The Eighth Commandment (24 page)

“Nah,” I said, “I’ve been up for hours.” Slight exaggeration.

“You didn’t call me, but I wondered if you had a chance to check the number of that East Sixty-fifth Street brownstone.”

“Sure I did,” I said, and gave him the address.

“Good,” he said. “Thanks. Shouldn’t take me long to check it out. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it. We’re still going around in circles on the Vanwinkle kill. The homicide guys visit you?”

“That they did. But I got the impression they were just going through the motions.”

“They were,” Al said. “I told them you were clean.”

Then, because I had already told Jack Smack and didn’t want to favor either of them, I said, “By the way, Al, in case you or the homicide men haven’t discovered it yet, Orson Vanwinkle was gay.”

Silence.

“Al?” I said. “Are you there?”

“I’m here. Where did you hear that?”

“From a reliable source. I guess he was bisexual.”

“I guess he was,” Al said, sighing. “That opens a whole new can of worms. Thanks for the tip, Dunk; we’ll work on it. Now I’ll give you one you won’t believe.”

“Try me,” I said. “I’ll believe anything.”

“Vanessa Havistock has a record. Before she married Luther, she was Vanessa Pembroke. Ain’t that elegant? Actually, her real name is Pearl Measley, and she’s from South Carolina—but that’s neither here nor there. She’s got a sheet in New York. Want to guess what she was arrested for?”

“Indecent exposure?”

He laughed. “Close, but no cigar. It was loitering for the purpose of prostitution. No record of trial. Apparently she was charged and released. How do you like that?”

“Incredible.”

“Yeah, it’s an eye-opener. Call you later.”

He hung up abruptly again, leaving me with another unconnected item to add to my spiral notebook. I wondered idly if a computer might be able to assimilate all this, hum for a few seconds, then spew out a beautifully logical solution to the whole puzzle. I doubted that could ever happen. Computers deal with facts. We—Al, Jack, and I—had to juggle tangled human emotions and passions. Which calls for instinct and judgment—does it not?

I showered, dressed, and went out for the morning paper and a hot bagel with a shmear of cream cheese. By ten o’clock I had devoured both bagel and
Times
, and was pondering what I might do that day to give the Havistocks their money’s worth of investigation. Then my doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole, and there was Dolly LeBaron standing in the vestibule. I couldn’t have been more discombobulated if it had been Martha Washington.

She came in, smiling bravely, carrying a shoebox-sized package in a brown paper bag that had been wrapped with yards and yards of wide Scotch tape. She was wearing a simple Perry Ellis dress that I had seen advertised for about $400. It was a muted pink linen, and she looked absolutely smashing.

“Hi!” she said brightly.

“Hi,” I said. “How did you find me?”

“Well, after you left, I wrote down your name. Mary Lou Bateson—right?”

“Right.”

“So then I looked you up in the telephone directory,” she said triumphantly.

“Good for you,” I said. “Would you like a cup of coffee—or anything else?”

“Nothing, thank you,” she said formally. “But I appreciate the offer.”

So we sat on the couch, side by side, looking at each other with glassy stares. She really was a cute little thing, all bouncy curves and wide-eyed innocence. I could understand Orson Vanwinkle’s infatuation. This kid was a living toy, and I imagined if he suggested they swing naked from a chandelier, she’d giggle and say, “Okay.”

“Listen,” she said suddenly, “you’re the best girlfriend I have.”

That came as something of a shock. I had only met her once before, for a limited time. To me, that didn’t add up to intimacy. Again I reflected that her back burners were not fully operative.

“Dolly,” I said, as gently as I could, “surely you know other women. I’ve only talked to you once.”

“No,” she said, “you’re the only one. Mostly I know men.”

“What about your family?”

“They’re in Wichita,” she said. “We send cards.”

That hurt because it reminded me that I hadn’t written home in more than two weeks. I resolved the moment she left, I’d write a long, long letter to Mom and Dad in Des Moines, and mail it that very day.

“It’s these phone calls, Dunk,” she said, little frown lines appearing between her plucked eyebrows.

“What phone calls?”

“I get them all the time. Some during the day. Some wake me up.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“A heavy breather—or does he say anything?”

“Sometimes he says things.”

“Sexual?”

“No. He wants to kill me. It’s scary.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, remembering my threatening letter. “Did you call the phone company?”

“No.”

“The police?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you change your number? Get an unlisted number.”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” she said helplessly. “He’d find me.”

Did she know who it was?

“Who?” I asked her. “Who’d find you, Dolly?”

A very brief pause, then: “I don’t know.”

“I have a friend who’s a detective in the New York Police Department. Would you like to tell him about it? He’s very understanding. Maybe he could do something about it.”

“No,” she said, “he couldn’t help me. Because you’re my very best girlfriend, I was hoping you’d do me a favor.”

“Of course,” I said. “Whatever I can.”

She thrust that crudely wrapped package at me.

“It’s some personal stuff,” she said. “But it’s valuable to me. I was wondering if you’d keep it. Just for a while.”

“Dolly,” I said, “I hate to take the responsibility. Don’t you have a safe deposit box?”

“What’s that? Well, whatever it is, I don’t have it. It’s just for a little while. I may go away,” she added vaguely.

I didn’t think she was on anything. I mean she wasn’t doped up or anything like that. It was just that the things she said and did were slightly askew. Her gears weren’t quite meshing.

“Can you hide it?” she pleaded.

I looked around my apartment hopelessly. “Maybe I can put it on a top shelf in a closet or cupboard somewhere. Put things in front to cover it. That’s the best I can do. But, Dolly, I really wish you wouldn’t ask me to do this.”

“You’re the only one I know,” she said. “Please?”

I couldn’t resist that. “All right. Will you come and take it back as soon as you can?”

“Of course!” she cried. “Just as soon as I can.”

“But what if you don’t? How long should I wait?”

She thought about that a long time. I could almost see the wheels turning as she labored with the mental challenge.

“A month?” she suggested.

“You’ll come back and get it within a month?”

She nodded briskly.

“And if you don’t?” I asked. “What do I do with it then?”

“Burn it,” she said promptly.

“Burn it?”

“Put it in the insinuator.” That’s the way she pronounced it.

So if she didn’t reclaim something valuable to her, something personal, I was to destroy it. Curiouser and curiouser.

She left that clunky package on the couch and stood up.

“I knew I could depend on you,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I just knew it. You won’t open it, will you?”

“Of course not,” I said, insulted.

“I knew you wouldn’t.” She craned up to kiss my cheek. But she was so short, and I was so tall, that I had to bend down to take her peck. She smelled nicely of something sweet and fruity. A little girl’s scent.

When she was gone, I came back into my living room to stare at that bundle and wonder what I was letting myself in for.

I picked it up and shook it gently. Naturally I suspected it might contain the Demaretion. But who would be simple enough to wrap a single coin in a shoebox? Not even someone as loopy as Dolly LeBaron.

Anyway, there was no rattle, no sound at all. Whatever was within the package was well-swaddled. I hefted it. Surprisingly light. How much did a bomb weigh? The moment I had that awful thought, I resolutely put it out of my mind. Sweet, sappy Dolly would never do anything like that. Would she? Unless she was just the messenger.

Other questions, other answers…

Should I open it?

Absolutely not. I gave her my word.

Should I tell Al Georgio and Jack Smack about it?

No.

Then what should I do with it?

Hide it—but only for the month she requested.

And then?

Burn it in the insinuator.

Carrying it rather gingerly, I wandered about my apartment looking for a good hiding place that thieves with limited time might have trouble finding. I finally settled on the top shelf of the metal cabinet in my kitchen, above the sink. I tucked it far in the back, behind packages of pancake mix and instant rice. Let the roaches have a field day on that Scotch tape.

I really did write that letter home—which made me feel virtuous. I stamped it and ran outside to drop it in the corner box. A droopy day with an army blanket over the city, rain threatening, and everyone frowning as they mooched along. I was depressed and, other than the weather, couldn’t understand the reason.

Then I figured out it was that visit from Dolly LeBaron and the package she had left in my care. That was a downer—and I didn’t understand why. But somehow it seemed as menacing as the creepy sky. I didn’t like the idea of being trusted custodian of a parcel, contents unknown. It could be stolen goods, drugs, or anything else illegal. That made me a receiver, didn’t it? I could hear myself stammering to a judge, “Your Honor, I just didn’t know what was in it.”

Before I got myself in a real snit, I decided to get out of the house and
do
something. What I planned was to go up to the American Numismatic Society and see if I could dig up any information on Archibald Havistock’s collection of ancient Greek coins. Oh, I knew what was in the Havistock Collection, now languishing in the vault at Grandby & Sons. What I was interested in were the coins Archibald had sold off, according to wife Mabel, over the past five years.

So I shouldered my bag, locked up, and started out. I admit I wasn’t as alert as I should have been. I wasn’t “living defensively,” which is what everyone says you must do in New York. Anyway, I didn’t look ahead, and so I failed to see the three guys lurking in the areaway beyond the outer door. But they were obviously waiting for me.

The moment I was in the vestibule, caught between two doors, two of the thugs hustled in, and the third stood on guard with his back against the outer door. Here it is, I thought: my first mugging. Or worse. But it was not to be.

The two guys crowding into the vestibule with me were in their middle twenties, I guessed. Wearing punky outfits: running shoes, a lot of stone-washed denim and creaky black leather, studded bracelets, chain belts, sharks’ teeth necklaces—the whole bit. I remember one of them had a gold tooth in front.

“Hi, there,” gold tooth said, grinning.

I thrust my shoulder bag at them. “Take it,” I said. “Just don’t hurt me. Please.”

“Nah,” the other one said. He had a silly blond Stalin mustache. “We don’t want your gelt. Mary Lou Bateson—right?”

I nodded frantically, absolutely determined not to wet my pants.

“Got a message for you,” gold tooth said. “You should stop asking questions. You dig?”

I kept nodding.

“You’re making a lot of people uncomfortable,” mustache said. “So just be nice and lay off. It’s healthier that way. For you.”

Their voices were not particularly menacing. They spoke in quiet conversational tones. But what they were saying was all the more frightening for that. They talked like businessmen, professionals, offering terms on a sale or contract. I never doubted them for a moment.

“Listen,” I started, “I don’t—”

“No,” gold tooth said, “you listen. Just walk away from it. The coin and everything and everyone connected with it. Give it up. It’s got nothing to do with you—right?”

“We’re being gentlemen, aren’t we?” mustache added. “Very polite. We haven’t touched you, have we? So you take our advice, and that’s the way it’ll stay. You keep poking your nose into things that don’t concern you, and we’ll have to come back.”

“Then we might not be so polite,” gold tooth said. “Then we might touch you. So-long, sweet mama.”

And they were gone, whisking through the outer door, joining their guard, the three of them walking rapidly away. I watched them go, trying to breathe and gradually becoming aware of my shaking knees and trembling hands.

I went back into my apartment and found a miniature bottle of cognac I had been saving for medicinal purposes. Now was the time. It took me almost a minute to get that damned screw top off, but I finally managed, and drained the brandy out of that little bottle in three gulps. Then, gasping, I staggered to the couch, collapsed, and waited for my hypertension to ease.

I went over that brief encounter and had no uncertainty whatsoever about their threats; they meant what they said. They had looked perfectly capable of any kind of violence: knifing, bombing, rape, murder—you name it. I had been lucky. Those messenger boys would obey any orders. “You want us to toss acid in her face? Sure, boss.”

But I’m a stubborn dame, and as fear faded, my indignation grew. The bastards! Did they really think I’d cave in that easily? And what was the reason for the whole megillah? Whoever sent them must have felt threatened by my investigation. But
why
, for God’s sake? I hadn’t learned anything that threatened anyone.

Unless I had heard something important that I wasn’t aware of.

I reviewed the melodramatic dialogue with the two amateur Scarfaces. “Just walk away from it,” gold tooth had said. “The coin and everything and everyone connected with it.” No clue there. His warning included all I had done and every person I had met since going to work for Grandby & Sons.

But then, just before they had scuttled out, gold tooth had said, “So-long, sweet mama.”

And who had first called me that? Sam Jefferson, aka Akbar El Raschid, Natalie Havistock’s misanthropic boyfriend. But what did I know about
him
?