The Eighth Commandment (15 page)

In the morning, fully awake, I discovered he had been up, dressed, and was gone. On my bedside table was a sheet torn from his notebook. It read: “I love you, Dunk.”

That troubled me.

N
EXT STOP: WIMPSVILLE…OR SO
I thought.

It was Saturday, and I called Roberta and Ross Minchen, hoping to make an appointment to see them that afternoon. I expected grumbles and hostility, but Roberta couldn’t have been more agreeable.

“Of course we’ll see you,” she said. “Mother told me you had been hired, and Ross and I think it’s a marvelous idea. We do hope you can get this mess cleared up as soon as possible. But I’m afraid seeing you this afternoon is out of the question; we’re in the middle of preparing for a little party we’re having tonight. Listen, I have a fabulous idea! Our guests won’t be arriving until eight-thirty or nine—around there. Why don’t you come over, say, an hour earlier or so, and we’ll have a nice chat. Then you stay on for the party. I think you’ll like our friends.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Minchen, but—”

“Roberta.”

“Roberta. But I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Nonsense! You won’t be intruding at all. Please say you’ll come early and stay for our little gala. Who knows—you may meet a fascinating man!”

Her effusiveness was hard to resist, but I was doubtful about spending an entire evening at the Home of the Wimps. But then I reckoned I could stay for one drink, and if it was too much of a drag, make a hasty exit, pleading a fierce migraine, the unexpected onset of menarche, or
something.

“All right, Roberta,” I said, “I’ll be there. Thank you. Is it a dress-up party?”

“
Au contraire
,” she said gaily. “Very informal. Wear whatever you like. I just know everyone’s going to
love
you!”

Then she giggled inexplicably. That giggle should have warned me that everything wasn’t quite right at the House of Minchen—but how was I to know? How could anyone have known?

They lived in a lumpy apartment house on East 80th Street that was almost back-to-back with the Havistocks’ building on 79th. It even had a similar lobby, with ancient attendant, frowsty odor, and walls of marble that might have been salvaged from Pompeii.

Even more startling was that the Minchens, a young couple, had apparently decided to make their apartment a smaller replica of the Havistocks’. Or perhaps they had furnished it totally with hand-me-downs. But there were the same brown velvet chairs and couches, stifling drapes, and suffocating bric-a-brac, whatnots, and a number of succulent plants that needed dusting.

But the most surprising thing, and quite out of character in that necropolis, was the largest television set I had ever seen—really an enormous screen. And atop cabinets on both sides, two videocassette recorders, and a portable video camera with power pack attached. Curious.

Roberta and Ross met me at the door, the soul of affability. They were both dressed informally: he in sport jacket, slacks, open-necked shirt, and loafers; she in a flowered print jumpsuit, zippered down the front, which, considering her dumpling body, gave her the look of a female Winston Churchill—or maybe an oversized Kew-pie doll.

They were not the most attractive people I had ever met—he
would
crack his knuckles, and apparently they never called each other anything but “dear” or “darling”—but they were hospitable enough, got me seated in one of those hot, overstuffed armchairs, and insisted I have something to drink. I settled for a glass of chilled white wine. I thought they were both drinking watered vodka. Later I discovered it was neat 94-proof gin.

As usual, I started out playing humble, explaining that while I had no desire to pry into their private lives, solving the puzzle of the missing Demaretion did, of necessity, demand the answers to some personal questions.

“For instance,” I said, addressing Ross Minchen, “I don’t even know what your occupation is. Are you in textiles—like your father-in-law and brother-in-law?”

“Oh, no,” he said quickly, “nothing like that. I’m vice president of the Digman-Findle Corporation. We do plastic extrusions.”

I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance by asking him what the hell
that
was.

“He practically runs the company,” his wife said brightly. “Don’t you, dear?”

“Well, not quite, darling,” he said modestly, patting his long, thinning locks to make certain they were concealing his baldness.

I didn’t have the chutzpah to ask him what his income was, but I figured the vice president of
anything
was doing okay dollarwise. Besides, everyone had said that at one time Vanessa had come on to Ross. Would a luxury-loving lady like that have cut her eyes at a guy who was destitute? Doubtful.

So I got down to the nitty-gritty, taking them over the events of that morning and early afternoon when the Demaretion disappeared. They said what everyone else had told me: there were a lot of people there, all mingling and moving about, and it was difficult, if not impossible, to say where any one individual was at any particular time.

I asked them the same question I had asked Vanessa and Luther Havistock: Did either of them notice anything unusual or unexpected that morning? They looked at each other, then shook their heads; no, they had not.

I had a sinking feeling that as a detective, I was a washout. It wasn’t so much that people were lying to me, but that I was asking the wrong questions.

“Look,” I said desperately, “I hope you understand that whatever you tell me will be held in strictest confidence. Neither of you will be quoted as the source of anything you might say. Now, with that in mind, I should tell you that Detective Al Georgio of the New York Police Department, and John Smack, investigator for Grandby’s insurance company, both think a member of your family was involved in the theft of the Demaretion. If what they believe is true—and I emphasize that
if
—who in the family do you think might possibly be guilty?”

Again they stared at each other: he so pale, solemn, with the intent frown of a pallbearer; she with that blinking, rabbity look, eyes popping, lips pouting.

“Orson Vanwinkle,” Ross Minchen said finally. “He’s capable of it. The man is a rotter.”

Rotter? When was the last time you heard someone use that word? But I didn’t laugh.

“It was Natalie, darling,” Roberta Minchen said to her husband. “Definitely Natalie.” Then she turned to me, incisors gleaming. “I hate to throw suspicion on my own sister, but let’s face it, she’s a disgrace. Those so-called friends of hers…I happen to know she’s into the drug scene. Hopheads are always in need of money, aren’t they?”

I was saved from answering by the front door chimes. The Minchens leaped to their feet.

“Our guests!” Ross cried.

“You’ll just
love
these people,” Roberta assured me. “They’re so different.”

Within the next thirty minutes, four married couples arrived, all about the Minchens’ age. I was introduced to everyone, and to this day cannot remember a single name—which is all right with me.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that in any gathering of five couples there would be at least
one
lovely woman and
one
handsome man? I’m not saying strangers should be immediately judged by their physical attractiveness—God knows I’m no beauty—but let’s face it, isn’t comeliness the first thing that makes us think someone may be worth knowing when we meet them for the first time?

Not that all the Minchens’ friends were ugly; they were not. But the men seemed shaped like milk bottles—remember how they looked?—and the women appeared to be down comforters tied in the middle. The men were balding, with a shocking assortment of smutchy complexions, tics, and scraggly mustaches. The women wore too much makeup, inexpertly applied, and instead of laughing, most of them whinnied.

I was ready to get out of there as soon as decently possible, but then I decided to stay awhile. It wasn’t their sparkling personalities—they had none at all—it was their conversation. It was in a kind of inside code they all understood, but which was pure Lower Slobbovian to me. It went something like this:

“Wait’ll you see what
we
brought!”

“Ours is better!”

“Harry says it’s the best yet!”

“It’s got to win an Academy Award!”

“Martha tells me I have a knack for it!”

“Three on one—come on, that’s a little much!”

While this chatter continued, all with exclamation marks, the host and hostess ladled out the drinks. I had one more glass of white wine and nursed it, but the others guzzled like there was no tomorrow. One geezer who was trying to grow a beard and wasn’t succeeding latched onto me and gave me a total examination, head to foot.

“Oh, my,” he said, showing tarnished teeth. “I hope you’re going to join our group. We need a wild card!”

What the hell?

This went on for almost an hour, and everyone was into their second or third round of booze, when Ross Minchen shouted, “Showtime!” And immediately several others echoed, “Showtime! Showtime!”

We all got seated, me included, facing the huge TV screen. Lights were dimmed, and Ross fussed with one of the VCRs, sliding in a cassette. By this time I realized I wasn’t going to see
The Sound of Music
or
Gone With the Wind.
I didn’t.

It was porn all right, the hardest of hard-core. But if that wasn’t numbing enough, the performers were Roberta and Ross Minchen and their happy little band of flakes. The color was great, the sound was professional, and there they all were on the silver screen doing things which never occurred to me that people could do or wanted to do.

I mean, I’ve read Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing, and in a bemused kind of way I can understand why someone might have a mad passion for an oak tree or go around sniffing an old piece of leather, but this stuff was
gross.
They were such
ordinary
people—business and professional men, career women and housewives—and really, seeing them naked, doing those things, wasn’t exciting at all. It was scary and it was sad.

When they started the second cassette, I decided I better get out of there before viewing ended and new filming began. I thought I was leaving unobtrusively; they all had their eyes glued to the screen and were busy with muttered comments and nervous laughter. But Roberta caught up with me at the door and clamped a tight hand on my arm.

“I know this is all new to you,” she whispered, “but you’ll be back, you’ll be back!”

I gave her a weak smile and edged out the door.

“It was Natalie,” she called after me. “She’s
obscene
!”

I got home as quickly as I could, stripped and showered. Soaped a long time and stood under a hard spray, washing it all away. I didn’t let myself think of what I had seen. I kept repeating nursery rhymes: “Mary, Mary, quite contrary…”

But later, in my shabby flannel bathrobe, sipping a vodka from Jack Smack’s bottle, I
had
to think about it and ponder the vagaries of human beings. All of us. It was very unsettling. Foundations seemed to be cracking, and I had to remember one-on-one basketball in a Des Moines driveway to keep my mind from whirling off into the wild blue yonder.

I had no idea what effect the Minchens’ aberrant behavior had on the disappearance of the Demaretion—if it had any effect at all. It was just another revelation of a family that was coming to look like a collection of misfits, totally unlike the personae they presented to the world. Are we all like that? Ordinary and presentable, even wimpish, in public, and then, in private, something different and perhaps monstrous? Was I like that?

I think that was what depressed me most about the evening. Those stupid porn films were funny, when I thought about them, but the worst thing was that they made me doubt myself, and what I might be capable of. Just seeing those unhappy people in frantic action brought me down to their level.

I
SUPPOSE I SHOULD
have immediately told Al Georgio and Jack Smack about the Minchens and their coven of wife-swappers, but I just couldn’t do it. I think I was too ashamed to relate what I had seen, not knowing how to describe it in polite terms. Also, at the time I didn’t see what possible connection it might have with the stealing of the Demaretion.

So I didn’t call either of them, and hoped to spend a quiet Sunday at home, cozying up with a five-pound
New York Times
and enjoying a breakfast treat of cream cheese, lox, and onion on a bagel. Then I intended to do some
very
deep thinking about the Havistocks, try to sort out my impressions, and see if I could devise a theory on who broke the Eighth Commandment and copped the coin.

But it was not to be the leisurely day I had planned.

First, Al Georgio phoned. He was on his way to pick up his daughter, Sally, and they were going to spend the day in Central Park, then take in a movie, and go to a new West Side restaurant that was reputed to have the best barbecued ribs in town. Would I like to come along, spend the day with them?

“Al,” I said, “when was the last time you saw your daughter?”

“About a month ago,” he admitted.

“Then she wants to spend the day with
you.
The two of you—alone. She’d resent me, and quite rightly. Maybe some other time, Al; I’d love to meet her. But I have a feeling that today she’d like to have you for herself, and I’d just spoil things.”

He sighed. “You may be right. I know she’s all excited about today.”

“Of course she is. You haven’t seen her in a month, and she was beginning to wonder if her father had deserted her. Now the two of you go out and have a wonderful day.” “Okay,” he said, “we will. Thanks, Dunk.”

I hoped that would be the last interruption of my Sunday tranquility, but it was not to be. The phone rang again. This time—surprise!—it was Archibald Havistock.

“Miss Bateson,” he said in his diapason, “I would like to have a brief private meeting with you, and this would be an ideal time. Mrs. Havistock and the Minchens have gone to church, and Ruby Querita doesn’t work on Sunday. May I impose on you and ask you to come over now? It shouldn’t take long. Would that be an inconvenience?”