He stopped slowly. Like most detectives in New York-in the world! — he had helped send men up. To execution, or to long or short prison terms, or to mental institutions. Most of them vowed revenge-in the courtroom, in threats phoned by their friends, in letters. Very few of them, thankfully, ever carried out their threats. But there were a few…
Now, hearing his name called from a dark sedan parked on a poorly lighted street, realizing he was unarmed, he turned slowly toward the car. He let the shopping bag drop to the sidewalk. He raised his arms slightly, palms turned forward.
But then he saw the uniformed driver in the front seat. And in the back, leaning toward the cranked-down window, the bulk and angry face of Deputy Commissioner Broughton. The cigar, clenched in his teeth, was burning furiously.
“Delaney!” Broughton said again, more of a command than a greeting. The Captain stepped closer to the car. Broughton made no effort to open the door, so Delaney was forced to bow forward from the waist to speak to him. He was certain this was deliberate on Broughton’s part, to keep him in a supplicant’s position.
“Sir?” he asked.
“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“We sent a man to Florida. It turns out that Lombard’s driver’s license is missing. The widow says you spoke to her about it. You were seen entering her house. You knew the license was missing. I could rack you up for withholding evidence.”
“But I reported it, sir.”
“You reported it? To Pauley?”
“No, I didn’t think it was that important. I reported it to Dorfman, Acting Commander of the Two-five-one Precinct. I’m sure he sent a report to the Traffic Department. Check the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, sir. I’m certain you’ll find a missing license report was filed with them.” There was silence for a moment. A cloud of rank cigar smoke came billowing out the window, into Delaney’s face. Still he stooped.
“Why did you go see Gilbert’s wife?” Broughton demanded.
“For the same reason I went to see Mrs. Lombard,” Delaney said promptly. “To present my condolences. As commander and ex-commander of the precinct in which the crimes occurred. Good public relations for the Department.”
Again there was a moment’s silence.
“You got an answer for everything, you wise bastard,” Broughton said angrily. He was in semi-darkness. Delaney, bending down, could barely make out his features. “You been seeing Thorsen? And Inspector Johnson?”
“Of course I’ve been seeing Deputy Inspector Thorsen, sir. He’s been a friend of mine for many years.”
“He’s your ‘rabbi’-right?”
“Yes. And he introduced me to Johnson. Just because I’m on leave of absence doesn’t mean I have to stop seeing old friends in the Department.”
“Delaney, I don’t trust you. I got a nose for snots like you, and I got a feeling you’re up to something. Just listen to this: you’re still on the list, and I can stomp on you any time I want to. You know that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t fuck me, Delaney. I can do more to you than you can do to me. You coppish?”
“Yes. I understand.”
So far he had held his temper under control and now, in a split-second, he made his decision. His anger wasn’t important, and neither was Broughton’s obnoxious personality. He brought the shopping bag closer to the car window.
“Sir,” he said, “I have something here I’d like to show you. I think it may possibly help-”
“Go fuck yourself,” Broughton interrupted roughly, and Delaney heard the belch. “I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help. The only way you can help me is to crawl in a hole and pull it in over your head. Is that clear?”
“Sir, I’ve been-”
“Jesus Christ, how can I get through to you? Fuck off, Delaney. That’s all I want from you. Just fuck off, you shit-head.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Edward X. Delaney said, almost delirious with pleasure. “I heard. I understand.”
He stood and watched the black sedan pull away. See? You worry, brood, wrestle with “moral problems” and such crap and then suddenly a foul-mouthed moron solves the whole thing for you. He went into his own home happily, called Deputy Inspector Thorsen and, after reporting his meeting with Broughton, told Thorsen he wanted to continue the investigation on his own.
“Hang on a minute, Edward,” Thorsen said. Delaney guessed Inspector Johnson and Deputy Mayor Alinski were still there, and Ivar was repeating the conversation to them. Thorsen was back again in about two minutes.
“Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Good luck.”
7
He seemed to be spending a lot of time doodling, staring off into space, jotting down almost incomprehensible notes, outlining programs he tore up and discarded as soon as they were completed. But he was, he knew, gradually evolving a sensible campaign in the two weeks following the meeting in Thorsen’s home.
He sat down with Christopher Langley in the Widow Zimmerman’s apartment and, while she fussed about, urging them to more tea and crumbcake, they went over Langley’s firm schedule for his investigation. The little man had already discovered two more stores in Manhattan that sold ice axes, neither of which had mailing lists or kept a record of customers’ purchases.
“That’s all right,” Delaney said grimly. “We can’t be lucky all the time. We’ll do what we can with what we have.” Langley would continue to look for stores in Manhattan where the ice ax was sold, then broadening his search to the other boroughs. Then he would check tool and outdoor equipment jobbers and wholesalers. Then he would try to assemble a list of American manufacturers of ice axes. Then he would assemble a list of names and addresses of foreign manufacturers of mountaineering gear who exported their products to the U.S., starting with West Germany, then Austria, then Switzerland.
“It’s a tremendous job,” Delaney told him.
Langley smiled, seemingly not at all daunted by the dimensions of his task.
“More crumbcake?” the Widow Zimmerman asked brightly. “It’s homemade.”
Langley had told the truth; she was a lousy cook.
Delaney had another meeting with Calvin Case, who announced proudly that he was now refraining from taking his first drink of the day until his bedside radio began the noon news broadcast.
“I have it prepared,” Case said, “but I don’t touch it until I hear that chime. Then…”
Delaney congratulated him, and when Case repeated his offer of help, they began to figure out how to handle the Outside Life sales checks.
“We got a problem,” Case told him. “If it’ll be easy enough to pull every sales slip that shows a purchase of an ice ax during the past seven years. But what if your man bought it ten years ago?”
“Then his name should show up on the mailing list. I’ll have someone working on that.”
“Okay, but what if he bought the ice ax some place else but maybe bought some other mountain gear at Outside Life?”
“Well, couldn’t you pull every slip that shows a purchase of mountain climbing gear of any type?”
“That’s the problem,” Case said. “A lot of stuff used in mountaineering is used by campers, back-packers, and a lot of people who never go near a mountain. I mean stuff like rucksacks, lanterns, freeze-dried foods, gloves, web belts and harnesses. Hell, ice fishermen buy crampons, and yachtsmen buy the same kind of line mountaineers use. So where does that leave us?”
Delaney thought a few minutes. Case took another drink. “Look,” Delaney said, “I’m not going to ask you to go through a hundred thousand sales checks more than once. Why don’t you do this: why don’t you pull every check that has anything at all to do with mountain climbing? I mean anything. Rope, rucksacks, food-whatever. That will be a big stack of sales checks-right? And it will include a lot of non-mountain climbers. That’s okay. At the same time you make a separate file of every sales check that definitely lists the purchase of an ice ax. After you’ve finished with all the checks, we’ll go through your ice ax file first and pull every one purchased by a resident of the Two-five-one Precinct, and look ’em up. If that doesn’t work, we’ll pull every resident of the Precinct from your general file of mountaineering equipment purchases. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll branch out and take in everyone in that file.”