The Sixth Commandment Read online

  The Sixth Commandment

  Lawrence Sanders

  Contents

  Prologue

  The First Day

  The Second Day

  The Third Day

  The Fourth Day

  The Fifth Day

  The Sixth Day

  The Seventh Day

  The Eighth Day

  Preview: The Tenth Commandment

  LATE NOVEMBER, AND THE world was dying. A wild wind hooted faintly outside the windows. Inside, the air had been breathed too many times.

  “It’s got nothing to do with your age,” I said.

  “Liar,” she said.

  I tried to groan. Swung my legs out of bed and lighted a cigarette. Sat there smoking, hunched over. She fumbled with my spine.

  “Poor baby,” she said.

  I wouldn’t look at her. I knew what I’d see: a small body so supple it twanged. Short brown hair cut like a boy’s. All of her sleek. She had me in thrall. Soft swell to her abdomen. A little brown mole on the inside of her left thigh. Her ass was smooth and tight.

  “All I’m saying,” I said, “is that I’ve got to go away on a business trip. A week, two weeks, a month—who knows? I’ve got to; it’s my job.”

  “I’ve got five weeks’ vacation coming,” she said. “I could get a leave of absence. I could quit. No problem.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Her squid arm slid around my neck. Even when she was coming, her flesh was cool. Did she ever sweat? Her skin was glass. But I could never break her.

  “It’s impossible,” I said. “It wouldn’t work.”

  She kneeled on the bed behind me. Put her arms about my neck. Pressed. Pointy little breasts. Very elegant. Pink bosses. All of her elegant. She worked at it: jogging, yoga, dance. I told her once that she even had muscles in her crap, and she said I was vulgar, and I said that was true.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  “No you won’t,” she said, and that was true, too.

  I leaned forward to stub my cigarette in the ashtray on the floor. She leaned with me. For a moment I was supporting her naked weight on my back. Her warm breath was in my ear. I straightened slowly, pushing her back.

  “At least,” she said, “let’s end things with a bang.”

  “You’re outrageous,” I said.

  “Am I not?” she said.

  See her in one of her tailored Abercrombie & Fitch suits, and you’d never guess. The Gucci brogues. Benjamin Franklin spectacles. Minimal makeup. Crisp. Aloof. All business. But naked, the woman was a goddamned tiger. Joan Powell. How I hated her. How I loved her. She taught me so much. Well, what the hell, I taught her a few things, too. I must have; why else had she endured my infidelities and shitty moods for three years?

  “You’ll call?” she said, and when I didn’t answer, she said, forlornly, “You’ll write?”

  It wasn’t her pleading that disgusted me so much as my own weakness. I wanted her so much, right then, that moment. After psyching myself for weeks, preparing for this break. If she had made the right gesture just then, the right touch, I’d have caved. But she didn’t. Which meant she didn’t want to, because she knew what the right gesture was, the right touch. She had invented it.

  So I shrugged her off, got up, started to dress. She lay back on the rumpled sheets, watching me with hard eyes.

  “The best you’ll ever get,” she said.

  “I agree,” I said. “Wholeheartedly.”

  She said she was forty-four, and I believed her. I said I was thirty-two, and she believed me. We didn’t lie to each other about things like that. About facts. We lied about important things. It wasn’t so much the difference in our ages that bothered me; it was the thralldom. I was addicted. She had me hooked.

  I knotted my tie, looking at her in the mirror. Now she had one arm over her eyes. Her upper torso was supine, then, at the waist, her body curved over onto a hip. One knee drawn up. All of her in a sweet S curve, tapering. She kept a year-round tan. Milkier to mark the straps and little triangles of her string bikini. She liked me to shave her. I liked it, too.

  “I’m going now,” I said.

  “Go,” she said.

  The Bingham Foundation wasn’t the Ford or the Rockefeller, but it wasn’t peanuts either. We gave away about ten million a year, mostly for scientific research. This was because the original Silas Bingham had been an ironmonger who had invented a new casting process. And his son, Caleb Bingham, had invented a cash register that kept a running total. His son, Jeremiah Bingham, had been a surgeon who invented a whole toolbox of clamps, saws, chisels, files, pliers, mallets, etc., for the repair of the human carcass.

  Mrs. Cynthia, widow of Jeremiah, ran the Bingham Foundation. She looked like a little old man. The executive director was Stacy Besant. He looked like a little old woman. My name is Samuel Todd. I was one of several field investigators. The Bingham Foundation does not disburse its funds casually.

  I was sitting in Besant’s office on Friday morning, watching him twist a benzedrine inhaler up one hairy nostril. Fascinating. He unplugged it, with some difficulty, then sniffed, blinked, sneezed. He slid the inhaler into a vest pocket.

  “A cold, sir?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But you never know. You’ve reviewed the Thorndecker file?”

  I flipped a palm back and forth.

  “Briefly,” I said. “I’ll take it with me for closer study.”

  Actually, I had spent the previous night saying goodby to Joan Powell. I hadn’t cracked the file. I didn’t know who Thorndecker was. Moral: Ignorance really is bliss.

  “What do you think?” Besant asked.

  “Hard to say,” I said. “The application sounds impressive, but all applications sound impressive.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said.

  Out came the inhaler again. Into the other nostril this time. Sniff. Blink. Sneeze.

  “He’s asking for a million,” he said.

  “Is he, sir?” I said. “They always double it, knowing we’ll cut it in half, at least. It’s a game.”

  “Usually,” he said. “But in this case, I’m not so sure. He comes highly recommended. His work, I mean. Won a third of a Nobel at the age of thirty-eight.”

  “What was that for, sir?”

  His eyes glazed over. Hunching across the desk toward me, he looked like a Galapagos tortoise clad in Harris tweed.

  “Uh, it’s all in the file,” he said. “The science people are very high on him. Very high indeed.” Pause. “His first wife was my niece.”

  “Oh?”

  “Dead now. Drowned in the surf on the Cape. Terrible tragedy. Lovely girl.”

  I was silent.

  The inhaler appeared again, but he didn’t use it. Just fondled it. It looked like an oversize bullet. Something for big game.

  “Go along then,” he said. “Take as much time as you need. Keep in touch.”

  He held out his hand, and I moved it up and down. I thought again of a turtle. His flipper was dry and scaly.

  Out in the gloomy corridor I met old Mrs. Cynthia. She was moving slowly along, leaning heavily on a polished cane. It had a silver head shaped like a toucan’s bill. Handsome.

  “Samuel,” she said, “you’re going up to see Doctor Thorndecker?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I knew his father,” she said. “Knew him well.”

  “Did you?”

  “A sweet man,” she said, and something that might have been pain pinched her eyes. “It was all so—so sad.”

  I stared at her.

  “Does that mean you’d like me to approve the grant, Mrs. Cynthia?” I asked bluntly.

  Her eyes cleared. She reached out a vein
ed hand and tapped my cheek. Not quite a slap.

  “Sometimes, Samuel,” she said, “you carry lovable irascibility a little too far. I know you won’t let my friendship with Doctor Thorndecker’s father affect your judgment. If I thought that, I would never have mentioned it.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. I went back to my broom-closet office, slid the Thorndecker file into my battered briefcase, and went home to pack. I planned to go over the research on Sunday night, and get an early start the next morning.

  I should have slit my wrists instead.

  Over the years the Bingham Foundation had developed a reasonably efficient method of processing grant applications. Unless they were obviously from nut cases (“I am on the verge of inventing perpetual motion!”), requests went to three independent investigative organizations that handled this type of work for private foundations and, occasionally, the federal government.

  The firm of Donner & Stern, older even than Pinkertons, was too discreet to call their operatives “private detectives.” They preferred “inquiry agents,” and they provided personal background material on grant applicants. This included family history, education, professional employment record, personal habits (drinking? drug addiction?), and anything else of an intimate nature Donner & Stern felt would assist the Bingham Foundation in forming an opinion on the applicant’s merit.

  Lifschultz Associates conducted an inquiry into the applicant’s financial status, his credit rating, banking history, investments, tax record, current assets, and so forth. The purpose here was to determine the applicant’s honesty and trustworthiness, and to insure, as certainly as possible, that upon receipt of a Bingham Foundation grant, he wouldn’t immediately depart for Pago Pago with his nubile secretary.

  Finally, Scientific Research Records provided an unbiased analysis of the value, or lack of it, of the applicant’s proposals: the reasons for which the subsidy was sought. The SRR report usually included a brief summary of similar work being conducted elsewhere, the chances for success, and a compilation of professional judgments on the applicant’s intelligence and expertise by associates, colleagues, and rivals.

  These three preliminary investigations eliminated about 90 percent of the hopeful scientists who approached the Bingham Foundation, hat in hand. The remaining applications were then handed over to Bingham’s own field investigators.

  Our job was to make an assessment of what Stacy Besant liked to call “the intangibles, human relations, and things known only to the applicant’s priest, psychiatrist, or mistress.”

  First of all, we tried to discover if his family life was reasonably happy, if his relations with assistants and employees was trouble free, and if he enjoyed a good reputation in his neighborhood and community. If he was himself employed in a university or research facility, it was necessary to make certain the applicant had the confidence and respect of his superiors.

  All this was fairly cut-and-dried, necessitating nothing more than talking informally to a great number of people and assuring them their comments would be off the record. But sometimes the results were surprising.

  I remember the case of one renowned scientist, happily married, father of four, who applied for a grant for a research project into the nature and origins of homosexuality. During a final interview, the Bingham field investigator discovered the applicant himself was gay. His request was denied, not on moral grounds but because it was feared his predilection would prejudice his research.

  In another case, a criminologist’s request for funds was rejected when it was learned that he was an avid hunter and gun collector. It was a damaging revelation only because he had asked for the subsidy to make an in-depth analysis of “The Roots of Violence.” Bingham decided to let some other foundation have the honor of financing the gunslinger’s research.

  “Field investigators” may have been our title, but “snoops” was more accurate. I had been doing it for almost five years, and if I was growing increasingly suspicious and cynical, it was because those were exactly the qualities the job required. It gave me no particular pleasure to uncover a weakness or ancient misstep that might mean the end of a man’s dreams. But that was what I was being paid for, and paid well.

  At least so I told myself. But occasionally, in moments of drunken enlightenment, I wondered if I enjoyed prying into other men’s lives because my own was so empty.

  The file on the application of Dr. Thorndecker was a fat one. Before I settled down with it, I put out a bottle of Glenlivet Scotch, pitcher of water, bucket of ice cubes. And two packs of cigarettes. I started something on the hi-fi—I think it was Vivaldi—the volume turned down so low the music was only a murmur. Then I started …

  THORNDECKER, Telford Gordon, 54, BSCh, MD, MSc, PhD, etc., etc., member of this, fellow of that, Nobel Prize Winner for research in the pathology of mammalian cells. Father of daughter Mary, 27, and son Edward, 17. Presently married to second wife Julie, 23.

  I took a swallow of Scotch at that. His second wife was four years younger than his daughter. Interesting, but not too unusual. About as interesting as the ten years difference in the ages of his two children.

  I sat staring a few moments at the photograph of Dr. Thorndecker included in the file. It was an 8 x 10 glossy, apparently intended for publication; it had that professional type of pose and lighting. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, eyes looking into the camera lens, mouth smiling faintly, chin raised.

  He was a handsome man; no doubt of that. Thick shock of dark, wavy hair; heavy, masculine features; surprisingly sensitive lips. Eyes large and widely spaced. High brow, a jaw that was solid without being massive. Smallish ears set close to the skull. Strong, straight nose, somewhat hard and hawkish.

  In the photo, the fine lips were smiling, but the eyes were grave, almost moody. I wondered how his voice would sound. I set great store by the timbre of a man’s voice. I guessed Thorndecker’s would be a rumbling baritone, with deep resonance.

  I read on … about his brilliant teaching career, and even more brilliant research into the pathology of mammalian cells. I am not a trained scientist, but I’ve read a great deal of chemistry and physics, and learned more on my job at Bingham. I gathered, from the SRR report, that Thorndecker was especially interested in the biology of aging, and particularly the senescence of normal mammalian cells. He had made a significant contribution to a research project that produced a statistical study of the reproduction (doublings) of human embryo cells in vitro.

  After this pioneer work, Thorndecker, on his own, had followed up with a study of the reproduction of human cells in vitro from donors of various ages. His findings suggested that the older the donor, the fewer times the donated cells could be induced to reproduce (double). Thorndecker concluded that mammalian cells had a built-in clock. Aging and death were not so much the result of genetic direction or of disease and decay, but were due to the inherent nature of our cells. A time for living, and a time for dying. And all the improved medical skills, diet, and health care in the world could not affect longevity except within very definite natural parameters.

  A jolly thought. I had another drink of Glenlivet on that. Then I turned to the report of Lifschultz Associates on the good doctor’s finances. It was revealing …

  Prior to the death of his first wife by drowning, Dr. Telford Thorndecker apparently had been a man of moderate means, supporting his family on his professor’s salary, fees from speaking engagements, the Nobel Prize award, and royalty income from two college textbooks he had written: “Human Cells” and “The Pathology of Human Cells.”

  He had been sole beneficiary of his wife’s estate, and I blinked my eyes when I saw the amount: almost a million dollars. I made a mental note to ask Stacy Besant the source of this inherited wealth. As the first Mrs. Thorndecker’s uncle, he should certainly know. And while I was at it, I might as well ask Mrs. Cynthia what she had meant by her lament: “It was all so—so sad,” when she mentioned knowing Thorndecker’s father.
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br />   Shortly after the will was probated, Dr. Thorndecker resigned all his teaching, research, and advisory positions. He purchased Crittenden Hall, a 90-bed nursing and convalescent home located near the village of Coburn, south of Albany, N.Y. The Crittenden grounds and buildings were extensive, but the nursing home had been operating at a loss for several years prior to Thorndecker’s purchase. This may have been due to its isolated location, or perhaps simply to bad management.

  In any event, Thorndecker showed an unexpected talent for business administration. Within two years, a refurbishing program was completed, a new, younger staff recruited, and Crittenden Hall was showing a modest profit. All this had been accomplished in spite of reducing occupancy to fifty beds and converting one of the buildings to a research laboratory that operated independently of the nursing facility.

  Thorndecker managed this by creating a haven for the alcoholic, mentally disturbed, and terminally ill members of wealthy families. The daily rates were among the highest in the country for similar asylums. The kitchen was supervised by a Swiss cordon bleu chef, the staff was large enough to provide a one-to-one relationship with patients, and a wide variety of social activities was available, including first-run movies, TV sets in every room, dances, costume balls, and live entertainment by visiting theatrical troupes. No basket weaving or finger painting at Crittenden Hall.

  As chief executive of this thriving enterprise, Dr. Thorndecker paid himself the relatively modest salary of $50,000 a year. All profits of the nursing facility went to the Crittenden Research Laboratory which was, according to the prospectus distributed to potential donors, “Devoted to a continuing inquiry into the biology of aging, with particular attention to cellular morphology and the role it plays in productive longevity.”

  The Lifschultz Associates’ report concluded by stating that the Crittenden Research Laboratory was supported by the profits of the nursing home, by grants and contributions from outside donors, and by bequests, many of them sizable and some of them willed to the laboratory by former patients of Crittenden Hall.

  Dr. Thorndecker, I decided, had a nice thing going. Not illegal certainly. Probably not even immoral or unethical. Just nice.