He was convinced his basic method of approach was sound: the quick, brisk step; the eye-to-eye smile; the whole appearance of ease and neighborliness. Then the fast turn, the blow.
He had, of course, made several errors. For instance, during the attack on Frank Lombard, he had worn his usual black calfskin shoes with leather soles. At the moment of assault his right foot had slipped on the pavement, leather sliding on cement. It was not, fortunately, a serious error, but he had been off-balance, and when Lombard fell backward the ice ax was pulled from Blank’s grasp.
So, before the murder of Bernard Gilbert, Blank had purchased a pair of light-weight crepe-soled shoes. It was getting on to December, with cold rain, sleet, snow flurries, and the rubber-soled shoes gave much better traction and stability.
Similarly, in the attack on Lombard, the leather handle of the ice ax had twisted in his sweated hand. Reflecting on this, he had, before the Gilbert assault, roughed the leather handle by rubbing it gently with fine sandpaper. This worked well enough, but he still was not satisfied. He purchased a pair of black suede gloves, certainly a common enough article of apparel in early winter weather. The grip between suede glove and the roughened leather of the ice ax handle was all that could be desired.
These were details, of course, and those who had never climbed mountains would shrug them off as of no consequence. But a good climb depended on just such details. You could have all the balls in the world, but if your equipment was faulty, or your technique wasn’t right, you were dead.
There were other things to consider; you just didn’t go out and murder the first man you met. He cancelled out rainy and sleety nights; he needed a reasonably dry pavement for that quick whirl after he had passed his victim. A cloudy or moonless night was best, with no strong wind to tug at his unbuttoned coat. And he carried as few objects and as little identification as possible; less to drop accidentally at the scene.
He went to his health club twice a week and worked out, and he did his stretch exercises at home every night, so strength was no problem. He was, he knew, in excellent physical condition. He could lift, turn, bend, probably better than most boys half his age. He watched his diet; his reactions were still fast. He meant to keep them that way, and looked forward to climbing Devil’s Needle again in the spring, or perhaps taking a trip to the Bavarian Alps for more technical climbs. That would be a joy.
So there was the passion-just as in mountain climbing-and there was also the careful planning, the mundane details-weapon, shoes, gloves, smile-just as any great art is really, essentially, a lot of little jobs. Picasso mixed paints, did he not?
He took the same careful and thoughtful preparation in his stalk after Gilbert’s death. A stupid assassin might come home from his job and eat, or dine out and then come home, and return to his apartment house at the same time. Sooner or later, the apartment house doorman on duty would become aware of his routine.
So Daniel Blank varied his arrivals and departures, carefully avoiding a regular schedule, knowing one doorman went off duty at 8:00 p.m., when his relief arrived. Blank came and he went, casually, and usually these departures and arrivals went unobserved by a doorman busy with cabs or packages or other tasks. He didn’t prowl every night. Two nights in a row. One night in. Three out. No pattern. No formal program. Whatever occurred to him; irregularity was best. He thought of everything.
There was, he admitted, something strange that to this enterprise that meant so much to him emotionally, privately, he should bring all his talents for finicky analysis, careful classifying, all the cold, bloodless skills of his public life. It proved he supposed, he was still two, but in this case it served him well; he never made a move without thinking out its consequences.
For instance, he debated a long time whether or not, during an actual murder, he should wear a hat. At this time of year, in this weather, most men wore hats.
But it might be lost by his exertions. And, supposing he made a murder attempt and was not successful-the possibility had to be faced-and the intended victim lived to testify. Surely he would remember the presence of a hat more strongly than he would recall the absence of a hat.
“Sir, did he wear a hat?”
“Yes, he wore a black hat. A soft hat. The brim was turned down in front.”
That would be more likely than if Blank wore no hat at all.
“Sir, did he wear a hat?”
“What? Well…I don’t remember. A hat? I don’t know. Maybe. I really didn’t notice.”
So Daniel Blank wore no hat on his forays. He was that careful.
But his cool caution almost crumbled when he began his nighttime reconnaissance following the death of Bernard Gilbert. It was on the third night of his aimless meanderings that he became aware of what seemed to be an unusual number of single men, most of them tall and well proportioned, strolling through the shadowed streets of his neighborhood. The pavements were alive with potential victims!
He might have been mistaken, of course; Christmas wasn’t so far away, and people were out shopping. Still…So he followed a few of these single males, far back and across the street. They turned a corner. He turned a corner. They turned another corner. He turned another corner. But none of them, none of the three he followed cautiously from a distance, ever entered a house. They kept walking steadily, not fast and not slow, up one street and down another.
He stopped suddenly, half-laughing but sick with fear. Decoys! Policemen. Who else could they be? He went home immediately, to think.
He analyzed the problem accurately: (1) He could cease his activities at once. (2) He could continue his activities in another neighborhood, even another borough. (3) He could continue his activities in his own neighborhood, welcoming the challenge.
Possibility (1) he rejected immediately. Could he stop now, having already come so far, with the final prize within recognizable reach? Possibility (2) required a more reasoned dissection. Could he carry a concealed weapon-the ice ax-by taxi, bus, subway, his own car, for any distance without eventual detection? Or (3), might he risk it?
He thought of his options for two whole days, and the solution, when it came, made him smack his thigh, smile, shake his head at his own stupidity. Because, he realized, he had been analyzing, thinking along in a vertical, in-line, masculine fashion-as if such a problem could be solved so!
He had come so far from this, so far from AMROK II, that he was ashamed he had fallen into the same trap once again. The important thing here was to trust his instincts, follow his passions, do as he was compelled, divorced from cold logic and bloodless reason. If he was finally to know truth, it would come from heart and gut.
And besides, there was risk-the sweet attraction of risk.
There was a dichotomy here that puzzled him. In the planning of the crime he was willing to use cool and formal reason: the shoes, the gloves, the weapon, the technique-all designed with logic and precision. And yet when it came to the reason for the act, he deliberately shunned the same method of thought and sought the answer in “heart and gut.”
He finally came to the realization that logic might do for method but not for motive. Again, to use the analogy of creative art, the artist thought out the techniques of his art, or learned them from others and, with patience, became a skilled craftsman. But where craft ended and art began was at the point where the artist had to draw on his own emotions, dreams, fervors and fears, penetrating deep into himself to uncover what he needed to express by his skill.
The same could be said of mountain climbing. A man might be an enormously talented and knowledgeable mountaineer. But it was just a specialized skill if, within him, there was no drive to push himself to the edge of life and know worlds that the people of the valley could not imagine.