Fourth Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “I think Isaac Kane is clean,” he declared, standing up.

  “Of course he is,” Evelyn Packard said stoutly. “He’s a dear, sweet boy. He’d never do anything bad.”

  “Sure,” her sister said skeptically.

  Her husband blinked behind his rimless glasses.

  “How did you connect Isaac with us?” Teresa Beele asked.

  “I followed him to this building last night,” he told her. “Then, this morning, I rang every bell until I found someone who knew him.”

  “My,” she said mockingly, “aren’t you the smart one.”

  “Sometimes,” he said, staring at her coldly.

  “Judson,” she said, “bring the policeman his hat and coat.”

  Calazo drove home and spent Saturday afternoon working on a report for Boone. He wrote that in his opinion Isaac Kane could be cleared, and further investigation was unwarranted.

  When he had finished, he read over what he had written and reflected idly on the relationship between Teresa and Judson Beele, and between Evelyn Packard and Isaac Kane, and between Teresa and her sister, and between Evelyn and her brother-in-law.

  “You know, hon,” he said to his wife, “life really is a fucking soap opera.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use words like that,” she said.

  “Soap opera?” he asked innocently. “What’s wrong with soap opera?”

  “Oh, you,” she said.

  He laughed and goosed her. “What’s for dinner?” he said.

  Calazo wasn’t the only one thinking about Saturday night dinner. Detective Timothy (Big Tim) Hogan was beginning to wonder if he would ever eat again.

  It had been a long day. Hogan was parked outside Ronald J. Bellsey’s high-rise by 8:00 A.M., and sat there for almost an hour. Just when he thought it might be safe to make a quick run for a coffee and Danish, he saw Bellsey’s white Cadillac come out of the underground garage.

  The subject was alone in the car, and Hogan tailed him over to the wholesale meat market on West 18th Street. Bellsey parked and went inside. Hogan had no idea how long he’d be there, but figured this would be a good chance to brace Bellsey’s wife without her husband being present.

  Hogan was not a great brain and he knew it. So he always did his best to go by the book, thinking that would keep him out of trouble. It hadn’t, but none of his stupidities had been serious enough to get him broken back to the ranks—so far.

  It wasn’t strictly true that Big Tim was stupid, but he was unimaginative and not strong at initiating new avenues of investigation. Another problem was that he didn’t look like a detective, being short, dumpy, and bald, with a whiny voice. His third wife called him Dick Tracy, which Hogan didn’t think was funny at all.

  As soon as Bellsey was safely inside his place of business, the detective drove back to the high-rise to put the arm on the wife. As long as he was deserting the subject, he could have stopped for breakfast right then, but it didn’t occur to him. Hogan found it difficult to keep two ideas in his head at the same time.

  Mrs. Lorna Bellsey let him into her apartment without too much of a hassle. She was so flustered that she didn’t even ask to see his ID. Hogan planned to lean on her hard. He didn’t even take his hat off, fearing his nude pate wouldn’t enhance the image of the hard-boiled detective.

  She was a wisp of a woman with thinning gray hair and defeated eyes. She was wearing something shapeless with long sleeves and a high neck that effectively hid her body. Hogan wondered what she was like in bed, and guessed she’d be similar to his second wife who, during sex, would say things like, “The ceiling needs painting.”

  “Look, Mrs. Bellsey,” he started, scowling at the timid woman, “you know why I’m here. Your husband is involved in the murder of Doctor Ellerbee, and we don’t believe he was home that night like he says.”

  “He was,” she said nervously, “he really was. I was here with him.”

  “From when to when?”

  “All evening. All night.”

  “And he never went out?”

  “No,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Never. He was here all the time.”

  “Did he tell you to say that?”

  “No, it’s the truth.”

  “Did he say if you didn’t back him up, he’d belt you around?”

  “No,” she said, finally showing a small flash of spirit, “it’s not like that at all.”

  “You say. We’re checking all your husband’s hangouts—those bars he goes to where he beats up strangers. If we find out that he wasn’t here that night, do you know what we’ll do to you for lying?”

  She was silent, clasping her hands tightly, knuckles whitening.

  “Come on, Mrs. Bellsey,” Hogan said in a loud, hectoring voice, “make it easy on yourself. He went out that night, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” she said in a low, quavery voice.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Do I have to take you in?” he demanded. “Arrest you as an accessory? March you through the lobby in handcuffs? Put you in a filthy cell with whores and dope fiends? Come on, what do you mean you don’t know if he went out?”

  “I had a headache,” she said faintly. “A migraine. I went to bed early.”

  “How early?”

  “About eight-thirty I think it was.”

  “On the night Ellerbee was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your husband was here then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went into the bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you close the door?”

  “Yes. He was watching television.”

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Well, I took my medicine. It makes me very drowsy.”

  “So you slept?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What time did you get up?”

  “I got up around eleven to go to the bathroom.” She wouldn’t look at him when she said that.

  “At eleven,” Hogan repeated. “Was your husband here then?”

  “Yes, he was,” she said defiantly. “I saw him.”

  “But you didn’t see him from eight-thirty to eleven?”

  She began to cry, small tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Don’t yell at me,” she said, choking. “Please.”

  “Answer my question. Otherwise I’ll take you downtown.”

  “No!” she screamed at him. “I didn’t see him from eight-thirty to eleven.”

  Got him! Detective Timothy Hogan thought with savage satisfaction.

  He drove back to 18th Street, delighted with his coup and hoping he hadn’t lost Bellsey to mar the triumph. But the white Cadillac was still outside the meat market. Hogan parked nearby where he could watch the door. He urinated into an empty milk carton he always brought along on stakeouts for emergencies.

  He sat there all day, getting hungrier and hungrier, and cursing his failure to buy a sandwich, candy bar, coffee—anything. He went through almost a pack of cigarettes, but the son of a bitch still didn’t come out.

  “What the hell is he doing in there?” the detective said aloud. And having said it, began to dream of what the market contained: steaks, chops, ground meat, chickens. It made him faint to think about it, he was so ravenous.

  He dozed off a couple of times, but when he jerked awake, the Cadillac was still there. Hogan stuck it out, trying to keep himself alert by recalling the interrogation of Mrs. Lorna Bellsey and planning how he would word it in his report: play down the threats, play up the subtlety of his questions.

  It was almost 8:45 P.M.—the streetlights on—when Bellsey came out of the meat market with two other guys. They stood joking, laughing, pushing each other. Hogan wondered if they had been boozing.

  Finally they separated. Bellsey got in his car and took off. Hogan followed him up Eighth Avenue, sticking close in the heavy traffic, not wanting to lose him after sitting for so many hours and
nearly dying of hunger.

  Bellsey hung a left on 53rd Street and headed for the river through a darkened factory and warehouse district. Where the hell is he going? Hogan puzzled, and dropped back a half-block as traffic thinned. The Cadillac turned onto Eleventh Avenue and went two blocks, slowing. Then Bellsey found a parking slot and pulled in.

  Beautiful, Hogan thought. It was a great neighborhood—if your life insurance was paid up.

  He cruised along slowly and saw the subject go into a tavern. The street lighting wasn’t the brightest, but Hogan could make out the name of the place: TAIL OF THE WHALE. Charming. Why didn’t they call it Moby’s Dick and be done with it?

  He parked and walked back. The windows were steamed up, and he couldn’t see inside, but it looked like a seaman’s bar, a boilermaker joint, and if you asked for an extra-dry martini with two olives, they’d look at you with loathing and throw your ass out on the street.

  He couldn’t make up his mind whether to go in, wait in his car for Bellsey to come out, or just scratch the day and go home. What decided him was a big sign over the door: FRANKS, BURGERS, CHILI DOGS, HOT SANDWICHES. He went in.

  It was about what he figured: a real bucket of blood. White tiled walls slick with grease. An old-fashioned mahogany bar on one side, tables and booths on the other. A TV set suspended from the tin ceiling on chains. Lighted jukebox and cigarette machine. In the back, a grill and steam table presided over by a fat black who was dripping sweat onto the sausages.

  Hogan saw Bellsey at the bar, talking to two other guys. It looked like they were all working on doubles. The detective slid into an empty booth across the room and started on a new pack of cigarettes. He looked around.

  A good crowd for so early in the evening; by midnight it would probably be jammed. Bellsey was the best-dressed man in the joint. Most of the others looked like cruds: construction workers in hard hats, seamen with stocking caps, a sprinkling of derelicts. There was one bum facedown on a table, sleeping off a drunk.

  Hogan couldn’t figure why a moneyed guy like Bellsey would patronize a grungy joint like this—until he saw that the wall behind the bar was covered with framed and autographed photos of boxers: dead ones, old ones, new ones—all in trunks, gloved, posed in attitudes of ferocious attack.

  Big Tim remembered that Jason had said Bellsey was an ex-pug, so he probably dropped in here to gas about fights and fighters. The guys he was talking to, and the bartender, had all the stigmata: hunched shoulders, bent noses, cauliflower ears. They looked like they could chew up Timothy Hogan and spit him over the left-field fence.

  “Yeah?”

  He looked up, startled. A waitress was slouched by his booth. She was an old dame with lumpy legs encased in thick elastic stockings. There was a heavy wen on her chin with two wiry black hairs sticking out.

  “What kind of bottled beer you got?” he asked her.

  “Bud, Miller, Heineken.”

  “I’ll have a Bud and a burger.”

  “Okay.”

  “Make the burger rare.”

  “Lotsa luck,” she said dourly and shuffled away.

  He had two hamburgers—so bad that he would have walked out after the first bite if he hadn’t been so hungry. Even the dill pickle was lousy. How in hell could a cook spoil a pickle?

  He saw that Bellsey was alone now, talking to the bartender. Hogan carried his second bottle of beer and glass over to the bar and took a nearby stool. The two men were arguing about who had the better right hook, Dempsey or Louis.

  Hogan took a swallow of beer. “What about Marciano?” he said loudly.

  Bellsey turned slowly to look at him. “Who the fuck asked you?” he demanded.

  “I was just—” the detective started.

  “Just butt out,” the other man advised. “This is a private conversation.”

  If Timothy Hogan had had any sense, he’d have stopped right there, finished his beer, paid his bill, and left. He could see his first guess had been right: Bellsey had been boozing that afternoon, maybe all day, and was carrying a load.

  He wasn’t swaying or slurring his speech or anything like that, but his eyes were shrunken and bloodshot, and he was leaning forward with a truculent chin thrust out. He looked ready and eager to climb into a ring and go ten.

  “What the hell you staring at?” Bellsey said to him. “You piece of shit.”

  Hogan reached casually inside his jacket to touch his holster. He knew it was there, but he wanted to make sure.

  “Take it easy,” he said to Bellsey. “I don’t like talk like that.”

  “Well, fuck you, fatso,” Bellsey said. “You don’t like it, wheel your ass somewhere else.”

  “Hey, Ron,” the bartender said in a raspy voice, “cool it. More trouble I don’t need.”

  By this time the bar had quieted. Everyone seemed to have his head down, staring into his drink. But they were all listening.

  “No trouble, Eddie,” Bellsey said. “Not from this little shithead.”

  “Mister,” the bartender said to Hogan, “do me a favor: Finish your beer, pay up, and try another joint. Please.”

  It gave the detective an out, and finally he had enough sense to take it. He finished his beer, put a bill on the bar.

  “What kind of a place you running here?” he said aggrievedly and stalked toward the door.

  “Asshole!” Bellsey yelled after him.

  Hogan walked toward his car, thinking the subject was a real psycho and an odds-on favorite for having bashed Ellerbee’s skull. He was so intent on planning what he was going to put in his report to Jason T. Jason that he didn’t hear the soft footfalls behind him.

  The first punch was to his kidneys and felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer. He went stumbling forward, mouth open, gasping for air. He tried to grab at a trash can for support, but a left hook crunched into his ribs just below the heart, and he went down into the gutter, fumbling at his holster.

  Heavy shoes were thudding into his gut, his head, and he tried to cover his eyes with folded arms. It went on and on, and he vomited up the beer and burgers. Just before he lost consciousness he was certain he was gone, and wondered why he was dying in a street like this, his vital report unwritten.

  A different report from Roosevelt Hospital went up and down the chain of police command, and eventually a blue working the case called Jason. He, in turn, alerted Boone. By midnight, the two of them were at Roosevelt, talking to doctors and guys from Midtown North, trying to collect as much information as they could before taking it to Edward X. Delaney.

  They woke him up a little after 5:00 A.M. Sunday morning and related what had happened. He told them to come over as soon as possible. He said he’d have coffee for them.

  “What is it, Edward?” Monica said drowsily from her bed.

  “Tell you later,” he said. “Boone and Jason are coming over for a few minutes. You go back to sleep.”

  When they arrived, he took them into the kitchen. He was wearing his old flannel bathrobe with the frayed cord. His short hair spiked up like a cactus.

  He had used the six-cup percolator and put a tray of frozen blueberry muffins in the oven. They sat around the kitchen table, sipping the steamy black coffee and munching on muffins while Sergeant Boone reported what had happened.

  A squad car on patrol had spotted Detective Timothy Hogan lying semiconscious in the gutter and had called for an ambulance. It wasn’t until they got him to Roosevelt Emergency that they found his ID and knew that one of New York’s Finest had been assaulted.

  “He had his ID?” Delaney said sharply.

  “Yes, sir,” Boone said. “And his gun.”

  “And his wallet,” Jason added. “Nothing missing. It wasn’t one of your ordinary, everyday muggings.”

  “But he’s going to be all right?”

  “Oh, hell, yes,” Boone said. “Cracked ribs, bruised kidneys, a gorgeous shiner, and assorted cuts and abrasions. He looks like he’s been through a meat grinder—stomped up som
ething fierce.”

  “I think his pride was hurt more than anything else,” Jason offered.

  “It should be,” Delaney said grumpily. “Letting himself be jumped like that. You talked to him?”

  “For a while,” Boone said. “They got him shot full of painkillers so he wasn’t too coherent.”

  He told Delaney what they had been able to drag out of a groggy Timothy Hogan:

  How he had made Mrs. Lorna Bellsey admit she was asleep and could not swear that her husband was home from eight-thirty to eleven o’clock on the murder night.

  How he had followed Bellsey up to the Tail of the Whale on Eleventh Avenue and gotten into a hassle with him at the bar.

  How he was unexpectedly attacked while he was returning to his car.

  “He swears it was Ronald Bellsey,” Boone said.

  “He saw him?” Delaney demanded. “He can positively identify him?”

  “Well … no,” Boone said regretfully. “He didn’t get a look at the perp, and apparently no words were spoken.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Delaney said disgustedly. “Can you think of any mistakes Hogan didn’t make? Did the investigating officers go back to the bar—what’s its name?”

  “Tail of the Whale. Yes, sir, they covered that bar and four others in the area. No one saw anything, no one heard anything, no one knows Ronald J. Bellsey or anyone resembling him. And no one admits seeing Tim Hogan either. It’s a blank.”

  “You want us to pull Bellsey in, sir?” Jason Two asked. “For questioning?”

  “What the hell for?” Delaney said irritably. “He’ll just deny, deny, deny. And even if we get the bartender and customers to admit there was a squabble in the Tail of the Whale, that’s no evidence that Bellsey put the boots to Hogan. I’m going to call Suarez in a couple of hours and ask him to put a lid on this thing. We’ll go at Bellsey from a different angle.”

  Sergeant Boone took folded papers from his inside jacket pocket and handed them to Delaney. “Benny Calazo stopped by my place last night and dropped off this report. He says that in his opinion, Isaac Kane is clean.”