The 1st Deadly Sin (37 page)

It was a big bed, occupied at some time in the past, Delaney imagined, by Calvin Case and his wife. Now she slept on the convertible in the living room. The bed was surrounded, by tables, chairs, magazine racks, a telephone stand, a wheeled cart with bottles and an ice bucket, on the floor an open bedpan and plastic “duck.” Tissues, a half-eaten sandwich, a sodden towel, cigarette and cigar butts, a paperback book with pages torn out in a frenzy, and even a hard-cover bent and partly ripped, a broken glass, and…and everything.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Then he looked directly at the man in the bed.

The soiled sheet, a surprising blue, was drawn up to the chin. All Delaney saw was a square face, a square head. Uncombed hair was spread almost to the man’s shoulders. The reddish mustache and beard were squarish. And untrimmed. Dark eyes burned. The full lips were stained and crusted.

“Calvin Case?”

“Yeah.”

“Captain Edward X. Delaney, New York Police Department. I’m investigating the death—the murder—of a man we believe—”

“Let’s see your badge.”

Delaney stepped closer to the bed. The stench was sickening. He held his identification in front of Case’s face. The man hardly glanced at it. Delaney stepped back.

“We believe the man was murdered with an ice ax. A mountain climber’s ax. So I came—”

“You think I did it?” The cracked lips opened to reveal yellowed teeth: a death’s head grin.

Delaney was shocked. “Of course not. But I need more information on ice axes. And as the best mountain climber—you’ve been recommended to me—I thought you might be—”

“Fuck off,” Calvin Case said wearily, moving his heavy head to one side.

“You mean you won’t cooperate in finding a man who—”

“Be gone,” Case whispered. “Just be gone.”

Delaney turned, moved away two steps, stopped. There was Barbara, and Christopher Langley, and Monica Gilbert, and all the peripheral people: Handry and Thorsen and Ferguson and Dorfman, and here was this…He took a deep breath, hating himself because even his furies were calculated. He turned back to the cripple on the soiled bed. He had nothing to lose.

“You goddamned cock-sucking mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch,” he said steadily and tonelessly. “You shit-gutted ass-licking bastard. I’m a detective, and I detect
you
, you punky no-ball frigger. Go ahead, lie in your bed of crap. Who buys the food? Your wife—right? Who tries to keep a home for you? Your wife—right? Who empties your shit and pours your piss in the toilet? Your wife—right? And you lie there and soak up whiskey. I could smell you the minute I walked in, you piece of rot. It’s great to lie in bed and feel sorry for yourself, isn’t it? You corn-holing filth. Go piss and shit in your bed and drink your whiskey and work your wife to death and scream at her, you crud. A man? Oh! You’re some man, you lousy ass-kissing turd. I spit on you, and I forget the day I heard your name, you dirt-eating nobody. You don’t exist. You understand? You’re no one.”

He turned away, almost out of control, and a woman was standing in the bedroom doorway, a slight, frail blonde, her hair brushing the window shade. Her face was blanched; she was biting on a knuckle.

He took a deep breath, tried to square his shoulders, to feel bigger. He felt very small.

“Mrs. Case?”

She nodded.

“My name is Edward X. Delaney, Captain, New York Police Department. I came to ask your husband’s help on an investigation. If you heard what I said, I apologize for my language. I’m very sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t know you were there.”

She nodded dumbly again, still gnawing her knuckle and staring at him with wide blue eyes.

“Good-day,” he said and moved to pass her in the doorway. “Captain,” the man in the bed croaked.

Delaney turned back. “Yes?”

“You’re some bastard, aren’t you?”

“When I have to be,” Delaney nodded.

“You’ll use anyone, won’t you? Cripples, drunks, the helpless and the hopeless. You’ll use them all.”

“That’s right. I’m looking for a killer. I’ll use anyone who can help.”

Calvin Case used the edge of his soiled blue sheet to wipe his clotted eyes clear.

“And you got a big mouth,” he added. “A
biiig
mouth.” He reached to the wheeled cart for a half-full bottle of whiskey and a stained glass. “Honey,” he called to his wife, “we got a clean glass for Mister Captain Edward X. Delaney, New York Police Department?”

She nodded, still silent. She ran out, then came back with two glasses. Calvin Case poured a round, then set the bottle back on the cart. The three raised glasses in a silent toast, although what they were drinking to they could not have said.

“Cal, are you hungry?” his wife asked anxiously. “I’ve got to get back to work soon.”

“No, not me. Captain, you want a sandwich?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Just leave us alone, hon.”

“Maybe I should just clean up a—”

“Just leave us alone. Okay, hon?”

She turned to go.

“Mrs. Case,” Delaney said.

She turned back.

“Please stay. Whatever your husband and I have to discuss, there is no reason why you can’t hear it.”

She was startled. She looked back and forth, man to man, not knowing.

Calvin Case sighed. “You’re something,” he said to Captain Delaney. “You’re really something.”

“That’s right,” Delaney nodded. “I’m something.”

“You barge in here and you take over.”

“You want to talk now?” Delaney asked impatiently. “Do you want to answer my questions?”

“First tell me what it’s all about.”

“A man was killed with a strange weapon. We think it was an ice ax and—”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“I think it was an ice ax. I want to know more about it, and your name was given to me as the most experienced mountaineer in New York.”

“Was,” Case said softly.
“Was.”

They sipped their drinks, looked at each other stonily. For once, there were no sirens, no buffalo whistles, no trembles of blasting or street sounds, no city noises. It was on this very block, Delaney recalled, that a fine old town house was accidentally demolished by a group of bumbling revolutionaries, proving their love of the human race by preparing bombs in the basement. Now, in the Case apartment, they existed in a bubble of silence, and unconsciously they lowered their voices.

“A captain comes to investigate a crime?” Case asked quietly. “Even a murder? No, no. A uniformed cop or a detective, yes. A captain, no. What’s it all about, Delaney?”

The Captain took a deep breath. “I’m on leave of absence. I’m not on active duty. You’re under no obligation to answer my questions. I was commander of the Two-five-one Precinct. Uptown. A man was killed there about a month ago. On the street. Maybe you read about it. Frank Lombard, a city councilman. A lot of men are working on the case, but they’re getting nowhere. They haven’t even identified the weapon used. I started looking into it on my own time. It’s not official; as I told you, I’m on leave of absence. Then, three days ago, another man was attacked not too far from where Lombard was killed. This man is still alive but will probably die. His wound is like Lombard’s: a skull puncture. I think it was done with an ice ax.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The nature of the wound, the size and shape. And an ice ax has been used as a murder weapon before. It was used to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in nineteen-forty.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Whatever you can tell me about ice axes, who makes them, where you buy them, what they’re used for.”

Calvin Case looked at his wife. “Will you get my axes, hon? They’re in the hall closet.”

While she was gone the men didn’t speak. Case motioned toward a chair, but Delaney shook his head. Finally Mrs. Case came back, awkwardly clutching five axes. Two were under an arm; she held the handles of the other three in a clump.

“Dump ’em on the bed,” Case ordered, and she obediently let them slide onto the soiled sheet.

Delaney stood over them, inspected them swiftly, then grabbed. It was an all-steel implement, hatchet-length, the handle bound in leather. From the butt of the handle hung a thong loop. The head had a hammer on one side, a pick on the other. The pick was exactly like that described by Christopher Langley; about five inches long, it was square-shaped at the shaft, then tapered to a thinning triangle. As it tapered, the spike curved downward and ended in a sharp point. On the underside were four little saw teeth. The entire head was a bright red, the leather-covered handle a bright blue. Between was a naked shaft of polished steel. There was a stamping on the side of the head: a small inscription. Delaney put on his glasses to read it: “Made in West Germany.”

“This—” he began.

“That’s not an ice ax,” Calvin Case interrupted. “Technically, it’s an ice hammer. But most people call it an ice ax. They lump all these things together.”

“You bought it in West Germany?”

“No. Right here in New York. The best mountain gear is made in West Germany, Austria and Switzerland. But they export all over the world.”

“Where in New York did you buy it?”

“A place I used to work. I got an employees’ discount on it. It’s down on Spring Street, a place called ‘Outside Life.’ They sell gear for hunting, fishing, camping, safaris, mountaineering, back-packing—stuff like that.”

“May I use your phone?”

“Help yourself,”

He was so encouraged, so excited, that he couldn’t remember Christopher Langley’s phone number and had to look it up in his pocket notebook. But he would not put the short ice ax down; he held it along with the phone in one hand while he dialed. He finally got through.

“Mr. Langley? Delaney here.”

“Oh, Captain! I should have called, but I really have nothing to report. I’ve made a list of possible sources, and I’ve been visiting six or seven shops a day. But so far I—”

“Mr. Langley, do you have your list handy?”

“Why yes, Captain. Right here. I was just about to start out when you called.”

“Do you have a store named Outside Life on your list?”

“Outside Life? Just a minute…Yes, here it is. It’s on Spring Street.”

“That’s the one.”

“Yes, I have it. I’ve divided my list into neighborhoods, and I have that in the downtown section. I haven’t been there yet.”

“Mr. Langley. I have a lead they may have what we want. Could you get there today?”

“Of course. I’ll go directly.”

“Thank you. Please call me at once, whether you find it or not. I’ll either be home or at the hospital.”

He hung up, turned back to Calvin Case, still holding the ice ax. He didn’t want to let it go. He swung the tool in a chopping stroke. Then he raised it high and slashed down. “Nice balance,” he nodded.

“Sure,” Case agreed. “And plenty of weight. You could kill a man easily.”

“Tell me about ice axes.”

Calvin Case told him what he could. It wasn’t much. He thought the modern ice ax had evolved from the ancient Alpinestock, a staff as long as a shepherd’s crook. In fact, Case had seen several still in use in Switzerland. They were tipped with hand-hammered iron spikes, and used to probe the depth of snow, try the consistency of ice, test stone ledges and overhangs, probe crevasses.

“Then,” Case said, “the two-handed ice ax was developed.”

He leaned forward from the waist to pick up samples from the foot of his bed. Apparently he was naked under the sheet. His upper torso had once been thick and muscular. Now it had gone to flab: pale flesh matted with reddish hair, smelling rankly.

He showed the long ice axes to Delaney, explaining how the implement could be used as a cane, driven into ice as a rope support, the mattock side of the head used to chop foot and hand holds in ice as capable of load-bearing as granite. The butt end of the handle varied. It could be a plain spike for hiking on glaciers, or fitted with a small thonged wheel for walking on crusted snow, or simply supplied with a small knurled cap.

“Where did you get all these?” Delaney asked.

“These two in Austria. This one in West Germany. This one in Geneva.”

“You can buy them anywhere?”

“Anywhere in Europe, sure. Climbing is very big over there.”

“And here?”

“There must be a dozen stores in New York. Maybe more. And other places too, of course. The West Coast, for instance.”

“And this one?” Delaney had slipped the thong loop of the short ice ax over his wrist. “What’s this used for?”

“Like I told you, technically it’s an ice hammer. If you’re on stone, you can start a hole with the pick end. Then you try to hammer in a piton with the other side of the head. A piton is a steel peg. It has a loop on top, and you can attach a line to it or thread it through.”

Delaney drew two fingers across the head of the ax he held. Then he rubbed the tips of the two fingers with his thumb and grinned.

“You look happy,” Case said, pouring himself another whiskey.

“I am. Oiled.”

“What?”

“The ax head is oiled.”

“Oh…sure. Evelyn keeps all my stuff cleaned and oiled. She thinks I’m going to climb again some day. Don’t you, hon?”

Delaney turned to look at her. She nodded mutely, tried to smile. He smiled in return.

“What kind of oil do you use, Mrs. Case?”

“Oh…I don’t know. It’s regular oil. I buy it in a hardware store on Sixth Avenue.”

“A thin oil,” Calvin Case said. “Like sewing machine oil. Nothing special about it.”

“Do all climbers keep their tools cleaned and oiled?”

“The good ones do. And sharp.”

Delaney nodded. Regretfully he relinquished the short-handled ice ax, putting it back with the others on the foot of Case’s bed.

“You said you worked for Outside Life, where you bought this?”

“That’s right. For almost ten years. I was in charge of the mountaineering department. They gave me all the time off I wanted for climbs. It was good publicity for them.”

“Suppose I wanted to buy an ice ax like that. I just walk in and put down my money. Right?”

“Sure. That one cost about fifteen dollars. But that was five years ago.”