First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Made first,” Shakespeare said proudly. “Sam, too. On your recommendation.”

  Delaney made a gesture.

  “You had it coming,” he said. He waved at Fifth Avenue, the elegant Hotel Knickerbocker, the last hotel in New York to have a billiard room. “What are you doing around here—slumming?”

  “Nah,” Shakespeare said. “It’s a half-ass stakeout. Sam and me are on temporary assignment to the East Side hotel squad for the summer. Ever hear of a wrong guy named Al Kingston?”

  “Al Kingston?” Delaney repeated. He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I make him.”

  “Arthur King? Albert Kingdon? Alfred Ka—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Delaney said. “Arthur King. That rings a bell. Hotel rooms and jewelry shops. Works alone or with a young twist. In and out so slick and so fast, no one could nail him.”

  “That’s the cat,” Shakespeare nodded. “Nabbed a dozen times, and it all added up to nit. Anyway, we got a flash from Miami that Al baby had been rousted and was believed heading our way. We picked him up at the airport and have been keeping tabs on him ever since. Loose tail. We just don’t have the manpower.”

  “I know,” Delaney said sympathetically.

  “Anyway, this is his third visit to the Knickerbocker. We figure he’s casing. When he comes out this time we’re going to grab him and bounce him a little. Nothing heavy. Just enough to convince him to move on to Chicago or L.A. Anywhere.”

  “There’s a service entrance,” Delaney cautioned. “On Fifty-fourth. You got it covered?”

  “Front and back,” Shakespeare nodded. “Sam and me have been watching the lobby entrance. We won’t miss him.”

  “Sure you will,” Delaney said genially. “There’s an arcade from the lobby that leads down the block to an outside drugstore. He could slip out through there as easy as Mary, kiss my ass.”

  “Son of a bitch!” William Shakespeare said bitterly, and began running.

  Sam Lauder piled out of the car and went pounding after his partner. Delaney watched them go, feeling, he admitted, better than he should have. He was still smiling when he went into the small, secluded Hotel Knickerbocker bar.

  It was a dark, paneled box of a room. The mahogany bar was about ten feet long, with six stools padded with black vinyl. There were a dozen small bistro tables placed around, each with two wire chairs, also padded with black vinyl. Behind the bar, covering the entire wall, was a mural from the 1930s, a vaguely Art Decoish montage of skyscrapers, jazz musicians, mustached men in nipped-waist tuxedos and blonde women in shimmery evening gowns—dancing to some maniacal beat. The mural was painted in white, black, and silver, with musical notes in fire-engine red floating across the surface. Along the top, in jerky lettering, was the legend: “Come on along and listen to—the lullaby of Broadway.”

  Delaney swung onto one of the stools. He was the only patron in the room. The big, paunchy bartender put down his Daily News and came over. He was wearing a white shirt with sleeve garters, a small, black leather bowtie clipped to the collar. He had a long white apron tied under his armpits. It covered him from chest to ankles. He smiled at Delaney, set out an ashtray, a wooden bowl of salted peanuts, a paper napkin with the hotel’s crest printed on it.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “What can I do you for?”

  “Good afternoon,” Delaney said. “Do you have any ale or dark beer?”

  “Dark Löwenbräu,” the man said, staring at Delaney.

  “That’ll be fine.”

  The man stood there. He began snapping his fingers, still staring at Delaney.

  “I seen you,” he said. “I seen you!”

  Delaney said nothing. The man kept staring, snapping his fingers.

  “Delaney!” he burst out. “Chief Delaney! Right?”

  Delaney smiled. “Right,” he said.

  “I knew the second you walked in you was somebody,” the bartender said. “I knew I seen you in the paper, or on the TV.” He wiped his hand carefully on his apron, then stuck it out. “Chief Delaney, it’s a pleasure, believe me. I’m Harry Schwartz.”

  Delaney shook his hand.

  “Not Chief anymore, Harry,” he said. “I’m retired.”

  “I read, I read,” Schwartz said. “Wear it in good health. But a President, he retires and he’s still Mister President. Right? And a governor is a governor till the day he dies. Likewise a colonel in the army. He retires, but people will call him ‘Colonel.’ Right?”

  “Right,” Delaney nodded.

  “So you’re still Chief,” the bartender said. “And me, when I retire, I’ll still be Harry Schwartz.”

  He took a dark Löwenbräu from a tub of crushed ice, wiped the bottle carefully with a clean towel. He selected a glass from the back rack, held it up to the light to detect spots. Satisfied, he placed the glass in front of Delaney on the paper napkin. He uncapped the bottle, filled the glass halfway, allowing about an inch of white head to build. Then he set the bottle on a little paper coaster next to Delaney’s hand. He waited expectantly until Delaney took a sip.

  “All right?” Harry Schwartz asked anxiously.

  “Beautiful,” Delaney said, and meant it.

  “Good,’ the bartender said. He leaned across the bar on folded arms. “So tell me, what have you been doing with yourself?”

  It didn’t come out like that, of course. It came out, “S’ tell me, watcha bin doon witcha self?” Chief Delaney figured the accent for Manhattan, probably the Chelsea district.

  “This and that,” he said vaguely. “Trying to keep busy.”

  The bartender spread his hands wide.

  “What else?” he said. “Just because you’re retired don’t mean you’re dead. Right?”

  “Right,” Delaney said obediently.

  “I thought all cops when they retire they go to Florida and play shuffleboard?”

  “A lot of them do,” Delaney laughed.

  “My brother-in-law, he was a cop,” Harry Schwartz said. “You prolly wouldn’t know him. Out in Queens. A good cop. Never took a nickel. Well, maybe a nickel. So he retires and moves to Arizona because my sister she’s got asthma. Get her to a dry climate, the doc says, or she’ll be dead in a year. So my brother-in-law, Pincus his name was, Louis Pincus, he retires early, you know, and moves Sadie to Arizona. Buys a house out there. Got a lawn, the whole schmear. It looked nice the house from the pictures they sent. A year later, a year mind you, Louie’s out mowing that lawn and he drops.” Harry Schwartz snapped his fingers. “Like that. The ticker. So he goes out there for Sadie’s health, he drops dead, and to this day she’s strong as a horse. That’s life. Am I right?”

  “Right,” Delaney said faintly.

  “Ah well,” Harry Schwartz sighed, “waddya going to do? That’s the way things go. Tell me something, Chief—what about these young cops you see nowadays? I mean with the sideburns, the mustaches, the hair. I mean they don’t even look like cops to me, you know?”

  They didn’t look like cops to Edward X. Delaney either, but he’d never tell a civilian that.

  “Look,” he said, “a hundred years ago practically every cop in New York had a mustache. And most of them were big, bushy walrus things. I mean then you almost had to have a mustache to get a job as a cop. Styles change, but the cops themselves don’t change. Except maybe they’re smarter today.”

  “Yeah,” Harry Schwartz said. “I guess you’re right. Ready for another?”

  “Please. That one just cut the dust. How about you? Have something with me?”

  “Nah,” Schwartz said. “Thanks, but not while I’m working. I ain’t supposed to.”

  “Come on.”

  “Well … maybe I’ll have a beer. I’ll keep it under the counter. Many thanks.”

  He went through the ceremony again, opening a fresh bottle of imported beer for Delaney. Then he opened a bottle of domestic for himself, poured a glass. He looked around at the empty room cautiously, held up the glass quickly, and
said, “To your health, Chief.”

  “To yours,” Delaney replied.

  They both sipped, and the bartender hid his glass expertly below the counter.

  “If you got your health you got everything—right?” he said.

  “Right.”

  “But it’s a miserable job, ain’t it? I mean being a cop?”

  Edward X. Delaney looked down at his glass. He lifted it off the paper napkin. He set it on the polished bar top and began moving it around in small, slow circles.

  “Sometimes,” he nodded. “Sometimes it’s the most miserable job on earth. Sometimes it’s okay.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Schwartz said. “I mean you see a lot of shit—right? Then, on the other hand, you are also helping people, which is okay.”

  Delaney nodded.

  “I was thinking of becoming a cop,” Schwartz reminisced. “I really was. I got out of Korea alive and I come back to New York, and I thought what should I do? And I thought maybe I should be a cop. I mean the pay isn’t all that great—at least then it wasn’t—but it was steady, you know, and the pension and all. But then I knew I really didn’t have the balls to be a cop. I mean it takes balls, don’t it?”

  “Oh yes,” Delaney said, wondering if Schwartz knew what they had called him in the Department—“Iron Balls” Delaney.

  “Sure. Well, I figured what the hell, so I didn’t. I mean like if someone shot at me, I’d probably piss my pants. I mean that. A hero I ain’t. And as for shooting someone, I just couldn’t.”

  “You shot at people in Korea, didn’t you?”

  “Nah. I was a cook.”

  “Well,” Delaney sighed, “Shooting or being shot at is really a very small part of a cop’s job. Most people don’t realize that, but it’s true. Only perhaps one percent or less of a cop’s time is spent with a gun in his hand. Most cops put in thirty years on the force, retire, and never fire their guns off the range. The stuff you see in the papers and on TV, the dramatic stuff, happens now and then, sure. But for every shootout there’s a thousand cops pounding the beat day after day, settling family squabbles, calling an ambulance for a heart case, getting drunks off the street, rousting junkies or hookers.”

  “Sure,” Harry Schwartz said, “I know all that, and I agree one hundred percent. But still and all, let’s face facts, they don’t give cops that gun for nothing—right? I mean a cop might go year after year and nothing happens, and that gun could grow right into his holster for all the use it gets. Right? But still and all, the time might come—and bang! There he is and some nut is trying to kill him and he’s got to kill that nut first. I mean it happens, don’t it?”

  “Yes. It happens.”

  “Still and all,” Harry Schwartz said, “I bet you miss it. Right?”

  “Right,” Edward X. Delaney said.

  The garbage had been collected that day and, as usual, the empty cans had been left on the curb. He brought them down in the little areaway below the front stoop and replaced the lids. He could have entered through the basement door, but it meant opening two padlocks and a chain on the outside iron grille, so he went up to the sidewalk again and climbed the eleven steps to the front door.

  When he and Barbara had remodeled this old brownstone almost thirty years ago, they had been able to save and refurbish some of the original amenities, including the front door, which had to be, he figured, at least seventy-five years old. Unlocking it now, he admired it anew—polished oak with brass hardware, and set with a diamond-shaped judas of beveled glass.

  He entered the lighted hall, double-locked the door, put the chain on.

  “I’m home,” he yelled.

  “In here, dear,” his wife called from the kitchen.

  He hung his homburg on the hall rack and went down the long corridor, sniffing appreciatively.

  “Something smells good,” he said, coming into the big kitchen.

  Monica turned, smiling. “Meal or cook?” she said.

  “Both,” he said, kissing her cheek. “What are we having?”

  “Your favorite,” she said. “Boiled beef with horseradish sauce.”

  He stopped suddenly, stared at her.

  “All right,” he said. “What did you buy?”

  She turned back to the pots and pans, vexed, a little, but still smiling.

  “Stop being a detective,” she said. “It wasn’t so much. New bedspreads for the girls’ room.”

  “That’s not so bad,” he said. He took a stalk of celery from a platter of greens and sat heavily at the wooden kitchen table, munching. “How was your day?”

  “Hectic. The stores were mobbed. The girls said they had a nice lunch and you drank two highballs.”

  “The dirty squealers,” he said. “They home?”

  “Yes. Upstairs. Getting a start on their homework. Edward, they give the kids a lot of homework at that school.”

  “It won’t kill them,” he said.

  “And Ivar Thorsen called. He wants to see you.”

  “Oh? Did he say why?”

  “No. He wants to come over tonight at nine. He said to call his office if you can’t make it. If he doesn’t hear from you, he’ll figure it’s all right to come over.”

  “All right with me. You? Have anything planned?”

  “No. There’s a program on Channel Thirteen I want to watch. About breast cancer.”

  “I’ll take Thorsen,” he said. “Can I set the table?”

  “Done,” she said. “We’ll eat in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll wash up then,” he said, rising.

  “And chase the kids down,” she said, tasting the sauce.

  He slid an arm around her soft waist. She came close to him, still holding a big wooden spoon.

  “Did I tell you I love you?” he asked her.

  “Not today, you haven’t.”

  “Consider it told.”

  “Oh no you don’t, buster,” she said. “You don’t get off that easy.”

  “I love you,” he said, and kissed her lips. “Umm,” he said. “Nothing like a horseradishy kiss. Going to have a beer with dinner?”

  “I’ll have a sip of yours.”

  “The hell you will,” he said. “Have your own. With boiled beef, I want all of mine.”

  She made a rude gesture with the wooden spoon, and he left, laughing.

  She had been Monica Gilbert, the widow of Bernard Gilbert, one of the victims of a psychopathic killer, Daniel Blank. Delaney had been a captain then, in command of a special task force that had taken Blank, and he had met Monica during the investigation of that case. A year after Barbara Delaney had died of proteus infection, the Chief had married Monica. She was twenty years younger than he.

  Their evening meal was, as usual, dominated by the lively chatter of the girls. Mary and Sylvia were eleven and thirteen and, of course, knew everything. Most of the discussion involved plans for the summer, whether it would be best for the sisters to attend the same camp or different camps. The spoke learnedly of “sibling rivalry” and “intrafamilial competition.” Chief Delaney listened gravely, asked serious questions, and only Monica was aware of his amusement.

  Afterwards, Delaney helped clear the table, but left the rest to his wife and stepdaughters. He went upstairs to take off jacket and vest and put on a worn cardigan. He also took off his high shoes, massaged his feet, and slid them into old carpet slippers. He came down to the living room, stopping off in the kitchen to fill a hammered silver ice bucket. The dishwasher was grinding away, and Monica was just finishing tidying up. The girls had gone up to their room again.

  “Can we afford it?” she asked anxiously. “Camp, I mean? It’s expensive, Edward.”

  “You tell me,” he said. “You’re the financial expert in this family.”

  “Well … maybe,” she said, frowning. “If you and I don’t go anywhere.”

  “So? We’ll stay home. Lock up, pull down the shades, turn on the air conditioner and make love all summer.”

 
; “Knocker,” she scoffed. “Your back couldn’t take it.”

  “Sure it could,” he said equably. “As long as your pearls don’t break.”

  She burst out laughing. He looked at her wryly.

  It had happened the first time they went to bed together, about two months before they were married. He had taken her to dinner and the theatre. After, she had readily agreed to stop at his home for a nightcap before returning to her home in the same neighborhood, to her children, a baby-sitter.

  She was a big-bodied woman, strong, with a good waist between heavy bosom and wide hips. Not yet matronly. Still young, still juicy. A look of limpid, almost ingenuous sensuality. All of her warm and waiting.

  That night she wore a thin black dress. Not clinging, but when she moved it, it touched her. About her neck, a choker of oversize pearls. When he kissed her, she pressed to him, clove to him, breast to breast, belly to belly, thigh to thigh. They stumbled, panting, up to his bedroom, where high drama became low farce.

  She was lying on the bed crossways, naked except for those damned pearls. Spread out, pink and anxious. He stood at the bedside, crouched and swollen, and lifted her hips. She writhed up to embrace him. The string of pearls broke, spilling down onto the parquet floor. But they were both nutty with their lust and …

  “You broke my pearls,” wailed she.

  “Fuck the pearls,” roared he.

  “No, me!” screamed she. “Me!”

  But the beads were under his floundering feet, rolling, hurting, and he began skidding about, doing a mad schottische, a wild gavotte, an insane kadzotsky, until laughter defeated them both. So they had to change positions and start all over again, which wasn’t all that bad.

  Smiling at the memory, they went into the living room, where he mixed them each a rye highball. They sat contentedly, both slumped with legs extended.

  Deputy Commissioner Ivar Thorsen arrived promptly at nine. Monica remained in the living room to watch her TV program. The two men went into the study and closed the door. Delaney emerged a moment later to fetch the bucket of ice. His wife was seated on the edge of her chair, leaning forward, arms on her knees, eyes on the screen. Delaney smiled and touched her hair before he went back into the study.