Lawrence Sanders - The 1st Deadly Sin

Daniel Blank was currently earning $55,000 a year and had an unlimited expense account, a very advantageous pension and stock option plan. He was 36.

About a month after he took over, he received a very strange postcard from Bob White. It said merely: “What are you feeding the computer? Ha-ha.”

Blank puzzled over this. What had been fed the computer, of course, were the past circulation and advertising revenue figures and profit or loss totals of all the magazines Javis-Bircham published. Admittedly, White had been working his worn slide rule during most of the years from which those figures were taken, and it was possible to say that, in a sense, White had programmed the computer. But still, the postcard made little sense, and Daniel Blank wondered why his former boss had bothered to send it.

It was gratifying to hear the uniformed starter say, “Good morning, Mr. Blank,” and it was gratifying to ride the Executive Elevator in solitary comfort to the 30th floor. His personal office was a corner suite with wall-to-wall carpeting, a private lavatory and, not a desk, but a table: a tremendous slab of distressed walnut on a wrought-iron base. These things counted.

He had deliberately chosen for his personal secretary a bony, 28-year-old widow, Mrs. Cleek, who needed the job badly and would be grateful. She had proved as efficient and colorless as he had hoped. She had a few odd habits: she insisted on latching all doors and cabinets that were slightly ajar, and she was continually lining up the edges of the ashtrays and papers with the edges of tables and desks, putting everything parallel or at precise right angles. A picture hanging askew drove her mad. But these were minor tics.

When he entered his office, she was ready to hang away his coat and hat in the small closet. His black coffee was waiting for him, steaming, on a small plastic tray on the table, having been delivered by the commissary on the 20th floor.

“Good morning, Mr. Blank,” she said in her watery voice, consulting a stenographer’s pad she held. “You have a meeting at ten-thirty with the Pension Board. Lunch at twelve-thirty at the Plaza with Acme, regarding the servicing contract. I tried to confirm, but no one’s in yet. I’ll try again.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I like your dress. Is it new?”

“No,” she said.

“I’ll be in the Computer Room until the Pension Board meeting, in case you need me.”

“Yes, Mr. Blank.”

The embarrassing truth was that, as Mrs. Cleek was probably aware, he had nothing to do. It was true he was overseer of an extremely important department-perhaps the most important department of a large corporation. But, literally, he found it difficult to fill his working day.

He could have given the impression of working. Many executives in similar circumstances did that. He could accept invitations to luncheons easily avoided. He could stalk corridors carrying papers over which he could frown and shake his head. He could request technical literature on supplies and computer systems utterly inadequate or too sophisticated for Javis-Bircham’s needs, with a heavy increase of unnecessary correspondence. He could take senseless business trips to inspect the operations of magazine wholesalers and printing plants. He could attend dozens of conventions and trade meetings, give speeches and buy the bodies of hat-check girls.

But none of that was his style. He needed work; he could not endure inaction for long. And so he turned to “empire building,” plotting how he might enlarge the size of the Circulation Department and increase his own influence and power.

And in his personal life he felt the same need for action after the brief hibernation following his divorce (during which period he vowed, inexplicably, to remain continent). This desire to “do” dated from his meeting with Celia Montfort. He punched his phone for an outside line, then dialed her number. Again.

He had not seen her nor had he spoken to her since that Sunday he was introduced at the Mortons’ and she had napped on his bed. He had looked her up in the Manhattan directory. There it was: “Montfort, C.” at an East End address. But each time he called, a male voice answered, lisping: “Mith Montforth rethidenth.”

Blank assumed it was a butler or houseman. The voice, in spite of its flutiness, was too mature to be that of the 12-year-old brother. Each time he was informed that Mith Montfort was out of town and, no, the speaker did not know when she might return.

But this time the reply was different. It was “Mith Montforth rethidenth” again, but additional information was offered: Miss Montfort had arrived, had called from the airport, and if Mr. Blank cared to phone later in the day, Mith Montforth would undoubtedly be at home.

He hung up, feeling a steaming hope. He trusted his instincts, though he could not always say why he acted as he did. He was convinced there was something there for him with that strange, disturbing woman: something significant. If he had energy and the courage to act…

Daniel Blank stepped into the open lobby of the Computer Room and nodded to the receptionist. He went directly to the large white enameled cabinet to the right of the inner doors and drew out a sterile duster and skull cap hermetically sealed in a clear plastic bag.

He donned white cap and duster, went through the first pair of swinging glass doors. Six feet away was the second pair, and the space between was called the “air lock,” although it was not sealed. It was illuminated by cold blue fluorescent lights said to have a germicidal effect. He paused a moment to watch the ordered activity in the Computer Room.

AMROK II worked 24 hours a day and was cared for by three shifts of acolytes, 20 in each shift. Blank was gratified to note that all on the morning shift were wearing the required disposable paper caps and dusters. Four men sat at a stainless steel table; the others, young men and women, sexless in their white paper costumes, attended the computer and auxiliary data-processing machines, one of which was presently chattering softly and spewing out an endless record that folded up neatly into partly serrated sheets in a wire basket. It was, Blank knew, a compilation of state unemployment insurance taxes.

The mutter of this machine and the soft start-stop whir of tape reels on another were the only sounds heard when Blank pushed through the second pair of swinging glass doors. The prohibition against unnecessary noise was rigidly enforced. And this glaring, open room was not only silent, it was dust-proof, with temperature and humidity rigidly controlled and monitored. An automatic alarm would be triggered by any unusual source of magnetic radiation. Fire was unthinkable. Not only was smoking prohibited but even the mere possession of matches or cigarette lighters was grounds for instant dismissal. The walls were unpainted stainless steel, the lamps fluorescent. The Computer Room was an unadorned vault, an operating theatre, floating on rubber mountings within the supporting body of the Javis-Bircham Building.

And 90 percent of this was sheer nonsense, humbuggery. This was not an atomic research facility, nor a laboratory dealing with deadly viruses. The business activities of AMROK II did not demand these absurd precautions-the sterile caps and gowns, the “air lock,” the prohibition against normal conversation.

Daniel Blank had decreed all this, deliberately. Even before it was installed and operating, he realized the functioning of AMROK II would be an awesome mystery to most of the employees of Javis-Bircham, including Blank’s superiors: vice presidents, the president, the board of directors. Blank intended to keep the activities of the Computer Room an enigma. Not only did it insure his importance to the firm, but it made his task much easier when the annual “budget day” rolled around and he requested consistently rising amounts for his department’s operating expenses.