that” – he thumped the photograph with his forefinger-”was the position she was in when I saw her falling. Also, she was wearing a full-length nightgown and a bathrobe when she fell, and she might have gotten some extra air resistance by the ballooning out of those garments. When she fell, she automatically assumed the position she’d been trained to assume when free-falling. And, by doing that, she slowed down her rate of acceleration and, most important, her terminal velocity.”
No, one spoke for a long time. Finally, Dino broke the rapt silence. “Horseshit,” he said.
“Maybe not,” Stone said.
“Let me tell you something, Stone – I read that lady’s diary, and I say she was suffering from too much fucking, too much fuckin’ ambition, and too much fuckin’ fame, all of it too fuckin’ soon.” Dino closed the magazine and, with his finger, drew an X over her face. “That girl
“I think somebody helped her,” Stone said. “And she may still be alive.”
Dino shook his head slowly. “I’ll tell you what she is. She’s New York Dead.”
Chapter 6
The Van Fleet Funeral Parlor had a Gramercy Park address, but it was around the corner, off the square.
“Italians know all about death,” Stone said to Dino. “What do you know about this place?”
Dino shrugged. “It’s not Italian, so what could I know? The location tells us, don’t it? Good address, not so good location. If you don’t want to pay for a first-class funeral at Frank Campbell’s, where the elite meet to grieve, then you go to, like, Van Fleet’s. It’s cheaper, but it’s got all the fuckin’ pretensions, you know?”
Dino parked in a loading zone and flipped down the sun visor to display the car’s ID. They walked back half a block and entered the front door, following a well-dressed couple. They stopped in a vestibule while the couple signed a visitors’ book, presided over by a man in a tailcoat.
“The Wilson party?” the man asked Dino, in unctuous tones.
“The NYPD party,” Dino said, flashing his shield. “Who runs the place?”
The man flinched at the sight of the badge. “That would be Mrs. Van Fleet,” he said. “Please stay here, and I’ll get her. Please remember there are bereaved here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dino said.
“You don’t like the fellow?” Stone said when the man had gone.
“I don’t like the business,” Dino said. “It’s a creepy business, and people who do it are creepy.”
“Somebody’s got to do it,” Stone said. “We’ll do better if you don’t give them a hard time.”
Dino nodded. “You talk to the creeps, then.”
As they waited, Stone looked around. In a large, somewhat overdecorated sitting room to their left, two dozen people talked quietly, while some gathered around an elderly woman who seemed to be receiving the condolences. He looked right and was surprised to see a bedroom. On the four-poster bed, under a lace coverlet, lay a pretty woman in her late thirties. Several people stood around the bed, and one knelt at some sort of altar set at the foot. It took Stone a moment to realize that the woman on the bed was the guest of honor. She appeared to be sleeping.
A door opened at the end of the hallway ahead of them, and a short, thin, severely dressed woman of about sixty approached them. She walked with her hands folded in front of her; it would have been an odd posture anywhere but here.
“Yes?” the woman said, her face expressionless.
“Good afternoon,” Stone said. “I am Detective Barrington, and this is Detective Bacchetti, New York City Police. I believe you have an employee here named Marvin Herbert Van Fleet.”
“He’s not an employee,” the woman said. “He’s a partner in the firm, he’s our chief… technical person, and he’s my son.”
Stone nodded. “May we see him, please?”
“Now?”
“Please.”
“I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment.”
“We’re busy, too,” Dino said, apparently unable to contain himself.
Stone shot him a sharp glance. “I’m afraid we can’t wait for a more convenient time,” he said to the woman.
“One moment, please,” Mrs. Van Fleet said, not happy. She walked down the hallway a few paces, picked up a phone, dialed two digits, and spoke quietly for a moment. She hung up and motioned to the detectives.
They followed her down the hallway. She turned right through a door and walked rapidly down another hall. The decor changed to utilitarian. A vaguely chemical scent hung in the air. She stopped before a large, metal swinging door and indicated with a nod that they were to enter. Then she brushed past them and left.
Stone pushed the door open and, followed by Dino, entered a large room with a tile floor. Before them were six autopsy tables, two of them occupied by bodies covered with sheets. At the far end of the room, the body of a middle-aged woman lay naked on another table. A man stood with his back to her, facing a counter built along the wall. Memories of dissecting frogs in high school biology swept over Stone; the smell of formaldehyde was distinct.
“Marvin Van Fleet?” Stone said.
A sharp, metallic sound was followed by a hollow rattling noise. The man turned around, and Stone saw a soft drink can on the tabletop.
“Herbert Van Fleet,” the man said. “Please call me Doc. Everybody does.”
The man was not handsome, Stone thought, but his voice was – a rich baritone, expressive, without any discernible accent. A good bedside voice. The detectives walked briskly to the end of the room, their heels echoing off the tile floor. They stopped at the head of the autopsy table. Stone introduced himself and Dino.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Van Fleet said. He stepped over to the naked body on the table and picked up the forceps that rested beside the head.
“Oh? Why is that?” Stone replied.
“Well, of course I heard about Miss Nijinsky on television this morning. Given the nature of our relationship, I thought perhaps someone would come to see me.” He produced a curved suturing needle and clamped it in the jaws of the forceps.
“Did you and Sasha Nijinsky have a relationship?” Stone asked.
Van Fleet looked thoughtful for a moment. “Why, yes, we did. I was her correspondent, although she seemed to think of me as an antagonist, which I never intended myself to be. She was my…” He paused. “She was an object of interest to me, I suppose. I greatly admired her talents. Do you know how she’s doing?” he asked, concernedly. “She’s in the hospital, they said on television.”
“We don’t have any information on her condition,” Stone said. God knew that was true.
Van Fleet nodded sadly. He bent over the corpse, peeled back the lips with rubber-gloved fingers, and inserted the needle in the inside of the upper lip, passing it through the inside of the lower lip, then pulled it tight.
Stone stopped asking questions and watched with a horrible fascination. So did Dino. Van Fleet continued to skillfully manipulate the forceps and the needle, until the web of thread reached across the width of the mouth. Then he pulled the thread tight, and the mouth closed, concealing the stitching on the inside of the lips. Van Fleet made a quick surgical knot, snipped off the thread, and tucked the end out of sight at the corner of the mouth.
“Shit,” Dino said.
“Mr. Van Fleet, could you leave that until we’re finished, please?” Stone said.
“Of course.”
“Can you account for your whereabouts between two and three A.M. this morning?”
“
“I remember,” Stone said. “At what time, exactly, did you leave Elaine’s?”
“A few minutes after you did,” Van Fleet said. “About two twenty, I’d say. Maybe the bartender would
