First Deadly Sin Read online

  “About Celia,” Tony said, looking down at his fingernails. “She wanted me to make her apologies.”

  “Valenter already has.”

  “Valenter? Oh pooh! Have a drink.”

  And suddenly, Valenter was there, leaning forward slightly from the waist.

  “No, thank you,” Blank said. “It’s a little early for me.”

  “Oh come,” Tony said. “Vodka martini on the rocks with a twist of lemon. Right?”

  Daniel considered a moment. “Right,” he smiled.

  “What will your son have?” the waiter asked, and they both laughed.

  “My son?” Blank said. He looked to Tony. “What will my son have?”

  They were in a French restaurant, not bad and not good. They didn’t care.

  Tony ordered oysters and frogs’ legs, a salad doused with a cheese dressing. Blank had a small steak and endives with oil and vinegar. They smiled at each other. Tony reached forward to touch his hand. “Thank you,” he said humbly.

  Daniel had two glasses of a thick burgundy, and Tony had something called a “Shirley Temple.” The boy’s knee was against his. He didn’t object, wanting to follow this plot to its denouement.

  “Do you drink coffee?” he asked. They flirted.

  “How is school?” he asked, and Tony made a gesture, infinitely weary.

  They were strolling then, hands brushing occasionally, up Madison Avenue, and stopped to smile at a display of men’s clothing in a boutique.

  “Oh,” Tony said.

  Daniel Blank glanced at him. The lad was in sunlight, brazen. He gleamed, a gorgeous being.

  “Let’s look,” Blank said. They went inside.

  “Ooh, thank you,” Tony said later, giving him a dazzling smile. “You spent so much money on me.”

  “Didn’t I though?”

  “Are you rich, Dan?”

  “No, I’m not rich. But not hurting.”

  “Do you think the pink pullover was right for me?”

  “Oh yes. Your coloring.”

  “I would have loved those fishnet briefs, but I knew even the small size would be too large for me. Celia buys all my underwear in a women’s lingerie shop.”

  “Does she?”

  They sat on a park bench unaccountably planted in the middle of a small meadow. Tony fingered the lobe of Dan’s left ear; they watched an old black man stolidly fly a kite.

  “Do you like me?” Tony asked.

  Daniel Blank would not give himself time to fear, but twisted around and kissed the boy’s soft lips.

  “Of course I like you.”

  Tony held his hand and made quiet circles on the palm with a forefinger.

  “You’ve changed, Dan.”

  “Have I?”

  “Oh yes. When you first started seeing Celia, you were so tight, so locked up inside yourself. Now I feel you’re breaking out. You smile more. Sometimes you laugh. You never did that before. You wouldn’t have kissed me three months ago, would you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t have, Tony, perhaps we should get back. Valenter is probably—”

  “Valenter,” Tony said in a tone of great disgust. “Pooh! Just because he—” Then he stopped.

  But Valenter was nowhere about, and Tony used his own key to let them in. Daniel’s roses were arranged in a Chinese vase on the foyer table. And in addition to the roses’ sweet musk, he caught another odor: Celia’s perfume, a thin, smoky scent, Oriental. He thought it odd he had not smelled it in this hallway at noon.

  And the scent was there in the upstairs room to which Tony led him by the hand, resolute and humming.

  He had vowed not only to perceive but to experience, to strip himself bare and plunge to the hot heart of life. The killing of Frank Lombard had been a cataclysm that left him riven, just as an earthquake leaves the tight, solid earth split, stretched open to the blue sky.

  Now, alone and naked with this beautiful, rosy lad, the emotions he sought came more quickly, easily, and fear of his own feelings was already turning to curiosity and hunger. He sought new corners of himself, great sweetness and great tenderness, a need to sacrifice and a want to love. Whatever his life had lacked to now, he resolved to find, supply, to fill himself up with things hot and scented, all the emotions and sentiments which might illume life and show its mystery and purpose.

  The boy’s body was all warm fabric: velvet eyelids, silken buttocks, the insides of his thighs a sheeny satin. Slowly, with a deliberate thoughtfulness, Daniel Blank put mouth and tongue to those cloths, all with the fragrance of youth, sweet and moving. To use youth, to pleasure it and take pleasure from it, seemed to him now as important as murder, another act of conscious will to spread himself wide to sentient life.

  The infant moved moaning beneath his caresses, and that incandescent flesh heated him and brought him erect. When he entered into Tony, penetrating his rectum, the boy cried out with pain and delight. Dimly, far off, Blank thought he heard a single tinkle of feminine laughter, and smelled again her scent clinging to the soiled mattress.

  Later, when he held the lad in his arms and kissed his tears away—new wine, those tears—he thought it possible, probable even, that they were manipulating him, for what reason he could not imagine. But it was of no importance. Because whatever the reason, it must certainly be a selfish one.

  Suddenly he knew; her slick words, her lectures on ritual, her love of ceremony and apotheosis of evil—all had the stench of egotism; there was no other explanation. She sought, somehow, to set herself apart. Apart and above. She wanted to conquer the world and, perhaps, had enlisted him in her mandarin scheme.

  But, enlisted or not, she had unlocked him, and would find he was moving beyond her. Whatever her selfish motive, he would complete his own task: not to conquer life, but to become one with it, to hug it close, to feel it and love it and, finally, to know its beautiful enigma. Not as AMROK II might know it, but in his heart and gut and gonads, to become a secret sharer, one with the universe.

  4

  AFTER WRENCHING HIS ICE ax from the skull of Frank Lombard, he had walked steadily homeward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his mind resolutely thoughtless. He had nodded in a friendly fashion to the doorman on duty, then ascended to his apartment. Only after he was inside, the battery of chains and locks in place, did he lean against the wall, still coated, close his eyes, drew a deep breath.

  But there was still work to be done. He put the ax aside for the moment. Then he stripped naked. He examined coat and suit for stains, of any kind. He could see none. But he placed coat and suit in a bundle for the drycleaner, and shirt, socks and underclothing in the laundry hamper.

  Then he went into the bathroom and held the ice ax so that the head was under water in the toilet bowl. He flushed the toilet three times. Practically all the solid matter—caked blood and some grey stuff caught in the saw-tooth serrations on the bottom point of the pick—was washed away.

  Then, still naked, he went into the kitchen and put a large pot of water on to boil. It was the pot he customarily used for spaghetti and stew. He waited patiently until the water boiled, still not reflecting on what he had done. He wanted to finish the job, then sit down, relax, and savor his reactions.

  When the water came to a rolling boil he immersed the ice ax head and shaft up to the leather around the handle. The tempered steel boiled clean. He dunked it three times, swirling it about, then turned the flame off under the pot, and held the ax head under the cold water tap to cool it.

  When he could handle it, he inspected the ax carefully. He even took a small paring knife and gently pried up the top edge of the blue leather-covered handle. He could see no stains that might have leaked beneath. The ax smelled of steel and leather. It shone.

  He took the little can of sewing machine oil from his kitchen closet and, with his bare hands, rubbed oil into the exposed steel surfaces of the ax. He applied a lot of oil, rubbing strongly, then wiped off the excess with a paper towel. He started to discard the towe
l in his garbage can, then thought better of it and flushed it down the toilet. The ice ax was left with a thin film of oil. He hung it away in the hall closet with his rucksack and crampons.

  Then he showered thoroughly under very hot water, using a small brush on hands and fingernails. After he dried, he used cologne and powder, then donned a short cotton kimono. It was patterned with light blue cranes stalking across a dark blue background. Then he poured himself a small brandy, went into the living room, sat on the couch before the mirrored wall, and laughed.

  Now he allowed himself to remember, and it was a beloved dream. He saw himself walking down that oranged street toward his victim. He was smiling, coat rakishly open, left hand inside the slit pocket, right arm swinging free. Was he snapping the fingers of his right hand? He might have been.

  The smile. The nod. The hot surge of furious blood when he whirled and struck. The sound. He remembered the sound. Then the victim’s incredible plunge forward that pulled the ice ax from his grasp, toppled him forward. Then, quickly pulling the ax free, search, wallet, and the steady walk homeward.

  Well then … what did he feel? He felt, he decided, first of all an enormous sense of pride. That was basic. It was, after all, an extremely difficult and dangerous job of work, and he had brought it off. It was not too unlike a difficult and dangerous rock climb, a technical assignment that demanded skill, muscular strength and, of course, absolute resolve.

  But what amazed him, what completely amazed him, was the intimacy! When he spoke to Celia about his love for the victim, he only hinted. For how could she understand? How could anyone understand that with one stroke of an ice ax he had plundered another human being, knowing him in one crushing blow, his loves, hates, fears, hopes—his soul.

  Oh! It was something. To come so close to another. No, not close, but in another. Merged. Two made one. Once, he had suggested in a very vague, laughing, roundabout fashion to his wife that it might be fun if they sought out another woman, and the three might be naked together. In his own mind he had visualized the other woman as thin and dark, with enough sense to keep her mouth shut. But his wife didn’t understand, didn’t pick up on what he was suggesting. And if she had, she would have attributed it to his depraved appetites—a man naked in bed with two women.

  But sex had nothing to do with it. That was the whole point! He wanted another woman both he and his wife could love because that would be a new, infinitely sweet intimacy between them. If he and his wife had gone to bed with a second woman, simultaneously sucked her hard nipples, caressed her, and their lips—his and his wife’s—perhaps meeting on foreign flesh, well then … well then that would be an intimacy so sharp, so affecting, that he could hardly dream of it without tears coming to his eyes.

  But now. Now! Recalling what he had done, he felt that sense of heightened intimacy, of entering into another, merging, so far beyond love that there was no comparison. When he killed Frank Lombard, he had become Frank Lombard, and the victim had become Daniel Blank. Linked, swooning, they swam through the endless corridors of the universe like two coupling astronauts cast adrift. Slowly tumbling. Turning. Drifting. Throughout all eternity. Never decaying. Never stopping. But caught in passion. Forever.

  5

  WHENEVER DANIEL BLANK SAW Florence and Samuel together, he remembered a film he had once seen on the life of sea otters. The pups! They nuzzled each other, touched, frolicked and frisked. And the Mortons’ close-fitting helmets of black oily hair were exactly like pelts. He could not watch them without amused indulgence.

  Now, seated in the couch in his apartment, they insisted on sharing one Scotch-on-the-rocks—which he had replenished four times. They were clad in their black leather jumpsuits, sleek as hides, and their bright eyes and ferrety features were alive and curious.

  Since they were so ready—ready? eager!—to reveal intimate details of their private lives, they assumed all their friends felt the same. They wanted to know how his affair with Celia Montfort was coming along. Had they been physically intimate? Was it a satisfying sex relationship? Had he discovered anything more about her they should know? What was Anthony’s role in her household? And Valenter’s?

  He answered in generalities and tried to smile mysteriously. After awhile, balked by his reticence, they turned to each other and began to discuss him as if they were alone in their own apartment. He had endured this treatment before (as had all their silent friends), and sometimes he found it entertaining. But now he felt uncomfortable and, he thought, perhaps fearful. What might they not stumble on?

  “Usually,” Sam said, speaking directly to Flo, “when a man like Dan is asked point-blank if his sex relations with a particular woman are satisfactory, he will say something like, ‘How on earth would I know? I haven’t been to bed with her.’ That means, A, he is telling the truth and has not been to bed with her. Or B, he has been to bed with her and is lying to protect the lady’s reputation.”

  “True,” Flo nodded solemnly. “Or C, it was so bad he doesn’t want to mention it because he has failed or the lady has failed. Or D, it was absolutely marvelous, so incredible he doesn’t want to talk about it; he wants to keep this wonderful memory for himself.”

  “Hey, come on,” Dan laughed. “I’m not—”

  “Ah yes,” Sam interrupted. “But when a man like Dan replies to the question, ‘How was sex with this particular, woman?’ by answering, ‘It was all right,’ what are we to understand from that? That he has been to bed with the lady but the experience was so-so?”

  “I think that is what Dan would like us to believe,” Flo said thoughtfully. “I think he is concealing something from us, Samovel.”

  “I agree,” he nodded. “What could it be? That he has not yet made the attempt?”

  “Yes,” Flo said. “That makes psychological sense. Dan is a man who was married several years to a woman his physical and mental inferior. Correct?”

  “Correct. And during that time sex became a routine, a habit. Suddenly separated and divorced, he looks around for a new woman. But he feels uncertain. He has forgotten how to operate.”

  “Exactly,” Flo approved. “He is unsure of himself. He fears he may be rejected. After all, the boy isn’t a mad rapist. And if he is rejected, then he will think the failure of his marriage was his fault. And his ego can’t accept that. So in Dan’s approach to this new woman, he is careful. He is wary. Did you ever know a wary lover to succeed?”

  “Never,” Sam said definitely. “Successful sex always demands aggression, either attack on the man or surrender on the part of the woman.”

  “And surrender on the part of the woman is as valid a method of aggression as attack on the part of the man.”

  “Of course. You remember reading—”

  But at this point, tiring of their game, Daniel Blank went into the kitchen to pour himself a fresh vodka. When he returned to the living room, they were still at it, their voices louder now, when the bell of the hall door rang so stridently they were shocked to silence. Daniel Blank, to whom an unexpected knock or ring now came as a heart flutter or spasm of the bowels, behaved, he assured himself later, with nonchalant coolness.

  “Now who on earth can that be?” he inquired of no one.

  He rose and moved to the hallway door. Through the peephole he caught a glimpse of a woman’s hair—long, blonde hair—and a padded coat shoulder. Oh my God, he thought, it’s Gilda. What’s she doing here?

  But when he unhooked the chain and opened the door, it wasn’t Gilda. It was and it wasn’t. He stared, trying to understand. She stared back just as steadily. It wasn’t until his mouth opened in astonishment that she broke into a laugh, and then he saw it was Celia Montfort.

  But what a Celia! Wearing a blonde wig down to her shoulders, with the tips curled upward. Thick makeup including scarlet lip rouge. A tacky tweed suit with a ruffled blouse. A necklace of oversize pearls. Crimson nail polish. And, obviously, a padded brassiere.

  She had never seen his ex-wife, never seen a p
hoto of her, but the resemblance was startling. The physical bulk was there, the gross good health, high color, muscular swagger, a tossing about of elbows and shoulders.

  “My God,” Daniel said admiringly, “you’re marvelous.”

  “Am I like her?”

  “You wouldn’t believe. But why?”

  “Oh … just for fun, as Tony would say. I thought you’d like it.”

  “I do. I really do, My God, you’re so like her. You really should have been an actress.”

  “I am,” she said. “All the time. Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  “Oh, of course. Listen, the Mortons are here. I’ll announce you as Gilda. I want to see their reactions.”

  He preceded her to the doorway of the living room.

  “It’s Gilda,” he called brightly, then stepped aside.

  Celia came to the doorway and stood posed, sweeping the Mortons with a beaming smile.

  “Gilda!” Sam cried, bouncing to his feet. “This is—” He stopped.

  “Gilda!” Florence cried, waving. “How nice that—” She stopped.

  Then Celia and Daniel burst out laughing, and within a moment the Mortons were laughing too.

  Flo came over to embrace Celia, then patted the padded shoulders of her suit and the tweed behind.

  “A padded ass,” she reported to the men. “And sponge rubber tits. My God, sweetie, you thought of everything.”

  “Do you think I’m like?”

  “Like?” Sam said. “A dead ringer. Even the makeup.”

  “Perfect,” Flo nodded. “Even to the fingernails. How did you do it?”

  “Guessed,” Celia said.

  “You guessed right,” Daniel said. “Now would you like to take off your jacket and get comfortable?”

  “Oh no. I’m enjoying this.”

  “All right. Vodka?”

  “Please.”

  He went into the kitchen to prepare new drinks for all of them. When he came back, Celia had turned off all the lights except for one standing lamp, and in the gloom she looked even more like his ex-wife. The resemblance was shattering, even to the way she sat upright in the Eames chair, her back straight, feet, firmly planted on the floor, knees slightly spread as if the thickness of her thighs prevented a more modest pose. He felt … something.