The 1st Deadly Sin (52 page)

“Excellent. Just right. You’re doing a marvelous job on this, Mr. Langley.”

“Oh well, you know…”

When he left them, the Widow Zimmerman was washing dishes, and Christopher Langley was drying.

Delaney spent the next two days checking on Langley’s list of stores in the New York area that sold ice axes and kept itemized sales checks. The one that did no mail order business and had no mailing list was willing to cooperate and lend Delaney the sales slips. He made arrangements to have them delivered to Calvin Case. The Captain wasn’t optimistic about results; this particular store kept the checks for only six months.

Of the other two stores, Delaney was able to obtain checks and mailing lists from only one. The owner of the other simply refused to cooperate, claiming his mailing list was a carefully guarded business secret, of value to competitors, and Delaney couldn’t have it without a court order. The Captain didn’t push it; he could always come back to it later.

So he now had two more shipments of itemized sales checks for Calvin Case and another mailing list for Monica Gilbert. He decided to tackle Case first. He called, then subwayed down about noon.

The change in Calvin Case was a delight. He was clean, his hair cut and combed, his beard trimmed. He sat in pajamas in his aluminum and plastic wheelchair at his desk, flipping through Outside Life sales checks. Delaney had brought him a bottle, the same brand of whiskey Case had been drinking when Delaney first met him. The crippled mountaineer looked at the bottle and laughed.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, “but I never touch the stuff now until the sun goes down. You?”

“No. Thanks. It’s a bribe. I’ve got bad news for you.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve found two more stores that sell ice axes. Ice hammers, I guess you’d say. Anyway, these stores have itemized sales checks.”

Unexpectedly, Calvin Case smiled. “So?” he asked.

“Will you be willing to go through them?”

“Is it going to help?”

“Damned right,” Delaney said fervently.

“Pile it on,” Case grinned. “I ain’t going no place. The more the merrier.”

“Very few receipts,” Delaney assured him. “I mean,” he added hastily, “compared to Outside Life. One store keeps them for six months, and the other store for a year. How you coming?”

“Okay. Another three days, I figure. Then what happens?”

“Then you’ll have a file of all ice ax purchases made at Outside Life in the past seven years. Right? Then I’ll give you a map of the Two-five-one Precinct, and you’ll go through your file and pull every sales check for an ice ax in the precinct.”

Case stared at him a long moment, then shook his head.

“Delaney,” he said, “you’re not a detective; you’re a fucking bookkeeper. You know that?”

“That’s right,” the Captain agreed readily. “No doubt about it.”

He was going down the stairs when he met Evelyn Case coming up. He took off his hat, nodded, and smiled. She put down her shopping bag to grab him in her arms, hug him, kiss his cheek.

“He’s wonderful,” she said breathlessly. “Just the way he used to be. And it’s all your doing.”

“Is it?” Delaney asked wonderingly.

His next meet had to be with Monica Gilbert, for he now had another mailing list for her to check. But she called him first and told him she had completed the Outside Life mailing list, had made out a file card for every resident of the 251st Precinct on the list, and had a typed record of those residents, a master and two carbon copies, just as he had instructed.

He was amazed and delighted she had completed her job so quickly…and a little worried that she had not been as meticulous as he wanted her to be. But he had to work with what he had, and he arranged to meet her at her home the following evening. She asked him if he would care to come for dinner but he declined, with thanks; he would dine early (he lied) before he visited his wife at the hospital, and then be over later. Though why he had accepted Christopher Langley’s dinner invitation and not Monica Gilbert’s, he could not have said.

He bought two stuffed toys for the young daughters: a black and a white poodle. When you pressed their stomachs, they made a funny barking, squeaking sound. When he arrived, Mary and Sylvia were already in their little nightgowns, but Mrs. Gilbert allowed them out of their bedroom to say hello to the visitor. They were delighted with their presents and finally retired (pushed) to their bedroom, arguing about which poodle had the more ferocious expression. For a half-hour afterwards the adults heard the squeal of pressed toys. But the sounds gradually grew more infrequent, then ceased, and then Monica Gilbert and Edward Delaney were alone, in silence.

Finally: “Thank you for thinking of the girls,” she said warmly.

“My pleasure. They’re lovely kids.”

“It was very kind of you. You like children?”

“Oh yes. Very much. I have a son and a daughter.”

“Married?”

“My daughter is. She’s expecting. Any day now.”

“Her first?”

“Yes.”

“How wonderful. You’ll be a grandfather.”

“Yes,” he laughed with delight. “So I will.”

She served coffee and almond-flavored cookies, so buttery he knew immediately they were homemade. His mother had made cookies like that. He put on his heavy glasses to inspect what she had done, while he sipped black coffee and nibbled cookies.

He saw immediately he needn’t have doubted her swift efficiency. There had been 116 residents of the 251st Precinct on the Outside Life mailing list. She had made out a file card for each one: last name first in capital letters, followed by the given name and middle initial. Beneath the name was typed the address, in two lines. Then she had made a master list and two carbons from the cards, now neatly filed alphabetically in a wooden box.

“Very good,” he nodded approvingly. “Excellent. Now I have some bad news for you; I have another mailing list from another store.” He smiled at her. “Willing?”

She smiled in return. “Yes. How many names?”

“I estimate about a third of the number of the Outside Life list; maybe less. And you’ll probably find duplications. If you do, don’t make out a separate card, just note on the Outside Life card that the individual is also on this list. Okay?”

“Yes. What happens now?”

“To your typed list, you mean? You keep one carbon. Just stick it away somewhere as insurance. I’ll keep the other carbon. The original will go to friends in the Department. They’ll check the names with city, state, and federal files to see if anyone listed has a criminal record.”

“A record?”

“Sure. Been charged, been convicted of any crime. Been sentenced. Fined, on probation, or time in jail.”

She was disturbed; he could see it.

“Will this help find the man who killed my husband?”

“Yes,” he said decisively, paused a moment, staring at her, then asked, “What’s bothering you?”

“it seems so—so unfair,” she said faintly.

He became suddenly aware of her as a woman: the solid, warm body beneath the black dress, the strong arms and legs, the steady look of purpose. She was not a beautiful woman, not as delicate as Barbara nor as fine. But there was a peasant sensuality to her; her smell was deep and disturbing.

“What’s unfair?” he asked quietly.

“Hounding men who have made one mistake. You do it all the time I suppose.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “we do it all the time. You know what the recidivist rate is, Mrs. Gilbert? Of all the men present in prison, about eighty percent have been behind bars at least once before.”

“It still seems—”

“Percentages, Mrs. Gilbert: We’ve got to use them. We know that if a man rapes, robs, or kills once, the chances are he’ll rape, rob, or kill again. We can’t deny that. We didn’t create that situation, but we’d be fools to overlook it.”

“But doesn’t police surveillance, the constant hounding of men with records, contribute to—”

“No,” he shook his great head angrily. “If an ex-con wants to go straight, really wants to, he will. I’m not going to tell you there have never been frames of ex-cons. Of course there have. But generally, when a man repeats, he wants to go back behind bars. Did you know that? There’s never been a study of it, to my knowledge, but my guess is that most two-and three-time losers are asking for it. They need the bars. They can’t cope on the outside. I’m hoping a check on your list will turn up a man or men like that. If not, it may turn up
something.
A similar case, a pattern of violence,
something
that may give me a lead.”

“Does that mean if you get a report that some poor man on this list forged a check or deserted his wife, you’ll swoop down on him and demand to know where he was on the night my husband and those other men were killed?”

“Of course not. Nothing like that. First of all, criminals can be classified. They have their specialties, and rarely vary. Some deal strictly in white-collar crime: embezzlement, bribery, patent infringement—things like that. Crimes against property, mostly. Then there’s a grey area: forgery, swindling, fraud, and so forth. Still crimes against property, but now the victim tends to be an individual rather than the government or the public. And then there’s the big area of conventional crime: homicide, kidnapping, robbery, and so forth. These are usually crimes of violence during which the criminal actually sees and has physical contact with his victim; and infliction of injury or death usually results. Or, at least, the potential is there. I’m looking for a man with a record in this last classification, a man with a record of violence, physical violence.”

“But—but how will you
know?
What if one of the men on that list was arrested for beating his wife? That’s certainly violent, isn’t it? Does that make him the killer?”

“Not necessarily, though I’d certainly check him out. But I’m looking for a man who fits a profile.”

She stared at him, not understanding. “A profile?”

He debated if he should tell her, but felt a need to impress her, couldn’t resist it, and wondered why that was.

“Mrs. Gilbert, I have a pretty good idea—a pretty good
visualization
of the man who’s doing these killings. He’s young—between thirty-five and forty—tall and slender. He’s in good health and strong. His physical reactions are very fast. He’s probably a bachelor. He may be a latent homosexual. He dresses very well, but conservatively. Dark suits. If you passed him on the street at night, you’d feel perfectly safe. He probably has a good job and handles it well. There’s nothing about him that would make people suspect him. But he’s addicted to danger, to taking risks. He’s a mountain climber. He's cool, determined, and I’m positive he’s a resident of this neighborhood. Certainly of this precinct. And tall. Did I say he was tall? Yes, I did. Well, he’s probably six feet or over.”

Her astonishment was all he could have asked, and he cursed his own ego for showing off in this fashion.

“But how do you know all this?” she said finally.

He rose to his feet and began to gather his papers together. He was so disgusted with himself.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said sourly. “It’s all guesswork, Mrs. Gilbert. Forget it. I was just shooting off my mouth.” She followed him to the door.

“I’m sorry about what I said,” she told him, putting a strong hand on his arm. “I mean about how cruel it is to check men with records. I know you’ve got to do it.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “I’ve got to do it. Percentages.”

“Captain, please do everything you think should be done. I don’t know anything about it. This is all new to me.”

He smiled at her without speaking.

“I’ll get on the new list tonight. And thank you, Captain.”

“For what?”

“For doing what you’re doing.”

“I haven’t done anything yet except give you work to do.”

“You’re going to get him, aren’t you?”

“Listen,” Delaney said, “could we—”

He stopped suddenly and was silent. She was puzzled. “Could we what?” she asked finally.

“Nothing,” he said. “Good-night, Mrs. Gilbert. Thank you for the coffee and cookies.”

He walked home, resolutely turning his mind from the thought of what a fool he had made of himself—in his own eyes if not in hers. He stopped at a phone booth to call Deputy Inspector Thorsen, and waited five minutes until Thorsen called him back.

“Edward?”

“Yes.”

“Anything new?”

“I have a list of a hundred and sixteen names and addresses. I need them checked out against city, state, and federal records.”

“My God.”

“It’s important.”

“I know, Edward. Well…at least we’ve got some names. That’s more than Broughton has.”

“I hear he’s in trouble.”

“You hear right.”

“Heavy?”

“Not yet. But it’s growing. Everyone’s leaning on him.”

“About this list of mine—I’ll get it to your office tomorrow by messenger. All right?”

“Better send it to my home.”

“All right, and listen, please include the State Department of Motor Vehicles and the NYPD’s Special Services Branch. Can you do that?”

“We’ll have to do it.”

“Yes.”

“Getting close, Edward?”

“Well…closer.”

“You think he’s on the list?”

“He better be,” Delaney said. Everyone was leaning on him, too.

He was weary now, wanting nothing but a hot shower, a rye highball, perhaps a sleeping pill, and bed. But he had his paper work to do, and drove himself to it. What was it Case called him—a fucking bookkeeper.

He finished his writing, his brain frazzled, and filed his neat folders away. He drained his highball, watery now, and considered the best way to handle results from the search of records of those 116 individuals, when they began to come in on printouts from city, state, and federal computers.

What he would do, he decided, was this: he would ask Monica Gilbert to make notations of any criminal history on the individual cards. He would buy five or six packages of little colored plastic tabs, the kind that could be clipped on the upper edge of file cards. He would devise a color code: a red tab attached to a card would indicate a motor vehicle violation, a blue tab would indicate a New York City criminal record…and -so forth. When reports were in from all computers, he could then look at Monica Gilbert’s file box and, without wasting time flipping through 116 cards, see at a glance which had one, two, three or more plastic tabs attached to their upper edges. He thought it over, and it seemed an efficient plan.