Dino, unaccountably in the station house early, was interviewing him.
“Look, I’ve already explained,” he said, looking uncomfortably around him. A very dirty, handcuffed black man was sitting at the next desk, admiring the man’s clothes.
“Mr. Duncan, this is my partner, Stone Barrington. Stone, this is Mr. Evan Duncan, who has something interesting to tell us.”
“How do you do, Mr. Duncan,” Stone said, extending his hand. He stepped between Duncan and the black man.
“Would you please tell Detective Barrington what you saw, Mr. Duncan?” Dino asked politely.
Shielded from the black man and seeming to take confidence from the presence of Stone, who probably looked like most of the people he knew, Duncan nodded. “I’m an investment banker,” he said. “My office is in Rockefeller Plaza.” Having established that he was a person worthy of belief, he went on. “Last evening, about six thirty, a friend and I were leaving the Harvard Club, on West Forty-fourth Street. We had ordered a car from the club’s service, and a black car pulled up and let a man out. I looked at the number on the window and thought it was car number twelve, which was the number on the slip the steward had given me, so I opened the door and started to get into the car.” He paused, as if uncertain as to whether he should continue.
“Go on, Mr. Duncan,” Stone said, nodding reassuringly.
“Well, there was a woman in the backseat. She turned to me, surprised that someone was getting into her car. I apologized and began backing out, and she said, ‘Don’t worry about it, all these cars look alike.’ I closed the door and checked the number again, and it was number twenty-one, not twelve.” He stopped and looked to Stone as if for approval.
Stone wondered if he had missed something. “Mr. Duncan…”
“You didn’t tell him, Mr. Duncan,” Dino said to the man.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I quite missed the main point, didn’t I?” Duncan chuckled.
“Yes,” Dino said.
“What is the main point?” Stone asked, baffled.
“Oh, well, the woman was Sasha Nijinsky,” Duncan replied, as if Stone should have known it all along.
The hairs stood up on the back of Stone’s neck. Here was an obviously solid citizen with a close-up sighting. “Why did you think it was Sasha Nijinsky?” Stone asked, hoping against hope that the man was not simply some upper-class fruitcake.
“Well, I’ve seen her on television several hundred times.”
“Sometimes people on television look different in person,” Stone said.
“And I sat across the table from her at a dinner party less than two weeks ago,” Duncan said firmly.
Stone looked at Dino. Dino made a how-about-that face.
“Did she recognize you?” Stone asked.
“I don’t think so, and I was in and out of the car so fast that I never really engaged her in conversation. But it was Sasha Nijinsky, I’m absolutely certain of it. I wouldn’t really have come in here about this, but my wife said it could be important, since Sasha is missing.”
“Missing?” Stone asked. Nobody knew she was missing. The press still thought she was in some hospital or other.
Dino held up a fresh copy of the
Stone picked up the paper and opened it. “A source in the New York City Police Department confirmed last night that, since her fall from the terrace of her East Side penthouse apartment, Sasha Nijinsky has been missing, and no one knows if she is alive or dead.” He didn’t read the rest. Somebody, probably somebody in this room, was talking to a reporter.
“You did the right thing, Mr. Duncan,” Stone said. “Now the car number was twenty-one, the time was about six thirty, you said?”
“That’s right, just about exactly six thirty. That was the time I had ordered the car for.”
“And the name of the car service?”
“Minute Man. I use them all the time.”
Stone held out his hand. “Thank you very much for this information, Mr. Duncan,” he said. “You may be sure that we’ll check this out thoroughly.”
Dismissed, Duncan retrieved his trench coat from Dino’s desk and made his way out of the room, giving the leering black man a wide berth.
“Cat’s out of the bag, huh?” Stone said to Dino.
“I think a more appropriate description of the situation is that the shit has hit the fan,” Dino said. “Leary wants to see us.”
“At least we’ve got some sort of lead,” Stone said. “Let’s call Minute Man first.”
After a long wait for the information, Stone was told that a Minute Man car had picked up a Ms. Balfour at the Algonquin Hotel at six thirty and had delivered her to an East Sixty-third Street address. Stone scribbled it down. “The Algonquin is right down the block from the Harvard Club; the car must have been stopped in traffic when Duncan mistook it for his.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dino said.
Armed with their new information, the two detectives faced Leary, who was an unhappy man. “I hope to God this is no fuckin’ wild-goose chase,” he said, when he had heard their story. “The chief of detectives has already been on the phone this morning, and I’m expecting a call from the mayor any minute.”
As if on cue, the phone rang. Leary put his hand on it. “Get out of here and run down that lead,” he said. “I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
Stone and Dino sat in their car outside the address, an elegant town house on East Sixty-third Street.
“I’m scared,” Dino said.
“I know how you feel,” Stone replied.
“You know how much we need this to
“I’d hold him down while you did it,” Stone said. “All right, let’s go.”
They trudged up the front steps and rang the bell, then watched through iron grillwork as a uniformed maid approached the door.
“Yes?” she said, opening the door slightly.
Stone showed his badge. “My name is Detective Barrington. Is there a Ms. Balfour at this address?”
“Just a minute,” the maid said, closing the door and shutting them out. She went to a telephone in the entrance hall, spoke a few words into it, then returned and opened the front door wide. “Please come in,” she said. “Mrs. Balfour will be right down.”
As they entered, Stone saw half a dozen pieces of matched luggage piled to one side of the front door. The detectives were shown to a small sitting room, and, as they sat down, the maid opened the door to another man, who began removing the baggage.
A moment later, there was the click of high heels on the marble floor of the entrance hall, and Sasha Nijinsky walked into the sitting room.
As the detectives got to their feet, Stone was swept with an overwhelming sense of relief that made him light-headed.
“I’m Ellen Balfour,” Sasha Nijinsky said. “How may I help you?”
Something is wrong here, Stone thought. Relief began to be replaced by panic.
“Well?” the woman said into the stunned silence.
“Aren’t you…” Stone couldn’t get the words out.
“Oh, I see,” the woman said, nodding her beautiful head gravely. “It’s the third time this week I’ve been mistaken for her.”
“Oh, shit,” Dino said, involuntarily, then recovered himself.
The woman turned and looked at him.
“Excuse me, please,” Dino pled.
“I wonder, Mrs. Balfour, if you have some personal identification?” Stone said, hoping against hope that this
