He pressed his cheek against the cool stainless steel of the elevator door, whimpering with pain and anger and sucking in deep breaths.
The bust of the century, and he had blown it.
Chapter
T
here were only two apartments on the twelfth floor, and the doorman was standing obediently in front of 12-A. The door was open.
“I told you not to open it,” Stone said irritably.
“I didn’t,” the old man said indignantly. “It was wide open. I didn’t go in there, either.”
“Okay, okay. You go on back downstairs. There’ll be a lot of cops here in a few minutes; you tell them where I am.”
“Yessir,” the doorman said and headed for the elevator.
“Wait a minute,” Stone said, still catching his breath. “Did anybody come into the building the last half hour? Anybody at all?”
“Nope. I wake up when people come in. I always do,” the old man said defensively.
Sure. “What time did Miss Nijinsky come home tonight?”
“About nine o’clock. She asked for her mail, but there wasn’t any. It had already been forwarded to the new address.”
“She was moving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What sort of mood was she in?” Stone asked.
“Tired, I’d say. Maybe depressed. She was usually pretty cheerful, had a few words to say to me, but not tonight. She just asked for her mail, and, when I told her there wasn’t any, she just sighed like this.” He sighed heavily. “And she went straight into the elevator.”
“Does she normally get many visitors in the building?”
“Hardly any. As a matter of fact, in the two years she’s been here, I don’t remember a single one, except deliverymen—you know, from the department stores and UPS and all.”
“Thanks,” Stone said. “You go on back to your post, and we’ll probably have more to ask you later.”
Stone stepped into the apartment. He reached high to avoid messing up any prints on the door and pushed it nearly shut. A single lamp on a mahogany drum table illuminated the living room. The place was not arranged for living. The cheap parquet floor was bare of carpets; there were no curtains or pictures; at least two dozen cardboard cartons were scattered or stacked around the room. A phone was on the table with the lamp. Stone picked it up with two fingers, dialed a number, waited for a beep, then, reading off the phone, punched in Nijinsky’s number and hung up. He picked his way among the boxes and entered the kitchen. More packed boxes. He found the small bedroom; the bed was still made.
Some penthouse. It was a mean, cramped, three-and-a-half-room apartment, and she was probably paying twenty-five hundred a month. These buildings had been thrown up in a hurry during the sixties, to beat a zoning restriction that
would require builders to offset apartment houses, using less of the land. If they got the buildings up in time, they could build right to the sidewalk. There were dozens of them up and down the East Side.
The phone rang. He got it before it rang a second time.
“Yes?”
“This is Bacchetti.”
“Dino, it’s Stone. Where are you?”
“A joint called Columbus, on the West Side. What’s up?”
“Hot stuff.” Stone gave him the address. “Ditch the girl and get over here fast. Apartment 12-A. I’ll wait five minutes before I call the precinct.”
“I’m already there.” Bacchetti hung up.
Stone hung up and looked around. The sliding doors to the terrace were open, and he could hear the whoop-whoop of an ambulance growing nearer. There was an armchair next to the table with the lamp and the phone, and next to it a packed carton with a dozen sealed envelopes on top. Stone picked up a printed card from a stack next to the envelopes.
Effective immediately,
Sasha Nijinsky is at
1011 Fifth Ave.
New York 10021.
Burn this.
The lady was moving up in the world. But, then, everybody knew that. Stone put the card in his pocket. The ambulance pulled to a halt downstairs, and, immediately, a siren could be heard. Not big enough for a fire truck, Stone thought, more like an old-fashioned police siren, the kind they used before the electronic noisemaker was invented.
He walked out onto the terrace, which was long but narrow, and looked over the chest-high wall. Sasha Nijinsky had
not fallen—she had either jumped or been muscled over. Down below, two vehicles with flashing lights had pulled up to the scene—an ambulance and a van with
SCOOP VIDEO
painted on the top. As he watched, another vehicle pulled up, and a man in a white coat got out.
Stone went back into the apartment, found a switch, and flooded the room with overhead light. He looked at his watch. Two more minutes before this got official. Two objects were on the drum table besides the lamp and the phone. He unzipped her purse and emptied it onto the table. The usual female rubbish—makeup of all sorts, keys, a small address book, safety pins, pencils, credit cards held together with a rubber band, and a thick wad of money, held with a large gold paper clip. He counted it: twelve hundred and eleven dollars, including half a dozen hundreds. The lady didn’t travel light. He looked closely at the gold paper clip. Cartier.
Stone turned to the other object: a red-leather book with the word
DIARY
stamped in gold. He went straight to the last page, today’s date.
Hassle, hassle, hassle. The moving men are giving me a hard time. The paparazzi have been on my ass all day. The painters haven’t finished in the new apartment. My limo caught on fire on East 52nd Street this afternoon, and I had to hoof it to the network through hordes of autograph-seekers. And the goddamned fucking contracts are still not ready. For this I have a business manager, a lawyer, and an agent? Also, I haven’t got the change-of-address cards done, and the ace researchers don’t have notes for me yet on the Bush interview, and What’s-his-name just called and wants to come over here right now! I am coming apart at the seams, I swear I am. As soon as he leaves, I’m going to get into a hot tub with a gigantic brandy and open a
vein. I swear to God it’s just not worth it, any of it. On Monday, I have to smile into a camera and be serious, knowledgeable, and authoritative, when all I want to do with my life is to go skydiving without a parachute. Fuck the job, fuck the fame, fuck the money! Fuck everybody!!!
Skydiving without a parachute: his very thought, what, ten minutes ago? He gingerly picked up the phone again and dialed.
“Homicide,” a bored voice said.
“It’s Barrington. Who’s the senior man?”
“Leary. How’s the soft life, Barrington?”
“Let me speak to him.”
“He’s in the can. I just saw him go in there with a
Hustler,
so he’ll be awhile.”
“Tell him I’ve stumbled onto a possible homicide. Lady took a twelve-story dive. I’m in her apartment now.” He gave the address. “An ambulance is already here, but we’ll need a team to work the scene. Rumble whoever’s on call. Bacchetti and I will take the case.”
“But you’re on limited duty.”
“Not anymore. Tell Leary to get moving.”
“I’ll tell him when he comes out.”
“I wouldn’t wait.” He hung up. He had not mentioned the victim’s name; that would get them here in too much of a hurry. He heard the elevator doors open.
“Stone?” Bacchetti called from outside the door.
“It’s open. Careful about prints.”
Dino Bacchetti entered the room as he might a fashionable restaurant. He was dressed to kill, in a silk Italian suit with what Stone liked to think of as melting lapels. “So?” he asked, looking around, trying to sound bored.
“Sasha Nijinsky went thataway,” Stone said, pointing to the terrace.
“No shit?” Dino said, no longer bored. “That explains the crowd on the sidewalk.”
“Yeah. I was passing, on my way home.”
Dino walked over and clapped his hands onto Stone’s cheeks. “I got the luckiest partner on the force,” he said, beaming.
Stone ducked before Dino could kiss him. “Not so lucky. I chased the probable perp down the stairs and blew it on the last landing. He walked.”
“A right-away bust would have been too good to be true,” Dino said. “Now we get to track the fucker down. Much, much better.” He rubbed his hands together. “Whatta we got here?”
“She was moving to a new apartment tomorrow,” Stone said. He beckoned Dino to the table and opened the diary with the pen.
“Not in the best of moods, was she?” Dino said, reading. “Skydiving without a parachute. The papers are going to love that.”
“Yeah, they’re going to love the whole thing.”
Dino looked up. “Maybe she jumped,” he said. “Who’s to say she was pushed?”
“Then who went pounding down the stairs at the moment I arrived on the scene?” Stone asked. “The moving men?”
“No sign of a struggle,” Dino observed.
“In a room full of cardboard boxes, who can say?”
“No glasses out for a guest, if What’s-his-name did show.”
“The liquor’s packed, like everything else. I’ve had a look around, I didn’t see any. She didn’t sound in any mood to offer him a drink, anyway.” Stone sighed. “Come on, let’s go over the place before the Keystone Kops get here.”
“Yeah, Leary’s got the watch,” Dino said.
The two men combed the apartment from one end to the
other. Stone used a penlight to search the corners of the terrace.
“Nothing,” Dino said, when they were through.
“Maybe everything,” Stone said. “We’ve got the diary, her address book, and a stack of change-of-address cards, already addressed. Those are the important people, I reckon. I’ll bet the perp is in that stack.” He took out his notebook and began jotting down names and addresses. Apart from the department stores and credit card companies, there were fewer than a dozen. Had she had so few friends, or had she just not gotten through the list before she died? He looked over the names: alphabetical. She had made it through the W’s.
They heard the elevator doors open, and two detectives walked in, followed by a one-man video crew. He was small, skinny, and he looked overburdened by the camera, battery belt, sound pack, and glaring lights.
“You, out,” Dino said. “This is a crime scene.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” the cameraman said. He produced a press card. “Scoop Berman,” he said. “Scoop Video.”
“The man said this is a crime scene, Scoop,” Stone said, propelling the little man toward the door.
“Hey, what crime?” Scoop said, digging in his heels.
“Possible homicide,” Stone replied, still pushing.
“There’s no homicide,” Scoop said.
“Yeah? How do
you
know?”
“Because she ain’t dead,” Scoop said.
Stone stopped pushing. “What are you talking about? She fell twelve stories.”
“Hang on a minute, guys,” Scoop said. He rewound the tape in his camera and flipped down a tiny viewing screen. “Watch this,” he said.
Stone and Dino elbowed the other two cops out of the way and focused on the screen. An image came up; the camera was running toward the Con Ed site downstairs. It
pushed past an ambulance man and zoomed in on the form of Sasha Nijinsky. She was wearing a nightgown under a green silk robe.
“Easy, now, lady,” someone was saying on the soundtrack. “Don’t try to move; let us do the moving.”
A white-clad back filled the screen, and the camera moved to one side, then zoomed in tight on her face. She blinked twice, and her lips moved.
“Okay, here we go,” the voice said, and the ambulance men lifted her onto a stretcher. The camera followed as they loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. One man got in with her and pulled the door shut. The ambulance drove away, its lights flashing and its whooper sounding.
“I had to make a choice then,” Scoop said. “I called in the incident, and then I went for the apartment.”
“It’s impossible,” Dino said.
“You saw her move, saw her blink,” Scoop said.
“Holy shit,” Dino said.
“Okay,” Stone said to the two cops. “You work the scene with the technical guys, and then knock on every door in the building. I want to know if anybody saw anybody come into the building after nine o’clock tonight.” He grabbed Dino’s elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter
S
tone hung up the car phone. “The company dispatcher says the wagon is going to Lenox Hill Hospital, but the driver hasn’t radioed in to confirm the delivery yet.”
“Seventy-seventh and Park,” Dino said, hanging a right.
Dino always drove as if he’d just stolen the car. Being Italian didn’t hurt either.
The two had been partners for nearly four years when Stone had got his knee shot up. It hadn’t even been their business, that call, but everybody responded to “officer needs assistance.” The officer had needed assistance half a minute before Stone and Dino arrived on the scene; the officer was dead, and the man who had shot him was trying to start his patrol car. He’d fired one wild shot before Dino killed him, and it had found its way unerringly to Stone’s knee. It had been nothing but a run-of-the-mill domestic disturbance
, until the moment the officer had died and the bullet had changed Stone’s life.
Dino had won an automatic commendation for killing a perp who had killed a cop. Stone had won four hours in surgery and an extremely boring amount of physical therapy. He rubbed the knee. It didn’t feel so terrible now; maybe he hadn’t screwed it up as badly as he had thought.
They screeched to a halt at the emergency entrance to Lenox Hill, and Stone limped into the building after Dino.
“You’ve got a woman named Nijinsky here,” Dino said to the woman behind the desk, flashing his badge. “We need to see her now.”
“I didn’t get her name, but she’s in room number one, first door on your right. Dr. Holmes is with her.”
Dino led the way.
“I’d never have guessed her name was Nijinsky,” the woman said after them.