The 1st Deadly Sin

2

Barbara Delaney’s stay in the hospital for tests was longer than the five days predicted by Dr. Louis Bernardi. It became a weekend and five days, then two weekends and five days, and finally a total of fifteen days. To every inquiry by Captain Edward X. Delaney, the doctor answered only, “More tests.”

From his daily-sometimes twice-daily-visits to his wife’s private room, Delaney came away with the frightening impression that things were not going well at all. The fever persisted, up one day, down slightly the next. But the course was steadily upward. Once it hit almost 103; the woman was burning up.

He himself had been witness to the sudden chills that racked her body, set teeth chattering and limbs trembling. Nurses came hurrying with extra blankets and hot water bottles. Five minutes later she was burning again; blankets were tossed aside, her face rosy, she gasped for breath.

New symptoms developed during those fifteen days: headaches, urination so difficult she had to be catheterized, severe pain in the lumbar region, sudden attacks of nausea that left her limp. Once she vomited into a basin he held for her. She looked up at him meekly; he turned away to stare out the window, his eyes bleary.

On the morning he finally decided, against his wife’s wishes, to dismiss Bernardi and bring in a new man, he was called at his Precinct office and summoned to an early afternoon meeting with Bernardi in his wife’s hospital room. Lieutenant Dorfman saw him off with anguished eyes.

“Please, Captain,” he said, “try not to worry. She’s going to be all right.”

Marty Dorfman was an extraordinarily tall (6'4") Jew with light blue eyes and red hair that spiked up from a squeezed skull. He wore size 14 shoes and couldn’t find gloves to fit. He seemed constantly to be dribbled with crumbs, and had never been known to swear.

Nothing fitted; his oversize uniform squirmed on thin shoulders, trousers bagged like a Dutch boy’s bloomers. Cigarette ashes smudged his cuffs. Occasionally his socks didn’t match, and he had lost the clasp on the choker collar of his jacket. His shoes were unshined, and he reported for duty with a dried froth of shaving cream beneath his ears.

Once, when a patrolman, he had been forced to kill a knife-wielding burglar. Since then he carried an unloaded gun. He thought no one knew, but everyone did. As Captain Delaney had told his wife, Dorfman’s paperwork was impeccable and he had one of the finest legal minds in the Department. He was a sloven, but when men of the 251st Precinct had personal problems, they went to him. He had never been known to miss the funeral of a policeman killed in line of duty. Then he wore a clean uniform and wept.

“Thank you, lieutenant,” Delaney said stiffly. “I will call as soon as possible. I fully expect to return before you go off. If not, don’t wait for me. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Dr. Louis Bernardi, Delaney decided was perfectly capable of holding the hand of a dying man and saying, “There there.” Now he was displaying the X-rays proudly, as if they were his own Rembrandt prints.

“The shadows!” he cried. “See the shadows!”

He had drawn a chair up close to the bedside of Barbara Delaney. The Captain stood stolidly on the other side, hands clasped behind him so their tremble might not reveal him.

“What are they?” he asked in his iron voice.

“What is it?” his wife murmured.

“Kidney stones!” Bernardi cried happily. “Yes, dear lady,” he continued, addressing the woman on the bed who stared at him sleepily, her head wavering slightly, “the possibility was there: a stubborn fever and chills. And more recently the headaches, nausea, difficulty in passing water, pain in the lower back. This morning, after more than ten days of exhaustive tests-which I am certain, he-he, you found exhausting as well as exhaustive-we held a conference-all the professional men who have been concerned with your condition-and the consensus is that you are, unhappily, suffering from a kidney calculus.”

His tone was so triumphant that Delaney couldn’t trust himself to speak. His wife turned her head on the pillow to look warmingly at him. When he nodded, she turned back to Bernardi to ask weakly:

“How did I get kidney stones?”

The doctor leaned back in his chair, made his usual gesture of placing his two index fingers together and pressing them against his pouting lips.

“Who can say?” he asked softly. “Diet, stress, perhaps a predisposition, heredity. There is so much we don’t know. If we knew everything, life would be a bore, would it not? He!”

Delaney grunted disgustedly. Bernardi paid no heed.

“In any event, that is our diagnosis. Kidney stones. A concretion frequently found in the bladder or kidneys. A hard, inorganic stone. Some no larger than a pinhead. Some quite large. They are foreign matter lodged in living tissue. The body, the living tissue, cannot endure this invasion. Hence, the fever, the chills, the pain. And, of course, the difficulty in urinating. Oh yes, that above all.”

Once again Delaney was infuriated by the man’s self-satisfaction. To Bernardi, it was all a crossword puzzle from the Times.

“How serious is it?” Barbara asked faintly,

A glaze seemed to come down over Bernardi’s swimming eyes, a milky, translucent film. He could see out but no one could see in.

“We needed the blood tests and these sensitive plates. And then, since you have been here, the symptoms that developed gave us added indications. Now we know what we are facing.”

“How serious is it?” Barbara asked again, more determinedly.

“We feel,” Bernardi went on, not listening, “we feel that in your case, dear lady, surgery is indicated. Oh yes. Definitely. I am sorry to say. Surgery.”

“Wait,” Delaney held up his hand. “Wait just a minute. Before we start talking about surgery. I know a man who had kidney stones. They gave him a liquid, something, and he passed them and was all right. Can’t my wife do the same?”

“Quite impossible,” Bernardi said shortly. “When the stones are tiny, that procedure is sometimes effective. These X-rays show a large area of inflammation. Surgery is indicated.”

“Who decided that?” Delaney demanded.

“We did.”

“‘We’?” Delaney asked. “Who is ‘we’?”

Bernardi looked at him coldly. He sat back, pulled up one trouser leg, carefully crossed his knees. “Myself and the specialists I called in,” he said. “I have their professional opinions here, Captain-their written and signed opinions-and I have prepared a duplicate set for your use.”

Captain Edward X. Delaney had interrogated enough witnesses and suspects in his long career to know when a man or woman was lying. The tip-off could come in a variety of ways. With the stupid or inexperienced it came with a physical gesture: a shifting away of the eyes, a nervous movement, blinking, perhaps a slight skim of sweat or a sudden deep breath. The intelligent and experienced revealed their falsehood in different ways: a too deliberate nonchalance, or an “honest” stare, eyeball to eyeball, or by a serious, intent fretting of the brows. Sometimes they leaned forward and smiled candidly.

But this man was not lying; the Captain was convinced of that. He was also convinced Bernardi was not telling the whole truth. He was holding something back, something distasteful to him.

“All right,” Delaney grated, “we have their signed opinions. I assume they all agree?”

Bernardi’s eyes glittered with malice. He leaned forward to pat Barbara’s hand, lying limply atop the thin blue blanket. “There there,” he said.

“It is not a very serious operation,” he continued. “It is performed frequently in every hospital in the country. But all surgery entails risk. Even lancing a boil. I am certain you understand this. No surgery should ever be taken lightly.”

“We don’t take it lightly,” Delaney said angrily, thinking this man-this “foreigner”-just didn’t know how to talk.

During this exchange Barbara Delaney’s head moved side to side, back and forth between husband and doctor.

“Very well,” Delaney went on, holding himself in control, “you recommend surgery. You remove those kidney stones, and my wife regains her health. Is that it? There’s nothing more you’re not telling us?”

“Edward,” she said. “Please.”

“I want to know,” he said stubbornly. “I want you to know.”

Bernardi sighed. He seemed about to mediate between them, then thought better of it.

“That is our opinion,” he nodded. “I cannot give you an iron-clad one hundred percent guarantee. No physician or surgeon can. You must know that. This, admittedly, will be an ordeal for Mrs. Delaney. Normal recuperation from this type of surgery demands a week to ten days in the hospital, and several weeks in bed at home. I don’t wish to imply that this is of little importance. It is a serious situation, and I take it seriously, as I am certain you do also. But you are essentially a healthy woman, dear lady, and I see nothing in your medical record that would indicate anything but a normal recovery.”

“And there’s no choice but surgery?” Delaney demanded again.

“No. You have no choice.”

A small cry came from Barbara Delaney, no louder than a kitten’s mew. She reached out a pale hand to her husband; he grasped it firmly in his big paw.

“But we have no assurance?” he asked, realizing he was again repeating himself, and that his voice was desperate.

The translucent film over Bernardi’s eyes seemed to become more opaque. Now it was the pearly cover on the eyes of a blind dog.

“No assurance,” he said shortly. “None whatsoever.”

Silence fell into the pastel room like a gentle rain. They looked at each other, all three, heads going back and forth, eyes flickering. They could hear the noises of the hospital: loudspeakers squawking, carts creaking by, murmured voices, and somewhere a radio playing dance music. But in this room the three looked into each others’ eyes and were alone, swaddled in silence.

“Thank you, doctor,” Delaney said harshly. “We will discuss it.”

Bernardi nodded, rose swiftly. “I will leave you these documents,” he said, placing a file on the bedside table. “I suggest you read them carefully. Please do not delay your decision more than twenty-four hours. We must not let this go on, and plans must be made.”

He bounced from the room, light on his feet for such a stout man.

Edward X. Delaney had been born a Catholic and raised a Catholic. Communion and confession were as much a part of his life as love and work. He was married in the Church, and his children attended parochial schools. His faith was monolithic. Until 1945…

On a late afternoon in 1945, the sun hidden behind a sky black with oily smoke, Captain Delaney led his company of Military Police to the liberation of a concentration camp in north Germany. The barbed wire gate was swinging wide. There was no sign of activity. The Captain deployed his armed men. He himself, pistol drawn, strode up to an unpainted barracks and threw open the door.

The things stared at him.

A moan came up from his bowels. This single moan, passing his lips, took with it Church and faith, prayer and confidence, ceremony, panoply, habit and trust. He never thought of such things again. He was a cop and had his own reasons.

Now, sensing what lay ahead, he yearned for the Church as a voluntary exile might yearn for his own native land. But to return in time of need was a baseness his pride could not endure. They would see it through together, the two of them, her strength added to his. The aggregate-by the peculiar alchemy of their love-was greater than the sum of the parts.

He sat on the edge of her bed, smiled, smoothed her hair with his heavy hand. A nurses’ aide had brushed her hair smooth and tied it back with a length of thick blue knitting wool.

“I know you don’t like him,” she said.

“That’s not important,” he shook his great head. “What is important is that you trust him. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. But I still want to talk to Ferguson.”

“You don’t want to decide now?”

“No. Let me take the papers and try to understand them. Then I’ll show them to Ferguson and get his opinion. Tonight, if possible. Then I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll discuss it. Will that be all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Did Mary do the curtains?” She was referring to their Monday-to-Friday, 8-to-4 maid.

“Yes, she did. And she brushed and aired the living room drapes in the backyard. Tomorrow she’ll do the parlor drapes if the weather holds. She wants so much to visit you but I said you weren’t up to it. I’ve told all your friends that. Are you sure it’s what you want?”

“Yes. I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Maybe later I’ll feel up to it. What did you have for breakfast?”

“Let’s see…” he said, trying to remember. “A small orange juice. Cereal, no sugar. Dry toast and black coffee.”

“Very good,” she nodded approvingly. “You’re sticking to your diet. What did you have for lunch?”

“Well, things piled up, and we had to send out for sandwiches. I had roast beef on whole wheat and a large tomato juice.”

“Oh Edward,” she said, “that’s not enough. You must promise that tonight you’ll-” Suddenly she stopped; tears flooded up to her eyes and out, down her cheeks. “Oh Jesus,” she cried. “Why me?”

She lurched up to embrace him. He held her close, her wet face against his. His blunt fingers stroked her back, and he kept repeating, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” over and over. It didn’t seem enough.

He went back to the Precinct carrying her medical file. The moment he was at his desk he called Dr. Sanford Ferguson, but couldn’t reach him. He tried the Medical Examiner’s office, the morgue, and Ferguson’s private office. No one knew where he was. Delaney left messages everywhere.

Then he put the.medical file aside and went to work. Dorfman and two Precinct detectives were waiting to see him, on separate cases. There was a deputation of local businessmen to demand more foot patrolmen. There was a group of black militants to protest “police brutality” in breaking up a recent march. There was a committee of Jewish leaders to discuss police action against demonstrations held almost daily in front of an Egyptian embassy located in the precinct. There was an influential old woman with an “amazing new idea” for combating drug addiction (put sneezing powder in cocaine). And there was a wealthy old man charged (for the second time) with exhibiting himself to toddlers.

Captain Delaney listened to all of them, nodding gravely. Occasionally he spoke in a voice so deliberately low his listeners had to crane forward to hear. He had learned from experience that nothing worked so well as quiet, measured tones to calm anger and bring people, if not to reason then to what was possible and practical.

It was 8:00 p.m. before his outer office had emptied. He rose and forced back his massive shoulders, stretching wide. This kind of work, he had discovered, was a hundred times more wearying than walking a beat or riding a squad. It was the constant, controlled exercise of judgment and will, of convincing, persuading, soothing, dictating and, when necessary, surrendering for a time, to take up the fight another day.

He cleaned up his desk, taking a regretful look at the paperwork that had piled up in one day and must wait for tomorrow. Before leaving, he looked in at lockups and squad rooms, at interrogation rooms and the detectives’ cubbyholes. The 251st Precinct house was almost 90 years old. It was cramped, it creaked, and it smelled like all antique precinct houses in the city. A new building had been promised by three different city administrations. Captain Delaney made do. He took a final look at the Duty Sergeant’s blotter before he walked next door to his home.

Even older than the Precinct house, it had been built originally as a merchant’s townhouse. It had deteriorated over the years until, when Delaney bought it with the inheritance from his father’s estate ($28,000), it had become a rooming house, chopped up into rat-and-roach-infested one-person apartments. But Delaney had satisfied himself that the building was structurally sound, and Barbara’s quick eye had seen the original marble fireplaces and walnut paneling (painted over but capable of being restored), the rooms for the children, the little paved areaway and overgrown garden. So they had bought it, never dreaming he would one day be commanding officer of the Precinct house next door.

Mary had left the hall light burning. There was a note Scotch-taped to the handsome pier glass. She had left slices of cold lamb and potato salad in the refrigerator. There was lentil soup he could heat up if he wanted it, and an apple tart for dessert. It all seemed good to him, but he had to watch his weight. He decided to skip the soup.

First he called the hospital. Barbara sounded sleepy and didn’t make much sense; he wondered if they had given her a sedative. He spoke to her for only a few moments and thought she was relieved when he said good-night.

He went into the kitchen, took off his uniform jacket and gun belt and hung them on the back of a chair. First he mixed a rye highball, his first drink of the day. He sipped it slowly, smoked a cigarette (his third of the day), and wondered why Dr. Ferguson hadn’t returned his calls. Suddenly he realized it might be Ferguson’s day off, in which case he had probably been out playing golf.

Carrying the drink, he went into the study and rummaged through the desk for his address book. He found Ferguson’s home number and dialed. Almost immediately a jaunty voice answered:

“Doctor Ferguson. ”

“Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

“Hello, Captain Edward X. Delaney there,” the voice laughed. “What the hell’s wrong with you-got a dose of clap from a fifteen-year-old bimbo?”

“No. It’s about my wife. Barbara.”

The tone changed immediately.

“Oh. What’s the problem, Edward?”

“Doctor, would it be possible to see you tonight?”

“Both of you or just you?”

“Just me. She’s in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Edward, you caught me on the way out. They’ve dragged me into an emergency cut-’em-up.” (The doctor’s slang for an autopsy.) “I won’t be home much before midnight. Too late?”

“No. I can be at your home at midnight. Will that be all right?”

“Sure. What’s this all about?”

“I’d rather tell you in person. And there are papers. Documents. Some X-rays.”

“I see. All right, Edward. Be here at twelve.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

He went back into the kitchen to eat his cold lamb and potato salad. It all tasted like straw. He put on his heavy, black-rimmed glasses, and as he ate slowly, he methodically read every paper in Barbara’s medical file, and even held the X-rays up to the overhead light, although they meant nothing to him. There she was, in shadows: the woman who meant everything to him.

He finished eating and reading at the same time. All the doctors seemed to agree. He decided to skip the apple tart and black coffee. But he mixed another rye highball and, in his skivvie shirt, went wandering through the empty house.

It was the first time since World War II he and his wife slept under separate roofs. He was bereft, and in all those darkened rooms he felt her presence and wanted her: sight, voice, smell, laugh, slap of slippered feet, touch…her.

The children were there, too, in the echoing rooms. Cries and shouts, quarrels and stumblings. Eager questions. Wailing tears. Their life had soaked into the old walls. Holiday meals. Triumphs and defeats. The fabric of a family. All silent now, and dark as the shadows on an X-ray film.

He climbed stairs slowly to vacant bedrooms and attic. The house was too big for the two of them: no doubt about it. But still…There was the door jamb where Liza’s growth had been marked with pencil ticks. There was the flight of stairs Eddie had tumbled down and cut his chin and never cried. There was the very spot where one of their many dogs had coughed up his life in bright blood, and Barbara had become hysterical.

It wasn’t much, he supposed. It was neither high tragedy nor low comedy. No great heights or depths. But a steady wearing away of the years. Time evened whatever drama there may have been. Time dimmed the colors; the shouting died. But the golden monochrome, the soft tarnish that was left had meaning for him. He wandered through the dim corridors of his life, thinking deep thoughts and making foolish wishes.

Dr. Sanford Ferguson, a bachelor, was a big man, made bigger by creaseless tweed suits worn with chain-looped vests. He was broad through the shoulders and broad through the chest. He was not corpulent but his thighs were as big around as another man’s waist, and his arms were meaty and strong.

No one doubted his cleverness. At parties he could relate endless jokes that had the company helpless with laughter. He knew many dialects perfectly and, in his cups, could do an admirable soft-shoe clog. He was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker at meetings of professional associations. He was an ineffectual but enthusiastic golfer. He sang a sweet baritone. He could make a souffle. And, unknown to everyone (including his older spinster sister), he kept a mistress: a middle-aged colored lady he loved and by whom he had fathered three sons.

He was also, Delaney knew, an experienced and cynical police surgeon. Violent death did not dismay him, and he was not often fooled by the obvious. In “natural deaths” he sniffed out arsenic. In “accidental deaths” he would pry out the fatal wound in a corpus of splinters.

“Here’s your rye,” he said, handing the highball to Delaney. “Now sit there and keep your mouth shut, and let me read and digest.”

It was after midnight. They were in the living room of Ferguson’s apartment on Murray Hill. The spinster sister had greeted Delaney and then disappeared, presumably to bed. The doctor had mixed a rye highball for his guest and poured a hefty brandy for himself in a water tumbler.

Delaney sat quietly in an armchair pinned with an antimacassar. Dr. Ferguson sat on a spindly chair at a fine Queen Anne lowboy. His bulk threatened to crush chair and table. His wool tie was pulled wide, shirt collar open: wiry hair sprang free.

“That was a nice cut-’em-up tonight,” he remarked, peering at the documents in the file Delaney had handed over. “A truck driver comes home from work. Greenwich Village. He finds his wife, he says, on the kitchen floor. Her head’s in the oven. The room’s full of gas. He opens the window. She’s dead. I can attest to that. She was depressed, the truck driver says. She often threatened suicide, he says. Well…maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see.”

“Who’s handling it?” Delaney asked.

“Sam Rosoff. Assault and Homicide South. You know him?”

“Yes. An old-timer. Good man.”

“He surely is, Edward. He spotted the cigar stub in the ashtray on the kitchen table. A cold butt, but the saliva still wet. What would you have done?”

“Ask you to search for a skull contusion beneath the dead woman’s hair and start looking for the truck driver’s girl friend.”

Dr. Ferguson laughed. “Edward, you’re wonderful. That’s exactly what Rosoff suggested. I found the contusion. Right now he’s out looking for the girlfriend. Do you miss detective work?”

“Yes.”

“You were the best,” Ferguson said, “until you decided to become Commissioner. Now shut up, lad, and let me read.” Silence.

“Oh-ho,” Ferguson said. “My old friend Bernardi.”

“You know him?” Delaney asked, surprised.

“I do indeed.”

“What do you think of him?”

“As a physician? Excellent. As a man? A prick. No more talk.”

Silence.

“Do you know any of the others?” Delaney asked finally. “The specialists he brought in?”

“I know two of the five-the neurologist and the radiologist. They’re among the best in the city. This must be costing you a fortune. If the other three are as talented, your wife is in good hands. I can check. Now be quiet.”

Silence.

“Oh well,” Ferguson shrugged, still reading, “kidney stones. That’s not so bad.”

“You’ve had cases?”

“All the time. Mostly men, of course. You know who get ’em? Cab drivers. They’re bouncing around on their ass all day.”

“What about my wife?”

“Well, listen, Edward, it could be diet, it could be stress. There’s so much we don’t know.”

“My wife eats sensibly, rarely takes a drink, and she’s the most-most serene woman I’ve ever met.”

“Is she? Let me finish reading.”

He went through all the reports intently, going back occasionally to check reports he had already finished. He didn’t even glance at the X-rays. Finally he shoved back from the table, poured himself another huge brandy, freshed the Captain’s highball.

“Well?” Delaney asked.

“Edward,” Ferguson said, frowning, “don’t bring me in. Or anyone else. Bernardi is a bombastic, opinionated, egotistical shit. But as I said, he’s a good sawbones. On your wife’s case he’s done everything exactly right. He’s tried everything except surgery-correct?”

“Well, he tried antibiotics. They didn’t work.”

“No, they wouldn’t on kidney stones. But they didn’t locate that until they got her in the hospital for sensitive plates, and then the trouble passing urine started. That’s recent, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Only in the last four or five days.”

“Well, then…”

“You recommend surgery?” Delaney asked in a dead voice. Ferguson whirled on him. “I recommend nothing,” he said sharply. “It’s not my case. But you’ve got no choice.”

“That’s what he said.”

“He was right. Bite the bullet, m’lad.”

“What are her chances?”

“You want betting odds, do you? With surgery, very good indeed.”

“And without?”

“Forget it.”

“It’s not fair,” Delaney cried furiously.

Ferguson looked at him strangely. “What the fuck is?” he asked.

They stared at each other a long moment. Then Ferguson went back to the table, flipped through the X-rays, selected one and held it up to the light of a tilted desk lamp. “Kidney,” he muttered. “Yes, yes.”

“What is it, doctor?”

“He told you and I told you: calculus in the kidneys, commonly known as stones.”

“That’s not what I meant. Something’s bothering you.” Ferguson looked at him. “You son of a bitch,” he said softly. “You should never have left the detective division. I’ve never met anyone as-as attuned to people as you are.”

“What is it?” Delaney repeated.

“It’s nothing. Nothing I can explain. A hunch. You have them, don’t you?”

“All the time.”

“It’s little things that don’t quite add up. Maybe there’s a rational explanation. The recent hysterectomy. The fever and chills that have been going on since then. But only recently the headaches, nausea, lumbar pain, and now the difficulty passing urine. It all adds up to kidney stones, but the sequence of symptoms is wrong. With kidney stones, pain at pissing usually comes from the start. And sometimes it’s bad enough to drive you right up a wall. No record of that here. Yet the plates show…You tell me she’s not under stress?”

“She is not.”

“Every case I’ve had is driven, trying to do too much, bedeviled by time, rushing around, biting fingernails and screaming at the waitress when the coffee is cold. Is that Barbara?”

“No. She’s totally opposite. Calm.”

“You can’t tell. We never know. Still…” He sighed. “Edward, have you ever heard of Proteus infection?”

“Bernardi mentioned it to me.”

Ferguson actually staggered back a step, as if he had been struck a blow on the chest. “He mentioned it to you?” he demanded. “When was this?”

“About three weeks ago, when he first told me Barbara should go into the hospital for tests. He just mentioned it and said he wanted to do some reading on it. But he didn’t say anything about it today. Should I have asked him?”

“Jesus Christ,” Ferguson said bitterly. “No, you shouldn’t have asked him. If he wanted to tell you, he would have.”

“You’ve treated cases?”

“Proteus? Oh yes, I have indeed. Three in twenty years. Mr. Proteus is a devil.”

“What happened to them?”

“The three? Two responded to antibiotics and were smoking and drinking themselves to death within forty-eight hours.”

“And the third?”

Ferguson came over, gripped Delaney by the right arm, and almost lifted him to his feet. The Captain had forgotten how strong he was.

“Go have your wife’s kidney stones cut out,” the doctor said brutally. “She’ll either live or die. Which is true for all of us. No way out, m’lad.”

Delaney took a deep breath.

“All right, doctor,” he said. “Thank you for your time and your-your patience. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Bother?” Ferguson said gruffly. “Idiot.”

He walked Delaney to the door. “I might just stop by to see Barbara,” he said casually. “Just as a friend of the family.”

“Yes,” Delaney nodded dumbly. “Please do that. She doesn’t want any visitors, but I know she’ll be glad to see you.”

In the foyer Ferguson took Delaney by the shoulders and turned him to the light.

“Have you been sleeping okay, Edward?” he demanded. “Not too well.”

“Don’t take pills. Take a stiff shot. Brandy is best. Or a glass of port. Or a bottle of stout just before you get into bed.”

“Yes. All right. Thank you. I will.”

They shook hands.

“Oh wait,” Ferguson said. “You forgot your papers. I’ll get the file for you.”

But when he returned, Delaney had gone.

He stopped at his home to put on a heavy wool sweater under his uniform jacket. Then he walked next door to the Precinct house. There was a civilian car parked directly in front of the entrance. Inside the windshield, on the passenger’s side, a large card was displayed: PRESS.

Delaney stalked inside. There was a civilian talking to the Desk Sergeant. Both men broke off their conversation and turned when he tramped in.

“Is that your car?” he asked the man. “In front of the station?”

“Yes, that’s mine. I was-”

“You a reporter?”

“Yes. I was just-”

“Move it. You’re parked in a zone reserved for official cars only. It’s clearly marked.”

“I just wanted-”

“Sergeant,” Delaney said, “if that car isn’t moved within two minutes, issue this man a summons. If it’s still there after five minutes, call a truck and have it towed away. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now look here-” the man started.

Delaney walked by him and went up to his office. He took a black-painted three-cell flashlight from the top drawer of his file cabinet. He also slipped a short, hard rubber truncheon into his jacket pocket and hung a steel “come-along” on his gun belt.

When he came out into the chilly night again, the Press car had been reparked across the street. But the reporter was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Precinct house.

“What’s your name?” he asked angrily.

“Captain Edward X. Delaney. You want my shield number?”

“Oh…Delaney. I’ve heard about you.”

“Have you?”

“‘Iron Balls.’ Isn’t that what they call you?”

“Yes.”

The reporter stared, then suddenly laughed and held out his hand.

“The name’s Handry, Captain. Thomas Handry. Sorry about the car. You were entirely right and I was entirely wrong.”

Delaney shook his hand.

“Where you going with the flashlight, Captain?”

“Just taking a look around.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

Delaney shrugged. “If you like.”

They walked over to First Avenue, then turned north. The street was lined with stores, supermarkets, banks. Most of them had locked gates across doors and windows. All had a light burning within.

“See that?” Delaney gestured. “I sent a letter to every commercial establishment in my precinct requesting they keep at least a hundred-watt bulb burning all night. I kept after them. Now I have ninety-eight-point-two percent compliance. A simple thing, but it reduced breaking-and-entering of commercial establishments in this precinct by fourteen-point-seven percent.”

He stopped in front of a shoe repair shop that had no iron gates. Delaney tried the door. It was securely locked.

“A little unusual, isn’t it?” Handry asked, amused. “A captain making the rounds? Don’t you have foot patrolmen for that?”

“Of course. When I first took over the 251st, discipline was extremely lax. So I started unscheduled inspections, on foot, mostly at night. It worked. The men never know when or where I may turn up. They stay alert.”

“You do it every night?”

“Yes. Of course, I can’t cover the entire precinct, but I do a different five or six blocks every night. I don’t have to do it anymore, you understand; my men are on their toes. But it’s become a habit. I think I enjoy it. As a matter of fact, I can’t get to sleep until I’ve made my rounds. My wife says I’m like a householder who has to go around trying all the windows and doors before he goes to bed.”

A two-man squad car came purring by. The passenger officer inspected them, recognized the Captain and threw him a salute, which he returned.

Delaney tried a few more un-gated doors and then, flashlight burning, went prowling up an alleyway, the beam flickering over garbage cans and refuse heaps. Handry stayed close behind him.

They walked a few more blocks, then turned eastward toward York Avenue.

“What were you doing in my Precinct house, Handry?” the Captain asked suddenly.

“Nosing around,” the reporter said. “I’m working on an article. Or rather a series of articles.”

“On what?”

“Why a man wants to become a policeman, and what happens to him after he does.”

“Again?” Delaney sighed. “It’s been done a dozen times.”

“I know. And it’s going to be done again, by me. The first piece is on requirements, screening, examination, and all that. The second will be on the Academy and probationary training. Now I’m trying to find out what happens to a man after he’s assigned, and all the different directions he can go. You were originally in the detective division, weren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Homicide, wasn’t it?”

“For a while.”

“They still talk about you, about some of your cases.”

“Do they?”

“Why did you switch to patrol, Captain?”

“I wanted administrative experience,” Delaney said shortly.

This time Handry sighed. He was a slender, dapper young man who looked more like an insurance salesman than a reporter. His suit was carefully pressed, shoes shined, narrow-brim hat exactly squared on his head. He wore a vest. He moved with a light-footed eagerness.

His face betrayed a certain tension, a secret passion held rigidly under control. Lips were pressed, forehead bland, eyes deliberately expressionless. Delaney had noted the bitten fingernails and a habit of stroking the upper lip downward with the second joint of his index finger.

“When did you shave your mustache?” he asked.

“You should have stayed in the detective division,” Handry said. “I know I can’t stop stroking my lip. Tell me, Captain-why won’t policemen talk to me? Oh, they’ll talk, but they won’t really open up. I can’t get into them. If I’m going to be a writer, that’s what I’ve got to learn to do-how to get into people. Is it me, or are they afraid to talk for publication, or what the hell is it?”

“It isn’t you-not you personally. It’s just that you’re not a cop. You don’t belong. There’s a gulf.”

“But I’m trying to understand-really I am. This series is going to be very sympathetic to the police. I want it to be. I’m not out to do a hatchet job.”

“I’m glad you’re not. We get enough of that.”

“All right, then you tell me: why does a man become a policeman? Who the hell in his right mind would want a job like that in this city? The pay is miserable, the hours are miserable, everyone thinks you’re on the take, snot-nosed kids call you ‘pig’ and throw sacks of shit at you. So what the hell is the point?

They were passing a private driveway alongside a luxury apartment house. Delaney heard something.

“Stay here,” he whispered to Handry.

He went moving quietly up the driveway, the flashlight dark. His right hand was beneath his jacket flap, fingers on the butt of his gun.

He was back in a minute, smiling.

“A cat,” he said, “in the garbage cans.”

“It could have been a drug addict with a knife,” Handry said.

“Yes,” Delaney agreed, “it could have been.”

“Well then, why?” Handry asked angrily.

They were strolling slowly southward on York Avenue heading back toward the Precinct house. Traffic was light at that hour, and the few pedestrians scurried along, glancing nervously over their shoulders.

“My wife and I were talking about that a few weeks ago,” Delaney mused, remembering that bright afternoon in the Park. “I said I had become a cop because, essentially, I am a very orderly man. I like everything neat and tidy, and crime offends my sense of order. My wife laughed. She said I became a policeman because at heart I am an artist and want a world of beauty where everything is true and nothing is false. Since that conversation-partly because of what has happened since then-I have been thinking of what I said and what she said. And I have decided we are not so far apart-two sides of the same coin actually. You see, I became a policeman, I think, because there is, or should be, a logic to life. And this logic is both orderly and beautiful, as all good logic is. So I was right and my wife was right. I want this logic to endure. It is a simple logic of natural birth, natural living, and natural death. It is the mortality of one of us and the immortality of all of us. It is the on-going. This logic is the life of the individual, the family, the nation, and finally all people everywhere, and all things animate and inanimate. And anything that interrupts the rhythm of this logic-for all good logic does have a beautiful rhythm, you know-well, anything that interrupts that rhythm is evil. That includes cruelty, crime, and war. I can’t do much about cruelty in other people; much of it is immoral but not illegal. I can guard against cruelty in myself, of course. And I can’t do a great deal about war. I can do something about crime. Not a lot, I admit, but something. Because crime, all crime, is irrational. It is opposed to the logic of life, and so it is evil. And that is why I became a cop. I think.”

“My God!” Handry cried. “That’s great! I’ve got to use that. But I promise I won’t mention your name.”

“Please don’t.” Delaney said ruefully. “I’d never live it down.”

Handry left him at the Precinct house. Delaney climbed slowly to his office to put away his “beat” equipment. Then he slumped in the worn swivel chair behind his desk. He wondered if he would ever sleep again.

He was ashamed of himself, as he always was when he talked too much. And what nonsense he had talked!

“Logic…immortality…evil.” Just to tickle his vanity, of course, and give him the glow of voicing “deep thoughts” to a young reporter. But what did all that blathering have to do with the price of beans?

It was all pretty poetry, but reality was a frightened woman who had never done an unkind thing in her life now lying in a hospital bed nerving herself for what might come. There were animals you couldn’t see gnawing away deep inside her, and her world would soon be blood, vomit, pus, and feces. Don’t you ever forget it, m’lad. And tears.

“Rather her than me” suddenly popped into his brain, and he was so disgusted with himself, so furious at having this indecent thought of the woman he loved, that he groaned aloud and struck a clenched fist on the desk. Oh, life wasn’t all that much of a joy; it was a job you worked at, and didn’t often succeed.

He sat there in the gloom, hunched, thinking of all the things he must now do and the order in which he must do them. Brooding, he glowered, frowned, occasionally drew lips back to show large, yellowed teeth. He looked like some great beast brought to bay.