The third Deadly Sin exd-3

by Lawrence Sanders

  She leaned over him, spraying until the can was empty.

  She ran back to the bathroom, hurriedly soaked a washcloth in cold water. Held it over her nose and mouth. Picked up the knife, returned to the bedroom.

  He was writhing on the floor, hands covering his face. He was, making animal sounds: grunts, groans. His hairy chest was pumping furiously.

  She bent over him. Dug the blade in below his left ear. Made a hard, curving slash. His body leaped convulsively. A fountain of blood. She leaped aside to avoid it. Hands fell away from his face. Watery eyes glared at her and, as she watched, went dim.

  The gas was beginning to affect her. She gasped and choked. But she had enough strength to complete the ritual, stabbing his naked genitals again and again, with a mouthed, "There. There. There."

  She fled to the bathroom, closed the door. She took several deep breaths of clear air. She soaked the washcloth again, wiped her eyes, cleaned her nostrils. She inspected her arms, dress, ankles, the soles of her shoes. She could find no bloodstains.

  But her right hand and the knife were wet with his blood. She turned on the hot water faucet in the sink. She began to rinse the blood away. It was then she noticed the knife blade was broken. About a half-inch of the tip was missing.

  She stared at it, calculating the danger. If the blade tip wasn't near him, lying on the rug, then it was probably lost in the raw swamp of his slashed throat, broken off against bone or cartilege. She could not search for it, could not touch him.

  She began moving quickly. Finished rinsing hand and knife. Dried both with one of his towels. Put towel, knife, and emptied Chemical Mace can into her shoulder bag. Strode into the bedroom. The gas was dissipating now.

  Leonard T. Bergdorfer lay sprawled in a pool of his own blood. Zoe looked about, but could not see the knife blade tip.

  She picked up her glass from the bedside table, drained the wine. The empty glass went into her shoulder bag, too. She turned back to wipe the knobs of the bathroom door and the faucet handles with the damp washcloth. She did the same to the knobs of the bedroom door.

  She put on her coat in the living room. She unlocked and opened the hallway door a few inches, peeked out. Then she wiped off the lock, chain, and doorknob with the washcloth, and tucked it into her bag. She opened the door wide with her foot, stepped out into the empty corridor. She nudged the door shut with her knee.

  She was waiting for the Down elevator when an ascending elevator stopped on the eighth floor. Five men piled out, laughing and shouting and hitting each other. Men were so physical.

  They didn't even glance in her direction, but went yelling and roughhousing down the corridor. They stopped in front of Bergdorfer's suite. One of them began knocking on the door.

  Then the Down elevator stopped at the eighth floor, the doors slid open, and Zoe Kohler departed.

  Chapter 6

  On April 18th, the night Zoe Kohler was sipping white wine at Harry Kurnitz's party at the Chez Ronald on East 48th Street, Edward X. Delaney was dining with reporter Thomas Handry at the Bull amp; Bear Restaurant, a block away.

  Handry was a slender, dapper blade who looked younger than his forty-nine years. His suits were always precisely pressed, shoes shined, shirts a gleaming white. He was one of the few men Delaney had known who could wear a vest jauntily.

  The only signs of inner tensions were his fingernails, gnawed to the quick, and a nervous habit of stroking his bare upper lip with a knuckle, an atavism from the days when he had sported a luxuriant cavalry mustache.

  "You're picking up the tab?" he had demanded when he arrived.

  "Of course."

  "In that case," Handry said, "I shall have a double Tanqueray martini, straight up with a lemon twist. Then the roast beef, rare, a baked potato, and a small salad."

  "I see nothing to object to there," Delaney said, and to the hovering waiter, "Double that order, please."

  The reporter regarded the Chief critically.

  "Christ, you never change, never look a day older. What did you do-sell your soul to the devil?"

  "Something like that," Delaney said. "Actually, I was born old."

  "I believe it," Handry said. He put his elbows on the table, scrubbed his face with his palms.

  "Rough day?" the Chief asked.

  "The usual bullshit. Maybe I'm just bored. You know, I'm coming to the sad conclusion that nothing actually new ever happens. I mean, pick up a newspaper of, say, fifty or a hundred years ago, and there it all is: poverty, famine, wars, accidents, earthquakes, political corruption, crime and so forth. Nothing changes."

  "No, it doesn't. Not really. Maybe the forms change, but people don't change all that much."

  "Take this Hotel Ripper thing," Handry went on. "It's just a replay of the Son of Sam thing, isn't it?"

  But then the waiter arrived with their drinks and Delaney was saved from answering.

  They had ale with their roast beef and, later, Armagnac with their coffee. Then they sat back and Delaney accepted one of Handry's cigarettes. He smoked it awkwardly and saw the reporter looking at him with amusement.

  "I'm used to cigars," he explained. "I keep wanting to chew the damned thing."

  They had a second cup of coffee, stared at each other.

  "Got anything for me?" Handry said finally.

  "A story?" Delaney said. "An exclusive? A scoop?" He laughed. "No, nothing like that. Nothing you can use."

  "Let me be the judge of that."

  "I can give you some background," the Chief said. "The powers-that-be aren't happy with Lieutenant Slavin."

  "Is he on the way out?"

  "Oh, they won't can him. Kick him upstairs maybe."

  "I'll check it out. Anything else?"

  Delaney considered how much he could reveal, what he would have to pay to get the cooperation he needed.

  "That last killing…" he said. "Jerome Ashley…"

  "What about it?"

  The Chief looked at him sternly.

  "This is not to be used," he said. "N-O-T. Until I give you the go-ahead. Agreed?"

  "Agreed. What is it?"

  "They found nylon hairs on the rug in Ashley's hotel room."

  "So? They've already said the killer wears a black nylon wig."

  "These nylon hairs were a reddish blond."

  The reporter blinked.

  "Son of a bitch," he said slowly. "He switched wigs."

  "Right," Delaney said, nodding. "And could switch again to brown, red, purple, green, any color of the goddamned rainbow. That's why nothing's been released on the strawberry blond hairs. Maybe the killer will stick to that color if nothing about it appears in the newspapers or on TV."

  "Maybe," Handry said doubtfully. "Anything else?"

  "Not at the moment."

  "Slim pickings," the reporter said, sighing. "All right, let's hear about this research you want."

  Edward X. Delaney took a folded sheet of typing paper from his inside jacket pocket, handed it across the table. Thomas Handry put on heavy, horn-rimmed glasses to read it. He read it twice. Then he raised his head to stare at the Chief.

  "You say this has something to do with the Hotel Ripper?"

  "It could."

  The reporter continued staring. Then…

  "You're nuts!" he burst out. "You know that?"

  "It's possible I am," the Chief said equably.

  "You really think…?"

  Delaney shrugged.

  "Gawd!" Handry said in an awed voice. "What a story that would make. Well, if your game plan was to hook me, you've succeeded. I'll get this stuff for you."

  "When?"

  "Take me at least a week."

  "A week would be fine," Delaney said.

  "If I have it before, I'll let you know."

  "I need all the numbers. Percentages. Rates."

  "All right, all right," the reporter said crossly. "I know what you want; you don't have to spell it out. But if it holds up, I get the story. Agreed?"

  Del
aney nodded, paid the bill, and both men rose.

  "A nightcap at the bar?" the Chief suggested.

  "Sure," the reporter said promptly. "But won't your wife be wondering what happened to you?"

  "She's taking a course tonight."

  "Oh? On what?"

  "Assertiveness training."

  "Lordy, lordy," Thomas Handry said.

  He went over the dossiers on the three victims again and again. He was convinced there was something there, a connection, a lead, that eluded him.

  Then, defeated, he turned his attention to the hotels in which the crimes had taken place, thinking there might be a common denominator there. But the three hotels had individual owners, were apparently just unexceptional midtown Manhattan hostel-ries with nothing about them that might motivate a criminal intent on revenge.

  Then he reviewed again the timing of the killings. The first had occurred on a Friday, the second on a Thursday, the third on a Wednesday. There seemed to be a reverse progression in effect, for what possible reason Delaney could not conceive. But if the fourth killing happened on a Tuesday, it might be worth questioning.

  He never doubted for a moment that there would be a fourth murder. He was furious that he was unable to prevent it.

  Sergeant Abner Boone called regularly, two or three times a week. It was he who had informed Delaney that strawberry blond hairs had been found on the rug in the third victim's hotel room.

  It had still not been decided whether or not to release this information to the media.

  Boone also said that analysis of the bloody footprints on Jerome Ashley's rug had confirmed the killer's height as approximately five feet five to five feet seven. It had proved impossible to determine if the prints were made by a man or woman.

  The sergeant reported that the scars on Ashley's hands were the result of burns suffered when a greasy stove caught fire. Boone didn't think there was any possible connection with the murder, and the Chief agreed.

  Finally, the investigation into the possibility that all three murdered men were victims of the same disgruntled employee seeking vengeance had turned up nothing. There was simply no apparent connection between Puller, Wolheim, and Ashley.

  "So we're back to square one," Boone said, sighing. "We're still running the decoys every night in midtown, and Slavin is pulling in every gay with a sheet or reported as having worn a wig at some time or other. But the results have been zip. Any suggestions, Chief?"

  "No. Not at the moment."

  "At the moment?" the sergeant said eagerly. "Does that mean, sir, that you may have something? In a while?"

  Delaney didn't want to raise any false hopes. Neither did he want to destroy Boone's hope utterly.

  "Well… possibly," he said cautiously. "A long, long shot."

  "Chief, at this stage we'll take anything, no matter how crazy. When will you know?"

  "About two weeks." Then, wanting to change the subject, he said, "You're getting the usual tips and confessions, I suppose."

  "You wouldn't believe," the sergeant said, groaning. "We've even had four black nylon wigs mailed to us with notes signed: 'The Hotel Ripper.' But to tell you the truth, if we weren't busy chasing down all the phony leads, we'd have nothing to do. We're snookered."

  Delaney went back to his dossiers and finally he saw something he had missed. Something everyone had missed. It wasn't a connection between the three victims, a common factor. That continued to elude him.

  But it was something just as significant. At least he thought it might be. He checked it twice against his calendar, then went into the living room to consult one of his wife's books.

  When he returned to the study, his face was stretched. The expression was more grimace than grin, and when he made a careful note of his discovery, he realized he was humming tonelessly.

  He wondered if he should call Sergeant Boone and warn him. Then he decided too many questions would be asked. Questions to which he did not have the answers.

  Not that he believed a warning would prevent a fourth murder.

  Thomas Handry called early on the morning of April 28th.

  "I've got the numbers you wanted," he said.

  There was nothing in his voice that implied the results were Yes or No. Delaney was tempted to ask, right then and there. But he didn't. He realized that, for some curious reason he could not analyze, he was more fearful of a Yes than a No.

  "That's fine," he said, as heartily as he could.

  "I didn't have time to do any adding up," Handry continued. "No compilation, no summary. You'll have to draw your own conclusions."

  "I will," Delaney said. "Thank you, Handry. I appreciate your cooperation."

  "It's my story," the reporter reminded him.

  The Chief wondered what that meant. Was it a story? Or just an odd sidebar to a completely different solution?

  "It's your story," he acknowledged. "When and where can I get the research?"

  There was silence a moment. Then:

  "How about Grand Central Station?" Handry said. "At twelve-thirty. The information booth on the main concourse."

  "How about a deserted pier on the West Side at midnight?" Delaney countered.

  The reporter laughed.

  "No," he said, "no cloak-and-dagger stuff. I have to catch a train and I'm jammed up here. Grand Central would be best."

  "So be it," Delaney said. "At twelve-thirty."

  He was early, as usual, and wandered about the terminal. He amused himself by trying to spot the plainclothes officers on duty and the grifters plying their trade.

  He recognized an old-time scam artist named Breezy Willie who had achieved a kind of fame by inventing a device called a "Grab Bag." It was, apparently, a somewhat oversized black suitcase. But it had no bottom and, of course, was completely empty.

  Breezy Willie would select a waiting traveler with a suitcase smaller than the Grab Bag, preferably a suitcase with blue, tan, or patterned covering. The traveler had to be engrossed in a book, timetable, or newspaper, not watching his luggage.

  Willie would sidle up close, lower the empty shell of the Grab Bag over the mark's suitcase, and pull a small lever in the handled Immediately, the sides of the Grab Bag would compress tightly, clamping the suitcase within.

  The con man would then lift the swag from the floor, move it ten or fifteen feet away and wait, reading his own newspaper. Willie never tried to run for it.

  When the mark discovered his suitcase was missing, he'd dash about frantically, trying to locate it. Breezy Willie would get only a brief glance. He looked legit, and his suitcase was obviously black, not the mark's blue, tan, or patterned bag. When the excitement had died down, the hustler would stroll casually away The Chief moved close to Breezy Willie, whose eyes were busy over the top edge of his folded newspaper.

  "Hullo, Willie," he said softly.

  The knave looked up.

  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I'm afraid you've made a mistake. My name is-"

  Then his eyes widened.

  "Delaney!" he said. "This is great!"

  He proffered his hand, which the Chief happily took.

  "How's business, Willie?" he asked.

  "Oh, I'm retired now."

  "Glad to hear it."

  "Going up to Boston to visit my daughter. She's married, y'know, with three kids, and I figured I'd-"

  "Uh-huh," the Chief said.

  He bent swiftly and picked up Breezy Willie's Grab Bag with one finger under the handle. He swung the empty shell back and forth.

  "Traveling light, Willie?" He laughed and set the Grab Bag down again. "Getting a little long in the tooth for the game, aren't you?"

  "That's a fact," the rascal said. "If it wasn't for the ponies, I'd have been playing shuffleboard in Florida years ago. I heard you retired, Chief."

  "That's right, Willie."

  "But just the same," Breezy Willie said thoughtfully, "I think I'll mosey over to Penn Station. I may visit my daughter in Baltimore, instead."
>
  "Good idea," Delaney said, smiling.

  They shook hands again and the Chief watched the scalawag depart. He wished all the bad guys were as innocuous as Breezy Willie. The jolly old pirate abhorred violence as much as any of his victims.

  Then he spotted Thomas Handry striding rapidly toward him. The reporter was carrying a weighted Bloomingdale's shopping bag.

  "I like your luggage," Delaney said, as Handry came up. "It's all yours," he said, handing it over. "About five pounds of photocopies. Interesting stuff." "Oh?"

  Handry glanced up at the big clock. "I've got to run," he said. "Believe it or not, I'm interviewing an alleged seer up in Mt. Vernon. She says she saw the Hotel Ripper in a dream. He's a six-foot-six black with one eye, a Fu Manchu mustache, and an English accent."

  "Sounds like a great lead," Delaney said.

  The reporter shrugged. "We're doing a roundup piece on all the mediums and seers who think they know what the Hotel Ripper looks like."

  "And no two of them agree," the Chief said.

  "Right. Well, I've got a train to catch." He hesitated, turned back, gestured toward the bag. "Let me know what you decide to do about all this."

  "I will," Delaney said, nodding. "And thank you again."

  He watched Handry trot away, then picked up the shopping bag and started out of the terminal. He hated carrying packages, especially shopping bags. He thought it might be a holdover from his days as a street cop: a fear of being encumbered, of not having his hands free.

  It was a bright, blowy spring day, cool enough for his putty-colored gabardine topcoat, a voluminous tent that whipped about his legs. He paused a moment to set his homburg more firmly. Then he set out again, striding up Vanderbilt to Park Avenue.

  He turned his thoughts resolutely away from what he was carrying and its possible significance. He concentrated on just enjoying the glad day. And the city.

  It was his city. He had been born here, lived here all his life. He never left without a sensation of loss, never returned without a feeling of coming home. It was as much domicile as his brownstone; New Yorkers were as much family as his wife and children.