Third Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

She sat on the edge of the bed. She took four of the pills, washed them down with a swallow of vodka. She didn’t want to drink too much, remembering what had happened to Maddie Kurnitz.

  Then she stripped the soaked sheet from the bed and let it fall at the foot. She got into bed alongside Ernest Mittle, wearing her oversized wedding gown and taped ring. She moved pills and vodka onto the bedside table. She took four more pills, a larger swallow of vodka.

  She waited …

  She thought it might come suddenly, blackness descending. But it did not; it took time. She gulped pills and swallowed vodka, and once she patted Ernie’s cooling hip and repeated, “There, there …”

  The scene she had been seeing all night, the blasted landscape, came back, but hazed and softened. The pitted ground slowly vanished, and only the curling smoke was left, the fog, the vapor.

  But soon enough that was gone. She thought she said something aloud, but did not know what it meant. All she was conscious of was that pain had ceased.

  And for that she was thankful.

  July 26; Saturday …

  “Surveillance reported ten minutes ago,” Sergeant Abner Boone said, consulting his notes.

  “Is she still there?” Thorsen said sharply.

  “Yes, sir. Got home about six-forty last night. Hasn’t been out since.”

  “Any phone calls?” Delaney asked.

  “One,” Boone said. “About nine o’clock last night. The deskman in the lobby, asking if Ernest Mittle could come up.”

  “Mittle?” Detective Bentley said. “He’s the boyfriend.”

  “He didn’t leave,” Boone said. “He’s still up there.”

  “Shacking up?” Sergeant Broderick said.

  “He never did that before,” Detective Johnson said.

  “Well, apparently both of them are still up there.”

  “Maybe he’s closer to this than we figured,” Broderick said. “Maybe he’s been in on it all along.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” Boone said.

  “How do we do this?” Ivar Thorsen asked.

  “Maybe I’ve overplanned it,” Boone said, “but rather be safe than sorry. Two cars at Lex and Third to block off her street. Precinct men for crowd control. The two guys on the wiretap will cover the basement. One man posted at each end of her hallway. Then we’ll go in.”

  “What if she doesn’t open up?” Thomas Handry said.

  “We’ll get the lobby man to use his passkeys,” Boone said. “He’s got them; I checked. Deputy, you, the Chief and I go in first. Uh, and Dr. Ho and Handry. Bentley, Johnson, and Broderick to follow. We got a floor plan of her apartment from the owner, and those guys will spread out fast to make sure she doesn’t have a chance to dump anything. Sound okay?”

  They all looked at Delaney.

  “I don’t think she’ll try to run,” he said, “but it won’t do any harm to have a man on the roof.”

  “Right,” Boone said, “we’ll do it.” He looked at his watch. “Coming up to ten o’clock. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Delaney, Dr. Patrick Ho, Sergeant Boone, and Thorsen rode in the Deputy’s car.

  “Ah, will there be any shooting?” Dr. Ho asked nervously.

  “God forbid,” Boone said.

  “I want this to go down quickly and quietly,” the Admiral said.

  “Get her and the boyfriend out of there as soon as possible,” Delaney advised. “Then you can tear the place apart.”

  “You have the warrants, sergeant?” Thorsen asked.

  Boone tapped his breast pocket. “Right here, sir. She’s signed, sealed, and delivered.”

  Thorsen remarked on the beauty of the morning; a bare sun rising in a strong sky. He said the papers had predicted rain, but at the moment it looked like a perfect July day.

  It went with a minimum of confusion. The screening cars sealed off the block. Two uniformed officers were posted at the outer door of the apartment house. Precinct men began to set up barricades.

  The others piled into the lobby. Uniformed men went first, hands on their holstered revolvers. The lobby attendant looked up, saw them coming. He turned white. Sergeant Boone showed the warrants. The man couldn’t stop nodding.

  They waited a few moments for the roof and corridor men to get in position. Then they crowded into the elevators, taking the lobby attendant along with them.

  They gathered outside her door. Boone waved the others aside, then knocked on the door with his knuckles.

  No response.

  He banged on the door with his fist, then put his ear to the panel.

  “Nothing,” he reported. “No sounds at all.” He gestured to the lobby attendant. “Open it up.”

  The man’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t insert the passkeys. Boone took them from him, turned both locks. The door opened a few inches, then caught on the chain.

  “I’ve got a bolt-cutter in my car,” Sergeant Broderick said.

  “Wait a minute,” Delaney said. He turned to the attendant. “Gas or electric ranges?” he asked.

  “Gas.”

  The Chief stepped close, put his face near the narrow opening, sniffed deeply.

  “Nothing,” he reported and stepped aside.

  Sergeant Boone took his place.

  “Police officers,” he yelled. “We’ve got a warrant. Open up.”

  No answer.

  “They’ve got to be in there,” Thorsen said nervously.

  “Should I get the bolt-cutter?” Broderick asked.

  Boone looked to Delaney.

  “Kick it in,” the Chief said curtly.

  The sergeant stood directly in front of the door. He drew up his leg until his knee almost touched his chin. He drove his foot forward at the spot where the chain showed. Wood splintered, the chain swung free, the door slammed open.

  They rushed in, jostling each other. The searchers spread out. Thorsen, Delaney, Dr. Ho, Handry, and Boone stood in the living room, looking around.

  “Clean and neat,” the Chief said, nodding.

  “Sarge!” Johnson yelled from the bedroom. “In here!”

  They went in, clustered around the bed. They stared down. The drained man with his raw throat gaping wide. The puttied woman wrapped in cloth as thin as a shroud.

  “Shit,” Sergeant Boone said bitterly.

  Delaney motioned to Dr. Ho. The little man stepped close, put two fingers to the side of Zoe Kohler’s neck.

  “Ah, yes,” he said gently. “She is quite, quite deceased.”

  He peered closely at the empty pill bottles but did not touch them. The vodka bottle was on its side on the rug, a little clear liquid left.

  “Barbiturates?” Handry asked Dr. Ho.

  “Ah, I would say so. And the liquor. Usually a lethal combination.”

  Ivar Thorsen took a deep breath, hands on his hips. Then he turned away.

  “You’ll have to clean up this mess, sergeant,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

  Thorsen and Delaney took the elevator down together.

  “She killed him?” the Deputy said. “Then did the Dutch?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “How do you figure it?”

  “I don’t,” Delaney said.

  Outside, on the sidewalk, a crowd was beginning to gather. They pushed their way through. They walked slowly to the Deputy’s car.

  “I’ll have to call a press conference,” Thorsen said, “but I could use a drink first. How about you, Edward?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “I’ll buy,” the Deputy offered.

  “Thanks, Ivar,” Edward X. Delaney said, smiling briefly. “Some other time. I think I’ll go home. Monica is waiting for me.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Edward X. Delaney Series

  1

  THE NOVEMBER SKY OVER Manhattan was chain mail, raveling into steely rain. A black night with coughs of thunder, lightning stabs that made abrupt days. Dr. Simon Ellerbee, standing at his office window, p
eered out to look at life on the street below. He saw only the reflection of his own haunted face.

  He could not have said how it started, or why. He, who had always been so certain, now buffeted and trembling …

  All hearts have dark corners, where the death of a loved one is occasionally wished, laughter offends, and even beauty becomes a rebuke.

  He turned back to his desk. It was strewn with files and tape cassettes: records of his analysands. He stared at that litter of fears, angers, passions, dreads. Now his own life belonged there, part of the untidiness, where once it had been ordered and serene.

  He stalked about, hands thrust deep into pockets, head bowed. He pondered his predicament and dwindling choices. Mordant thought: How does one seek “professional help” when one is a professional?

  The soul longs for purity, but we are all hungry for the spiced and exotic. Evil is just a word, and what no one sees, no one knows. Unless God truly is a busybody.

  He lay full-length on the couch some of his patients insisted on using, though he thought this classic prop of psychiatry was flimflam and often counterproductive. But there he was, stretched out tautly, trying to still his churning thoughts and succeeding no better than all the agitated who had occupied that same procrustean bed.

  Groaning, he rose from the couch to resume his pacing. He paused again to stare through the front window. He saw only a rain-whipped darkness.

  The problem, he decided, was learning to acknowledge uncertainty. He, the most rational of men, must adjust to the variableness of a world in which nothing is sure, and the chuckles belong to chance and accident. There could be satisfaction in living with that—fumbling toward a dimly glimpsed end. For if that isn’t art, what is?

  The downstairs bell rang three times—the agreed-upon signal for all late-night visitors. He started, then hurried into the receptionist’s office to press the buzzer unlocking the entrance from the street. He then unchained and unbolted the door leading from the office suite to the corridor.

  He ducked into the bathroom to look in the mirror, adjust his tie, smooth his sandy hair with damp palms. He came back to stand before the outer door and greet his guest with a smile.

  But when the door opened, and he saw who it was, he made a thick, strangled sound deep in his throat. His hands flew to cover his face and hide his dismay. He turned away, shoulders slumping.

  The first heavy blow landed high on the crown of his head. It sent him stumbling forward, knees buckling. A second blow put him down, biting at the thick pile carpeting.

  The weapon continued to rise and fall, crushing his skull. But by that time Dr. Simon Ellerbee was dead, all dreams gone, doubts fled, all questions answered.

  2

  BY MONDAY MORNING THE sky had been rinsed; a casaba sun loomed; and pedestrians strode with opened coats flapping. A chill breeze nipped, but New York had the lift of early winter, with stores preparing for Christmas, and street vendors hawking hot pretzels and roasted chestnuts.

  Former Chief of Detectives Edward X. Delaney sensed the acceleration. The city, his city, was moving faster, tempo changing from andante to con anima. The scent of money was in the air. It was the spending season—and if the boosters didn’t make it in the next six weeks, they never would.

  He lumbered down Second Avenue, heavy overcoat hanging from his machine-gunner’s shoulders. Hard homburg set solidly, squarely, atop his head. Big, flat feet encased in ankle-high shoes of black kangaroo leather. A serious man who looked more like a monsignor than an ex-cop. Except that cops are never ex-.

  The sharp weather delighted him, and so did the food shops opening so rapidly in Manhattan. Every day seemed to bring a new Korean greengrocer, a French patisserie, a Japanese take-out. And good stuff, too—delicate mushrooms, tangy fruits, spicy meats.

  And the breads! That’s what Edward X. Delaney appreciated most. He suffered, as his wife, Monica, said, from “sandwich senility,” and this sudden bonanza of freshly baked breads was a challenge to his inventiveness.

  Pita, brioche, muffins, light challah and heavy pumpernickel. Loaves no larger than your fist, and loaves of coarse German rye as big as a five-inch shell. Flaky stuff that dissolved on the tongue, and some grainy doughs that hit the stomach with a thud.

  He stopped in a half-dozen shops, buying this and that, filling his net shopping bag. Then, fearful of his wife’s reaction to his spree, he trundled his way homeward. He had a vision of something new: smoked chub tucked into a split croissant—with maybe a thin slice of Vidalia onion and a dab of mayonnaise, for fun.

  This hunched, ponderous man, weighty shoes thumping the pavement, seemed to look at nothing, but he saw everything. As he passed the 251st Precinct house—his old precinct—and came to his brownstone, he noted the unmarked black Buick illegally parked in front. Two uniformed cops in the front seat. They glanced at him without interest.

  Monica was perched on a stool at the kitchen counter, going through her recipe file.

  “You have a visitor,” she said.

  “Ivar,” he said. “I saw his car. Where’d you put him?”

  “In the study. I offered a drink or coffee, but he didn’t want anything. Said he’d wait for you.”

  “He might have called first,” Delaney grumbled, hoisting his shopping bag onto the counter.

  “What’s all that stuff?” she demanded.

  “Odds and ends. Little things.”

  She leaned forward to sniff. “Phew! What’s that smell?”

  “Maybe the blood sausage.”

  “Blood sausage? Yuck!”

  “Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.”

  He bent to kiss the back of her neck. “Put this stuff away, will you, hon? I’ll go in and see what Ivar wants.”

  “How do you know he wants anything?”

  “He didn’t come by just to say hello—that I know.”

  He hung his hat and coat in the hall closet, then went through the living room to the study at the rear of the house. He opened and closed the door quietly, and for a moment thought that First Deputy Commissioner Ivar Thorsen might be dozing.

  “Ivar,” Delaney said loudly, “good to see you.”

  The Deputy—known in the Department as the “Admiral”—opened his eyes and rose from the club chair alongside the desk. He smiled wanly and held out his hand.

  “Edward,” he said, “you’re looking well.”

  “I wish I could say the same about you,” Delaney said, eyeing the other man critically. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “I suppose,” Thorsen said, sighing. “You know what it’s like downtown, and I haven’t been sleeping all that much lately.”

  “Take a glass of stout or port before you go to bed. Best thing in the world for insomnia. And speaking of the old nasty—it’s past noon, and you could use some plasma.”

  “Thank you, Edward,” Thorsen said gratefully. “A small scotch would do me fine.”

  Delaney brought two glasses and a bottle of Glenfiddich from the cellarette. He sat in the swivel chair behind his desk and poured them both tots of the single malt. They tinked glass rims and sipped.

  “Ahh,” the Admiral said, settling into his armchair. “I could get hooked on this.”

  He was a neat, precise man. Fine silvery hair was brushed sideways. Ice-blue eyes pierced the world from under white brows. Ordinarily he had a baby’s complexion and a sharp nose and jaw that could have been snipped from sheet metal. But now there were stress lines, sags, pouches.

  “Monica had lunch with Karen the other day,” Delaney mentioned. “Said she’s looking fine.”

  “What?” Thorsen said, looking up distractedly.

  “Karen,” Delaney said gently. “Your wife.”

  “Oh … yes,” Thorsen said with a confused laugh. “I’m sorry; I wasn’t listening.”

  Delaney leaned toward his guest, concerned. “Ivar, is everything all right?”

  “Between Karen and me? Couldn’t be better. Downtown?
Couldn’t be worse.”

  “More political bullshit?”

  “Yes. But this time it’s not from the Mayor’s office; it’s the Department’s own bullshit. Want to hear about it?”

  Delaney really didn’t want to. Political infighting in the upper echelons of the New York Police Department was the reason he had filed for early retirement. He could cope with thieves and killers; he wasn’t interested in threading the Byzantine maze of Departmental cliques and cabals. All those intrigues. All those naked ambitions and steamy hatreds.

  In the lower, civil service ranks of sergeant, lieutenant, captain, he had known the stress of political pressure—from inside and outside the Department. He had been able to live with it, rejecting it when he could, compromising when he had to.

  But nothing had prepared him for the hardball games they played in the appointive ranks. When he got his oak leaves as a Deputy Inspector, he was thrown into a cockpit where the competition was fierce, a single, minor misstep could mean the end of a twenty-year career, and combatants swigged Maalox like fine Beaujolais.

  And as he went up the ladder to the two stars of an Assistant Chief, the tension increased with the responsibility. You not only had to do your work, and do it superbly well, but you had constantly to look over your shoulder to see who stood close behind you with a knife and a smirk.

  Then he had the three stars of Chief of Detectives, and wanted only to be left alone to do the job he knew he could do. But he was forced to spend too much time soothing his nervous superiors and civilian politicos with enough clout to make life miserable for him if he didn’t find out who mugged their nephew.

  He couldn’t take that kind of constraint, and so Edward X. Delaney turned in his badge. The fault, he acknowledged later, was probably his. He was mentally and emotionally incapable of “going along.” He had a hair-trigger temper, a strong sense of his own dignity, and absolute faith in his detective talents and methods of working a case.

  He couldn’t change himself, and he couldn’t change the Department. So he got out before the ulcers popped up, and tried to keep busy, tried to forget what might have been. But still …

  “Sure, Ivar,” he said with a set smile, “I’d like to hear about it.”