Part III
1
The street was blocked off with sawhorses: raw yellow wood with “New York Police Department” stencilled on the sides. Below the barricades were oil lanterns, black globes with smoking wicks. They looked like 19th century anarchists’ bombs.
The patrolman on duty saluted and pulled one sawhorse aside to let Delaney through. The Captain walked slowly down the center of the street, toward the river. He knew this block well; three years previously he had led a team of officers and Technical Patrol Force specialists in the liberation of a big townhouse that had been taken over by a gang of thugs and was being systematically looted. The house was near the middle of the block. A few lights were on; in one apartment the tenants were standing at the window, staring down into the street.
Delaney paused to survey the silent scene ahead of him. Understanding what was happening, he removed his cap, made the sign of the cross, bowed his head.
There were a dozen vehicles drawn up in a rough semicircle: squad cars, ambulance, searchlight truck, laboratory van, three unmarked sedans, a black limousine. Thirty men were standing motionless, uncovered heads down.
This city block had been equipped with the new street lights that cast an orange, shadowless glow. It filled doorways, alleys, corners like a thin liquid, and if there were no shadows, there was no brightness either, but a kind of strident light without warmth.
Into this brassy haze a morning mist seeped gently and collected in tears on hoods and roofs of cars and on black asphalt. It damped the hair and faces of the silent watchers. It fell as a shroud on the bundle crumpled on the sidewalk. The kneeling priest completed extreme unction and rose from his knees. The waiting men replaced their hats; there was a subdued murmur of voices.
Delaney stared at this night lithograph, then walked forward slowly. He came into a hard white beam from the searchlight truck; men turned to look at him. Lieutenant Dorfman came hurrying up, face twisted.
“It’s Lombard, Captain,” he gasped. “Frank Lombard, the Brooklyn councilman. You know-the one who’s always talking about ‘crime on the streets’ and writing the newspapers what a lousy job the police are doing.”
Delaney nodded. He looked around at the assembled men: patrolmen, precinct and Homicide North detectives, laboratory specialists, an inspector from the Detective Division. And a deputy commissioner with one of the Mayor’s personal aides.
Now there was another figure kneeling alongside the corpse. Captain Delaney recognized the massive bulk of Dr. Sanford Ferguson. Despite the harsh glare of the searchlights, the Police Surgeon was using a penlight to examine the skull of the dead man. He stood away a moment while photographers placed a ruler near the corpse and took more flash photos. Then he kneeled again on the wet sidewalk. Delaney walked over to stand next to him. Ferguson looked up.
“Hullo, Edward,” he smiled. “Wondering where you were. Take a look at this.”
Before kneeling, Delaney stared down a moment at the victim. It was not difficult to visualize what had happened. The man had been struck down from behind. The back of his skull appeared crushed; thick black hair was bloodied and matted. He had fallen forward, sprawling heavily. As he fell, the left femur had snapped; the leg was now flung out at an awkward angle. He had fallen with such force that the splintered end of the bone had thrust out through his trouser leg.
As he fell, presumably his face smacked the sidewalk, for blood had flowed from a mashed nose, perhaps from a crushed mouth and facial abrasions. The pool of blood, not yet congealed, bloomed from his head in a small puddle, down into a plot of cracked earth about a scrawny plane tree at the curb.
Delaney kneeled carefully, avoiding a leather wallet lying alongside the body. The Captain turned to squint into the searchlight glare.
“The wallet dusted?” he called to men he couldn’t see. “No sir,” someone called back. “Not yet.”
Delaney looked down at the wallet.
“Alligator,” he said. “They won’t get much from that.” He took a ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of his uniform jacket and gently prized open the wallet, touching only one edge. Dr. Ferguson put the beam of his penlight on it. They both saw the thick sheaf of green bills.
Delaney let the wallet fall closed, then turned back to the body. Ferguson put his light on the skull. Three men in civilian clothes came up to kneel around the corpse. The five bent over closely, heads almost touching.
“Club?” one of the detectives asked. “A pipe maybe?”
“I don’t think so,” Ferguson said, without looking up. “There’s no crushing or depression. That’s blood and matting you see. But there’s a penetration. Like a puncture. A hole about an inch in diameter. It looks round. I could put my finger in it.”
“Hammer?” Delaney asked.
Ferguson sat back on his heels. “A hammer? Yes, it could be. Depends on how deep the penetration goes.”
“What about time, doc?” one of the other detectives asked. “Looks to be within three hours tops. No, call it two hours. Around midnight. Just a guess.”
“Who found him?”
“A cabby spotted him first but thought he was a drunk and didn’t stop. The cabby caught up with one of your precinct squads on York Avenue, Captain, and they came back.”
“Who were they?”
“McCabe and Mowery.”
“Did they move the body or the wallet?”
“McCabe says they didn’t touch the body. He says the wallet was lying open, face up, with ID card and credit cards showing in plastic pockets. That’s how they knew it was Lombard.”
“Who closed the wallet?”
“Mowery did that.”
“Why?”
“He says it was beginning to drizzle, and they were afraid it might rain harder and ruin any latent prints on the plastic windows in the wallet. He says they could see it was a rough leather wallet and chances are there’d be a better chance of prints on the plastic than on the leather. So they closed the wallet, using a pencil. He says they didn’t touch it. McCabe backs him up. McCabe says the wallet is within a quarter-inch at most from where they found it.”
“When did the cabby stop them on York Avenue and tell them there was someone lying here?”
“About an hour ago. Closer to fifty minutes maybe.”
“Doctor,” Delaney asked, “can we roll him over now?”
“You got your pictures?” a detective roared into the darkness.
“We need the front,” the reply came back.
“Careful of that leg,” Ferguson said. “One of you hold it together while we roll him over.”
Five pairs of hands took hold of the corpse gently and turned it face up. The five kneeling men drew back as two photographers came up for long shots and closeups of the victim. Then the circle closed again.
“No front wounds that I can see,” Ferguson reported, his little flashlight beam zigzagging down the dead body. “The broken leg and facial injuries are from the fall. At least the abraded skin indicates that. I’ll know better when I get him downtown. It was the skull penetration that did it.”
“Dead before he hit the ground?”
“Could be if that puncture is deep enough. He’s a-he was a heavy man. Maybe two twenty-five. He fell heavily.” He felt the dead man’s arms, shoulders, legs. “Solid. Not too much fat. Good muscle layer. He could have put up a fight. If he had a chance.”
They were silent, staring down at the body. He had not been a handsome man, but his features were rugged and not unpleasant: strong jaw, full lips, a meaty nose (now crushed), thick black brows and walrus mustache. The teeth still unbroken were big, white, square-little tombstones. Blank eyes stared at the weeping sky.
Delaney leaned forward suddenly and pressed his face close to the dead man’s. Dr. Ferguson grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
