Lawrence Block - Sins of the Fathers

There were four locks on the door, including a Taylor that is as close as you can come to pickproof. I knocked off the other three with a celluloid strip, an old oil-company credit card that is otherwise useless since I no longer own a car. Then I kicked the Taylor in. I had to kick it twice before the door flew inward.

I locked the other three locks after me. The tenants would have a lot of fun trying to figure out what had happened to the Taylor, but that was their problem, and it wouldn’t come up until sometime in March. I poked until I found the window that fed onto the fire escape, opened it, and climbed down two stories to the Hanniford-Vanderpoel apartment.

The window wasn’t locked. I opened it, let myself in, closed it after me.

An hour later I went out the window and back up the fire escape. There were lights on in the fourth-floor apartment by now, but the shade was drawn on the window I had to pass. I reentered the fifth-floor apartment, let myself out into the hallway, locked the door behind me, and went downstairs and out of the building. I had enough time to grab a sandwich before I kept my appointment with Martin Vanderpoel.

I got off the BMT at Sixty-second Street and New Utrecht and walked a couple of blocks through a part of Brooklyn where Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst rub shoulders with one another. A powdery rain was melting some of yesterday’s snow. The weather bureau expected it to freeze sometime during the night. I was a little early and stopped at a drugstore lunch counter for a cup of coffee. Toward the rear of the counter a kid was demonstrating a gravity knife to a couple of his friends. He took a quick look at me and made the knife disappear, reminding me once again that I haven’t stopped looking like a cop.

I drank half my coffee and walked the rest of the way to the church. It was a massive edifice of white stone toned all shades of gray by the years. A cornerstone announced that the present structure had been erected in 1886 by a congregation established 220 years before that date. An illuminated bulletin board identified the church as the First Reformed Church of Bay Ridge, Reverend Martin T. Vanderpoel, Pastor. Services were held Sundays at nine thirty; this coming Sunday Reverend Vanderpoel was slated to speak on “The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions.”

I turned the corner and found the rectory immediately adjacent to the church. It was three stories tall and built of the same distinctive stone. I rang the bell and stood on the front step in the rain for a few minutes. Then a small gray-haired woman opened the door and peered up at me. I gave my name.

“Yes,” she said. “He said he was expecting you.” She led me into a parlor and pointed me to an armchair. I sat down across from a fireplace with an electric fire glowing in it. The wall on either side of the fireplace was lined with bookshelves. An Oriental rug with a muted pattern covered most of the parquet floor. The room’s furniture was all dark and massive. I sat there waiting for him and decided I should have stopped for a drink instead of a cup of coffee. I wasn’t likely to get a drink in this cheerless house.

He let me sit there for five minutes. Then I heard his step on the stairs. I got to my feet as he entered the room. He said, “Mr. Scudder? I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I was on the telephone. But please have a seat, won’t you?”

He was very tall and rail-thin. He wore a plain black suit, a clerical collar, and a pair of black leather bedroom slippers. His hair was white with yellow highlights here and there. It would have been considered long a few years ago, but now the abundant curls were conservative enough. His horn-rimmed glasses had thick lenses that made it difficult for me to see his eyes.

“Coffee, Mr. Scudder?”

“No, thank you.”

“And none for me, either. If I have more than one cup with my dinner, I’m up half the night.” He sat down in a chair that was a mate to mine. He leaned toward me and placed his hands on his knees. “Well, now,” he said. “I don’t see how I can possibly help you, but please tell me if I can.”

I explained a little more fully the errand I was running for Cale Hanniford. When I had finished he touched his chin with his thumb and forefinger and nodded thoughtfully.

“Mr. Hanniford has lost a daughter,” he said. “And I have lost a son.”

“Yes.”

“It’s so difficult to father children in today’s world, Mr. Scudder. Perhaps it was always thus, but it seems to me that the times conspire against us. Oh, I can sympathize fully with Mr. Hanniford, more fully than ever since I have suffered a similar loss.” He turned to gaze at the fire. “But I fear I have no sympathy for the girl.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It’s a failing on my part, and I recognize it as such. Man is an imperfect creature. Sometimes it seems to me that religion has no higher function than to sharpen his awareness of the extent of his imperfection. God alone is perfect. Even Man, His greatest handiwork, is hopelessly flawed. A paradox, Mr. Scudder, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Not the least of my own flaws is an inability to grieve for Wendy Hanniford. You see, her father no doubt holds my son responsible for the loss of his daughter. And I, in turn, hold his daughter responsible for the loss of my son.”

He got to his feet and approached the fireplace. He stood there for a moment, his back perfectly straight, warming his hands. He turned toward me and seemed on the point of saying something. Instead, he walked slowly to his chair and sat down again, this time crossing one leg over the other.

He said, “Are you a Christian, Mr. Scudder?”

“No.”

“A Jew?”

“I have no religion.”

“How sad for you,” he said. “I asked your religion because the nature of your own beliefs might facilitate your understanding my feelings toward the Hanniford girl. But perhaps I can approach the matter in another way. Do you believe in good and evil, Mr. Scudder?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you believe that there is such a thing as evil extant in the world?”

“I know there is.”

He nodded, satisfied. “So do I,” he said. “It would be difficult to believe otherwise, whatever one’s religious outlook. A glance at a daily newspaper provides evidence enough of the existence of evil.” He paused, and I thought he was waiting for me to say something. Then he said, “ She was evil.”

“Wendy Hanniford?”

“Yes. An evil, Devil-ridden woman. She took my son away from me, away from his religion, away from God. She led him away from good paths and unto the paths of evil.” His voice was picking up a timbre, and I could imagine his forcefulness in front of a congregation. “It was my son who killed her. But it was she who killed something within him, who made it possible for him to kill.” His voice dropped in pitch, and he held his hands palms down at his sides. “And so I cannot mourn Wendy Hanniford. I can regret that her death came at Richard’s hands, I can profoundly regret that he then took his own life, but I cannot mourn your client’s daughter.”

He let his hands drop, lowered his head. I couldn’t see his eyes, but his face was troubled, wrapped up in chains of good and evil. I thought of the sermon he would preach on Sunday, thought of all the different roads to Hell and all the paving stones therein. I pictured Martin Vanderpoel as a long, lean Sisyphus arduously rolling the boulders into place.

I said, “Your son was in Manhattan a year and a half ago. That was when he went to work for Burghash Antiques.” He nodded. “So he left here some six months before he began sharing Wendy Hanniford’s apartment.”