New York Dead

Chapter 9

Stone was jerked awake by the short stop of the cab. He fumbled for some money, gave the cabbie five dollars, and struggled out of the cab. It was pouring rain now, and he got across the street as quickly as he could with his sore knee. A uniformed security guard sat at a desk, and Stone gave him Cary Hilliard’s name. Before the man could dial the number, an elevator door opened, and a young woman walked out.

“Detective Barrington?” she asked, offering a hand.

“That’s right,” Stone replied, thinking how long and cool her fingers were. All of her, in fact, was long and cool. She was nearly six feet tall, he reckoned, slim but not thin, dressed in a black cashmere sweater that did not conceal full breasts and a houndstooth skirt that ended below the knee.

“I’m Cary Hilliard,” she said. “Come on, let’s go up to the studio. Barron will be on the air in a few minutes, and we can watch from the control room.” They turned toward the elevator. “By the way, a Detective Bacchetti called and left a message for you. He said, and I quote, ‘Your man was where he was supposed to be’ and ‘Tell Detective Barrington that I’ve been detained, and I’ll see him tomorrow.’”

“Thank you.” Detained, my ass, Stone thought. Detained by some stewardess, maybe.

She led him upstairs and through a heavy door. A dozen people worked in a room that held at least twenty-five television monitors and thousands of knobs and switches. “We can sit here,” she said, showing him to a comfortable chair on a tier above the control console.

The whole of the top row of monitors displayed the face, in close-up, of Barron Harkness, “the idol of the airlanes,” someone had called him, stealing Jan Garber’s sobriquet. Tissue paper was tucked into his collar, and a woman’s hand entered the frame, patting his nose with a sponge. “You’ve got a good tan, Barron,” a voice said. “We won’t need much of this.”

Harkness nodded, as if saving his voice.

“One minute,” somebody at the console said.

“I’ve got a thirty-second statement before the music,” Harkness said into the camera.

“Barron,” a man at the console said, “it’s too late to fit it in; we’re long as it is.”

“Cut the kid with the transplant before the last commercial,” Harkness said.

“Barron…,” the man nearly wailed.

“Do it.”

Someone counted down from ten, and stirring music filled the control room. Barron Harkness arranged his face into a serious frown and looked up from his desk into the camera. “Good evening,” he said, and his voice let the viewer know that something important was to follow. “Last night, a good friend of this newscast and of many of us personally was gravely injured in a terrible accident. Sasha Nijinsky was to have joined me at this desk tonight, and she is badly missed. All of us here pray for her recovery. All of us wish her well. All of us look forward to her taking her place beside me. We know you do, too.”

Music swelled, and an announcer’s voice heralded the evening news. Stone watched as Harkness skillfully led half a dozen correspondents through the newscast, reading effortlessly from the TelePrompTer and asking an occasional informed question of someone in Tehran, Berlin, or London, while the control room crew scrambled to squeeze his opening statement into their allotted time.

During a commercial break, Cary turned to Stone. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Very impressive,” he said, looking directly at her.

She laughed. “I meant about the newscast.”

“Not nearly as impressive.”

“Well, Barron’s a little self-important,” she said, “but nobody does this better.”

“Read the news?”

She laughed again. “Oh, come on, now, he’s reported from all over the world; he doesn’t just read.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

The newscast ended, and she led Stone out another door and down a spiral staircase to the newsroom set. A dozen people were working at computer terminals.

“They’re already getting the eleven o’clock news together,” Cary said.

Barron Harkness was having the last of his makeup removed. He stood up and shook Stone’s hand firmly. “Detective,” he said.

To Stone’s surprise, Harkness was at least six four, two twenty, and flat bellied. He looked shorter and fleshier on camera.

“Come on, let’s go up to my office,” Harkness said.

They climbed another spiral staircase, entered a hallway, and turned into Harkness’s office, a large, comfortably furnished room with a big picture window looking down into the newsroom. Harkness waved Stone to a leather sofa. “Coffee? I’m having some.”

“Thank you, yes,” Stone said. He could use it; he fought off the lassitude caused by the bourbon and the newscast.

Cary Hilliard disappeared without being told, then came back with a Thermos and two cups. Both men watched her pour, then she took a seat in a chair to one side of Harkness’s desk and opened a steno pad. “You don’t mind if I take notes?” she asked Stone.

“Not at all,” he replied. “Forgive me if I don’t take any; I remember better if I do it later.” He turned to Harkness. “Mr. Harkness-”

“Please call me Barron; I’d be more comfortable. And your first name?”

“Stone.”

“A hard name,” he said, smiling slightly.

“I’ll try not to be too hard on you.”

“Where is Sasha Nijinsky? What hospital?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any information on that.”

Harkness’s eyebrows went up. “I understood you were in charge of this investigation.”

“That’s nominally so, but I’m not the only investigator on the case, and I don’t have all the information.” That wasn’t strictly true; he did have all the information there was; there just wasn’t much.

“I trust somebody knows what hospital she’s in. Certainly nobody at the network does.”

“I expect somebody knows where she is,” Stone said. “I understand you were traveling last night?”

“Yes, from Rome. I expect you’ve already checked that out.”

“What time did you arrive at Kennedy?”

“Four thirty or five.”

Stone nodded. “Mr. Harkness, did Sasha Nijinsky have any enemies?”

Unexpectedly, Harkness broke into laughter. “Are you kidding? Sasha climbed over half the people at the network to get where she is, and the other half are scared shitless of her.”

“I see. Did any of them hate her enough to try to kill her?”

“Probably. In my experience, lots of people kill who have less cause than Sasha’s victims.”

That was Stone’s experience too, but he didn’t say so. “Who among her enemies do you think I should talk to?”

“Christ, where to begin!” Harkness said. “Oh, look, I’m overstating the case. I don’t think anybody around here would try to kill Sasha. Do you think somebody kicked her off that terrace?”

“We have to investigate all the possibilities,” Stone said.

“Well, I can’t imagine that, not really. Maybe she caught a burglar in the act? Something like that?”

“It’s possible,” Stone said. It was, too, given that the doorman spent his evenings sound asleep. “We’re looking at known operators in her neighborhood.”

“On the other hand,” Harkness said, “Sasha was one tough lady; I don’t think a burglar could get the best of her. I’ll tell you a story, in confidence. After the last elections, Sasha and I left this building very late, and, before we could get to the car that was waiting for us, a good-sized black guy stepped out of the shadows. He had a knife, and he said whatever the ghetto version of ‘your money or your life’ is these days. Before I even had time to think, Sasha stuck out her left arm, straight, and drove her fist into the guy’s throat. He made this gurgling noise, dropped the knife, and hit the pavement like a sack of potatoes. Sasha stepped over, kicked the knife into the river, and said, ‘Let’s go.’ We got into the car and left. Now that is what Sasha can be like. She’d been studying one of those martial arts things, and, when most people would have turned to jelly in the circumstances, she used what she knew. Me, I’d have given the guy anything he wanted.” Harkness put his feet on his desk. “Now, do you think a burglar – or anybody else, for that matter – could heave somebody like that over a balcony railing?”

“You could be right,” Stone said. You could be the guy who heaved her over the edge too, he thought. You’re big enough and in good enough shape to handle a woman – even one who had martial arts training. “That brings us to another possibility. Did Sasha strike you as the sort of person who might take her own life?”

Harkness looked down at the carpet for a moment, drumming his fingers on the desk noisily. “In a word, yes,” he said. “I think there was something of the manic-depressive in Sasha. She was high at a lot of times, but she was down at times, too. She could turn it off, if she was working; she could look into that camera and smile and bring it off. But there must have been times, when she was all alone, when it got to her.”

“Did you ever see it get to her?”

“Once or twice, when we were doing The Morning Show together. I remember going into her dressing room once, five minutes before airtime, and she was in tears over something. But when we went on the air, she was as cheerful as a chipmunk.”

“Do you know if she ever saw a psychiatrist?”

“Nope, but I’d bet that, if she did, she didn’t tell him much. Sasha plays her cards very close to that beautiful chest.”

Stone nodded, then stood up. “Well, thank you, Mr. – ah, Barron. If anything else comes up, I hope I can call you.”

“Absolutely,” Harkness said, rising and extending his hand. “Just call Cary; she always knows where to find me.”

“Come on, I’ll walk you down,” Cary said, leading the way. Passing through the outer office, she tossed her steno pad on a desk and grabbed a raincoat from a rack. On the elevator, she turned to Stone. “Well, now you’ve had the Harkness treatment,” she said. “What did you think?”

Stone shrugged. “Forthright, frank, helpful.”

She smiled. “You got Barron’s message.”

The elevator reached the lobby, and, when the doors opened, they could see the rain beating against the windows.

“Can I give you a lift?” she asked. “I’ve got a car waiting, and you’ll never get a cab down here at this time of the evening.”

“Sure, I’d appreciate that.” He took a deep breath. “If you’re all through with work, how about some dinner?”

“You’re off duty now?”

“The moment you say yes.”

She looked at him frankly. “I’d like that.”

They ran across the pavement to the waiting Lincoln Town Car, one of hundreds that answer the calls of people with charge accounts.

“Where to?” Cary said, as they settled into the back seat.

“How about Elaine’s?” Stone said.

“Can you get a table without a reservation?”

“Let’s find out.”

“Eighty-eighth and Second Avenue,” she said to the driver.

Stone turned to her. “I got the impression from what you said in the elevator that I shouldn’t necessarily believe everything Barron Harkness tells me.”

“Why, Detective,” Cary said, her eyes wide and innocent. “I never said that.” She scrunched down in the seat and laid her head back. “And, anyway, you’re off duty, remember?”