as any great art is really, essentially, a lot of little jobs. Picasso mixed paints, did he not?

  He took the same careful and thoughtful preparation in his stalk after Gilbert’s death. A stupid assassin might come home from his job and eat, or dine out and then come home, and return to his apartment house at the same time. Sooner or later, the apartment house doorman, on duty would become aware of his routine.

  So Daniel Blank varied his arrivals and departures, carefully avoiding a regular schedule, knowing one doorman went off duty at 8:00 p.m., when his relief arrived. Blank came and he went, casually, and usually these departures and arrivals went unobserved by a doorman busy with cabs or packages or other tasks. He didn’t prowl every night. Two nights in a row. One night in. Three out. No pattern. No formal program. Whatever occurred to him; irregularity was best. He thought of everything.

  There was, he admitted, something strange that to this enterprise that meant so much to him emotionally, privately, he should bring all his talents for finicky analysis, careful classifying, all the cold, bloodless skills of his public life. It proved he supposed, he was still two, but in this case it served him well; he never made a move without thinking out its consequences.

  For instance, he debated a long time whether or not, during an actual murder, he should wear a hat. At this time of year, in this weather, most men wore hats.