First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  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 l
ike 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.

  Dr. Sanford Ferguson, a bachelor, was a big man, made bigger by creaseless tweed suits worn with chain-looped vests. He was broad through the shoulders and broad through the chest. He was not corpulent but his thighs were as big around as another man’s waist, and his arms were meaty and strong.

  No one doubted his cleverness. At parties he could relate endless jokes that had the company helpless with laughter. He knew many dialects perfectly and, in his cups, could do an admirable soft-shoe clog. He was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker at meetings of professional associations. He was an ineffectual but enthusiastic golfer. He sang a sweet baritone. He could make a soufflé. And, unknown to everyone (including his older spinster sister), he kept a mistress: a middle-aged colored lady he loved and by whom he had fathered three sons.

  He was also, Delaney knew, an experienced and cynical police surgeon. Violent death did not dismay him, and he was not often fooled by the obvious. In “natural deaths” he sniffed out arsenic. In “accidental deaths” he would pry out the fatal wound in a corpus of splinters.

  “Here’s your rye,” he said, handing the highball to Delaney. “Now sit there and keep your mouth shut, and let me read and digest.”

  It was after midnight. They were in the living room of Ferguson’s apartment on Murray Hill. The spinster sister had greeted Delaney and then disappeared, presumably to bed. The doctor had mixed a rye highball for his guest and poured a hefty brandy for himself in a water tumbler.

  Delaney sat quietly in an armchair pinned with an antimacassar. Dr. Ferguson sat on a spindly chair at a fine Queen Anne lowboy. His bulk threatened to crush chair and table. His wool tie was pulled wide, shirt collar open: wiry hair sprang free.

  “That was a nice cut-’em-up tonight,” he remarked, peering at the documents in the file Delaney had handed over. “A truck driver comes home from work. Greenwich Village. He finds his wife, he says, on the kitchen floor. Her head’s in the oven. The room’s full of gas. He opens the window. She’s dead. I can attest to that. She was depressed, the truck driver says. She often threatened suicide, he says. Well … maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  “Who’s handling it?” Delaney asked.

  “Sam Rosoff. Assault and Homicide South. You know him?”

  “Yes. An old-timer. Good man.”

  “He surely is, Edward. He spotted the cigar stub in the ashtray on the kitchen table. A cold butt, but the saliva still wet. What would you have done?”

  “Ask you to search for a skull contusion beneath the dead woman’s hair and start looking for the truck driver’s girl friend.”

  Dr. Ferguson laughed. “Edward, you’re wonderful. That’s exactly what Rosoff suggested. I found the contusion. Right now he’s out looking for the girlfriend. Do you miss detective work?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were the best,” Ferguson said, “until you decided to become Commissioner. Now shut up, lad, and let me read.”

  Silence.

  “Oh-ho,” Ferguson said. “My old friend Bernardi.”

  “You know him?” Delaney asked, surprised.

  “I do indeed.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “As a physician? Excellent. As a man? A prick. No more talk.”

  Silence.

  “Do you know any of the others?” Delaney asked finally. “The specialists he brought in?”

  “I know two of the five—the neurologist and the radiologist. They’re among the best in the city. This must be costing you a fortune. If the other three are as talented, your wife is in good hands. I can check. Now be quiet.”

  Silence.

  “Oh well,” Ferguson shrugged, still reading, “kidney stones. That’s not so bad.”

  “You’ve had cases?”

  “All the time. Mostly men, of course. You know who get ’em? Cab drivers. They’re bouncing around on their ass all day.”

  “What about my wife?”

  “Well, listen, Edward, it could be diet, it could be stress. There’s so much we don’t know.”

  “My wife eats sensibly, rarely takes a drink, and she’s the most—most serene woman I’ve ever met.”

  “Is she? Let me finish reading.”

  He went through all the reports intently, going back occasionally to check reports he had already finished. He didn’t even glance at the X-rays. Finally he shoved back from the table, poured himself another huge brandy, freshed the Captain’s highball.

  “Well?” Delaney asked.

  “Edward,” Ferguson said, frowning, “don’t bring me in. Or anyone else. Bernardi is a bombastic, opinionated, egotistical shit. But as I said, he’s a good sawbones. On your wife’s case he’s done everything exactly right. He’s tried everything except surgery—correct?”

  “Well, he tried antibiotics. They didn’t work.”

  “No, they wouldn’t on kidney stones. But they didn’t locate that until they got her in the hospital for sensitive plates, and then the trouble passing urine started. That’s recent, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Only in the last four or five days.”

  “Well, then …”

  “You recommend surgery?” Delaney asked in a dead voice.

  Ferguson whirled on him. “I recommend nothing,” he said sharply. “It’s not my case. But you’ve got no choice.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “He was right. Bite the bullet, m’lad.”

  “What are her chances?”

  “You want betting odds, do you? With surgery, very good indeed.”

  “And without?”

  “Forget it.”

  “It’s not fair,” Delaney cried furiously.

  Ferguson looked at him strangely. “What the fuck is?” he asked.

  They stared at each other a long moment. Then Ferguson went back to the table, flipped through the X-rays, selected one and held it up to the light of a tilted desk lamp. “Kidney,” he muttered. “Yes, yes.”

  “What is it, doctor?”

  “He told you and I told you: calculus in the kidneys, commonly known as stones.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Something’s bothering you.”

  Ferguson looked at him. “You son of a bitch,” he said softly. “You s
hould never have left the detective division. I’ve never met anyone as—as attuned to people as you are.”

  “What is it?” Delaney repeated.

  “It’s nothing. Nothing I can explain. A hunch. You have them, don’t you?”

  “All the time.”

  “It’s little things that don’t quite add up. Maybe there’s a rational explanation. The recent hysterectomy. The fever and chills that have been going on since then. But only recently the headaches, nausea, lumbar pain, and now the difficulty passing urine. It all adds up to kidney stones, but the sequence of symptoms is wrong. With kidney stones, pain at pissing usually comes from the start. And sometimes it’s bad enough to drive you right up a wall. No record of that here. Yet the plates show … You tell me she’s not under stress?”

  “She is not.”

  “Every case I’ve had is driven, trying to do too much, bedeviled by time, rushing around, biting fingernails and screaming at the waitress when the coffee is cold. Is that Barbara?”

  “No, She’s totally opposite. Calm.”

  “You can’t tell. We never know. Still …” He sighed. “Edward, have you ever heard of Proteus infection?”

  “Bernardi mentioned it to me.”

  Ferguson actually staggered back a step, as if he had been struck a blow on the chest. “He mentioned it to you?” he demanded. “When was this?”

  “About three weeks ago, when he first told me Barbara should go into the hospital for tests. He just mentioned it and said he wanted to do some reading on it. But he didn’t say anything about it today. Should I have asked him?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ferguson said bitterly. “No, you shouldn’t have asked him. If he wanted to tell you, he would have.”

  “You’ve treated cases?”

  “Proteus? Oh yes, I have indeed. Three in twenty years. Mr. Proteus is a devil.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The three? Two responded to antibiotics and were smoking and drinking themselves to death within forty-eight hours.”