Third Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “The wigs?” Delaney asked.

  “Oh yeah. Black and blond. Both nylon. In the same closet with the whore’s duds. High-heeled shoes in there, too. And in a dresser drawer, way in the back, black lace underwear and fancy shit like that.”

  “Did he say anything about what the apartment was like?” the Chief said.

  “Very neat,” Bentley reported. “Very clean. Spotless.”

  “That figures,” Delaney said.

  Late on Friday afternoon, July 18th, the Chief met with Deputy Commissioner Thorsen at a back table in a seedy tavern on Eighth Avenue. There were only a few solitary drinkers at the bar. The waitress, wearing a leotard and black net hose, brought their Scotch-and-waters and left them alone.

  “How’s it going, Edward?” Thorsen asked.

  Delaney flipped a palm back and forth. “Some good, some bad,” he said.

  “But is it her?” the Deputy said.

  “No doubt about that. It’s her, all right.”

  “But you still don’t want to pick her up?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We’ve got about a week, Edward. Then she’s due to hit again.”

  “I’m aware of that, Ivar.”

  The Admiral sat back, sighing. He lifted his glass around on the Formica tabletop, making damp interlocking circles.

  “You’re a hard man, Edward.”

  “Not so hard,” Delaney said. “I’m just trying to make a case for you.”

  “Since when has any case been airtight?”

  “I didn’t say an airtight case. Just a strong case that has a chance in the courts.”

  Thorsen stared at him reflectively.

  “Sometimes I think you and I are—well, maybe not on opposing sides, but we see this thing from different viewpoints. All I want to do is stop these killings. And you—”

  “That’s all I want,” Delaney said stolidly.

  “No, that’s not all you want. You want to squash the woman.”

  “And what do you want—to let her walk away whistling? That’s exactly what will happen if we pull her in now.”

  “Look,” Thorsen said, “let’s get our priorities straight. You’re convinced she’s the killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, now suppose we pull her in, even charge her, and eventually she walks. But she’s not going to kill again, is she? She’s going to behave, knowing we’ll keep an eye on her. So the killings will end, won’t they? Even if she walks?”

  “And what about George Puller, Frederick Wolheim, Jerome Ashley, and all the rest? Just tough titty for them—right?”

  “Edward, our main job is crime prevention. And if pulling her in now can prevent a crime, then I say let’s do it.”

  “Prevention is only part of the job. Another part is crime detection and punishment.”

  “Let’s have another drink,” Ivar Thorsen said, signaling the waitress and pointing at their empty glasses.

  They were silent while they were being served. Then Thorsen tried again …

  “On the basis of what we know now,” he said, “we can probably get search warrants for her apartment and office. Agreed?”

  “Probably. But unless you find the weapon used, with her prints on it and stains of blood from her last kill, what have you got?”

  “Maybe we’ll find that WHY NOT? bracelet.”

  “Hundreds of them were sold. Probably thousands. It would mean nothing.”

  “The tear gas container?”

  “Even if we find it, there’s no proof it was the one used on Bergdorfer. Ditto the clothes she wore. And the wigs. Ivar, that’s all the sleaziest kind of circumstantial evidence. A good defense attorney would make mincemeat of a prosecution based on that.”

  “She’s got Addison’s disease.”

  “So have fifteen other women living in Manhattan. I know you think we’ve got a lot on her. We have. Enough to convince me that she’s the Hotel Ripper. But it’s been a long time since you’ve testified in court. You’ve forgotten that there’s a fucking big gap between knowing and proving. We have enough to know we have the right perp, but we have shit-all when it comes to proving. I tell you frankly that I don’t think the DA will go for an indictment on the basis of what we’ve got. He’s looking for good arrests and convictions. Like everyone else, he’s not particularly enamored of lost causes.”

  “I still say we have enough to bring her in for questioning. Even if we don’t find anything new in her apartment or office, we can throw the fear of God into her. She won’t slit any more throats.”

  “You’re sure of that? Positive? That she won’t leave the city, move somewhere else, change her name, and take up her hobby again?”

  “That’s some other city’s problem.”

  Delaney grunted. “Ivar, you’re all heart.”

  “You know what I mean. I volunteered for this job because I figured if anyone could find the Hotel Ripper, you could. All right, you’ve done it, and I want you to know how much I appreciate what you’ve done. But the whole point of the thing was to bring this series of homicides to an end. It seems to me that we can do that now by picking her up and telling her what we know. Trial and conviction are secondary to stopping her.”

  “Then it’s bye-bye, birdie,” Delaney said. “That’s not right.”

  Ivar Thorsen slapped his palms on the table.

  “No wonder they called you ‘Iron Balls,’” he said.

  “You’ve got to be the most stubborn, opinionated man I’ve ever met. You just won’t give.”

  “I know what’s right,” Delaney said woodenly.

  The Admiral took a deep breath.

  “I’ll give you another week,” he said. “That’s, uh, Friday the twenty-fifth. If we have nothing more on her by then, I’m bringing her in anyhow. I just can’t take the risk of letting her try another slashing.”

  “Shit,” Delaney said.

  He strode home through the sultry twilight. He went through Central Park, trying to walk off his anger. Intellectually, he could understand the reasoning behind Ivar Thorsen’s decision. But that didn’t make it any better. It was all political.

  “Political.” What a shifty word! Political was everything weak, sly, expedient, and unctuous. Political was doing the right things for the wrong reasons, and the wrong things for the right reasons.

  Ivar had his career and the Department’s reputation to think about. In that connotation, he was doing the “right” thing, the political thing. But he was also letting a murderess stroll away from her crimes; that was what it amounted to.

  Delaney planned how they could smash her. It would be an audacious scheme, but with foresight and a bit of luck, they could pull it off.

  Not letting her out on the prowl to pick up some innocent slob, going with him to his hotel room, and then ripping his throat. With the cops tailing her and breaking in at the last minute to catch her with the knife in her hand and the victim-to-be still alive. That would never work.

  It would have to be a carefully plotted scam, using a police decoy. The guy selected would have to be a real cowboy, with quick reflexes and the balls to see it through. He’d have charm, be physically presentable, and have enough acting ability to play the role of an out-of-town salesman or convention-goer.

  He would have a room in a midtown hotel, and they would wire it like a computer, with mikes, a two-way mirror, and maybe a TV tape camera filming the whole thing. A squad of hard guys in the adjoining room, of course, ready to come on like Gangbusters.

  She’d be tailed to the hotel she selected and the cowboy would be alerted. He’d make the pickup or let her pick him up. Then he’d take her back to his hotel room. The pickup would be the dicey part. Once the cowboy made the meet, the rest should go like silk.

  It would be important that even the appearance of entrapment be avoided, but that could be worked out. With luck they’d be able to grab her in the act, with her trusty little jackknife open and ready. Let her try to walk away from that!
>
  Delaney admitted it was a chancy gamble, but God-damnit, it could work. And it would cut through all the legal bullshit, all the court arguments about the admissibility of circumstantial evidence. It would be irrefutable proof that Zoe Kohler was a bloody killer.

  But the politicians said No, don’t take the risk, all we want to do is stop her, and start booking conventions again, and if she walks, that’s too bad, but we stopped her, didn’t we?

  Edward X. Delaney made a grimace of disgust. The law was the law, and murder was wrong, and every time you weaseled, you weakened the whole body of the law, the good book it had taken so many centuries to write.

  By God, if he was on active duty and in command, he would smash her! If the cowboy didn’t succeed, then Delaney would try something else. She might kill again, and again, but in the end he’d hang her by the heels, and the best defense attorney in the world couldn’t prevent those words: “Guilty as charged.”

  By the time he arrived home, he was sodden with sweat, his face reddened, and he was puffing with exhaustion.

  “What happened to you?” Monica asked curiously. “You look like you’ve been wrestling with the devil.”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  July 22; Tuesday …

  She did not wake pure and whole—and knew she never would. The abdominal pains were constant now, almost as severe as menstrual cramps. Weakness buckled her knees; she frequently felt giddy and feared she might faint on the street.

  She continued to lose weight; her flesh deflated over her joints; she seemed all knobs and edges. The discolored blotches grew; she watched with dulled horror as whole patches of skin took on a grayish-brown hue.

  Everything was wrong. She felt nausea, and vomited. She suddenly had a craving for salt and began taking three, four, then five tablets a day. She tried to eat only bland foods, but was afflicted first with constipation, then with diarrhea.

  Her dream of happiness, on the night following Ernest Mittle’s proposal of marriage, had vanished. Now she said aloud: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

  When Madeline Kurnitz called to ask her to lunch, Zoe tried to beg off, not certain she had the strength and fearful of what Maddie might say about her appearance.

  But the other woman insisted, even agreeing to lunch in the dining room of the Hotel Granger.

  “I want you to meet someone,” Maddie said, giggling.

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see!”

  Zoe reserved a table for three and was already seated when Maddie arrived. With her was a tall, stalwart youth who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Maddie was hanging on to his arm possessively, looking up at his face, and whispering something that made him laugh.

  She hardly glanced at Zoe. Just said, “Christ, you’re skinny,” and then introduced her escort.

  “Kiddo, this stud is Jack. Keep your hands off; I saw him first. Jack, this is Zoe, my best friend. My only friend. Say, ‘Hello, Zoe, how are you?’ You can manage that, can’t you?”

  “Hello, Zoe,” Jack said with a flash of white teeth, “how are you?”

  “See?” Maddie said. “He can handle a simple sentence. Jack isn’t so great in the brains department, luv, but with what he’s got, who needs brains? Hey, hey, how’s about a little drink? My first today.”

  “Your first in the last fifteen minutes,” Jack said.

  “Isn’t he cute?” Maddie said, stroking the boy’s cheek. “I’m teaching him to sit up and beg.”

  It was the other way around; Zoe was shocked by her appearance. Maddie had put on more loose weight, and it bulged, unbraed and ungirdled, in a straining dress of red silk crepe, with a side seam gaping and stains down the front.

  Her freckled cleavage was on prominent display, and she wore no hose. Her feet, in the skimpiest of strap sandals, were soiled with street dirt. Her legs had been carelessly shaved; a swath of black fuzz ran down one calf.

  It was her face that showed most clearly her loss: clown makeup wildly applied, powder caked in smut lines on her neck, a false eyelash hanging loose, lipstick streaked and crooked.

  There she sat, a blob of a woman, all appetite. It seemed to Zoe that her voice had become louder and screakier. She shouted for drinks, yelled for menus, laughing in high-pitched whinnies.

  Zoe hung her head as other diners turned to stare. But Maddie was impervious to their disapproval. She held hands with Jack, popped shrimp into his mouth, pinched his cheek. One of her hands was busy beneath the tablecloth.

  “… so Harry moved out,” Maddie chattered on, “and Jack moved in. A beautiful exchange. Now the lawyers are fighting it out. Jack, baby, you have a steak; you’ve got to keep up your strength, you stallion, you!”

  He sat there with a vacant grin, enjoying her ministrations, accepting them as his due. His golden hair was coiffed in artful waves. His complexion was a bronzed tan, lips sculpted, nose straight and patrician. A profile that belonged on a coin.

  “Isn’t he precious?” Maddie said fondly, staring at him with hungry eyes. “I found him parking cars at some roadhouse on Long Island. I got him cleaned up, properly barbered and dressed, and look at him now. A treasure! Maddie’s own sweet treasure.”

  She was, Zoe realized, quite drunk, for in addition to her usual ebullience, there was something else: almost an hysteria. Plus a note of nasty cruelty when she spoke of the young man as if he were a curious object.

  Either he did not comprehend her malicious gibes or chose to ignore them. He said little, grinned continuously, and ate steadily. He poked food into an already full mouth and masticated slowly with heavy movements of his powerful jaw.

  “We’re off for Bermuda,” Maddie said, “or is it the Bahamas? I’m always getting the two of them fucked up. Anyway, we’re going to do the tropical paradise bit for a month, drink rum out of coconut shells, and skinny-dip in the moonlight. How does that scenario grab you, kiddo? What does a thirsty gal have to do to get another drink in this dump?”

  She ate very little, Zoe noted, but she drank at a frantic rate, gulping, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand when liquid trickled down her chin. But never once did she let go of Jack. She hung on to his arm, shoulder, thigh.

  Zoe, remembering the brash bravado of a younger Maddie, was terrified by the woman’s dissolution. Frightened not only for Maddie but at what it presaged for her own future.

  For this woman, as a girl, had been the best of them. She was courageous and independent. She swaggered through life, dauntless and unafraid. She lived, and never feared tomorrow. She dared and she challenged, and never asked the price or counted the cost.

  Now here she was, drunk, wild, feverish, her flesh puddled, holding on desperately to a handsome boy young enough to be her son. Behind the bright glitter of her mascaraed eyes grew a dark terror.

  If this woman could be defeated, this brave, free, indefatigable woman, what hope in life was there for Zoe Kohler? She was so much weaker than Madeline Kurnitz. She was timid and fearful. She was smaller. When giants were toppled, what chance was there for midgets?

  They finished their hectic meal and Maddie threw bills to the waiter.

  “The son of a bitch cut off my credit cards,” she muttered.

  She rose unsteadily to her feet and Jack slid an arm about her thick waist. She tottered, staring glassily at Zoe.

  “You changing jobs, kiddo?” she asked.

  “No, Maddie. I haven’t even been looking. Why do you ask?”

  “Dunno. Some guy called me a few days ago, said you had applied for a job and gave me as a reference. Wanted to know how long I had known you, what I knew about your private life, and all that bullshit.”

  “I don’t understand. I haven’t applied for any job.”

  “Ah, the hell with it. Probably some weirdo. I’ll call you when I get back from paradise.”

  “Take care of yourself, Maddie.”

  “Fuck that. Jack’s going to take care of me. Aren’t you, l
over boy?”

  She watched them stagger out, Jack half-supporting the porcine woman. Zoe walked slowly back to her office, dread seeping in as she realized the implications of what Maddie had said.

  Someone was making inquiries about her, about her personal history and private life. She knew who it was—that stretched, dour man labeled “police,” who would not give up the search and would not be content until Zoe Kohler was dead and gone.

  She slumped at her desk, skeleton hands folded. She stared at those shrunken claws. They looked as if they had been soaked in brine. She thought of her approaching menstrual period and wondered dully if blood could flow from such a desiccated corpus.

  “Hello there!” Everett Pinckney said brightly, weaving before her desk. “Have a good lunch?”

  “Very nice,” Zoe said, trying to smile. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Pinckney?”

  He beamed at her, making an obvious effort to focus his eyes and concentrate on what he wanted to say. He leaned forward, knuckles propped on her desk. She could smell his whiskey-tainted breath.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, uh … Zoe, remember that tear gas I gave you? The spray can? The little one for your purse?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, have you got it with you? In your purse? In your desk?”

  She stared at him.

  “Silly thing,” he went on. “A detective was around. He’s investigating a burglary and has to check the serial numbers of all the cans sold in New York. I asked McMillan and Joe Levine to bring theirs in. You still have yours, don’t you? Didn’t squirt anyone with it, did you?” He giggled.

  “I don’t have it with me, Mr. Pinckney,” she said slowly.

  “Oh. It’s home, is it?”

  “Yes,” she said, thinking sluggishly. “I have it at home.”

  “Well, bring it in, will you, please? By Friday? The detective is coming back. Once he checks the number, you can have the can again. No problem.”

  He smiled glassily and tottered into his own office.

  Stronger now, it returned: the sense of being moved and manipulated. Events had escaped her power. They were pressing her back into her natural role of victim. She had lost all initiative; she was being controlled.