Lawrence Sanders - The seventh commandment

"You think Felicia is hooked?" Wenden asked.

"Definitely. She should be under treatment right now."

"Where is she getting her supply?"

"Eleanor says Turner Pierce is her candyman. But Eleanor is so bitter about the divorce, I don't know if she's telling the truth."

John shook his head. "We find coke under the floorboards in Father Callaway's pad, Felicia is snorting the stuff, and now Ramon Schnabl, a drug biggie, turns out to have some connection with Starrett's gold trading. Maybe it all fits together, but I don't see it. Do you?"

"Not yet," Dora said. "Do you have anything new on the three homicides?"

He brightened. "Yeah-we finally got a break. At least I hope it's a break. Remember I told you we were checking out all the stores, bars, and restaurants in the neighborhood of the Church of the Holy Oneness, to see if Loftus-Callaway had been in the night he was offed. We finally got to a scruffy French restaurant on East Twenty-eighth Street, and an old waiter there says he thinks the good Father was in that night."

"John, it's taken a long time, hasn't it?"

"You think it's an easy job, that you just walk into a joint, flash a photo of the dear departed and ask if he was there at a certain time on a certain date, and then people tell you? It's not that simple, Red. Clerks and bartenders and waiters have so many customers, they forget individual faces. And also, it's hard to find out who was on duty that particular night. And then it turns out that one of the waiters has been fired, or quit for another job, or maybe moved out of the state. And then he's got to be tracked down. Believe me, it's a long, ass-breaking job, and chances are good it'll turn out to be a dead end. But it's got to be done. So as I said, we finally found this restaurant on East Twenty-eighth where a waiter remembers Callaway being in the night he was killed. The reason the waiter remembers him was that the noble padre didn't leave a tip. The moral of that story is: Never stiff a waiter."

"Was Callaway alone or with someone?"

Wenden looked at her admiringly. "You're pretty sharp-you know that? I'm sorry for that crack I made about you being an amateur. But I did say you were a talented and beautiful amateur. That helps, doesn't it?"

"Some," Dora said, but it still rankled. "Who was Callaway with?"

"The waiter says he sat in a booth with a young woman. But the waiter is so old that to him a 'young woman' could be anyone from sixty on down."

"What's your next move?"

"I went to Mrs. Olivia Starrett and got photographs of Eleanor, Felicia, and Helene Pierce. They're color Polar-oids taken at a dinner party last Christmas at the Starretts' apartment. I'm having blow-ups made, and I'm going back to that waiter and see if he can pick out one of them as the woman who sat in the booth and had drinks with the recently deceased. It's a long shot, but it's all I've got."

"It sounds good to me," Dora said enthusiastically. "I think you're doing a great job."

"Tell that to my boss," the detective said mournfully. "He thinks I'm dragging my feet. Actually, I'm dragging my tail. Order me to go home, Red, and get some sleep."

"Go home and get some sleep."

"Yeah," he said, "I should. Remember the night you let me crash here?"

"Not tonight, John," Dora said firmly.

"You don't trust me?"

"I don't trust either of us. Besides, you're too bushed even to go through the motions."

"You're right," he said, groaning. "I feel like one of the undead. Well, thanks for everything, Red."

"John, drive carefully."

He stared at her with eyes heavy with weariness. "No decision yet, huh?" he said.

"Not yet."

"But you're thinking about it?"

"All the time," she said, almost angrily.

"Good," he said. "It would work for us, Red, I know it would."

They embraced before he left, hugged tightly, kissed long and lingeringly. Finally Dora pushed him out the door and turned her head away so he wouldn't see the tears brimming.

She cleaned up the pretzel crumbs, still snuffling, a little, and dumped the empty beer cans. She took up her pen and notebook but sat for several moments without scribbling a word. After a while she was able to stop brooding about John Wenden and concentrate on what she had learned from ballsy Terry Ortiz.

She figured he'd probably go ahead with a break-in at Stuttgart Precious Metals, and John would help him, and so would she. She knew what they would find-and it wasn't drugs. But she'd never tell the detectives what she had guessed; it would bruise their masculine egos. Let them go on thinking she was an amateur.

Numbers had always fascinated Turner Pierce. He even gave them characteristics: 1 was stalwart, 3 was sensual, 7 was stern, 8 was lascivious. But even without this fanciful imaging, numbers had the power to move the world. Once you understood them and how they worked, you could exploit their power for your own benefit.

But now, in his elegant, number-ordered universe, a totally irrational factor had been introduced. The presence of Felicia Starrett was like the "cracking" of a functioning computer by the invasion of a virus. The software he had designed to program his life was being disrupted by this demented woman.

He was quite aware of what was happening to him. It was as if he had caught Felicia's unreason. His linear logicality was constantly being ruptured by her drug-induced madness, and his reactions were becoming as disordered as her hallucinations and paranoia. He knew his physical appearance was deteriorating and his work for Ramon Schnabl suffering from neglect.

Her speech was becoming increasingly incoherent. She had lost the ability to control her bladder and bowels. Her rages had become more violent. She had lost so much weight that her dry, hot skin was stretched tightly over white knobs of bones. Turner was chained to a convulsive skeleton whose paroxysms became so extreme that he was forced to restrain her with bands of cloth. But even when fettered to the bed, her thrashings were so furious he feared her thin bones might snap.

It was only when she smoked a pipe of ice that these frightening displays of dementia were mollified. But then her body temperature rose so high, her breathing became so labored, her heartbeat so erratic, that he panicked at the thought she might expire in his bed, in his apartment. His life had not been programmed to handle that eventuality.

He phoned Ramon Schnabl, twice, intending to ask if an antidote existed that might return Felicia to normality. His calls were not returned. He then phoned Helene and, trying not to sound hysterical, asked her to come over and baby-sit "the patient" so he could get out of that smashed and fetid apartment for a while, have a decent dinner, and try to jump-start his brain in the cold night air.

Helene, not questioning, said she'd be there as soon as possible.

"Thank you," Turner Pierce said, not recognizing his own piteous voice.

Felicia Starrett dwelt in a world she did not recognize. It was all new, all different: colors more intense, sounds foreign, smells strange and erotic. She heard herself babbling but could not understand the words. She wasn't aware of who she was or where she was. Her new world was primeval. She remembered a few things in brief moments of lucidity: an aching past and a glorious future when she would marry Turner Pierce and everything would be all right. Forever and ever. She stared about with naked eyes.

Once, in Kansas City, when she had repulsed Sid Loftus, he had said to her, "You're not deep, you're shallow." Then he had added, "But wide." Helene Pierce had never understood what he meant by that. If he was implying that she was incapable of reflecting on the Meaning of Life, he was totally wrong; Helene often had deep thoughts. She was not, after all, a ninny.