New York Dead (19 page)

Stone picked up the cardboard box and walked out of the squad room. Nobody looked at him.

Chapter

28

T
he phone was ringing as Stone walked into the house. He picked it up. “Hello?”

“Detective Barrington?”

“Yes?”

“This is Jack Marcus at the
Post.
We’re doing a follow-up on the Nijinsky story; does your leaving the force have anything to do with your dissatisfaction with the way the investigation is being conducted?”

Stone was taken aback for a moment. The precinct was leaking again. “I’m leaving the force for medical reasons,” he said.

“Weren’t your superiors happy about the arrest of Henrietta Morgan?”

“You’ll have to ask them about that.”

“Do you think Hank Morgan pushed Sasha off that terrace?”

“I don’t have an opinion about that. I’m a civilian.” He hung up the phone. It rang again immediately.

“It’s Cary. It just came over the AP wire.”

“That’s pretty fast reporting. I only heard myself an hour ago.” He had walked home from the precinct.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. Let’s have dinner tonight.”

“I wish I could. Barron’s doing a prime-time special on murder in New York for Friday night. He’s shooting every day, and we’re editing every night.”

“Come over here when you finish tonight.”

“I wish I could, Stone; God knows, I’d rather be with you, but you have to understand about my job. I’ll be working fifteen-hour days all this week.”

“I’m sorry I pressed you; I know the job’s important.”

“It is, but I’ll see you Saturday night for dinner at Barker’s.”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you relax for the rest of the week? Do some work on the house.”

“I don’t have anything else to do.”

“We’ll talk about that Saturday. I’ve got to run now.”

“See you.”

“Take care.”

Stone put down the phone. He could hear the noise of sanding coming from the study. The shelves would be ready to varnish again by late afternoon.

He went upstairs to his bedroom and stood looking at himself in the mirror over the chest of drawers. Nothing seemed different. He unstrapped the gun from his ankle, took the badge wallet from his pocket, and put them both in the top drawer, at the back, under his socks and underwear. As always, he felt naked when he wasn’t carrying them. He would have to get used to feeling naked.

He was suddenly overcome with fatigue. He stretched
out on the bed, still wearing his trench coat, and closed his eyes for a minute.

When he woke, it was dark outside, and the noise of sanding had stopped. He still felt exhausted, but he struggled out of his trench coat and suit and into work clothes. Downstairs, he repeated his actions of the evening before—ate lasagna, made a drink, varnished. By the time he went to bed, he was drunk.

The next morning, he forced himself, in spite of the hangover, to work out on the exercise equipment; then he took a cab to Central Park and ran twice around the reservoir. It was a clear autumn day, the sort of day he loved in New York, and it lifted his spirits somewhat. He got a sandwich at the zoo and watched the seals cavort in their pool. What would he do tomorrow, he asked himself, and the week and the month after that? He knew how easy it would be to let himself descend into depression.

He finished his sandwich and found a pay phone, which, miraculously, had an intact yellow pages. He found the number and learned that the next bar exam was in three weeks, and the next cram course began the following Monday. He signed up on the spot, giving them a credit card number to hold his place. The thought of sitting in a classroom repelled him, but the thought of doing nothing was worse.

He bought the
Daily News
and the
Times
and looked for news. Hank Morgan had been arraigned the previous afternoon on the weapons charge and had been released on bail, which her father had covered. The
Times
report went no further than that, but a
News
columnist tied her to the Nijinsky case:

There is little doubt that Henrietta “Hank” Morgan is the chief suspect in the fall of Sasha Nijinsky from the terrace of her East Side penthouse. While everyone connected with the case has declined comment, police sources say that it is only a matter of time before enough evidence will be marshaled for the D.A. to seek an indictment. But an indictment for what? At the moment, there seems to be no proof that Sasha Nijinsky is dead, and even the police have not tried to link Morgan to her disappearance. It looks to this observer that the best the cops can hope for is an indictment for attempted murder, and one wonders how they could get a conviction on even that charge without producing either Nijinsky or her dead body.

It was starting now. The groundwork was being laid for a failure to convict Hank Morgan of anything, the implication being that, even though the police couldn’t get enough evidence against her, they knew she was the guilty party. They had solved the crime, and that would get the department off the hook; never mind that Morgan, supposedly innocent until proven guilty, would be branded as a murderer and would live the rest of her life under a cloud.

For the first time, he felt glad to be out of the department. He looked at the photograph of Hank Morgan leaving the court with her attorney, mobbed by photographers and reporters, their lips curled back, screaming their questions. The woman looked terrified, even worse than she had looked in the interrogation room. There was the real victim in all this; Sasha herself had become a secondary figure to the newspapers and television news programs.

Stone forced himself to jog home, and he arrived thoroughly winded.

The answering machine was blinking; he pushed the button.

“Hello, there Det…uh, Mr. Barrington. This is Herbert Van Fleet. I was very sorry to read in the newspapers about your retirement from the police force. I hope my mother’s letters to the mayor didn’t have anything to do with this. She has been a big contributor to his campaigns, you know, and she’s known him for years. I don’t guess I’ll be seeing you in the line of duty anymore—the FBI seems to have taken over, anyway. Can I buy you lunch sometime? You can always get me at the funeral parlor.” He chuckled. “I guess you have the number.”

Stone gave a little shudder at the thought of having lunch with Herbert Van Fleet.

There was a message from Cary, too. “Sorry I couldn’t get over. We worked past midnight, and I was exhausted. I wouldn’t have been any good to you. It’s all over on Friday, though, and I promise to be fresh and ready for anything on Saturday night. I’ll have a car; pick you up at eight?”

There was one more message. “Stone, it’s Bill Eggers, your old law school buddy, of Woodman & Weld? I heard about your departure from the cop shop. I’m in LA right now on a case, but I’ll be back in the office on Monday. Let me buy you dinner next week? I want to talk about something that might interest you. I’ll call you Monday.”

Stone spent the rest of the week working furiously on the house, making remarkable progress, now that he had the time. There were five coats of varnish on the bookshelves by the weekend, and they were looking good. He got all the floors sanded with rented equipment and got the tile floor laid in the kitchen. A few weeks more, and the place would start to look like home. A bill came from the upholsterer that put a serious dent in his bank account, and he remembered the letter from his banker and the note, which would be due soon. He tried to put money out of his mind. It didn’t work.

Dino didn’t call.

Chapter

29

O
n Saturday night, Cary turned up not in just a black car but in a limousine. Stone was waiting at the curb, and he slid into the backseat laughing.

He gave the driver the address and turned to Cary. “Are you sure the network can afford this?”

She raised the black window that separated them from the driver and slid close to him. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been putting in so much overtime, they owe me.” She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.

“There goes the lipstick,” he said.

“Fuck the lipstick.” She kissed him again and ran her hand up his thigh to the crotch. “Fuck me, too.”

“In a limousine?”

“Why not? The driver can’t see anything.”

“We’ll be at Barker’s building in three minutes.”

“That’s just time enough,” she said, unzipping his fly.

Before Stone could move he was in her mouth.

She was very good, and he was very fast; by the time the chauffeur opened the door, Stone had already adjusted his clothing, and Cary had reapplied her lipstick.

“You’re amazing,” Stone whispered as they entered the building. He was trying to bring his breathing back to normal.

“It was the least I could do,” she said, “after I abandoned you in what must have been a very bad week.”

“I think being alone helped me make the adjustment better,” he said, “but I like the way you make up for slights.” The doorman took their names and directed them to the elevator.

When the door had closed, she moved close to him. “I wonder how long we have before the elevator reaches Barker’s floor?” she said.

Stone leaned down and kissed the top of a breast, accessible above the low-cut dress. “Not long enough for what I have in mind,” he said. “By the way, you look spectacular. It’s a wonderful dress.”

She laughed. “You like cleavage, don’t you?”

“The sight of breasts is good for morale.”

“You look pretty sharp yourself. The suit suits you.”

“I had good advice.”

The elevator door opened. A uniformed maid answered the door and took their coats.

“Well, good evening,” Hi Barker said, sweeping into the hall from the living room.

Stone introduced Cary.

“You’re a fine judge of women, Stone,” Barker said, kissing Cary’s hand.

“Why, thank you, sir,” Cary responded. She turned to Stone. “You didn’t prepare me for this man.”

“How could I?”

Barker ushered them into the living room, where two other couples and a woman waited. “Meet everybody,” he
said. “This is Frank and Marian Woodman.”

Stone shook their hands. “Mr. Woodman and I have met,” he said.

“Oh?” Barker said. “You’re better acquainted around town than I thought.”

“All in the line of duty,” Stone said, “just the way I met you.”

“That’s right,” Woodman said. “Sasha Nijinsky was my client, and Detective Barrington came to see me. Or, I should say, Mr. Barrington. My congratulations; I hear that sort of medical retirement is every police officer’s dream.”

“Most of the cops I know would rather serve the thirty years healthy,” Stone said.

“Oh, the penny just dropped,” Mrs. Woodman said. She was a small, handsome woman some years her husband’s junior. “You’re the detective in the papers.”

“I’m afraid so,” Stone said.

“You’ll have to interrogate him later, Marian,” Barker said, pulling Stone and Cary away. “He has other guests to meet.” He took them to the other couple. “This is Abbott Wheeling and his wife, India. Stone Barrington and Cary Hilliard.”

Wheeling was an elderly man, a former editor of the
New York Times,
now a columnist on the Op-Ed page. He shook hands warmly, and, before Stone had a chance to speak to him, the other woman in the room approached.

“I’m Edith Bonner,” she said, shaking hands with both of them. She was tall, on the heavy side, but quite pretty and elegantly dressed.

“Edith is my date for the evening,” Barker explained.

A waiter approached and took their drink orders. Bonner excused herself, and Cary pulled Stone to the window.

“It’s quite a view, isn’t it?” she said, pointing at the United Nations building.

“I hadn’t seen it at night,” Stone said.

“Do you know who Edith Bonner is?”

“No, the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“She’s a sort of society psychic,” Cary explained. “She’s a wealthy widow who does readings of her friends—strictly amateur—but she has quite a reputation.”

The Wheelings joined them at the window and admired the view. “Your leaving the force at this particular time has caused quite a bit of speculation,” he said to Stone.

“Well, I was scheduled for the physical some time ago,” Stone replied. “It was unfortunate that I was in the middle of an investigation at the time.”

“I don’t mean to interview you, Mr. Barrington…”

“Please call me Stone.”

“Thank you, and you must call me Ab; everyone does. As I was saying, I don’t mean to interview, and this is certainly off the record, but do you think this Morgan woman had anything to do with the Nijinsky business?”

Stone nodded toward Bonner, who was returning to the room. “Maybe we should ask Mrs. Bonner,” he said. “I expect she has just as good an idea about it as anyone assigned to the case.”

Wheeling smiled. “You should have been a diplomat, Stone, or somebody’s press secretary. That was as neat an answer as I’ve ever heard, and I couldn’t quote you if I wanted to.”

The maid entered the room. “Dinner is served,” she said. People finished their drinks and filed into the dining room.

Stone was seated between India Wheeling and Edith Bonner and across from Frank Woodman.

“Stone, what are you going to do with yourself, now that you’re a free man?” Woodman asked in the middle of the main course.

“I’m returning to the law,” Stone said. “It seems to be the only thing I know anything about.” He didn’t mention
that he would soon be cramming for the bar exam.

“Your career as a detective makes for an interesting background for a certain kind of lawyer,” Woodman said. “I believe Bill Eggers may have an idea for you.”

“I had a message from him this week,” Stone replied.

“When he’s back from Los Angeles, I hope you’ll listen to what he has to say.”