Delaney-killer turned his head as he passed Lombard. Then his right hand swooped under the coat. The rolled-up magazine was transferred. At the same time Delaney-killer whirled and went up on his toes. Now he was behind the victim. The magazine whistled down. The entire action took a few seconds, no longer.
“Then I bend over-”
“Get him!” Barbara cried. “Edward, get him! Get him!”
He straightened in astonishment, riven by the hatred and venom in her voice. He rushed to the bed, tried to take her in his arms, but she would not be comforted.
“Get him!” she repeated, and it was a curse. “You can do it, Edward. You’re the only one who can do it. Get him! Promise me? It’s not right. Life is too precious. Get him! Get him!”
And even after he calmed her, a nurse had been summoned, a sedative had been administered, Barbara was sleeping, and he left the hospital, still he heard that virulent “Get him! Get him!” and vowed he would.
5
Xerox copies of the Operation Lombard reports constituted a bundle of almost 500 sheets of typed papers, official forms, photostats, transcriptions of tape recordings, signed statements, etc. In addition, there was a separate envelope of more than 30 photo copies: Lombard in death and in life, his wife, mother, two brothers, politcal and business associates, and close friends. The dead man and his wife had been childless.
Captain Delaney, impressed with this mass of material spread out on the desk in his study, and realizing the urgency with which Operation Lombard was working, set out to organize the documents into manila folders marked Physical Evidence, Personal History, Family, Business (Lombard had been an active partner in a Brooklyn law firm), Politics, and Miscellaneous.
It took him almost two hours to get the material filed in some kind of rough order. Then he mixed a rye highball, put his feet up on the desk, and began reading. By two in the morning he had read every report and stared at every photo in every file. He was doubly impressed with the thoroughness of Broughton’s investigation, but as far as first impressions went, Ivar Thorsen was right: there was nothing-no leads, no hints, no mysteries at all-except who killed Frank Lombard.
He started his second reading, going slower this time and making notes on a pad of long yellow legal notepaper. He also set aside a few documents for a third reading and study. Dawn was lightening the study windows when he closed the final folder. He rose to his feet, stretched and yawned, put his hands on his hips and bent his torso backward until his spine cracked.
Then he went into the kitchen and drank a large glass of tomato juice with a lemon wedge squeezed into it. He made a carafe of three cups of instant coffee, black, and carried that into the study along with a dry and stale bagel.
He consulted his notes and, sipping coffee, read for the third time Dr. Sanford Ferguson’s medical report. It was one of Ferguson’s usual meticulous autopsies; the eight-page statement included two sketches showing the outside wound in actual size and a profile outline of the human skull showing the location and shape of the penetration. It looked like an elongated isosceles triangle. The outside wound was roughly circular in shape, slightly larger than a quarter.
The essential paragraph of the report was as follows:
“The blow caused a penetrating wound, fracturing the right occipital bone, lacerating the dura, piercing the right occipital lobe. Laceration of the cerebellum caused hemorrhaging with resultant rupture into the posterior fossa and 4th ventrical causing acute compression of the brain stem with subsequent death.” Delaney made several additional notes on the autopsy report. He had questions he knew could only be answered in a personal interview with Ferguson. How he would explain to the doctor his interest in the Lombard homicide was a problem he’d face when he came to it.
His other notes concerned the interviews with the widow, Mrs. Clara Lombard. She had been interviewed five times by three different detectives. Delaney nodded approvingly at Chief Pauley’s professionalism. It was standard detective procedure: you send three different detectives for the first three interviews. Then the three get together with their chief, discuss the subject’s personality, and select the detective who has established the closest rapport with her, the one she feels most simpatico with. He returns for the two final interviews.
Delaney began to get a picture of the widow from the typed reports. (The first three were transcriptions made from tape recordings.) Mrs. Clara Lombard seemed to be a flighty, feather-brained women, trying hard to appear devastated by the tragedy of her husband’s violent death, but still capable of infantile laughter, jokes of a dubious nature, sudden inquiries about insurance money, questions about probating the will, illogical threats of legal action against New York City, and statements that could only be construed as outright flirtation.
Delaney wasn’t interested in all that; careful investigation showed that although Clara was a very social woman-a happy party-goer with or without her husband-she had no boyfriend, and no one, not even her women friends, even hinted she might have been unfaithful.
The portion of her testimony that interested Delaney most was concerned with Frank Lombard’s wallet. That damned wallet irritated the Captain…its position near the body…the fact that it had been deliberately removed from the hip pocket…it was lying open…it was still full of money…
To Delaney’s surprise, in only one interview had Mrs. Lombard been handed a detailed inventory of the wallet. This document was included in the Physical Evidence file. Clara had been asked if, to her knowledge, anything was missing. She had replied no, she thought all her late husband’s identification and credit cards were there, and the sum of money-over two hundred dollars-was what he customarily carried. Even two keys, one to his home, one to his office-in a “secret pocket” in the wallet-were there.
Delaney didn’t accept her statement. How many wives could tell you exactly what their husbands carried in their wallets? How many husbands could list exactly what their wife’s purse contained? As a matter of fact, how many men knew exactly how much money they had in their own wallets? To test this, Delaney thought a moment and guessed he had fifty-six dollars in the wallet in his hip. Then he took it out and counted. He had forty-two-and wondered where his money was going.
The only other Operation Lombard report that interested him was an interview with the victim’s grieving mother. Delaney read this transcription again. As he had suspected, Mrs. Sophia Lombard lived in a converted brownstone between the East River and the point where her son’s body had been found.
Mrs. Lombard had been questioned-and very adroitly, Delaney acknowledged; that was Chief Pauley’s doing-on the circumstances of her son’s visits to her. Did he come every week? The same night every week? The same time every night? In other words, was it a regular, established routine? Did he call beforehand? How did he travel over from Brooklyn?
The answers were disappointing and perplexing. Frank Lombard had no regular schedule for dining with his mother. He came to see her when he could. Sometimes two weeks, sometimes a month would elapse before he could make it. But he was a good boy, Mrs. Sophia Lombard assured her interrogator; he called every day. On the day he could come to dinner, he would call before noon so Mrs. Lombard could go out and shop in the markets along First Avenue for the things he liked.
Lombard didn’t drive his car over from Brooklyn because parking space was hard to find near his mother’s apartment. He would take the subway, and a bus or taxi from the subway station. He didn’t like to walk on the streets at nights. He always left for his Brooklyn home before midnight.