Second Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Ah, hell,” Boone said. “What’s this about?”

  “He died intestate,” Delaney said. “No will. That means the IRS wants to make sure it gets its share of the goodies. Also, the IRS had a back claim he’d been fighting for years. Well … what do we do now?”

  Boone glanced around.

  “Uh, Chief …” he said in a low voice. “Uh, I got a set of picks. Okay?”

  Delaney stared at him.

  “Sergeant,” he said, “you’re looking better to me every minute. Sure okay.”

  Abner Boone took a flat pouch of black suede from his inside jacket pocket. He inspected the heavy padlock, then selected one of the picks—a long, thin sliver of stainless steel with a tiny hook at one end. Boone inserted the hook end into the keyhole of the padlock. He probed delicately, staring up at the ceiling. The pick caught. Boone turned his wrist slowly. The lock popped open.

  “Very nice,” Delaney said. “And the first time you’ve done it, too.”

  Boone smiled and put his picks away. He pushed the door open. They entered, closed the door behind them.

  “Stand right here,” Delaney commanded. “Take a good look around. See if it’s all about the same as it was when the body was found. Anything out of place? Anything missing? Take your time.”

  He waited patiently while Boone inspected the interior of the studio. Sunshine was flooding through the overhead skylight. One of the panes of glass was broken and had been stuffed with a blue rag. There was a wire mesh over the skylight. But no ventilator. The room smelled musty, spoiled.

  Delaney glanced at his watch.

  “About ten-thirty,” he said. “It must have looked like this six weeks ago. You said it was a bright, clear day, so he wouldn’t be using the lamps. The sun is higher now, of course, but it should be just about as it was.”

  “I don’t see anything missing or out of place,” Boone said. “I have the feeling that glass on the drainboard was closer to the sink than it is now. They moved it after dusting. And the mattress on the cot was flipped. Old semen stains on the top side. Nothing fresh. Otherwise, it looks exactly the same to me.”

  “Were the windows open?”

  “No, sir. Shut, like they are now.”

  “Radio on?”

  “No. Switched off. That stuff at the far end, all his paints and brushes and rolls of canvas, all that mess, that’s not in the original position because we went through it. But as far as I know, nothing was taken. We left it all right here.”

  “No paintings?”

  “No. The agent said he had just finished a series and brought the last to the Geltman Galleries. There’s a couple of rough sketches on the floor. The agent wanted to take them, but we wouldn’t let him. He said they might have been Maitland’s last work and belonged to the estate.”

  Delaney walked over to the chalked outline on the floor and stared down. The wood around it was stained a dark brown, almost black in patches.

  “The outline about right?” he asked Boone.

  “About. The right arm, here, wasn’t exactly straight. More bent at the elbow. And the knees were bent a little. But he went down flat on his face and spread out.”

  Delaney knelt by the rude outline of the dead painter, staring at it through half-closed eyes.

  “Was his face right down on the floor?”

  “Turned a little to the left maybe, but mostly straight down.”

  “Do you know where he carried his wallet?”

  “We figured right hip pocket. He had a comb in his left hip. His wife and agent confirmed.”

  The Chief stood up, dusting his knees.

  “Smell?” he asked.

  “Plenty,” Boone said. “That was a warm, clammy weekend.”

  “No, no,” Delaney said. “I mean, did anyone get down on him to smell him?”

  Abner Boone was bewildered.

  “No one I saw, Chief,” he said. “What for?”

  “Oh …” Delaney said vaguely. “You never know …”

  He went over to the sink, inspecting the stained basin and the drain-board.

  “The drain searched?”

  “Sure. And the tub drain. And the toilet and the tank.”

  The old-fashioned bathtub, on claw feet, had a white enameled metal lid. Delaney lifted it to peer underneath, then crouched to look under the tub.

  “Roaches,” he reported.

  “Plenty of those,” Boone nodded. “All over. He wasn’t exactly what you’d call Mister Clean.”

  Delaney walked slowly toward the front of the studio. He paused at the platform under the skylight.

  “What’s this thing?” he asked.

  “The agent said it’s a posing dais. The model got up there when Maitland was making drawings or paintings.”

  Delaney moved around the clutter on the floor, stopped, looked down.

  “I can figure what most of this stuff is,” he said. “But why the saw, nails, hammer? And that thing—that claw—what’s that?”

  “Geltman said Maitland stretched his own canvas. Bought it in rolls. Made a wood frame, then stretched the canvas over it and tacked it down. The claw helped him pull the canvas taut. Those little wooden wedges went into the inside corners of the frame to help keep the canvas tight.”

  “What’s this black stuff near the wall? Black crumbs?”

  “Pieces of a charcoal stick. The agent helped us identify all this shit. It seems Maitland used charcoal sticks for sketching. Most artists use pencils.”

  “Why all the little pieces?”

  “It breaks easily. But there’s a mark on the wall, up there, to your right. Looks like Maitland threw the stick at the wall. Geltman says he’d do something like that.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t know, unless Maitland’s work wasn’t going good and he got sore.”

  Delaney picked up the two sketches from the floor, handling them with his fingernails at the corners, and brought them closer to the front windows to examine them.

  “There’s a third drawing on the pad on the crate,” Boone said. “Half-finished. And there’s half a charcoal stick alongside it. The agent said it looked to him like Maitland was doing the third sketch, the charcoal stick broke in two, and Maitland threw the piece he was holding at the wall.”

  Delaney didn’t reply. He was staring at the drawings, awed. Maitland had been putting a three-dimensional torso on two-dimensional paper, working with hard, bold strokes of his charcoal. There was no conventional shading; the line itself suggested the modelings of the flesh. But in two places he had made fast smudges with thumb or finger to suggest hollow and shadow.

  The body was that of a young girl, juicy, bursting. You could almost feel the heat. She stood bent over in a distorted pose that bunched muscles, jutted breasts. Maitland had caught swoop of back, flare of hips, sweet curve of shoulder and arm. The face, in profile, was barely suggested; something vaguely Oriental about it. But the body, to the knees, leapt from the white paper. The black lines seemed alive, seemed to writhe. There was no doubt that a heart pumped, breath flowed, blood coursed.

  “Jesus,” Delaney said in a low voice. “I don’t care what the guy was, he shouldn’t be dead.” Then, in a louder voice, he asked: “Did the agent know when these were done?”

  “No, sir. Could have been that morning. Could have been a week before. He had never seen them before.”

  “Did he know the model?”

  “Said not. Said the sketches looked to him like preliminary work, the kind of throwaway stuff Maitland might try with a new model. To see if he could catch what he wanted.”

  “Throwaway stuff? Not these. I’m going to take them. I’ll return them to the estate. Eventually. Where’s the third?”

  “Here. Still on the crate.”

  Chief Delaney inspected the still life atop the rough crate: sketchpad propped on a can of turpentine, half a charcoal stick, bottle of whiskey. He looked from the whiskey to the studio entrance and back again. Then he tore the third dr
awing from the pad and flipped through the remaining pages to make certain there was nothing more. There wasn’t. He carefully rolled the three sketches into a tight tube. Then he looked around.

  “Can’t think of anything else,” he said. “Can you?”

  “No, Chief. There was no address book. No books at all. A few old newspapers under the sink, some catalogues from art-supply stores. There’re a few numbers written on the wall near the telephone. We checked them out. A neighborhood liquor store that delivers. Ditto for a delicatessen over on Lafayette. The number for an artist friend named Jake Dukker. He’s in the file. That’s all there was. No letters, no bills, nothing. A few pieces of old clothes in the chest of drawers. Most of his personal stuff he kept uptown in his apartment. Not that that was of any more help.”

  They put the padlock back on the door and trudged downstairs. The red-haired woman stuck her face out again.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “Good day, madam,” Edward X. Delaney said politely, lifting his homburg.

  Out on the street Abner Boone said, “If the IRS comes around asking questions, she can make us.”

  “Conjecture,” Delaney said, shrugging. “She didn’t actually see us in the place. Don’t worry; if necessary, Thorsen will scam it.”

  They strolled back to Houston Street in silence. Boone walked around his car, inspecting it. It hadn’t been touched. They got in, and Delaney lighted a cigar. Boone found him a rubber band in the cluttered glove compartment to put around his roll of drawings. The sergeant had also brought the book of Maitland’s paintings, in an old manila envelope. Delaney held it on his lap. He didn’t open it.

  They sat awhile in silence, their comfort with each other growing. Boone lighted a cigarette. His fingers were stained yellow.

  “I’m trying to cut down,” he told Delaney.

  “Any luck?”

  “No. Since I’ve been off the sauce, it’s worse.”

  The Chief nodded, put his head back against the seat rest. He stared through the windshield at a noontime game of stickball being played in the middle of traffic on Houston Street.

  “Let’s play games, too,” he said dreamily, not looking at Boone. “Try this on for size … Maitland picks up a young twist. On the street, in a bar, anywhere. Maybe he figures she really would make a good model—that body in the drawings is something—or maybe it’s just his con to get a slab on the mat. Anyway, she shows up at the studio Friday morning. She strips. He does the sketches of her. I don’t know what he thought of them; I think they’re great. The charcoal stick breaks on the third drawing. Maitland throws the piece in his hand against the wall. Maybe he’s sore it broke, maybe he’s just feeling frisky. Who knows? He gives the bimbo a drink. Near the sink and cot. Those are her partials on the glass. Maybe they talk money. He boffs her or he doesn’t boff her. She leaves. He locks the door, goes back to the crate with the bottle of whiskey, looks at his sketches. Knock-knock at the door. Who is it? Someone answers, a voice he recognizes. He puts the bottle on the crate, goes to the door, unlocks it. The door opens. The guy comes in. Maitland turns his back and walks away. Fini. How does it grab you?”

  “Motive?”

  “Jesus Christ, sergeant, I haven’t even begun to think about that. I don’t know enough. I’m just trying to figure what happened that Friday morning. The action. How does it listen?”

  “Possible,” Boone said. “It covers all the bases. They might have screwed around for an hour or two. The killing was some time between ten and three.”

  “Right.”

  “But there’s no hard evidence to show her presence. Those sketches could have been done a week before Maitland was snuffed. There’s no face powder, no bobby pins, no lipstick smears on the glass. Just that one safety pin.”

  Delaney jerked erect. Whirled. Stared at Boone.

  “That what?” he said furiously.

  “The safety pin, sir. On the floor near the cot. Wasn’t it in the file?”

  “No, goddamn it, it wasn’t in the file.”

  “Should have been, Chief,” Boone said softly. “One safety pin. Open. The lab boys took it to check it out. No different from zillions of others. Sold in a million stores.”

  “How long was it?”

  Boone held thumb and forefinger apart.

  “Like so. About an inch. No fibers or hairs on it. Nothing to indicate if Maitland used it or if it belonged to a broad.”

  “Shiny?”

  “Oh yes. It had been used recently.”

  “Definitely a woman’s,” Delaney said. “What’s Maitland going to do with it—hold up the underwear he wasn’t wearing? No, a young piece was there that morning.”

  They were both silent on the long, slow ride uptown. Around Fourteenth Street, Delaney said, “Sergeant, I’m sorry I barked at you about that safety pin not being in the reports. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

  Boone turned briefly to give him that boyish grin.

  “Bark all you like, Chief,” he said. “I’ve taken worse than that.”

  “Haven’t we all,” Delaney said. “Look, I’ve been thinking … I’ve been in this business a long time, and I know, I know there are a lot of things that don’t go into the reports. An investigating officer can’t put everything down in writing, or he’d spend his life behind a typewriter and have no time for investigating. Just the act of making out a report is a process of selection. The officer picks out what he thinks is meaningful, what’s significant. He doesn’t include in the record that the guy he was tailing was chewing gum, or the woman he questioned was wearing Chanel Five perfume. He leaves out all the innocuous crap. Or what he thinks is innocuous. You understand? He reports only what he thinks is important. Or really what he thinks his superior will think is important. Agree so far?”

  “To a point,” Boone said cautiously. “Sometimes an officer might include something that doesn’t mean much to him, but it’s so unusual, so odd or different that he figures the higher-ups should know about it.”

  “Then he’s a good cop, because that’s exactly what he should do. Even if nothing comes of it. And if it turns out to be hot, then he’s off the hook, because he filed it. Right?”

  “Right, sir. I agree with you there.”

  “But still,” Delaney persisted, “a lot of stuff never gets put down. Little-bitty things. Most of it’s nothing and never should be reported. But sometimes, very occasionally, if it had been reported, it would have helped break a case a lot sooner. I worked a homicide up in the Two-oh. A strangling in this big apartment house. Ten apartments on the floor. Naturally, the neighbors were questioned. No one heard a thing; the hallway had a thick carpet. One old dame mentioned that the only thing she heard was a dog sniffing under her door and making little whining sounds. But it doesn’t mean anything, she tells the dick, because four people on that floor have dogs, and they’re always taking them for walks. And the moron takes her word for it and doesn’t put it in his report. Two weeks later we’re at a standstill and start all over again. The old lady tells about the dog sniffing under her door again. This time it’s in a report, and the lieutenant has me check all the people on that floor who own dogs. None of them took their dog for a walk at that time. But the guy who got strangled, he had a rough boyfriend, and he had a dog. Never went out without him. So one thing led to another, and we nailed him. If that miserable sniffing dog had been mentioned in an early report, we’d have saved a month of migraine. Now a lot of men were working on the Maitland thing, and I know there was stuff that’s not in those records. I’m not blaming the men. I know their workload. But it’s possible that some things they sluffed in the scramble to break this case would be a big help to you and me, now that we’ve got all the time in the world to look into every little thing with no one breathing down our necks.”

  Boone picked up on it at once.

  “What do you want me to do, Chief?”

  “You know most of the men who worked on the case—at least the heavies—and you
can talk to them better than I could. Whenever we’re not working together, I want you to go see these guys, or call them, and ask them if there was anything they remember that wasn’t reported. I mean anything! Tell them they won’t get their ass in a sling. You won’t even tell me their names. That’s the truth. I don’t want to know their names. But see if you can get them to dredge their memories and come up with something they didn’t report. Someone must have seen something or heard something. It doesn’t have to be big. In fact, if it was big, it would probably be in the file. What I’m looking for are odds and ends, little inconsequential things. You understand, sergeant?”

  “Sure,” Abner Boone said. “When do you want me to get started?”

  “This afternoon. Will you drop me at home, please? I have enough to keep me busy for the rest of the day. You can start looking up the men who worked on the Maitland case. And while you’re at it, drop by the labs, or call them, and find out why that safety pin wasn’t mentioned in their analysis of physical evidence. Maybe it was, and I missed it. But I don’t think so. I think it was a foul-up, and it scares me, because maybe it happened more than once and there are things I won’t know about by reading the file. That’s why I’m happy you’re working with me.”

  Sergeant Boone was happy, too, and showed it.

  “One more thing,” Delaney said. “I intend to write up a report on this morning’s visit to Maitland’s studio. What I saw, what I found, what I took. I’ll write a daily report of my investigation, just as if I was on active duty. I want you to write daily reports, too. You’ll find they’ll be a big help to keep things straight.”

  “All right, sir,” Boone said doubtfully. “If you say so.”

  He let Delaney out in front of his brownstone. The Chief came around the car and leaned down to Boone’s open window.

  “Did Deputy Commissioner Thorsen tell you to keep him privately informed on the progress of my investigation?” he asked.

  Boone lowered his head, blushed again, the freckles lost.