The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Madam,” I said haughtily, “do you intend to seduce me?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” I said suddenly, grabbed the black coffee, ran for the bathroom, and just did make it. I had let myself think about Al Coburn. So I threw up for the third time that night. Brushed my teeth. Showered. For some reason I’ll never know, washed my hair and shaved. Finished the coffee. Put on a towel. Came out feeling mildly human. Millie Goodfellow was still there.

  “You’ve very patient,” I told her. “For a seductress.”

  “I found the brandy,” she said cheerfully. “It’s very good. Want one?”

  “Do I ever!” I said.

  She was using my sole glass, so I drank from the bottle. Not elegant, but effective.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  “What for? You weren’t so bad.”

  “Bad enough. Did I pay the tab at Betty’s?”

  “Of course you did. And left too much tip.”

  “It couldn’t have been too much,” I groaned. “Betty and I are still friends?”

  “She loves you.”

  “And I love her. Nice lady.”

  “Who was the little butterball you were slobbering over?”

  “Linda Cunningham? She works at the Crittenden lab.”

  “You like her?”

  “Sure. She’s nice.”

  “You love her?”

  “Come on, Millie. Tonight was the third time I’ve seen her. Just an acquaintance.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  I picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips.

  “I like that,” I said, grinning. “You jealous! You’ve got every guy in Coburn popping his suspenders.”

  “It’s just a game,” she said. “You play the game, and you get the name.”

  “And don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

  “That’s very true,” she said seriously.

  There I was in my towel. She was still fully clothed, sitting rather distantly in one of the sprung armchairs. I poured her another brandy.

  “I talked to Al Coburn just this morning,” I said. “Hearing he was dead hit me hard.”

  “I figured,” she said. “You okay now?”

  “Oh sure. I’m even sober. Sort of.”

  “I am, too,” she said. “Sort of. I think Ronnie’s going to leave me.”

  I tilted the brandy bottle again. I wasn’t gulping. I was tonguing the opening. Little sips. It was helping.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked her.

  “I just know,” she said. “A woman’s instinct,” she said virtuously.

  “Well … if he does, how do you feel about it?”

  “It’s that chippy,” she burst out. “It’s because of her.”

  “Julie? Julie Thorndecker?”

  “She’ll be the end of him.” Millie Goodfellow said. “He’s pussy-whipped. If he wanted to leave me for some nice, sweet homebody who likes to cook, I could understand it, and wish him the best. But that hoor? She’ll finish him.”

  I looked at her with awe. You never know people. Never. You think you’ve got them analyzed and tagged. You think you know their limits. Then they surprise you. They stagger you and stun you. They have depths, complexities you never even imagined. Here was this nutty broad mourning her husband’s infidelity, not for her own injury, but because of the pain he would suffer. I admired her.

  “Well, Millie,” I said, “I don’t think there’s a thing you can do about it. He’s got to make his own mistakes.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, staring into her glass of brandy. “If I come to New York, could you do anything for me? I don’t mean money—nothing like that. I mean introduce me to people. Tell me how to go about getting a job. Would you do that?”

  “Of course,” I said bravely.

  “Oh hell,” she said, shaking her head. “Who am I kidding? I’ll never leave Coburn. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m scared. I watch television. I see all these young, pretty, bright girls. I’m not like that. I sell cigarettes at the Coburn Inn. They could put in a coin machine, but I bring guys around to eat in the restaurant and drink at the bar. Think I don’t know it? But I’m safe here. I’ll never leave. I might dream about it, but I know I’ll never leave. I’ll die in Coburn.”

  I groaned. I went down on my knees, put my head in her lap. I took up her hand again, kissed her palm.

  “You’ll be nice to me, won’t you?” she asked anxiously. It was a pleading, little girl’s voice. “Please be nice.”

  I nodded.

  From the way she dressed and the way she came on, I expected her to be sex with four-wheel drive, a heaving, panting combination of Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, and the Dragon Lady. But she undressed with maidenly modesty, switching off all the bedroom lamps first, leaving only the bathroom light burning with the door open just wide enough to cast long shadows across the softly illuminated bed.

  She turned her back to me when she took off her clothes. I think she was humming faintly. I watched her in amazement. She didn’t come diving eagerly between the sheets like a chilled swimmer entering a heated pool. She slid in next to me demurely, her back still turned. All cool indifference.

  I pulled her over to face me.

  “Be nice,” she kept murmuring. “Please be nice.”

  That Picasso clown makeup ended at her neck. On almost a straight line. Above was the painted, weathered, used face of a woman who’s been through the mill twice: seams and wrinkles, crow’s feet and puckers, worried eyes and a swollen, hungry mouth. She looked like she had been picked up by the heels and dipped in age.

  But below the pancake makeup line, from neck to toes, her body was fruit, as fresh and as juicy. It was a revelation. She was made of peach skin and plum pulp: a goddamned virgin.

  “Millie,” I said. “Oh Millie …”

  “Please be nice,” she said.

  Nice? I was in bed with a white marble Aphrodite, a faintly veined Venus. Having sex with her was like slashing a Rubens or taking a sledge to a Michelangelo. Screwing that woman was sheer vandalism.

  I made love to her like an archeologist, being ever so careful. I didn’t want to break or mar anything. After awhile she lay on her back, closed her eyes, and stopped saying, “Be nice,” for which I was thankful. But she gave me no hint, no clue as to what I might do that would bring her pleasure. She made small sounds and small movements. If she felt anything, it was deep, deep, and there were few outer indications that she might not be falling asleep.

  It became evident that I could do anything to her or with her, and she would slackly submit. Not from desire or unendurable passion, but simply because this was what one did on Saturday night in Coburn, N.Y., after a drunken dinner at Red Dog Betty’s. It was ritual.

  But something happened to me. I think it was caused by the texture of her skin: fine-pored, tight and soft, firm and yielding. Joan Powell had skin like that, and holding a naked Millie Goodfellow in my arms, putting lips and tongue to her warm breast, I thought of Powell.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything?” she breathed finally.

  So I knew that if I did not do something, Europe would be the less. She expected tribute; denial would have demolished what little ego survived. Almost experimentally, and certainly deliberately, I began a long, whispered hymn of love.

  “Oh Millie,” I declaimed into her ear, “I’ve never seen a woman like you. Your body is so beautiful, so beautiful. Your breasts are lovely, and here, and here. I want to eat your sweetness, take all of you into me. This waist! Legs! And here behind your knees. So soft, so tender. This calf. These toes …”

  On and on. And as I reassured her, she came alive. Her magnificent body warmed, began to twist and writhe. Her sounds became stronger, her pulse beat more powerfully, and she pressed to me.

  “How lovely,” I carried on, “how wonderful. You have a perfect body. Perfect! Never have I seen nipples so
long. And this slender waist! Look, I can almost put my hands around it. And down here. So warm, so warm and loving.”

  It wasn’t my caresses, I knew. It was the con, the scam. Is it so awful to be wanted? She awoke as if my words were feathers between her thighs. Her eyes opened just a bit, wetly, and I thought she might be weeping from happiness.

  “Don’t stop,” she told me. “Please don’t stop.”

  So I continued my sexual gibberish as she became fevered and bursting beneath me. In all things I was gentle, and hoped it was what she meant by, “Be nice.” And all the time, delivering my cocksman’s spiel, I was remembering Joan Powell, tasting her skin, kissing her skin, biting her skin. I loved Millie Goodfellow, and loving her, loved Joan Powell more.

  I’ll never understand what it’s all about.

  The Seventh Day

  I GUESS IT WAS the clanking of the radiator that woke me up Sunday morning. Of course it might have been the clanking in my head, but I didn’t think so; I wasn’t hissing and spitting.

  It was nice in that cocoon of warmed sheets and wool blankets. For the second time since I arrived in Coburn, I debated the wisdom of staying there for the rest of my life. I could pay Sam Livingston to bring me bologna sandwiches and take away the bedpan. What I had to do that day offered no hope of jollity. Maybe it’s a sign of age (maturity?) when the future holds less than the past.

  I turned to look at the other pillow, still bearing the dent of Millie Goodfellow’s architectural hairdo. I leaned across to sniff. It still smelled of her scent but, faded, it didn’t seem as awful as it had the night before. Now it seemed warm, fragrant, and very, very intimate. I kissed the pillow like a demented poet.

  We had dressed shortly before what laughingly passes for dawn in Coburn, N.Y., and I had escorted Millie down to her car in the parking lot. An affecting parting. We clung to each other and said sappy things. It wasn’t the world’s greatest love affair—just a vigorous one-night stand—but we liked each other and had a few laughs.

  Then I had returned to my nest for five good hours of dreamless sleep. When I awoke, other than that crown of thorns (pointed inward) I was wearing, the carcass seemed in reasonably efficient condition: heart pumping, lungs billowing, all joints bending in the proper direction. Bladder working A-OK; I tested it. Then I rescued a cold ale from the windowsill. See how rewarding careful planning can be?

  Sat sprawled naked, sipping my breakfast calories, and tried to remember what goofy things I had done the night before. But then I gave up on the self-recriminations. I’ve played the fool before, and will again. You’d be surprised at how comforting that acknowledgment can be.

  Finished the ale, went in to shave and discovered I had shaved the night before. In fact, at about two in the morning. Beautiful. So I showered and dressed, happy to feel the headache fading to a light throb. Went to the window again, not expecting to see the sun, and didn’t. Had another chilled ale while planning the day’s program. I didn’t want to stray too far from the hotel in case Mary Thorndecker called. But there was one thing I decided I had to do: try to convince the local cops to let me take a look at Al Coburn’s pickup truck, especially the glove compartment. It wasn’t a job I was looking forward to, but I figured I had to make the try.

  Went down to the lobby to discover the restaurant and bar didn’t open until 1:00 P.M. I decided that a day-long fast wouldn’t hurt me. After my behavior the night before, maybe a week-long penance would be more appropriate.

  Sam Livingston came to my rescue. He found me in the lobby, trying to get a newspaper out of a coin machine. Sam showed me where to kick it. Not only did you get your newspaper, but your money came back. Then I accepted his invitation to join him in his basement apartment for coffee and a hunk of Danish.

  It was snug in that warm burrow, and the coffee was strong and hot. We sat at the little table with the ice cream parlor chairs, drank our coffee, chewed Danish, and grunted at each other. It wasn’t till the second cup and second cigarette that we started talking. That may have been because this wise old man was putting a dollop of the 12-year-old Scotch in the drip brew. Coffee royal. Nothing like it to unglue the tongue on a frosty Sunday morning.

  “I keep hearing things,” he told me.

  “Voices?” I asked idly.

  “Nah. Well … them too. I was talking about gossip.”

  “Thought you didn’t believe in gossip?”

  “Don’t,” he said stoutly. “But this was about something you asked me, so I listened.”

  “What did you hear?”

  He poured us each a little more coffee, a little more whiskey. It was warming, definitely warming. The headache was gone. I began to expand.

  “I should have been a detective,” he said. “Like you.”

  “I’m not a detective; I’m an investigator.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes they’re the same. But why should you have been a detective?”

  “Well, you’ve got to know that in a place small like this, we ain’t got too much to talk about. Small town; small talk. Like Mrs. Cimenti had her hair dyed red. Aldo Bates bought a new snow shovel. Fred Aikens bounced a bad check at Red Dog Betty’s. Little things like that.”

  “So? What did you hear?”

  “On Friday, one of the regulars here told me he stood behind Constable Ronnie Goodfellow at the bank, and Goodfellow closed out his account. More’n three hundred dollars. Then that fellow from Mike’s Service Station, he told Millie Goodfellow that her husband had brought in their car for a tune-up. Then one of the clerks from Bill’s Five-and-Dime happened to mention that Ronnie Goodfellow stopped in and bought the biggest cardboard suitcase they got. Now you put all those things together, and what do you get?”

  I grinned at him.

  “A trip,” I said. “Constable Goodfellow is cutting loose.”

  “Yeah,” he said with satisfaction, taking a sip of the coffee royal, “that’s what I figured.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “Any idea where he’s going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any idea who he’s going with?”

  “Nope, except I know it ain’t his wife.”

  “Sam,” I said, “why would Goodfellow go about planning this trip so openly? He must know how people talk in this town. Is it that he just doesn’t give a damn?”

  That seamed basalt face turned to me. He showed the big, yellowed teeth in what I supposed was intended as a smile. The old eyes stared, then lost their focus, looking inward.

  “You know what I figure?” he said. “I figure it’s part what you say: he don’t give a damn. But why don’t he? I tell you, I think since he took up with that woman—or she took up with him—he ain’t been thinking straight. I figure that woman scrambled his brains. Just stirred him up to such a hot-pants state, he don’t know if he’s coming or going. I hear tell of them two …”

  “All right,” I said, “that fits in with what I’ve heard. Sam, you think he’d kill for her? You think he’d do murder for a woman he loves?”

  He reflected a moment.

  “I reckon he would,” he said finally. Then he added softly, “I did.”

  I froze, not certain I had heard him aright.

  “You killed for a woman?”

  He nodded.

  I glanced briefly at his bookcase of romantic novels. I wondered if what he was telling me was fact or fiction. But when I looked at him again, I recognized something I had never before put a name to. That unreadable, inward look. Speaking with a minimum of lip movement. The ability to turn a question. The coldly suspicious, standoffish manner. Friendly enough, genial enough. To a point. Then the steel shutter came rattling down.

  “You’ve done time,” I told him.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Eleven years.”

  “Couldn’t have been manslaughter. Murder two?”

  He sighed. “My woman’s husband. He was a no-good. She wanted him gone. After awhile, I wanted him g
one, too. I’d have done anything to keep her. Anything. Murder? Sheesh, that wasn’t nothing. I’d have cut my own throat to make her happy. Some women can do that to you.”

  “I guess,” I said. “Did she wait for you?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “She took up with others. Got killed when a dancehall burned down in Chicago. This happened a long time ago, whilst I was inside.”

  He just said it, without rancor. It was something that had happened a long time back, and he had learned to live with it. Memories blur. Pain becomes a twinge. Can you remember the troubles you had five years ago?

  “So you think Goodfellow would do it?”

  “Oh, he’d do it; no doubt about that. If she said, ‘Jump,’ he’d just say, ‘How high?’ You think he did?”

  I started to say yes, started to say I thought Ronnie Goodfellow had murdered both Ernie Scoggins and Al Coburn. But I shut my mouth. I had nothing to take to a D.A. Nothing but the sad knowledge of how a tall, proud Indian cop might become so impassioned by sleek, soft Julie Thorndecker that the only question he’d ask would be, “How high?”

  We finished our coffee. I thanked Sam Livingston and left. He didn’t rise to see me out. Just waved a hand slowly. When I closed the door, he was still seated at the table with empty cups and a full ashtray. He was an old, old man trying vainly to recall a dim time of passion and resolve.

  When I got up to the lobby, the desk clerk motioned me over and said I had a call at ten o’clock. A Miss Joan Powell had called.

  I was discombobulated. Then insanely happy. Joan Powell? How had she learned where I was? What could she—? Then I remembered: it was the name Mary Thorndecker was to use.

  “Did she say she’d call again?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Todd. At eleven.” He glanced at the wood-cased regulator clock on the wall behind him. “That’ll be about twenty minutes or so.”

  I told him I’d be in my room, and asked him to switch the call. Upstairs, I sat patiently, flipping the pages of my Sunday newspaper, not really reading it or even seeing it. Just turning pages and wondering if I’d ever meet a woman I’d kill for. I didn’t think so. But I don’t suppose Sam Livingston or Ronnie Goodfellow ever anticipated doing what they had done.