“Is Richmond dead?”
“I don’t know.”
He went back into the waiting room.
“Dr. Spencer is still in surgery,” the nurse told him. “Thank you. Did Dr. Ferguson call?”
“No. But I checked recovery. Your wife is sleeping peacefully.”
“Thank you.”
“An exploratory,” the matron said, holding onto his elbow. “They said it would just be an exploratory. Now they won’t tell me anything.”
“What’s his name?” Delaney asked. “Maybe I can find out what’s going on.”
“Modell,” she said. “Irving Modell. And my name is Rhoda Modell. We have four children and six grandchildren/’
“I’ll try to find out,” Delaney nodded.
He went back to the nurse. But she had heard his conversation with the woman.
“Not a chance,” she said softly. “A few hours. Before morning. They took one look and sewed him up.”
He nodded and glanced at the clock. Had time speeded up? It was past midnight.
“What I’d like-” he started, but then there was a patrolman next to him.
“Captain Delaney?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a reporter at the door. Guy named Handry. Says you-”
“Yes, yes.”
Delaney walked back with him. The door was opened wide enough for Handry to give him a wrinkled brown paper bag.
“Thank you,” Delaney said, and reached for his wallet. But Handry shook his head angrily and turned away.
He peeked into the bag. It was an almost full pint bottle of bourbon. He took several paper cups from the water cooler in the hallway and went back into the waiting room. Boznanski was still lolling in the chair, his head thrown back. Delaney filled a cup with bourbon.
“Dick,” he said.
Boznanski opened his eyes.
“A sip,” Delaney said. “Dick, just take a little sip.”
He held the cup to the policeman’s lips. Boznanski tasted, coughed, bent forward in dry heaves, then leaned back. Delaney fed him slowly, sip by sip. Color began to come back into the Captain’s face. He straightened in his chair. Delaney poured a cup for the sergeant who drained it gratefully, in one gulp.
“Oh my,” he said.
“May I sir?” a voice asked. And there was the white-haired gentleman, finally awake and holding out a quivering hand that seemed skinned with tissue paper. And the two hippies. And the old Italian couple. Just a taste for alclass="underline" the sacramental cup.
“He’s not going to make it, is he?” the matron asked suddenly, looking at Delaney. “I knew you wouldn’t lie to me.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.” Delaney nodded, pouring her the few drops remaining in the bottle. “He’s not going to make it.”
“Ah Jesus,” she sighed, rolling a pale tongue around the inside of the waxed paper cup. “What a miserable marriage that was. But aren’t they all?”
There was noise outside in the corridor. Deputy Inspector Thorsen came in, composed as ever. He stalked directly to the seated Captain Boznanski and stared at him. Then he turned to Delaney.
“Thanks, Edward.”
“What about Richmond?”
“Richmond? Oh. He’s gone. They tried, but it was hopeless. Everyone knew it. Five surgeons working four hours.” Delaney looked up at the clock. It couldn’t be two in the morning, it couldn't be. What had happened to time?
“The Mayor and Commissioner are out there now,” Thorsen said in a toneless voice, “giving statements about the need for gun control laws and a new moral climate.”
“Yes,” Delaney said. He strode over to the nurse’s desk. “Where can I find Dr. Spencer?” he asked harshly.
She looked at him with tired eyes. “Try the lounge. Turn right as you go out. Then, after you go through the swinging doors, there’s a narrow door on the left that says ‘No Admittance.’ That’s the surgeons’ lounge.”
“Thank you,” Captain Delaney said precisely.
He followed her directions. When he pushed back the narrow door without knocking, he saw a small room, one couch and two armchairs, a TV set, a card table and four folding chairs. There were five men in the room wearing surgical gowns, skull caps, and masks pulled down onto their chests. Three were dressed in light green, two in white.
One man was standing, staring out a window. One was fiddling with the knobs on the TV set, trying to bring in a clear picture. One was trimming his fingernails with a small pocket knife. One was seated at the card table, carefully building an improbable house of leaned cards. One was stretched out on the floor, raising and lowering his legs, doing some kind of exercise.
“Dr. Spencer?” Delaney said sharply.
The man at the window turned slowly, glanced at the uniform, turned back to the window.
“He’s dead,” he said tonelessly. “I told them that.”
“I know he’s dead,” the Captain said. “My name is Delaney. You operated on my wife earlier this evening. Kidney stones. I want to know how she is.”
Spencer turned again to look at him. The other men didn’t pause in their activities.
“Delaney,” Spencer repeated. “Kidney stones. Well. I had to remove the kidney.”
“What?”
“I had to take out one of your wife’s kidneys.”
“Why?”
“It was infected, diseased, rotted.”
“Infected with what?”
“It’s down in the lab. We’ll know tomorrow.”
The man building a house of cards looked up. “You can live with one kidney,” he said mildly to Delaney.
“Listen,” Delaney said, choking, “listen, you said there’d be no trouble.”
“So?” Spencer asked. “What do you want from me? I’m not God.”
“Well, if you’re not,” Delaney cried furiously, “who the hell is?”
There was a knock on the door. The man on the floor, the one lifting and lowering his legs, gasped, “Come in, come in, whoever you are.”
A colored nurses’ aide stuck her capped head through the opened door and looked about boldly.
“Any of you gentlemen a certain Captain Delaney?” she asked saucily.
“I’m Delaney.”
“You have a call, Captain. In the waiting room. They say it’s very, very, very important.”
Delaney took a last look around. Spencer was staring out the window again, and the others were trying to stay busy. He stalked down the hall, pushed angrily through the swinging doors, slammed back into the waiting room. The little nurse handed him the phone, not looking up.
“Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”
“Captain, this is Dorfman.”
“Yes, lieutenant. What is it?”
“Sorry to bother you, Captain. At this hour.”
“What is it?”
“Captain, there’s been a murder.”
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.