The 1st Deadly Sin (38 page)

“Do I get a cash register receipt, or do they write out an itemized sales check?”

Case looked at him narrowly. Then his bearded face opened into a smile; he showed his stained teeth again.

“Mr. Detective,” he grinned. “Thinking every minute, aren’t you? Well, as far as Outside Life goes, you’re in luck. A sales slip is written out—or was, when I worked there. You got the customer’s name and address. This was because Sol Appel, who owns the place, does a big mail order business. He gets out a Summer and Winter catalogue, and he’s always anxious to add to his list. Then, on the slip, you wrote out the items purchased.”

“After the customer’s name and address were added to the mailing list, how long were the sales slips kept? Do you know?”

“Oh Jesus, years and years. The basement was full of them. But don’t get your balls in an uproar, Captain. Outside Life isn’t the only place in New York where you can buy an ice ax. And most of the other places just ring up the total purchase. There’s no record of the customer’s name, address, or what was bought. And, like I told you, most of these things are imported. You can buy an ice ax in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Geneva, and points in between. And in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Montreal, and a hundred other places. So where does that leave you?”

“Thank you very much,” Captain Delaney said, without irony. “You have really been a big help, and I appreciate your cooperation. I apologize for the way I spoke.”

Calvin Case made a gesture, a wave Delaney couldn’t interpret.

“What are you going to do now, Captain?”

“Do now? Oh, you mean my next step. Well, you heard my telephone call. A man who is helping me is on his way to Outside Life. If he is able to purchase an ice ax like yours, then I’ll go down there, ask if they’ll let me go through their sales slips and make a list of people who have bought ice axes.”

“But I just told you, there’ll be thousands of sales checks.
Thousands'.”

“I know.”

“And there are other stores in New York that sell ice axes with no record of the buyer. And stores all over the world that sell them.”

“I know.”

“You’re a fool,” Calvin Case said dully, turning his face away. “I thought for awhile you weren’t, but now I think you are.”

“Cal,” his wife said softly, but he didn’t look at her.

“I don’t know what you think detective work is like,” Delaney said, staring at the man in the bed. “Most people have been conditioned by novels, the movies and TV. They think it’s either exotic clues and devilishly clever deductive reasoning, or else they figure it’s all rooftop chases, breaking down doors, and shoot-outs on the subway tracks. All that is maybe five percent of what a detective does. Now I’ll tell you how he mostly spends his time. About fifteen years ago a little girl was snatched on a street out on Long Island. She was walking home from school. A car pulled up alongside her and the driver said something. She came over to the car. A little girl. The driver opened the door, grabbed her, pulled her inside, and took off. There was an eyewitness to this, an old woman who ‘thought’ it was a dark car, black or dark blue or dark green or maroon. And she ‘thought’ it had a New York license plate. She wasn’t sure of anything. Anyway, the parents got a ransom note. They followed instructions exactly: they didn’t call the cops and they paid off. The little girl was found dead three days later.
Then
the FBI was called in. They had two things to work on: it
might
have been a New York license plate on the car, and the ransom note was hand-written. So the FBI called in about sixty agents from all over, and they were given a crash course in handwriting identification. Big blowups of parts of the ransom note were pasted on the walls. Three shifts of twenty men each started going through every application for an automobile license that originated on Long Island. They worked around the clock. How many signatures? Thousands? Millions, more likely. The agents set aside the possibles, and then handwriting experts took over to narrow it down.”

“Did they get the man?” Evelyn Case burst out.

“Oh, sure,” Delaney nodded. “They got him. Eventually. And if they hadn’t found it in the Long Island applications, they’d have inspected every license in New York State. Millions and millions and millions. I’m telling you all this so you’ll know what detective work usually is: common sense; a realization that you’ve got to start somewhere; hard, grinding, routine labor; and percentages. That’s about it. Again, I thank you for your help.”

He was almost at the shaded doorway to the living room when Calvin Case spoke in a faint, almost wispy voice.

“Captain.”

Delaney turned. “Yes?”

“If you find the ax at Outside Life, who’ll go through the sales slips?”

Delaney shrugged. “I will. Someone will. They’ll be checked.”

“Sometimes the items listed on the sales slips are just by stock number. You won’t know what they are.”

“I’ll get identification from the owner. I’ll learn what the stock numbers mean.”

“Captain, I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m not going any place. I could go through those sales checks. I know what to look for. I could pull out every slip that shows an ice ax purchase faster than you could.”

Delaney looked at him a long moment, expressionless. “I’ll let you know,” he nodded.

Evelyn Case saw him to the outside door.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

When he left the Case home he walked directly over to Sixth Avenue and turned south, looking for a hardware store. Nothing. He returned to 11th Street and walked north. Still nothing. Then, across Sixth Avenue, on the west side, he saw one.

“A little can of oil,” he told the clerk. “Like sewing machine oil.”

He was offered a small, square can with a long neck sealed with a little red cap.

“Can I oil tools with this?” he asked.

“Of course,” the clerk assured him. “Tools, sewing machines, electric fans, locks…anything. It’s the biggest selling all-purpose oil in the country.”

Thanks a lot, Delaney thought ruefully. He bought the can of oil.

He shouldn’t have taken a cab. They still had sizable balances in their savings and checking accounts, they owned securities (mostly tax-exempt municipal bonds) and, of course, they owned their brownstone. But Delaney was no longer on salary, and Barbara’s medical and hospital bills were frightening. So he really should have taken the subway and changed at 59th Street for a bus. But he felt so encouraged, so optimistic, that he decided to buy a cab to the hospital. On the way uptown he took the little red cap off the oil can and squeezed a few drops of oil onto his fingertips. He rubbed it against his thumb. Thin oil. It felt good, and he smiled.

But Barbara wasn’t in her room. The floor nurse explained she had been taken down to the lab for more X-rays and tests. Delaney left a short note on her bedside table: “Hello. I was here. See you this evening. I love you. Edward.”

He hurried home, stripped off overcoat and jacket, loosened his tie, rolled up his cuffs, put on his carpet slippers. Mary was there and had a beef stew cooking in a Dutch oven. But he asked her to let it cool after it was done; he had too much to do to think about eating.

He had cleaned out the two upper drawers of a metal business file cabinet in the study. In the top drawer he had filed the copies of the Operation Lombard reports. Methodically, he had divided this file in two: Frank Lombard and Bernard Gilbert. Under each heading he had broken the reports down into categories: Weapon, Motive, Wound, Personal History, etc.

In the second drawer he had started his own file, a thin folder that consisted mostly, at this time, of jotted notes.

Now he began to expand these notes into reports, to whom or for what purpose he could not say. But he had worked this way on all his investigations for many years, and frequently found it valuable to put his own instinctive reactions and questions into words. In happier times Barbara had typed put his notes on her electric portable, and that was a big help. But he had never solved the mysteries of the electric, and now would have to be content with handwritten reports.

He started with the long-delayed directory of all the people involved, their addresses and telephone numbers, if he had them or could find them in the book. Then he wrote out reports of his meeting with Thorsen and Johnson, of his interviews with Lombard’s widow, mother, and associates, his talks with Dorfman, with Ferguson. He wrote as rapidly as he could, transcribing scribbles he had made in his pocket notebook, on envelopes of letters, on scraps of paper torn from magazines and newspaper margins.

He wrote of his meeting with Thomas Handry, with Christopher Langley, with Calvin Case. He described the bricklayers’ hammer, the rock hounds’ hammer, and Case’s ice ax—where they had been purchased, when, what they cost, and what they were used for. He wrote a report of his interrogation of Monica Gilbert, his purchase of the can of light machine oil, his filing of a missing driver’s license report.

He should have done all this weeks ago, and he was anxious to catch up and then to keep his file current with daily additions. It might mean nothing, it probably meant nothing, but it seemed important to him to have a written record of what he had done, and the growing mass of paper was, somehow, reassuring. At the rear of the second file drawer he placed the bricklayers’ hammer, the rock hounds’ hammer, and the can of oil: physical evidence.

He worked steadily, stopping twice just long enough to get bottles of cold beer from the kitchen. Mary was upstairs, cleaning, but she had turned the light out under the stew. He lifted the lid and sniffed experimentally. The steam smelled great.

He wrote as clearly and as swiftly as he could, but he admitted his handwriting was miserable. Barbara could read it, but who else could? Still, his neat manila file folders grew: “The Suspect,” Weapon, Motive, Interrogations, Timing, Autopsies, etc. It all looked very official and impressive.

Late in the afternoon, still writing as fast as he could, Mary departed, with a firm command to eat the stew before he collapsed from malnutrition. He locked the door behind her, went back to his reports and then, a few minutes later, the front door bell chimed. He threw his pen down in anger, thought, then said aloud, “Please, God, let it be Langley. With the ax.”

He peered through the narrow glass side panels, and it was Langley. Bearing a paper-wrapped parcel. And beaming. Delaney threw open the door.

“Got it!” Langley cried.

The Captain could not tell him he had held the same thing in his hands a few hours previously; he would not rob this wonderful little man of his moment of triumph.

In the study they inspected the ice ax together. It was a duplicate of the one Calvin Case owned. They went over it, pointing out to each other the required features: the tapering pick, the downward curve, the sharp point, the all-steel construction.

“Oh yes,” Delaney nodded. “Mr. Langley, I think this is it. Congratulations.”

“Oh…” Langley said, waving in the air. “You gave me the lead. Who told you about Outside Life?”

“A man I happened to meet,” Delaney said vaguely. “He was interested in mountain climbing and happened to mention that store. Pure luck. But you’d have gotten there eventually.”

“Excellent balance,” Langley said, hefting the tool. “Very well made indeed. Well…”

“Yes?” Delaney said.

“Well, I suppose my job is finished,” the old man said. “I mean, we’ve found the weapon, haven’t we?”

“What we think is the weapon.”

“Yes. Of course. But here it is, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t suppose you have anything more for me to do. So I’ll…” His voice died away, and he turned the ice ax over and over in his hands, staring at it.

“Nothing more for you to do?” Delaney said incredulously. “Mr. Langley, I have a great deal more I’d like you to do. But you’ve done so much already, I hesitate to ask.”

“What?” Langley interrupted eagerly. “What? Tell me what. I don’t want to stop now. Really I don’t. What’s to be done? Please tell me.”

“Well…” Delaney said, “we don’t know that Outside Life is the only store in New York that sells this type of ice ax. You have other stores on your list you haven’t visited yet, don’t you?”

“Oh my yes.”

“Well, we must investigate and make a hard list of every place in New York that sells this ice ax. This one or one like it. That involves finding out how many American companies manufacture this type of ax and who they wholesale to and who the wholesalers retail to in the New York area. Then—you see here? On the side of the head? It says ‘Made in West Germany. ’ Imported. And maybe from Austria and Switzerland as well. So we must find out who the exporters are and who, over here, they sell to. Mr. Langley, that’s a hell of a lot of work, and I hesitate to ask—”

“I’ll do it!” Christopher Langley cried. “My goodness, I had no idea detective work was so—so involved. But I can understand why it’s necessary. You want the source of every ice ax like this sold in the New York area. Am I correct?”

“Exactly,” Delaney nodded. “We’ll start with the New York area, and then we’ll branch out. But it’s so much work. I can’t—”

Christopher Langley held up a little hand.

“Please,” he said. “Captain, I
want
to do it. I’ve never felt so
alive
in my life. Now what I’ll do is this: first I’ll check out all the other stores on my list to see if they carry ice axes. I’ll keep a record of the ones that do. Then I’ll go to the library and consult a directory of domestic tool manufacturers. I’ll query every one of them, or write for their catalogues to determine if they manufacture a tool like this. At the same time I’ll check with European embassies, consulates and trade commissions and find out who’s importing these implements to the U.S. How does that sound?”

Delaney looked at him admiringly. “Mr. Langley, I wish I had had you working with me on some of my cases in the past. You’re a wonder, you are.”

“Oh…” Langley said, blushing with pleasure, “you know…”

“I think your plan is excellent, and if you’re willing to work at it—and it’s going to be a lot of hard, grinding work—all I can say is ‘Thank you’ because what you’ll be doing is important.”