The 1st Deadly Sin

“Mith Montforth rethidenth,” he heard Valenter say.

“This is Daniel Blank. Is Miss Montfort in?”

“Yeth, thir. I’ll call-”

But then Daniel Blank heard a few more soft clicks, a strange hissing on the line. He hung up abruptly. Jesus! He should have known. He left the apartment immediately. What time was it? It didn’t matter.

“He’s tapping my phone,” he said to Celia indignantly. “I definitely heard it. Definitely.”

They were in that tainted room at the top of the house; city sounds came faintly. He told her he had followed her advice, had opened his mind to instinct, to all the primitive fears and passions that had come flooding in. He told her how he had been acting, the irrational fits and starts of his daily activities, and he told her about the clicks, hisses, and echo on the phone when he had called her.

“Do you think I’m going mad?” he demanded.

“No,” she said slowly, almost judiciously, “I don’t think so. I think that in the time I have known you, you have been moving from the man you were to the man you are to be. What that is, I don’t believe either of us know for sure. But it’s understandable that this growth be painful, perhaps even frightening. You’re leaving everything familiar behind you and setting out on a journey, a search, a climb, that’s leading…somewhere. Forget for a moment the man who has been following you and the phone call you received. These pains and dislocations have nothing to do with that. Dan, you’re being born again, and you’re feeling all the anguish of birth, being yanked from the safety of a warm womb into a foreign world. The wonder is that you’ve endured it as well as you have.”

As usual, her flood of murmured words soothed and assured him; he felt as relaxed as if she was stroking his brow. She did make sense; it was true that he had changed since he met her, and was changing. The murders were part of it, of course-she was wrong to deny that-but they were not the cause but just one effect of the monumental upheaval inside him, something hot and bubbling there thrusting to the surface.

They made love slowly then, with more tenderness than passion, more sweetness than joy. In the eerie light of that single orange bulb he leaned close to see her for the first time, microscopically.

Her nipples, under his tongue’s urging, engorged and, peering close, he saw the flattened tops with ravines and gorges, tiny, tiny, a topographic map. And threaded through the small breasts a network of bluish veins, tangled as a silken skein.

Along the line of curved hip sprouted a Lilliputian wheat-field of surprisingly golden hairs, and more at the dimpled small of her back. These tender sprouts tickled dry and dusty on his tongue. The convoluted navel returned his stare in a lascivious wink. Inside, prying, he found a sharp bitterness that tingled.

Far up beneath her long hair, at nape of neck, was swamp dampness and scent of pond lilies. He stared at flesh of leg and groin, so close his eyelashes brushed and she made a small sound. There was hard, shiny skin on her soles, a crumbling softness between her toes. It all became clear to him, and dear, and sad.

They fenced with tongues-thrust, parry, cut-and then he was tasting creamy wax from her ear and in her armpits a sweet liquor that bit and melted on his lips like snow. Behind her knees more blue veins meandered, close to a skin that felt like suede and twitched faintly when he touched.

He spread her buttocks; the rosebud glared at him, withdrawing and expanding-a time-motion film of a flower reacting to light and darkness. He put his erect penis in her soft palm, slowly guided her fingers to stroke, circle, gently probe the opening, their hands clasped so they might share. He touched his lips to her closed eyes, thought he might suck them out and gulp them down like oysters, seasoned with her tears.

“I want you inside me,” she said suddenly, lay on her back, spread her knees wide, guided his cock up into her. She wrapped arms and legs about him and moaned softly, as if they were making love for the first time.

But there was no love. Only a sweetness so sad it was almost unendurable. Even as they fucked he knew it was the sadness of departure; they would never fuck again; both knew it.

She was quickly slick, inside and out; they grappled to hold tight. He spurted with a series of great, painful lunges and, stunned, he continued to make the motions long after he was drained and surfeited. He could not stop his spasm, had no desire to, and felt her come again.

She looked at him through half-opened eyes, glazed; he thought she felt what he did: the defeat of departure. In that moment he knew she had told. She had betrayed him.

But he smiled, smiled, smiled, kissed her closed mouth, went home early. He took a cab because the darkness frightened him.

If it was a day of departure and defeat for Daniel Blank, it was a day of arrival and triumph for Captain Edward X. Delaney. He dared not feel confident, lest he put the Whammy on it, but it did seem to be coming together.

Paper work in the morning: requisitions, reports, vouchers-the whole schmear. Then over to the hospital to sit awhile with Barbara, reading to her from “Honey Bunch: Her First Little Garden.” Then he treated himself to a decent meal in one of those west side French restaurants: coq au vin with a half-bottle of a heavy burgundy to help it along. He paid his bill and then, on the way out, stopped at the bar for a Kirsch. He felt good.

It was good; everything was good. He had no sooner returned to his home when Blankenship came in to display Danny Boy’s Time-Habit Pattern. It was very erratic indeed: Arrived at the Factory at 11:30 a.m. Skipped lunch completely. Took a long zigzag walk along the docks. Sat on a wharf for almost an hour-“Just watching the turds float by” according to the man tailing him. Report from Stryker: He had taken Mrs. Cleek to lunch, and she told him she had found Danny Boy weeping in his office, and he had told her there had been a death in the family. Danny Boy returned to the White House at 2:03 p.m.

“Fine,” the Captain nodded, handing the log back to Blankenship. “Keep at it. Is Fernandez on?”

“Comes on at four, Captain.”

“Ask him to stop by to see me, will you?”

After Blankenship left, Delaney closed all the doors to his study, paced slowly around the room, head bowed. “A death in the family.” That was nice. He paused to call Monica Gilbert and ask if he could come over to see her that evening. She invited him for dinner but he begged off; they arranged that he would come over at 7:00 p.m. He told her it would only be for a few minutes; she didn’t ask the reason. Her girls were home from school during the holiday week so, she explained, she hadn’t been able to visit Barbara as much as she wanted to, but would try to get there the following afternoon. He thanked her.

More pacing, figuring out options and possibilities. He walked into the radio room to tell Blankenship to requisition four more cars, two squads and two unmarked, and keep them parked on the street outside, two men in each. He didn’t want to think of the increase in manpower that entailed, and went back into his study to resume his pacing. Was there anything he should have done that he had not? He couldn’t think of anything, but he was certain there would be problems he hadn’t considered. No help for that.

He took out his plan and, alongside the final three items, worked out a rough time schedule. He was still fiddling with it when Lt. Jeri Fernandez knocked and looked in.

“Want me, Captain?”

“Just for a minute, lieutenant. Won’t take long. How’s it going?”

“Okay. I got a feeling things are beginning to move. Don’ ask me how I know. Just a feeling.”

“I hope you’re right. I’ve got another job for you. You’ll have to draw more men. Get them from wherever you can. If you have any shit with their commanders, tell them to call me. It’s a woman-Monica Gilbert. Here’s her address and telephone number. She’s the widow of Bernard Gilbert, the second victim. There was a guard on her right after he was iced, so there may be a photo of her in the files and some Time-Habit reports. I want a twenty- four hour tap on her phone, two men in an unmarked car outside her house, and two uniformed men outside her apartment door. She’s got two little girls. If she goes out with the girls, both the buttons stick with them, and I mean close. If she goes out alone, one man on her and one on the kids. Got all that?”

“Sure, Captain. A tight tail?”

“But I mean tight. Close enough to touch.”

“You think Danny Boy’ll try something?”

“No, I don’t. But I want her and her children covered, around the clock. Can you set it up?”

“No sweat, Captain. I’ll get on it right away.”