The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  As a matter of fact, there was more than one amongst us; several leaped to their feet and clamored for attention. What followed convinced me that this mob had come to church directly from a grass-uppers-LSD buffet, or was on leave from a local acorn academy.

  A young woman, tears streaming down her cheeks, described, graphically, how she had been unfaithful to her husband on “myriad occasions,” and how she was tortured by the memories. During this titillating recital, her hand was held by the young man seated beside her. He was, I presumed, the betrayed husband. Or he could have been one of the tortured memories.

  A young man, twisting his fingers nervously, told how he had been seduced by his aunt when he was wearing his Boy Scout uniform, and how the relationship continued until he was wearing a U.S. Army uniform, at which time the aunt deserted him, leaving him with a seared psyche and a feeling of guilt that frequently resulted in nocturnal emissions.

  Three witnesses, in rapid succession, testified to how much they hated their mother/father/brother/sister, and wished them dead.

  A woman confessed to unnatural sex acts with a dalmatian owned by her local fire company.

  A stuttering lad, desperately sincere, confessed to a secret passion for Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink, who died in 1936. He had come across her photograph in an old magazine, and her image had haunted his waking hours and dreams ever since.

  A wispy blond girl, eyes glazed and enormously swollen, said she had this “thing.” She could never get rid of this “thing.” She thought about it constantly and she wanted Lord Jesus, or at least Father Michael Bellamy, to exorcise this “thing.”

  It went on and on like that: a litany of personal confessions that had me squirming with shame and embarrassment. I am, by nature, a private man. I could match anyone of them sin for sin, depravity for depravity, in dream or in deed, but I’d be damned if I’d stand voluntarily before a jury of my peers and spill my guts. It was just none of their business. I don’t think I could do it in a confessional booth either. I can’t even watch TV talk shows. Listen, if we all told one another what we really did, thought, and dreamed, the world would dissolve into mad laughter, helpless with despair, and then who would have the strength and resolve to plan wars?

  So I rose quietly from the rear pew and slipped out the church door, just as an older, bearded man was describing how he had been abusing himself ever since he picked up a weight-lifting magazine in a barber shop and, as a consequence, had become a chronic bed-wetter.

  I climbed into the dank cab of the pickup. I turned up the collar of my trenchcoat and slouched down. I lighted a cigarette and waited. I wasn’t bored; I had a lot of questions to ponder.

  Like: were those idiots inside who were stripping themselves naked in front of friends and strangers really sincere about this confession and redemption jazz? Or was it just another kick like Zen or Rolfing?

  Like: had any bright young sociologist ever written a PhD thesis on the remarkable similarities between bucolic American revival meetings and sophisticated American group therapy sessions? Both had a father-leader (preacher/psychiatrist). Both demanded public confession. Both promised salvation.

  Like: where did Mary Thorndecker run after I jolted her? I figured she’d have to call me, that night or Saturday morning. I put my money on a morning call, after she had a desperate night wondering how I had fingered her as the author of the anonymous note.

  Three cigarettes later, the service ended. The congregation of the First Fundamentalist Church of Lord Jesus streamed forth into the cold night air, presumably cleansed and rejuvenated. I had been right: there were bursts of raucous laughter and a great tooting of horns as they roared away from the parking lot. Kids let out of school.

  Still I sat there in Betty Hanrahan’s broken wreck. The spotlight illuminating the steeple cross went out. The interior lights of the church went out. Only one car remained in the parking area: that impressive maroon Bentley. Of course, it would be his.

  I got out of the truck slowly, being careful not to slam that tinny door. I made a slow circuit of the church building. Lights still burned in a side extension of the nave: the vestry. I went back to the main entrance. The double-door was still unlocked. I slid in, tiptoed up the aisle. Even in broad daylight a church is a ghostly place. At night, in almost total darkness, it can spook you. Don’t ask me why.

  The only illumination was a thin bar of light coming from the interior door of the vestry. I heard laughter, the clink of glasses. I pulled down my tweed hat to shadow my eyes, stuck my hands deep in the trenchcoat pockets. All I needed was a Lone Ranger mask.

  I shoved the door open with my foot and stalked in. I was thinking of a joke a cop had told me: this nervous robber goes into a bank on his first job and pulls out a gun. “All right, you mother-stickers,” he snarls. “This is a fuck-up.”

  There were two of them in there. Father Michael Bellamy had doffed his pristine robes. Now he was wearing a beautifully tailored suit of soft, gray doeskin with a Norfolk jacket, lavender shirt, knitted black silk tie. I had time to eyeball his jeweled cufflinks: twin Kohinoors. He was seated behind a desk, counting the night’s collection. Piling the coins in neat columns, tapping the bills into square stacks.

  The other gink was the limp young man I had seen playing the organ. He was a washed-out lad with strands of lank blond hair falling across his acned forehead. The acne was hard to spot under the pancake makeup. He was wearing a ranch suit: faded blue jeans and jacket. With high-heeled western boots yet. He looked as much like a Wyoming cowpoke as Joan Powell looks like Sophie Tucker.

  There was a bottle of Remy Martin on the desk. Bellamy was taking his straight in a little balloon glass. The organist was diluting his cognac with a can of Pepsi, which is like blowing your nose in a Gobelin tapestry.

  The effete youth was first to react to my entrance. He jerked to his feet and glared at me, not knowing whether to shit, go blind, or wind his watch.

  Bellamy didn’t pop a capillary.

  “Easy, Dicky,” he said soothingly. “Easy now.” Then to me, brightly: “Yes, sir, and how may I be of service?”

  I gave them the silent treatment, looking at them, one to the other, back and forth.

  “Well?” Bellamy said. “If it’s spiritual advice you’re seeking, my son, I must tell you I conduct personal sessions only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning at twelve noon.”

  I said nothing. He leaned forward a little to stare at my shadowed face.

  “At the service tonight, weren’t you?” he said in that rich, rolling voice. “In the rear pew, left side?”

  “Keen eyes,” I said. “What were you doing, counting the house?”

  I had been keeping watch on nervous Dicky. But as I spoke, he relaxed back in his chair, apparently reassured. But he never took his glittering eyes off me.

  “If this is a robbery,” Father Bellamy said steadily, “you’re welcome to everything you see before you. Just don’t hurt us.”

  “It isn’t a robbery,” I told him, “and why should I want to hurt you?”

  That Bellamy was one cool cat. He sat back comfortably, took out a pigskin cigar case, and went through all the business of selecting, cutting off the tip, and lighting it with a wooden match. The whole ceremony took about two minutes. I waited patiently. He took an experimental puff to see if it was drawing satisfactorily. Then he blew a plume of blued smoke at me.

  “All right,” he said, “what’s this all about?”

  “It’s a grift, isn’t it?” I asked him.

  “Grift?” he said perplexedly. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that term.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You’re in the game. It’s all a con.”

  “A con?” he said. “Could you possibly be implying trickery? That I, as an ordained minister of the First Fundamentalist Church of Lord Jesus, am running a confidence game designed to deceive and defraud my parishioners?”

  “Tell you what,” I said, “you call the cops and tell them I
’m threatening you. I’ll wait right here until they come. No rough stuff, I promise you. Then, when they take me in, I’ll ask them to run a trace. The Feds should have you in their files. Or someone, somewhere. They’ll find out about the outstanding warrants, skips, and like that. Well? How about it?”

  He looked at me with a beatific smile, rolling the cigar around in his plump lips.

  “Mike, for Christ’s sake!” Dicky cried. “Let’s throw this turd out on his ass.”

  “Now, sonny,” I said, “be nice. Have a little respect for a seeker of the truth. How about it, Mr. Bellamy?”

  He sighed deeply, running a palm lightly over his billowy white hair.

  “How did you tumble?” he asked me curiously.

  “You’re too good,” I said. “Too good for the come-to-Jesus scam. With your looks and voice and delivery, I figure you for Palm Beach or Palm Springs, peddling cheesy oil stock. Or maybe in a Wall Street boardroom, trading conglomerates. You don’t belong in the boondocks, Mr. Bellamy.”

  The Father smiled with great satisfaction. He raised his brandy snifter to me.

  “Thank you for those kind words, sir,” he said. “Did you hear that, Dicky? Haven’t I told you the same thing?”

  “Lots of times,” Dicky grumbled.

  “But I haven’t asked your name, sir,” Bellamy said to me.

  “Jones,” I said.

  “To be sure,” he said. “Very well, Mr. Jones. Assuming—just assuming, mind you—that your false and malicious allegations are correct, where do we go from here?”

  “Mike, what are you doing?” the organist yelled. “Can’t you see that this crud—”

  Bellamy whirled on him.

  “Shut your trap!” he said in a steely voice, the black eyes hard. “Just sit there and drink that loathsome mixture and don’t say word one. Understand?”

  “Yes, Mike,” the youth said meekly.

  “As I was saying,” Bellamy went on blandly, turning back to me, “where do we go from here?”

  I was still standing. There were two empty chairs in the room, but he didn’t ask me to sit down. That was okay. Oneupsmanship. You keep a guy standing in front of your desk, he becomes the inferior, the supplicant.

  “I don’t want to blow the whistle on you,” I assured him. “You got a nice thing going here, and as far as I’m concerned, you can milk it until you run out of sinners. I just want a little information. Whatever you can tell me about one of your vestrypersons.”

  He took a sip of cognac, a puff of his cigar. Then he dipped the mouth of the cigar in the brandy and took a pull on that. He looked at me narrowly through the smoke.

  “Are you heat?”

  “No. Just a concerned citizen.”

  “Aren’t we all?” he said, smiling again. “Who do you want?”

  “Mary Thorndecker.”

  “Mike, will you stop it?” the damp youth agonized. “You don’t have to tell this creep anything, except to get lost.”

  “Sonny, sonny,” I groaned, “can’t you be civilized? The Father and I have reached a cordial understanding. Can’t you see that? Now just let us get on with our business, and then I’ll climb out of your hair, and you can go back to counting the take. Won’t that be nice?”

  “Listen to the gentleman, Dicky,” Bellamy rumbled. “He is obviously a man of breeding and a rough but nimble wit. Mary Thorndecker, you said? Ah, yes. A plain jane. And yet I have the feeling that with the advice and assistance of a clever hairdresser, corsetiere, and dress designer, our dull, drab Mary might blossom into quite a swan indeed. Do you share that dream, Mr. Jones?”

  “Could be,” I said. “But what I really came to find out is anything you know about her private life, especially her family. Has she ever had one of those private consultations with you on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning at noon?”

  “On occasion.”

  “And?”

  “A very troubled young woman,” he said promptly, staring over my head. “A difficult family situation. A stepmother who is younger and apparently much prettier than Mary. A man who wishes to marry her and who, for some reason she has not revealed to me, she both loves and loathes.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And what?”

  “That’s it? That’s all she talked about in those private sessions?”

  “Well …” he said, waving a hand negligently, “she did confess to a few personal peccadilloes, a few minor misdeeds that could hardly be dignified as sins. Would you care to hear them?”

  “No,” I said. “And that’s all there is?”

  He smoked slowly, frowning in an effort to remember conversations in which, I was sure, he had no interest whatsoever. He leaned forward to pour himself another cognac. I licked my lips as obviously as I could. It won me an amused smile, but no invitation.

  “Mike,” Dicky said loudly, “you’ve told this jerk enough. Let’s bounce him.”

  “Sonny,” I said, “I’m trying very hard to ignore you, but it’s a losing battle. If you’d like to—”

  “Now, now,” Bellamy interrupted smoothly, raising a palm. “There is no room for animosity and ill-feeling in God’s house. Calm down, you two; I detest scenes.” He took another sip of brandy, closing his eyes, smacking his wet lips. Then he opened his eyes again and looked at me thoughtfully. “She did say something else. Ask something else. In the nature of a hypothetical question. To wit: what is the proper course of conduct for a child of Lord Jesus who becomes aware that her loved ones are involved in something illegal? They are, in fact, not only sinning but engaged in a criminal activity.”

  “Did she tell you who the loved ones are?”

  “No.”

  “Did she tell you the nature of the criminal activity?”

  “No.”

  “What did you tell her to do?”

  “I suggested she report the entire matter to the police,” he said virtuously. “I happen to be a very law-abiding man.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I said.

  I decided not to push it any further; he was obviously tiring. After his physical performance at the church service that evening, considering his age it was a wonder he wasn’t in intensive care.

  “Nice doing business with you, Father,” I said. “Keep up the good work. By the way, I put a finif in the plate tonight. You and sonny have a drink on me.”

  “Don’t call me sonny!” the infuriated youth screamed at me.

  “Why not?” I said innocently. “If I had a son, I’d want him to be just like you.” I paused at the door, turned back. “Father, just out of curiosity, is Mary Thorndecker a heavy mark?”

  “She is generous in contributing to God’s work on earth,” he said sonorously, rolling his eyes to heaven.

  “Could you give me a ballpark figure?” I asked him.

  He inspected the soaked stump of his cigar closely.

  “It is a very large ballpark,” he said.

  I laughed and left the two of them together. They deserved each other.

  I chugged back to Coburn, glad I couldn’t coax any more speed out of that groaning heap, because I had some thinking to do. Up to that moment I had vaguely suspected Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker might be cutting corners in that combined nursing home-research-lab organization of his. I was thinking along the lines of unethical conduct: not an indictable offense but serious enough to put the kibosh on his application for a grant. Something like trying out new drugs without an informed consent agreement. Or maybe persuading doomed patients to include a plump bequest to the Crittenden Research Laboratory in their wills. Nasty stuff, but difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute.

  But Mary Thorndecker hinted at something illegal. A criminal activity. I couldn’t guess what it was. I did know it was heavy enough to get Ernie Scoggins chilled when he found out about it. And heavy enough to give Al Coburn the shakes when he found out about it.

  I must have dreamed up a dozen ugly plots on my way back to Coburn. I had Thorndecker rifling the bank a
ccounts of guests, hypnotizing them into signing over their estates, working on biological warfare for the U.S. Army, trying to determine safe radiation dosages with human subjects, even raping sedated female patients. I went wild, but nothing I imagined really made sense.

  I pulled into the parking lot at the Coburn Inn. It was a paved area, lighted with two floods on short poles. They cast puddles of weak yellowish illumination, but most of the lot was either in gloom or lost in black shadow. Still, that was no excuse for what happened next. After the Great Slashed Tire Caper, I should have been more alert.

  I parked, got out of the truck, turned to struggle with a balky door lock. The next thing I knew, I was face down on cold cement. That was the sequence: I went down first, and then I felt the punch that did it, a slam in the kidneys that spun me around and dumped me. Strange, but even as I realized what had happened, I remember thinking, “That wasn’t so bad. It hurt like hell, but this guy is no pro.” Probably the last thoughts of every man who’s been killed by an amateur.

  On the ground, I went into the approved drill: draw up the knees to protect the family jewels, bend neck, cover face and head with folded arms, make yourself into a tight, hard ball. All this to endure the boot you’ve got to figure is coming. It came, in the short ribs mostly. And though it banged me something fierce, there wasn’t any crushing force, and I never came close to losing consciousness. I remember the other guy breathing in wheezing sobs, and thinking he was as much out of condition as I was.

  So there I was, lying on my side on a hard bed, curled into a knot. After a few ineffectual kicks to my crossed arms, thighs, and spine, I began to get annoyed. At myself, not the guy who was trying so hard and doing such a lousy job of messing me up.

  I recalled an army instructor I had who specialized in unarmed combat. His lecture went something like this:

  “Forget about trying to fight with your fists. Forget about those roundhouse swings and uppercuts you see in the movies and on TV. All that’ll get you is a fistful of broken knuckles. While you’re trying the Fancy Dan stuff, an experienced attacker will be cutting you to ribbons, even if you’re a Golden Gloves champ. Rule Number One: hug him. If he’s a karate or judo man, and you stand back, he’ll kill you. So get in close where he can’t swing his arms or legs. Rule Number Two: there are no rules. Forget about fair play and the Marquis of Queensberry. A guy is trying to murder you. Murder him first. Or at least break him. A knee in the nuts is very effective, but if he’s fast enough, he’ll turn to take it on his thigh. A punch to the balls is better. A hack at the Adam’s apple gets good results. If you can get behind him, put two fingers up his nostrils and yank up. The nose rips. Very nice. Also the eyes. Put in a stiff thumb and roll outward. The eyeball pops out like a pit from a ripe peach. And don’t forget your teeth. The human jaw can exert at least two hundred pounds of pressure—enough to take off an ear or nose. Shin kicks are fine, and if you can stomp down on the kneecap, you can get his legs to bend the wrong way. Pretty. Pulling hair comes in handy at times, and fingers bent backward make a nice snapping sound.”