Second Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  “My husband described you. He said you were very beautiful.”

  “Well, aren’t you nice, sweetie. And did he tell you all about me?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid. My husband never discusses his cases with me.”

  “Too bad. I imagine it could be exciting in bed with a cop. Listening to him talk.”

  “It’s exciting even if he doesn’t talk.”

  “See you around, kiddo.”

  “Nice to see you again, Miss Maitland,” Abner Boone said. “Is your mother here, too?”

  “Around somewhere,” Emily Maitland said breathlessly. “My land, isn’t this just fascinating? I love it!”

  “Love the paintings?”

  “Those, too. Vic was such a naughty boy! But this crowd! The famous people! Have you ever seen such beautiful people?”

  “Men or women?” he asked.

  “All of them,” she sighed. “So grand and skinny.”

  “Did you drive down?” the sergeant asked, wishing she had not worn that shattering flowered muumuu.

  “Oh yes,” she said, looking about with wide, shining eyes. “We always drive down.”

  “When you had lunch and dinner with your brother?” he pressed. “You drove?”

  “Oh look!” she breathed. “That gorgeous man in the velvet suit and ruffled shirt. The devil!”

  “Would you like to meet him?” Boone asked. “I know him. I’ll introduce you.”

  “Would you?” she gasped. “Maybe he’ll let me take him home to Nyack and keep him under a belljar.”

  Abner Boone looked at her.

  “Having a good time, dear?” Edward X. Delaney asked. “Did you get a drink? Some caviar?”

  “I’m doing fine,” Monica assured him. “I know what you mean about his paintings, Edward. They’re very strong, aren’t they? They’re sort of …”

  “Of what?” he asked.

  “A little crazy?” she said cautiously.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “A little crazy. He wanted to know it all, have it all, and show it. That way he could own it.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “I met Belle Sarazen,” she said.

  “And … ?

  “Very sexy. Very hard. Bitchy.”

  “Could she kill?”

  Monica looked at him queerly.

  “I think so,” she said slowly. “She’s very unhappy.”

  “No,” he said. “Just greedy. Will you do me a favor?”

  “Of course. What?”

  “See that young fellow over there? Under the spiral staircase? Alone? That’s Ted Maitland. Victor’s son. Go talk to him. Tell me what you think.”

  “Could he … ?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Talked to Saul,” Lieutenant Wolfe said, grinning. The crowd shoved him tightly against Delaney.

  “Oh?” Delaney said, smiling broadly in return. Two friends laughing, enjoying a joke.

  “He says he works with Sarazen, like half the dealers on Madison Avenue. She finds buyers. Here and in Europe. Takes ten percent.”

  “From the dealer or the artist?”

  “You kidding? The artist, of course. No dealer’s going to reduce his take.”

  “So they worked together on Maitland’s stuff?”

  “Occasionally. He says.”

  “Mooch around, will you, lieutenant? Maybe she and Maitland were cutting him out.”

  “Oh-ho. Like that, was it?”

  “Could be.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig. By the way, I may run away with your wife.”

  “I’d mind,” Delaney said. “Great cook. Come up for dinner?”

  “You say when.”

  Boone put his back against the wall. He held his glass of ginger ale chest-high, stared with a vacant smile. Guests pushed by, stepped on his toes, slopped his drink. He paid no attention; he was watching Saul Geltman and the Maitlands, mother and daughter. The agent had the two women crowded into a corner. He was speaking rapidly, gesturing. Emily was listening intently, head lowered. Dora seemed out of it, leaning back, swaying, eyes closed.

  To the sergeant, it looked as if Geltman were trying to sell them something. He was almost spluttering in his eagerness to convince. He took hold of Dora’s shoulder, shook it gently. Her eyes opened. Geltman moved closer and spoke directly into her face. Her hand, clenched into a fist, rose slowly. For a moment, Boone thought she was going to hit the agent: punch him in the mouth or club him on the head. But Emily Maitland grabbed her mother’s arm, soothed her, took hold of the menacing hand. She pried the fist open, straightening the fingers, smiling, smiling, smiling …

  “Chief!” a harried Saul Geltman said. “Glad you could make it. You’ve met Mrs. Dora Maitland? Victor’s mother?”

  “I’ve had that pleasure,” the Chief said, bowing. “A pleasure again, ma’am. A beautiful show. Your son’s paintings are magnificent.”

  “’Nificent,” she nodded solemnly.

  Zonked, Delaney thought. Boone was right: she’s on the sauce.

  “Pardon me a moment,” Saul Geltman said. “The critics. Photographers. It’s going well, don’t you think?”

  He turned away. Delaney grabbed his arm, pulled him back.

  “One quick question,” he said. “Did you have a contract with Maitland?”

  Geltman looked at him, puzzled. Then his face cleared, and he laughed.

  “No contract,” he said. “Not even a handshake. He could have walked away any time he wanted to. If he thought I wasn’t doing a good job. Sometimes artists jump from dealer to dealer. The second-raters looking for instant success. Gotta run …”

  He disappeared. Delaney steadied Mrs. Maitland with a firm hand under her elbow. He steered her skillfully, got her against a wall. A waiter passed, and Delaney lifted a glass of something from his tray. He folded Dora Maitland’s fingers around it. She stared at it blearily.

  “Scotch?” she said.

  “Whatever,” he said. “How I enjoyed my visit to your lovely home.”

  She raised those dark, brimming eyes and tried to focus. Lurched closer. The oiled ringlets swung around his face. He caught the musky scent.

  “You’ll see,” she said in a curdled voice. “Like it was. When I get the money …”

  “Oh?” he said lightly. “Well, I can imagine all the improvements you’ll make. When you get the money. But won’t it be very costly to restore the house and grounds?”

  “Don’ you worry,” she said, patting his arm with floating fingers. “Plenty of—”

  “There you are, Mother!” Emily Maitland said brightly. “I was wondering where you’d got to. Chief Delaney, how nice to see you again. Land, but isn’t it hot? How I’d like a glass of that nice fruit punch. Chief? Please?”

  “My pleasure,” Chief Delaney said, and moved toward the bar. But when he returned with the glass of punch, the Maitland women were gone. He looked about, searching for them.

  “If you can’t find a customer, I’ll take that,” Susan Hemley said. She plucked the glass from Delaney’s fingers. “Remember me? Susan Hemley? You liked my hair.”

  “How could I ever forget?” he said gallantly. “Enjoying yourself?”

  “A lot of fags,” she said. “You and the sergeant are the only straight men in the place.”

  “You’re very kind,” he said, without irony. “And the paintings? What do you think of them?”

  “Alma says …” she giggled, then tried again. “Alma thinks they’re vulgar and dirty. All that skin. Alma thinks they’re like, you know, porn.”

  “Does she?” he smiled. “So that’s what Alma thinks. What do you think?”

  “Live and let live,” she shrugged.

  “My sentiments exactly,” he told her. “I’m sorry to hear Mrs. Maitland doesn’t approve of her husband’s work. She modeled for him, didn’t she?”

  “A long time ago,” Susan Hemley said. “She’s changed.”

  “Now she doesn’t like the nudes?” />
  “Well, she does and she doesn’t,” Susan Hemley said vaguely. “Doesn’t like all the bare ass. But still they do sell, don’t they? And who can argue with money?”

  “Not me,” he assured her.

  “You were kidding, weren’t you?” Jake Dukker asked Sergeant Abner Boone.

  “Kidding? About what?”

  “What you and the Chief said. Me a suspect.”

  “Oh, that,” Boone said. “No, we weren’t kidding. Sarazen claims she went upstairs with you at noon all right. On that Friday. But then she fell asleep. She says. So she can’t swear you were there until one-thirty or two. She doesn’t know what you were up to.”

  Dukker’s face blanched. The pits of his cheeks became black pimples. His mouth opened and closed.

  “She …” he tried.

  “Oh yes,” Boone said, nodding. “She can’t remember a thing.”

  He smiled and moved away.

  “I talked to Ted Maitland,” Monica said. “At least I tried to.”

  “And?” the Chief asked.

  “Nothing. All he did was grunt. Did you notice the bandage?”

  “What bandage?”

  “Ah-ha,” Monica said triumphantly. “I’m a better detective than you are.”

  “Did I ever deny it?” he said. “What bandage?”

  “On Ted’s wrist.”

  “Which wrist? Or both?”

  “On his left wrist. Under his cuff.”

  “So,” Delaney said, with a bleak smile. “The boy’s got a thing for sharp edges.”

  “Maybe it was an accident,” Monica said.

  “Maybe it was guilt,” the Chief said. “I’ll ask Ted and Alma about it, but I know what I’ll get from them. Zilch.”

  The pot didn’t disturb him; he had smelled marijuana before. And the swirls of perfume and whiffs of deodorant-masked sweat he could identify and accept. It was something else: a smell that was not a scent, but in the air, permeating the hard chatter he heard, the gargled laughter.

  Perhaps it was the way they disregarded Victor Maitland’s paintings, or debated their cash value with cold eyes. He glimpsed the lorn figure of Theodore Maitland standing near a keen J. Julian Simon, and he remembered what the boy had said: the upside-down pyramid of the art world. All this glitter and the clang of coin sprouting from the lonely talent of a doomed creative artist who was, at the bottom, secretly derided. If they could, if it was possible, they would prefer that art could be produced by means other than individual pain. A factory perhaps. A computer. Anything they could understand and control. But wild genius daunted them; to accept it demeaned their own brutal lives. They lived off another man’s talent and travail, and despised him for it to hide their own empty envy and want.

  That was what he smelled: the greed of the contemptuous leeches. Their scorn hung in the air, and they turned their backs to those tortured, blazing paintings on the walls. They knew everything, but they knew nothing. This loud, brazen crowd reminded him so much of the drunken throng that gathered beneath the hotel ledge and turned white faces and wet lips upward, screaming, “Jump! Jump!”

  Delaney and Boone, standing apart, exchanged what they had learned.

  “We’ve got to get back to Nyack,” the Chief said. “Dora’s counting on money. ‘Plenty of money,’ she said. Where? From whom? She doesn’t inherit.”

  “They drove down,” Boone said. “For those lunches and dinners. Emily didn’t say so, but I know. God, what a mess.”

  “No,” Delaney said, “not a mess. Just a disorder. No pattern at all. What we’ve—”

  But then a woman screamed. Commotion. The crowd surged toward the bar. More screams. Shouts. Then laughter. Cries.

  “What the hell,” Delaney said. “Let’s take a look.”

  The press of heated bodies was thick, jammed. They pushed, shoved, slid by, working their way to the bar. Voices were high, everyone gabbling, excited, eyes shining.

  “He hit her,” a man said happily. “Slammed her in the chops. She fell into the punch bowl. I saw it. Beautiful.”

  Boone grabbed his shoulder.

  “Who?” he said harshly. “Who hit who?”

  “Whom,” the man said. “Jake Dukker hit Belle Sarazen. Right in the chops. I saw it. Knocked her ass over tea kettle. Loverly! Great party!”

  Delaney put a hand on Boone’s arm.

  “Let’s stay out of it,” he said, his lips close to the sergeant’s ear.

  “My doing,” Boone grinned. “I told him she had thrown him to the wolves.”

  “Good,” Delaney nodded. “Maybe we’ll visit them both again. Just to listen. Let’s find our women and go home. I’ve had enough.”

  “See the paintings, Chief?” Boone asked.

  “Some. I’ll come back in a few days when I can really look. Alone.”

  They sat awhile in Boone’s car, discussing the evening’s events, reporting on what they had seen and what they had heard. Chief Delaney and the sergeant listened intently as Monica and Rebecca Hirsch exchanged opinions on people they had met, subjective reactions to appearance, manner, dress, and style.

  “What about Alma Maitland?” Delaney asked. “The widow?”

  “What about her?” Monica said.

  The Chief tried to phrase it delicately.

  “Is she—ah—interested in—ah—well … women?”

  The two women looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  Monica took her husband’s hands in hers.

  “What an old foof you are,” she said. “Sometimes. Is she a lesbian? Is that what you want to know?”

  “Yes,” he said gratefully.

  Monica thought a moment.

  “Could be,” she said. “Becky, did you get any reaction?”

  “I’d say she is,” Rebecca nodded. “She may not know it, but she is. And Saul Geltman is gay; that’s obvious. Belle Sarazen is a cruel bitch. I’m glad she got slugged. Jake Dukker is a complete nut. But it’s Ted Maitland who really scares me.”

  “Why is that?” Boone asked.

  “Repressed violence,” Rebecca said promptly. “He’s right on the edge. Did you notice his fingernails? Bitten down to the quick.”

  “Did either of you get to meet the mother and daughter?”

  “I didn’t,” Rebecca said.

  “I met the daughter,” Monica said. “A lonely girl. But underneath all that flab there’s drive and ambition.”

  “Dreams?” Delaney asked.

  “Definitely,” his wife said. “Big expectations. She kept looking at the way other women were dressed and said, ‘I like that. I’m going to get that.’ And I asked her when, and she said, ‘Soon.’ She knows what she wants.”

  “Interesting evening,” the Chief said. “Let’s go home. How about you folks coming in with us for coffee-and?”

  “And what?” Rebecca asked. “I fell off my diet too far tonight.”

  “And nothing,” Monica said. “No, wait, I have a pound cake in the freezer.”

  “Good enough,” Delaney said. “Toasted pound cake; I can endure that. We’ll take our shoes off, and the postmortems will continue.”

  They had to park almost a block away. They strolled back to the Delaney brownstone, the two men together in front, the women following, all of them chatting.

  The men trudged up the stone steps of the stoop, still talking, Chief Delaney taking out his keys. He stopped suddenly. Two steps from the top. Boone, not watching, bumped into him. He began to murmur an apology, then stopped. He saw it, too.

  The front door, the fine old oak door, was open a few inches. The light that had been left on in the hallway streamed through. Around the lock and knob, the door was scarred, crushed, splintered. A piece had been broken away and lay on the landing.

  “Stay here,” Delaney said to Boone.

  The Chief went back down to the sidewalk. The two women were just coming up. Delaney stopped them. He stood directly in front of Monica, took hold of her upper arms.

  “Listen to
me,” he said in a cold, dead voice. “Do exactly what I tell you.”

  “Edward, what—”

  “Just listen. The house had been broken into. The door is smashed open.”

  “The girls!” she wailed. He gripped her tighter.

  “I want you and Rebecca to walk slowly next door to the precinct house. Don’t run. Don’t scream or yell. Go into the station. Identify yourself to the desk sergeant. Tell him what’s happened. Tell him to send some men, anyone he can spare. Got that?”

  She nodded dumbly.

  “Tell the sergeant that Boone and I will be inside. That’s very important. We’ll both be inside. Be sure the desk sergeant and the men he sends know that. I don’t want them to come in blasting. You understand, Monica?”

  Again she nodded. Rebecca stepped closer to her. Delaney stood back. The two women linked arms. The Chief gave his wife a tight smile.

  “All right,” he said. “Now go.”

  She hesitated a moment.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “Now go get help.”

  The women turned. Delaney watched them walk steadily, with measured steps, back toward the precinct house. Then he rejoined Abner Boone. They moved up slowly, silently to the top landing. They stood at the hinged side of the jimmied door.

  “You carrying?” Boone whispered.

  Delaney shook his head.

  The sergeant slid his revolver from the hip holster beneath his suit jacket.

  “Back way out?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Dead end,” Delaney said. “Courtyard. No way.”

  Boone nodded, pushed the safety off, crouched.

  “You stay here,” he commanded. “I’ll go in fast and low. Keep away from the open door, sir.”

  Delaney didn’t answer. Boone set himself. Bent lower. Pushed off with a thrust of his thighs. Hit the door with a shoulder. It flung wide, banged the opposite wall, began to bounce back.

  By then the sergeant was in. Down. On the floor. Rolling. Ending up against the entrance-hall wall. Gun held in both hands. Propped up. Pointing.

  Nothing. No sound. No movement.

  “I’m coming,” Delaney called. “Upstairs. Along the hall. Second door on the right. My gun’s there. You lead. I’ll follow. Ready? Let’s go!”

  They went with a rush, Boone scrambling to his feet. Dashing up the staircase. Delaney pounding after him. Down the hall. To the half-open bedroom door.