New York Dead (15 page)

“Anybody else? A neighbor?”

“No. There are only two apartments in the building, and my downstairs neighbor was on vacation.”

“Did you go out again for any reason?”

“No. I read until about eleven, then I went to sleep.”

“I see. Ms. Morgan, I’d like you to come up to the Nineteenth Precinct to be fingerprinted. It might help us eliminate you as a suspect.”

She paused for a long time. “I don’t think I want to do that,” she said. “I’ve already talked to a lawyer, and he advised me not to cooperate any further than this.”

“That’s your right,” Stone said. “But I have to tell you that the Supreme Court doesn’t consider being fingerprinted to be self-incriminating. We may have to insist.”

“I suppose that’s your right,” she replied. “But I haven’t done anything wrong, and you don’t have any real reason to suspect me. So I won’t be having anything else to say.”

“I’m sorry you’ve decided to do it this way, Ms. Morgan.”

“Good afternoon, Detective Barrington.” She hung up.

Stone told Dino about their conversation.

“Bingo!” Dino cried. “Let’s go see Leary.”

“Wait a minute,” Stone said. “I just remembered something.” He went to the evidence room, dug out Sasha Nijinsky’s financial records, and began leafing through her checkbook.

“What are you looking for?” Dino asked.

“I remember some checks Sasha wrote. Here! One…two…three of them, all made out to Henrietta Morgan! The name meant nothing to me at the time.” He totted up the amounts in his head. “Total of twenty thousand dollars over eight weeks, listed as loans. You know what this smells like, Dino?”

“Blackmail!” Dino yelled. “Miss Hank says, ‘Pay me, Sasha, or I’ll tell all!’ Let’s go see Leary!”

Leary beamed at them. “I knew good police work was going to break this case.” He chortled. “Pick her up right now.” He reached for the phone. “I’ll call Delgado; he’ll call Waldron.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lieutenant,” Stone said, “not yet, anyway. Let’s get her up here and hear her story first.”

“Get your asses out of here and bring in the dyke!” Leary said, dialing.

“This is insane!” Hank Morgan said, interrupting Stone in his reading of her rights. “You aren’t handcuffing me!”

“If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you,” Stone concluded. “I’m sorry about the cuffs; it’s department policy.” He took her raincoat from a hook on the wall and placed it over her shoulders. “Don’t worry, no one here will see them.”

“Let’s go, lady,” Dino said.

“I want to call my lawyer,” she said shakily.

“You can call her from the precinct,” Dino said. “Let’s go.”

Stunned into silence, Hank Morgan accompanied the two detectives out of the building and into their car.

“Is there anything you want to tell us before we get to the station?” Stone asked her.

Morgan shook her head. “I want my lawyer,” she said.

“Uh, oh,” Dino said as they pulled up to the entrance of the 19th Precinct. “What’s this?”

“Leakiest precinct in the city,” Stone said, slamming his fist against the dashboard in frustration.

A knot of reporters crowded the sidewalk. Television lights went on. Stone and Dino got Morgan out of the car and hustled her into the building, shoving the shouting reporters out of the way.

“No comment,” Dino kept yelling.

“I want to call my lawyer,” Morgan said, when they were safe from the howling mob.

“Just as soon as we’ve fingerprinted and photographed you,” Stone said, unlocking her handcuffs.

She gave the fingerprints without further protest, then, while Stone had her photographed, Dino hand-carried the prints upstairs. Stone took Morgan into the squad room and put her in an empty cubicle, away from the stares of the other detectives.

Morgan put her face in her hands. “This is so humiliating,” she said.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” Stone replied, “but you’ve made it harder on yourself by refusing to cooperate.”

“I want my lawyer
now,
” she said.

Stone handed her the phone, and, hands shaking, she dialed a number. Stone noted that she didn’t have to look it
up. He wondered how many innocent people knew their lawyers’ phone numbers off the tops of their heads.

Fifteen minutes passed, and Dino came breathlessly into the cubicle and hauled Stone out.

“Listen to this,” he said.

“Was one of her prints in Sasha’s apartment?” Stone asked. It would be too good to be true.

“Better than that, pal—we’ve got a
palm
print—and on the
outside
of the sliding glass door to the terrace. We can put her on the terrace!”

A weak, warm feeling flooded through Stone. “Jesus Christ!” He exhaled. All the work, all the sweat had been worth it. He had not realized until that moment how afraid he had been of this case and what it might do to him. “Let’s have another shot at her before her lawyer gets here,” he said, heading back for the cubicle.

Morgan was sitting rigidly in the steel chair, her hands clenched in her lap.

“Listen to me, Ms. Morgan,” Stone said, pulling up a chair. “You’ve already admitted to me that you and Sasha were having an affair, and that she was also having an affair with a man; that would make you pretty jealous, wouldn’t it? We’ve got canceled checks showing that Sasha paid you twenty thousand dollars in less than two months; your palm print was found on the terrace that Sasha fell from. We’ve got all that, Ms. Morgan, and we’re going to get more. Now, don’t you think it’s time you told us about it?”

Morgan’s shoulders began to shake, and tears rolled down her face.

Stone thought it was the only moment she had looked
feminine since he had met her.

“Oh, God!” she moaned, “I want to tell you…”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” a rumbling voice said from behind them.

Stone and Dino turned to see a tall man in a beautiful overcoat standing there.

“My name is Carlton Palmer; I’m Henrietta Morgan’s attorney; I know you won’t mind if I consult with my client. Alone,” he added for good measure.

The two detectives reluctantly gave up the field.

“Shit,” Dino muttered. “She was going to confess. We had her in the palm of our hands, and that slick bastard had to show up.”

“She had a right to see him, Dino,” Stone said. “To tell you the truth, I’d have been uncomfortable with a confession made before her lawyer got here.”

“She won’t say another fucking word now,” Dino complained. “We’ll just have to work our fucking balls off, making the case. If we’d had that confession, you and I would have made detective first by tomorrow morning.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing,” Stone commiserated. “She’ll never say a word to us now.”

Ten minutes later, Palmer came out of the cubicle. “Gentlemen,” he said, “my client will answer your questions now.”

Chapter

21

T
hey had moved to the conference room. Tape and video equipment was up and running. Leary had joined them for the big moment.

“I’d like to say something for the camera before you begin,” the lawyer said.

Stone nodded.

He got up, walked around to where Hank Morgan sat, placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder, and spoke to the camera. “I am Carlton Palmer, the attorney representing Henrietta Morgan, and I would like this record to show that Miss Morgan is giving this statement voluntarily and of her own free will in a spirit of cooperation with the police.” He returned to his seat.

Stone’s hands were sweating. “State your full name and address and place of employment for the record,” he said to Morgan.

“My name is Henrietta Maxine Morgan; I live at Seventy-one West Tenth Street in Manhattan. I am employed as a makeup artist by the news division of the Continental Network.” Her voice quavered a bit, but she was calm.

“Ms. Morgan, have you been advised of your rights under the Constitution of the United States?”

“I have been.”

“Are you making this statement voluntarily?”

“I am.”

“Have you been subjected to any duress with regard to this statement?”

“No.”

“Ms. Morgan, how long have you been employed by the Continental Network?”

“Just over three months.”

“And when did you first meet Sasha Nijinsky?”

“Shortly after I joined the network. I did her makeup once, substituting for someone who was out sick, and she began asking for me.”

“Did you and Ms. Nijinsky become friends?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“We were on friendly terms from the beginning. We began to become…close about eight weeks ago.”

“Did you, in fact, enter into a romantic relationship with Ms. Nijinsky?”

“Yes.”

“A relationship of a sexual nature?”

Morgan gulped. “Yes.”

“Were you in love with Ms. Nijinsky?”

“Yes.”

“And was she in love with you?”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you she loved you, in so many words?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“Were you aware that, during the same period Ms. Nijinsky was seeing you, she was also having an affair with a man?”

Morgan looked away for the first time. “Yes. She told me so.”

“Did she tell you who this man was?”

“No.”

“Did she give you any indication, any hint at all as to his identity?”

“No. She referred to him as ‘What’s-his-name.’”

That rang a bell from Sasha’s diary. “How often did you see Ms. Nijinsky outside of working hours?”

“Two or three nights a week; sometimes four.”

“Where did these meetings take place?”

“Either at my apartment or at hers.”

“And when was the last occasion you saw Ms. Nijinsky?”

“The night before she disappeared.”

“Where did this meeting take place?”

“At her apartment.”

Stone paused. “Did you not tell me on a previous occasion that this meeting took place at
your
apartment?”

“I have no recollection of that,” Morgan replied smoothly.

Why was she changing her story? What did it matter where that particular meeting took place? “Did anyone see you in Ms. Nijinsky’s building that night?”

“The doorman saw me when we came in together. It must have been around nine o’clock. He was asleep when I left. That was around four in the morning.”

“What did you and Ms. Nijinsky do that evening?”

“I helped her pack her things; she was moving to a new apartment in a day or two. We had a late dinner and drank a bottle of wine together.” She paused. “We made love. It was a very happy evening.”

“And when did you next see Ms. Nijinsky?”

“I never saw her again.”

“We’ll come back to that. You were taking money from Ms. Nijinsky, weren’t you, Ms. Morgan?”

Morgan frowned. “
Taking
money? Certainly not. I borrowed some money from her, and only at her insistence. I was remodeling my apartment, and I ran out of cash. I had some six-month CDs that were not due to mature for another three months, and Sasha said it would be crazy to cash them and lose the interest, and that she wanted to loan me the money to finish the project. It came to twenty thousand dollars out of the eighty that I spent on the project.”

This was not going the way Stone had meant it to. “You want us to believe that Ms. Nijinsky just
loaned
you the money—you, a person she had only recently met?”

“I don’t much care what you believe,” Morgan said coldly. “The money was a loan; I insisted on giving Sasha a promissory note for the amount, although she wouldn’t accept interest.”

“You’re aware that we have Ms. Nijinsky’s financial records and that we can search them for this note?” He was faltering now. Why hadn’t he gone through those records more carefully?

“That’s fine with me. I have a copy, if you need it.”

“Ms. Morgan, after the disappearance of Sasha Nijinsky, police experts removed a palm print from the outside of the sliding glass door of her apartment’s terrace. That palm print
has since been identified as yours. On the
outside
of the door, Ms. Morgan, on the terrace from which Ms. Nijinsky fell. How do you explain that?”

“I told you that I had seen Ms. Nijinsky many times over the past weeks, often at her apartment. In fact, I think I remember when I could have left that palm print. On our last night together, Sasha and I took our wine out onto the terrace. There was no furniture out there, but it was a nice evening, and there was one break in the surrounding buildings where you could see some city skyline. I got something in my shoe, and I leaned against the sliding door while I shook out the shoe. I’m sure that must be the palm print you’re referring to.”

Leary, sitting next to Stone, was becoming restive.

Stone hurried. “Ms. Morgan, when Sasha told you she was seeing a man—at the same time she was making love to you—how did you feel about that?”

“I didn’t like it much, at first, but, as we became closer, I realized that Sasha’s sexuality was truly dual—not like mine. When you’ve gone through what most lesbian women go through to live their lives openly, you become more tolerant of other people’s desires. There was a part of Sasha that liked sex with men, and I soon knew I couldn’t change that. I told her I understood that, and the subject ceased to be a sore point between us.”

This simple, rational explanation stopped Stone. He turned to Leary. “Lieutenant, do you have any questions for Ms. Morgan?”

Leary shook his head slowly. His face was red.

“Detective Bacchetti?”

“Yes, I have a question,” Dino replied. His voice was cold and hard.

Stone wanted to stop him, but he knew he could not.

“This is the way it happened,
Miz
Morgan,” Dino spat at her. “You fell madly in love with Sasha Nijinsky, and then you found out she was screwing a man, and that drove you crazy, didn’t it?” He continued before she could answer. “So then, to get back at Sasha, you started blackmailing her, didn’t you? Demanding money not to talk to the tabloids about her swinging both ways. And when she got tired of paying and told you so, there was a fight, and you heaved her off that terrace, didn’t you? Isn’t that the way it happened,
Miz
Morgan?”