The Fourth Deadly Sin (3 page)

“Do you think that’s fair?”

“Monica,” he said patiently, “suppose a junkie with a snootful of shit is found murdered in an alley. The clunk has a sheet as long as your arm, and he’s a prime suspect in muggings, robberies, rapes, and God knows what else. Do you really want the Department to spend valuable man-hours trying to find out who burned him? Come on! They’re delighted that garbage like that is off the streets.”

“I suppose …” she said slowly. “But it just doesn’t seem right that the rich and influential get all the attention.”

“Go change the world,” he said. “It’s always been like that, and always will. I know you think everyone is equal.

Maybe we all are-in God’s eyes and under the law. But it’s not as clear-cut as that. Some people try to be good, decent human beings, and some are evil scum. The cops, with limited budgets and limited personnel, recognize that. Is it so unusual or outrageous that they’ll spend more time and effort protecting the angels than the devils?”

“I don’t know,” she said, troubled. “it sounds like elitism to me. Besides, how do you know Dr. Simon Ellerbee was an angel?”

“I don’t. But he doesn’t sound like a devil, either.”

“You’re really fascinated by all this, aren’t you?”

“Just something to do,” he said casually.

“I have a better idea of something to do,” she said, fluttering her eyes.

“I’m game,” he said, smiling.

The small, narrow townhouse on East 84th Street, between York and East End Avenues, was jointly owned by Drs. Diane and Simon Ellerbee. After its purchase in 1976, they had spent more than $100,000 on renovations, stripping the pine paneling of eleven layers of paint, restoring the handsome staircase, and redesigning the interior to provide four useful floor-throughs.

The first level, up three stone steps from the sidewalk, was occupied by the Piedmont Gallery. It exhibited and sold handwoven fabrics, quilts, and primitive American pottery. It was not a profitable enterprise, but was operated almost as a hobby by two prim, elderly ladies who obviously didn’t need income from this commercial venture.

The offices of Dr. Diane Ellerbee were on the second floor, and those of Dr. Simon Ellerbee on the third. Both floors had been remodeled to include living quarters. Living room, dining room, and kitchen were on the second; two bedrooms and sitting room on the third. Each floor had two bathrooms.

The professional suites on both floors were almost identical: a small outer office for a receptionist and a large, roomy inner office for the doctor. The offices of Drs. Diane and Simon Ellerbee were connected by intercom.

The fourth and top floor of the townhouse was a private apartment, leased as a pied-A-terre by a West Coast filmmaker who was rarely in residence.

In addition to the townhouse, the Ellerbees owned a country home near Brewster, New York. It was a brick and stucco Tudor on 4.5 wooded acres bisected by a swift-running stream. The main house had two master bedrooms on the ground floor and two guest bedrooms on the second. A three car garage was attached. In the rear of the house was a tiled patio and heated swimming pool.

Both the Ellerbees were avid gardeners, and their English garden was one of the showplaces of the neighborhood. They employed a married couple, Polish immigrants, who lived out. The husband served as groundsman and did maintenance.

The wife worked as housekeeper and, occasionally, cook.

It was the Ellerbees’ custom to stay in their East 84th Street townhouse weekdays-and, on rare occasions, on Saturday.

They usually left for Brewster on Friday evening and returned to Manhattan on Sunday night. Both spent the entire month of August at their country home.

The Ellerbees owned three cars. Dr. Simon drove a new bottie-green Jaguar XJ6 sedan, Dr. Diane a 1971 silver and black Mercedes-Benz SEL 3.5. Both these cars were customarily garaged in Manhattan. The third vehicle, a Jeep station wagon, was kept at their Brewster home.

On the Friday Dr. Simon Ellerbee was murdered, he told his wife-according to her statement to the police-that he had scheduled an evening patient. He suggested she drive back to Brewster as soon as she was free, and he would follow later. He said he planned to leave by 9:00 P.m. at the latest.

Dr. Diane said she left Manhattan at approximately 6:30 P.m. She described the drive north as “ferocious” because of the 40 mph wind and heavy rain. She arrived at their country home about 8:00 P.m. Because of the storm, she guessed her husband would be delayed, but expected him by 10:30 or 11:00.

By 11:30, she stated she was concerned by his absence and called his office.

There was no reply. She called two more times with the same result. Around midnight, she called the Brewster police station, asking if they had any report of a car THE Fourth DEAL)LYSIN 17 accident involving a Jaguar XJ6 sedan. They had not.

Becoming increasingly worried, she phoned the Manhattan garage where the Ellerbees kept their cars. After a wait of several minutes, the night attendant reported that Dr. Simon Ellerbee’s Jaguar had not been taken out; it was still in its slot.

“I was getting frantic,” she later told detectives. “I thought he might have been mugged walking to the garage. It happened once before.”

So, at approximately 1:15 A.M Dr. Diane called Dr. Julius K. Samuelson. He was also a psychiatrist, a widower, and close friend and frequent house guest of the Ellerbees. Dr. Samuelson was also president of the Greater New York Psychiatric Association. He lived in a cooperative apartment. at 79th Street and Madison Avenue.

Samuelson was not awakened by Diane Ellerbee’s phone call, having recently returned from a concert by the Stuttgart String Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. When Dr. Diane explained the situation, he immediately agreed to taxi to the Ellerbees’ house and try to find Dr. Simon or see if anything was amiss.

Samuelson stated he arrived at the East 84th Street townhouse at about 1:45 A.m. He asked the cabdriver to wait. It was still raining heavily. He stepped from the cab into a streaming gutter, then hurried across the sidewalk and up the three steps to the front entrance. He found the door ajar.

“Not wide open,” he told detectives. “Maybe two or three inches.”

Samuelson was fifty-six, a short, slender man, but not lacking in physical courage. He tramped determinedly up the dimly lighted, carpeted staircase to the offices of Dr. Simon on the third floor. He found the office door wide open.

Within, he found the battered body.

He checked first to make certain that Ellerbee was indeed dead. Then, using the phone on the receptionist’s desk, he dialed 911. The call was logged in at 1:54 A.M. All the above facts were included in New York City newspaper reports and on local TV newscasts following the murder.

Delaney planted himself across the street from Acting Chief Suarez’s house on East 87th, off Lexington Avenue. He squinted at it, knowing exactly how it was laid out; he had grown up in a building much like that one.

It was a six-story brownstone, with a flight of eight stone steps, called a stoop, leading to the front entrance. Originally, such a building was an old-law tenement with two railroad flats on each floor, running front to back, with almost every room opening onto a long hallway.

“Cold-water flats,” they were sometimes called. Not because there was no hot water; there was if you had a humane landlord. But the covered bathtub was in a corner of the kitchen, and the toilet was out in the hall, serving the two apartments.

Not too many brownstones like that left in Manhattan.

They were being demolished for glass and concrete highrise coops or being purchased at horrendous prices in the process called “gentrification,” and converted into something that would warrant a six-page, four-color spread in Architectural Digest.

Edward X. Delaney wasn’t certain that was progress-but it sure as hell was change. And if you were against change, you had to mourn for the dear, departed days when all of Manhattan was a cow pasture. Still, he allowed himself a small pang of nostalgia, remembering his boyhood in a building much like the one across the street.

He saw immediately that the people who lived there were waging a valiant battle against the city’s blight. No graffiti.

Washed windows and clean curtains. Potted ivy at the top of the stoop (the pots chained to the railing). The plastic garbage cans in the areaway were clean and had lids. All in all, a neat, snug building with an air of modest prosperity.

Delaney lumbered across the street, thinking it was an offbeat home for an Acting Chief of the NYPD. Most of the Department’s brass lived in Queens, or maybe Staten Island.

The bell plate was polished and the intercom actually worked. When he pressed the 3-B button alongside the neatly typed name, M.R. suarez, a childish voice piped, “Who is it?”

Edward X. Delaney here,” he said, leaning forward to speak into the little round grille.

There was static, the sound of thumps, then the inner door lock buzzed, and he pushed his way in. He tramped up to the third floor.

The man waiting for him at the opened apartment door was a Don Quixote figure: tall, thin, splintery, with an expression at once shy, deprecatory, rueful.

“Mr. Delaney?” he said, holding out a bony hand. “I am Michael Ramon Suarez.”

“Chief,” Delaney said. “Happy to make your acquaintance.

I appreciate your letting me stop by; I know how busy you must be.”

“It is an honor to have you visit my home, sir,” Suarez said with formal courtesy. “I hope it is no inconvenience for you. I would have come to you gladly.”

Delaney knew that; in fact, Deputy Commissioner Thorsen had suggested it. But Delaney wanted to meet with the Acting Chief in his own home and get an idea of his life outside the Department: as good a way to judge a man as any.

The apartment seemed mobbed with children-five of them ranging in age from three to ten. Delaney was introduced to them all: Michael, Jr Maria, Joseph, Carlo, and Vita. And when Mrs. Rosa Suarez entered, she was carrying a baby, Thomas, in her arms.

“Your own basketball team,” Delaney said, smiling. “With one substitute.”

“Rosa wishes to try for a football team,” Suarez said dryly.

“But there I draw the line.”

They made their guest sit in the best chair, and, despite his protests that he had just dined, brought coffee and a platter of crisp pastries dusted with powdered sugar. The entire family, baby included, had coffee laced with condensed milk. Delaney took his black.

“Delicious,” he pronounced after his first cup. “Chicory, Mrs. Suarez?”

“A little,” she said faintly, lowering her eyes and blushing at his praise.

“And these,” he said, raising one of the sweetmeats aloft.

“Homemade?”

She nodded.

“I love them,” he said. “You know, the Italians and French and Polish make things very similar.”

“Just fried dough,” Suarez said. “But Rosa makes the best.”

“I concur,” Delaney said, reaching for another.

He got the kids talking about their schools, and while they chattered away he had a chance to look around.

Not a luxurious apartment-but spotless. Walls a tenement green. A large crucifix. One hanging of black velvet painted with what appeared to be a view of Waikiki Beach. Patterned linoleum on the floor. Furniture of orange maple that had obviously been purchased as a five-piece set.

None of it to Delaney’s taste, but that was neither here nor there. Any honest cop with six children wasn’t about to buy Louis Quatorze chairs or Aubusson carpets. The important thing was that the home was warm and clean, the kids were well fed and well dressed. Delaney’s initial impression was of a happy family with love enough to go around.

The kids begged to watch an hour of TV-a comedy special-and then promised to go to their rooms, the younger to sleep, the older to do their homework.

Suarez gave his permission, then led his visitor to the large kitchen at the rear of the apartment and closed the door.

“We shall have a little peace and quiet in here,” he said.

“Kids don’t bother me,” Delaney said. “I have two of my own and two stepdaughters. I like kids.”

“Yes,” the Chief said, “I could see that. Please sit here.”

The kitchen was large enough to accommodate a long trestle table that could seat the entire family. Delaney noted a big gas range and microwave oven, a food processor, and enough pots, pans, and utensils to handle a company of Marines. He figured good food ranked high on the Suarez family’s priority list.

He sat on one of the sturdy wooden chairs. The Chief suddenly turned.

“I called you Mr. Delaney,” he said. “Did I offend?”

“Of course not. That’s what I am-a mister. No title.”

“Well … you know,” Suarez said with his wry smile, “some retired cops prefer to be addressed by their former rank -captain, chief, deputy … whatever.”

“Mister will do me fine,” Delaney said cheerfully. “I’m just another civilian.”

“Not quite.”

They sat across the table from each other. Delaney saw a long-faced man with coarse black hair combed back from a high forehead. A thick mustache drooped. Olive skin and eyes as dark and shiny as washed coal. A mouthful of strong white teeth. - He also saw the sad, troubled smile and the signs of stress: an occasional tic at the left of the mouth, bagged shadows under the eyes, furrows etched in the brow. Suarez was a man under pressure-and beginning to show it. Delaney wondered how he was sleeping-or if he was sleeping.

“Chief,” he said, “when I was on active duty, they used to call me Iron Balls. I never could figure out exactly what that meant, except maybe I was a hard-nosed, blunt-talking bastard. I insisted on doing things my way. I made a lot of enemies.”

“So I have heard,” Suarez said softly.

“But I always tried to be up-front in what 1. said and what I did. So now I want to tell you this: On the Ellerbee case, forget what Deputy Commissioner Thorsen told you. I don’t know how heavily he’s been leaning on you, but if you don’t want me in, just say so right now. I won’t be offended. I won’t be insulted. Just tell me you want to work the case yourself, and I’ll thank you for a pleasant evening and the chance to meet you and your beautiful family. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”