The 1st Deadly Sin (75 page)

“Danny Boy in the White House?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. No departure. About half an hour ago Tiger One called in. Princess left the Castle in a cab.” (“Princess” was the code name for Celia Montfort.) “About then minutes later Bulldog One reported her arrival at the White House. They’re both still in there, as far as we know.”

Delaney nodded, went back into his study, closing the door. He called Blank’s number again. No answer. Maybe Danny Boy and the Princess were having a sex scene and weren’t answering the phone. Maybe. And maybe they were at a Christmas Eve Party. At the Mortons, possibly? Possibly. He went to the file cabinet, took out the thin folder on the Mortons that MacDonald’s snoops had assembled. Their home phone number was there.

Delaney came back to his desk, dialed the number.

“Mortons’ residence,” a female voice answered, after the seventh ring.

In the background Delaney could hear the loud voices of several people, shouts, laughter. A party. He didn’t grin.

“I’m trying to reach Mr. Daniel Blank,” he said slowly, distinctly, “and I was given this number to call. Is he there?”

“Yes, he is. Just a minute, please.”

He heard her call, “Mr. Blank! Phone!” Then that familiar voice was there, curious and cautious. Delaney knew what Danny Boy was wondering: how had anyone traced him to the Mortons’ Christmas Eve party?

“Hello?”

“Mr. Daniel G. Blank?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Frank Lombard.”

There was a sound at the other end of the phone: part moan, part groan, part gasp—something sick and unbelieving. “Who?”

“Frank Lombard,” Delaney said in a low, soft voice. “You know me. We’ve met before. I just wanted to wish you—” But the connection went dead. Delaney hung up gently, smiling now. Then he put on overcoat and cap and went out into the dark night to find a drugstore that was still open so he could buy a bottle of perfume and take it to the hospital, a Christmas gift for his wife.

Part VIII

1

S
OMETHING WAS HAPPENING.
What was happening? Something…

Daniel Blank thought it had started two weeks ago. Or perhaps it was three; it was difficult to remember. But the garage attendant in his apartment house casually mentioned that an insurance examiner had been around, asking about Blank’s car.

“He thought you had been in some kind of accident,” the man said. “But he took one look at your car and knew you wasn’t. I told him so. I told him you ain’t had that car out in months.”

Blank nodded and asked the man to wash the Stingray, check the battery, oil, gas. He thought no more about the insurance examiner. It had nothing to do with him.

But then, one night, he stopped in at The Parrot. The bartender served him his brandy, then asked if his name was Blank. When Daniel acknowledged it—a tickle of agitation there—the bartender told him a private detective had been in, asking questions about him. He couldn’t recall the man’s name, but he described him. Troubled now, Blank went back to the garage attendant; his description of the “insurance examiner” tallied with that of the bartender’s “private detective.”

Not two days later, doorman Charles Lipsky reported that a man had been around asking “very personal questions” about Daniel Blank. The man, Lipsky said, had not stated his name or occupation, but Lipsky could describe him, and did.

From these three descriptions Blank began to form a picture of the man dogging him. Not so much a picture as a silhouette, A dark, hulking figure, rough as a woodcut. Big, with stooped shoulders. Massive. Wearing a stiff Homburg set squarely atop his head, an old-fashioned, double-breasted, shapeless overcoat.

Then, with great glee, Flo and Sam Morton told him of the visit of the credit investigator, and Dan—you devil!—why hadn’t you told your best friends about your plans to marry Celia Montfort and purchase her townhouse? He grinned bleakly.

Then that humbling, mumbling meeting with Rene Horvath, Javis-Bircham’s Director of Personnel. Blank finally got it straight that a credit investigator had been making inquiries; apparently Blank had applied for a “very large loan”—much larger than that offered by the J-B employees’ loan program. Horvath had felt it his duty to report the investigator’s visit to his superiors, and he had been assigned to ask Daniel Blank the purpose of the loan.

Blank finally got rid of the disgusting little creep, but not before eliciting a physical description of the “credit investigator.” Same man.

He knew now his days at Javis-Bircham were numbered, but it wasn’t important. The phony credit investigation would just be the last straw. But it wasn’t important. He’d be fired, or allowed to resign, and given a generous severance payment. It wasn’t important. He knew that during the last few months he simply hadn’t been doing his job. He wasn’t interested. It wasn’t important.

What was important, right now, was the insurance examiner-private detective-credit investigator—a composite man who had become more than a silhouette, a vague image, but was now assuming a rotundity, a solidity, with heavy features and gross gestures, a shambling walk and eyes that never stopped looking. Who was he? God in a stiff Homburg and floppy overcoat?

Blank looked for him wherever he went, on the street, in bars and restaurants, at night, alone in his apartment. On the streets he would search the faces of approaching strangers, then whirl suddenly to see if that big, huddled man was lumbering along behind him. In restaurants, he strolled to the men’s room, looking casually at patrons, walking into the kitchen “by accident,” glancing into occupied phone booths, inspecting toilet cubicles. Where was he? At home, at night, the door locked, bolted, jammed tight, he would lie awake in the darkness and suddenly hear night noises: thumpings, creakings, a short snap. Then he would rise, put on all the lights, stalk through the apartment, wanting to meet him face to face. But he was not there.

Then, finally, it was Christmas Eve. Javis-Bircham would not fire him until after the holidays; he knew that. So he could accept happily an invitation to the Mortons’ Christmas Eve party and ask Celia to join him. He would drink a little, laugh, put his arm around Celia’s slender, hard waist, and surely the dark, thrusting shadow could not be there.

The call shattered him. For how could anyone know he was at the Mortons’? He approached the phone cautiously, picked it up as if expecting it to explode in his hand. Then that soft, insinuating voice said: “Frank Lombard. You know me. We’ve met before. I just wanted—”

Then he was out of there, leaving Celia behind him, saying goodnight to no one. The elevator took a decade; it was a generation before he got his door unlocked and locked again; it was a century before he had the drawer out, turned upside down on his bed. He inspected the taped envelope carefully but, as far as he could see, it had not been touched. He opened it; everything was there. He sat on his bed, fingering his mementoes, and became aware that he had wet his pants. Not a lot. But a few drops. It was degrading.

He stuffed the black velvet suit, white cashmere turtleneck sweater, and flowered panties into the bathroom laundry hamper. He peeled off the Via Veneto wig before getting under a shower as hot as he could stand it. When he soaped his bare skull, he felt the light fuzz and knew he’d soon need another shave.

He dried, smoothed on cologne, powdered, stuck the wig firmly back into place. Then he put on one of his silk robes, the crane design, and padded barefoot into the living room to pour himself a warm vodka and light one of his dried lettuce cigarettes.

Then he realized the apartment doorbell was chiming had been for several rings. He stubbed his cigarette out carefully and drained his vodka before going into the hallway to peer at Celia Montfort through the peephole. He unlocked the door to let her in, bolted it again behind her.

“You’re not ill, are you, Dan?”

“You don’t talk in your sleep, do you?” he asked. Even in his own ears his laugh sounded wild and forced.

She stared at him, expressionless.

She sat on the living room couch, waited patiently while he opened a bottle of bordeaux, poured her a stemmed glass and for himself the glass still wet from the vodka he had finished. She sipped the wine cautiously.

“Good,” she nodded. “Dry as dust.”

“What? Oh yes. I should have bought more. The price has almost doubled. Did you tell anyone about me?”

“What are you talking about, Dan?”

“What I’ve done. Did you tell anyone?”

Her answer was prompt, but it was no answer at all: “Why should I do a thing like that?”

She was wearing a tube of black jersey, high at the neck, long-sleeved, hanging to her dull black satin evening pumps. About her neck was what appeared to be a six-foot rope of cultured pearls, wound tightly, around and around, so it formed a gleaming collar that kept her head erect, chin raised.

He had the sense—as he had at their first meeting—of never being able to recognize her, of forgetting what she looked like when she was out of his sight. The long, black, almost purple hair; drawn, witch-like face; slender, tapering hands; but the eyes—were they grey or blue? Were the lips full or flat? Was the nose Egyptian—or merely pinched? And the pallid complexion, bruised weariness, aura of corruption, of white flesh punished to a puddle—where did those fantasies come from? She was as much a mystery to him now as at their first meeting. Was it a thousand years ago?

She sat on the couch, composed, withdrawn, sipping her wine as he passed back and forth. He never took his eyes from her as he told her about the man who had been dogging him—the insurance examiner-private detective-credit investigator man—and the people this man had seen, the questions he had asked, what he had said.

As he talked, words spilling out so fast that he spluttered a few times and white spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth—well, as he chattered, he saw her cross her legs slowly, high up, at her thighs, hidden by her long dress. But from the bent knee, one ankle showed, a satin evening pump hung down. As he told her what had happened, that loose foot, that black shoe, began to bob up and down, lower leg swinging from the hidden knee, slow at first, nodding in a graceful rhythm, then moving faster in stronger jerks. Her face was still expressionless.

Watching Celia’s bobbing foot, the leg from the knee down swinging faster under her long dress, he thought she must be masturbating, sitting there on his couch, naked thighs pressed tightly together beneath her gown. The rhythm of that jerking foot became faster and faster until when he told her about the telephone call he had just received at the Mortons, she began to pant, her eyes glazed, pearls of sweat to match her necklace formed on brow and upper lip. Then, eyes closed now, her entire body stiffened for a moment. He stopped talking to watch her. When she finally relaxed, shuddering, looked about with vacant eyes, uncrossed her legs, he thought she must have been sexually excited by his danger, but for what reason he did not know, could not guess.

“Could the man be Valenter?” he asked her.

“Valenter?” She took a deep sip of wine. “How could he know? Besides, Valenter is skinny, a scarecrow. You said this man following you about is heavy, lumbering. It couldn’t be Valenter.”

“No. I suppose not.”

“How could this man—the one on the phone—know about Frank Lombard?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps there was an eyewitness—to Lombard or one of the others—and he followed me home and got my address and then my name.”

“For what reasons?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He didn’t go to the police, so it must be blackmail.”

“Mmm, possibly. Are you frightened?”

“Well…disturbed.” Then he told her about what he had been doing since he left the Mortons’ apartment so abruptly: trying to make his mind into a blank blackboard, erasing thoughts as quickly as they appeared in chalk script.

“Oh no,” she shook her head, and in her voice was an imploring tone he had never heard her use before, “you shouldn’t do that. Open your mind wide. Let it expand. Let it shatter into a million thoughts, sensations, memories, fears. That’s how you’ll find perception. Don’t erase your consciousness. Let it flower as it will. Anything is possible. Remember that: anything is possible. Something will come to you, something that will explain the man following you and the phone call. Open your mind; don’t close it down. Logic won’t help. You must become increasingly aware, increasingly sensitive. I have a drug at home. Do you want to use it?”

“No.”

“All right. But don’t shut yourself in, inside yourself. Be open to everything.”

She stood, picked up the remainder of the wine.

“Let’s go to your bedroom,” she said. “I’ll stay the night.”

“I won’t be any good.”

Her free hand slid inside the opening of his robe. He felt her slim, cool fingers drift across his nakedness to find him, to hold him.

“We’ll play with each other,” she murmured.

And so they did.

2

O
N THE DAY
following Christmas, Captain Delaney worked all morning in his study, in his shirtsleeves—it was unseasonably warm, the house overheated—trying to prepare estimates of his manpower and vehicle requirements for the coming week.

The holiday season complicated things; men wanted to spend time at home with their families. That was understandable, but it meant schedules had to be reshuffled, and it was impossible to satisfy everyone.

Delaney’s three commanders—Fernandez, MacDonald, and Blankenship—had prepared tentative schedules for their squads, but had appended suggestions, questions, requests. From this tangled mess of men available for duty, men on vacation or about to go, sick leave, hardship cases, special pleadings (one of Fernandez’ spooks had an appointment with a podiatrist to have his bunions trimmed), Delaney tried to construct a master schedule for Operation Lombard that would, at least, have every important post covered 24 hours a day but still leave enough “wiggle room” so last-minute substitutions could be made, and there would always be a few men playing poker for matchsticks in the radio room, available for emergency duty if needed.