First Deadly Sin Read online

“A sip,” Delaney said. “Dick, just take a little sip.”

  He held the cup to the policeman’s lips. Boznanski tasted, coughed, bent forward in dry heaves, then leaned back. Delaney fed him slowly, sip by sip. Color began to come back into the Captain’s face. He straightened in his chair. Delaney poured a cup for the sergeant who drained it gratefully, in one gulp.

  “Oh my,” he said.

  “May I sir?” a voice asked. And there was the white-haired gentleman, finally awake and holding out a quivering hand that seemed skinned with tissue paper. And the two hippies. And the old Italian couple. Just a taste for all: the sacramental cup.

  “He’s not going to make it, is he?” the matron asked suddenly, looking at Delaney. “I knew you wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you.” Delaney nodded, pouring her the few drops remaining in the bottle. “He’s not going to make it.”

  “Ah Jesus,” she sighed, rolling a pale tongue around the inside of the waxed paper cup. “What a miserable marriage that was. But aren’t they all?”

  There was noise outside in the corridor. Deputy Inspector Thorsen came in, composed as ever. He stalked directly to the seated Captain Boznanski and stared at him. Then he turned to Delaney.

  “Thanks, Edward.”

  “What about Richmond?”

  “Richmond? Oh. He’s gone. They tried, but it was hopeless. Everyone knew it. Five surgeons working four hours.”

  Delaney looked up at the clock. It couldn’t be two in the morning, it couldn’t be. What had happened to time?

  “The Mayor and Commissioner are out there now,” Thorsen said in a toneless voice, “giving statements about the need for gun control laws and a new moral climate.”

  “Yes,” Delaney said. He strode over to. the nurse’s desk. “Where can I find Dr. Spencer?” he asked harshly.

  She looked at him with tired eyes. “Try the lounge. Turn right as you go out. Then, after you go through the swinging doors, there’s a narrow door on the left that says ‘No Admittance.’ That’s the surgeons’ lounge.”

  “Thank you,” Captain Delaney said precisely.

  He followed her directions. When he pushed back the narrow door without knocking, he saw a small room, one couch and two armchairs, a TV set, a card table and four folding chairs. There were five men in the room wearing surgical gowns, skull caps, and masks pulled down onto their chests. Three were dressed in light green, two in white.

  One man was standing, staring out a window. One was fiddling with the knobs on the TV set, trying to bring in a clear picture. One was trimming his fingernails with a small pocket knife. One was seated at the card table, carefully building an improbable house of leaned cards. One was stretched out on the floor, raising and lowering his legs, doing some kind of exercise.

  “Dr. Spencer?” Delaney said sharply.

  The man at the window turned slowly, glanced at the uniform, turned back to the window.

  “He’s dead,” he said tonelessly. “I told them that.”

  “I know he’s dead,” the Captain said. “My name is Delaney. You operated on my wife earlier this evening. Kidney stones. I want to know how she is.”

  Spencer turned again to look at him. The other men didn’t pause in their activities.

  “Delaney,” Spencer repeated. “Kidney stones. Well. I had to remove the kidney.”

  “What?”

  “I had to take out one of your wife’s kidneys.”

  “Why?”

  “It was infected, diseased, rotted.”

  “Infected with what?”

  “It’s down in the lab. We’ll know tomorrow.”

  The man building a house of cards looked up. “You can live with one kidney,” he said mildly to Delaney.

  “Listen,” Delaney said, choking, “listen, you said there’d be no trouble.”

  “So?” Spencer asked. “What do you want from me? I’m not God.”

  “Well, if you’re not,” Delaney cried furiously, “who the hell is?”

  There was a knock on the door. The man on the floor, the one lifting and lowering his legs, gasped, “Come in, come in, whoever you are.”

  A colored nurses’ aide stuck her capped head through the opened door and looked about boldly.

  “Any of you gentlemen a certain Captain Delaney?” she asked saucily.

  “I’m Delaney.”

  “You have a call, Captain. In the waiting room. They say it’s very, very, very important.”

  Delaney took a last look around. Spencer was staring out the window again, and the others were trying to stay busy. He stalked down the hall, pushed angrily through the swinging doors, slammed back into the waiting room. The little nurse handed him the phone, not looking up.

  “Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

  “Captain, this is Dorfman.”

  “Yes, lieutenant. What is it?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Captain. At this hour.”

  “What is it?”

  “Captain, there’s been a murder.”

  PART III

  1

  THE STREET WAS BLOCKED off with sawhorses: raw yellow wood with “New York Police Department” stencilled on the sides. Below the barricades were oil lanterns, black globes with smoking wicks. They looked like 19th century anarchists’ bombs.

  The patrolman on duty saluted and pulled one sawhorse aside to let Delaney through. The Captain walked slowly down the center of the street, toward the river. He knew this block well; three years previously he had led a team of officers and Technical Patrol Force specialists in the liberation of a big townhouse that had been taken over by a gang of thugs and was being systematically looted. The house was near the middle of the block. A few lights were on; in one apartment the tenants were standing at the window, staring down into the street.

  Delaney paused to survey the silent scene ahead of him. Understanding what was happening, he removed his cap, made the sign of the cross, bowed his head.

  There were a dozen vehicles drawn up in a rough semicircle: squad cars, ambulance, searchlight truck, laboratory van, three unmarked sedans, a black limousine. Thirty men were standing motionless, uncovered heads down.

  This city block had been equipped with the new street lights that cast an orange, shadowless glow. It filled doorways, alleys, corners like a thin liquid, and if there were no shadows, there was no brightness either, but a kind of strident light without warmth.

  Into this brassy haze a morning mist seeped gently and collected in tears on hoods and roofs of cars and on black asphalt. It damped the hair and faces of the silent watchers. It fell as a shroud on the bundle crumpled on the sidewalk. The kneeling priest completed extreme unction and rose from his knees. The waiting men replaced their hats; there was a subdued murmur of voices.

  Delaney stared at this night lithograph, then walked forward slowly. He came into a hard white beam from the searchlight truck; men turned to look at him. Lieutenant Dorfman came hurrying up, face twisted.

  “It’s Lombard, Captain,” he gasped. “Frank Lombard, the Brooklyn councilman. You know—the one who’s always talking about ‘crime on the streets’ and writing the newspapers what a lousy job the police are doing.”

  Delaney nodded. He looked around at the assembled men: patrolmen, precinct and Homicide North detectives, laboratory specialists, an inspector from the Detective Division. And a deputy commissioner with one of the Mayor’s personal aides.

  Now there was another figure kneeling alongside the corpse. Captain Delaney recognized the massive bulk of Dr. Sanford Ferguson. Despite the harsh glare of the searchlights, the Police Surgeon was using a penlight to examine the skull of the dead man. He stood away a moment while photographers placed a ruler near the corpse and took more flash photos. Then he kneeled again on the wet sidewalk. Delaney walked over to stand next to him. Ferguson looked up.

  “Hullo, Edward,” he smiled. “Wondering where you were. Take a look at this.”

  Before kneeling, Delaney stared down a
moment at the victim. It was not difficult to visualize what had happened. The man had been struck down from behind. The back of his skull appeared crushed; thick black hair was bloodied and matted. He had fallen forward, sprawling heavily. As he fell, the left femur had snapped; the leg was now flung out at an awkward angle. He had fallen with such force that the splintered end of the bone had thrust out through his trouser leg.

  As he fell, presumably his face smacked the sidewalk, for blood had flowed from a mashed nose, perhaps from a crushed mouth and facial abrasions. The pool of blood, not yet congealed, bloomed from his head in a small puddle, down into a plot of cracked earth about a scrawny plane tree at the curb.

  Delaney kneeled carefully, avoiding a leather wallet lying alongside the body. The Captain turned to squint into the searchlight glare.

  “The wallet dusted?” he called to men he couldn’t see.

  “No sir,” someone called back. “Not yet.”

  Delaney looked down at the wallet.

  “Alligator,” he said. “They won’t get much from that.” He took a ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of his uniform jacket and gently prized open the wallet, touching only one edge. Dr. Ferguson put the beam of his penlight on it. They both saw the thick sheaf of green bills.

  Delaney let the wallet fall closed, then turned back to the body. Ferguson put his light on the skull. Three men in civilian clothes came up to kneel around the corpse. The five bent over closely, heads almost touching.

  “Club?” one of the detectives asked. “A pipe maybe?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ferguson said, without looking up. “There’s no crushing or depression. That’s blood and matting you see. But there’s a penetration. Like a puncture. A hole about an inch in diameter. It looks round. I could put my finger in it.”

  “Hammer?” Delaney asked.

  Ferguson sat back on his heels. “A hammer? Yes, it could be. Depends on how deep the penetration goes.”

  “What about time, doc?” one of the other detectives asked.

  “Looks to be within three hours tops. No, call it two hours. Around midnight. Just a guess.”

  “Who found him?”

  “A cabby spotted him first but thought he was a drunk and didn’t stop. The cabby caught up with one of your precinct squads on York Avenue, Captain, and they came back.”

  “Who were they?”

  “McCabe and Mowery.”

  “Did they move the body or the wallet?”

  “McCabe says they didn’t touch the body. He says the wallet was lying open, face up, with ID card and credit cards showing in plastic pockets. That’s how they knew it was Lombard.”

  “Who closed the wallet?”

  “Mowery did that.”

  “Why?”

  “He says it was beginning to drizzle, and they were afraid it might rain harder and ruin any latent prints on the plastic windows in the wallet. He says they could see it was a rough leather wallet and chances are there’d be a better chance of prints on the plastic than on the leather. So they closed the wallet, using a pencil. He says they didn’t touch it. McCabe backs him up. McCabe says the wallet is within a quarter-inch at most from where they found it.”

  “When did the cabby stop them on York Avenue and tell them there was someone lying here?”

  “About an hour ago. Closer to fifty minutes maybe.”

  “Doctor,” Delaney asked, “can we roll him over now?”

  “You got your pictures?” a detective roared into the darkness.

  “We need the front,” the reply came back.

  “Careful of that leg,” Ferguson said. “One of you hold it together while we roll him over.”

  Five pairs of hands took hold of the corpse gently and turned it face up. The five kneeling men drew back as two photographers came up for long shots and closeups of the victim. Then the circle closed again.

  “No front wounds that I can see,” Ferguson reported, his little flashlight beam zigzagging down the dead body. “The broken leg and facial injuries are from the fall. At least the abraded skin indicates that. I’ll know better when I get him downtown. It was the skull penetration that did it.”

  “Dead before he hit the ground?”

  “Could be if that puncture is deep enough. He’s a—he was a heavy man. Maybe two twenty-five. He fell heavily.” He felt the dead man’s arms, shoulders, legs. “Solid. Not too much fat. Good muscle layer. He could have put up a fight. If he had a chance.”

  They were silent, staring down at the body. He had not been a handsome man, but his features were rugged and not unpleasant: strong jaw, full lips, a meaty nose (now crushed), thick black brows and walrus mustache. The teeth still unbroken were big, white, square—little tombstones. Blank eyes stared at the weeping sky.

  Delaney leaned forward suddenly and pressed his face close to the dead man’s. Dr. Ferguson grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

  “What the hell are you doing, Edward?” he cried. “Kissing the poor bastard?”

  “Smell him,” Delaney said. “Smell the mustache. Garlic, wine, and something else.”

  Ferguson leaned forward cautiously, and sniffed at the thick mustache.

  “Anise,” he said. “Wine, garlic, and anise.”

  “That’s an Italian dinner,” one of the detectives said. “Maybe he stiffed the waiter and the guy followed him down here and offed him.”

  No one laughed.

  “He is Italian,” someone said. “His name isn’t Lombard, it’s Lombardo. He dropped the ‘o’ when he went into politics. His district in Brooklyn is mostly Jewish.”

  They looked up. It was Lieutenant Rizzo from the 251st.

  “How do you know, lieutenant?”

  “He’s—was my wife’s cousin. He was at our wedding. His mother lives around here somewhere. I called my wife. She’s calling relatives, trying to find out the mother’s address. My wife says Lombard came over from Brooklyn occasionally to have dinner with his mother. She’s supposed to be a good cook.”

  The five men climbed shakily to their feet and brushed their damp knees. Dr. Ferguson signaled toward the ambulance, and two men came forward lugging a canvas body bag. A man came from the laboratory van with a plastic bag and a small pair of tongs to retrieve the wallet.

  “Edward,” Ferguson said, “I forgot to ask. How is your wife getting along?”

  “She was operated on tonight. Or rather yesterday afternoon.”

  “And …?”

  “They had to take out one of her kidneys.”

  Ferguson was silent a moment, then … “Infected?”

  “That’s what Spencer told me, Bernardi observed the operation but I can’t get hold of him.”

  “The prick. As soon as I get to a phone I’ll try to find out what the hell is going on. Where can I reach you.”

  “The precinct house probably. We’ll have to re-shuffle schedules and figure out how many uniformed men we can spare for door-to-door questioning. They’re taking our detectives away.”

  “I heard. Edward, I’ll call if I learn anything. If I don’t call, it means I haven’t been able to reach Spencer or Bernardi.”

  Delaney nodded. Dr. Ferguson climbed into the back of the ambulance, and it went whining away. Lt. Dorfman was moving toward him, but the deputy commissioner came out of the darkness and clamped a hand on Delaney’s elbow. The Captain didn’t like to be touched; he tugged his arm gently away.

  “Delaney?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “My name’s Broughton. B-r-o-u-g-h-t-o-n. I guess we never met.”

  They had, but Delaney didn’t mention it. The two officers shook hands. Broughton, a thick, shapeless man, motioned Delaney toward the black limousine. He opened the back door, waved Delaney in, climbed in beside him.

  “Go get a coffee, Jack,” he commanded the uniformed driver.

  Then they were alone. Broughton offered a cigar but Delaney shook his head. The deputy lighted up furiously, the end of the cigar flaring, the car fil
ling with harsh smoke.

  “It’s a piece of shit,” he said angrily. “Why the hell can’t we get Havana cigars? We’re defeating Communism by smoking horse shit? What kind of insanity is that?”

  He sat back, staring out the window at the sidewalk where someone had chalked an outline around the corpse before it was removed.

  “A lot of flak on this one, Captain,” Broughton said loudly. “A lot of flak. The Commissioner cancelled a speech in Kansas City—Kansas City, for Chrissakes—and is flying back. You probably saw the Mayor’s aide. His Honor is on our ass already. And don’t think the fucking governor won’t get in the act. You know this Lombard—the guy who got hisself killed?”

  “I read his statements in the newspapers and I saw him on television.”

  “Yeah, he got the publicity. So you know what we’re up against. ‘Crime in the streets … no law and order … hoodlums and muggers running wild … shake up the police department … the Commissioner should resign …’ You know. The shithead was running for Mayor. Now he’s knocked off, and if we don’t pull someone in, it proves he was right. You understand how serious this is, Captain.”

  “I consider every homicide serious.”

  “Well … yeah … sure. But the politics involved. You understand that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “All right. That’s one thing. Now the other thing. … This killing couldn’t have happened at a worst time. You get the Commissioner’s memo about precinct detectives?”

  “Memorandum four six seven dash B dated eight October; subject: Detective division, reorganization of? Yes sir, I received it.”

  Broughton laughed shortly. “I heard about you, Delaney. Yeah, that’s the memo.” He belched suddenly, a ripe, liquid sound. He didn’t excuse himself, but scratched in his crotch. “All right, we’re pulling all the detectives out of the precinct houses. You’re next on the list. You got the notification?”

  “Yes.”

  “Starts on Monday. All detectives will be organized in special units—homicide, burglary and larceny, truck thefts, hotel thefts, and so on. Uniformed officers will make the first investigation of a crime. You’re going to give your cops a crash course on what to look for. It’s all spelled out in a manual you’ll be getting. The investigating officers file a report. If it’s a major theft, say, involving more than $1,500 in money or goods, the detective unit takes over. If it’s a minor crime, say b-and-e or a mugging, the patrolman does what he can or reports it unsolvable. We tried it out in two test precincts, and we think it’s going to work. What do you think?”