First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Well …” Thorsen said cautiously, “maybe.”

  “If you do, a couple of things … Is anything missing from the victim’s wallet? Particularly identification of any kind? And second, does he—or did he—use hair oil of any kind?”

  “Hair oil? What the hell is that all about?”

  Delaney frowned at the telephone. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Probably not important. But can you check?”

  “I’ll try. Anything else?”

  “One more thing. If this Bernard Gilbert dies, and it’s proved similar to the Lombard snuff, the papers are going to get hold of it, so you better be prepared for ‘Maniacal Killer on Loose’ type of thing. It’s going to get hairy.”

  “Oh God. I suppose so.”

  “Most of the pressure will be on Broughton.”

  “And the Commish.”

  “Him, too, of course. But it will affect Chief Pauley most. He’s sure to get hundreds of phony leads and false confessions. They’ll all have to be checked out, of course. And there’s a good possibility there may be imitative assaults and homicides in other parts of the city. It usually happens. But don’t be spooked by them. Eventually they’ll be weeded out …”

  He had more conversation with Deputy Inspector Thorsen. They agreed that since Dorfman was recently appointed Acting Commander of the 251st Precinct, and since Thorsen was head of personnel of the patrol division, it would be entirely logical and understandable if Thorsen went to the scene of the Gilbert assault, ostensibly to check up on how Dorfman was handling things. Thorsen promised to call Delaney back as soon as possible, and he would, personally, try to check out the question of missing identification from Bernard Gilbert’s wallet and whether or not the victim used hair oil.

  The moment he hung up, Delaney dialed the home number of Dr. Sanford Ferguson. It was getting on to 2:00 a.m., but the doctor was awake and cheerful.

  “Edward!” he said. “How’s by you? I just came in from an on-the-spot inspection of a luscious young piece. Couldn’t have been over twenty-six or seven. Oh so lovely.”

  “Dead?”

  “Oh so dead. Apparently cardiac arrest. But doesn’t that strike you as odd, Edward? A luscious young piece with a shattered heart?”

  “Married?”

  “Not legally.”

  “Is the boy friend a doctor or medical student?”

  There was silence a moment.

  “You bastard,” Ferguson said finally, “you scare me, you know that? In case you’re interested, the boy friend is a pharmacist.”

  “Beautiful,” Delaney said. “Well, he probably found a younger, more luscious piece. But doctor, why I called … There’s been an assault in the Two-five-one Precinct. Tonight. Preliminary reports are that the wound and weapon used are similar to the Lombard homicide. The victim in this case, still alive, a man named Bernard Gilbert, will be taken or has been taken to Mother of Mercy.”

  “Dear old Mother.”

  “I wondered if you’ve been assigned to this?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “I wondered if you could call the attending doctors and surgeons at Mother of Mercy and find out if it really is a Lombard-type penetration, and whether he’ll live or not, and—you know—whatever they’ll tell you.”

  Again there was silence. Then …

  “You know, Edward, you want a lot for one lousy lunch.”

  “I’ll buy you another lousy lunch.”

  Ferguson laughed. “You treat everyone differently, don’t you?”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “I guess so. And you want me to call you back with whatever I can get?”

  “If you would. Please. Also, doctor, if this man should die, will there be an autopsy?”

  “Of course. On every homicide victim. Or suspected victim.”

  “With or without next-of-kin’s consent?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “If this man dies—this Bernard Gilbert—could you do the autopsy?”

  “I’m not the Chief Medical Examiner, Edward. I’m just one of the slaves.”

  “But could you wangle it?”

  “I might be able to wangle it.”

  “I wish you would. If he dies.”

  “All right, Edward. I’ll try.”

  “One more thing …”

  Ferguson’s laughter almost broke his eardrum; Delaney held the phone up in the air until the doctor stopped spluttering.

  “Edward,” Ferguson said, “I love you. I really do. With you it’s always ‘I want two things’ or ‘I’d like three favors.’ But then you always say, ‘Oh, just one more thing.’ You’re great. Okay, what’s your ‘one more thing’?”

  “If you should happen to talk to a doctor or surgeon up at Mother of Mercy, or if you should happen to do the postmortem, find out if the victim used hair oil, will you?”

  “Hair oil?” Ferguson asked. “Hair oil,” Ferguson said. “Hair oil!” Ferguson cried. “Jesus Christ, Edward, you never forget a thing, do you?”

  “Sometimes,” Captain Delaney acknowledged.

  “Nothing important, I’ll bet. All right, I’ll keep the hair oil in mind if I do the cut-’em-up. I’m certainly not going to bother the men in emergency at Mother of Mercy with a thing like that right now.”

  “Good enough. You’ll get back to me?”

  “If I learn anything. If you don’t hear from me, it means I’ve drawn a blank.”

  Delaney rejected the idea of sleep, and went into the kitchen to put water on for instant coffee. While it was heating, he returned to the study and from a corner closet he dragged out a three-by-four foot bulletin board to which he had pinned a black-and-white street map of the 251st Precinct. The map was covered with a clear plastic flap that could be wiped clean. In the past, while on active duty, Delaney had used the map to chart location and incidence of street crimes, breaking-and-enterings, felonious assaults, etc. The map was a miniature of the big one on the wall of the commander’s office in the precinct house.

  Now he wiped the plastic overlay clean with a paper tissue, returned to the kitchen to mix his cup of black coffee, brought it back with him and sat at the desk, the map before him. He sharpened a red grease pencil and carefully marked two fat dots: on 73rd Street where Lombard had been killed and on East 84th Street where Gilbert had been assaulted. Alongside each dot he wrote the last name of the victim and the date of the attack.

  Two red dots, he acknowledged, hardly constituted a pattern, or even a crime wave. But from his experience and reading of the histories of mass murders, he was convinced additional assaults would be confined to a limited area, probably the 251st Precinct, and the assailant was probably a resident of the area. (Probably! Probably! Everything was probably.) The assassin’s success in the Lombard killing would certainly make him feel safe in his home territory.

  Delaney sat back and stared at the red dots. He gave Chief Pauley about three days to acknowledge there was no connection between the victims. Then Pauley would opt for a psychopathic killer and would do all those things Delaney had mentioned to Deputy Inspector Thorsen.

  In addition, Delaney guessed, Chief Pauley, with no announcement and no publicity, would put on 10 or 20 decoys on the streets of the 251st Precinct, from about ten p.m. till dawn. In civilian clothes, newspapers clutched under one arm, the detectives would scurry up one street and down the next, apparently residents hurrying home in the darkness, but actually inviting attack. That’s what Delaney would do. He was certain, knowing Pauley’s thoroughness, that the Chief would do it, too. It might work. And it might only serve to drive the killer farther afield if he recognized the decoys for what they were. But you took your chances and hoped. You had to do something.

  He was still staring at the red dots on the map overlay, sipping cooled black coffee and trying to compute percentages and probabilities, when the desk phone rang. He snatched it up after one ring.

  “Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

  “Thorsen.
I’m calling from a tavern on Second Avenue. They had taken Gilbert to the hospital by the time I arrived. Broughton and Pauley are with him, hoping he’ll regain consciousness and say something.”

  “Sure.”

  “Gilbert’s wallet was on the sidewalk next to him, just like in the Lombard case. Someone’s at his home now, trying to find out what, if anything, is missing.”

  “Was there money in it?”

  “Dorfman tells me yes. He thinks it was about fifty dollars.”

  “Untouched?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How is Dorfman managing?”

  “Very well.”

  “Good.”

  “He’s a little nervous.”

  “Naturally. Any prediction on whether Gilbert will live?”

  “Nothing on that. He is a short man, about five-six or five-seven. He was hit from the front. The penetration went in high up on the skull, about an inch or so above where the hair line would have been.”

  “ ‘Would have been’?”

  “Gilbert is almost completely bald. Dorfman says just a fringe of thin, grey hair around the scalp, above the ears. But not in front. He was wearing a hat, so I assume some of the hat material was driven into the wound. Jesus, Edward, I don’t like this kind of work. I saw the blood and stuff where he lay. I want to get back to my personnel records.”

  “I know. So you have nothing on whether or not he used hair oil?”

  “No, nothing. I’m a lousy detective, I admit.”

  “You did all you could. Why don’t you go home and try to get some sleep?”

  “Yes. I’ll try. Anything else you need?”

  “Copies of the Operation Lombard reports as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll put the pressure on. Edward …”

  “Yes?”

  “When I saw the pool of blood there, on the sidewalk, I got the feeling …”

  “What?”

  “That this business with Broughton is pretty small potatoes. You understand?”

  “Yes,” Delaney said gently. “I know what you mean.”

  “You’ve got to get this guy, Edward.”

  “I’ll get him.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Good, I think I’ll go home now and try to get some sleep.”

  “Yes, you do that.”

  After he hung up, Delaney drew his list, “The Suspect,” from his top drawer and went through it, item by item. None of his notations had been negated by what Thorsen had told him. If anything, his supposition had been strengthened. Certainly a swinging blow high on the skull of a short man would indicate a tall assailant. But why the attack from the front when the rear attack on Lombard had been so successful? And couldn’t Gilbert see the blow coming and dodge or throw up an arm to ward it off? A puzzle.

  He was almost ready to give it up for the night, to try to grab a few hours of sleep before dawn, when the phone rang. He reached for it, wondering again how much of his life was spent with that damned black thing pressing his ear flat and sticky.

  “Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

  “Ferguson. I’m tired, I’m sleepy, I’m irritable. So I’ll go through this fast. And don’t interrupt.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You just did. Bernard Gilbert. White male. About forty years old. Five feet six or seven. About one-fifty. Around there. I’ll skip the medical lingo. Definitely a Lombard-type wound. Struck from the front. The penetration went in about two inches above the normal hair line. But the man is almost totally bald. That answers your hair oil question.”

  “The hell it does. Just makes the cheese more binding.”

  “I’ll ignore that. Foreign matter in the wound from the felt hat he was wearing. Penetration to a depth of four or five inches. Curving downward. He’s in a deep coma. Paralyzed. Prognosis: negative. Any questions?”

  “How long do they figure?”

  “From this instant to a week or so. His heart isn’t all that strong.”

  “Will he recover consciousness?”

  “Doubtful.”

  Delaney could tell Ferguson’s patience was wearing thin.

  “Thank you, doctor. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Any time,” Ferguson assured him. “Any two o’clock in the morning you want to call.”

  “Oh, wait a minute,” Delaney said.

  “I know,” Ferguson sighed. “ ‘One more thing.’ ”

  “You won’t forget about the autopsy.”

  Ferguson began to swear—ripe, sweaty curses—and Delaney hung up softly, smiling. Then he went to bed, but didn’t sleep.

  It was something he hated and loved: hated because it kept his mind in a flux and robbed him of sleep; loved because it was a challenge: how many oranges could he juggle in the air at one time?

  All difficult cases came eventually to this point of complexity; weapon, method, motives, suspects, alibis, timing. And he had to juggle them all, catching, tossing, watching them all every second, relaxed and laughing.

  It had been his experience that when this point came in a difficult, involved investigation, when the time arrived when he wondered if he could hold onto all the threads, keep the writhings in his mind, at that point, at that time of almost total confusion, if he could just endure, and absorb more and more, then somehow the log jam loosened, he could see things beginning to run free.

  Right now it was a jam, everything caught up and canted. But he began to see key logs, things to be loosened. Then it would all run out. Now the complexity didn’t worry him. He could accept it, and more. Pile it on! There wasn’t anything one man could do that a better man couldn’t undo. That was a stupid, arrogant belief, he admitted. But if he didn’t hold it, he really should be in another line of business.

  4

  FOUR DAYS LATER BERNARD Gilbert died without regaining consciousness. By that time Chief Pauley had established, to his satisfaction, that there was no link between Lombard and Gilbert, except the nature of the attack, and he had set in motion all those things Captain Delaney had predicted: the check-up of recent escapes from mental institutions, investigation of recently released inmates, questioning of known criminals with a record of mental instability, the posting of decoys in the 251st Precinct.

  Delaney learned all this from copies of Operation Lombard reports supplied by Deputy Inspector Thorsen. Once again there were many of them, and they were long. He studied them all carefully, reading them several times. He learned details of Bernard Gilbert’s life. He learned that the victim’s wife, Monica Gilbert, had stated she believed the only thing missing from her husband’s wallet was an identification card.

  The accountants for whom Bernard Gilbert worked audited the books of a Long Island manufacturer doing secret work for the U. S. government. To gain access to the premises of the manufacturer, it was necessary for Bernard Gilbert to show a special identification card with his photo attached. It was this special identification card that was missing. The FBI had been alerted by Chief Pauley but, as far as Delaney could determine, the federal agency was not taking any active role in the investigation at this time.

  There was a long memo from Chief Pauley to Deputy Commissioner Broughton speculating on the type of weapon used in the Lombard and Gilbert assaults. The phrase “a kind of ax or pick” was used, and Delaney knew Pauley was not far behind him.

  At this point the news media had not yet made the Lombard-Gilbert connection. In fact, Gilbert’s attack earned only a few short paragraphs on inside pages. Just another street crime. Delaney considered a few moments whether to tip off Thomas Handry, then thought better of it. He’d learn soon enough, and meanwhile Chief Pauley would be free of the pressures of screaming headlines, crank calls, false confessions, and imitative crimes.

  It was the timing of his own activities that concerned Captain Delaney most. He wanted to keep up with the flood of Operation Lombard reports. He wanted desperately to interrogate Monica Gilbert himself. He needed to vi
sit Calvin Case, the crippled mountain climber, and learn what he could about ice axes. He wanted to check the progress of Christopher Langley without giving the sweet old man the feeling that he, Delaney, was leaning on him. And, of course, the two visits a day to Barbara in the hospital—that came first.

  Two days after the Gilbert attack, while the victim floated off somewhere, living and not living, but still breathing, Delaney thought long and hard on how to approach Monica Gilbert. She was sure to be spending many hours at her husband’s bedside. And it was certain she would be guarded by Operation Lombard detectives, probably a two-man team outside her house, although there might be an interior man, too.

  The Captain considered and rejected several involved plans for a clandestine meeting with her, unobserved by Operation Lombard. They all seemed too devious. He decided the best solution would be the obvious: he would call for an appointment, give his name, and then walk right up to her door. If he was braced or recognized by Broughton’s dicks he would use the same cover story he had prepared when he had gone to question the widow of Frank Lombard: as ex-commander of the 251st Precinct he had come to express his sympathy.

  It worked—up to a point. He phoned, identified himself, made an appointment to see her at her home at 4:00 p.m., when she returned from Mother of Mercy. He thought it likely she would repeat the conversation to her guard, as she had been instructed. Or perhaps her phone was tapped. Anything was possible. So, when he walked over a few minutes before four, and one of the dicks in the unmarked police car parked outside her brownstone cranked down his window, waved, and called, “Hi, Captain,” he wasn’t surprised. He waved back, although he didn’t recognize the man.

  Monica Gilbert was a strong, handsome woman, hairy, wearing a shapeless black dress that didn’t quite conceal heavy breasts, wide hips, pillar thighs. She had been brewing a pot of tea, and he accepted a cup gratefully. There were two little girls in the room, peeking out from behind their mother’s skirts. They were introduced to him as Mary and Sylvia, and he rose to bow gravely. They ran giggling from the room. He saw no sign of an interior guard.

  “Milk?” she asked. “Sugar?”

  “Thank you, no. I take it straight. How is your husband?”