The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “There,” I said. “That looks much better.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Todd,” he said, humble and abashed.

  There was nothing on his shoulder, of course. God, I can be a nasty son of a bitch.

  I found Coburn Office Supplies, a hole-in-the-wall with a dusty window and a sad display of pencils, erasers, faded stationery, and office gadgets already beginning to rust. The opening door hit a suspended bell that jangled in the quiet of the deserted store. I looked around. The place was a natural for a Going-Out-of-Business Sale.

  And the little guy who came dragging out of the back room was perfectly suited to be custodian of this mausoleum. All I remember about him was that he wore shredded carpet slippers and had six long strands of hair (I counted them) brushed sideways across his pale, freckled skull.

  “Yes, sir,” he sighed. “Can I help?”

  That last word came out “hep.” In fact, he said, “Kin ah hep?” Southern, I thought, but I couldn’t place it exactly. Hardscrabble land somewhere.

  I had intended to waltz him around, but he was so beaten, so defeated, I had no desire to make a fool of him. Life had anticipated me. So I just said:

  “I want to bribe you.”

  The pale, watery eyes blinked.

  “Bribe me?”

  I took out my wallet, extracted a ten-dollar bill. I dangled it, flipping it with my fingers.

  “This is the only office supply store in town?”

  “Wull … sure,” he said, eyeing that sawbuck like it was a passport to Heaven, or at least out of Coburn.

  “Good,” I said. “The ten is yours for a simple answer to a simple question.”

  “I don’ know …” he said, anxious and cautious at the same time.

  “You can always deny you talked to me,” I told him. “No one here but us chickens. Your word against mine.”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, brightening, “thass right, ain’t it? Whut’s the question?”

  “Anyone in town buy ribbons for an Olympia Standard typewriter?”

  “Olympia Standard?” he said, licking his dry lips. “Only one machine like that in town as I know of.”

  “Who?”

  “Mary Thorndecker. She comes in ever’ so often to buy—”

  I handed him the ten.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Mebbe ever’ two months or so,” he droned on, staring down at the bill in his hand. “She always asks—”

  The bell over the door jangled as I went out.

  I strutted back to the Coburn Inn, so pleased with myself it was sickening As a reward for my triumph, I stopped off at Sandy’s and bought another quart of Popov, a fine Russian-sounding vodka distilled in Hartford, Conn. But by the time I entered Room 3-F, my euphoria had evaporated; I didn’t even open the bottle.

  I lowered myself gingerly into one of those grasping armchairs and sat sprawled, staring at nothing. All the big problems were still there. Mary Thorndecker may have written the note, and Ronnie Goodfellow may have tried to recover it. An interesting combo. Tinker to Evers to Chance. But who was Chance?

  How’s this?

  Mary Thorndecker types out a note, “Thorndecker kills,” and leaves it for me. What’s her motive? Well, maybe she’s driven by something as innocent as outrage at the vivisection being practiced at the Crittenden Research Laboratory. If she’s a deeply religious woman, a fundamentalist, as everyone claims, she could be goaded to write, “Thorndecker kills.” Anyway, she writes the note, for whatever reason.

  Now, who might Mary tell what she had done? She could tell Dr. Kenneth Draper. But I doubted that; he was deeply involved in the activities of the research lab. She might tell her half-brother, Edward Thorndecker. That made more sense to me. She wants to protect Edward from what she conceives to be an evil existing in Crittenden.

  Let’s say she does tell Edward, and hints to him that she intends to end what she sees as wickedness pervading the tiled corridors of Crittenden. But Edward, smitten by Julie’s beauty and sexuality—I had observed this; it was more than a crush—tells his stepmother what Mary is up to. Especially the note left in my box at the Coburn Inn.

  Julie, wanting to protect her husband, the “great man,” before the letter can be used as evidence to deny Thorndecker’s application for a grant, asks Constable Ronnie Goodfellow to recover the damned, and damning thing. For all Julie knows, it could be a long bill of particulars signed by Thorndecker’s stepdaughter.

  And because he is so pussy-whipped, Goodfellow gives it the old college try (using his wife’s passkey), and strikes out. Only because I had already mailed the note to Donner & Stern for typewriter analysis.

  All right, I admit it: the whole thing was smoke. A scenario based on what I knew of the people involved and how they might react if their self-interest was threatened. But it all made sense to me. As a matter of fact, it turned out to be about 80 percent accurate.

  But it was that incorrect 20 percent that almost got me killed.

  I had something to eat that evening. I think it was a tunafish salad and a glass of milk; the size of my gut was beginning to embarrass me. Anyway, I dined lightly and had only two vodka gimlets for dessert at the Coburn Inn bar before I climbed into Betty Hanrahan’s pickup truck, drove happily out of Coburn, and rattled south on the river road. I was heading for Mary Thorndecker’s church. It wasn’t that I was looking for salvation, although I could have used a small dollop. I just wanted to touch all bases. I wanted to find out why a young, intelligent woman seemed intent on destroying a man she reportedly loved.

  I’ve attended revival meetings in various parts of the country, including a snake-handling session in a tent pitched on the outskirts of Macon, Georgia. I’ve heard members of fundamentalist churches speak in tongues, and I’ve seen apparent cripples throw away their crutches or rise from wheelchairs to dance a jig. I’m familiar with the oratorical style of backwoods evangelists and the fervor of their congregations. This kind of down-home religion is not my cup of vodka, but I can’t see where they’re hurting anyone—except possibly themselves, and you won’t find anything in the Constitution denying a citizen the right to make a fool of himself.

  So I thought I knew what to expect: a mob of farmers, rednecks, and assorted blue-collar types shouting up a storm, clapping their hands, and stomping their feet as they confessed their piddling sins and came forward to be saved. All this orchestrated by a leather-lunged preacher man who knew all the buzzwords and phrases to lash his audience to a religious frenzy.

  I was in for a surprise.

  The First Fundamentalist Church of Lord Jesus was housed not in a tent or ramshackle barn, but in a neat, white clapboard building with well-kept grounds, a lighted parking area, and a general appearance of modest prosperity. The windows were washed, there were bright boxes of ivy, and the cross atop the small steeple was gilded and illuminated with a spotlight.

  I had expected a junkyard collection of battered sedans, pickup trucks, rusted vans, and maybe a few motorcycles. But the cars I saw gave added evidence of the economic well-being of the congregation: plenty of Fords, Chevys, VW’s, and Toyotas, but also a goodly sprinkling of imported sports cars, Cadillacs, Mercedes-Benzes, and one magnificent maroon Bentley. I parked Betty Hanrahan’s heap amongst all that polished splendor, feeling like a poor relation.

  They were singing “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” when I entered. I slid into an empty rear pew, opened a hymnal, and looked around. A simple interior painted an off-white, polished walnut pews, a handsome altar covered with a richly brocaded cloth, an enormous painting of the crucifixion on the wall behind the altar. It was no better and no worse than the usual church painting. Lots of blood. The seated congregation was singing along with music from an electronic organ up front against the left wall. There was a door set into the opposite wall. I assumed it led to the vestry.

  There wasn’t any one thing about the place that I could label as definitely fake or phony. But I began to get the damndest feeling that I had
wandered into a movie or TV set, put together for a big climactic scene like a wedding or funeral, or maybe the church into which the bullet-riddled hero staggers to cough his last on the altar, reaching for the cross.

  Trying to analyze this odd impression, I decided that maybe the newness of the place had something to do with it. Churches usually look used, worn, comfortably shabby. This one looked like it had been put up that morning; there wasn’t a nick, stain, or scratch that I could see. It even smelled of paint and fresh plaster.

  Maybe the congregation had something to do with my itchy feeling that the whole thing was a scam. There were a few blacks, but most of them were whites in their twenties and thirties. The men favored beards, the women either pigtails or hair combed loosely to their waist. Both sexes sported chain necklaces and medallions. Most of them, men and women, wore jeans. But they were French jeans, tailored jeans, or jeans with silver studs, appliques, or designs traced with bugle beads and seed pearls.

  All I could do was guess, but I guessed there was a good assortment of academics, writers, artists, musicians, poets, and owners of antique shops. They looked to be the kind of people who had worked their way through Freudian analysis, high colonics, est, Yoga, TM, primal scream, communal tub bathing, and cocaine. Not because they particularly needed any of these things, but because they had been the in things to do. I’d make book that the First Fundamentalist Church of Lord Jesus was only the latest brief enthusiasm in their fad-filled lives, and as soon as they all got “born again,” the whole crowd would decamp for the nearest disco, with shouts of loud laughter and a great blaring of horns.

  The hymn came to an end. The congregation put their hymnals in the racks on the pew backs in front of them. A young man in the front pew stood up and faced us. “Faced” is an exaggeration; he had so much hair, beard, and mustache, all I could see were two blinking eyes.

  “Welcome to the First Fundamentalist Church of Lord Jesus. My name is Irving Peacock, and I am first vestryperson of your church. Most of you I know, and most of you know each other. But I do see a few brothers and sisters who, I believe, are here for the first time. To these newcomers, may I say, ‘Welcome! Welcome to our family!’ It is our custom, at the beginning of the service, for each sister and brother to turn to the right and left and kiss their neighbors as a symbol of our devotion to the love and passion of Lord Jesus. Now, please, all kiss. On the lips now! On the lips!”

  The congregation stood. I rose along with them, wondering what kind of a nuthouse I had strayed into. I watched, fascinated, as men and women turned right and left, embracing and kissing their neighbors. A great smacking of lips filled the room.

  I was alone in the rear pew and figured I was safe. But no, a grizzly bear of a man in the pew in front of me kissed right and left, then turned suddenly and held out his arms to me.

  “Brother!” he said.

  What could I do—say, “Please, not on the first date?” So I kissed him, or let him kiss me. He had a walrus mustache. It tickled. Also, he had just eaten an Italian dinner. A cheap Italian dinner.

  After this orgy of osculation, the congregation sat down, and Irving Peacock announced the offertory. Contributions would be accepted by vestrypersons John Millhouse and Mary Thorndecker, and we were urged to give generously to “support the splendid work of Father Michael Bellamy and to signify our faith in and love for our Lord Jesus.”

  The two vestrypersons started down the center aisle. Brass trays, velvet-lined to eliminate the vulgar sound of shekels clinking, were passed along each pew, hand-to-hand, then returned to the aisle. I saw that Mary Thorndecker was collecting on the other side. I slipped across the aisle, into the empty rear pew on her side. I watched her approach, features still and expressionless.

  She was wearing an earth-colored tweed suit over a death-gray sweater. Opaque hose and flat-heeled brogues. Her hair was drawn back tightly, pinned back with a barrette. No jewelry. No makeup. I wondered if she was making herself as unattractive as possible in reaction to Julie’s obvious charms.

  She moved slowly down the aisle toward me, not looking up. Even when she took the brass tray from the pew in front of me, she still hadn’t seen me. I had time to note the plate contained a nifty pile of coins and folding money. Father Michael Bellamy was doing all right.

  Then she was at my pew. Her eyes rose as she proffered the tray.

  “Why … Mr. Todd!” she said, not quite gasping, her face flushing.

  I looked at her. I may have smiled pleasantly.

  “Thorndecker kills?” I said.

  Down went the brass tray. Coins clanged, bounced, rolled. Bills fluttered to the floor. For a moment I thought she was going to cave. Her face went putty-white, then greenish. A pale hand fluttered up to her hair, and just hung there, waving futilely.

  Then she was gone, dashing out the double-door. I thought I heard a sound: a sob, a moan. I let her go. I helped others gather up the spilled coins, the scattered bills. I added a fin of my own. Atonement.

  The collection plates were returned to the first vestryperson; everyone settled down. A few moments passed while the congregation gradually quieted. Nothing happened. But I felt the expectation, saw heads turning toward the vestry door. Still nothing. A very professionally calculated stage wait. Tension grew.

  Then the effete lad at the Hammond organ played something that sounded suspiciously like a fanfare. The vestry door was flung open. Father Michael Bellamy, clad in flowing white robes, swept into the nave, arms outstretched to embrace his followers.

  “Blessings on my children!” he intoned.

  “Blessings on our father!” they shouted back.

  He stood before the altar, arms wide, head thrown back, eyes turned heavenward.

  “Let us pray together a moment in silence,” he declaimed. “Let our souls’ voices merge and rise to Lord Jesus, asking love, understanding, and redemption for our sins.”

  All heads bowed. Except mine. I was too busy studying Father Michael Bellamy.

  A big man, maybe six-four. Broad shoulders and chest. I couldn’t see much more because of those robes, but got an impression of a comfortable corporation. A marvelous head of wavy, snow-white hair. If it wasn’t a carpet, it had enjoyed the attentions of an artful coiffeur. No one’s hair could be that white or that billowy without aid.

  The hair was long enough and full enough to cover what I guessed were big, meaty ears. I reckoned that from the rest of his face, also big and meaty. A nose like a sausage, a brow like a rare roast, chin and jowls like beef liver. The man was positively appetizing. Stuck in all this rosy suet were glistening eyes, round and hard as black marbles.

  The voice was something; it made the electronic organ sound like a twopenny whistle. Orotund, booming, it not only filled the church but rattled the windows and, for all I knew, browned the ivy in the outside window boxes. That voice conquered me; it was an instrument, and if a good soprano can shatter a wine glass, this guy should have been able to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Children,” he said, and his praying family looked up, “tonight we shall speak of sin and forgiveness. We shall speak of the unutterable lusts that corrupt the human heart and soul; and how we may all be washed clean in the blood of our Redemptor, Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

  Then he was off. I had heard the sermon before, but never so well delivered. The man was a natural, or practiced preacher. His magnificent voice roared, whispered, entreated, scorned, laughed, hissed, wailed. There was nothing he could not do with that voice. And the gesturings and posturings! Waves, flappings, pointings, clenched fists, pleading palms, stoopings, leaps, stridings from one side of the platform to the other. And tears. Oh yes. The eyes moist and brimming on demand.

  Did they listen to his words? I wasn’t sure. I found it difficult to listen, so overwhelming was his physical performance. He was a whirlwind, white robes streaming in the tempest, and what he said seemed of less importance than the presence of the man himself. Behind him, on the wall, Chris
t bled and died on the cross. And Father Michael Bellamy, the white-haired prophet incarnate, stamped the boards before this image and mesmerized his trendy flock with a performance worth four Oscars, three Emmys, two Grammys, one Ike, and a platinum record. The man was a master.

  As I said, the sermon was familiar. He told us that the human heart was a fetid swamp, filled with nasty crawling things. We were all sinners, in thought or in deed. We betrayed the best impulses of our souls, and turned instead to lechery, lust, and lasciviousness. (The Father was big on alliteration.)

  He gave a fifteen-minute catalogue of human sins of the flesh, listened to attentively by the congregation who, I figured, wanted to find out if they had missed any. This portion of the sermon was all stern denunciation, a jeremiad against the permissiveness of our society which condoned conduct that in happier times would have earned burning at the stake, or at least a holiday weekend in the stocks.

  And where was such lewdness and licentiousness leading us? To eternal damnation, that’s where. To a hell which, according to Father Bellamy’s description, was something like a Finnish sauna without the snowbanks.

  But all was not lost. There was a way to redeem our wasted lives. That was to pledge our remaining days to the service of Lord Jesus, following in His footsteps. It was being born again, finding the love and forgiveness of the Father of Us All, and dedicating our lives to walking the path of righteousness.

  Up to this point, the sermon had followed the standard revivalist pattern: scare ’em, then save ’em. But then Bellamy got into an area that made me a little queasy.

  He said there was only one way to prove sincere relinquishment of a wicked life. That was by full public confession, acknowledgment of past sins, and wholehearted and soul-felt determination to make a complete break with the past, to seek the comforting embrace of Lord Jesus and be saved.

  “O, my children!” cried Father Bellamy, throwing his gowned arms wide like a great white bat. “Is there not one among ye willing to stand now, this moment, and confess your most secret vices openly and honestly in the presence of Lord Jesus and these witnesses?”