The 1st Deadly Sin (10 page)

Contradicting all this were the man’s eyes: hard, bright. They were shrewd little chips of quartz. His glance never wavered; his toneless stare could bring a nurse to tears.

Delaney did not like the man. He did not, for a moment, doubt Bernardi’s professional competence. But he mistrusted the tailored plumpness, the secret smile, the long strands of oily hair slicked across a balding pate. He was particularly incensed by the doctor’s mustache: a thin, carefully clipped line of black imprinted on the upper lip as if marked by a felt-tipped pen.

The Captain knew he amused Bernardi. That did not bother him. He knew he amused many people: superiors in the Department, peers, the uniformed men of his command. Newspapermen. Investigators. Doctors of sociology and criminal pathology. He amused them all. His wife and children. He knew. But on occasion Dr. Bernardi had made no effort to conceal his amusement. Delaney could not forgive him that. “I hope you have good news for me, doctor.”

Bernardi spread his hands in a bland gesture: the dealer who has just been detected selling a ruptured camel.

“Regrettably, I do not. Captain, your wife has not responded to the antibiotics. As I told her, my first instinctive impression was of a low-grade infection. Persistent and of some duration. It accounts for the temperature.”

“What kind of infection?”

Again the gesture: hands spread wide and lifted, palms outward.

“That I do not know. Tests show nothing. Nothing on X-rays. No tumor, so far as I am able to determine. But still, apparently, an infection. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t like it,” Delaney said stonily.

“Nor do I,” Bernardi nodded. “First of all, your wife is ill. That is of most importance. Second, it is a defeat for me. What is this infection? I do not know. It is an embarrassment.”

An “embarrassment,” Delaney thought angrily. What kind of a thing was that to say? The man didn’t know how to use the king’s English. Was he an Italian, a Lebanese, a Greek, a Syrian, an Arabian? What the hell
was
he?

“Finally,” Dr. Bernardi said, consulting the file open on his desk, “let us consider the fever. It has been approximately six weeks since your wife’s first visit complaining of, quote, ‘Fever and sudden chills.’ Unquote. On that first visit, a temperature a bit above normal. Nothing unusual. Pills for a cold, the flu, a virus—whatever you want to call it. No effect. Another visit. Temperature up. Not a great increase, but appreciable. Then antibiotics. Now, third visit and temperature is up again. The sudden chills continue. It worries me.”

“Well, it worries her and it worries me,” Delaney said stoutly.

“Of course,” Bernardi soothed. “And now she finds many loose hairs in her comb. This is undoubtedly the result of the fever. Nothing serious, but still…And you are aware of the rash on the insides of her thighs and forearms?”

“Yes.”

“Again, undoubtedly the result of the fever stemming from the infection. I have prescribed an ointment. Not a cure, but it will take the itch away.”

“She looks so healthy.”

“You are seeing the fever, Captain! Don’t believe the blush of health. Those bright eyes and rosy cheeks. He! It is the infection.”

“What infection?” Delaney cried furiously. “What the hell
is
it? Is it cancer?”

Bernardi’s eyes glittered.

“At this stage, I would guess no. Have you ever heard of a Proteus infection, Captain?”

“No. I never have. What is it?”

“I will not speak of it now. I must do some reading on it. You think we doctors know everything? But there is too much. There are young physicians today who cannot recognize (because they have never treated) typhus, small pox or poliomyelitis. But that is by the by.”

“Doctor,” Delaney said, wearied by all this lubricous talk, “let’s get down to it. What do we do now. What are our options?”

Dr. Bernardi leaned back in his swivel chair, placed his two forefingers together, pressed them against his plump lips. He regarded Delaney for a long moment.

“You know, Captain,” he said with some malevolence, “I admire you. Your wife is obviously ill, and yet you say ‘What do
we
do’ and ‘What are
our
options.’ That is admirable.”

“Doctor…”

“Very well.” Bernardi sat forward sharply and slapped the file on his desk. “You have three options. One: I can attempt to reduce the fever, to overcome this mysterious infection, by heavier doses of antibiotics or with drugs I have not yet tried. I do not recommend this out of the hospital; the side effects can be alarming. Two: Your wife can enter a hospital for five days to a week for a series of tests much more thorough than I can possibly administer in this office. I would call in other men. Specialists. Neurologists. Gynecologists. Even dermatologists. This would be expensive.”

He paused, looking at the Captain expectantly.

“All right, doctor,” Delaney said patiently. “What’s the third choice?”

Bernardi looked at him tenderly.

“Perhaps you would prefer another physician,” he said softly. “Since I have failed.”

Delaney sighed, knowing his wife’s faith in this oleaginous man.

“We’ll go for the tests. In the hospital. You’ll arrange it?”

“Of course.”

“A private room.”

“That will not be necessary, Captain. It is only for tests.”

“My wife would prefer a private room. She’s a very modest woman. Very shy.”

“I know, Captain,” the doctor murmured, “I know. Shall you tell her or shall I?”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Yes,” Dr. Bernardi said. “I believe that would be best.” The Captain went back to the reception room to wait for her, and practiced smiling.

It was a doxy of a day, merry and flirting. There was a hug of sun, a kiss of breeze. Walking north on Fifth Avenue, they heard the snap of flags, saw the glister of an early September sky. Captain Delaney, who knew his city in all its moods and tempers, was conscious of a hastened rhythm. Summer over, vacation done, Manhattan rushed to Christmas and the New Year.

His wife’s hand was in his arm. When he glanced sideways at her, she had never seemed to him so beautiful. The blonde hair, now silvered and fined, was drawn up from her brow and pinned in a loose chignon. The features, once precise, had been softened by time. The lips were limpid, the line of chin and throat something. Oh she was something! And the glow (that damned fever!) gave her skin a grapy youthfulness.

She was almost as tall as he, walked erect and alert, her hand lightly on his arm. Men looked at her with longing, and Delaney Was proud. How she strode, laughing at things! Her head turned this way and that, as if she was seeing everything for the first time. The last time? A cold finger touched.

She caught his stare and winked solemnly. He could not smile, but pressed her arm close to his body. The important thing, he thought—the most important thing—was that…was that she should out-live him. Because if not…if not…he thought of other things.

She was almost five years older than he, but she was the warmth, humor, and heart of their marriage. He was born old, with hope, a secret love of beauty, and a taste for melancholy. But she had brought to their home a recipe for lentil soup, thin nightgowns with pink ribbons, and laughter. He was bad enough; without her he would have been a grotesque.

They strolled north on Fifth Avenue, on the west side. As they approached the curb at 56th Street, the traffic light was about to change. They could have made it across safely, but he halted her.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I want to catch this.”

His quick eye had seen a car—a station wagon with Illinois license plates—coming southward on Fifth Avenue. It attempted to turn westward onto 56th Street, going the wrong way on a one-way street. Immediately there was a great blaring of horns. A dozen pedestrians shouted, “One-way!” The car came to a shuddering halt, nosing into approaching traffic. The driver bent over the wheel, shaken. The woman beside him, apparently his wife, grabbed his arm. In the seat behind them two little boys jumped about excitedly, going from window to window.

A young uniformed patrolman had been standing on the northwest corner of the intersection, his back against a plate glass window. Now, smiling, he sauntered slowly toward the stalled car.

“Midtown Squad,” Captain Delaney muttered to his wife. “They pick the big, handsome ones.”

The officer wandered around to the driver’s side, leaned down, and there was a brief conversation. The couple in the out-of-state car laughed with relief. The policeman cocked thumb and forefinger at the two kids in the back and clicked his tongue. They giggled delightedly.

“He’s not going to ticket them?” Delaney said indignantly. “He’s going to let them go?”

The patrolman moved back onto Fifth Avenue and halted traffic. He waved the Illinois car to back up. He got it straightened out and heading safely downtown again.

“I’m going to—” Captain Delaney started.

“Edward,” his wife said. “Please.”

He hesitated. The car moved away, the boys in the back waving frantically at the policeman who waved back.

Delaney looked sternly at his wife. “I’m going to get his name and tin number,” he said. “Those one-way signs are plain. He should have—”

“Edward,” she repeated patiently, “they’re obviously on vacation. Did you see the luggage in the back? They don’t know our system of one-way streets. Why spoil their holiday? With two little boys? I- think the patrolman handled it beautifully. Perhaps that will be the nicest thing that happens to them in New York, and they’ll want to come back again. Edward?” He looked at her. (“Your wife is obviously ill…the fever…hair in her comb…you have three options…infection that…”) He took her arm, led her carefully across the street. They walked the next block in silence.

“Well, anyway,” he grumbled, “his sideburns were too long. You won’t find sideburns like that in
my
precinct.”

“I wonder why?” she said innocently, then laughed and leaned sideways to touch her head against his shoulder.

He had plans for lunch at the Plaza, window-shopping, visiting the antique shops on Third Avenue—things she enjoyed doing together on his day off. It was important that she should be happy for a time before he told her. But when she suggested a walk through the Park and lunch on the terrace at the zoo, he agreed instantly. It would be better; he would find a bench where they could be alone.

As they crossed 59th Street into the Park, he looked about with wonder. Now what had been there before the General Motors Building?

“The Savoy-Plaza,” she said.

“Mind-reader,” he said.

So she was—where he was concerned.

The city changed overnight. Tenements became parking lots became excavations became stabbing office buildings while your head was turned. Neighborhoods disappeared, new restaurants opened, brick changed to glass, three stories sprouted to thirty, streets bloomed with thin trees, a little park grew where you remembered an old Irish bar had been forever.

It was his city, where he was born and grew up. It was home. Who could know its cankers better than he? But he refused to despair. His city would endure and grow more beautiful.

Part of his faith was based on knowledge of its past sins: all history now. He knew the time when the Five Points Gang bit off enemies’ ears and noses in tavern brawls, when farm lads were drugged and shanghaied from the Swamp, when children’s bordellos flourished in the Tenderloin, when Chinese hatchetmen blasted away with heavy pistols (and closed eyes) in the Bloody Triangle.

All this was gone now and romanticized, for old crime, war, and evil enter books and are leached of blood and pain. Now his city was undergoing new agonies. These too, he was convinced would pass if men of good will would not deny the future.

His city was an affirmation of life: its beauty, harshness, sorrow, humor, horror, and ecstasy. In the pushing and shoving, in the brutality and violence, he saw striving, the never-ending flux of life, and would not trade it for any place on earth. It could grind a man to litter, or raise him to the highest coppered roof, glinting in benignant sunlight.

They entered the Park at 60th Street, walking between the facing rows of benches toward the zoo. They stopped before the yak’s cage and looked at the great, brooding beast, his head lowered, eyes staring at a foreign world with dull wonder.

“You,” Barbara Delaney said to her husband.

He laughed, turned her around by the elbow, pointed to the cage across the way where a graceful Sika deer stood poised and alert, head proud on slim neck, eyes gleaming.

“You,” Edward Delaney said to his wife.

They lunched lightly. He fretted with his emptied coffee cup: peering into it, turning it over, revolving it in his blunt fingers.

“All right,” she sighed in mock weariness, “go make your phone call.”

He glanced at her gratefully. “It’ll just take a minute.”

“I know. Just to make sure the precinct is still there.”

The thick voice said, “Two hundred and fifty-first Precinct. Officer Curdy. May I help you?”

“This is Captain Edward X. Delaney,” he said in his leaden voice. “Connect me with Lieutenant Dorfman, please.”

“Oh. Yes, Captain. I think he’s upstairs. Just a minute; I’ll find him.”

Dorfman came on almost immediately. “’Lo, Captain, Enjoying your day off? Beautiful day.”

“Yes. What’s happening?”

“Nothing unusual, sir. The usual. A small demonstration at the Embassy again, but we moved them along. No charges. No injuries.”

“Damage?”

“One broken window, sir.”

“All right. Have Donaldson type up the usual letter of apology, and I’ll sign it tomorrow.”

“It’s done, Captain. It’s on your desk.”

“Oh. Well…fine. Nothing else?”

“No, sir. Everything under control.”

“All right. Switch me back to the man on the board, will you?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll buzz him:”

The uniformed operator came back on.

“Captain?”

“Is this Officer Curdy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Curdy, you answered my original call with: ‘Two hundred and fifty-first Precinct.’ In my memo number six three one, dated fourteen July of this year, I gave very explicit orders governing the procedure of uniformed telephone operators on duty. I stated in that memorandum that incoming calls were to be answered: ‘Precinct two five one.’ It is shorter and much more understandable than ‘Two hundred and fifty-first Precinct.’ Did you read that memo?”