Lama Bellsey admit she was asleep and could not swear that her husband was home from, eight-thirty to eleven o'clock on the murder night.
How he had followed Bellsey up to the Tail of the Whale on Eleventh Avenue and gotten into a hassle with him at the bar.
How he was unexpectedly attacked while he was returning to his car.
'He swears it was Ronald Bellsey,' Boone said.
'He saw him?' Delaney demanded.
'He can positively identify him?'
'Well… no,' Boone said regretfully.
'He didn't get a look at the perp, and apparently no words were spoken.'
'Jesus Christ!' Delaney said disgustedly.
'Can you think of any mistakes Hogan didn't make? Did the investigating officers go back to the bar what's its name?'
'Tail of the Whale. Yes, sir, they covered that bar and four others in the area. No one saw anything, no one heard anything, no one knows Ronald J. Bellsey or anyone resembling him. And no one admits seeing Tim Hogan either.
It's a blank.'
'You want us to pull Bellsey in, sir?' Jason Two asked.
'For questioning?'
'What the hell for?' Delaney said irritably.
'He'll just deny, deny, deny. And even if we get the bartender and customers to admit there was a squabble in the Tail of the Whale, that's no evidence that Bellsey put the boots to Hogan. I'm going to call Suarez in a couple of hours and ask him to put a lid on this thing.
We'll go at Bellsey from a different angle.'
Sergeant Boone took folded papers from his inside jacket pocket and handed them to Delaney.
'Benny Calazo stopped by my place last night and dropped off this report. He says that in his opinion, Isaac Kane is clean.'
'You trust his opinion?' Delaney said sharply.
'Absolutely, sir. If Calazo says the kid is clean, then he is.
Ben has been around a long time and doesn't goof. I was thinking…
Hogan's going to be on sick leave for at least a month. How about putting Calazo onto Bellsey? If anyone can put the skids under that bastard, Ben will do it.'
'Fine with me,' Delaney said.
'Brief him on Bellsey and tell him for God's sake not to turn his back on the guy. Jason, you're still working with Keisman on Harold Gerber's confession?'
'Yes, sir. Nothing new to report.'
'Keep at it. There's one blueberry muffin left; who wants it?' I'll take it,' Jason Two said promptly.
'I could OD on those little beauties.'
After they were gone, Delaney sat at the kitchen table and finished his lukewarm coffee, too keyed-up to go back to bed.
He reflected on the latest developments and decided he had very little sympathy for Detective Timothy Hogan. You paid for your stupidity in this world one way or another.
He rinsed out the cups and saucers, set them in the rack to dry, cleaned up the kitchen. He took Calazo's report on Isaac into the study and put on his glasses. He read slowly and with enjoyment. Calazo had a pungent style of writing that avoided the usual Department gibberish.
When he finished, Delaney put the report aside and lighted a cigar. He pondered not so much the facts Calazo had recounted but what he had implied.
The detective (covering his ass) had said there was a possibility he was wrong, but he believed Isaac Kane innocent of the murder of Dr. Simon Ellerbee. He was saying, in effect, that there were no perfect solutions, only judgments.
Edward X. Delaney knew that mind set well; it was his own. In the detection of crime, nothing cohered. It was an open-ended pursuit with definite answers left to faith. There was a religious element to detection: Rational investigation went only so far. Then came the giant step to belief for which there was no proof.
Which meant, of course, that the detective had to live with doubt and anxiety. If you couldn't do that, Delaney thought not for the first time you really should be in another line of business.
Detective Helen Venable was having a particularly severe attack of doubt and anxiety. She was uncertain of her own ability to establish the truth or falsity of Joan Yesell's alleged alibi without seeking the advice of her more experienced male colleagues.
She was nervous about her failure to report Mrs. Blanche Yesell's possible absence from her apartment on the murder night. She was worried that there were inquiries she should be making that she was not. And she fretted that an entire week had to pass before she could confirm or deny the existence of the stupid bridge club.
But her strongest doubt was a growing disbelief in Joan's guilt. That soft, feeling, quiet woman, so overwhelmed by the hard, brutal, raucous world of Manhattan, was incapable of crushing the skull of a man she professed to admire. Or so Detective Venable thought.
She met with Joan every day, spoke to her frequently on the phone, went out with her Monday night for a spaghetti dinner and to a movie on Thursday afternoon. The closer their relationship became, the more Helen was convinced of the woman's innocence.
Joan was almost physically sickened by the filth and ugliness of city streets. She was horrified and depressed by violence in any form. She could not endure the thought of cruelty to animals. The sight of a dead sparrow made her weep. She never objected to Helen's squad room profanity, but the detective could see her wince.
'Kiddo,' Venable told her, 'you're too good for this world.
Angels finish last.'
'I don't think I'm an angel,' Joan said slowly.
'Far from it. I do awful, stupid things, like everyone else. Sometimes I get so furious with Mama that I could scream. You think I'm goody-goody, but I'm not.'
'Compared to me,' Helen said, 'you're a saint.'
Frequently, during that week, the detective brought the talk around to Dr. Simon Ellerbee. Joan seemed iilling, almost eager, to speak of him.
'He meant so much to me,' she said.
'He was the only therapist I ever went to, and I knew right from the start that he would help me. I could see he'd never be shocked or offended by anything I'd tell him. He'd just listen in that nice, sympathetic way of his. I'd never hold back from him because I knew I could trust him. I think he was the first man-the first person-I really and truly trusted. We were so close. I had the feeling that things that hurt me hurt him, too. I suppose psychiatrists are like that to all their patients, but Doctor Simon made me feel like someone special.'
'Sounds like quite a guy,' Venable said.
'Oh, he was. I'm going to tell you something, but you must promise never to tell anyone. Promise?'
'Of course.'
'Well, sometimes I used to daydream about Doctor Simon's wife dying.
Like in a plane crash-you know? Quick and painless. Then he and I would get married. I imagined what it would be like seeing him every day, living with him, spending,the rest of my life with him.'
'Sounds to me like you were in love with him, honey.'
'I suppose I was,' Yesell said sorrowfully.
'I guess all his patients were. You call me a saint; he was the real saint.'
Another time she herself brought up the subject of the murder: 'Are. the police getting anywhere?' she asked Venable.
'On who killed Doctor Simon?'
'It's slow going,' the detective admitted.
'No good leads that I know of, but a lot of people are working on it.
We'll get the perp.' :'Perp?'
