New York Dead (29 page)

When she opened the door, the bathroom light illuminated her from above for just a moment. She was wearing only a terry-cloth robe, and it fell open. She switched off the light and crossed the room to him. Somewhere along the way, the robe disappeared.

He rolled off her and sprawled on his back, panting and sweating. It had been the third time in two hours; he hadn’t known he was capable of that. In the time since he had entered the room, neither of them had spoken a word that had not been connected with what they were doing to each other.

She handed him a glass of water from the bedside. He drank greedily from it, then handed it back.

“Turn on a light,” he said. “It’s on your side.”

“No.”

“I want to see you.”

“No.”

“Why are we doing this in a hotel room? I have a home; you could have come there.”

“It would have been an unnecessary risk,” she said.

“Risk? What risk?”

“We can’t be seen together.”

“Cary, for Christ’s sake! I think you owe me some sort of explanation for your behavior.”

“My father always said to me, ‘Never explain, never apologize.’”

He got angrily out of bed and went into the bathroom. He peed, then turned on the light and looked at himself in the mirror, his hair awry, his face streaked with sweat. He found a facecloth and cleaned himself, brushed his hair with his fingers, rinsed his mouth. When he came out of the bathroom, she was dressed and pulling on a coat. A silk scarf was tied around her hair.

“Cary, stay here and talk to me.”

“I can’t.”

The photograph of her and Harkness in bed together was still in his overcoat pocket. He felt an urge to thrust it into her face, but he held back. It disgusted him that he still wanted her, but he did, and he could not afford to push her further away.

“Did you check on the Rome flight?” she asked casually.

“Yes. Dino didn’t see Harkness. His name was on the manifest, though; that means someone used his ticket.”

“Probably a crew member.” She was buckling the belt of her trench coat.

“I can’t prove he wasn’t on the airplane, and, if he wasn’t, then I can’t prove where else he was. Not without your help.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not? If he murdered her, don’t you want him caught?”

She went into the bathroom and began putting on lipstick. “There’s something else you could look into, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Sasha gave him a very large amount of money; I’m not sure how much.”

Stone remembered the funds missing from Sasha’s accounts. “Could it have been as much as two million dollars?”

“Yes. She wanted it back, and he couldn’t come up with it.”

Motive, he thought. Finally, a solid motive. Harkness borrowed the money, then lost it somehow—gambling? Bad investments?

“Why did she give him the money?”

“To invest. Barron thinks of himself as God’s gift to Wall Street. Wall Street thinks of him that way, too; he’s lost millions in his time.” She put her makeup back into her purse and snapped it shut.

“How can I get in touch with you?”

“I told you before, you can’t. I’ll call you soon.” She was in the living room and opening the front door before he could move to stop her. She paused there and looked back. “You were wonderful,” she said. “You’re always wonderful.” She closed the door behind her.

He nearly went after her, then remembered he was naked.

When he got home, there was an invitation in the mail, postmarked Penn Station:

The pleasure of your company is requested for dinner, Saturday evening at nine. A car will call for you at eight thirty.         Black tie

A handwritten note was in a corner:

I so look forward to meeting you.

S.

Chapter

45

S
tone spent a good part of the night restless in his bed, wondering how he could use the new information Cary had given him about Barron Harkness. He found a possible answer in the television column of the following morning’s
New York Times:

BARKER GETS LATE-NIGHT SHOW

Hiram Barker, the writer and social gadfly, has landed his own interview show, Sunday nights at 11:30
P.M.
, on the Continental Network, beginning this Sunday. Barker, contacted for comment, said that negotiations had been going on for several weeks and that he expected to be able to attract guests who did not ordinarily give interviews.

Stone picked up the phone and called Hi Barker.

“Hello, Stone, how are you? I hear good things about
you from Frank Woodman.”

“I’m very well, Hi. I see in this morning’s
Times
that you’ve landed a television show.”

“That’s right. In fact, I had hoped to interview you about the Sasha business.”

“It’s a little early for that, I think, but you may remember that when we first met I agreed to tell you what I knew first, in return for your help.”

“I remember that very well indeed, dear boy, and that’s an IOU I intend to collect.”

“Well, I’m not ready for you to publish just yet, but I am ready to start telling you what I know about the case.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“How about lunch today?”

“You’re on. Where?”

“The Four Seasons at twelve thirty?”

“Fine. Use my name; you’ll get a better table.”

“There’s just one thing, Hi.”

“What’s that?”

“If I’m going to tell you all, you’re going to have to do the same.”

“But I thought I already had, Stone.” Barker sounded wounded.

“You held something back, Hi, something important, and today I want to know all about that.”

“Hmmmm,” Barker said, “I wonder if you’re fishing.”

“Today, I’m catching,” Stone replied. “See you at lunch.”

He was fishing, indeed. He didn’t know what Barker was holding back, but he figured there must be something. Most people held back something.

Stone arrived first, and Barker’s trip to their table was slowed as he stopped at half a dozen others to greet their occupants.

“I love this place,” Barker sighed as he slid his bulk into a seat. “It’s just so…
perfect.”

“I’m glad I chose it,” Stone said. He ordered a bottle of wine.

“All right,” Barker said when their lunch had come, “you first.”

Stone began at the beginning and took Barker through his investigation of the Nijinsky case. He glossed over the business with Hank Morgan’s suicide to protect Dino, and Barker didn’t call him on it. When he had finished, Barker looked skeptical.

“Then you’re still nowhere on this?”

“Not quite nowhere,” Stone replied. “I have some new information.”

“Tell me, dear boy.”

“I’ve learned that Barron Harkness wasn’t on the airplane from Rome.”

Barker’s eyebrows went up in delight. “And how did you learn that?”

“I must protect my source.”

“So now you’ll have him arrested?” Barker seemed thrilled at the prospect.

“No. I can’t prove he wasn’t on the airplane. His ticket was used, so his name appears on the manifest.”

“How about questioning the flight attendants? Surely, they would remember such a celebrity.”

“Not necessarily. Months have passed. The flight attendants might testify that they don’t remember seeing him, but they couldn’t credibly swear that he was not on the plane.”

“Hmmmm. I see your problem.”

“There’s something else. Sasha gave Harkness two million dollars to invest, and he was having trouble returning it.”

“Now
that’s
very interesting.”

“Yes, but again, I can’t prove it. The money seems to
have been laundered through a Cayman Islands bank, so there’s no paper trail. The only person who could testify to the transaction is Sasha, and she’s not available—at least, not yet.”

“Not yet? You sound as if you think she might still be alive.”

Stone took Barker through his terminal velocity theory.

Barker looked doubtful. “That’s pretty farfetched, Stone. I think you’re grasping at straws.”

Stone took the note and the invitation from his pocket and put them on the table.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Barker said. He took out his glasses and examined the note carefully. “I’ve had a couple of letters from Sasha in the past, and that certainly looks like her handwriting.”

“An expert says it almost certainly is,” Stone said. “What’s more, her fingerprints were on the note.”

Barker forgot about his food.
“Her fingerprints?”

“I kid you not.”

“Well, if Sasha is alive, and if you are having dinner with her on Saturday night, then you’ll soon have her testimony about Harkness.”

“
If
she’s alive, and
if
the dinner isn’t some sort of elaborate hoax perpetrated by some demented Sasha fan. I can’t depend on that to nail Harkness. I need your help.”

“I would be absolutely delighted,” Barker said, grinning. “Barron has never been one of my favorite people. What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to invite him to be your first guest on your new television show.”

“And?”

Stone told him.

Barker chuckled as he listened. “I
love
it,” he said.

“That’s even better than writing about it in
Vanity Fair
, isn’t it?” Stone asked.

“Oh, I could do that, too,” Barker said, laughing. “Print
all
the details.” He laughed again. “You know, I’m going to see Barron this afternoon at a social event. I’ll corner him there and get him to agree to do the show. He’s never given personal interviews, you know.”

“I’d heard that. Now, Hi, it’s your turn. I want to know what you didn’t tell me about Sasha.”

Barker looked at Stone appraisingly. “I’ve underestimated you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have told anybody in a million years, but now you’ve trapped me.”

Stone sat back and waited.

“There is one promise I must extract from you,” Barker said.

“What’s that?”

“If Sasha is alive, you will never tell a living soul what I am about to tell you. If you find out she’s dead, then I’ll tell the world.”

“All right, I agree.” Suddenly, Stone knew what he was about to hear.

“This really has no relevance to your investigation, at least I can’t imagine how it could be relevant, but who knows?”

“Come on, Hi, tell me.”

“It came out in my research. I do a great deal more research for my profiles than anybody imagines. I use only a fraction of what I learn, but I learn
everything
.” Barker leaned forward and wagged a finger. “You must never let me do a profile of you, if you have anything to hide.”

Stone sat back and relaxed. Barker was going to stretch it out.

“At the time I was researching the Sasha piece, I knew a fellow in the American embassy in Moscow. I asked him to get me a copy of Sasha’s birth announcement and fax it to me, along with a translation. Her father was a member of the academy and a very famous writer in the USSR, so I knew
there would be an announcement in
Pravda
or
Izvestia
. And there was.” He paused for effect.

“Go on,” Stone said.

“And what do you think the baby was named?”

Stone let Barker have his moment. “I can’t imagine.”

“The baby was named Vladimir Georgivich Nijinsky.” Barker rested his chin on his folded hands, looking pleased with himself.

“A boy’s name? But when her family came to America six years later, all the pictures showed a little girl. What about the passport?”

“They had no passports. They were thrown out of the Soviet Union and given asylum here. They had no records of any kind, not even birth certificates. The Soviets refused to supply them. The State Department, as was usual at the time, issued them documents based on sworn statements from the parents.”

“And Georgi Nijinsky swore that little Vladimir was a girl named Sasha?”

“Precisely. I never got the whole story—God knows, I would never have asked Sasha—but I surmise that, from birth, the little boy exhibited female traits, and the parents accepted that and raised him as a girl. I did find out that they took her to Morocco on a six-week vacation when she was twelve, and I believe she must have had hormone treatments and a sex-change operation at that time. After all, the onset of puberty was at hand, and people would have begun to notice if little Vladimir wasn’t developing breasts, et cetera.” Barker looked at Stone closely. “You don’t seem particularly surprised. I thought I would knock you right out of your chair with this story.”

“I figured it out when you began to tell me, but I had the advantage of an important clue.”

“What was that?”

“The handwriting expert who compared this note to a
sample of Sasha’s writing said that both letters were written by a man.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful touch for my
Vanity Fair
piece!” Barker crowed. Then he became serious. “But tell me, Stone, what happens if neither of these things works—if Sasha isn’t alive, and if Barron refuses to do my show?”

“Well, I have an ace up my sleeve—my source for the information about the flight and the money. This would be a reluctant witness, but a subpoena can work wonders, especially if the witness may be an accessory to the crime because of withholding information.”

Barker looked down at the table. “Stone, I know you were seeing Cary Hilliard—you brought her to my house, remember? Might Cary be your source?”

Stone played cagey. “Why do you ask?”

“I didn’t want to bring this up; I got the impression at that time that you and Cary were close.”

“You could say that.”

Barker’s voice was sympathetic. “Stone, I have to tell you that Barron Harkness and Cary Hilliard are being married this afternoon, at three. I was invited to the wedding.”

Stone took a quick breath. “I wasn’t,” he said.

“And, Stone, after they’re married, Cary can’t be subpoenaed to testify against her husband, can she?”