New York Dead

Chapter 33

When Stone got home, Dino was standing on the front stoop, back against the door, trying to stay out of the rain.

“Hi, Dino,” Stone said.

“Hi, Can I buy you a drink?”

“Come on in, let me buy you one.”

“Nah, I hate the smell of paint and sawdust. Let’s go someplace.”

“All right.”

They walked silently up Third Avenue to P. J. Clarke’s and leaned on the corner of the bar.

“The usual?”

“Fine.”

“A Wild Turkey and a Stoly, both rocks,” Dino said to the barman. “Make em doubles.”

They both looked idly around until the drinks came.

Dino held up his glass. “Better days.”

Stone nodded and drank.

Dino gulped a quarter of the vodka. “I feel bad about what happened,” he said.

“It’s okay, Dino. Maybe it was all for the best.” He told Dino about his dinner with Bill Eggers.

“That’s great, Stone, and I’m happy for you, but it’s still not okay with me. You were my partner, and I should have at least warned you what was coming. I didn’t know myself until that morning.”

“You were my partner, too, and I didn’t back you up,” Stone said.

“Yeah, but you were right, that’s the difference. I was wrong, and because of what I did Morgan croaked herself.”

Stone said nothing.

“I took the call,” Dino said, blinking.

Stone still said nothing.

“She was in the bathtub, and it looked like the tub was full of blood.”

“Jesus,” Stone allowed himself.

“She had a straight razor. God knows what she was doing with it, even if she was a dyke. You think she was keeping it in case she grew a beard?”

Stone shrugged.

“She stuck it in right under her left ear and pulled it all the way around, deep.”

Stone winced.

“She had guts, I’ll say that for her. I couldn’t never do that, not in a million years. Pills, maybe. Maybe eat your gun, but you don’t die right away when you cut your own throat. It must hurt like all hell, and you got time to think about what you done before you go under.” Dino shifted his weight and took another deep pull from his glass. “She left a note.”

“The papers didn’t say anything about that,” Stone said, surprised.

Dino took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Stone.

Stone read it.

I have never harmed another human being in my life. I did not harm Sasha Nijinsky. I loved her, and she loved me, and I would never have done anything to hurt her.

I want my friends to know that this is not a suicide. This is murder, and the police are the murderers.

“You can see why you didn’t read about it in the papers,” Dino said, taking the note back. He took a pack of matches from an ashtray on the bar, lit the note, watched it burn. “You know something? I went to confession. I didn’t go to confession since I was fourteen, but I went yesterday. As part of my penance, I had to tell you this stuff. I didn’t do the rest of the penance; I’m not going to. But I wanted to do this part.”

“Thanks, Dino, I know what it cost you.”

“Don’t be so fucking nice about it, Stone. I wouldn’t have said a word to you, but I know you won’t say nothing to nobody about this.”

Stone nodded.

“I always been good at looking out for my own ass,” Dino said. “Sometimes I fall in the shit, but I come up smelling like a rose, you know?”

Stone laughed. “I know.”

“Nah, you don’t know. I made detective first grade today. Ain’t that a kick in the balls? I get a promotion I would have killed for-” He stopped and laughed ironically. “Shit, I guess I did kill for it, didn’t I?”

“Congratulations, Dino.” Stone raised his glass.

Dino drank with him. “They made me deputy squad commander, too. Leary’s retiring the end of the year, and I’m getting the job, Delgado says.”

“That’s great, Dino,” Stone said, but it was a statement of sympathy.

“Yeah, get me off the street some, I guess. Teach me a sense of responsibility.”

“You’ll be good at it. Look out for the politics, though.”

“What politics? I’m not going anywhere after that. I’m never going to be chief of detectives – they know it, and I know it. Shit, I never expected to make detective first, to tell the truth. Nah, there’s no politics to worry about. I’m bought and paid for. I’ll do what I’m told and like it.”

Stone couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself, don’t it? Well, I am, I guess. I found out how far I’d go to cover my ass, and I feel terrible about it.” He tossed down the rest of his drink and squared his shoulders. “I’ll get over it, though. In a week or two, or when I get Leary’s little cubicle, I’ll look around and say to myself, ‘Hey, this ain’t half bad, you know? These fuckers have to do what I tell ‘em now! I’m the fucking boss!’ And I’ll start to feel okay about it. And come spring, I’ll forget all about Hank Morgan and how she took a bath in her own blood. I’m good at that – forgetting what a shit I was about something. I’ll forget that I wasn’t the world’s greatest detective, too, that I was lazy and shiftless a lot of the time, that I didn’t give much of a shit about my job. I’ll forget all that, and when the next batch of detective thirds cruises into the precinct, I’ll give ‘em the pep talk, tell ‘em how it was when I was scratching for promotion, how hard I worked on a case, how many righteous busts I had. I’ll be a hard ass, just like Leary – shit, worse than Leary.”

“Sure, you will.”

Dino picked up the heavy doubles glass and heaved it across the bar. The mirror on the other side shattered, and chunks of glass fell among the liquor bottles, breaking some of them.

The dozen people standing at the bar and the two bartenders froze, staring at Dino.

Finally, a bartender, a red-haired, freckle-faced Irishman who looked right off the boat, spoke up. “The last one o’ dose got broke cost eight hundred bucks, Dino,” he said sadly. “And that was six, seven years ago. They prob’ly went up.” He looked at the mess, shaking his head. “And dere’s the booze, too.”

Dino put a fifty-dollar bill on the bar. “That’s for our drinks, Danny,” he said calmly, “and the change is for your trouble. Send me a bill for the rest.”

The bartender nodded and began picking up glass. The customers went back to their drinking as if nothing had happened.

Outside, the rain had stopped, and the night had turned clear and frosty. Dino hailed a cab. “Stone,” he said, while the cab waited, “I owe you. I’m always gonna owe you. You call me any time you need something. Anytime.”

Stone nodded. They shook hands. Dino got into the cab and drove off into the night. Stone walked home thinking that both he and Dino had done all right out of Sasha Nijinsky’s trouble.

The only loser had been Hank Morgan.