New York Dead

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