New York Dead (20 page)

“Surely. At this point, I’m certainly open to suggestions.”

Edith Bonner, who had been quiet up until now, spoke up. “Mr. Barrington…”

“Stone.”

“Stone. Of course I’m aware of what you’ve been investigating recently. I read the papers like everybody else.”

“Why, Edith,” Woodman broke in, “I didn’t know you had to read the papers; I thought you had a direct line to the central source of all knowledge.”

Bonner smiled. “You’ll have to excuse Frank; he’s a very bright man, but his curiosity extends only to the literal—what he can see and hear and touch.”

“That’s right, Edith,” Woodman said.

“What Frank doesn’t understand is that some of us see and hear and touch things that are not quite so literal. Do you see what I mean, Stone?”

“I believe I do, Edith, but I have to tell you that my experience as a police officer has made me not unlike Frank. I tend to put my faith in what I can see and hear, and I don’t have your gifts with the less than literal.”

“I believe I might be able to tell you something about what happened to Sasha Nijinsky,” Bonner said.

All conversation ceased at the table.

“Would this be something material, or would it be more…ephemeral?” Stone asked, trying to keep the tone light.

Bonner smiled. “I believe you might think it ephemeral,” she said, “but I assure you it is material to me. I would
not speak if I didn’t feel quite certain about what I want to tell you.”

“I’m all ears,” Stone said.

“I feel strongly that two persons are responsible for what happened to Sasha Nijinsky,” Bonner said.

“Well, since two things happened to Sasha—her fall and her disappearance—it seems quite possible that two people could be involved.”

“I was referring to Sasha’s fall from her terrace,” Bonner said, “and only one of these persons was present when she…fell.”

“That’s very interesting,” Stone said. It’s not very interesting at all, he thought. So much for ESP.

“I warn you, Stone,” Barker said, “Edith does not make such statements lightly. You should take her seriously.”

“Unfortunately,” Stone replied, “I’m no longer in a position to do so, and I have no reason to believe that anyone assigned to the case would be interested in hearing from me about any theory whatsoever. Edith, if you feel strongly about this, perhaps you should contact Lieutenant Leary, who is commander of detectives at the 19th Precinct.”

Bonner shook her head. “No,” she said, “he wouldn’t listen to me. I’ve done what I can, now; I’ll have no more to say on the subject.” She returned to her dinner and her silence.

Soon the party moved back to the living room for coffee and brandy. Stone chatted at some length with Frank Woodman and found that he liked the man.

Later, when people made a move to leave, Bonner appeared at Stone’s elbow. “There’s something I didn’t want to mention at the table,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Sasha Nijinsky is not finished with you.”

“Well, I’m afraid the NYPD has finished with me.”

“But not Sasha. There’s a connection between the two of you that you don’t seem to know about.”

“A connection?”

“A…well, a spiritual connection.”

“But I never knew her.”

“Do you think it was a coincidence that you were there when she fell from that balcony?”

“It couldn’t be anything else.”

“It was no coincidence. You and Sasha are bound together, and you won’t be released until she is found and you know what happened to her.”

“Edith, I’m going to do everything I can to put Sasha out of my mind permanently.”

Bonner smiled. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that.” Then her expression turned serious. “There’s something else,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“I feel that you are, or will be, in some sort of jeopardy, resulting from your connection with Sasha.”

“Jeopardy? How?”

“I don’t know. I only know that you are at risk, and, if you are not very careful indeed, this thing with Sasha could destroy you.”

“Some would say it already has,” Stone said. “At least with regard to my career as a police officer.” He was near to confiding in her, now, and it surprised him.

“I mean destroy you entirely—mortally. In fact, I have the very strong feeling that your chances of surviving this crisis are poor—certainly, you will not come through without help, and you may not get it.”

Stone pushed away the chill that threatened to run through him. “Edith,” he managed to say, “I appreciate your concern for me, but please don’t worry too much. It’s my intention to stay just as far away as I can from the Nijinsky case or anything to do with it.”

“You won’t be able to do that,” Bonner said. She looked away from him. “I’m sorry.”

Chapter

30

S
tone was awakened in the best possible way. “You’re going to kill me,” he said.

“Mmmmmmm,” she replied, concentrating her efforts. “It’s only fair; you nearly killed me last night.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” he gasped.

Sunlight streamed into the room, and his blurring vision made the sparsely furnished chamber seem somehow heavenly. A moment later, everything came into sharp focus, and he closed his eyes and yelled.

“You’re noisy,” she said.

“It’s your fault. You made me.”

“I want some breakfast.”

“You just had breakfast, and I’m not sure I can walk.”

She got up and went into the bathroom. Stone heard the water running, and he had nearly dozed off when she
came back. She crawled into bed, and, suddenly, there was something icy on his belly.

He yelled again and leapt out of bed. “Jesus Christ, was that your hands?”

“New York City tap water gets very cold in the wintertime,” she said. “As long as you’re up, could I have an English muffin, marmalade, orange juice, and coffee?”

“I suppose if I get back into bed you’ll just attack me with the iceberg hands again.”

“Right. But they’ll warm up while you’re fixing breakfast.”

Defeated, Stone got into a bathrobe and went downstairs to the kitchen. He stuck the muffins into the toaster oven, got coffee started, and went to the front door. He peeked up and down the street, then tiptoed out onto the frosty stoop and retrieved the Sunday
Times
. He was back inside before he registered all that he had taken in. He cracked the door again and looked up the block. A plain green, four-door sedan was parked on the other side of the street, and two men inside it were sipping coffee from paper cups. He didn’t know them, but he knew who they were.

He went back to the kitchen, got the breakfast together, loaded it onto a cart, and wheeled it into the old elevator, which made the usual creaking noises on the way up.

Cary was asleep, sprawled across the bed, the sunlight streaming across her naked body. He stopped and looked at her for a moment, that length of delicious woman, the flat belly, the swelling breasts with their small, red nipples, the dark hair strewn across the pillow. Slowly, quietly, he sneaked onto the bed and carefully set a glass of chilled orange juice onto a nipple.

“Oooooo,” she said without moving. “What a nice way to wake up. Could I have something on the other one, please?”

“You’re unsurprisable,” he said, setting the orange juice
on her belly and returning for the rest of the breakfast. He put the tray on the bed between them while she struggled into a sitting position and fluffed up the pillows.

“I like the sun in the morning,” she said. “It’s better than blankets.”

He drank his juice and reached for the
Times
.

“I get the front page,” she said, snatching it away.

He settled for the book review and munched on a muffin.

“Oh, shit,” she said suddenly.

“What is it?”

She clutched the front page to her breast. “You aren’t at fault here,” she said. “You have to get that through your head. This is not your fault.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He tugged at the newspaper, and she gave it up reluctantly.

SUSPECT IN NIJINSKY CASE IS APPARENT SUICIDE

Henrietta Morgan, a makeup artist for the Continental Network who police sources say was implicated in the fall of television anchorwoman Sasha Nijinsky from the terrace of her East Side penthouse apartment, last night apparently took her own life in her Greenwich Village apartment.

Ms. Morgan, who was known as “Hank” and who was active in gay and lesbian rights issues in the city, had been questioned about Ms. Nijinsky’s fall, then last week was arrested and charged with possession of an unlicensed pistol. She had been released on bail, but sources in the New York Police Department had told the press that Morgan was the chief suspect in the Nijinsky case.

In a late-night statement from City Hall, Deputy Police Commissioner Lawrence Waldron announced
that the death of Ms. Morgan had effectively closed the investigation into Ms. Nijinsky’s fall. Waldron said that Ms. Nijinsky’s disappearance after an ambulance collided with a fire truck while on her way to a hospital was still being investigated by the F.B.I., who are treating her incident as a kidnapping, which is a federal crime.

Stone felt ill. He rubbed his face briskly with his hands and tried to fight back the nausea.

“It’s not your fault,” Cary said again, rubbing the back of his neck.

He got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and splashed cold water onto his face. Then he thought about the unmarked car downstairs. He went back into the bedroom and got back into his robe. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

He trotted downstairs to the main hall, retrieved a flashlight from the utility closet, and unlocked the basement door. It took him a minute or so to find the main telephone junction box, and only seconds to find the wires leading from it to a small FM transmitter a few feet away. Angrily, Stone ripped out the wires, then smashed the transmitter with the heavy flashlight. He walked back up to the main floor, then took the elevator up-stairs.

“What’s the flashlight for?” Cary asked. “It’s broad daylight.”

“I needed it to find the phone tap,” Stone said.

“Somebody’s tapped your phone?”

“New York’s Finest,” Stone said. “Two of them are sitting out in the street in an unmarked car, waiting either to follow me wherever I go or to record my telephone conversations.”

“Why?”

“Because they think that when I hear about Hank Morgan’s death, I might start talking to the press.”

“Stone, I’m confused. If you want me to understand what you’re talking about, then you’d better fill me in.”

Stone took a deep breath. “This is not something you can discuss with anybody at work.”

“Of course not,” she said indignantly.

He went back to his and Dino’s initial questioning of Hank Morgan and told her everything that had happened since.

“I see,” she said when he had finished. “So you think Hank had nothing to do with Sasha’s fall.”

“Nothing whatever.”

“But the NYPD and the DA’s office were going to try and railroad her for it?”

“Not exactly; they knew they would never get a conviction. They just needed a strong suspect to take the heat off the department. Somebody’s been telling a reporter or two that Morgan really did it, but they didn’t have enough evidence against her for a conviction.”

“So everybody would think Hank did it, even though they couldn’t prove it?”

“Right. Except it worked out even better than they had planned. They didn’t know that she wouldn’t be strong enough to handle the suspicion and the publicity; they couldn’t predict that she would finally break and kill herself.”

“So what happens now?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“The investigation into Sasha’s fall is over. Hank’s suicide was as good as a confession.”

“But they still don’t know what happened to her, do they?”

“No, but the FBI very kindly stepped in and took responsibility for that part of the investigation, so the department is out of it.”

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

“What can I do?”

“Go to the press. I can arrange for you to talk with one of our investigative reporters.”

“It wouldn’t work. There’s just enough substance to the evidence against Morgan to justify the department’s actions. I mean, I can’t prove that she
didn’t
do it.” He picked up the bedside phone and dialed a number.

“Hello?” Dino said. He had obviously been asleep.

“Dino, it’s Stone; I want you to give Leary a message for me.”

“What?” He was waking up now.

“Tell him I found the phone tap, and it’s now in several pieces, so there’s no need to come back for it.”

“Stone, what are you talking—”

“Also tell him”—Stone glanced at the bedside clock—“that it’s nine forty-five now, and at ten o’clock I’m going to go downstairs and look up and down the street. If the police car is still sitting out there—or if I ever see any cops taking an interest in me again at any time—I’m going to take a fullpage ad in the
New York Times
and publish my complete memoirs. Did you get that?”

“Yeah, but—”

Stone hung up the phone and put his face in his hands.

Cary sat up and began massaging his shoulders. “Just take it easy now; you told them off, and that’s it. They won’t bother you again, and none of this is your fault.”

“You don’t understand,” Stone said.

“Understand what? It’s not your fault.”

Stone could not look at her, but he told her what he had been telling himself over and over again. “I would have gone along with it,” he said. “If they had let me stay on the force, I would have stood by and let them pillory Hank Morgan. I would have done anything to keep my job.”

Cary put her cheek against his back. “Oh, baby,” she said. “Oh, my poor, sweet baby.”

Chapter

31

S
tone filed into the huge room with at least three hundred other aspirants to the bar of New York State, burdened like the rest with course materials, his bank account lighter by the substantial tuition. For eight hours, with a one-hour break for lunch, the instructor drilled the class, and Stone found the lectures to be well organized, to the point, with the fat trimmed away. The volume of material was daunting; when the day ended, he felt as if he’d been beaten up.