clouds and withdrew again. The mild wind was there. The night. Somewhere, unseen, stars whirled their keening courses. And tomorrow the sun might shine. Nothing could stop the tides.
“Good movie, Mr. Blank?” Charles Lipsky asked.
“I liked it,” Daniel Blank nodded brightly. “Very enjoyable. You really should see it.”
He went through the now familiar drill: washing and sterilizing the ice ax, then oiling the exposed steel. He put it away with his other climbing gear in the front hall closet. The policeman’s badge represented a problem. He had tucked Lombard’s driver’s license and Gilbert’s ID card under a stack of handkerchiefs in his top dresser drawer. It was extremely unlikely the cleaning woman, or anyone else, would uncover them. But still…
He wandered through the apartment, looking for a better hiding place. His first idea was to tape the identification to the backs of three of the larger mirrors on the living room wall. But the tape might dry, the gifts fall free, and then…
He finally came back to his bedroom dresser. He pulled the top drawer out and placed it on his bed. There was a shallow recess under the drawer, between the bottom and the runners. All the identification fitted easily into a large white envelope, and this he taped to the bottom of the drawer. If the tape dried, and the envelope dropped, it could only drop into the second drawer. And, while taped, it was a position where he could easily check its security every day, if he wanted to. Or open the envelope flap and look at his gifts.
Then he was home free-weapon cleansed, evidence hidden, all done that reason told him should be done. He even saved the ticket stub for the neighborhood movie. Now was the time for reflection and dreaming, for pondering significance and meaning.
He bathed slowly, scrubbing, then rubbing scented oil onto his wet skin. He stood on the bathroom mat, staring at himself in the full-length mirror, unaccountably, he began to make the gyrations of a strip-tease dancer: hands clasped behind his head, knees slightly bent, pelvis pumping in and out, hips grinding. He became excited by his own mirror image. He became erect, not fully but sufficiently to add to his pleasure. So there he stood, pumping his turgid shaft at the mirror.
Was he mad? he wondered. And, laughing, thought he might very well be.
4
The following morning he was having breakfast-a small glass of apple juice, a bowl of organic cereal with skim milk, a cup of black coffee-when the nine o’clock news came on the kitchen radio and a toneless voice announced the murder of Detective third grade Roger Kope on East 75th Street the previous midnight. Kope had been promoted from uniformed patrolman only two weeks previously. He left a widow and three small children. Deputy Commissioner Broughton, in charge of the investigation, stated several important leads were being followed up, and he hoped to make an important statement on the case shortly.
Daniel Blank put his emptied dishes into the sink, ran hot water into them, went off to work.
When he left his office in the evening, he purchased the afternoon
He fixed himself a vodka on the rocks with a squeeze of lime, turned on the television set and sat in the living room, sipping his drink, leafing through the catalogue, waiting for the evening news.
The coverage of Kope’s murder was disappointingly brief. There was a shot of the scene of the crime, a shot of the ambulance moving away, and then the TV reporter said the details of. the death of Detective Kope were very similar to those in the murder of Frank Lombard and Bernard Gilbert, and police believed all three killings were the work of one man. “The investigation is continuing.”
Later that evening Blank walked over to Second Avenue to buy the early morning editions of the
The most detailed, the most accurate report, Blank acknowledged, appeared under the byline “Thomas Handry.” Handry, quoting “a high police official who asked that his name not be used,” stated unequivocally that the three murders were committed by the same man, and that the weapon used was “an ax-like tool with an elongated spike.” The other papers identified the weapon as “a small pick or something similar.”
Handry also quoted his anonymous informant in explaining how a police decoy, an experienced officer, could be struck down from behind without apparently being aware of the approach of his attacker or making any effort to defend himself. “It is suggested,” Handry wrote, “the assailant approached from the front, presenting an innocent, smiling appearance to his victim, then, at the moment of passing, turned and struck him down. It is believed by the usually reliable source that the killer carried his weapon concealed under a folded newspaper or under his coat. Although Gilbert died from a frontal attack, the method used in Kope’s murder closely parallels that in the Lombard killing.”
Handry’s report ended by stating that his informant feared there would be additional attacks unless the killer was caught. Another paper spoke of an unprecedented assignment of detectives to the case, and the third paper stated that a curfew in the 251st Precinct was under consideration.
Blank tossed the papers aside. It was disquieting, he admitted, that the term “ax-like tool” had been used in Handry’s report. He had to assume the police knew exactly what the weapon was, but were not releasing the information. He did not believe they could trace the purchase of an ice ax to him; his ax was five years old, and hundreds were sold annually all over the world. But it did indicate he would be wise not to underestimate the challenge he faced, and he wondered what kind of a man this Deputy Commissioner Broughton was who was trying so hard to take him by the neck. Or, if not Broughton, who Handry’s anonymous “high police official” was. That business of approaching from the front, then whirling to strike-who had guessed
Blank went over his procedures carefully and could find only two obvious weak links. One was his continued possession of the victims’ identification. But, after pondering, he realized that if it ever came to a police search of his apartment, they would already have sufficient evidence to tie him to the murders, and the identification would merely be the final confirmation.
The other problem was more serious: Celia Montfort’s knowledge of what he had done.
5
Erotica, the sex boutique owned by Florence and Samuel Morton was located on upper Madison Avenue, between a gourmet food shop and a 100-year-old store that sold saddles and polo mallets. Erotica’s storefront had been designed by a pop-art enthusiast and consisted of hundreds of polished automobile hubcaps which served as distorting mirrors of the street scene and passing pedestrians.
“It boggles the mind,” Flo nodded.
“It blows the brain,” Sam nodded.
Between them, they had come up with this absolutely marvy idea for decorating their one window for the Christmas shopping season. They had, at great expense, commissioned a display house to create a naked Santa Claus. He had the requisite tasseled red cap and white beard, but otherwise his plump and roseate body was nude except for a small, black patent leather bikini equipped with a plastic codpiece, an item of masculine attire Erotica was attempting to revive in New York, with limited success.
The naked Santa was displayed in the Madison Avenue window for one day. Then Lieutenant Marty Dorfman, Acting Commander of the 251st Precinct, paid a personal visit to Erotica and politely asked the owners to remove
