The living room floor was a checkerboard pattern, alternating black and white tiles, 18 inches square. Scattered about were six small rugs in bright colors and modern design. Scandinavian, he guessed. He lifted each rug, looked underneath. He didn’t expect to find anything; he didn’t.
He wasted a few minutes staring at that long mirrored wall, watching his image jerk along as he moved. He would have liked to search behind each mirror but knew it would take forever, and he’d never get them back in their precise pattern. He turned instead to a desk near the window. It was a slim, elegant spider of chrome and glass. One center drawer, one deep file drawer on the left side.
The top drawer was marvelously organized with a white plastic divider: paper clips (two sizes), sharpened pencils, stamps, built-in Scotch tape dispenser, scissors, ruler, letter opener, magnifying glass—all matching. Delaney was impressed. Not envious, but impressed.
There were three documents. One was a winter catalogue from Outside Life; the Captain smiled, without mirth. One, in a back corner, was obviously half a salary check, the half that listed taxes, pension payment, hospitalization, and similar deductions. Delaney put on his glasses to read it. According to his calculations, Blank was earning about $55,000 a year. That was nice.
The third document was an opened manila envelope addressed to Mr. Daniel G. Blank from something called Medical Examiners Institute. Delaney drew out the stapled report, scanned it quickly. Apparently, six months ago, Blank had undergone a complete physical checkup. He had had the usual minor childhood illnesses, but the only operation noted was a tonsillectomy at the age of nine. His blood pressure was just slightly below normal, and he had a 20 percent impairment of hearing in his left ear. But other than that, he seemed to be in perfect physical condition for a man his age.
Delaney replaced this document and then, recalling something, drew it out again. In his pocket notebook he made a notation of Blank’s blood type.
The deep file drawer contained one object: a metal document box. Delaney lifted it out, placed it atop the desk, examined it. Grey steel. Locked, with the lock on top. White plastic handle in front. About 12 inches long, eight inches wide, four inches deep. He could never understand why people bought such boxes for their valuables. It was true the box might be fire-resistant, but no professional thief would waste time forcing or picking the lock; he’d just carry the entire box away by its neat plastic handle, or slip it into a pillowcase with his other loot.
Delaney took a closer look at the lock. Five minutes at the most, but was it worth it? Probably checkbooks, bank books, maybe some cash, his lease, passport, a few documents not valuable enough to put in his safe deposit box. Blank, he was certain, would have a safe deposit box. He was that kind of a man. He replaced the document box in the desk, closed the drawer firmly. If he had time, he’d come back to it. He glanced at his watch; almost 25 minutes.
He moved toward the bedroom. But he paused before an ebony and aluminum liquor cabinet. He could not resist it, and opened the two doors. Matching glassware on one side: Baccarat crystal, and beautiful. What was it Handry had asked? What does Blank do with his money? He could tell Handry now: he buys Baccarat crystal.
The liquor supply was curious: one gin, one Scotch, one rye, one bourbon, one rum, and at least a dozen bottles of brandies and cordials. Curiouser and curiouser. What did a grown man want with an ink-colored liqueur called “Fleur d’Amour”?
There was a technique to a good search; some dicks were better at it than others. It was a special skill. Delaney knew he was good at it, but he knew others who were better. There was an old detective—the Captain thought he was probably retired by now—who could go through a six-room house in an hour and find the cancelled stamp he was looking for, or a single earring, or a glassine envelope of shit. You simply could not hide anything with absolute certainty that it could never be found. Given enough time, enough men, anything could be found, anywhere. Swallow a metal capsule? Stick a microfilm up you ass? Put a microdot in a ground-out tooth and have it capped? Tattoo your skull and let the hair grow over? Forget it. Anything could be found.
But those methods were rare and exotic. Most people with something to hide—documents, money, evidence, drugs—hid it in their own home or apartment. Easy to check its safety. Easy to destroy fast in an emergency. Easy to get when needed.
But within their homes—as the cops good at tossing well knew—most people had two tendencies: one rational, one emotional. The rational was that, if you lived a reasonably normal life, you had visitors: friends and neighbors dropping in, sometimes unexpectedly. So you did not hide your secret in the foyer, living room, or dining room: areas that were occupied by others at various times, where the hidden object might, by accident, be uncovered or be discovered by a drunken and/or inquisitive guest. So you selected bathroom or bedroom, the two rooms in your home indisputedly yours.
The emotional reason for choosing bathroom or bedroom was this: they were intimate rooms. You were naked there. You slept there, bathed, performed your bodily functions. They were your “secret places.” Where else would you conceal something secret, of great value to you alone, something you could not share?
Delaney went directly to the bathroom, removed the top of the toilet tank. An old trick but still used occasionally. Nothing in there except, he was amused to note, a plastic daisy and a bar of solid deodorant that kept Daniel Blank’s toilet bowl sweet-smelling and clean. Beautiful.
He tapped the wall tiles rapidly, lifted the tufted bathmat from the floor and looked underneath, made a closer inspection of the medicine cabinets, used his penlite to tap the length of the shower curtain rod. All hollow. What was he looking for? He knew but would not admit it to himself. Not at this moment. He was just looking.
Into the bedroom. Under the rug again. A long wiggle under the bed to inspect the spring. A careful hand thrust between spring and mattress. Under the pillows. Then the bed restored to its taut neatness. Nothing in the Venetian blinds. Base of the lamp? Nothing. Two framed French posters on the walls. Nothing on their backs. The paper appeared intact. That left the wall-length closet and the two dressers in pale Danish wood. He looked at his watch. Coming up to forty minutes. He was sweating now; he had not removed hat or overcoat or taken anything from his pockets that he did not immediately replace.
He tried the closet first. Two wide, hinged, louvered doors that could be folded back completely. So he did, and gazed in astonishment. He himself was a tidy man, but compared to Daniel Blank he was a lubber. Delaney liked his personal linen folded softly, neatly stacked with fold forward, newly laundered to the bottom. But this display in Blank’s closet, this was—was mechanized!
The top shelf, running the length of both closets, held linen: sheets, pillowcases, beach towels, bath towels, bathmats, hand towels, dish towels, washcloths, napkins, tablecloths, mattress covers, mattress pads, and a stack of heavy things whose function Delaney could only guess at, although they might have been dustcloths for covering furniture during an extended absence.
But what was so amazing was the precision with which these stacks had been arranged. Was it a militaristic cleaning woman or Blank himself who had adjusted these individual stacks, and then aligned all stacks as if with a stretched string? And the colors! No white sheets and pillowcases here, no dull towels and washcloths, but bright, jumping colors, floral designs, abstract patterns: an eye-jarring display. How to reconcile this extravagance with the white-and-black sterility of the living room, the architectural furniture?
On the floors of both closets were racks of shoes. In the left-hand closet, summer shoes—whites, sneakers, multicolors—each pair fitted with trees, encased in clear plastic bags. In the other closet, winter shoes, also with trees but not bagged. Practically all blacks these, mostly slip-ons, moccasin styles, two pair of buckled Guccis, three pairs of boots, one knee-high.
Similarly, hanging from the rod, summer clothing on the left, winter on the right. The summer suits were bagged in clear
plastic, jackets on wooden hangers, trousers suspended from their cuffs on clamps. The uncovered winter suits were almost all black or midnight blue. There was a suede sports jacket, a tartan, a modest hound’s tooth. Four pairs of slacks: two grey flannel, one tartan, one a bottle-green suede. Two silk dressing gowns, one in a bird print, one with purple orchids.
Delaney did the best he could in a short time, feeling between and under the stacks of linen, shaking the shoes heels downward, pressing between his palms the bottoms of the plastic bags that protected the summer suits. He went into the living room, removed a small metal mirror from its hook on the wall, and by stretching, using the mirror and his penlite, he was able to see behind the stacks of linen on the top shelf. It was, he admitted, a cursory search, but better than nothing. That’s just what he found—nothing. He returned the mirror to its hook, adjusted it carefully.
That left the two dressers. They were matching pieces, each with three full drawers below and two half-drawers on top. He looked at his watch. About 46 minutes gone now. He had promised Lipsky an hour, no more.
He started on the dresser closest to the bedroom window. The first half-drawer he opened was all jewelry, loose or in small leather cases: tie pins, cufflinks, studs, tie tacks, a few things he couldn’t immediately understand—a belt of gold links, for instance, and a gold link wrist watch band, three obviously expensive identification bracelets, two heavy masculine necklaces, seven rings, a hand-hammered golden heart strung on a fine chain. He cautiously pried under everything.
The other half-drawer contained handkerchiefs, and how long had it been since he had seen Irish linen laundered to a silken feel? Nothing underneath.
Top full drawer: hosiery, at least fifty pair, from black silk formal to knee-length Argyle-patterned knits. Nothing there.
Second and third full drawers: shirts. Obviously business shirts in the second: white and light blue in a conservative cut. In the third drawer, sports shirts, wilder hues, patterns, knits, polyesters. Again he thrust his hand carefully between and beneath the neat piles. His silk-covered fingers slid on something smooth. He drew it out.
It was, or had been originally, an 8x10 glossy photo of Daniel Blank taken in the nude. Not recently. He looked younger. His hair was thicker. He was standing with his hands on his hips, laughing at the camera. He had, Delaney realized, a beautiful body. Not handsome, not rugged, not especially muscular. But beautiful: wide shoulders, slender waist, good arms. It was impossible to judge his legs since the photograph had been cut across just above the pubic hair, by scissors, razor, or knife. Blank stood smiling at Delaney, hands on hips, prick and balls excised and missing. The Captain carefully slid the mutilated photo back beneath the knitted sports shirts.
He went to the second dresser now, feeling certain he would find little of significance, but wanting to learn this man. He had already observed enough to keep him pondering for weeks, but there might be more.
One half-drawer of the second dresser contained scarves: mostly foulard ascots, squares, a formal white silk scarf, a few patterned handkerchiefs. The second half-drawer contained a miscellany: two crushable linen beach hats, two pairs of sunglasses, a bottle of suntan lotion in a plastic bag, a tube of “Cover-All” sunscreen cream, and timetables of airline flights to Florida, the West Indies, Britain, Brazil, Switzerland, France, Italy, Sweden—all bound together with a rubber band.
The top full drawer was underwear. Delaney looked at the assortment, oddly moved. It was a feeling he had had before when searching the apartment of a stranger: secret intimacy. He remembered once sitting around in a squad room, just relaxing with two other detectives, gossiping, telling stories about their cases and experiences. One of the dicks was telling about a recent toss he had made of the premises of a hooker who had been beaten to death by one of her customers.
“My God,” the cop said, “I handled all her underwear and that frilly stuff, her garter belt and that thing they pin their napkins on and blue baby-doll pajamas she had, and the smell of it all, and I damned near came in my pants.”
The others laughed, but they knew what he meant. It wasn’t only that she had been a whore with lacy things that smelled sexy. It was the secret sharing, entering into another’s life as a god might enter—unseen, unsuspected, but penetrating into a human being and knowing.
That was something of what Captain Edward X. Delaney felt, staring at Blank’s precise stacks of briefs, bikinis, shorts, stretch panties, trimmed garments in colors he could not believe were sold anywhere but in women’s lingerie shops. But stolidly he felt beneath each stack after flipping them through, replaced everything meticulously, and went on.
The second full drawer was pajamas: jackets and pants in nylon, cotton, flannel. Sleep coats. Even a bright red nightshirt.
The bottom drawer was bathing suits—more than one man could use in a lifetime: everything from the tiniest of bikinis to long-legged surfing trunks. Three jockstraps, one no larger than an eyepatch. And in with it all, unexpectedly, six pairs of winter gloves: thin, black leather; rough cowhide, fleece-lined; bright yellow suede; grey formal with black stitching along the knuckles; etc. Nothing. Between items or underneath.
Delaney closed the final drawer, drew a deep breath. He looked at his watch again. Five minutes to go. He might stretch it a minute or two, but no more. Then, he was certain, he’d hear three frantic intercom rings from a spooked Charles Lipsky.
He could open that document case in the living room desk. He could take a look at the bottom kitchen cabinets. He could try several things. On impulse, nothing more, he got down on his hands and knees, felt beneath the bottom drawer of one of the dressers. Nothing. He crawled on hands and knees, felt beneath the other. Nothing. But as he felt about, the wood panel pressed slightly upward.
Now that was surprising. In chests of drawers as expensive and elegant as these appeared to be, he would have guessed a solid piece of wood beneath the bottom drawer, and between each pair of drawers another flat layer of wood. They were called “dust covers,” he remembered. Good furniture had them. Cheaply made chests had no horizontal partitions between the bottom of one drawer and the open top of the one beneath.
He climbed to his feet, brushed his overcoat, knees, and trouser cuffs free of carpet lint. There was lint; he picked it off carefully, put it into a vest pocket. Then he opened a few dresser drawers at random. It was true; there were no wooden partitions between drawers; they were simply stacked. Well, it would only take a minute …
He pulled out the first full drawer of one dresser, reached in and felt the bottom surfaces of the two half-drawers above it. Nothing. He closed the first full drawer, opened the second and ran his fingers over the bottom surface of the first full drawer. Nothing. He continued in this fashion. It only took seconds. Seconds of nothing.
He started on the second dresser. Closed the drawer containing Blank’s incredible underwear, opened the drawer containing pajamas, thrust his hand in to feel the undersurface of the drawer above. And stopped. He withdrew his hand a moment, wiped his silk-clad fingertips on his overcoat, reached in again, felt cautiously. Something there.
“Please, God,” he said aloud.
Slowly, with infinite caution, he closed the pajama drawer and then drew out the one above it, the underwear drawer. He drew it halfway out of the dresser. Then, fearful there might be wood splinters on the runners, sawdust, stains, anything, he took off his overcoat and laid it out on Daniel Blank’s bed, lining side up. Then he carefully removed the underwear drawer completely from the chest, placed it softly on his overcoat. He didn’t look at his watch now. Fuck Charles Lipsky.
He removed the stacks of underwear, placing them on the other side of the bed in the exact order in which he removed them. Four stacks across, two stacks back to front. They’d be returned to the drawer in the same order. When the drawer was empty, he slowly turned it upside down and placed it on his opened overcoat. He stared at the taped envelope. He could appreciate Blank’s reasoning: if the tape
dried out and the envelope dropped, it could only drop into the next drawer down.
He pressed the envelope gently with his fingertips. Things stiffer than paper, and something hard. Leather maybe, wood or metal. The envelope was taped to the wooden bottom of the drawer on all its four sides. He put on his glasses again, bent over it. He used one of his lock picks, probed gently at the corners of the envelope where the strips of tape didn’t quite meet.
He wanted to avoid, if possible, removing the four strips of tape completely. He finally determined, to his satisfaction, the top of the envelope. Using a pick, he lifted a tiny corner of the top tape. Then he switched to tweezers. Slowly, slowly, with infinite caution, he peeled the tape away from the wood, making certain he did not pull the tape away from the paper envelope. Tape peeled off the rough wood stickily; he tried to curl it back without tearing it or folding it. He heard, dimly, three sharp rings on the intercom, but he didn’t pause. Screw Lipsky. Let him sweat for his fifty bucks.
When the top tape was free of the wood, he switched back to a locksmith’s pick, slender as a surgeon’s scalpel. He knew the envelope flap would be unsealed, he knew it! Well, it wasn’t just luck or instinct. Why should Blank want to seal the envelope? He’d want to gloat over his goodies, and add more to them later.
Gently Delaney prized out the envelope flap, lifted it. He leaned forward to smell at the open envelope. A scent of roses. Back to the tweezers again, and he carefully withdrew the contents, laying them out on his overcoat lining in the order in which they had been inserted in the envelope: Frank Lombard’s driver’s license. Bernard Gilbert’s ID card. Detective Kope’s shield and identification. And four withered rose petals. From Albert Feinberg’s boutonniere. Delaney turned them over and over with his tweezers. Then he left them alone, lying there, walked to the window, put his hands in his pockets, stared out.
First Deadly Sin Page 51
