The 1st Deadly Sin (49 page)

It had become increasingly difficult, he acknowledged. Since the death of the detective, the neighborhood streets at night were not only patrolled by plain-clothes decoys, but two-man teams of uniformed officers appeared on almost every block and corner, wary and not at all relaxed after what happened to Kope. In addition, the assignment of more squad cars to the area was evident, and Daniel Blank supposed that unmarked police cars were also being used.

Under the circumstances he would have been justified in seeking another hunting ground, perhaps another borough. But he considered it more challenge than risk. Did you reject a difficult climb because of the danger? If you did, why climb at all? The point, the whole point, was to stretch yourself, probe new limits of your talent and courage. Resolution was like a muscle: exercised it grew larger and firmer; unused it became pale and flabby.

The key, he reasoned, might be the time factor. His three killings had all taken place between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. The police would be aware of this, of course, and all officers warned to be especially alert during the midnight hour. They might be less vigilant before and after He needed every advantage he could find.

He decided on an earlier time. It was the Christmas shopping season. It was dark by seven p.m., but the stores were open until nine, and even at ten o’clock people were scurrying home, laden with parcels and bundles. After 12:30 the streets were almost deserted except for the decoys and uniformed patrols. Neighborhood residents had read the newspaper reports following Kope’s death; few ventured out after midnight. Yes, earlier would be best: any time from nine to ten-thirty. Mountain climbers judged carefully the odds and percentages; they were not deliberate suicides.

He needed camouflage, he decided, and after long consideration determined what he must do. The previous evening, on his way home from work, he stopped in a store on 42nd Street that sold Christmas cards, artificial trees, ornaments, wrapping paper, and decorations. The store had opened six weeks before Christmas and would go out of business on Christmas Eve. He had seen it happen frequently, all over the city.

He purchased two boxes, one about the size of a shoe box, the other flat and long, designed for a man’s necktie or a pair of gloves. He bought a roll of Christmas wrapping paper, the most conventional he could find: red background with reindeer pulling Santa’s sled imprinted on it. The roll itself was wrapped in cellophane. He bought a small package of stickers and a ball of cord that was actually a length of knitting yarn wound about a cardboard square.

He wore his thin, black suede gloves while making the purchase. The store was mobbed; the clerk hardly glanced at him. At home, still wearing the gloves, he prepared the two empty boxes as Christmas packages, wrapping them neatly in the reindeer paper, sticking down the end flaps with the gummed Santa Claus heads, then tying them up with red yarn, making very attractive bows on top. Finished, he had what were apparently two Christmas gifts, handsomely wrapped. He intended to leave them at the scene; the chances of their being traced to him, he believed, were absolutely minimal. He then shoved excess wrapping, stickers, cord and paper bag into his garbage can, took it to the incinerator room down the hall, and dumped it all down. Then he came back to his apartment and took off his gloves.

As he had expected, the doorman on duty when he left the following evening—it was not Charles Lipsky—hardly looked up when Daniel Blank passed, carrying his two empty Christmas boxes; he was too busy signing for packages and helping tenants out of cabs with shopping bags stuffed with bundles. And if he had noted him, what of that? Daniel Blank on his way to an evening with friends, bringing them two gaily wrapped presents. Beautiful.

He was so elated with his own cleverness, so surprised by the number of shoppers still on the streets, that he decided to walk over to The Parrot on Third Avenue, have a leisurely drink, kill a little time. “Kill time.” He giggled, the ax clasped beneath his coat, the Christmas packages in his right arm.

The Parrot was almost empty. There was one customer at the bar, a middle-aged man talking to himself, making wide gestures. The lone waiter sat at a back table, reading a religious tract. The bartender was marking a racing form. They were the two who had been on duty when he had had the fight with the homosexual the previous year. They both looked up when he came in, but he saw no recognition in their faces.

He ordered a brandy, and when it was brought he asked the bartender if he’d have something, too.

“Thanks,” the man said with a cold smile. “Not while I’m working.”

“Quiet tonight. Everyone Christmas shopping, I suppose.”

“It ain’t that,” the man said, leaning toward him. “Other Christmases we used to get a crowd when the stores closed. This year, no one. Know why?”

“Why?”

“This nutty killer on the loose,” the man said angrily, his reddish wattles wagging. “Who the hell wants to be out on the streets after dark? I hope they catch him soon and cut his balls off. The son-of-a-bitch, he’s ruining our business.”

Blank nodded sympathetically and paid for his drink. The ax was still under his coat. He sat at the bar, coated, gloved, although the room was warm, and sipped his brandy with pleasure. The Christmas boxes were placed on the bar next to him. It was quiet and restful. And amusing, in a way, to learn that what he was doing had affected so many people. A stone dropped in a pool, the ripples going out, spreading…

He had the one drink, left a modest tip, walked out with his packages. He turned at the door to see if he should make a half-wave to the bartender or waiter, but no one was looking at him. He laughed inwardly; it was all so easy. No one cared.

The shoppers were thinning out; those still on the streets were hurrying homeward, packages under their arms or shopping bags swinging. Blank imitated their appearance: his two Christmas presents under one arm, his head and shoulders slightly bent against the cruel wind. But his eyes flicked everywhere. If he couldn’t finish his business before 11:00, he would give it up for another night; he was determined on that.

He lost one good prospect when the man suddenly darted up the stairway of a brownstone and was gone while Daniel Blank was still practicing his smile. He lost another who stopped to talk to the doorman of an apartment house. A third looked promising, but too much like a detective decoy; a civilian wouldn’t be walking
that
slowly. Another was lost because a uniformed patrol turned the corner after him unexpectedly and came sauntering toward Blank.

He would not be frustrated and tried to keep his rage under control. But still…what were they doing to him? He pulled his left wrist far enough from his coat pocket to read the time under a street lamp. It was almost 10:30. Not much left. Then he’d have to let it go for another night. But he couldn’t.
Couldn’t.
The fever was in his blood, blazing. The hell with…Damn the…Fix bayonets, lads, and over…Now or…It had to be. His luck was so good. A winning streak. Always ride a winning streak.

And so it was. For there—incredibly, delightfully, free of prowling cars and uniformed patrols—the block was empty and dim, and toward him came striding a single man, walking swiftly, under one arm a package in Christmas wrapping. And in the buttonhole of his tweed overcoat, a small sweetheart rose. Would a police decoy carry a Christmas package? Wear a rose? Not likely, Daniel Blank decided. He began his smile.

The lover passed under a street lamp. Blank saw he was young, slender, mustached, erect, confident and, really, rather beautiful. Another Daniel Blank.

“Good evening!” Daniel called out, a pace away, smiling.

“Good evening!” the man said in return, smiling.

At the moment of passing, Blank transferred the ax and started his turn. And even as he did he was aware that the victim had suddenly stopped and started
his
turn. He had a dim feeling of admiration for a man whose instincts, whose physical reactions were so right and so swift, but after that it was all uncertain.

The ax was raised. The Christmas packages dropped to the sidewalk. Then there were two hands clamped on his lifted wrist. The man’s package fell also. But his grip didn’t loosen. Blank was pulled tight. Three arms were high in the air. They stood a second, carved in sweet embrace, breathing wintry steam into each other’s open lips, close. The physical contact was so delicious that Daniel was fuddled, and pressed closer. Warmth. Lovely warmth and strength.

Sense came flooding back. He hooked a heel behind the man’s left knee, pulled back and pushed. It wasn’t enough. The man staggered but would not go down. But his grip on Blank’s wrist loosened. He hooked again and shoved again, his entire body against the other body. Oh. He thought he heard a distant whistle but wasn’t sure. They fell then, and Daniel Blank, rolling, heard and felt his bent left,elbow crack against the pavement and wondered, idly, if it was broken, and thought perhaps it was.

Then they were flat, Blank lying on top of the man whose eyes were dull with a kind of weariness. His hands fell free from Blank’s wrist. So he brought the ice ax up and down, up and down, up and down, hacking furiously, in an ecstasy, pressing close, for this was the best yet, and hardly aware of weak fingers and nails clawing at his face. Something warm there.

Until the young man was still, black eyes glaring now. Blank laid the ax aside a moment to snatch at the lapel rose, picked up the ax again, staggered to a snarling crouch, looked about wildly. There were whistles now, definitely. A uniformed cop came pounding down from the far corner, hand fumbling at his hip, and his partner across the avenue, blowing and blowing at that silly whistle. Blank watched a few seconds, looping the ax about his dead left wrist under his coat.

He was suddenly conscious of the pain, in his left elbow, in his bleeding face. Then he was running, holding his injured left elbow close to his body, calculating possibilities and probabilities, but never once considered casting aside the sweetheart rose.

The body on the sidewalk should stop them for a moment, one of them at least, and as he turned onto First Avenue he stopped running, shoved the rose into his righthand coat pocket, fished out a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and held it across his bleeding face, coughing and coughing. He went into a luncheonette, two doors down from the corner. Still coughing, his bleeding face concealed by his handkerchief, he walked steadily to the phone booth in the rear. He actually clamped the handkerchief with his shoulder and took a coin from his righthand pocket to put in and dial the weather service. He was listening to a disembodied voice say, “Small craft warnings are in effect from Charleston to Block Island,” when, watching, he saw a uniformed cop run by the luncheonette with drawn gun. Blank left the phone booth immediately, still coughing, handkerchief to face. There was an empty cab stopped for a light at 81st Street. Luck. Wasn’t it all luck?

He asked the driver, politely, to take him to the west side bus terminal. His voice—to his own ears, at least—was steady. When the light changed and the cab started off, he pushed to the far left corner where the driver couldn’t see him in his rear view mirror without obvious craning. Then Blank held out his right hand, fingers spread. They didn’t seem to be trembling.

It was almost a twenty-minute trip to the bus terminal and he used every one of them, looking up frequently to make certain the driver wasn’t watching. First he swung open his topcoat, unbuttoned his jacket, unhooked his belt. Then he gently slid the loop of the ice ax off his nerveless left wrist, put his belt through the loop, and buckled it again. Now the ax would bump against his thigh as he walked, but it was safe. He buttoned his jacket.

Then he spit onto his handkerchief and softly rubbed his face. There was blood, but much less than he had feared. He put the handkerchief beside him on the seat and, gripping his left hand in his right, slowly bent his left arm. It hurt, it ached, but the pain was endurable, the elbow seemed to be functioning, and he hoped it was a bad bruise, not a break or a chip. He bent his left elbow and put the forearm inside his jacket, resting on the buttons, like a sling. It felt better that way.

He spit more into his handkerchief, wiped his face again, and there was hardly any fresh blood. The shallow wounds were already clotting. Blank pushed his reddened handkerchief into his breast pocket. He dragged out his wallet with one hand, glanced at the taxi meter, then extracted three one-dollar bills, replaced his wallet, sat back in the seat, drew a deep breath and smiled.

The bus station was mobbed. No one stared at him, and he didn’t even bother covering his face with his handkerchief. He went directly to the men’s room. It, too, was crowded, but he was able to get a look at himself in the mirror. His wig was awry, his left cheek scratched deeply—they’d surely scab—his right cheek roughened but not cut. Only one scratch on his left cheek was still welling blood, but slowly.

There was a man washing his hands in the basin alongside. He caught Blank’s eye in the mirror.

“Hope the other guy looks as bad,” he said.

“Never laid a hand on him,” Blank said ruefully, and the man laughed.

Daniel moistened two paper towels under the tap and went into one of the pay toilets. When he had locked the door, he used one wet towel to wipe his face again, then plastered toilet paper onto his scratched, wet cheek. He used the other dampened towel to sponge his coat and suit. He discovered an abrasion on the left knee of his trousers; the cloth had been scraped through and skin showed. He would have to throw away the entire suit, wrap it in brown paper and dump it in a trash basket on his way to work. Chances were a derelict would fish it out before the sanitation men got to the basket. In any event, Blank could tear out the labels and burn them. It wasn’t important.

He tried his left arm again. The elbow joint worked but painfully—no doubt about that. He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. A lovely swelling there, already discolored. But the elbow worked. He adjusted all his clothes and managed his topcoat so that it hung from his shoulders, continental style, both his arms inside, the ax swinging from his belt. He peeled the toilet paper carefully from his face and looked at it. Faintly pinkish. He flushed paper and towels down the drain, tugged his clothing smooth, and opened the toilet door, smiling faintly.