The smell was…something. Stale whiskey, stale bedclothes, stale flesh. Urine and excrement. There was a tiny log of incense smoking in a cast iron pot; it made things worse. The room was rotting. Delaney had smelled odors more ferocious than this-was there a cop who had not? — but it never got easier. He breathed through his mouth and turned to the man in the bed.
It was a big bed, occupied at some time in the past, Delaney imagined, by Calvin Case and his wife. Now she slept on the convertible in the living room. The bed was surrounded, by tables, chairs, magazine racks, a telephone stand, a wheeled cart with bottles and an ice bucket, on the floor an open bedpan and plastic “duck.” Tissues, a half-eaten sandwich, a sodden towel, cigarette and cigar butts, a paperback book with pages torn out in a frenzy, and even a hard-cover bent and partly ripped, a broken glass, and…and everything.
“What the fuck do you want?”
Then he looked directly at the man in the bed.
The soiled sheet, a surprising blue, was drawn up to the chin. All Delaney saw was a square face, a square head. Uncombed hair was spread almost to the man’s shoulders. The reddish mustache and beard were squarish. And untrimmed. Dark eyes burned. The full lips were stained and crusted.
“Calvin Case?”
“Yeah.”
“Captain Edward X. Delaney, New York Police Department. I’m investigating the death-the murder-of a man we believe-”
“Let’s see your badge.”
Delaney stepped closer to the bed. The stench was sickening. He held his identification in front of Case’s face. The man hardly glanced at it. Delaney stepped back.
“We believe the man was murdered with an ice ax. A mountain climber’s ax. So I came-”
“You think I did it?” The cracked lips opened to reveal yellowed teeth: a death’s head grin.
Delaney was shocked. “Of course not. But I need more information on ice axes. And as the best mountain climber-you’ve been recommended to me-I thought you might be-”
“Fuck off,” Calvin Case said wearily, moving his heavy head to one side.
“You mean you won’t cooperate in finding a man who-”
“Be gone,” Case whispered. “Just be gone.”
Delaney turned, moved away two steps, stopped. There was Barbara, and Christopher Langley, and Monica Gilbert, and all the peripheral people: Handry and Thorsen and Ferguson and Dorfman, and here was this…He took a deep breath, hating himself because even his furies were calculated. He turned back to the cripple on the soiled bed. He had nothing to lose.
“You goddamned cock-sucking mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch,” he said steadily and tonelessly. “You shit-gutted ass-licking bastard. I’m a detective, and I detect you, you punky no-ball frigger. Go ahead, lie in your bed of crap. Who buys the food? Your wife-right? Who tries to keep a home for you? Your wife-right? Who empties your shit and pours your piss in the toilet? Your wife-right? And you lie there and soak up whiskey. I could smell you the minute I walked in, you piece of rot. It’s great to lie in bed and feel sorry for yourself, isn’t it? You corn-holing filth. Go piss and shit in your bed and drink your whiskey and work your wife to death and scream at her, you crud. A man? Oh! You’re some man, you lousy ass-kissing turd. I spit on you, and I forget the day I heard your name, you dirt-eating nobody. You don’t exist. You understand? You’re no one.”
He turned away, almost out of control, and a woman was standing in the bedroom doorway, a slight, frail blonde, her hair brushing the window shade. Her face was blanched; she was biting on a knuckle.
He took a deep breath, tried to square his shoulders, to feel bigger. He felt very small.
“Mrs. Case?”
She nodded.
“My name is Edward X. Delaney, Captain, New York Police Department. I came to ask your husband’s help on an investigation. If you heard what I said, I apologize for my language. I’m very sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t know you were there.”
She nodded dumbly again, still gnawing her knuckle and staring at him with wide blue eyes.
“Good-day,” he said and moved to pass her in the doorway. “Captain,” the man in the bed croaked.
Delaney turned back. “Yes?”
“You’re some bastard, aren’t you?”
“When I have to be,” Delaney nodded.
“You’ll use anyone, won’t you? Cripples, drunks, the helpless and the hopeless. You’ll use them all.”
“That’s right. I’m looking for a killer. I’ll use anyone who can help.”
Calvin Case used the edge of his soiled blue sheet to wipe his clotted eyes clear.
“And you got a big mouth,” he added. “A biiig mouth.” He reached to the wheeled cart for a half-full bottle of whiskey and a stained glass. “Honey,” he called to his wife, “we got a clean glass for Mister Captain Edward X. Delaney, New York Police Department?”
She nodded, still silent. She ran out, then came back with two glasses. Calvin Case poured a round, then set the bottle back on the cart. The three raised glasses in a silent toast, although what they were drinking to they could not have said.
“Cal, are you hungry?” his wife asked anxiously. “I’ve got to get back to work soon.”
“No, not me. Captain, you want a sandwich?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Just leave us alone, hon.”
“Maybe I should just clean up a-”
“Just leave us alone. Okay, hon?”
She turned to go.
“Mrs. Case,” Delaney said.
She turned back.
“Please stay. Whatever your husband and I have to discuss, there is no reason why you can’t hear it.”
She was startled. She looked back and forth, man to man, not knowing.
Calvin Case sighed. “You’re something,” he said to Captain Delaney. “You’re really something.”
“That’s right,” Delaney nodded. “I’m something.”
“You barge in here and you take over.”
“You want to talk now?” Delaney asked impatiently. “Do you want to answer my questions?”
“First tell me what it’s all about.”
“A man was killed with a strange weapon. We think it was an ice ax and-”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“I think it was an ice ax. I want to know more about it, and your name was given to me as the most experienced mountaineer in New York.”
“Was,” Case said softly. “Was.”
They sipped their drinks, looked at each other stonily. For once, there were no sirens, no buffalo whistles, no trembles of blasting or street sounds, no city noises. It was on this very block, Delaney recalled, that a fine old town house was accidentally demolished by a group of bumbling revolutionaries, proving their love of the human race by preparing bombs in the basement. Now, in the Case apartment, they existed in a bubble of silence, and unconsciously they lowered their voices.
“A captain comes to investigate a crime?” Case asked quietly. “Even a murder? No, no. A uniformed cop or a detective, yes. A captain, no. What’s it all about, Delaney?”
The Captain took a deep breath. “I’m on leave of absence. I’m not on active duty. You’re under no obligation to answer my questions. I was commander of the Two-five-one Precinct. Uptown. A man was killed there about a month ago. On the street. Maybe you read about it. Frank Lombard, a city councilman. A lot of men are working on the case, but they’re getting nowhere. They haven’t even identified the weapon used. I started looking into it on my own time. It’s not official; as I told you, I’m on leave of absence. Then, three days ago, another man was attacked not too far from where Lombard was killed. This man is still alive but will probably die. His wound is like Lombard’s: a skull puncture. I think it was done with an ice ax.”
“What makes you think so?”
“The nature of the wound, the size and shape. And an ice ax has been used as a murder weapon before. It was used to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in nineteen-forty.”