The 1st Deadly Sin

Part IV
1

He thought she was wearing a loose-fitting dress of black crepe with white cuffs. Then he saw the cuffs were actually bandages about both wrists. But he was so inflamed with what he wanted to tell her that he didn’t question the bandages, knowing. Instead, he merely held up before her eyes Frank Lombard’s driver’s license. She would not look at it, but took him by the arm and drew him slowly, step by step, to the upstairs room. Where he was impotent.

“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I understand. Believe me, I understand and love you for it. I told you sex should be a ritual, a ceremony. But a rite has no consummation. It’s a celebration of a consummation. Do you understand? The ritual celebrates the climax but does not encompass it. It’s all right, my darling. Don’t think you’ve failed. This is best. That you and I worship the fulfillment-a continuing celebration of an unknowable finality. Isn’t that what prayer is all about?”

But he was not listening to her, so livid was he with the need to talk. He snapped on that cruel overhead light and showed her the driver’s license and newspaper headlines, proving himself.

“For you,” he said. “I did it for you.” Then they both laughed, knowing it was a lie.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “Every detail. I want to know everything that happened.”

His soft scrotum huddled in her hand, a dead bird.

He told her, with pride, of the careful planning, the long hours of slow thought. His first concern, he said, had been the weapon.

“Did I want a weapon that could be discarded?” he asked rhetorically. “I decided not, not to leave a weapon that might be traced to me. So I chose a weapon I would take with me when I left.”

“To be used again,” she murmured.

“Yes. Perhaps. Well…I told you I’m a climber. I’m not an expert; just an amateur. But I have this ice ax. It’s a tool of course, but also a very wicked weapon. All tempered steel. A hammer on one side of the head for pitons, and a tapered steel pick on the other. There are hundreds just like it. Also, it has a leather-wrapped handle and a rawhide thong hanging from the butt. Heavy enough to kill, but small and light enough to carry concealed. You know that coat I have with slits in the pockets, so that I can reach inside?”

“Do I not!” she smiled.

“Yes,” he smiled in reply. “I figured I could wear that coat, the front unbuttoned and hanging loose. My left hand would be through the slit, and I could carry the ice ax by the leather throng, dangling from my fingers but completely concealed. When the time came to use it, I could reach inside the unbuttoned coat with my right hand and take the ax by the handle.”

“Brilliant,” she said.

“A problem,” he shrugged. “I tried it. I practised. It worked perfectly. If I was calm and cool, unhurried, I could transfer the ax to my right hand in seconds. Seconds! One or two. No more. Then, after, the ax would disappear beneath my coat again. Held by my left hand through the pocket slit.”

“Did you see his eyes?” she asked.

“His eyes?” he said vaguely. “No. I must tell you this in my own way.”

She leaned forward to put her lips on his left nipple; his eyes closed with pleasure.

“I didn’t want to travel too far,” he said. “The farther I went, carrying the concealed ice ax, the greater the danger. It had to be in my own neighborhood. Near. Why not? The murder of a stranger. A crime without motive. What difference if it was next door or a hundred miles away? Who could connect me?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh yes.”

He told her how he had walked the streets for three nights, seeking the lonely blocks, noting the lighting, remembering bus stops and subway stations, lobbies with doormen, deserted stretches of unattended stores and garages.

“I couldn’t plan it. I decided it would have to be chance. Pure chance. ‘Pure.’ That’s a funny word, Celia. But it was pure. I swear to you. I mean, there was no sex connected with it. I mean, I didn’t walk around with an erection. I didn’t have an orgasm when I did it. Nothing like that. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“It really was pure. I swear it. It was religious. I was God’s will. I know that sounds insane. But that’s how I felt. Maybe it is mad. A sweet madness. I was God on earth. When I looked at people on shadowed streets…Is he the one? Is he the one? My God, the power!”

“Oh yes. Darling, oh yes.”

He was so tender with her in that awful room…so tender. And then, the memory of the two times he had been unfaithful to his wife…He had enjoyed both adventures; both women had been his wife’s superior in bed. But he had not loved her the less for that. Instead, unaccountably, his infidelity had increased his affection for and kindness toward his wife. He touched her, kissed her, listened to her.

And now, telling this woman of murder, he felt the same thaw: not increased sexuality but heightened sweetness because he had a new mistress. He touched Celia’s cheek, kissed her fingertips, murmured, saw to her comfort, and in all things acted the gentle and parfait lover, loving her the more because he loved another most.

“It was not someone else doing it,” he assured her. “You’ve read these stories where the killer blames it on someone else. Another him. Someone who took over, controlled his mind and guided his hand. It was nothing like that. Celia, I have never had such a feeling of being myself. You know? It was a sense of oneness, of me. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes. And then?”

“I hit him. We smiled. We nodded. We passed, and I transferred the ax to my right hand. Just as I had rehearsed. And I hit him. It made a sound. I can’t describe it. A sound. And he fell forward so heavily that it pulled the ax out of my hand. I didn’t know that might happen. But I didn’t panic. Jesus, I was cool. Cold! I bent down and twisted the ax to pull it free. Tough. I had to put my foot on the back of his neck and pull up on the ax with both hands to free it. I did that. I did it! And then I found his wallet and took his driver’s license. To prove to you.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Didn’t I?”

“Yes. You did.”

They both laughed then, and rolled on the soiled bed, holding.

He tried, again, to enter into her and did not succeed, not caring, for he had already surpassed her. But he would not tell her that since she knew. She took his penis into her mouth, not licking or biting, but just in her mouth: a warm communion. He was hardly conscious of it; it did not excite him. He was a god; she was worshipping.

“One other thing,” he said dreamily. “When, finally, on the night, I looked down the street and saw him walking toward me through that orange glow, and I thought yes, now, he is the one, I loved him so much then, loved him.”

“Loved him? Why?”

“I don’t know. But I did. And respected him. Oh yes. And had such a sense of gratitude toward him. That he was giving. So much. To me. Then I killed him.”