In that week before Christmas, while the Delaney’s living room furniture was being pushed back to the walls, deal tables and folding chairs brought in, cots set up, and communications men were still fiddling with their equipment, including three extra telephone lines, a “council of war” was scheduled every afternoon at 3:00 p.m. It was held in the Captain’s study where the doors could be closed and locked. Attending were Captain Delaney, Lt. Jeri Fernandez, Detective first grade Ronald Blankenship, and Detective sergeant Thomas MacDonald. Delaney’s liquor cabinet was open or, if they preferred, there was cold beer or hot coffee from the kitchen.
The first few meetings were concerned mostly with planning, organization, division of responsibility, choice of personnel, chain of command. Then, as information began to come in, they spent part of their time discussing the “Time-Habit Charts” compiled by Blankenship’s squad. They were extremely detailed tabulations of Daniel Blank’s daily routine: the time he left for work, his route, time of arrival at the Javis-Bircham Building, when he left for lunch, where he usually went, time of arrival back at the office, departure time, arrival at home, when he departed in the evening, where he went, how long he stayed. By the end of the fourth day, his patterns were pretty well established. Daniel Blank appeared to be a disciplined and orderly man.
Problems came up, were hashed out. Delaney listened to everyone’s opinion. Then, after the discussion, he made the final decision.
Question: Should an undercover cop, with the cooperation of the management, be placed in Daniel Blank’s apartment house as a porter, doorman, or whatever? Delaney’s decision: No.
Question: Should an undercover cop be placed in Javis-Bircham, as close to Blank’s department as as he could get? Delaney’s decision: Yes. It was assigned to Fernandez to work out as best he could a cover story that might seem plausible to the J-B executives he’d be dealing with.
Question: Should a Time-Habit Chart be set up for the residents of that townhouse on East End Avenue? Delaney’s decision: No, with the concurring opinions of all three assistants.
“It’s a screwy household,” MacDonald admitted. “We can’t get a line on them. This Valenter, the butler-or whatever you want to call him-has a sheet on molesting juvenile males. But no convictions. But that’s all I’ve got so far.”
“I don’t have much more,” Fernandez confessed. “The dame-this Celia Montfort-was admitted twice to Mother of Mercy Hospital for suicide attempts. Slashed wrists, and once her stomach had to be pumped out. We’re checking other hospitals, but nothing definite yet.”
“The kid seems to be a young fag,” Blankenship said, “but no one’s given me anything yet that makes a pattern. Like Pops said, it’s a weird set-up. I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on over there. Nothing we can chart, anyway. She’s in, she’s out, at all hours of the day and night. She was gone for two days. Where was she? We don’t know and won’t until we put a special tail on her. Captain?”
“No,” Delaney said. “Not yet. Keep at it.”
Keep at it. Keep at it. That’s all they heard from him, and they did because he seemed to know what he was doing, radiated an aura of confidence, never appeared to doubt that if they all kept at it, they’d nail this psycho and the killings would stop.
Daniel G. Blank. Captain Delaney knew his name, and now the others did, too. Had to. The men on the street, in the Con Ed van, in the unmarked cars adopted, by common consent, the code name “Danny Boy” for the man they watched. They had his photo now, reprinted by the hundreds, they knew his home address and shadowed his comings and goings. But they were told only that he was a “suspect.”
Sometime during that week, Captain Delaney could never recall later exactly when, he scheduled his first press conference. It was held in the now empty detectives’ squad room of the 251st Precinct house. There were reporters from newspapers, magazines, local TV news programs. The cameras were there, too, and the lights were hot. Captain Delaney wore his Number Ones and delivered, from memory, a brief statement he had labored over a long time the previous evening.
“My name is Captain Edward X. Delaney,” he started, standing erect, staring into the TV cameras, hoping the sweat on his face didn’t show. “I have been assigned command of Operation Lombard. This case, as you all know, involves the apparently unconnected homicides of four men: Frank Lombard, Bernard Gilbert, Detective Roger Kope, and Albert Feinberg. I have spent several days going through the records of Operation Lombard during the time it was commanded by former Deputy Commissioner Broughton. There is nothing in that record that might possibly lead to the indictment, conviction, or even identification of a suspect. It is a record of complete and utter failure.”
There was a gasp from the assembled reporters; they scribbled furiously. Delaney didn’t change expression, but he was grinning inwardly. Did Broughton really think he could talk to Delaney the way he had and not pay for it, eventually? The Department functioned on favors. It also functioned on vengeance. Run for mayor, would he? Lots of luck, Broughton!
“So,” Captain Delaney continued, “because there is such a complete lack of evidence in the files of Operation Lombard while it was under the command of former Deputy Commissioner Broughton, I am starting from the beginning, with the death of Frank Lombard, and intend to conduct a totally new investigation into the homicides of all four men. I promise you nothing, I prefer to be judged by my acts rather than by my words. This is the first and last press conference I intend to hold until I either have the killer or am relieved of command. I will not answer any questions.”
An hour after this brief interview, shown in its entirety, appeared on local TV news programs, Captain Delaney received a package at his home. It was brought into his study by one of the uniformed patrolmen on guard duty at the outside door-a 24-hour watch. No one went in or out without showing a special pass Delaney had printed up, issued only to bona fide members of Operation Lombard. The patrolman placed the package on Delaney’s desk.
“Couldn’t be a bomb, could it, Captain?” he asked anxiously. “You was on TV tonight, you know.”
“I know,” the Captain nodded. He inspected the package, then picked it up gingerly. He tilted it gently, back and forth. Something sloshed.
“No,” he said to the nervous officer, “I don’t think it’s a bomb. But you did well to suggest it. You can return to your post.”
“Yes, sir,” the young patrolman said, saluted and left.
Handsome, Delaney thought, but those sideburns were too goddamned long.
He opened the package. It was a bottle of 25-year-old brandy with a little envelope taped to the side. Delaney opened the bottle and sniffed; first things first. He wanted to taste it immediately. Then he opened the sealed envelope. A stiff card. Two words: “Beautiful” and “Alinski.”
The mood of the “war councils” changed imperceptibly in the three days before Christmas. It was obvious they now had a working, efficient organization. Danny Boy was blanketed by spooks every time he stepped outside home or office. Blankenship’s bookkeeping and communications were beyond reproach. Detective sergeant MacDonald’s snoops had built up a file on Blank that took up three drawers of a locked cabinet in Delaney’s study. It included the story of his refusal to attend his parents’ funeral and a revealing interview with a married woman in Boston who agreed to give her impressions of Daniel Blank while he was in college, under the cover story that Blank was being considered for a high-level security government job. Her comments were damning, but nothing that could be presented to a grand jury. Blank’s ex-wife had remarried and was presently on an around-the-world honeymoon cruise.
During those last three days before Christmas, the impression was growing amongst Delaney’s assistants-he could feel the mood-that they were amassing a great deal of information about Daniel G. Blank-a lot of it fascinating and libidinous reading-but it amounted to a very small hill of beans. The man had a girl friend. So? Maybe he was or was not sleeping with her brother, Tony. So? He came out occasionally at odd hours, wandered about the streets, looked in shop windows, stopped in at The Parrot for a drink. So?