Tenth Commandment Read online

  'What company is that?'

  'Uh, Metropolitan Life,' I said.

  'That's odd,' he said. 'About a week after Kipper died, I got a visit from a claim adjuster from Prudential. He said they had insured Kipper.'

  He looked at me steadily. I think I was blushing. I know I couldn't meet his stare. I may have hung my head.

  'You don't mind if I call you Josh, do you?' Stilton asked gently.

  'No, I don't mind.'

  'You can call me Perce,' he offered. 'You see, Josh, two years in this business, or even four years, aren't enough to learn how to be a really good liar. The first rule is only lie when you have to. And when you do lie, keep it as close to the truth as you can and keep it simple. Don't try to scam it up. If you do, you're sure to get in trouble. When I asked you if your interest was the insurance, you should have said yes and let it go at that. I probably would have swallowed it. It's logical that lawyers handling the estate would be interested in a dead man's insurance. But then 82

  you started fumbling around with justifying the claim, and I knew you were jiving me.'

  'And I didn't even know the name of the company,' I said sadly.

  He put his head back and laughed, so loudly that the other diners turned to look.

  'Oh, Josh,' he said. 'I don't know what company insured Kipper either. No claim adjuster ever visited me. I just said Prudential to catch your reaction. When you collapsed, I knew you were running a game on me.'

  Our food was served, and we didn't speak until the waiter left the table.

  'Then you won't tell me about the Kipper case?' I said.

  'Why the hell not?' he said, astonished. 'I'm willing to co-operate. It's all a matter of public record. That boss of yours, the guy with the fish, could probably even get a look at the file if he pushed hard enough. How's the steak-and-kidney pie?'

  'Delicious,' I said. 'I'm really enjoying it. Is your roast beef rare enough?'

  'If it was any rarer, it would still be breathing. All right, now let me tell you about the Kipper thing. I went over the file before I left the office, just to refresh my memory.

  Here's what h a p p e n e d . . . '

  As he spoke, and ate steadily, I glanced up frequently from my own plate to look at him.

  I guessed him to be in his early fifties. He was about six feet tall, with narrow shoulders and hips. Very willowy. He was dressed with great care and polish, in a double-breasted blue pinstripe that closed at the lower button with a graceful sweep of a wide lapel. His shirt was a snowy white broadcloth with a short, button-down collar. He wore a polka-dot bowtie with butterfly wings. He had a gold watch on one wrist and a gold chain identification bracelet on the other. If he was wearing a gun — and I presumed he was — it certainly didn't show.

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  His colour was hard to distinguish in the dim light, but I judged it to be a dark brown with a reddish tinge, not quite cordovan but almost. His hair was jet black and and lay flat on his skull in closely cropped waves. His hands were long, fingernails manicured.

  His eyes were set deep and wide apart. His nose was somewhat splayed, and his thick lips turned outward. High cheekbones, like an Indian. He had a massive jaw, almost square, and a surprisingly thick, corded neck. Small ears were flat to his head.

  I would not call him a handsome man, but his features were pleasant enough. He looked amused, assured, and competent. When he was pondering, or trying to find the right word or phrase, he had the habit of putting his tongue inside his cheek, bulging it.

  I think I was most impressed by the cool elegance of the man, totally unlike what I envisioned a New York police detective would be. He really looked like a business executive or a confident salesman. I thought this might be an image he projected deliberately, as an aid in his work.

  'Let's start with the time sequence,' he began. 'This happened on January 24th, a Wednesday. The first call went to 911, and was logged in at 3.06. That's p.m., the afternoon. A squad car was dispatched from the One-Nine Precinct and arrived at the premises at 3.14. Not bad, huh?

  Two cops in the squad. They took a look at what had happened and called their precinct. This was at 3.21.

  Everyone was doing their jobs. We don't fuck up all the time, you know. The squeal came to the Homicide Zone where I work at 3.29. It didn't sound like a homicide, but these things have to be checked out. I arrived at the scene at 3.43. I was with my partner, Detective Lou Emandola.

  We no sooner got in the place when the loot called and pulled Lou away. Some nut was holding hostages in a supermarket over on First Avenue, and they were calling out the troops.

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  'So Lou took off and I was left alone. I mean I was the only homicide guy there. There were plenty of cops, the ambulance guys, the Medical Examiner, the lab truck technicians, a photographer, and so forth. A real mob scene. I questioned the witnesses then, but they were so spooked I didn't get much out of them, so I left. I went back again that evening, and I went twice more. Also, I talked to neighbours, the ME who did the PM, your Mr Tabatchnick, Kipper's doctor, and Kipper's sons. After all this, it looked like an open-and-shut suicide, and that's how we closed it out. .Any questions so far?'

  'Who made the first call to 911?' I asked.

  'I'm getting to that,' Stilton said. 'I've hardly started yet.'

  He paused, drained his tankard of ale, and looked at me. I called the waiter and ordered two more. The detective continued:

  'Here's the s t o r y . . . First of all, you've got to understand the scene of the crime, although there was no crime, unless you want to call a suicide a crime. Anyway, that townhouse is a palace. Huge? You wouldn't believe. You could sleep half of East Harlem in there. It's six floors high and it's got a double-basement, plus an elevator. I never did get around to counting all the rooms. Thirty at least, I'd guess, and most of them empty. I mean they were furnished, but no one lived in them. A terrible waste of space.

  It runs halfway back the depth of the building. The rear half is an open terrace. The room up front is used for parties. It has a big-screen TV, bar, hi-fi equipment, movie projector, and so forth. The rear terrace has plants, and trees, and outdoor furniture. Sol Kipper took his dive from that terrace. It has a wall around it thirty-eight inches high — I measured it — but that wouldn't be hard to climb over, even for an old guy like Kipper.'

  He paused again to take a swallow of his new ale. I used the interruption to dig into my dinner. I had been so en-85

  grossed in his story, not wanting to miss anything, that I had neglected to eat. He had finished most of his beef and was now whittling scraps off the rib, handling his knife with the dexterity of a surgeon.

  'The nearer the bone,' he said, 'the sweeter the meat. All right, here's what I found out: At 2.30 p.m. on that Wednesday, there were five people in the townhouse. Sol Kipper, his wife, Tippi — she's a looker, that one — and the three servants. Sol and Tippi were in their bedroom, the master bedroom on the fifth floor. The servants were on the ground floor, in and around the kitchen. Tippi was expecting a guest, a Protestant minister named Knurr. He was a frequent visitor, and he was usually served a drink or two and some little sandwiches. The servants were setting up for him.

  'Mrs Kipper came downstairs about ten minutes to three to make sure everything was ready for the Reverend Knurr.

  Now we got four people downstairs, and only Sol Kipper upstairs — right? In the back of the townhouse there's a patio. Most of it is paved with tiles, and there's aluminium furniture out there: a cocktail table, chairs, an umbrella table — stuff like that. Farther in the rear is a small garden: a tree, shrubs, flowers in the summer, and so on. But most of the patio is paved with tiles. There are two ways of getting out there: one door through the kitchen, and French doors from the dining room.

  'A few minutes after three, the four people hear a tremendous crash and a big, heavy thump on the patio.

  They all hear it. They rush to the kitchen door and look out, and there's Sol Kipper. He was squ
ashed on the tiles.

  That was the thump they heard. And one of his legs had hit the umbrella table, dented it, and overturned it. That was the crash they heard. They ran out, took one look, and knew Sol Kipper was as dead as a mackerel — no joke intended.'

  Stilton finished his dinner. He pushed back his chair, 86

  crossed his knees, and adjusted his trouser crease. He lighted a cigarette and sipped at what remained of his ale.

  'Instant hysteria,' he went on. 'Mrs Kipper fainted, the cook started bawling, and right about then the front doorbell rang.'

  'The guest?' I said.

  'Right. Reverend Knurr. The butler went to the front door, let him in, and screamed out what had just happened. I gather this Knurr more or less took charge then. He's a put-together guy. He called 911, and he got Tippi Kipper revived, and the others quieted down. By the time I got there, they had found the suicide note. How about some coffee?'

  'Sure,' I said. 'Dessert? A brandy?'

  'A brandy would be fine,' he said. 'May I suggest Rémy Martin?'

  So I ordered two of those and a pot of coffee.

  'I've got a lot of questions,' I said tentatively.

  'Thought you might have,' he said. 'Shoot.'

  'Are you sure there were only four people in the house besides Sol Kipper?'

  'Absolutely. We searched every room when we got there. No one. And the witnesses swear no one left.'

  'The time sequence you gave me of what happened — did you get that from Mrs Kipper?'

  'And the servants. And Reverend Knurr. All their stories matched within a minute or so. None of them sounded rehearsed. And if you're figuring maybe they were all in on it together, forget it . Why should they all gang up on the old guy? According to the servants, he treated them just right. A fast man with a buck. The wife says the marriage was happy. None of them showed any signs of a struggle.

  No scratches or bruises — nothing like that. And if one of them, or all of them, wanted to get rid of Sol, it would have been a lot easier to slip something into one of his pill bottles. You should have seen his medicine chest. He had a 87

  drugstore up there. And, of course, there was the suicide note. In his writing.'

  'Do you remember what it said?' I asked. 'Exactly?'

  'It was addressed to his wife. It said: "Dear Tippi.

  Please forgive me. I am sorry for all the trouble I've caused." It was signed " S o l . " '

  I sighed. Our coffee and cognac arrived, and we sat a moment in silence, then sipped the Rémy Martin. Very different from the California brand I drank at home.

  'Did you check the wall on the terrace?'

  Stilton looked at me without expression.

  'You're all right,' he said. 'Dolly did a good job on you.

  Yes, we checked the terrace wall. It's a roughly finished cement, painted pink. There were scrape marks on the top where Kipper went over. And there were crumbs of pink cement on the toes of his shoes, stuck in the welt. Any more questions?'

  'No,' I said, depressed. 'Maybe I'll think of some later, but I can't think of any now. So it was closed out as a suicide?'

  'Did we have any choice?' Detective Percy Stilton said, almost angrily. 'We have a zillion homicides to work on. I mean, out-and-out, definite homicides. How much time can we spend on a case that looks like a suicide no matter how you slice it? So we closed the Kipper file.'

  I took a swallow of brandy, larger than I should have, and choked on it. Stilton looked at me amusedly.

  'Go down the wrong way?' he said.

  I nodded. 'And this suicide,' I said, still gasping, 'it sticks in my throat, too. Perce, how do you feel about it? I mean personally? Are you absolutely satisfied in your own mind that Sol Kipper committed suicide?'

  He stared at me, bulging his cheek with his tongue, as if trying to make up his mind. Then he poured himself more coffee.

  'It's trade-off time,' he said softly.

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  'What?' I said. 'I don't understand.'

  'A trade-off,' he said. 'Between you and me. You tell me what your interest is in how Sol Kipper died and I'll tell you what I personally think.'

  I took a deep breath and wished I had never asked Mr Tabatchnick if I could tell the detective about Marty Reape. Tabatchnick had definitely said no. If I hadn't asked, I could have traded with Stilton without a qualm. I pondered where my loyalty lay. I decided.

  'It means my job,' I said, 'if any of this gets out.'

  'No one will hear it from me,' Stilton said.

  'All right,' I said. 'I trust you. I've got to trust you. Here it i s . . . '

  And I told him all about Marty Reape. Everything, beginning with his telephone call to Mr Tabatchnick, then my call to him, my meeting with him, what he said and what I said, the decision to meet his price, and how he died Wednesday evening under the wheels of a subway train.

  Stilton listened closely to this recital, not changing expression. But he never took his eyes off me, and I noticed he chain-smoked while I was speaking. He was about to light another when I finished. He broke the cigarette in two and threw it down.

  'I smoke too damned much,' he said disgustedly,

  'What do you think?' I said, leaning forward eagerly,

  'about Marty Reape?'

  'Your boss could be right,' he said slowly. 'Reape could have been a cheap chiseller trying to pull a con.'

  'But he was killed!' I said vehemently.

  'Was he?' Stilton said. 'You don't know that. And even if he was, that doesn't prove he had the information he claimed. Maybe he tried to pull his little scam on some other people who aren't as civilized as you and your boss, and they stepped on him.'

  'But he knew the size of the Kipper estate,' I argued.

  'Doesn't that prove he knew the family or had some 89

  dealings with them?'

  'Maybe,' he said. 'And maybe Sol Kipper told someone what's in his will, and maybe that someone told Marty Reape. Or maybe Reape just made a lucky guess about the size of the estate.'

  It was very important to me to convince this professional detective that my suspicions about the death of Sol Kipper had merit and justified further investigation. So, having come this far in betraying Mr Tabatchnick's trust, I felt I might as well go all the way.

  'There's another thing,' I said. 'On the morning of the day Sol Kipper died, he called Tabatchnick and set up an appointment. He said he wanted to change his will.'

  Stilton had been turning his cigarette lighter over and over in his long fingers, looking down at it. Now he stopped his fiddling and raised his eyes slowly until he was staring at me.

  'Jesus,' he breathed, 'the plot thickens.'

  'All right,' I said, sitting back. 'That's my trade. Now let's have yours. Do you really think Sol Kipper committed suicide?'

  He didn't hesitate.

  'That's the official verdict,' he said, 'and the file is closed. But there were things about it that bugged me from the start. Little things. Not enough to justify calling it homicide, but things, three, to be exact, that just didn't set right with me. First of all, committing suicide by jumping from the sixth floor is far from a sure thing. You can jump from a higher place than that and still survive.

  'That's why most leapers go higher up than six storeys.

  They want to kill themselves, but they don't want to take the chance of being crippled for life. This Kipper owned a textile company. He was semi-retired, his sons run the business, but Kipper went there for a few hours three or four days a week. The office is on the thirty-fourth floor of a building in the garment centre. He could have gone out a 90

  window there and they'd have had to pick him up with a blotter.'

  'Perce, what actually killed him when he went off the sixth-floor terrace?'

  'He landed on his head. Crushed his skull. All right, it could happen from six floors. He could also break both arms and legs, have internal injuries, and still live. That could happen, too. It couldn't happen from thirty-four floors. That
's the first thing that bothered me: a suicide from the sixth floor. It's like trying to blow your brains out with a BB gun.

  'The second thing was this: When jumpers go out, from a window, ledge, balcony, whatever, they usually drop straight down. I mean, they just take one giant step out into space. They don't really leap. Practically all the jumpers I've seen have landed within six feet of the side of the building. They usually squash on the sidewalk. When they go from a really high place, maybe their bodies start to windmill. But even then they hit the sidewalk or, at the most, crush in the top of a parked car. But I've never seen any who were more than, say, six or seven feet out from the side of the building. Kipper's body was almost ten feet away.'

  I puzzled that out.

  'Perce, you mean someone threw him over?'

  'Who? There were four other people in that house — remember? Kipper weighed about one-sixty. None of the women could have lifted him over that terrace wall and thrown him so he landed ten feet from the side of the building. And the only man, the butler, is so fat it's all he can do to stand up. Maybe Kipper just took a flying leap.'

  'An old man like that?'

  'It's possible,' he said stubbornly. 'The third thing is even flimsier than the first two. It's that suicide note. It said: "I am sorry for all the trouble I've caused." Get it?

  "Caused." Please forgive me for something I've done.

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  That note sounds to me like he's referring to something he did in the past, not something he was planning to do in a few minutes. Also, the note is perfectly legible, written in straight lines with a steady hand. Not the kind of handwriting you'd expect from a guy so mixed up in his skull that a few minutes later he was going to take a high dive from his terrace. But again, it's possible. I told you it's flimsy. All the things that bug me are flimsy.'

  'I don't think they are,' I said hotly. 'I think they're important.'

  He gave me a half-smile, looked at his watch, and began to stow away his cigarette case and lighter.

  'Listen,' I said desperately, 'where do we go from here?'

  'Beats me,' he said.

  'Can't you -' I began.