First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Oh Edward.” She looked at him reproachfully. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well, I meant to but—but it slipped my mind.”

  “Slipped your mind? How could a thing like that slip your mind? Well, I’ll write a letter of condolence as soon as we get home.”

  “Yes, do that. They took up a collection for flowers. I gave twenty dollars.”

  “Poor Dorfman.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Of course I like him. As a man, a person. But he’s really not a good cop.”

  “He’s not? I thought you told me he does his job very well.”

  “He does. He’s a good administrator, keeps up on his paperwork. He’s one of the best lawyers in the Department. But he’s not a good cop. He’s a reasonable facsimile. He goes through all the motions, but he lacks the instinct.”

  “And tell me, oh wise one,” she said, “what is this great cop’s instinct?”

  He was glad to have someone to talk to about such things.

  “Well,” he said, “laugh if you like, but it does exist. What drove me to become a cop? My father wasn’t. No one in my family was. I could have gone on to law school; my marks were good enough. But all I ever wanted was to be a cop. As long as I can remember. And I’ll tell you why: because when the laundry comes back from the Chinaman—as you well know, my dear, after thirty years—I insist on—”

  “Thirty-one years, brute.”

  “All right, thirty-one years. But the first year we lived in sin.”

  “You are a brute,” she laughed.

  “Well, we did: the most marvelous year of my life.”

  She put a hand over his. “And everything since then has been anti-climax?”

  “You know better than that. All right, now let me get back to the instinct of a true cop.”

  “And the Chinaman’s laundry.”

  “Yes. Well, as you know, I insist on putting my own clean clothes away in the bureau and dresser. Socks are folded once and piled with the fold forward. Handkerchiefs are stacked with the open edges to the right. Shirts are stacked alternately, collar to the rear, collar to the front—so the stack won’t topple, you understand. And a similar system for underwear, pajamas, and so forth. And always, of course, the freshly laundered clothes go on the bottom of each pile so everything is worn evenly and in order. That’s the word: ‘order.’ That’s the way I am. You know it. I want everything in order.”

  “And that’s why you became a cop? To make the world neat and tidy?”

  “Yes.”

  She moved her head back slowly and laughed. How he loved to see her laugh. If only he could laugh like that! It was such a whole-hearted expression of pure joy: her eyes squinched shut, her mouth open, shoulders shaking, and a surprisingly full, deep guffaw that was neither feminine nor masculine but sexless and primitive as all genuine laughter.

  “Edward, Edward,” she said, spluttering a little, taking a lace-edged hanky from her purse to wipe her eyes. “You have a marvelous capacity for deluding yourself. I guess that’s why I love you so.”

  “All right,” he said, miffed. “You tell me. Why did I become a cop?”

  Again she covered his hand with hers. She looked into his eyes, suddenly serious.

  “Don’t you know?” she asked gently. “Don’t you really know? Because you love beauty. Oh, I know law and order and justice are important to you. But what you really want is a beautiful world where everything is true and nothing is false. You dreamer!”

  He thought about that a long time. Then they rose, and hand in hand they strolled into the park.

  In Central Park, there is an enclosed carrousel that has been a delight to generations of youngsters. Some days, when the wind is right, you can hear its musical tinkle from a distance; the air seems to dance.

  The animals—marvelously carved and painted horses—chase each other in a gay whirl that excites children and hypnotizes their parents. On a bench near this merry-go-round, Barbara and Edward Delaney sat to rest, shoulders touching. They could hear the music, see the giddy gyrations through trees still wearing summer’s green.

  They sat awhile in silence. Then she said, not looking at him, “Can you tell me now?”

  He nodded miserably. As rapidly as he could, he delivered a concise report of what Dr. Bernardi had told him. He omitted only the physician’s fleeting reference to a “Proteus infection.”

  “I see no choice,” he said, and gripped her hand harder. “Do you? We’ve got to get this cleared up. I’ll feel better if Bernardi brings in other men. I think you will, too. It only means five days to a week in the hospital. Then they’ll decide what must be done. I told Bernardi to go ahead, get the room. A private room. Barbara? Is that all right?”

  He wondered if she heard him. Or if she understood. Her eyes were far away, and he did not know the smile on her soft lips.

  “Barbara?” he asked again.

  “During the war,” she said, “when you were in France, I brought the children here when the weather was nice. Eddie could walk then but Elizabeth was still in the carriage. Sometimes Eddie would get tired on the way home, and I’d put him in the carriage with Liza. How he hated it!”

  “I know. You wrote me.”

  “Did I? Sometimes we’d sit on this very bench where we’re sitting now. Eddie would ride the merry-go-round all day if I let him.”

  “He always rode a white horse.”

  “You do remember,” she smiled. “Yes, he always rode a white horse, and every time he came around he’d wave at us, sitting up straight. He was so proud.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re good children, aren’t they, Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Happy children.”

  “Well, I wish Eddie would get married, but there’s no use nagging him.”

  “No. He’s stubborn. Like his father.”

  “Am I stubborn?”

  “Sometimes. About some things. When you’ve made up your mind. Like my going into the hospital for tests.”

  “You will go, won’t you?”

  She gave him a dazzling smile, then unexpectedly leaned forward to kiss him on the lips. It was a soft, youthful, lingering kiss that shocked him with its longing.

  And late that night she still burned with that longing, her body kindled with lust and fever. She came naked into his arms and seemed intent on draining him, exhausting him, taking all for herself and leaving nothing.

  He tried to contain her fury—so unlike her; she was usually languorous and teasing—but her rage defeated him. Once, thrashing about in a sweated paroxysm, she called him “Ted,” which she had not done since their life together was born.

  He did what he could to satisfy and soothe, wretchedly conscious that his words were not heard nor his caresses felt; the most he could do was be. Her storm passed, leaving him riven. He gnawed a knuckle and fell asleep.

  He awoke a few hours later, and she was gone from the bed. He was instantly alert, pulled on his old patterned robe with its frazzled cord. Barefoot, he went padding downstairs, searching all the empty rooms.

  He found her in what they still called the “parlor” of their converted brownstone, next door to the 251st Precinct house. She was on the window seat, clad in a white cotton nightgown. Her knees were drawn up, clasped. In the light from the hallway he could see her head bent forward. Her hair was down, hiding her face, drifting shoulders and knees.

  “Barbara,” he called.

  Her head came up. Hair fell back. She gave him a smile that twisted his heart.

  “I’m dying,” she said.

  2

  BARBARA DELANEY’S STAY IN the hospital for tests was longer than the five days predicted by Dr. Louis Bernardi. It became a weekend and five days, then two weekends and five days, and finally a total of fifteen days. To every inquiry by Captain Edward X. Delaney, the doctor answered only, “More tests.”

  From his daily—somet
imes twice-daily—visits to his wife’s private room, Delaney came away with the frightening impression that things were not going well at all. The fever persisted, up one day, down slightly the next. But the course was steadily upward. Once it hit almost 103; the woman was burning up.

  He himself had been witness to the sudden chills that racked her body, set teeth chattering and limbs trembling. Nurses came hurrying with extra blankets and hot water bottles. Five minutes later she was burning again; blankets were tossed aside, her face rosy, she gasped for breath.

  New symptoms developed during those fifteen days: headaches, urination so difficult she had to be catheterized, severe pain in the lumbar region, sudden attacks of nausea that left her limp. Once she vomited into a basin he held for her. She looked up at him meekly; he turned away to stare out the window, his eyes bleary.

  On the morning he finally decided, against his wife’s wishes, to dismiss Bernardi and bring in a new man, he was called at his Precinct office and summoned to an early afternoon meeting with Bernardi in his wife’s hospital room. Lieutenant Dorfman saw him off with anguished eyes.

  “Please, Captain,” he said, “try not to worry. She’s going to be all right.”

  Marty Dorfman was an extraordinarily tall (6’4”) Jew with light blue eyes and red hair that spiked up from a squeezed skull. He wore size 14 shoes and couldn’t find gloves to fit. He seemed constantly to be dribbled with crumbs, and had never been known to swear.

  Nothing fitted; his oversize uniform squirmed on thin shoulders, trousers bagged like a Dutch boy’s bloomers. Cigarette ashes smudged his cuffs. Occasionally his socks didn’t match, and he had lost the clasp on the choker collar of his jacket. His shoes were unshined, and he reported for duty with a dried froth of shaving cream beneath his ears.

  Once, when a patrolman, he had been forced to kill a knife-wielding burglar. Since then he carried an unloaded gun. He thought no one knew, but everyone did. As Captain Delaney had told his wife, Dorfman’s paperwork was impeccable and he had one of the finest legal minds in the Department. He was a sloven, but when men of the 251st Precinct had personal problems, they went to him. He had never been known to miss the funeral of a policeman killed in line of duty. Then he wore a clean uniform and wept.

  “Thank you, lieutenant,” Delaney said stiffly. “I will call as soon as possible. I fully expect to return before you go off. If not, don’t wait for me. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Dr. Louis Bernardi, Delaney decided was perfectly capable of holding the hand of a dying man and saying, “There there.” Now he was displaying the X-rays proudly, as if they were his own Rembrandt prints.

  “The shadows!” he cried. “See the shadows!”

  He had drawn a chair up close to the bedside of Barbara Delaney. The Captain stood stolidly on the other side, hands clasped behind him so their tremble might not reveal him.

  “What are they?” he asked in his iron voice.

  “What is it?” his wife murmured.

  “Kidney stones!” Bernardi cried happily. “Yes, dear lady,” he continued, addressing the woman on the bed who stared at him sleepily, her head wavering slightly, “the possibility was there: a stubborn fever and chills. And more recently the headaches, nausea, difficulty in passing water, pain in the lower back. This morning, after more than ten days of exhaustive tests—which I am certain, he-he, you found exhausting as well as exhaustive—we held a conference—all the professional men who have been concerned with your condition—and the consensus is that you are, unhappily, suffering from a kidney calculus.”

  His tone was so triumphant that Delaney couldn’t trust himself to speak. His wife turned her head on the pillow to look warningly at him. When he nodded, she turned back to Bernardi to ask weakly:

  “How did I get kidney stones?”

  The doctor leaned back in his chair, made his usual gesture of placing his two index fingers together and pressing them against his pouting lips.

  “Who can say?” he asked softly. “Diet, stress, perhaps a predisposition, heredity. There is so much we don’t know. If we knew everything, life would be a bore, would it not? He!”

  Delaney grunted disgustedly. Bernardi paid no heed.

  “In any event, that is our diagnosis. Kidney stones. A concretion frequently found in the bladder or kidneys. A hard, inorganic stone. Some no larger than a pinhead. Some quite large. They are foreign matter lodged in living tissue. The body, the living tissue, cannot endure this invasion. Hence, the fever, the chills, the pain. And, of course, the difficulty in urinating. Oh yes, that above all.”

  Once again Delaney was infuriated by the man’s self-satisfaction. To Bernardi, it was all a crossword puzzle from the Times.

  “How serious is it?” Barbara asked faintly.

  A glaze seemed to come down over Bernardi’s swimming eyes, a milky, translucent film. He could see out but no one could see in.

  “We needed the blood tests and these sensitive plates. And then, since you have been here, the symptoms that developed gave us added indications. Now we know what we are facing.”

  “How serious is it?” Barbara asked again, more determinedly.

  “We feel,” Bernardi went on, not listening, “we feel that in your case, dear lady, surgery is indicated. Oh yes. Definitely. I am sorry to say. Surgery.”

  “Wait,” Delaney held up his hand. “Wait just a minute. Before we start talking about surgery. I know a man who had kidney stones. They gave him a liquid, something, and he passed them and was all right. Can’t my wife do the same?”

  “Quite impossible,” Bernardi said shortly. “When the stones are tiny, that procedure is sometimes effective. These X-rays show a large area of inflammation. Surgery is indicated.”

  “Who decided that?” Delaney demanded.

  “We did.”

  “ ‘We’?” Delaney asked. “Who is ‘we’?”

  Bernardi looked at him coldly. He sat back, pulled up one trouser leg, carefully crossed his knees. “Myself and the specialists I called in,” he said. “I have their professional opinions here, Captain—their written and signed opinions—and I have prepared a duplicate set for your use.”

  Captain Edward X. Delaney had interrogated enough witnesses and suspects in his long career to know when a man or woman was lying. The tip-off could come in a variety of ways. With the stupid or inexperienced it came with a physical gesture: a shifting away of the eyes, a nervous movement, blinking, perhaps a slight skim of sweat or a sudden deep breath. The intelligent and experienced revealed their falsehood in different ways: a too deliberate nonchalance, or an “honest” stare, eyeball to eyeball, or by a serious, intent fretting of the brows. Sometimes they leaned forward and smiled candidly.

  But this man was not lying; the Captain was convinced of that. He was also convinced Bernardi was not telling the whole truth. He was holding something back, something distasteful to him.

  “All right,” Delaney grated, “we have their signed opinions. I assume they all agree?”

  Bernardi’s eyes glittered with malice. He leaned forward to pat Barbara’s hand, lying limply atop the thin blue blanket. “There there,” he said.

  “It is not a very serious operation,” he continued. “It is performed frequently in every hospital in the country. But all surgery entails risk. Even lancing a boil. I am certain you understand this. No surgery should ever be taken lightly.”

  “We don’t take it lightly,” Delaney said angrily, thinking this man—this “foreigner”—just didn’t know how to talk.

  During this exchange Barbara Delaney’s head moved side to side, back and forth between husband and doctor.

  “Very well,” Delaney went on, holding himself in control, “you recommend surgery. You remove those kidney stones, and my wife regains her health. Is that it? There’s nothing more you’re not telling us?”

  “Edward,” she said. “Please.”

  “I want to know,” he said stubbornly. “I want you to know.”<
br />
  Bernardi sighed. He seemed about to mediate between them, then thought better of it.

  “That is our opinion,” he nodded. “I cannot give you an iron-clad one hundred percent guarantee. No physician or surgeon can. You must know that. This, admittedly, will be an ordeal for Mrs. Delaney. Normal recuperation from this type of surgery demands a week to ten days in the hospital, and several weeks in bed at home. I don’t wish to imply that this is of little importance. It is a serious situation, and I take it seriously, as I am certain you do also. But you are essentially a healthy woman, dear lady, and I see nothing in your medical record that would indicate anything but a normal recovery.”

  “And there’s no choice but surgery?” Delaney demanded again.

  “No. You have no choice.”

  A small cry came from Barbara Delaney, no louder than a kitten’s mew. She reached out a pale hand to her husband; he grasped it firmly in his big paw.

  “But we have no assurance?” he asked, realizing he was again repeating himself, and that his voice was desperate.

  The translucent film over Bernardi’s eyes seemed to become more opaque. Now it was the pearly cover on the eyes of a blind dog.

  “No assurance,” he said shortly. “None whatsoever.”

  Silence fell into the pastel room like a gentle rain. They looked at each other, all three, heads going back and forth, eyes flickering. They could hear the noises of the hospital: loudspeakers squawking, carts creaking by, murmured voices, and somewhere a radio playing dance music. But in this room the three looked into each others’ eyes and were alone, swaddled in silence.

  “Thank you, doctor,” Delaney said harshly. “We will discuss it.”

  Bernardi nodded, rose swiftly. “I will leave you these documents,” he said, placing a file on the bedside table. “I suggest you read them carefully. Please do not delay your decision more than twenty-four hours. We must not let this go on, and plans must be made.”

  He bounced from the room, light on his feet for such a stout man.

  Edward X. Delaney had been born a Catholic and raised a Catholic. Communion and confession were as much a part of his life as love and work. He was married in the Church, and his children attended parochial schools. His faith was monolithic. Until 1945 …