New York Dead

Chapter 7

Stone went to the Vanity Fair offices in midtown and, after a phone call was made, he was given Hiram Barker’s address. As he entered the lobby of United Nations Plaza, he remembered a line about the apartment house from an old movie: “If there is a god,” a character had said, “he probably lives in this building.” After another phone call, the deskman sent him up to a high floor.

“I can just imagine why you’re here,” Barker said as he opened the door.

He was larger than Stone had expected, in both height and weight, a little over six feet tall and broad at the middle. The face was not heavy but handsome, the hair sleek and gray, slicked straight back.

“I’m Hi Barker,” he said, extending a fleshy hand. He waved Stone into a spacious, beautifully furnished living room with a view looking south toward the United Nations.

Stone introduced himself. He heard the tinkling of silver in the background; he saw a woman enter the dining room and begin to set the table.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Barker asked solicitously.

Stone was thirsty. “Perhaps some water.”

“Jeanine, get the gentleman some Perrier,” Barker said to the woman.

She left and returned with a heavy crystal glass, decorated with a slice of lime.

“Sit you down,” Barker said, waving at one end of a large sofa, while flopping down at the other end, “and tell me what I can do for you.” He cocked his head expectantly.

“You can tell me where you were between two and three this morning,” Stone said.

Barker clapped his hands together and threw his head back. “I’ve been waiting all my life for a cop to ask me that question!” he crowed.

Stone smiled. “I hope I won’t have to wait that long for an answer.”

“Dear me, no.” Barker chuckled. “I got home about one thirty from a dinner at the de la Rentas ’, then went straight to bed. The night man downstairs can confirm that – ah, the time, not the bed part. Security is ironclad here, you know. We’ve got Arabs, Israelis, and Irish in the building, and nobody, but nobody, gets in or out without being seen.”

Stone didn’t doubt it.

“Am I a suspect, then?”

“A suspect in what?” Stone asked.

“Oh, God, now I’ve done it! I’m not even supposed to know there’s a crime!”

“Is there?”

“Well, didn’t somebody help poor Sasha out into the night?”

“I’d very much like to know that,” Stone said, “and I’d like to know why you think so.”

“She wasn’t the sort to take a flying leap,” Barker said more seriously.

“That’s why I’ve come to see you, Mr. Barker.”

“Hi, please call me Hi. I’ll be uncomfortable if you don’t”

“Hi it is then.”

“And why is it you’ve come to see me?”

“Because of your Vanity Fair piece. I’ve read it, and it seemed extremely well researched.”

“That’s a very astute observation,” Barker said. “Most people would have thought it produced from gossip. No, I spent a good six months on that. I was researching it even before Tina at the magazine knew I wanted to do it.”

“And you talked with Miss Nijinsky at some length?”

“I did, a good six hours over three meetings.”

“Did you make any tape recordings?”

“I did, but when I finished the piece I returned the tapes to her, as agreed.”

“You didn’t, perhaps, make a copy?”

Barker’s eyes turned momentarily hard. “No. That’s not the way it’s done.”

“How well did you know her before you began research for the article?”

“We had a cordial acquaintance. We’d been to a few of the same dinner parties. That was before the piece. By the time I finished it, I think I knew her as well as anybody alive.”

“You can do that in six hours of conversation?”

“If you’ve done six months of research beforehand, and if nobody else knows the person at all.”

“She had no close friends?”

“None in the sense that any normal person would call close.”

“Family?”

“She hardly ever saw them after she left home to go to college. I think she was close to her father as a young girl, but she didn’t speak of him as a confidant, not in the least.”

“Did she have any confidants?”

“Not one, as far as I could tell. I think by the time we had finished, she thought of me as one.” Barker shook his head. “But no, as well as I got to know her, she never opened up to me. I took my cues as much from what she didn’t say as what she said. There was a sort of invisible, one-way barrier between that young woman and the rest of the world; everything passed through it to her, but very little passed out.”

“Do you think she was a possible suicide?”

“Not for a moment. Sasha was one tough cookie; she had goals, and she was achieving them. Christ, I mean, she was on the verge of the biggest career any woman ever had in television news. Bigger than Barbara Walters. That sort of person commits suicide only in trashy novels.”

“All right,” Stone said, “let’s assume murder.”

Barker grinned. “Let’s.”

“Who?”

Barker crossed his legs, clasped his hands behind his neck, and stared out at the sweep of the East River. “Two kinds of people might have murdered Sasha Nijinsky,” he said. “First, people she hurt on the way up – you know, the secretary she tyrannized, the people she displaced when she got promotions – there was no shortage of those. But you’d have to be a raving lunatic to kill such a famous woman just for revenge. The chances are too good of getting caught and sent away.”

“What’s the other kind of person?” Stone asked.

Barker grinned again, still looking at the river. “Whoever had the most to lose from Sasha’s future success,” he said.

“That’s an interesting notion,” Stone said, and he meant it. “Who did you have in mind?”

“I’ll tell you,” Barker said, turning to face him, “but if you ever quote me, I’ll call you a liar.”

Stone nodded. “It’ll be just between us.”

“Well,” Barker said, drawing it out. “There’s only one person in the world I can think of who would suffer from Sasha Nijinsky’s future success.”

“Go on,” Stone said.

“Her new co-anchor, who else? The estimable Mr. Barron Harkness, prizewinning television journalist, squarejawed, credible, terribly vulnerable Barron Harkness.”

“I take it you don’t like Mr. Harkness.”

“Who does, dear boy? He lacks charm.” Barker said this as if it were the ultimate crime. “Sasha would have blown him out of the water in less than a year. His ratings had slipped badly, you know – after a winning streak last year, he has slipped to a point or two behind Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather, and he’s still sinking. He’s already worked at ABC and NBC, and neither would have him back; and I know for a fact that Larry Tisch despises him, so that shuts him out of CBS. Then here comes Sasha, hipping him over at the anchor desk, loaded for bear. A power struggle began the day the first rumor hit the street about Sasha’s new job, and, if Harkness lost, where would he go? He’d be making solemn pronouncements on Public Radio, like Dan Schorr, and his ego would never accept that. No, sir, Barron Harkness is a man with a motive.”

“I think I should tell you,” Stone said, looking at his watch, “that Barron Harkness got off an airplane from Rome just about an hour ago.”

Barker’s face fell. “I’m extremely sorry to hear it,” he said. “But,” he said, brightening, “if I were you I’d make awfully sure he was really on that plane.”

“Don’t worry,” Stone said, “that’s been done. Tell me, would it violate some journalistic ethic if you gave me a list of the people you interviewed about Miss Nijinsky?”

Barker shook his head. “No. I’ll do even better than that; I’ll give you a paragraph on each of them and my view as to the value of each as a suspect.”

“I’d be very grateful for that.”

The writer turned sly. “It’ll have to be a trade, though.”

“What do you want?”

“When you find out what’s happened to Sasha and who is responsible, I want a phone call before the press conference is held.”

Stone thought for a moment. It wasn’t a bad trade, and he needed that list. “All right, you’re on.”

“It’ll take me a couple of hours.”

“You have a fax machine?”

Barker looked hurt. “Of course.”

Stone gave him a card. “Shoot it to me there when you’re done.” He got up.

Barker rose with him. “I’m having a few friends in for dinner this evening, as you can see,” he said, waving a hand at the dining room. “Would you like to join us?”

“Thanks,” Stone said, “but until I’ve solved the Nijinsky problem, there are no dinner parties in the picture.”

“I understand,” Barker said, seeing him out. “Perhaps another time?”

“Thank you,” Stone said. While he waited for the elevator, he wondered why Hi Barker would ask a policeman to dinner. Well, he thought, as he stepped from the elevator into the lobby, if he solved this one, he would become a very famous policeman.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait that long. A skinny young man with half a dozen cameras draped about him was arguing with the doorman when he turned and saw Stone. “Right here, Detective Barrington,” he called, raising a camera.

The flash made Stone blink. As he made his way from the building, pursued by the snapping paparazzo, he felt a moment of sympathy for someone like Sasha Nijinsky, who spent her life dodging such trash.