Third Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  The cop took a quick glance at a piece of scrap paper crumpled in his hand.

  “Right,” he said. “You’re cleared.”

  He held the door open for Delaney. The Chief strode into the lobby, hearing the howls of rage and frustration from the newsmen on the sidewalk.

  There was a throng in the lobby being herded by plainclothesmen into a single file. The line was moving toward a cardtable that had been set up in one corner. There, identification was requested, names and addresses written down.

  This operation was being supervised by Sergeant Broderick. When Delaney caught his eye, the sergeant waved and made his way through the mob to the Chief’s side. He leaned close.

  “Fifth floor,” he said in a low voice. “A butcher shop. An old couple next door heard sounds of a fight. The old lady wanted to call the desk and complain; the old geezer didn’t want to make trouble. By the time they ended the argument and decided to call, it was too late; a security man found the stiff. I swear we got here no more than a half-hour after it happened.”

  “Decoys?” Delaney asked.

  “Two,” Broderick said. “A hotel man in the pub, one of our guys in the cocktail lounge. Both of them claim they saw no one who looked like the perp.”

  The Chief grunted. “I better go up.”

  “Hang on to your cookies,” Broderick said, grinning.

  The fifth floor corridor was crowded with uniformed cops, ambulance men, detectives, the DA’s man, and precinct officers. Delaney made his way through the crush. Sergeant Boone and Ivar Thorsen were standing in the hallway, just outside an open door.

  The three men shook hands ceremoniously, solemn mourners at a funeral. Delaney took a quick look through the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said softly.

  “Yeah,” Boone said, “a helluva fight. And then the cutting. The ME says not much more than an hour ago. Two, tops.”

  “I’m getting too old for this kind of thing,” Thorsen said, his face ashen. “The guy’s in ribbons.”

  “Any doubt that it was the Ripper?”

  “No,” Boone said. “Throat slashed and nuts stabbed. But the doc says he might have been dead when that happened.”

  “Any ID?”

  Sergeant Boone flipped the pages of his notebook, found what he was seeking.

  “Get a load of this,” he said. “His paper says he was Nicholas Telemachus Pappatizos. How do you like that? Home address was Las Vegas.”

  “The hotel security chief made him,” Thorsen said. “Known as Nick Pappy and Poppa Nick. Also called The Magician. A small-time hood. Mostly cons and extortion. We’re running him through Records right now.”

  Delaney looked through the doorway again. The small room was an abattoir. Walls splattered with gobbets of dripping blood. Rug soaked. Furniture upended, clothing scattered. A lamp smashed. The drained corpse was a jigsaw of red and white.

  “Naked,” Delaney said. “But he did put up a fight.”

  The three men watched the Crime Scene Unit move about the room, dusting for prints, vacuuming the clear patches of carpet, picking up hairs and shards of glass with tweezers and dropping them into plastic bags.

  The two technicians were Lou Gorki and Tommy Callahan, the men Delaney had met in Jerome Ashley’s room at the Hotel Coolidge. Now Gorki came to the door. He was carrying a big plastic syringe that looked like the kind used to baste roasts. But this one was half-filled with blood. Gorki was grinning.

  “I think we got lucky,” he announced. He held up the syringe. “From the bathroom floor. It’s tile, and the blood didn’t soak in. And we got here before it had a chance to dry. I got enough here for a transfusion. I figure it’s the killer’s blood. Got to be. The clunk was sliced to hash. No way was he going to make it to the bathroom and bleed on the tile. Also, we got bloody towels and stains in the sink where the perp washed. It looks good.”

  “Tell the lab I want a report on that blood immediately,” Thorsen said. “That means before morning.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Gorki said doubtfully.

  “Prints?” Boone asked.

  “Doesn’t look good. The usual partials and smears. The faucet handles in the bathroom were wiped clean.”

  “So if she was hurt,” Delaney said, “it wasn’t so bad that she didn’t remember to get rid of her prints.”

  “Right,” Gorki said. “That’s the way it looks. Give us another fifteen minutes and then the meat’s all yours.”

  But it was almost a half-hour before the CSU men packed up their heavy kits and departed. Deputy Commissioner Thorsen decided to go with them to see what he could do to expedite blood-typing by the Lab Services Section. In truth, Thorsen looked ill.

  Then Delaney and Boone had to wait an additional ten minutes while a photographer and cartographer recorded the scene. Finally they stepped into the room, followed by Detectives Aaron Johnson and Daniel Bentley.

  The four men leaned over the congealing corpse.

  “How the hell did she do that?” Johnson said wonderingly. “The guy had muscles; he’s not going to stand there and let a woman cut him up.”

  “Maybe the first stab was a surprise,” Bentley said. “Weakened him enough so she could hack him to chunks.”

  “That makes sense,” Boone said. “But how did she get cut? Gorki says she bled in the bathroom. No signs of a second knife—unless it’s under his body. Anyone want to roll him over?”

  “I’ll pass,” Johnson said. “I had barbecued ribs for dinner.”

  “They may have fought for her knife,” Delaney said, “and she got cut in the struggle. Boone, you better alert the hospitals.”

  “God damn it!” the sergeant said, furious at his lapse, and rushed for the phone.

  Delaney hung around until the ambulance men came in and rolled Nicholas Telemachus Pappatizos onto a body sheet. There was no knife under the body. Only blood.

  The other detectives went down to the lobby to assist in the questioning. Delaney stayed in the room, wandering about, peeking into the bathroom. He saw nothing of significance. Perhaps, he thought, because he was shaken by the echoes of violence. Tommy Callahan came back and continued the Crime Scene Unit investigation.

  He pushed the victim’s discarded clothing into plastic bags and labeled them. He collected toothbrush, soap, and toilet articles from the bathroom and labeled those. Then he popped the lock on the single suitcase in the room and began to inventory the contents.

  “Look at this, Chief,” he said. “I better have a witness that I found this …”

  Using a pencil through the trigger guard, he fished a dinky, chrome-plated automatic pistol from the suitcase. He sniffed cautiously at the muzzle.

  “Clean,” he said. “Looks like a .32.”

  “Or .22,” Delaney said. “Gambler’s gun. Good for maybe twenty feet, but you’d have to be Deadeye Dick to hit your target. Find anything else?”

  “Two decks of playing cards. Nice clothes. Silk pajamas. He lived well.”

  “For a while,” Delaney said.

  He left the death room and took the elevator to the lobby. The crowd had thinned, but police were still quizzing residents and visitors. Out on the sidewalk, the mob of noisy newspapermen had grown. In the street, two TV vans were setting up lights and cameras.

  Delaney pushed through the throng and crossed the avenue. He turned to look back at the hotel. If she came out onto Seventh, she could have taken a bus or subway. But if she was wounded, she probably caught a cab. He hoped Sergeant Boone would remember to check cabdrivers who might have been in the vicinity at the time.

  He walked over to Sixth Avenue and got a cab going uptown. He was home in ten minutes, double-locked and chained the door behind him. It was then almost 2:00 A.M.

  “Is that you, Edward?” Monica called nervously from upstairs.

  “It’s me,” he assured her. “I’ll be right up.”

  He hung his skimmer away, then went through his nightly routine: checking the locks on every door and
window in the house, even those in the vacant children’s rooms. Not for the first time did he decide this dwelling was too large for just Monica and him.

  They could sell the building at a big profit and buy a small cooperative apartment or a small house in the suburbs. It made sense. But he knew they never would, and he supposed he would die in that old brownstone. The thought did not dismay him.

  He left a night-light burning in the front hallway, then climbed the stairs slowly to the bedroom. He was not physically weary, but he felt emptied and weak. The sight of that slaughterhouse had drained him, diminished him.

  Monica was lying on her side, breathing deeply, and he thought she was asleep. She had left the bathroom light on. He undressed quickly, not bothering to shower. He switched off the light, moved cautiously across the darkened room, climbed into bed.

  He lay awake, trying to rid his mind of the images that thronged. But he kept seeing the jigsaw corpse and shook his head angrily.

  He heard the rustle of bedclothes. In a moment Monica lifted his blanket and sheet and slipped in next to him. She fitted herself to his back, her knees bending with his. She dug an arm beneath him so she could hold him tightly, encircled.

  “Was it bad?” she whispered.

  He nodded in the darkness and thought of what Thorsen had said: “I’m getting too old for this kind of thing.” Delaney turned to face his wife, moved closer. She was soft, warm, strong. He held on, and felt alive and safe.

  After a while he slept. He roused briefly when Monica went back to her own bed, then drifted again into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  When the phone rang, he roused slowly and reached to fumble for the bedside lamp. When he found the switch, he saw it was a little after 6:00 A.M. Monica was sitting up in bed, looking at him wide-eyed.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Edward X. Delaney here.”

  “Edward, this is Ivar. I wanted you to know as soon as possible. They’ve run the first part of the blood analysis. You were right. Caucasian female. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” Delaney said.

  9

  ZOE KOHLER CAME OUT of the hairdresser’s, poking selfconsciously at her new coiffure. Her hair had been shampooed, cut and styled, and treated with a spray guaranteed to give it gloss and weight while leaving it perfectly manageable.

  Now it was shorter, hugged her head like a helmet, with feathery wisps at temples and cheeks. It was undeniably shinier, though it seemed to her darker and stiffer. The hairdresser had assured her it took ten years off her life, and then tried to sell her a complete makeup transformation. But she wasn’t yet ready for that.

  She walked slowly toward Madison Avenue, still limping slightly although the cut in her thigh was healing nicely. Everett Pinckney had asked her about the limp. She told him that she had turned her ankle, and that satisfied him.

  She passed a newsstand and saw the headlines were still devoted to the murder at the Hotel Adler. She had not been surprised to read that the victim had a police record. One columnist called him a “nefarious character.” Zoe Kohler agreed with that judgment.

  Two days after the homicide, the police had announced that the Hotel Ripper was definitely a woman. The media had responded enthusiastically with enlarged coverage of the story and interviews with psychologists, feminists, and criminologists.

  At least three female newspaper columnists and one female TV news reporter had made fervent pleas to the Hotel Ripper to contact them personally, promising sympathetic understanding and professional help. One afternoon tabloid had offered $25,000 to the Ripper if she would surrender to the paper and relate her life story.

  Even more amazing to Zoe Kohler was a casual mention that in a single day, the New York Police Department had received statements from forty-three women claiming to be the killer. All these “confessions” had been investigated and found to be false.

  Zoe had asked Mr. Pinckney how the police could be so certain that the Hotel Ripper was a woman. He said they obviously had hard evidence that indicated it. Bloodstains, for instance. They could do wonderful things with blood analysis these days.

  Barney McMillan, who was present during this conversation, slyly suggested that another factor might have been the results of the autopsy which could show if the victim had sexual intercourse just before he was killed.

  “He probably died happy,” McMillan said.

  Zoe Kohler wasn’t particularly alarmed that the police investigation was now directed toward finding a female murderer. And she had read that plainclothesmen were now being stationed in hotel cocktail lounges in midtown Manhattan. She thought vaguely that it might be necessary to seek her adventures farther afield.

  She had been fortunate so far, mostly because of careful planning. She was exhilarated by the fearful excitement she had caused. More than that, the secret that she alone knew gave her an almost physical pleasure, a self-esteem she had never felt before.

  All those newspaper stories, all those television broadcasts and radio bulletins were about her. What she felt came very close to pride and, with her new hairdo and despite her limp, she walked taller, head up, glowing, and felt herself queen of the city.

  She paused on Madison Avenue to look in the show windows of a shop specializing in clothing for children, from infants to ten-year-olds. The prices were shockingly high for such small garments, but the little dresses and sweaters, jeans and overalls, were smartly designed.

  Zoe stared at the eyelet cotton and bright plaids, the crisp party dresses and pristine nightgowns. All so young, so—so innocent. She remembered well that she had been dressed in clean, unsoiled clothing like that: fabrics fresh against her skin, stiff with starch, rustling with their newness.

  “You must be a little lady,” her mother had said. “And look at these adorable white gloves!”

  “You must keep yourself clean and spotless,” her mother had said. “Never run. Try not to become perspired. Move slowly and gracefully.”

  “A little lady always listens,” her mother had said. “A little lady speaks in a quiet, refined voice, enunciating clearly.”

  So Zoe avoided mud puddles, learned the secrets of the kitchen. She did her homework every night and was awarded good report cards. All her parents’ friends remarked on what a paragon she was.

  “A real little lady.” That’s what the adults said about Zoe Kohler.

  Seeing those immaculate garments in a Madison Avenue shop brought it all back: the spotlessness of her home, the unblemished clothing she wore, the purity of her childhood. Youth without taint …

  On the evening of June 14th, a Saturday, Zoe had dinner with Ernest Mittle in the dining room of the Hotel Gramercy Park. They were surprised to find they were the youngest patrons in that sedate chamber.

  Zoe Kohler, glancing about, saw Ernest and herself in twenty years, and found comfort in it. Well-groomed women and respectable men. Dignity and decorum. Low voices and small gestures. How could some people reject the graces of civilization?

  She looked at the man sitting opposite and was content. Courtesy and kindness were not dead.

  Ernest was wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt, maroon tie. His fine, flaxen hair was brushed to a gleam. Cheeks and chin were so smooth and fair that they seemed never to have known a razor.

  He appeared so slight to Zoe. There was something limpid about him, an untroubled innocence. He buttered a breadstick thoroughly and precisely and crunched it with shining teeth. His hands and feet were small. He was almost a miniature man, painted with a one-hair brush, refined to purity.

  After dinner they stopped at the dim bar for a Strega. Here was a more electric ambience. The patrons were younger, noisier, and there were shouts of laughter. Braless women and bearded men.

  “What would you like to do, Zoe?” Ernest asked, holding her hand and stroking her fingers lightly. “A movie? A nightclub? Would you like to go dancing somewhere?”

  She considered a moment. “A disco. Ernie, could we go to a d
isco? We don’t have to dance. Just have a glass of wine and see what’s going on.”

  “Why not?” he said bravely, and she thought of her gold bracelet.

  An hour later they were seated at a minuscule table in a barnlike room on East 58th Street. They were the only customers, although lights were flashing and flickering and music boomed from a dozen speakers in such volume that the walls trembled.

  “You wanted to see what’s going on?” Ernest shouted, laughing. “Nothing’s going on!”

  But they were early. By the time they finished their second round of white wine, the disco was half-filled, the dance floor was filling up, and newcomers were rushing through the entrance, stamping, writhing, whirling before they were shown to tables.

  It was a festival! a carnival! What costumes! What disguises! Naked flesh and glittering cloth. A kaleidoscope of eye-aching colors. All those jerking bodies frozen momentarily in stroboscopic light. The driving din! Smell of perfume and sweat. Snuffle of a hundred feet. The thunder!

  Zoe Kohler and Ernest Mittle looked at each other. Now they were the oldest in the room, smashed by cacophonous music, assaulted by the wildly sexual gyrations on the floor. It wasn’t a younger generation they were watching; it was a new world.

  There a woman with breasts swinging free from a low-cut shirt. There a man with genitals delineated beneath skin-tight pants of pink satin. Bare necks, arms, shoulders. Navels. Hot shorts, miniskirts, vinyl boots. Rumps. Tits and cocks.

  Grasping hands. Sliding hands. Grinding hips. Opened thighs. Stroking. Gasps and shiny grins. Flickering tongues and wild eyes. A churn of heaving bodies, the room rocking, seeming to tilt.

  Everything tilting …

  “Let’s dance,” Ernest yelled in her ear. “It’s so crowded, no one will notice us.”

  On the floor, they were swallowed up, engulfed and hidden. They became part of the slough. Hot flesh poured them together. They were in a fevered flood, swept away.

  They tried to move in time to the music, but they were daunted by the flung bodies about them. They huddled close, staggering upright, trying to keep their balance, laughing nervously and holding each other to survive.