Second Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “You got some fucking nerve,” the doctor said wrathfully. “What the hell’s so important about Victor Maitland it couldn’t wait for Monday?”

  “You ever treat him for a knife wound?” Delaney asked. “In the arm?”

  “No. Is that the emergency, the matter of life-or-death?”

  “There’s more,” Delaney said. “The autopsy report said ‘Possible polymyositis.’”

  “Possible.” Horowitz sneered. “That’s good. I like that.”

  “You knew about it?” Delaney asked.

  “Knew about it? Of course I knew about it. The man was my patient, wasn’t he?”

  “What is it—polymyositis?” Delaney asked. “Like bursitis or arthritis?”

  “Oh sure,” Horowitz said. “Just like it. Like death is like fainting.”

  Delaney stared at him a moment, not comprehending.

  “Death?” he said. “You mean it’s fatal?”

  “In Victor Maitland it was terminal. Or would have been if someone hadn’t killed him first.”

  Delaney took a small step backward.

  “Terminal?” he repeated hoarsely. “You’re sure?”

  Dr. Aaron Horowitz threw up his hands in disgust.

  “Why don’t you have the Board investigate me?” he jeered. “Am I sure? What kind of a shit-ass question is that? You want to see Maitland’s file? You want to read the tests? How the corticosteroid therapy failed? You want the opinions of two other—”

  “All right, all right,” Delaney said hastily. “I believe you. How long did he have it?”

  Horowitz thought a moment.

  “About five years maybe,” he said. “I’d have to check his file to be sure.”

  “How long would he have to live?”

  “He should have been dead a year ago. The man had the constitution of an ox.”

  “How long would he have lived if he hadn’t been killed? Just a guess, Doctor. You won’t be asked to testify. I’m not taking any of this down.”

  “A guess? Maybe another year. Two, three at the most. This isn’t an exact science, you know. Everyone’s different.”

  “Did he know it? Did you tell him?”

  “That he was dying? Sure, I told him.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He laughed.”

  Delaney stared at the doctor.

  “He laughed?”

  “That’s right. What’s so unusual? Some people cry, some break down, some don’t do anything. Everyone’s different. Maitland laughed.”

  “Did he ever tell anyone else he was dying?”

  “Now how in hell would I know that?”

  “But you never told anyone else? His wife, for instance?”

  “I told no one. Just Maitland. Your five minutes are up.”

  “All right, Doctor,” Chief Delaney said. “Thank you for your time.” He turned to go, had the corridor door opened when he paused, turned back. “How’s that kid you mentioned?” he asked.

  “Died about twenty minutes ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Delaney said.

  “Zol dich chapen beim boych!”

  “Zol vaksen tsibelis fun pipik!” Edward X. Delaney said to an amazed Dr. Aaron Horowitz.

  The Chief went directly to a lobby phone booth and looked up the number of Saul Geltman. The art dealer was home and, Delaney could tell, wasn’t overjoyed to hear from a cop on a bright, sunshiny June afternoon. But he agreed to see him, asked him to come up. It turned out Geltman lived way over east, in one of the new high-rise apartment buildings overlooking the East River and Brooklyn beyond. Delaney took a cab and finally got to smoke the cigar he had prepared an hour ago. The cab interior was plastered with signs that read: please do not smoke, driver allergic. But Delaney lighted up anyway, and the driver didn’t say anything. Which was wise, considering the Chief’s mood.

  Delaney had told Sergeant Boone he wanted to see Saul Geltman’s apartment, believing there was no better way to judge a man’s character than to get a look at his home. It was a secret place where a man, if he wished, could take off the mask he presented to the world. It revealed his tastes, idiosyncrasies, needs and wants, strengths and weaknesses. If a man had a lot of books, that told you something about him. The titles of the books he owned told you more. And no books told you even more.

  But the presence or absence of a private library was an obvious clue to a man’s personality. Chief Delaney sincerely believed you could better judge by the pictures on his walls, the carpets on the floor, ashtrays on the desk. And if all these things had been selected by his wife or an interior decorator—well, that too revealed something, didn’t it?

  But more than rugs, paintings, ashtrays, or books, Delaney was interested in the ambiance of a man’s home. Was it cold and contrived, or warm and cheery? Was it cluttered as the man’s own mind or as serene as his soul? The Chief never ceased marveling at how many criminals lived in hotels, furnished rooms, and motels, their rootless lives mirrored by their transient surroundings. And like most cops, Delaney had seen old cons who lived in square chambers with a cot, dresser, chair. Not because they couldn’t afford better, but because they were attempting to reproduce the institutional life for which they subconsciously yearned and to which they inevitably returned.

  The home of art dealer Saul Geltman was on the east side of the seventeenth floor of the high-rise apartment house. The building itself was constructed of glazed brick tinted a light green, with horizontal bands of picture windows. The lobby was small, spare, tiled, with a single piece of abstract stainless-steel sculpture as the sole decoration.

  The living room of Geltman’s apartment, Delaney estimated, had to be forty by twenty. It was all windows on the east side, with glass doors at each end opening onto a terrace as long as the room itself, but only half as deep. There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a combined kitchen and dining area separated by a serving counter with a butcher’s-block top. All the rooms were well proportioned, airy, smiling. The ceilings were higher than Delaney had expected; the floors were parquet.

  But it was the manner in which this joyous apartment had been furnished that delighted the Chief. There was an eclectic selection of antiques, leaning heavily to light-wood French provincial. A plenitude of gleaming copper, brass, and pewter ornaments. A zinc-covered dining table set on a cast-iron base. Polished carved oak caryatids supporting a black marble sideboard. Worn Persian and Turkish rugs on the parquetry. Chair fabrics and drapes in a pleasantly clashing rainbow of plaids, candy stripes, and rich, nubbly wools.

  And all spotless, glittering, almost overwhelming in its comfortable perfection. It stopped just short of being a department-store model apartment. Delaney did not miss the “careless elegance” of tossed art magazines on the pitted teak cocktail table, the carefully arranged informality of the bookcase, with a few art books tilted, a few lying on their sides, but the entire display ordered in such a manner that it pleased the eye, and the Chief wondered if there could be any art without artifice.

  “Beautiful,” he said to Saul Geltman, who had shown him through with great enthusiasm, giving the age (and frequently the cost) of each antique, pointing out amusing bric-a-brac, calling Delaney’s attention to a seventeenth-century desk reputed to have six secret drawers—although Geltman had found only five—and a set of eighteenth-century carved walnut bookends which, joined together, proved to be an old man buggering a goat.

  “Not bad for a poor kid from Essex Street, huh?” Geltman laughed. “Now all I got to do is pay for it!”

  “You decorated the place yourself?” Delaney asked.

  “Every stick I personally selected,” the little art dealer said proudly. “Every fabric, every rug, ashtrays—the lot. I’m still working on it. I see something I got to have, I buy it, bring it up, get rid of something. Otherwise this place would be a warehouse.”

  “Well, you’ve done wonders,” the Chief told him. “There isn’t a single thing here I wouldn’t like to have in my home.”

/>   “Really?” Geltman said, glowing. “You really mean that?”

  “Absolutely,” Delaney said, wondering at the other man’s need for reassurance. “Excellent taste.”

  “Taste!” Geltman cried, looking about with shining eyes. “Yes! Well, I couldn’t play the fiddle, and I can’t paint, so I suppose whatever creative talent I have came out here.” He looked down, let his fingertips drift softly across the top of a charming pine commode, the drawers and doors fitted with hammered brass hardware. “I love this place,” Geltman murmured. “Love it. Sounds silly, I know, but—” He stopped suddenly, straightened up, smiled at Delaney. “Well,” he said briskly, rubbing his palms together, “what can I get you to drink? Wine? Whiskey? What?”

  “Do you have any beer?” the Chief asked.

  “Beer. Of course I have beer. Heineken. How’s that?”

  “Just fine, thank you.”

  “Sit anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

  Delaney selected a high-backed wing chair at the rear of the room, facing the expanse of glass. He settled himself and, for the first time, saw there were two men on the terrace, seated in chairs of white wire at a white cast-iron table. The Chief was startled. He had not seen them before, nor had Geltman mentioned he had guests.

  The two men, youths actually, were almost identically clad in short-sleeved knitted white shirts, trousers of white duck, white sneakers. They lounged indolently in their chairs, not facing each other but turned so they could watch the river traffic below.

  There was a bottle of rosé wine on the white table, sparkling in the sunlight. As Delaney watched, both youths raised crystal glasses slowly to their lips and sipped. Viewed through sheer ecru curtains, the scene had the feel of an Edwardian garden party, peaceful and haunting, frozen in an old sepia photograph, faded, emulsion cracking, corners bent or missing, but the moment in time and place caught like a remembered dream: languid youth, sunshine over all, a breeze that would kiss forever and a day that would never die.

  “I’m sorry,” he said when Geltman came back, “I didn’t know you had company.”

  “Oh, just two local boys,” Geltman said lightly. “Stopped by to raid my wine cellar.”

  He had brought the opened bottle of beer on a silver salver, along with a glass of a tulip design. The glass had been chilled; frost coated the sides.

  “You do it with an electric gadget,” Geltman laughed. “Instant frosting. Silly, but it looks nice.”

  “Tastes better too,” Delaney said, pouring his beer. “Nothing for you?”

  “Not at the moment. Well, what can I do for you, Chief? More questions?”

  The little man sat on the arm of a club chair, facing Delaney at an angle. Geltman’s back was to the windows, his face in shadow. He was wearing bags of light grey flannel, a turtleneck sweater of white wool. His cordovan moccasins gleamed wickedly. The bracelet of heavy gold links was much in evidence, catching the light, but Delaney saw none of the nervous vigor the dealer had displayed in his gallery. No slumping, straightening, twisting, gesturing. No drumming of fingers or smoothing the thin, brown-grey hair across his skull. Saul Geltman seemed composed, at peace. Because, Delaney supposed, he was in his own home.

  “More questions, yes,” the Chief said. “But first I’d like to thank you for having us to your party. We enjoyed it.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Geltman grinned. “See the Times story this morning? Wonderful! Of course Belle and Jake Dukker misbehaved, but an art show isn’t counted a success without at least one fight. Did you get to see the paintings? In that mob?”

  “Not as much as I wanted to. I’d like to come back.”

  “Of course. Any time. They’ll be there for a month, at least. We’re charging admission. For a charity. But ask for me at the door.”

  Delaney waved the suggestion away.

  “Are the paintings selling?” he asked.

  “Marvelously,” Geltman nodded. “Most of them are sold. Only a few left, and they’ll go soon enough.”

  Delaney looked around the elegant room.

  “You don’t have any Maitlands?” he observed, half-question, half-statement.

  “Can’t afford them,” the dealer laughed. “Besides, it’s bad business to have artists you represent in your own home. Buyers suspect you’d save the best for yourself. Which is true, of course.”

  Delaney held his frosted glass to the light, admiring the dark, glowing amber of the beer. He took a deep, satisfying swallow. Then he held the stemmed glass in both hands, tinked the edge of the glass gently against his teeth.

  “You knew he was dying?” he asked.

  Then he heard, for the first time, soft laughter from the terrace. The two youths, wine glasses in hand, were standing at the railing, looking down at something on the East River.

  When he looked back, he saw Geltman had slid from his perch on the chair arm. Now he was in the chair, sitting sideways, his legs hooked over the opposite arm.

  “Yes,” he told Delaney, “I knew.”

  “You didn’t tell us,” the Chief said flatly.

  “Well …” Geltman sighed, “it’s not the kind of thing you like to talk about. Also, I couldn’t see how it could possibly help you find the guy who did it. I mean, how could it help?”

  Delaney took another sip of beer. From now on, he decided, he would frost his glasses.

  “It might help,” he said. “It just might. I’m not saying it would help explain other people’s actions, but it might help explain Maitland’s.”

  Geltman stared at him a moment, then shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “The doctor says that when he told Maitland he had a fatal illness, Maitland laughed. I believe that. It’s in character with what we’ve learned about the man. But I don’t care how hard he was, how cynical, what a lush. Hearing a thing like that would change his life. The life he had left. It had to. He’d do things he wouldn’t otherwise do. Make plans maybe. Or try to jam as much into his remaining days as he could. Something. It would result in something. The man was human. Just ask yourself how you’d react if you got heavy news like that. Wouldn’t it affect the way you’d live out your days?”

  “I suppose so,” Geltman said in a low voice. “But I knew about it, and I didn’t see any change in him. He was still the same crude, mean son of a bitch he had always been.”

  “When did you learn about the illness?”

  “About five years ago, I think it was. Yes, about then.”

  “He told you himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell anyone else, to your knowledge? His wife, for instance? His son?”

  “No,” Geltman said. “He told me I was the only one he was telling. He swore me to secrecy. Said if I told anyone, and he learned about it, he’d cut my balls off. And he’d have done it, too.”

  “Did you tell anyone?” Delaney asked.

  “Jesus, no!”

  “His mother? His sister? Anyone?”

  “I swear I didn’t, Chief. It’s just not the sort of thing you go around blabbing about.”

  “No,” Delaney said, “I suppose not. You say you saw no change in his conduct? His personality?”

  “That’s right. No change.”

  “He didn’t, to your knowledge, make any special plans? Men sentenced to death usually tidy up, put their affairs in order.”

  “He didn’t do anything special. Not to my knowledge.”

  “Well,” Delaney sighed, finishing his beer, “he certainly didn’t seem to make any effort to leave his wife and son well provided for. They inherit, but not much.”

  “They’ll do all right,” Geltman said shortly. “With the sale of the last paintings. Even after taxes, they’ll come out with half a million. At least. I’m not shedding any tears for them. Another beer, Chief?”

  “No, thank you. That just hit the spot.”

  He looked out onto the terrace again. The languid youths were draped again in their white wire chairs, loung
ing comfortably. As Delaney watched, one of them, a golden-haired boy, tilted his head back and, holding the wine glass above him, let the last few drops of wine spill into his mouth and onto his face. The other youth laughed.

  “It was some muscle disorder,” Delaney said. “As I understand it.”

  “Yes,” Geltman said.

  “It didn’t affect his painting? For five years?”

  “Not noticeably,” the art dealer said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The buyers didn’t notice,” Geltman said. “The critics didn’t. But Maitland did. And I did.”

  “How? How did it affect his painting?”

  “He said there was a—well, not pain, but a stiffness. That’s how he described it—a stiffness. In his hands, arms, shoulders. So he took something that seemed to help.”

  “Poppers? Snappers?”

  “Yes.”

  “From Belle Sarazen?”

  “I don’t know where he got them.”

  “But they helped?”

  “That’s what Vic told me. He said they loosened him up. You can see it in his last paintings. The stuff he did in, oh, the last year or two. They were looser, the line not as sharp, the colors harsher, brighter. It’s a subtle thing. I think only Vic and I could see it. No one else saw any change. They were still the same old Maitlands. Still as wonderful, still as evocative, as stirring.”

  “Yes,” Edward X. Delaney said. “Stirring.”

  He heaved himself to his feet, cleared his throat.

  “I thank you, Mr. Geltman,” he said. “For seeing me. The hospitality.”

  “My pleasure,” the little man said. He thrust himself up from the chair, slid over the arm to land agilely on the balls of his feet. “Hope it helped. Getting anywhere, are you?”

  “Oh yes,” Chief Delaney said. “Definitely.”

  “Good,” Geltman said. “Glad to hear it.”

  They moved to the entrance hall. Delaney turned back to look around that fabulous room one more time.