The 1st Deadly Sin (18 page)

The patrolman didn’t know, and the sergeant didn’t either.

Another possibility, Delaney was thinking, was that the killer was walking along with Lombard, the two were friends. But could the killer pull out a weapon, get behind his victim, and strike him directly from the rear without Lombard turning in alarm, dodging, or trying to ward off the blow?

The sticking point was still the suddenness of the attack and the fact that Lombard, a big, muscular man, had apparently offered no resistance, had allowed the killer to come up on him from behind.

Delaney stopped a moment and reflected; he was racing ahead too fast. Perhaps the killer didn’t approach from the rear. Perhaps he came directly toward Lombard from York Avenue. If he was well-dressed, walking swiftly like a resident of the block anxious to get home at midnight, chances are Lombard would have inspected him as he approached. And if the man looked all right, Lombard might have moved aside slightly to let him pass.

The weapon, of course, would have to be concealed. But if it was a pipe or a hammer, there were a number of ways that could be done—in a folded newspaper, under a coat carried on the arm, even in a trick package. Then, the instant after passing Lombard, the victim’s attention now on the area in front of him, the killer could bare his weapon, whirl, crush Lombard’s skull. All in an instant. Lombard would have no warning. He would topple forward, already dead. The assassin would return his weapon to its cover, and retrace his steps to York Avenue or even continue on to his own apartment, if he was a resident of the block, or to the apartment of a friend, or to a car parked for a convenient getaway.

Delaney ran through it again. The more he inspected it, the stronger it looked. It
felt
right. It assumed the killer approaching Lombard was a stranger to him. But if he was well-dressed, “legitimate” looking, and apparently hurrying home, it was doubtful if Lombard or anyone else would cross the street to escape attack. The Captain discarded the notion that after the murder the killer went on to his own apartment or that of a friend; he would surely guess that every resident of the block would be questioned and his whereabouts checked at the time of the slaying. No, the killer either went back toward York or escaped in a car parked nearby.

Delaney returned to the fence blocking off East River Drive, crossed the street, and started down the sidewalk where the body had been found, heading in the direction the victim had been walking.

Now I am Frank Lombard, soon to be dead. I have just had dinner with my mother, I have come out of her apartment house at midnight, I am in a hurry to get home to Brooklyn. I walk quickly, and I look about constantly. I even look down into the bush-surrounded entrances to the brownstones. I am acutely aware of the incidence of street assaults, and I make certain no one is lurking, waiting to bash me on the head or mug me.

I look up ahead. There is a man coming toward me from York Avenue. In the shadowless glare of the new street lights I can see that the man is well-dressed, carrying a coat over his arm. He too is hurrying, anxious to get home. I can understand that. As he approaches, our eyes lock. We both nod and smile reassuringly. “It’s all right,” the smile says. “We’re both well-dressed. We look okay. We’re not muggers.” I draw aside a little to give the man room to pass. The next instant I am dead.

Delaney stopped at the chalked outline on the sidewalk. It began to seem real to him. It explained why Lombard apparently made no move to defend himself, didn’t have time to make a move. The Captain walked slowly down to York Avenue. He turned, started back toward the river.

Now I am the killer, carrying a coat across my arm. Under the coat, hidden, I am grasping the handle of a hammer. I am walking quickly, with purposeful strides. Ahead of me, in the orange glare, I see the man I am to kill. I walk toward him briskly. As I come up, I nod, smile, and move to pass him. Now he is looking straight ahead. I pass, lift the hammer free, whirl, raise it high and strike. He goes down, sprawling forward. I cover the hammer again, walk quickly back to York Avenue again and escape.

Captain Delaney paused again at the chalked diagram. Yes, it could have happened that way. If the killer had nerve and resolution—and luck, of course. Always luck. No one looking out a window. No one else on the street at that hour. No cab suddenly coming down from York, its headlights picking him up the instant he struck. But assuming the killer’s luck, it all—ah, Jesus! The wallet! He had forgotten that damned wallet completely!

The wallet was the folding type, the kind a man customarily carries in a hip pocket. Indeed, Delaney had noted it had acquired a slight curve, taking its shape from the buttock. He carried the same type of wallet himself, and it began to curve after several months of use.

Lombard had been wearing a three-quarter “car coat” fastened in front with wooden toggles. In back, the coat and suit jacket beneath it had been pulled up high enough to expose his hip pockets. Now why had the killer paused long enough to frisk his victim for his wallet and then leave it open beside the body, even though it was stuffed with money? Every moment he tarried, every second, the killer was in deadly peril. Yet he took the time to search the corpse and remove the wallet. And then he left it open beside the body.

Why didn’t he take the money—or the entire wallet? Not because he was frightened away by someone’s appearance at a window or on the street. A man with nerve enough to approach his victim from the front would have nerve enough to take his loot, even if emperiled. A man can run just as fast with a wallet as without it. No, he just didn’t want the money. What did he want? To check the identification of his victim—or did he take something from the wallet, something they didn’t know about yet?

Delaney went back to York Avenue, turned, started back, and ran through it again.

Now I am the killer, carrying a coat across my arm. Under the coat…

Delaney knew as well as any man in the Department what the chances were of solving this particular homicide. He knew that in 1971 New York City had more murders than American combat deaths in Vietnam during the same period. In New York, almost five victims a day were shot, knifed, strangled, bludgeoned, set on fire or thrown from roofs. In such a horrific bloodbath, what was one more?

But if that became the general attitude, the
accepted
attitude, society’s attitude—“What’s one more?”—then the murder of Frank Lombard was an incident of no significance. When plague strikes, who cares enough to mourn a single soul?

When Captain Edward X. Delaney explained to the newspaperman why he had become a cop, he said what he thought: that he believed there was an eternal harmony in the universe, in all things animate and inanimate, and that crime was a dissonance in the chiming of the spheres. That is what Delaney thought.

But now, playing his victim-killer game in the first raw attempt to understand what had happened and to begin a possible solution of this crime, he was sadly aware that he had a deeper motive, more felt than thought. He had never spoken of it to anyone, not even Barbara, although he suspected she guessed.

It was perhaps due to his Catholic nurture that he sought to set the world aright. He wanted to be God’s surrogate on earth. It was, he knew, a shameful want. He recognized the sin. It was pride.

2

W
HAT WAS IT?
He could not decipher its form or meaning. A frail thing there under white sheet and blue blanket, thin arms arranged outside. Heavy eyelids more stuck than shut, cheek bones poking, pale lips drawn back in a death’s head grin, a body so frail it seemed even the blanket pressed it flat. And tubes, bandages, steel and plastic—new organs these—jars and drainage bags. He looked frantically for signs of life, stared, stared, saw finally a slow wearied rise and fall of breast no plumper than a boy’s. He thought of the body of Frank Lombard and wondered, Where is the connection? Then realized he saw both through mist, his eyes damped and heavy.

“She’s under heavy sedation,” the nurse whispered, “but she’s coming along just fine. Dr. Bernardi is waiting for you in the Surgeons’ Lounge.”

He searched for something he could kiss, a naked patch of skin free of tubes, needles, straps, bandages. All he wanted was to make a signal, just a signal. He bent to kiss her hair, but it was wire beneath his lips.

“I mentioned it,” Bernardi said, inspecting his fingernails. Then he looked up at Delaney accusingly, daring him to deny it. “You’ll remember I mentioned Proteus infection.”

The Captain sat stolidly, craving sleep like an addict. They were at opposite sides of the card table in the Surgeons’ Lounge. Cards were scattered across the surface, most of them face down but a queen of hearts showing, and a nine of spades.

“Proteus infection,” Delaney repeated heavily. “How do you know?”

“That’s what the lab tells us.”

“And you think your lab is more knowledgeable than you and your associates who diagnosed my wife’s illness as kidney stones?”

Again the opaque film coated the doctor’s glistening eyes.

His body stiffened, and he made a gesture Delaney had never seen him use before: he put the tip of his right forefinger in his right ear with the thumb stuck up in the air, exactly like a man blowing his brains out.

“Captain,” he purred in his unctuous voice, “I assure you—”

“All right, all right,” Delaney waved the apology away. “Let’s not waste time. What is Proteus infection?”

Bernardi brightened, as he always did at an opportunity to display his erudition. Now he made his usual gesture of placing his index fingers together and pressing them against pouting lips.

“Proteus,” he sang happily. “A Greek sea-god who could change his appearance at will. You should be interested in that, Captain. A million different shapes and disguises at will. That would complicate a policeman’s task, would it not? He!”

Delaney grunted disgustedly. Bernardi paid no heed.

“And so the name was given to this particular infection. An infection is not an illness—but we needn’t go into that. Suffice to say that Proteus infection frequently takes on the shape, appearance, form, and symptoms of a dozen other infections and illnesses. Very difficult to diagnose.”

“Rare?” Delaney asked.

“Proteus rare?” the doctor said, eyebrows rising. “I would say no. But not too common. The literature is not extensive That is what I was researching this morning, and why I did not return your calls. I was reading everything I could find on Proteus.”

“What causes it?” Delaney asked, trying to keep the hatred out of his voice, to be as clinical and unemotional as this macaroni.

“I told you. Bacillus Proteus. B. Proteus. It exists in all of us. Usually in the intestinal tract. We have all kinds of good and bad little animalcules squiggling around inside us, you know. Sometimes, usually following an abdominal operation, B. Proteus goes on a rampage. Breaks loose. Sometimes in the urinary tract or in a specific organ. Rarely in the blood stream itself. The usual symptoms are high fever, chills, headaches, sometimes nausea. Which are—as I am certain you are aware—the symptoms of a dozen other infections. Proteus also causes certain changes in the blood, difficult to determine definitely. The recommended treatment for this infection is the employment of antibiotics.”

“You tried that.”

“True. But I assure you, Captain, I did not go through the entire spectrum. These so-called ‘wonder drugs’ are not all that wonderful. One of them may stifle a particular bacillus. At the same time it encourages the growth of another, more virulent bacillus. The antibiotics are not to be used lightly. In your wife’s case, I believe the Proteus infection was triggered by her hysterectomy. But all the symptoms pointed to kidney stones, and there was nothing in the tests or plates to discourage that diagnosis. When Dr. Spencer got in there, we realized one kidney had to be removed.
Had
to. You understand?” Delaney didn’t answer.

“We saw there were still pockets of infection, small and scattered, that could not be removed by surgery. Now we must start again, hoping the main source of infection has been eliminated and we can clear up the remaining pockets with antibiotics.”

“Hoping, doctor?”

“Yes. Hoping, Captain.”

The two men stared at each other.

“She’s dying, isn’t she, doctor?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“No. You wouldn’t.”

He dragged to his feet, stumbled from the room.

Now I am the killer, Bacillus Proteus. I am in my wife’s kidneys. I am…

He went back to the precinct house in hard afternoon sunlight. He thought he would be with her. He did not think he ought or should be with her, but that he would. He knew he could not attend her, for as long as it took, and still function efficiently as Captain Edward X. Delaney, New York Police Department. On his old portable he typed out a letter to Deputy Inspector Ivar Thorsen, Patrol Division, asking immediate retirement. He filled out the “Request for Retirement” form and told Thorsen, in a personal note, that the request was due to his wife’s illness. He asked his old friend to expedite the retirement papers. He sealed, stamped the envelope, walked down to the corner postbox and mailed it. Then he returned to his home and rolled onto his bed without undressing.

He slept for perhaps three minutes or eight hours. The brilliant ringing of the bedside phone brought him instantly awake. “Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

“Edward, this is Ferguson. Did you talk to Bernardi?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Edward.”

“Thank you.”

“The antibiotics might work. The main source of the infection is gone.”

“I know.”

“Edward, I woke you up.”

“That’s all right.”

“I thought you might want to know.”

“Know what?”

“The Lombard homicide. It wasn’t a hammer.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. The skull penetration was about three to four inches deep. It was like a tapered cone. The outside hole, the entrance, was about an inch in diameter. Then it tapered down to a sharp point. Like a spike. Do you want a copy of my report?”