Mortal Sins

by Anna Porter

  “Mrs. Hayes?” asked the polite voice on the telephone.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Deidre Thomas, Mr. Zimmerman’s secretary. Mr. Zimmerman wondered if you would like the car to pick you up on Sunday.”

  “Sunday?” Judith pondered vaguely.

  “For the party,” Deidre Thomas explained. “Mr. Zimmerman is expecting you at his residence at seven o’clock for cocktails. Dinner will be served at eight.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Judith said, realizing she hadn’t even thought about dinner at the Hayes residence today. If she hurried, there might still be time to cook the pot roast, but only just.

  “You are planning to be there,” Deidre’s voice persisted.

  “Of course,” Judith said. “But I’ll drive there myself.”

  “Mr. Zimmerman thought Geoff would pick you up at 6:30—”

  “Thanks all the same,” Judith said. What was the matter with this woman? Had she been programmed to have her driven to the party and nothing less would do?

  “If you’re quite sure...,” Deidre said, hesitant.

  From Zimmerman’s mention of it, Judith would never have guessed that she was such an important part of Zimmerman’s late birthday party. After all, they had just met.

  Four

  “YOU KNOW YOU’RE welcome to look at him any time you want,” Dr. Yan said testily. “Ours is but to serve.” He sighed theatrically and took another cigarette from his gnawed-looking package of Camels. If he must smoke, Parr thought, why in heaven’s name those? “Though what you think you’re going to accomplish by staring at the poor bugger again...” Yan shrugged and spread his small manicured hands, palms up. “Perhaps you’re looking for a flicker of recognition from him?”

  Parr chose to ignore Yan’s customary bullying. “I’m hoping for something,” he said. No point getting into a battle with the coroner. He could be a brilliant strategist when it came to slowing down the works.

  Parr glanced around Yan’s office. It had been painted sky blue and outfitted with orange straight-backed chairs, black side tables, pea green filing cabinets, and matching green ashtrays: 1950s Holiday Inn.

  “Still no idea who he is?” Yan asked.

  Parr shook his head. “Nothing. Pockets were empty. Fingerprints not on file. Shirt handmade, no store name. Sent his mug shot out to all divisions, no response. Somehow, I doubt if there will be. By the looks of him he was a clean-living guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “A mugging?”

  “Possibly. I don’t think so. Too deliberate for that. Moving the body, for instance, for which there’s double evidence. You put the time of death between 10 P.M. and 1 A.M., but Brandy’s was open till midnight and the staff left by the front door without tripping over him at 1 A.M.”

  “Did you read the pathologist’s report?” Yan asked. “Not that I want to discredit your professional hunches.”

  “About the blood-alcohol content? Sure. Been checking the bars in the area. No luck yet. Damn hard to pick out a guy—any guy—in a Thursday-night crowd, unless he’s a midget, wears a clown outfit, or has a light bulb on his forehead. This one’s sort of elderly average. And even if we got lucky and he’d been knocking ’em back in a bar with a waitress who has photographic recall, she’d have trouble with the photograph. People look different when they’re dead.”

  “Some do,” Yan agreed, glancing pointedly at Parr. “By the way, would you mind taking your goddam foot off my chair?” he asked with a fixed grin. “It’s new.”

  “Right,” Parr said, launching his butt off the coroner’s desk as he swung his feet from the orange plastic seat cushion. “Well off. Somewhat overweight.”

  “Only around the middle,” Yan said. “Healthy heart and lungs. You could try checking tennis clubs. Well-developed triceps and deltoids, right arm only. Lumpy flexor pollicis of the right thumb.”

  “Anything else?” Parr asked.

  “Sure.” Yan butted his cigarette in the ashtray. “Lots. He had lousy teeth and an expensive dentist. Probably calcium deprivation as a child. The back molars are gold, front bicuspids filled with porcelain. Another goes and he’s into a whole new set. Or would have been.”

  Parr opened the door for the coroner and followed him out.

  “In some countries people used their mouths as vaults,” Yan continued. “Lots of gold teeth in case you had to get out in a hurry.”

  The elevators had obviously escaped the decorator’s attentions. They were pre-war antiques with folding wrought-iron doors that clanged shut with such force that young cadets usually took the stairs at the morgue.

  “He had been married a long time,” Yan continued. “At least 20 years, I’d guess. Quite an indentation on the ring finger.”

  Storage was in the basement. Despite the cold and the overwhelming ministrations of Lysol and lemon air freshener, there was a faint smell of decaying flesh, or so Parr thought each time he came down here. Through all his years on the force, he had never become accustomed to it. In a room to the left of the main area, a couple of white-smocked pathologists were working on the fortune-teller. Parr waved at them as he passed the open door.

  The room where the bodies were kept resembled a giant rectangular filing cabinet, painted antiseptic white.

  “There are traces of brown stains on the first joints of the third and index fingers, right hand,” Yan said, pulling on the handle of the drawer labeled NO NAME. “Nicotine. But you got that before. From the teeth.”

  Stretched out naked on the sheet-covered aluminum slab inside the drawer, the body seemed much less human than it had when curled up at Brandy’s welcoming door. The wounds on the throat and forehead had turned pale blue, the blood was caked dark brown.

  Yan picked up the right hand and propelled the fingers toward Parr. “Cigars,” he stated with a triumphant grin. “Discoloration of the tip of the thumb and under the thumbnail. See?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Comes from grinding the butt in the ashtray. Don’t get so much with a cigarette. You don’t smoke, do you?”

  “Used to,” Parr said. “Pipe.”

  “Right,” Yan murmured, dropping the dead man’s hand. “You’re the type.”

  Parr decided it was better he didn’t know what Yan thought of as the pipe-smoking type.

  Since yesterday, the pathologist must have dug into the man’s chest for more of the glass they’d found in his breast pocket. There was a cut above the nipple the length of a finger. Yan’s chalk mark surrounded the incision, dark green around the waxy yellow skin. They had found a much larger piece of glass embedded in the brain.

  “The glass came from a car window,” Yan said. “Some kind of expensive smoked job used to break the sunlight.”

  “What make?”

  “Don’t know yet. They’re checking with manufacturers.”

  “Killed in a car then,” Parr asserted. “Glass shattered by the bullet that passed through the throat. Clean line of exit. Only shards in the chest.”

  Yan nodded.

  “What do you make of the serial number on the left arm?” he asked, pointing at the upper left arm.

  “Concentration camp,” Parr said. “Probably Jewish.”

  “Of course,” Yan said, impatiently. “What else?”

  Parr held the arm with thumb and forefinger, looking at the six-digit number, indigo blue, stretched sideways and blurred, but still neatly printed.

  “Auschwitz,” Yan said, finally. “You can tell from the series. Very practical, the Germans. Systematic, like the Japanese. That’s why they’re so good with computers.”

  Parr had heard Yan had spent some years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Lost both his parents during the war. He was still given to red-faced rages over his secretary’s Toyota Corona and the Minolta Forensic used to photograph details of the bodies.

  “He’d have been about 14, I’d say, when they checked him in. Still growing. Or trying to. That’s why the numbers are stretched. They grew wit
h him, poor bugger. That puts him between 55 and 60. Must have been one strapping strong kid to survive that nightmare.”

  Parr replaced the arm gently beside the body.

  Five

  THERE ARE SOME overwhelming advantages to being an observer at a party, Judith observed to herself. Somewhat like dropping into a play where you’re the only one without a script, a role, or the benefit of rehearsal. Zimmerman’s party was well into Act I.

  “I hadn’t planned on getting into the textile business,” the man in the olive green bow tie told Judith. “A fluke really. Met this guy at a dinner of Parker’s, said he’d inherited the shop from his uncle. Couldn’t make a go of it, and cared less. I like a challenge.” The man swirled the champagne around in his long-stemmed glass. “We were up 20 million last year.”

  “Double what it was when he started,” the capacious woman in the red décolleté added. “Eddie’s got a knack for making things work. Not like some people, buying and selling companies like used furniture.” She glanced at Eddie, smiling benevolence and pride, almost maternal. “Whatever he touches,” she sighed.

  “Except, perhaps, for wine,” remarked Philip Masters as he pushed past with a full glass in each hand. “Can I get you something, Judith?” he squawked.

  “No, thanks,” Judith said, determined to follow Marsha’s advice and nurse only one drink before dinner.

  “We were okay in wine, you sleazy sod,” laughed the face above the green bow tie, “till you lot decided to take your pound of flesh—”

  “Eddie,” hissed the large woman, her head swiveling rapidly.

  “Rather an unfortunate choice of words, wouldn’t you agree, Judith?” Masters said lightly.

  “What I meant was—” Eddie stammered.

  “I know what you meant,” said Masters. Then he grinned. “You couldn’t afford it, Eddie. Can’t live in a house if you can’t carry the mortgage.” Then he half turned his back on Eddie and his wife, either to indicate, rather crudely, that the conversation about wine mortgages was over or to get a better view of Judith’s neck, which was at about his eye level. “Paul has asked me to take care of you for a while,” he said. “Don’t drift away.”

  “Charming,” Judith said, as they all watched him maneuver his way toward a blue lace woman who was waiting for one of the glasses he carried.

  “You know Jane?” Eddie inquired.

  She didn’t.

  “A marvelous woman. Masterminded last month’s Creeds benefit for the blind. The Botanical Gardens extravaganza for the ballet, last year. Shaw Festival fundraiser auction, too, I believe.”

  “Has he finally succeeded in getting her on the National Trust board?” the red décolleté asked sweetly.

  “Just,” Eddie said.

  “Odd that Paul would invite you to such a gathering of old friends, having met you only a couple of days ago,” said the red woman, whose name turned out to be Susanne. “Especially as you’re a journalist.”

  “You’ve known him a long time?” Judith asked after agreeing that it was indeed odd.

  “Twenty-five years,” Eddie said. “I was his first customer in the Aspen resorts. Those days, it was hard to sell units in Aspen, if you can believe. Now they’re lining up at a million a shot. Turned out to be one hell of an investment. We’ve tried a few other odds and ends since, nothing major. Paul’s interests jump from opportunity to opportunity. I’m more of a sticker, if you know what I mean.”

  “What happened to you in the wine business?” Judith asked.

  Philip was back before Eddie could answer. He stopped a few inches from Judith’s chin and looked her over, clucking appreciatively and somewhat theatrically. “You’re very lovely this evening,” he said. “Lovely and not so threatening.”

  Judith, who couldn’t remember when she had last looked threatening, took a small step back and collided with an athletic man in his 50s who had been keenly engaged in debating decorating styles for his home in Florida. A couple of times in the conversation Judith had tried to abandon the textile business and join decorating, for a change, but couldn’t make the transition. Eddie needed an audience.

  “When was I ever threatening?” she said.

  “Our first meeting was...well, frosty? Would you agree to frosty?” Philip didn’t wait for her to agree. Insecure? Maybe. “That’s it,” he said, thoughtfully. “I worry about people with a chip on their shoulder. They’re apt to be dangerous.”

  She felt the blood rush to her cheeks, but she was not going to ruin her chances of getting the story for Finance International. The Renault needed muffler repairs and she’d promised herself a new couch. However tempting it might be to toss the drink at his balding head, hell no. She sipped on her gin and tonic.

  “Me too,” she said. “I worry about people with chips on their shoulders. Lot of it going around these days.”

  Masters chuckled.

  “Don’t let him get to you, dear,” said Susanne in a stage whisper. “It’s just his style. Thrust and parry. Right, Philip?”

  Masters continued to ignore her. “Come,” he said to Judith. “You must meet the others.” He held her by the elbow. “Have you met Brenda Zimmerman yet?”

  She hadn’t. Arnold, who was rather dashing in tails and white gloves, had ushered her directly into the tuxedoed, bejeweled room and left her there. She had stood for a while surveying the bright lights, the bowls of exquisitely arranged lilies of the valley, the shining faces, the women’s colorful dresses. In the background, someone was playing the piano. Two waiters in crimson jackets wove around the small clusters of noisy people. There was not one familiar face among them.

  It was precisely for such an occasion that she had bought the Boots Anti-Perspirant-Deodorant with aluminum chlorhydroxide.

  Masters directed her to the far end of the room where the grand piano snuggled against the gold-brocade ceiling-to-floor drapes. Under a dignified portrait of herself—in black velvet, with fan and tiara—a tall blond woman, around 35, maybe 40, in a strapless burgundy gown, was gesticulating at two grave men. They were both very still and attentive. She had the self-conscious beauty of someone who knows how to inflict it on others. Her long slender arms flew in the air as she emphasized a point; the array of woven silver bracelets on her wrists made a soft tinkling noise. She wore elaborately designed silver rings, one on each finger.

  When she laughed, she threw her head back, presenting her soft, blue-white throat and coming precariously close to dislodging her ample breasts from the uncertain confines of the burgundy dress.

  “You must be Judith Hayes,” she said with high-pitched enthusiasm, before Masters had been able to make the introductions. “How very nice that you could come. Paul’s told me all about you. Well...” She elongated the “well” as she appraised Judith with a narrowing of the eyes, as though she were scrutinizing a new pet. “No wonder he’s so enchanted with the story. Right, Philip?” She nudged Masters with her elbow. “I’d no idea writers came in such splendid packaging.” She clapped her hands in childlike delight, her rings and bangles clanging musical accompaniment.

  “We do our best to provide amusement and variety,” Judith said, with a mock curtsy.

  “This,” Masters said, “as you may have guessed, is our hostess. And on my left, the resolutely pious Rabbi Reuben Jonas, our spiritual caretaker.” The man with the steel-rimmed granny glasses winced and adjusted his hand-tied bow tie by turning it, once, clockwise. Miraculously, it stayed put.

  “This week,” Masters continued, “he’s in persistent pursuit of $5 million for the United Jewish Appeal, having already fleeced us for the new university in Tel Aviv. Sometimes I wonder how many universities we need in Israel.”

  “One can never have too much education,” the rabbi said, with practiced intonation. “Only too little.”

  Brenda held up her rings in supplication. “That was last week, Reuben.”

  “And Chuck Griffiths,” Masters said, indicating the other man. He had a shiny, tropical tan,
thick gray hair, and a spectacular gold watch. “He has just accepted the unique honor of being caller at the good rabbi’s fundraiser.”

  Griffiths shuffled his feet in obvious discomfort.

  “Or hasn’t Reuben told you?” Masters squealed.

  Brenda reached out her champagne glass for the passing waiter to fill. “Always the last to know, eh, Chuck?” Her voice was loud and sharp. Around them, heads turned to watch as Griffiths gulped his drink, the ice hitting his upper lip. A drop of yellow liquid trickled down his chin and landed on his tidy white collar.

  “I’d mentioned to Philip I was going to approach you,” the rabbi said quickly. “I thought perhaps...inasmuch as you haven’t yet... Obviously, you’re the ideal choice. We’d be most grateful.”

  “Thanks, Reuben,” Griffiths said quietly. “I’d like to think about it for a day or two.”

  “What’s to think?” tinkled Brenda. “It’s an honor, and you know it. But if the shoes don’t fit...well...” She trailed off into another elongated “well,” threw her head back, and once more challenged the burgundy dress to hold on.

  Griffiths and the rabbi asked the waiter for fresh Scotches on the rocks. The rabbi then took Griffiths by the arm, murmured something to Brenda, and led him off toward the dining room.

  “A little hard on him, weren’t you?” Masters asked.

  “Was I?” Brenda said with feigned surprise. “A man should be able to occupy his wife.” Then she returned her attention to Judith.

  His wife?

  “Paul says you take notes of everything. Is that right?” Her lightly penciled eyebrows curved up above violet eyes shaded in a range of violets.

  “Only when I’m working,” Judith replied.

  “And tonight? Are you working tonight?” Brenda asked eagerly.

  Judith patted her enormous black handbag affectionately. “I brought my notebook,” she said. “I guess Mr. Zimmerman thought this would be an easy way to meet his close associates all at once.” A hideous idea.