The 1st Deadly Sin (12 page)

“Who decided that?” Delaney demanded.

“We did.”

“‘We’?” Delaney asked. “Who is ‘we’?”

Bernardi looked at him coldly. He sat back, pulled up one trouser leg, carefully crossed his knees. “Myself and the specialists I called in,” he said. “I have their professional opinions here, Captain—their written and signed opinions—and I have prepared a duplicate set for your use.”

Captain Edward X. Delaney had interrogated enough witnesses and suspects in his long career to know when a man or woman was lying. The tip-off could come in a variety of ways. With the stupid or inexperienced it came with a physical gesture: a shifting away of the eyes, a nervous movement, blinking, perhaps a slight skim of sweat or a sudden deep breath. The intelligent and experienced revealed their falsehood in different ways: a too deliberate nonchalance, or an “honest” stare, eyeball to eyeball, or by a serious, intent fretting of the brows. Sometimes they leaned forward and smiled candidly.

But this man was not lying; the Captain was convinced of that. He was also convinced Bernardi was not telling the whole truth. He was holding something back, something distasteful to him.

“All right,” Delaney grated, “we have their signed opinions. I assume they all agree?”

Bernardi’s eyes glittered with malice. He leaned forward to pat Barbara’s hand, lying limply atop the thin blue blanket. “There there,” he said.

“It is not a very serious operation,” he continued. “It is performed frequently in every hospital in the country. But all surgery entails risk. Even lancing a boil. I am certain you understand this. No surgery should ever be taken lightly.”

“We don’t take it lightly,” Delaney said angrily, thinking this man—this “foreigner”—just didn’t know how to talk.

During this exchange Barbara Delaney’s head moved side to side, back and forth between husband and doctor.

“Very well,” Delaney went on, holding himself in control, “you recommend surgery. You remove those kidney stones, and my wife regains her health. Is that it? There’s nothing more you’re not telling us?”

“Edward,” she said. “Please.”

“I want to know,” he said stubbornly. “I want you to know.”

Bernardi sighed. He seemed about to mediate between them, then thought better of it.

“That is our opinion,” he nodded. “I cannot give you an iron-clad one hundred percent guarantee. No physician or surgeon can. You must know that. This, admittedly, will be an ordeal for Mrs. Delaney. Normal recuperation from this type of surgery demands a week to ten days in the hospital, and several weeks in bed at home. I don’t wish to imply that this is of little importance. It is a serious situation, and I take it seriously, as I am certain you do also. But you are essentially a healthy woman, dear lady, and I see nothing in your medical record that would indicate anything but a normal recovery.”

“And there’s no choice but surgery?” Delaney demanded again.

“No. You have no choice.”

A small cry came from Barbara Delaney, no louder than a kitten’s mew. She reached out a pale hand to her husband; he grasped it firmly in his big paw.

“But we have no assurance?” he asked, realizing he was again repeating himself, and that his voice was desperate.

The translucent film over Bernardi’s eyes seemed to become more opaque. Now it was the pearly cover on the eyes of a blind dog.

“No assurance,” he said shortly. “None whatsoever.”

Silence fell into the pastel room like a gentle rain. They looked at each other, all three, heads going back and forth, eyes flickering. They could hear the noises of the hospital: loudspeakers squawking, carts creaking by, murmured voices, and somewhere a radio playing dance music. But in this room the three looked into each others’ eyes and were alone, swaddled in silence.

“Thank you, doctor,” Delaney said harshly. “We will discuss it.”

Bernardi nodded, rose swiftly. “I will leave you these documents,” he said, placing a file on the bedside table. “I suggest you read them carefully. Please do not delay your decision more than twenty-four hours. We must not let this go on, and plans must be made.”

He bounced from the room, light on his feet for such a stout man.

Edward X. Delaney had been born a Catholic and raised a Catholic. Communion and confession were as much a part of his life as love and work. He was married in the Church, and his children attended parochial schools. His faith was monolithic. Until 1945…

On a late afternoon in 1945, the sun hidden behind a sky black with oily smoke, Captain Delaney led his company of Military Police to the liberation of a concentration camp in north Germany. The barbed wire gate was swinging wide. There was no sign of activity. The Captain deployed his armed men. He himself, pistol drawn, strode up to an unpainted barracks and threw open the door.

The things stared at him.

A moan came up from his bowels. This single moan, passing his lips, took with it Church and faith, prayer and confidence, ceremony, panoply, habit and trust. He never thought of such things again. He was a cop and had his own reasons.

Now, sensing what lay ahead, he yearned for the Church as a voluntary exile might yearn for his own native land. But to return in time of need was a baseness his pride could not endure. They would see it through together, the two of them, her strength added to his. The aggregate—by the peculiar alchemy of their love—was greater than the sum of the parts.

He sat on the edge of her bed, smiled, smoothed her hair with his heavy hand. A nurses’ aide had brushed her hair smooth and tied it back with a length of thick blue knitting wool.

“I know you don’t like him,” she said.

“That’s not important,” he shook his great head. “What is important is that you trust him. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. But I still want to talk to Ferguson.”

“You don’t want to decide now?”

“No. Let me take the papers and try to understand them. Then I’ll show them to Ferguson and get his opinion. Tonight, if possible. Then I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll discuss it. Will that be all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Did Mary do the curtains?” She was referring to their Monday-to-Friday, 8-to-4 maid.

“Yes, she did. And she brushed and aired the living room drapes in the backyard. Tomorrow she’ll do the parlor drapes if the weather holds. She wants so much to visit you but I said you weren’t up to it. I’ve told all your friends that. Are you sure it’s what you want?”

“Yes. I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Maybe later I’ll feel up to it. What did you have for breakfast?”

“Let’s see…” he said, trying to remember. “A small orange juice. Cereal, no sugar. Dry toast and black coffee.”

“Very good,” she nodded approvingly. “You’re sticking to your diet. What did you have for lunch?”

“Well, things piled up, and we had to send out for sandwiches. I had roast beef on whole wheat and a large tomato juice.”

“Oh Edward,” she said, “that’s not enough. You must promise that tonight you’ll—” Suddenly she stopped; tears flooded up to her eyes and out, down her cheeks. “Oh Jesus,” she cried. “Why me?”

She lurched up to embrace him. He held her close, her wet face against his. His blunt fingers stroked her back, and he kept repeating, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” over and over. It didn’t seem enough.

He went back to the Precinct carrying her medical file. The moment he was at his desk he called Dr. Sanford Ferguson, but couldn’t reach him. He tried the Medical Examiner’s office, the morgue, and Ferguson’s private office. No one knew where he was. Delaney left messages everywhere.

Then he put the.medical file aside and went to work. Dorfman and two Precinct detectives were waiting to see him, on separate cases. There was a deputation of local businessmen to demand more foot patrolmen. There was a group of black militants to protest “police brutality” in breaking up a recent march. There was a committee of Jewish leaders to discuss police action against demonstrations held almost daily in front of an Egyptian embassy located in the precinct. There was an influential old woman with an “amazing new idea” for combating drug addiction (put sneezing powder in cocaine). And there was a wealthy old man charged (for the second time) with exhibiting himself to toddlers.

Captain Delaney listened to all of them, nodding gravely. Occasionally he spoke in a voice so deliberately low his listeners had to crane forward to hear. He had learned from experience that nothing worked so well as quiet, measured tones to calm anger and bring people, if not to reason then to what was possible and practical.

It was 8:00 p.m. before his outer office had emptied. He rose and forced back his massive shoulders, stretching wide. This kind of work, he had discovered, was a hundred times more wearying than walking a beat or riding a squad. It was the constant, controlled exercise of judgment and will, of convincing, persuading, soothing, dictating and, when necessary, surrendering for a time, to take up the fight another day.

He cleaned up his desk, taking a regretful look at the paperwork that had piled up in one day and must wait for tomorrow. Before leaving, he looked in at lockups and squad rooms, at interrogation rooms and the detectives’ cubbyholes. The 251st Precinct house was almost 90 years old. It was cramped, it creaked, and it smelled like all antique precinct houses in the city. A new building had been promised by three different city administrations. Captain Delaney made do. He took a final look at the Duty Sergeant’s blotter before he walked next door to his home.

Even older than the Precinct house, it had been built originally as a merchant’s townhouse. It had deteriorated over the years until, when Delaney bought it with the inheritance from his father’s estate ($28,000), it had become a rooming house, chopped up into rat-and-roach-infested one-person apartments. But Delaney had satisfied himself that the building was structurally sound, and Barbara’s quick eye had seen the original marble fireplaces and walnut paneling (painted over but capable of being restored), the rooms for the children, the little paved areaway and overgrown garden. So they had bought it, never dreaming he would one day be commanding officer of the Precinct house next door.

Mary had left the hall light burning. There was a note Scotch-taped to the handsome pier glass. She had left slices of cold lamb and potato salad in the refrigerator. There was lentil soup he could heat up if he wanted it, and an apple tart for dessert. It all seemed good to him, but he had to watch his weight. He decided to skip the soup.

First he called the hospital. Barbara sounded sleepy and didn’t make much sense; he wondered if they had given her a sedative. He spoke to her for only a few moments and thought she was relieved when he said good-night.

He went into the kitchen, took off his uniform jacket and gun belt and hung them on the back of a chair. First he mixed a rye highball, his first drink of the day. He sipped it slowly, smoked a cigarette (his third of the day), and wondered why Dr. Ferguson hadn’t returned his calls. Suddenly he realized it might be Ferguson’s day off, in which case he had probably been out playing golf.

Carrying the drink, he went into the study and rummaged through the desk for his address book. He found Ferguson’s home number and dialed. Almost immediately a jaunty voice answered:

“Doctor Ferguson. ”

“Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

“Hello, Captain Edward X. Delaney there,” the voice laughed. “What the hell’s wrong with you—got a dose of clap from a fifteen-year-old bimbo?”

“No. It’s about my wife. Barbara.”

The tone changed immediately.

“Oh. What’s the problem, Edward?”

“Doctor, would it be possible to see you tonight?”

“Both of you or just you?”

“Just me. She’s in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Edward, you caught me on the way out. They’ve dragged me into an emergency cut-’em-up.”
(The doctor’s slang for an autopsy.)
“I won’t be home much before midnight. Too late?”

“No. I can be at your home at midnight. Will that be all right?”

“Sure. What’s this all about?”

“I’d rather tell you in person. And there are papers. Documents. Some X-rays.”

“I see. All right, Edward. Be here at twelve.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

He went back into the kitchen to eat his cold lamb and potato salad. It all tasted like straw. He put on his heavy, black-rimmed glasses, and as he ate slowly, he methodically read every paper in Barbara’s medical file, and even held the X-rays up to the overhead light, although they meant nothing to him. There she was, in shadows: the woman who meant everything to him.

He finished eating and reading at the same time. All the doctors seemed to agree. He decided to skip the apple tart and black coffee. But he mixed another rye highball and, in his skivvie shirt, went wandering through the empty house.

It was the first time since World War II he and his wife slept under separate roofs. He was bereft, and in all those darkened rooms he felt her presence and wanted her: sight, voice, smell, laugh, slap of slippered feet, touch…
her.

The children were there, too, in the echoing rooms. Cries and shouts, quarrels and stumblings. Eager questions. Wailing tears. Their life had soaked into the old walls. Holiday meals. Triumphs and defeats. The fabric of a family. All silent now, and dark as the shadows on an X-ray film.

He climbed stairs slowly to vacant bedrooms and attic. The house was too big for the two of them: no doubt about it. But still…There was the door jamb where Liza’s growth had been marked with pencil ticks. There was the flight of stairs Eddie had tumbled down and cut his chin and never cried. There was the very spot where one of their many dogs had coughed up his life in bright blood, and Barbara had become hysterical.

It wasn’t much, he supposed. It was neither high tragedy nor low comedy. No great heights or depths. But a steady wearing away of the years. Time evened whatever drama there may have been. Time dimmed the colors; the shouting died. But the golden monochrome, the soft tarnish that was left had meaning for him. He wandered through the dim corridors of his life, thinking deep thoughts and making foolish wishes.