that, there’s a lot more I can do. I’m just getting started.”
She nodded, and went back to her mending. He took notes on the three records of violent crimes included on the file cards. For good measure, although he thought the chances were nil, he added the names and addresses of men convicted of vandalism, extortion, and safe-breaking. He glanced at his watch, a thick hunter his grandfather had owned, and saw he had time to check out three or four of the men with records.
He rose, she put aside her sewing and stood up, and they took off their glasses simultaneously, and laughed together, it seemed like such an odd thing.
“I hope your wife is feeling better soon,” she said, walking him to the door.
“Thank you.”
“I’d-I’d like to meet her,” she said faintly. “That is, if you think it’s all right. I mean, I have time on my hands now that the file is finished, and I could go over and sit with-”
He turned to her eagerly. “Would you? My God, that would be wonderful! I know you two will get along. She’ll like you, and you’ll like her. I try to get there twice a day, but sometimes I don’t. We have friends who come to see her. At least at first they did. But-you know-they don’t come too often anymore. I’ll go over with you and introduce you, and then if you could just stop by occasionally.
“Of course. I’ll be happy to.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind. And thank you for having lunch with me. I really enjoyed it.”
She held out her hand. He was surprised, a second, then grasped it, and they shook. Her grip was dry, her flesh firm, the hand unexpectedly strong.
He went out into the dull winter afternoon, the sky tarnished pewter, and glanced at his list to see who he should hit first. But curiously he was not thinking of the list, nor of Monica Gilbert, nor of Barbara. Something was nibbling at the edge of his mind, something that had to do with the murders. It was something he had heard recently; someone had said something. But what it was he could not identify. It hovered there, tantalizing, teasing, until finally he shook his head, put it away from him, and started tramping the streets.
He got home a little after ten that evening, his feet aching (he had not worn his “cop shoes”), and so soured with frustration that he whistled and thought of daffodils-anything to keep from brooding on false leads and time wasted. He soaked under a hot shower and washed his hair. That made him feel a little better. He pulled on pajamas, robe, slippers, and went down to the study.
During the afternoon and evening he had checked out five of the six on his list. The rapist and the robber were still in prison. The man convicted of assault with a deadly weapon had been released a year ago, but was not living at the address given. It would have to be checked with his parole officer in the morning. Of the other three, the safe-breaker was still in prison, the vandal had moved to Florida two months ago and considerately left a forwarding address, and Delaney was just too damned tired to look for the extortionist, but would the next day.
He stolidly wrote out reports on all his activities and added them to his files. Then he made his nightly tour of inspection, trying locks on all windows and outside doors. Lights out and up to bed. It wasn’t midnight, but he was weary. He was really getting too old for this kind of nonsense. No pill tonight. Blessed sleep would come easily.
While he waited for it, he wondered if it was wise to introduce Monica Gilbert to his wife. He had said they would hit it off, and they probably would. Barbara would certainly feel sympathy for a murder victim’s widow. But would she think…would she imagine…But she had asked him to…Oh, he didn’t know, couldn’t judge. He’d bring them together, once at least, and see what happened.
Then he turned his thoughts to what had been nagging his brain since he left Monica’s apartment that afternoon. He was a firm believer in the theory that if you fell asleep with a problem on your mind-a word you were trying to remember, an address, a name, a professional or personal dilemma-you would awake refreshed and the magic solution would be there, the problem solved in your subconscious while you slept.
He awoke the next morning, and the problem still existed, gnawing at his memory. But now it was closer; it was something Monica had said at their luncheon. He tried to remember their conversation in every detail: she had talked about her geraniums, he had talked about his ivy; she had talked about her children, he had talked about Barbara. Then Varro tried to pick up the check, and he, Delaney, told her about the break-in at the restaurant. But what the hell did all that have to do with the price of eggs in China? He shook his head disgustedly and went in to shave.
He spent the morning tracking down the extortionist, the last man of the six in Monica Gilbert’s file with a record of even mildly violent crime. Delaney finally found him pressing pants in a little tailor shop on Second Avenue. The extortionist was barely five feet tall, at least 55 and 175 lbs., pasty-faced, with trembling hands and watery eyes. What in God’s name did he ever extort? Delaney muttered something about “mistaken identity” and departed as fast as he could, leaving the fat little man in a paroxysm of trembling and watering.
He went directly to the hospital, helped feed Barbara her noon meal, and then read to her for almost an hour from “Honey Bunch: Her First Little Garden.” Strangely, the reading soothed him as much as it did her, and when he returned home he was in a somber but not depressed mood-a mood to work steadily without questioning the why’s or wherefore’s.
He spent an hour on his personal affairs: checks, investments, bank balances, tax estimates, charitable contributions. He cleaned up the month’s accumulated shit, paid what he had to pay, wrote a letter to his accountant, made out a deposit for his savings account and a withdrawal against his checking account for current expenses.
Envelopes were sealed, stamped, and put on the hall table where he’d be sure to see them and pick them up for mailing the next time he went out. Then he returned to the study, drew the long legal pad toward him, and began listing his options.
1. He could begin personally investigating
2. He could wait for Christopher Langley’s report, and then contact, by mail or phone, every retail outlet for the West German ice ax in the U.S.
3. He could wait for Calvin Case’s file of everyone in the 251st Precinct who had bought any kind of mountaineering equipment whatsoever from Outside Life and that other store that had supplied a mailing list, and then he could ask Monica to double-check her file to make certain she had a card for every customer.
4. He could go back to the store that refused to volunteer sales checks and mailing list, and he could lean on them. If that didn’t work, he could ask Thorsen what the chances were for a search warrant.
5. He could recheck his own investigations of the nine ice ax purchases and the six men in the file with a record of violent crime.
6. He could finally get to his early idea of determining if there was a magazine for mountain climbers and he could borrow their subscription list; if there was a club or society of mountain climbers and he could borrow their membership list; and if it was possible to check the local library on residents of the 251st Precinct who had withdrawn books on mountaineering.
7. If it came to it, he would personally check out every goddamn name of every goddamn New Yorker on the goddamn Outside Life mailing list. There were probably about 10,000 goddamn New Yorkers included, and he’d hunt down every goddamn one of them.
But he was just blathering, and he knew it. If he was commanding the 500 detectives in Operation Lombard he could do it, but not by himself in much less than five years. How many murder victims would there be by then? Oh?…probably not more than a thousand or so.
But all this was cheesy thinking. One thing was bothering him, and he knew what it was. When Monica called him to report that one of the ice ax purchasers in Calvin Case’s file hadn’t been included on her Outside Life mailing list, he had laughed it off as “human error.” No one is perfect. People do make mistakes, errors of commission or omission. Quite innocently, of course.
What if Calvin Case, late at night and weary, flipped by the sales check of an ice ax purchaser?
What if Christopher Langley had missed a store in the New York area that sold axes?
What if Monica Gilbert had somehow skipped a record of violent crime on one of the computer reports she noted on her file cards?
And what if he, Captain Edward X. Delaney, had the solution to the whole fucking mess right under his big, beaky nose and couldn’t see it because he was stupid, stupid, stupid?
