The Tenth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “Mr. Bigg, when my family came up here from Mississippi, we were one of the first colored families in the neighborhood. It wasn’t easy, I do assure you. But my daddy and older brothers got jobs in the mills, so we were eating. That was something. They put me in grade school here. Mostly Irish, Polish, and Ukrainian kids. I was the only black in my class. It would have been worse if it hadn’t been for Godfrey Knurr.”

  I must have looked surprised.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “He saved my ass more than once, I do assure you. This was in the eighth grade, and he was the biggest, strongest, smartest, best-looking boy in school. The teachers loved him. Girls followed him down the street, passed him notes, gave him me cookies they baked in home economics class. I guess you could say he was the school hero.”

  “Is that how you saw him?”

  “Oh yes,” he said seriously, “I do assure you. He was my hero, too. Protected me. Showed me around. Took me under his wing, you might say. I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world to have a friend like Godfrey Knurr. I worshiped him.”

  “And then…?” I asked.

  “Then we went to high school together—right here in dear old McKinley—and Godfrey began to call in my markers. Do you know what that means?”

  “I know.”

  “It started gradually. Like we’d have to turn in a theme, and he’d ask me to write one for him because he had put it off to the last minute and he wanted to take a girl to the movies. He was something with the girls. Or maybe we’d be taking a math test, and he’d make sure to sit next to me so that I could slip him the answers if he got stuck.”

  “I thought you said he was smart?”

  “He was. The smartest. If he had applied himself, and studied, he could have sailed through high school, just sailed, and ended up first in his class. But he had no discipline. There were always a dozen things he’d rather be doing man homework—mooning around with girls, playing a game of stickball in a vacant lot, going into Chicago to see a parade—whatever. So he began to lean on me more and more until I was practically carrying him.”

  “You didn’t object to this?”

  Jesse Karp swung his creaking swivel chair around until he was looking out a window. I saw him in profile. A great brown bald dome. A hard, brooding expression.

  “I didn’t object,” he said in a rumbling, ponderous voice. “At first. But then I began to grow up. Physically, I mean. I really sprouted. In the tenth grade alone I put on four inches and almost thirty pounds. After a while I was as tall as Godfrey, as strong, and I was faster. Also, I was getting wiser. I realized how he was using me. I still went along with him, but it bothered me. I didn’t want to get caught helping him cheat. I didn’t want to lie for him anymore. I didn’t want to do his homework or lend him my notes or write his themes. I began to resent his demands.”

  “Do you think…” I said hesitantly, “do you think that when you first came up here from the south, and he took you under his wing, as you said, do you think that right from the start, the both of you just kids, that he saw someone he could use? Maybe not right then, but in the future?”

  Jesse Karp swung around to face me, to stare at me somberly.

  “You weren’t raised to be an idiot, were you?” he said. “I gave that question a lot of thought, and yes, I think he did exactly that. He had a gift—if you can call it that—of selecting friends he could use. If not immediately, then in the future. He banked people. Just like a savings account that he could draw on when he was in need. It hurt me when I realized it. Now, after all these years, it still hurts. I thought he liked me. For myself, I mean.”

  “He probably did,” I assured him. “Probably in his own mind he doesn’t know the difference. He only likes people he can use. The two are inseparable.”

  “What you’re saying is that he’s not doing it deliberately? That he’s not consciously plotting?”

  “I think it’s more like an instinct.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Anyway, after I realized what he was doing, I decided against a sudden break. I didn’t want to confront him or fight him or anything like that. But I gradually cooled it, gradually got out from under.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “Just fine. We stayed friends, I do assure you. But he got the message. Stopped asking me to do his themes and slip him the answers on exams. It didn’t make any difference. By that time he had a dozen other close friends, some boys but mostly girls, who were delighted to help him. He had so much charm. Even as a boy, he had so damned much charm, you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I’d believe,” I said. “He’s still got it.”

  “Yes? Well, in our senior year, a couple of things happened that made me realize he was really bad news. He had a job for an hour after school every day working in a local drugstore. Jerking sodas and making deliveries—like that. He worked for maybe a month and then he was canned. There were rumors that he had been caught dipping into the till. That may or may not have been true. Knowing Godfrey, I’d say it was probably true. Then, we were both on the high school football team. Competitors, you might say, because we both wanted to play quarterback, although sometimes the coach played us both at the same time with one of us at halfback. But still, we both wanted to call the plays. Anyway, in our last season, three days before the big game with Edison High, someone pushed me down the cement steps to the locker room. I never saw who did it, so I can’t swear to it, but I’ll go to my grave believing it was Godfrey Knurr. All I got out of it, thank God, was a broken ankle.”

  “But he played quarterback in the big game?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did McKinley High win?”

  “No,” Jesse Karp said with grim satisfaction, “we lost.”

  “And who ended up first in the class? Scholastically?”

  “I did,” he said. “But I do assure you, if Godfrey Knurr had applied himself, had shown some discipline, there is no way I could have topped him. He was brilliant. No other word for it; he was just brilliant.”

  “What does he want!” I cried desperately. “Why does he do these things? What’s his motive?”

  The principal fiddled with an ebony letter opener on his desk, looking down at it, turning it this way and that.

  “What does he want?” he said ruminatively. “He wants money and beautiful women and the good things of this world. You and I probably want exactly the same, but Godfrey wants them the easy way. For him, that means a kind of animal force. Rob a drugstore cash register. Push a competitor down a flight of cement steps. Make love to innocent women so they’ll do what you want. What you need. He goes bulling his way through life, all shoulders and elbows. And God help you if you get in his way. He has a short fuse—did you know that? A really violent temper. He learned to keep it under control, but I once saw what he did to a kid in scrimmage. This kid had made Godfrey look bad on a pass play. The next time we had a pileup, I saw Godfrey go after him. It was just naked violence; that’s the only way I can describe it. Really vicious stuff. That kid was lucky to come out alive.”

  I was silent, thinking of Solomon Kipper and Professor Yale Stonehouse. They hadn’t come out of the pileup.

  “What does he want?” Jesse Karp repeated reflectively. “I’ll tell you something odd. When Godfrey and I were kids, almost everyone collected baseball cards. You know—those pictures of players you got in a package of bubblegum. Godfrey never collected them. You know what he saved? He showed me his collection once. Models and movie stars. Yachts and mansions. Jewelry and antiques. Paintings and sculpture. He wanted to own it all.”

  “The American dream?” I asked.

  “Well…” he said, “maybe. But skewed. Gone bad. He wanted it all right now.”

  “Why did he go into the ministry?” I asked.

  He lifted his eyes to stare at me. “Why do you think?”

  “To avoid the draft?”

  “That’s my guess,” Jesse Karp said, shrugging.
“I could be wrong.”

  “Was Knurr ever married?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he said too quickly.

  “I understand there is a Reverend Stokes who helped him?”

  “That’s right. The Reverend Ludwig Stokes. He’s retired now.”

  “Goldie Knurr hinted that he’s fuddled, that he drinks too much.”

  “He’s an old, old man,” Jesse Karp said stonily. “He’s entitled.”

  “Could you tell me where I might find him?”

  “The last I heard he was living in a white frame house two doors south of St. Paul’s on Versailles.”

  He glanced obviously at his wristwatch and I rose immediately to my feet. I thanked him for his kind cooperation. He helped me on with my coat and walked me to the door.

  “I’ll let you know how it all comes out,” I told him.

  “Don’t bother,” he said coldly. “I really don’t want to know.”

  I was saddened by the bitterness in his voice. It had all happened so many years ago, but he still carried the scars. He had been duped and made a fool of. He had thought he had a friend who liked him for what he was. The friend had turned out to be just another white exploiter. I wondered how that discovery had changed Jesse Karp’s life.

  At the doorway, I thought of something else and turned to him.

  “Do you remember a girl Knurr dated, probably in high school—a short, lovely girl with long blonde hair? She had a heavy metal brace on one leg. Maybe polio.”

  He stared at me, through me, his high brow rippling.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “I do remember. She limped badly. Very slender.”

  “Fragile looking,” I said. “Wistful.”

  “Yes, I remember. But I can’t recall her name. Wait a minute.”

  He went back to the glass-enclosed bookcase set against the far wall. He opened one of the shelf doors, searched, withdrew a volume bound in maroon. Plastic stamped to look like leather.

  “Our yearbook,” he said, smiling shyly. “The year Godfrey and I graduated. I still keep it.”

  I liked him very much then.

  I stood at his side as he balanced the wide volume atop the mess at his desk and flipped through the pages rapidly. He found the section with small, individual photographs of graduating seniors, head-and-shoulder shots. Then Jesse Karp turned the pages slowly, a broad forefinger running down the columns of pictures, names, school biographies.

  “Here I am,” he said laughing. “God, what a beast!”

  I leaned to look: Jesse Karp, not a beast, but an earnest, self-conscious kid in a stiff white collar and a tie in a horrendous pattern. Most of the other boys were wearing suit jackets, but Karp wasn’t. I didn’t remark on it.

  “Not so bad,” I said, looking at the features not yet pulled with age. “You look like it was the most solemn moment of your life.”

  “It was,” he said, staring down at the book. “I was the first of my family to be graduated from high school. It was something. And here’s Godfrey.”

  Directly below Karp’s photograph was that of Knurr, wearing a sharply patterned sport jacket. He was smiling at the camera, his chin lifted. Handsome, strong, arrogant. A Golden Boy. He had written an inscription in the yearbook directly below Karp’s biography: “To Jesse, my very best friend ever. Godfrey Knurr.” I guessed he had written that same sentiment in many McKinley High yearbooks.

  Each student had a pithy motto or prediction printed in italic type below his biography. Jesse Karp’s said: A slow but sure winner.

  Godfrey Knurr’s was: We’ll be hearing of him for many years to come.

  The principal continued flipping through the pages of stamp-sized portraits. Finally his finger stopped.

  “This one?” he said, looking at me.

  I glanced down. It was the same girl I had seen in Goldie

  Knurr’s photo album. The same pale gold beauty, the same soft vulnerability.

  “Yes,” I said, reading her name. “Sylvia Wiesenfeld. Do you know anything about her?”

  He closed the yearbook with his two hands, slapping the volume with what I thought was unusual vehemence. He went back to the bookcase to restore the book to its place and close the glass door.

  “Why are you asking about her?” he demanded, his back to me. I thought something new had come into his voice: a note of hostility.

  “Just curious,” I said. “She’s so beautiful.”

  “Her father owned a drugstore,” he said grudgingly. “He’s dead now—the father. I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “Was this the drugstore where Godfrey Knurr worked after school?”

  “Yes,” he said shortly.

  He insisted on personally accompanying me through the outer offices, down the hallways and staircases to the front entrance of McKinley High School. I didn’t know if he was being polite or wanted to make certain I didn’t loiter about the premises.

  I thanked him again for his kindness and he sent me on my way. He didn’t exactly push me out the door, but he made certain I exited. I didn’t think he regretted what he had told me about Godfrey Knurr. I thought he was ashamed and angry at what he had revealed about himself. I had set the old wounds throbbing.

  On the sidewalk, I turned and looked back at the high school, a pile of red brick so ugly it was impressive. I had brief and sententious thoughts of the thousands—maybe millions!—of young students who had walked those gloomy corridors, sat at those worn desks, who had laughed, wept, frolicked, and discovered despair.

  I found the white frame house two doors south of St. Paul’s on Versailles Street. Perhaps it had once been white, but now it was a powdery gray, lashed by rain and wind, scoured by the sun. It looked at the world with blind eyes: uncurtained windows with torn green shades drawn at various levels. The cast-iron fence was rusted, the tiny front yard scabby with refuse. It was a sad, sad habitation for a retired preacher, and I could only wonder how his parishioners could allow their former pastor’s home to fall into such decrepitude.

  I went cautiously up the front steps and searched for a bell. There was none, although I discovered four stained screwholes in the doorjamb, a larger drilled hole in the middle, and the faint scarred mark of a square enclosing them all. Apparently a bell had once existed but had been removed.

  I rapped sharply on the peeling door and waited. No answer. I knocked again. Still no reply.

  “Keep trying,” someone called in a cackling voice. “He’s in there all right.”

  I turned. On the sidewalk was an ancient black man wearing a holey wool cap and fingerless gloves. He seemed inordinately swollen until I realized he was wearing at least three coats and what appeared to be several sweaters and pairs of trousers. He was pushing a splintered baby carriage filled with newspapers and bottles, cans, an old coffee percolator, tattered magazines, two bent umbrellas, and other things.

  “Is this the home of the Reverend Stokes?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” he said, nodding vigorously and showing a mouthful of yellow stumps. “What you do is you keep pounding. He’s in there all right. He don’t never go out now. Just keep pounding and pounding. He’ll come to the door by and by.”

  “Thank you,” I called, but he was already shuffling down the street, a strange apparition.

  So I pounded and pounded on that weathered door. It seemed at least five minutes before I heard a quavery voice from inside: “Who is there?”

  “Reverend Stokes?” I shouted. “Could I speak to you for a moment, sir? Please?”

  There was a long pause and I thought I had lost him. But then I heard the sounds of a bolt being drawn, the door unlocked. It swung open.

  I was confronted by a wild bird of a man. In his late seventies, I guessed. He was actually a few inches taller than I, but his clothes seemed too big for him so he appeared to have shrunk, in weight and height, to a frail diminutiveness.

  His hair was an uncombed mess of gray feathers, and on his hollow cheeks w
as at least three days’ growth of beard: a whitish plush. His temples were sunken, the skin on his brow so thin and transparent that I could see the course of blood vessels. Rheumy eyes tried to stare at me, but the focus wavered. The nose was a bone.

  He was wearing what had once been a stylish velvet smoking jacket, but now the nap was worn down to the backing, and the elbows shone greasily. Beneath the unbuttoned jacket was a soiled blue workman’s shirt, tieless, the collar open to reveal a scrawny chicken neck. His creaseless trousers were some black, glistening stuff, with darker stains and a tear in one knee. His fly was open. He was wearing threadbare carpet slippers, the heels broken and folded under. His bare ankles were not clean.

  I was standing outside on the porch, he inside the house. Yet even at that distance I caught the odor: of him, his home, or both. It was the sour smell of unwashed age, of mustiness, spilled liquor, unmade beds and unaired linen, and a whiff of incense as rancid as all the rest.

  “Reverend Stokes?” I asked.

  The bird head nodded, pecking forward.

  “My name is Joshua Bigg,” I said briskly. “I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’d just like to talk to you for a few minutes, sir.”

  “About what?” he asked. The voice was a creak.

  “About a former parishioner of yours, now an ordained minister himself. Godfrey Knurr.”

  What occurred next was totally unexpected and unnerving.

  “Nothing happened!” he screamed at me and reached to slam the door in my face. But a greenish pallor suffused his face, his hand slipped down the edge of the door, and he began to fall, to sag slowly downward, his bony knees buckling, shoulders slumping, the old body folding like a melted candle.

  I sprang forward and caught him under the arms. He weighed no more than a child, and I was able to support him while I kicked the door shut with my heel. Then I half-carried, half-dragged him back into that dim, malodorous house.

  I pulled him into a room that had obviously once been an attractive parlor. I put him down on a worn chesterfield, the brown leather now crackled and split. I propped his head on one of the armrests and lifted his legs and feet so he lay flat.