First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “What does he want?”

  “Broughton? He wants to be commissioner, then mayor, then governor, then President of these here You-nited States. He’s got ambition and drive you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I gather you don’t approve of him.”

  “You gather right. I’ve had one personal interview with him. You know how most men carry pictures of their wives and children in their wallets? Broughton carries pictures of himself.”

  “Nice. Does he have any clout? Political clout?”

  “Very heavy indeed. Queens and Staten Island for starters. The talk is that he’s aiming for the primary next year. On a ‘law and order’ platform. You know, ‘We must clamp down on crime in the streets, no matter what it costs.’ ”

  “You think he’ll make it?”

  “He might. If he can bring off his Operation Lombard thing, it’s bound to help. And if Lombard’s killer turns out to be a black heroin addict on welfare who’s living with a white fifteen-year-old hippie with long blonde hair, there’ll be no stopping Broughton.”

  “You think the mayor’s worried?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I guess. Thank you, Handry. You’ve made a lot of things a lot clearer.”

  “Not for me. What the hell is going on?”

  “Will you give me a day—or two?”

  “No more. Gilbert died, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  “There’s a connection, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two days,” Handry said. “No more. If I don’t hear from you by then I’ll have to start guessing. In print.”

  “Good enough.”

  He walked home, the shopping bag bumping against his knee. Now he could understand something of what was going on—the tension of Thorsen, Johnson’s grimness, Alinski’s presence. He really didn’t want to get involved in all that political shit. He was a cop, a professional. Right now, all he wanted to do was catch a killer, but he seemed bound and strangled by this maze of other men’s ambitions, feuds, obligations.

  What had happened, he realized, was that his search for the killer of Lombard and Gilbert had become a very personal thing to him, a private thing, and he resented the intrusion of other men, other circumstances, other motives. He needed help, of course—he couldn’t do everything himself—but essentially it was a duel, a two-man combat, and outside advice, pressures, influence were to be shunned. You knew what you could do, and you respected your opponent’s ability and didn’t take him lightly. Whether it was a fencing exhibition or a duel to the death, you put your cock on the line.

  But all that was egotism he admitted, groaning aloud. Stupid male machismo, believing that nothing mattered unless you risked your balls. It should not, it could not affect his decision which, as Barbara and Deputy Mayor Alinski had recognized, was essentially a moral choice.

  Thinking this way, brooding, his brain in a whirl, he turned into his own block, head down, schlepping along with his heavy shopping bag, when a harsh voice called, “Delaney!”

  He stopped slowly. Like most detectives in New York—in the world!—he had helped send men up. To execution, or to long or short prison terms, or to mental institutions. Most of them vowed revenge—in the courtroom, in threats phoned by their friends, in letters. Very few of them, thankfully, ever carried out their threats. But there were a few …

  Now, hearing his name called from a dark sedan parked on a poorly lighted street, realizing he was unarmed, he turned slowly toward the car. He let the shopping bag drop to the sidewalk. He raised his arms slightly, palms turned forward.

  But then he saw the uniformed driver in the front seat. And in the back, leaning toward the cranked-down window, the bulk and angry face of Deputy Commissioner Broughton. The cigar, clenched in his teeth, was burning furiously.

  “Delaney!” Broughton said again, more of a command than a greeting. The Captain stepped closer to the car. Broughton made no effort to open the door, so Delaney was forced to bow forward from the waist to speak to him. He was certain this was deliberate on Broughton’s part, to keep him in a supplicant’s position.

  “Sir?” he asked.

  “Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “We sent a man to Florida. It turns out that Lombard’s driver’s license is missing. The widow says you spoke to her about it. You were seen entering her house. You knew the license was missing. I could rack you up for withholding evidence.”

  “But I reported it, sir.”

  “You reported it? To Pauley?”

  “No, I didn’t think it was that important. I reported it to Dorfman, Acting Commander of the Two-five-one Precinct. I’m sure he sent a report to the Traffic Department. Check the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, sir. I’m certain you’ll find a missing license report was filed with them.”

  There was silence for a moment. A cloud of rank cigar smoke came billowing out the window, into Delaney’s face. Still he stooped.

  “Why did you go see Gilbert’s wife?” Broughton demanded.

  “For the same reason I went to see Mrs. Lombard,” Delaney said promptly. “To present my condolences. As commander and ex-commander of the precinct in which the crimes occurred. Good public relations for the Department.”

  Again there was a moment’s silence.

  “You got an answer for everything, you wise bastard,” Broughton said angrily. He was in semi-darkness. Delaney, bending down, could barely make out his features. “You been seeing Thorsen? And Inspector Johnson?”

  “Of course I’ve been seeing Deputy Inspector Thorsen, sir. He’s been a friend of mine for many years.”

  “He’s your ‘rabbi’—right?”

  “Yes. And he introduced me to Johnson. Just because I’m on leave of absence doesn’t mean I have to stop seeing old friends in the Department.”

  “Delaney, I don’t trust you. I got a nose for snots like you, and I got a feeling you’re up to something. Just listen to this: you’re still on the list, and I can stomp on you any time I want to. You know that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t fuck me, Delaney. I can do more to you than you can do to me. You coppish?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  So far he had held his temper under control and now, in a split-second, he made his decision. His anger wasn’t important, and neither was Broughton’s obnoxious personality. He brought the shopping bag closer to the car window.

  “Sir,” he said, “I have something here I’d like to show you. I think it may possibly help—”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Broughton interrupted roughly, and Delaney heard the belch. “I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help. The only way you can help me is to crawl in a hole and pull it in over your head. Is that clear?”

  “Sir, I’ve been—”

  “Jesus Christ, how can I get through to you? Fuck off, Delaney. That’s all I want from you. Just fuck off, you shit-head.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Edward X. Delaney said, almost delirious with pleasure. “I heard. I understand.”

  He stood and watched the black sedan pull away. See? You worry, brood, wrestle with “moral problems” and such crap and then suddenly a foul-mouthed moron solves the whole thing for you. He went into his own home happily, called Deputy Inspector Thorsen and, after reporting his meeting with Broughton, told Thorsen he wanted to continue the investigation on his own.

  “Hang on a minute, Edward,” Thorsen said. Delaney guessed Inspector Johnson and Deputy Mayor Alinski were still there, and Ivar was repeating the conversation to them. Thorsen was back again in about two minutes.

  “Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Good luck.”

  7

  HE SEEMED TO BE spending a lot of time doodling, staring off into space, jotting down almost incomprehensible notes, outlining programs he tore up and discarded as soon as they were completed. But he was, he knew, gradually evolv
ing a sensible campaign in the two weeks following the meeting in Thorsen’s home.

  He sat down with Christopher Langley in the Widow Zimmerman’s apartment and, while she fussed about, urging them to more tea and crumbcake, they went over Langley’s firm schedule for his investigation. The little man had already discovered two more stores in Manhattan that sold ice axes, neither of which had mailing lists or kept a record of customers’ purchases.

  “That’s all right,” Delaney said grimly. “We can’t be lucky all the time. We’ll do what we can with what we have.”

  Langley would continue to look for stores in Manhattan where the ice ax was sold, then broadening his search to the other boroughs. Then he would check tool and outdoor equipment jobbers and wholesalers. Then he would try to assemble a list of American manufacturers of ice axes. Then he would assemble a list of names and addresses of foreign manufacturers of mountaineering gear who exported their products to the U.S., starting with West Germany, then Austria, then Switzerland.

  “It’s a tremendous job,” Delaney told him.

  Langley smiled, seemingly not at all daunted by the dimensions of his task.

  “More crumbcake?” the Widow Zimmerman asked brightly. “It’s homemade.”

  Langley had told the truth; she was a lousy cook.

  Delaney had another meeting with Calvin Case, who announced proudly that he was now refraining from taking his first drink of the day until his bedside radio began the noon news broadcast.

  “I have it prepared,” Case said, “but I don’t touch it until I hear that chime. Then …”

  Delaney congratulated him, and when Case repeated his offer of help, they began to figure out how to handle the Outside Life sales checks.

  “We got a problem,” Case told him. “It’ll be easy enough to pull every sales slip that shows a purchase of an ice ax during the past seven years. But what if your man bought it ten years ago?”

  “Then his name should show up on the mailing list. I’ll have someone working on that.”

  “Okay, but what if he bought the ice ax some place else but maybe bought some other mountain gear at Outside Life?”

  “Well, couldn’t you pull every slip that shows a purchase of mountain climbing gear of any type?”

  “That’s the problem,” Case said. “A lot of stuff used in mountaineering is used by campers, back-packers, and a lot of people who never go near a mountain. I mean stuff like rucksacks, lanterns, freeze-dried foods, gloves, web belts and harnesses. Hell, ice fishermen buy crampons, and yachtsmen buy the same kind of line mountaineers use. So where does that leave us?”

  Delaney thought a few minutes. Case took another drink.

  “Look,” Delaney said, “I’m not going to ask you to go through a hundred thousand sales checks more than once. Why don’t you do this: why don’t you pull every check that has anything at all to do with mountain climbing? I mean anything. Rope, rucksacks, food—whatever. That will be a big stack of sales checks—right? And it will include a lot of non-mountain climbers. That’s okay. At the same time you make a separate file of every sales check that definitely lists the purchase of an ice ax. After you’ve finished with all the checks, we’ll go through your ice ax file first and pull every one purchased by a resident of the Two-five-one Precinct, and look ’em up. If that doesn’t work, we’ll pull every resident of the Precinct from your general file of mountaineering equipment purchases. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll branch out and take in everyone in that file.”

  “Jesus Christ. And if that doesn’t work, I suppose you’ll investigate every one of those hundred thousand customers in the big file?”

  “There won’t be that many. There have got to be people who bought things at Outside Life several times over the past seven years. Notice that Sol Appel estimates a hundred thousand sales checks in storage, but only thirty thousand on his mailing list. I’ll check with him, or you can, but I’d guess he’s got someone winnowing out repeat buyers, and only new customers are added to the mailing list.”

  “That makes sense. All right, suppose there are thirty thousand individual customers. If you don’t get anywhere with the sales checks I pull, you’ll investigate all thirty thousand?”

  “If I have to,” Delaney nodded. “But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Meanwhile, how does the plan sound to you—I mean your making two files: one of ice ax purchases, one of general mountaineering equipment purchases?”

  “It sounds okay.”

  “Then can I make arrangements with Sol Appel to have the sales checks sent up here?”

  “Sure. You’re a nut—you know that, Captain?”

  “I know.”

  The meeting with Monica Gilbert called for more caution and deliberation. He walked past her house twice, on the other side of the street, and could see no signs of surveillance, no uniformed patrolmen, no unmarked police cars. But even if the guards had been called off, it was probably that her phone was still tapped. Remembering Broughton’s threat to “stomp” him, he had no desire to risk a contact that the Deputy Commissioner would learn about.

  Then he remembered her two little girls. One of them, the older, was surely of school age—perhaps both of them. Monica Gilbert, if she was sending her children to a public school, and from what Delaney had learned of her circumstances she probably was, would surely walk the children to the nearest elementary school, three blocks away, and call for them in the afternoon.

  So, the next morning, he stationed himself down the block, across the street, and waited, stamping his feet against the cold and wishing he had worn his earmuffs. But, within half an hour, he was rewarded by the sight of Mrs. Gilbert and her two little girls, bundled up in snowsuits, exiting from the brownstone. He followed them, across the street and at a distance, until she left her daughters at the door of the school. She started back, apparently heading home, and he crossed the street, approached her, raised his hat.

  “Mrs. Gilbert.”

  “Why, it’s Captain … Delaney?”

  “Yes. How are you?”

  “Well, thank you. And thank you for your letter of condolence. It was very kind of you.”

  “Yes, well … Mrs. Gilbert, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes. Would you like a cup of coffee? We could go to a luncheonette.”

  She looked at him a moment, debating. “Well … I’m on my way home. Why don’t you come back with me? I always have my second cup after the girls are in school.”

  “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  He had carefully brought along the Xerox copy of the Outside Life mailing list, three packs of 3x5 filing cards, and a small, hand-drawn map of the 251st Precinct, showing only its boundaries.

  “Good coffee,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Mrs. Gilbert, you told me you wanted to help. Do you still feel that way?”

  “Yes. More than ever. Now …”

  “It’s just routine work. Boring.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “All right.”

  He told her what he wanted. She was to go through the 30,000 names and addresses on the mailing list, and when she found one within the 251st Precinct, she was to make out a typed file card for each person. When she had finished the list, she was then to type out her own list, with two carbons, of her cards of the Precinct residents.

  “Do you have any questions?” he asked her.

  “Do they have to live strictly within the boundaries of this Precinct?”

  “Well … use your own judgment on that. If it’s only a few blocks outside, include them.”

  “Will this help find my husband’s killer?”

  “I think it will, Mrs. Gilbert.”

  She nodded. “All right. I’ll get started on it right away. Besides, I think it’s best if I have something to keep me busy right now.”

  He looked at her admiringly.

  Later, he wondered why he felt so pleased with himself after his meetings with Calvin Case and Mrs.
Gilbert. He realized it was because he had been discussing names and addresses. Names! Up to now it had all been steel tools and cans of oil. But now he had names—a reservoir, a Niagara of names! And addresses! Perhaps nothing would come of it. He was prepared for that. But meanwhile he was investigating people, not things, and so he was pleased.

  The interview with Thomas Handry was ticklish. Delaney told him only as much as he felt Handry should know, believing the reporter was intelligent enough to fill in the gaps. For instance, he told Handry that both Lombard and Gilbert had been killed with the same weapon—had apparently been killed with the same weapon. He didn’t specify an ice ax, and Handry, writing notes furiously, nodded without asking more questions on the type of weapon used. As a newspaperman he knew the value of such qualifiers as “apparently,” “allegedly,” and “reportedly.”

  Delaney took complete responsibility for his own investigation, made no mention of Thorsen, Johnson, Alinski or Broughton. He said he was concerned because the crimes had occurred in his precinct, and he felt a personal responsibility. Handry looked up from his notebook to stare at Delaney a long time, but made no comment. Delaney told him he was convinced the killer was a psychopath, that Lombard and Gilbert were chance victims, and that the murderer would slay again. Handry wrote it all down and, thankfully, didn’t inquire why Delaney didn’t take what he had to Operation Lombard.

  Their big argument involved when Handry could publish. The reporter wanted to go at once with what he had been told; the Captain wanted him to hold off until he got the go-ahead from him, Delaney. It developed into a shouting match, louder and louder, about who had done more for whom, and who owed whom what. Finally, realizing simultaneously how ridiculous they sounded, they dissolved into laughter, and the Captain mixed fresh drinks. They came to a compromise; Handry would hold off for two weeks. If he hadn’t received the Captain’s go-ahead by then, he could publish anything he liked, guess at anything he liked, but with no direct attribution to Delaney.

  His biggest disappointment during this period came when he happily, proudly brought Barbara the two Honey Bunch books he had received in the mail. She was completely rational, apparently in flaming good health. She inspected the books, and gave a mirthful shout, looking at him and shaking her head.