Fourth Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Who is it?” a fluty voice asked.

  “Sergeant Abner Boone, New York Police Department. Is this Mr. Symington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could we speak to you for a few minutes, sir?”

  “What precinct are you from?”

  “Manhattan North.”

  “Just a minute, please.”

  “Cautious bastard,” Boone whispered to Delaney. “He’s calling the precinct to see if I exist.”

  Delaney shrugged. “He’s entitled.”

  They waited almost three minutes before the buzzer sounded. They pushed inside and climbed the carpeted stairs. The man waiting for them on the third-floor landing might have been wary enough to check with Manhattan North, but he nullified that prudence by failing to ask for their ID.

  “I suppose this is about Dr. Ellerbee,” he said nervously, retreating to his doorway. “I’ve already talked to the police about that.”

  “Yes, sir, we know,” the Sergeant said. “But there are some additional questions we wanted to ask.”

  Symington sighed. “Oh, very well,” he said petulantly. “I hope this will be the end of it.”

  “That,” Boone said, “I can’t guarantee.”

  The apartment was meticulously decorated and looked, Delaney thought, about as warm and lived-in as a model room in a department store. Everything was just so: color-coordinated, dusted, polished, shining with newness. No butts in the porcelain ashtrays. No stains on the velvet upholstery. No signs of human habitation anywhere.

  “Beautiful room,” he said to Symington.

  “Do you really think so? Thank you so much. You know, everyone thinks I had a decorator, but I did it myself. I can’t tell you how long it took. I knew exactly what I wanted, but it was ages before it all came together.”

  “You did a great job,” Boone assured him. “By the way, I’m Sergeant Boone, and this is Edward Delaney.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” Symington said. “Forgive me for not shaking hands. I’m afraid I’ve got a thing about that.”

  He took their damp hats and coats, handling them with fingertips as if they might be infected. He motioned them to director’s chairs: blond cowhide on stainless-steel frames. He stood lounging against an antique brick fireplace with a mantel of distressed oak.

  He was wearing a jumpsuit of cherry velour that did nothing to conceal his paunch. A gold medallion hung on his chest, and a loose bracelet of chunky gold links flopped on his wrist when he gestured. His feet were bare.

  “Well,” he said with a trill of empty laughter, “I suppose you know all about me.”

  “Beg pardon, sir?” Boone said, puzzled.

  “I mean, I suppose you’ve been digging into Doctor Simon’s files, and you know all my dirty little secrets.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Symington,” Delaney said. “Nothing like that. We have the names and addresses of patients—and that’s about it.”

  “That’s hard to believe. I’m sure you have ways … Well, I have nothing to hide, I assure you. I’ve been seeing Doctor Simon for six years, three times a week. If it hadn’t been for him, I’m sure I would have been a raving maniac by now. When I heard of his death, I was devastated. Just devastated.”

  And, Delaney recalled, the lobby attendant at Sylvia Mae Otherton’s apartment house said she was devastated. Perhaps all of Ellerbee’s patients were devastated. But not as much as the doctor …

  “Mr. Symington,” Boone said, “were your relations with Doctor Simon friendly?”

  “Friendly?” he said with a theatrical grimace. “My God, no! How can you be friendly with your shrink? He hurt me. Continually. He made me uncover things I had kept hidden all my life. It was very painful.”

  “Let me try to understand,” Delaney said. “Your relations with him were kind of a duel?”

  “Something like that,” Symington said hesitantly. “I mean, it’s not all fun and games. Yes, I guess you could say it was a kind of duel.”

  “Did you ever attack Doctor Simon?” Boone asked suddenly. “Physically attack him?”

  The gold chain clinked as Symington threw out his arm in a gesture of bravura. “Never! I never touched him, though God knows I was tempted more than once. You must understand that most people under analysis have a love-hate relationship with their therapist. I mean, intellectually you realize the psychiatrist is trying to help you. But emotionally you feel he’s trying to hurt you, and you resent it. You begin to suspect him. You think he may have an ulterior motive for making you confess. Perhaps he’s going to blackmail you.”

  “Did you really believe that Doctor Simon might blackmail you?” Delaney asked.

  “I thought about it sometimes,” Symington said, stirring restlessly. “It wouldn’t have surprised me. People are such shits, you know. You trust them, you even love them, and then they turn on you. I could tell you stories …”

  “But you stuck with him for six years,” Boone said.

  “Of course I did. I needed the man. I was really dependent on him. And, of course, that made me resent him even more. But kill him? Is that what you’re thinking? I’d never do that. I loved Doctor Simon. We were very close. He knew so much about me.”

  “Did you know any of his other patients?”

  “I knew a few other people who were going to him. Not friends, just acquaintances or people I’d meet at parties, and it would turn out that they were his patients or former patients.”

  “To your knowledge,” Boone said, “was he ever threatened by a patient?”

  “No. And if he was, he’d never mention it to another patient.”

  “Did you notice any changes in his manner?” Delaney asked. “In the past year or six months.”

  L. Vincent Symington didn’t answer at once. He came over to the long sectional couch opposite their chairs and stretched out. He stuffed a raw silk cushion under his head and stared at them.

  He had a doughy face, set with raisin eyes. His lips were unexpectedly full and rosy. He was balding, and the naked scalp was sprinkled with brown freckles. Delaney thought he looked like an aged Kewpie doll, and imagined his arms and legs would be sausages, plump and boneless.

  “I loved him,” Symington said dully. “Really loved him. He was almost Christlike. Nothing shocked him. He could forgive you anything. Once, years ago, I went off the deep end and punished my parents. Really hurt them. Doctor Simon got me to face that. But he didn’t condemn. He never condemned. Oh, Jesus, what’s going to happen to me?”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Delaney said sternly. “Did you notice any change in him recently?”

  “No. No change.”

  Suddenly, without warning, Symington began weeping. Tears ran down his fat cheeks, dripped off, stained the cushion. He cried silently for several minutes.

  Delaney looked at Boone and the two rose simultaneously.

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Symington,” Delaney said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Boone said.

  They left him there, lying on his velvet couch in his cherry jumpsuit, wet face now turned to the ceiling.

  Outside, they ran for the car, splashing through puddles. They sat for a moment while Boone lighted a cigarette.

  “A butterfly?” he said. “Do you think?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Delaney said roughly. “But he’s a real squirrel. Listen, I’m hungry. There’s a Jewish deli on Lex, not too far from here. Great corned beef and pastrami. Plenty of pickles. Want to try it?”

  “Hell, yes,” the Sergeant said. “With about a quart of hot coffee.”

  The delicatessen was a steamy, bustling place, fragrant with spicy odors. The decibel level was high, and they shouted their orders to one of the rushing waiters.

  “Good scoff,” Boone said to Delaney when their sandwiches came. “How did you happen to find this place?”

  “Not one of my happier moments. I was a dick two, and I was tailing a guy who was a close pal of a bent-nose we wanted for homicide in a liqu
or store holdup. The guy I was hoping would lead us to the perp came in here for lunch, so I came in, too. The guy ordered his meal, and when it was served, he got up and headed for the rear of the place. The john is back there, so I figured he was going to take a leak, then come back and eat his lunch. But when he didn’t return in five minutes, I thought, Oh-oh, and went looking. That’s when I found out there’s a back door, and he was long gone. I guess he spotted me and took off. So I came back and finished my lunch. The food was so good, I kept coming here every time I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Did you get the perp?”

  “Eventually. He made the mistake of belting his wife once too often, and she sang. He plea-bargained it down to second degree. That was years ago; he’s probably out of the clink by now.”

  “Robbing more liquor stores.”

  “Wouldn’t doubt it for a minute,” Delaney said with heavy good humor. “It was the only trade he knew.”

  “You know,” said Boone, “that Symington didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d own a ball peen hammer.”

  “Or galoshes either. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he owned a pair of cowboy boots. These people we’re dealing with are something. They hold down good jobs and make enough loot to see a therapist three times a week. I mean they function. But then they get talking, and you realize their gears don’t quite mesh. They think that if A equals B, and B equals C, then X equals Y. We’ve got to start thinking like that, Sergeant, if we expect to get anywhere on this thing. No use looking for logic.”

  They were silent awhile, looking idly at the action in the deli as customers arrived and departed, the sweating waiters screamed orders, and the guys behind the hot-meat counter wielded their long carving knives like demented samurai.

  “I think,” Boone said, “that maybe Symington really was in love with Ellerbee. Sexually, I mean.”

  “It’s possible,” Delaney said. “It’s even possible that Ellerbee responded. Maybe the good doctor was iced because of a lover’s quarrel. But that just shows how this warped world is getting to me. Finished? I think we better get back; Jason said he’d be there at one o’clock.”

  “I hope he’s found something heavy.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Delaney advised.

  Monica had been out doing volunteer work at a local hospital. When she returned home, she had found Jason T. Jason sitting outside the brownstone in the unmarked police car. She brought him into the kitchen and they were having a coffee when Delaney and Boone walked in. The three men went into the study, Jason carrying a manila envelope.

  “So,” Delaney said to Jason, “how did you make out?”

  The black cop was a boulder of a man: six-four, 250—and very little of that suet. His skin was a ruddy cordovan that always seemed polished to a high gloss. He wore his hair clipped short, like a knitted helmet, but his sharply trimmed mustache stretched from cheek to cheek. His hands were hams and his feet bigger than Delaney’s.

  Jason Two lived with his wife, Juanita, and two young sons in Hicksville, Long Island. He had been six years in the Department and had two citations, a number of solid busts and some good assists. He was hoping for a detective’s shield—but so were twenty thousand other cops.

  “I don’t know how I did,” he confessed, opening the manila envelope. “First time I looked for a perp in a library. I got three reports here, on the two Ellerbees and Doc Samuelson. I did them up on my older boy’s typewriter. I’m a two-fingered typist, both thumbs, so there’s a lot of marking out and corrections, but I think you’ll be able to read them. Anyway, they’re mostly cut-and-dried stuff: dates, ages, education, family background, their college degrees, and so forth. To be honest, sir, I don’t think it all amounts to diddley-squat. I mean, I can’t see any of it helping us find Ellerbee’s killer.”

  “Nothing unusual?” Delaney asked. “Nothing that struck you as being out of the ordinary or worth taking a second look at?”

  “Not really,” Jason said slowly. “About the most unusual thing was that Samuelson had a breakdown some years ago. That seemed odd to me: a psychiatrist cracking up. They said it was exhaustion from overwork. He was out of action for about six months. But then he went back to his office and took up his caseload again.”

  Delaney turned to Boone. “He said his wife died of cancer, didn’t he, and his son was killed in an automobile accident? That would be enough to knock anyone for a loop. Anything else, Jason?”

  “Well, sir, I collected all the facts and figures I could in the time I had. All that’s in my reports. Most of it came from books, newspapers, and professional journals. But I talked to a lot of people, too. Friends and associates of all three doctors. And after I got the factual stuff I wanted, I’d bullshit awhile with them. Funny how people run off at the mouth when they hear it’s a murder investigation. Anyway, I heard some stuff that may or may not mean anything. I didn’t put it in my reports because it was just hearsay. I mean, none of it is hard evidence.”

  “You did just right, Jase,” Sergeant Boone said. “We need every scrap we can get. What did you hear?”

  “First of all, practically every guy I talked to mentioned how beautiful Diane is. They all sounded like they were in love with her. I’ve never seen her, but she must be some foxy lady.”

  “She is,” Delaney and Boone said simultaneously, and they all laughed.

  “Well, everyone said how lucky Doc Simon was to hook on to someone like her: a looker with plenty of the green. But one guy swears Ellerbee wasn’t all that anxious to marry, but she had her mind set on it. I told you I heard a lot of rumors. Some of the guys admitted they made a play for her, even after she was married, but it was no dice; she was straight.”

  “Any gossip about Doctor Simon playing around?” Delaney asked.

  “Nada,” Jason said. “Apparently he was a cold, controlled kind of guy. I mean, he was pleasant enough, good company and all that, but a secret man; he didn’t reveal much. At least that’s what most people said. But I talked to one woman—she’s the secretary of that association he belonged to—and she said she saw Ellerbee at a dinner about a month before he was iced. She said she was surprised at how he had changed since she saw him last. She said he was smiling, and a lot more outgoing than he had been. Seemed really happy, she said.”

  Delaney and Boone stared at each other.

  “Crazy,” the Sergeant said, shaking his head.

  Delaney explained to Jason why they were puzzled. He told him that Sylvia Mae Otherton had claimed Ellerbee had become quieter, more thoughtful, not depressed but subdued.

  “It doesn’t jibe,” Jason said. “One of those ladies must be wrong.”

  “Not necessarily,” Delaney said. “Maybe they just caught him in different moods. But what’s interesting is that they both noticed a recent change in his disposition. I’d like to know what brought that on. It’s probably nothing, but still … Sergeant, why don’t you tell Jason about the patients we’ve seen.”

  When Boone finished, Jason said, “Whoo-ee! Those people—doesn’t sound like their elevators go to the top floor.”

  “They’re a little meshugenah,” Delaney admitted. “Sometimes they make sense and sometimes they’re way out in left field. Our problem is going to be separating what’s real from what’s part of their never-never world. I don’t see how we can do anything but let them blabber and then try to figure the meaning later. I’ll have to warn the new people about that when they come in Monday morning.”

  “Sir,” Boone said, “how are you going to handle those guys—assign one to each of the patients?”

  “That was my first plan, and maybe it would work if we were covering punks and small-time hoods. But these subjects are mostly educated and intelligent, even if their brains rattle a little. I think we’ll get better results if each detective has a chance to talk to three or four of the patients. And then select the one he feels he can work with best. You know how sometimes a witness will clam up with one dick and then spill
his guts to another because he feels the second guy is more simpatico. We’ll try to pair detective and subject so it’ll do us the most good.”

  They talked for another hour, discussing how they would organize the investigation so detectives wouldn’t be duplicating each other’s work unless a double-check was deemed necessary.

  Delaney decided that Boone and Jason would each be responsible for scheduling and supervising three detectives. The two of them would then submit daily reports to Delaney on the activities of their squads.

  “I expect a certain amount of confusion at first,” he told them, “but I want the two of you to coordinate your planning as much as possible. I’ll keep the files, which will be open to all of you. Just tell your guys to put everything in their reports, no matter how stupid or meaningless they might think it. And the first thing I want done is to have these six patients run through Records. If they’re as violent as Doctor Diane seems to think, some of them should have sheets.”

  They traded ideas awhile longer, then Delaney glanced up at the walnut-cased regulator on the wall, a relic from a demolished railroad station.

  “Getting late,” he said. “Why don’t the three of us try Ronald J. Bellsey again—just walk in on him without warning. He should be home by now. Jason, we’ll take your car and you can drop us back here.”

  On the drive south, Delaney remembered to ask Jason Two if he and his family would like to come for Thanksgiving Day dinner.

  “Thank you, sir,” the officer said, “but we’ve already signed on with Juanita’s parents. They’re making a big deal out of it, and the kids and the old folks would kill me if I canceled.”

  “Don’t even consider it,” Delaney said. “We’ll make it another time. Your boys should see their grandparents as often as possible. I wish I could see more of my grandchildren.”

  They double-parked in front of Bellsey’s high-rise. Boone flashed his ID and asked the doorman to keep an eye on their car. There was no house phone; the lobby attendant explained they’d have to use the intercom. In addition, they were told to stand in front of a small, ceiling-mounted television camera that would relay their picture via closed circuit to a monitor in Bellsey’s foyer.