The Tenth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Sorry,” I said, “that’s not the man.”

  “No harm in trying,” he said cheerfully and hung up.

  The next call was from Percy Stilton. I told him about the meeting with Teitelbaum and Tabatchnick at 2:00 P.M., and he said he’d do his best to make it. Then he told me that he had visited Glynis Stonehouse’s former employer, Atlantic Medical Research, that morning.

  “They stock enough poison to waste half of Manhattan,” Stilton reported. “And they’ve got a very lax control system. The poison cabinet has a dimestore lock that could be opened with a heavy breath. The supervisor is the only one with a key, but he keeps it in plain view, hanging on a board on his wall, labeled. He’s in and out of his office a hundred times a day. Anyone who works in the place could lift the key, use it, and replace it without being noticed. Every time a researcher takes some poison he’s supposed to sign a register kept in the poison locker stating how much he took, the date, and his name. So I had the supervisor run a total on the arsenic trioxide withdrawn and check it against the amount they started with and how much was there this morning. Over two ounces is unaccounted for. He couldn’t understand how that could happen.”

  “I can,” I said. “Two ounces! She took enough to kill the old man ten times.”

  “Sounds like,” Stilton agreed, “but no way to prove it. Now they’re going to tighten up their poison control procedure. By the way, Glynis Stonehouse wasn’t fired; she left voluntarily. Cleaned out her desk one Friday and called on Monday to say she wasn’t coming in. Didn’t even give them a reason or excuse; just quit cold. Well, I’ve got to run, Josh. I’m going to try to get over to the 79th Street boat basin around noon. And if possible, I’ll see you at two o’clock.”

  I finished typing up my notes on the Bishop Oxman interview and began trying to compose a rough agenda for the meeting that afternoon with the two senior partners. I knew I would make a better impression if my presentation was organized, brief, succinct.

  I was scribbling notes when the phone rang again. It was another cabdriver and the conversation followed the usual pattern:

  “How much is the reward?” he asked in a gargling voice.

  “A hundred dollars,” I said automatically, continuing to make notes as I spoke.

  “Well,” he said, “it isn’t much, but it’s better than a stick up the nose. I think I picked up the guy. About January 10th. It could have been then. On Central Park West and maybe 70th or 71st. Around there.”

  “What time?”

  “Oh, maybe nine o’clock at night. Like that. I was working nights then. I’m on day now.”

  “Do you remember what the weather was like?”

  “That night? A bitch. Lousy driving. Sleety. I was ready to pack it in when this guy practically threw himself under my wheels, waving his arms.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “The only reason I remember, he gave me such a hard time. I wasn’t driving fast enough. I was taking the long way. The back of the cab was littered and smelled. And so forth and so on. A real ball-breaker, if you know what I mean.”

  I put my pen aside and took a deep breath. It was beginning to sound encouraging.

  “Can you describe him physically?”

  “Hat, scarf, and overcoat,” the cabdriver said. “An old geezer. Tall and skinny. Stooped over. Ordinarily I don’t take a lot of notice of who rides my cab, but this guy was such a fucking asshole I remember him.”

  He was sounding better and better.

  “And where did you take him?” I asked, closing my eyes and hoping.

  “The 79th Street boat basin,” the cabdriver said. “And he gives me a quarter tip. In weather like that! Can you beat it?”

  I opened my eyes and let my breath out in a long sigh.

  “Would you tell me your name, please?” I said.

  “Bernie Baum.”

  “And where are you calling from now, Mr. Baum?”

  “Gas station on Eleventh Avenue.”

  “We’re on East 38th Street. If you’d be willing to come over and sign a short statement attesting to what you’ve just told me, you can pick up your hundred dollars.”

  “You mean that was the guy?” he said.

  “That was the guy,” I said.

  “Well, yeah, sure,” he said, “I’ll sign a statement. It’s the truth, ain’t it? But listen, I wouldn’t have to go to court or nothing like that, will I?”

  “Oh no, no,” I said hurriedly. “Nothing like that. It’s just for our files.”

  Maybe someday he would have to repeat his statement in court, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Well, I want to grab some lunch first,” he said, “but I’ll be over right after.”

  “Fine,” I said heartily. “Try to make it before one o’clock.”

  I gave him our address and told him to ask for Joshua Bigg. I hung up, grinning. Percy Stilton had been right; the bad guys didn’t have all the luck.

  I typed out a brief statement to be signed by Bernie Baum that said only that he had picked up a man he later identified from a photograph as Professor Yale Stonehouse at approximately 9:00 P.M. on the evening of January 10th in the vicinity of Central Park West and 70th Street and had delivered him to the 79th Street boat basin. I kept it as short and factual as possible.

  Mrs. Kletz arrived while I was finishing up. She said her tooth was feeling better and she felt well enough to put in her four hours.

  I told her about Bernie Baum and she was as pleased as I was.

  “A lot has happened since you read the Kipper and Stonehouse files,” I said. “Sit down for a moment and I’ll bring you up to date.”

  She listened intently, sucking her breath in sharply when I told her about Glynis and Knurr.

  “And that’s where the cabdriver took Professor Stonehouse the night he disappeared,” I finished triumphantly.

  But she was thinking of something else. Those young eyes seemed to have taken on a thousand-yard stare.

  “Do you suppose, Mr. Bigg,” she said in her light, lilting voice, “do you suppose that either of the two women, Tippi Kipper or Glynis Stonehouse, knows of the other?”

  I blinked at her. The question had never occurred to me, and I was angry with myself because it should have.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Kletz,” I confessed. “I’d say no, neither is aware of the other’s existence. If there’s anything Knurr doesn’t need right now it’s a jealous and vindictive woman.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I expect you’re right, Mr. Bigg.” She went back to her desk and began answering some of the routine requests. As for me, I ordered a pastrami on rye, kosher dill pickle, and tea from a Madison Avenue deli. Bernie Baum arrived and turned out to be a squat, middle-aged man with two days’ growth of grizzled beard and a wet cigar. He was wearing a soiled plaid mackinaw and a black leather cap.

  I handed him the statement I had prepared, and he took a pair of spectacles from his inside shirt pocket. One of the bows was missing and he had to hold the ramshackle glasses to his eyes to read.

  Then he looked up at me.

  “What’d this guy do?” he asked in his raspy, gargling voice. “Rob a bank?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “It figures,” he said, nodding. “Since I talked to you on the phone, I been trying to remember the guy better. I figure now he was nervous—you know? Something was bugging him and that’s why he was bugging me.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Well,” said Bernie Baum judiciously, “if he had a yacht stashed in that boat basin, he’s probably in Hong Kong by now.”

  “That could be, too,” I said. “Now if you’ll just sign the statement, Mr. Baum, I’ll get you your money.”

  He signed Bernard J. Baum, with his address, and I made out a petty cash voucher for $100. We shook hands and I sent him up to the business office with Mrs. Kletz. She was back in five minutes and told me Bernie Baum had received his cash reward an
d departed happily. She also told me that Hamish Hooter had okayed the request with no demur. In victory, magnanimous…

  Percy Stilton showed up right on time, dressed, I was happy to see, very conservatively in navy blue suit, white shirt, black tie. No jewelry. No flash. He had judged his audience to a tee. I showed him the statement the cabdriver had signed.

  Percy sat there a moment, knees crossed, pulling gently at his lower lip.

  “Uh-huh,” he said finally. “We’re filling in the gaps—slowly. Know what I think? Professor Stonehouse is down in the mud at the bottom of the Hudson River at 79th Street with an anchor tied to his tootsies. That’s what I think. I checked out the boat basin about an hour ago. There’s a houseboat registered to a Mister Godfrey Knurr. Not reverend, but mister. It’s a fifty-foot fiberglass Gibson, and the guy I talked to told me it’s a floating palace. All the comforts of home and then some.”

  I sighed.

  “It makes sense,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense to think a man like Knurr would be content to live in the back room of a dingy store down on Carmine Street.”

  Perce was silent, and I glanced nervously at my watch. We only had a few more minutes.

  “Something bothering you?” I asked.

  “Do you really think Knurr burned Kipper and Stonehouse?” he asked tonelessly.

  “Kipper certainly,” I said. “Probably Stonehouse.”

  “That’s how I see it,” he said, nodding somberly. “What’s bothering me is this: we know of two. How many more are there we don’t know about?”

  I gathered up my notes and files and we took the elevator up to the library. Neither of us spoke during the ascent.

  There was a note Scotch-taped to the library door: “Closed from 2:00 to 3:00 P.M.” An effective notice to me that I would be allotted one hour, no more. Stilton and I went in and took adjoining leather-padded captain’s chairs at the center of one of the table’s long sides.

  “Perce, can you get through this without smoking?” I asked him.

  “Sure.”

  “Try,” I said.

  I arranged my files and papers in front of me. I went over my presentation notes. Then we sat in silence.

  When Ignatz Teitelbaum and Leopold Tabatchnick entered together, at precisely 2:00 P.M., Stilton and I rose to our feet. I thought wildly that there should have been a fanfare of trumpets.

  Both senior partners were wearing earth-colored vested suits, with shirts and ties of no particular style or distinction. But there the resemblance ended. Tabatchnick, with his brooding simian posture, towered over Teitelbaum, who appeared especially frail and shrunken in comparison.

  I realized with a shock that these two men had lived a total of almost a century and a half, and shared a century of legal experience. It was a daunting perception, and it took me a few seconds to gather my courage and plunge ahead.

  “Mr. Tabatchnick,” I said, “I believe you’ve already met Detective Percy Stilton of the New York Police Department. Detective Stilton was involved in the initial inquiry into the death of Solomon Kipper.”

  Tabatchnick gave Percy a cold nod and me an angry glare as he realized I had disobeyed his injunction against sharing the results of my investigation with the police.

  I introduced Percy to Mr. Teitelbaum. Again, there was an exchange of frosty nods. Neither of the partners had made any effort to sit down. My longed-for conference was getting off to a rocky start.

  “Detective Stilton,” Mr. Tabatchnick said in his most orotund voice, “are we to understand that you are present in an official capacity?”

  “No, sir, I am not,” the detective said steadily. “I am here as an interested observer, and perhaps to contribute what I can to the solution of a dilemma confronting you gentlemen.”

  I could have kissed him. Their eyebrows went up; they glanced at each other. Obviously they hadn’t been aware they were confronted by a dilemma, and just as obviously wanted to hear more about it. They drew up chairs opposite us. I waited until everyone was seated and still.

  “Gentlemen,” I started, “it would save us all a great deal of time if you could tell me if each of you is aware of my investigation into the other’s case. That is, Mr. Teitelbaum, have you been informed of the circumstances surrounding the death of Sol Kipper? And, Mr. Tabatchnick, are you—”

  “Get on with it,” Tabatchnick interrupted testily. “We’re both aware of what’s been going on.”

  “As of your last reports,” Mr. Teitelbaum added, his leathery hands lying motionless on the table before him. “I presume you have something to add?”

  “A great deal, sir,” I said, and I began, using short declarative sentences and speaking as briskly as possible without garbling my words.

  I was gratified to discover that I could speak extemporaneously and forcefully without consulting my notes. So I was able to meet the eyes of both men as I spoke, shifting my gaze from one to the other; depending on whether I was discussing matters relating to Kipper or Stonehouse.

  It was like addressing two stone monoliths, as brooding and inexplicable as the Easter Island heads. Never once did they stir or change expression. Mr. Teitelbaum sat back in his chair, seemingly propped erect with stiff, spindly arms thrust out, splayed hands flat on the tabletop. Mr. Tabatchnick leaned forward, looming, his hunched shoulders over the table, heavy head half-lowered, the usual fierce scowl on his rubbery lips.

  Up through my account of recognizing one of Knurr’s street Arabs among my attackers, neither of the attorneys had asked any questions or indeed shown any great interest in my recital. But my telling of the meeting I had seen at the 66th Street garage changed all that.

  First of all, both men switched positions suddenly: Tabatchnick leaned back, almost fell back into his chair as if with disbelief, and Teitelbaum suddenly jerked forward, leaning over the table.

  “You’re certain of that, Mr. Bigg?” he barked sharply. “The Reverend Godfrey Knurr met Glynis Stonehouse? No doubt about it at all?”

  “None whatsoever, sir,” I said decisively.

  I explained that I had then requested a meeting with Detective Percy Stilton and told him everything that had occurred.

  “It was necessary, gentlemen,” I said earnestly, “because I needed Detective Stilton’s cooperation to determine if anyone involved had prior criminal records. Detective Stilton will tell you the results of that investigation. To get back to your question, Mr. Teitelbaum—was I certain that Knurr met Glynis Stonehouse? Yes, I am certain, because I saw them together again two nights ago.”

  I then told them how I had shadowed Glynis Stonehouse to a rendezvous with Knurr and had tailed both of them to a houseboat at the 79th Street boat basin.

  “Perce,” I said, “will you take it from here?”

  His recital was much shorter than mine, and delivered in toneless police officialese: “the alleged perpetrator” and “the suspect” and so forth. It was courtroom testimony, and both lawyers seemed completely familiar with the phrases and impressed by them.

  He told them that he had never been completely satisfied with the suicide verdict in the Kipper case, and gave his reasons why. So, he explained, he had welcomed my independent inquiry and cooperated every way he could, especially since he was impressed by the thoroughness and imaginative skill of my investigation.

  I ducked my head to stare at the table as he continued.

  He said his hope was that I would uncover enough evidence so that the NYPD would be justified in reopening the Kipper case. To that end, he had run the names of Godfrey Knurr and Tippi Kipper through the computer and discovered Tippi’s arrest record. He told them about our interview with Bishop Harley Oxman and the revelation of Knurr’s prior offense in Chicago.

  He had also, he said, after I had furnished the lead, determined what was probably the source of the arsenic used to poison Professor Stonehouse: a medical research laboratory where Glynis Stonehouse had been employed less than a year ago.

  Finally, he had discovere
d that Godfrey Knurr owned a houseboat moored at the 79th Street boat basin.

  Then Stilton turned to me and I told them that a cabdriver had come forward that morning who remembered driving Professor Stonehouse to the boat basin on the night he disappeared.

  I slid Baum’s statement across the table to the senior partners, but neither reached for it. Both men were staring at Percy.

  “Detective Stilton,” Mr. Tabatchnick boomed in his magisterial voice, “as a police officer with many years’ experience, do you believe that Godfrey Knurr murdered Solomon Kipper?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. With premeditation.”

  “But how?” Mr. Teitelbaum asked in a mild, dreamy tone.

  “I’ll let Josh tell you that,” Percy said.

  So I told them.

  Mr. Tabatchnick was the first to turn back to me.

  “And the suicide note?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” I said regretfully. “I haven’t yet accounted for that. But I’m sure you’ll admit, sir, that the wording of the note is subject to several interpretations. It is not necessarily a suicide note.”

  “And assuming the homicide occurred in the manner you suggest, you further assume that Tippi Kipper and the Reverend Godfrey Knurr were joined in criminal conspiracy? You assume that they planned and carried out the murder of Solomon Kipper because he had discovered, through the employment of Martin Reape, that his wife had been unfaithful to him with Godfrey Knurr and had decided to change his will to disinherit her to the extent allowed by law? You assume all that?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said finally.

  But now it was Mr. Teitelbaum’s turn.

  “Do you further assume,” he said in a silky voice, “that Professor Stonehouse, having discovered that his daughter had attempted to poison him, furthermore discovered that she was having an affair with Godfrey Knurr. And you assume that Stonehouse learned of the existence of Knurr’s houseboat, by what means we know not, and resolved to confront his daughter and her paramour on the night he disappeared. And you suspect, with no evidence, that he may very well have been killed on that night. Is that your assumption?”