New York Dead

remember.”

“Where did you go then?”

“I drove down Second Avenue, and in the sixties I saw a sort of commotion. It seemed that someone had been hurt. I have some medical skills, so I stopped to see if I could help. They were loading a stretcher into an ambulance. I didn’t know it was Sasha until this morning, when I turned on The Morning Show.”

“Who else was at the scene when you stopped?” Stone asked.

“Two ambulance men, two or three Con Ed men, and a man with a television camera.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went home.”

“What route did you take?”

“I continued down Second Avenue all the way to Houston, then turned right, then left on Garamond Street. That’s where I live.”

“Did you see anyone you knew?”

“At two thirty in the morning?”

“Anyone at all. Someone else in your building?”

“There is no one else in my building. I live over a former glove factory.”

“We’d like to see your apartment. May we go there now?”

“Why?”

“It would help us in our investigation. If you had nothing to do with what happened to Miss Nijinsky, then we’d like to be able to cross you off our list of suspects.”

“I’m a suspect?” Van Fleet asked, surprised. “What do you suspect me of?”

“Well, we haven’t established the cause of… what happened, yet.”

“Was there a crime?”

“We haven’t determined that yet.”

“My impression from the news was that Sasha’s fall was a suicide attempt.”

“That’s certainly a possibility. We treat any unknown cause of death as homicide, until we know otherwise.”

“Then you suspect me of a homicide you’re not sure was committed?”

“As I said, Mr. Van Fleet, everyone who had anything to do with her is a suspect, until we know for sure what happened. Do you object to our seeing where you live?”

Van Fleet shrugged. “Not really, but I think I should ask my lawyer how he feels about it.”

“That’s your right.”

“Unless you have a search warrant.”

“We can get one if we feel it’s necessary.”

“If a judge feels it’s necessary, you mean.”

“We can get a search warrant.”

“I watch a lot of police shows on television, you see. I understand these things.”

“You object to our seeing your apartment, then?”

“No, I don’t, not really. However, I don’t think you have a good enough reason to ask. If you do have a good enough reason, then you can get a search warrant, can’t you?”

“It would certainly make us feel better about you if we had your cooperation, Mr. Van Fleet.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, Detective Barrington, I’m most anxious to help. I greatly admire Sasha, and I would do anything I could to help you resolve what happened to her. But I don’t really see how visiting my home would help you, and I think such a visit would be an unwarranted invasion of my privacy. Of course, a judge may feel differently, and, if so, I’ll be happy to cooperate.”

“I see,” Stone said. He was getting nowhere.

“Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

“Not at the moment, Mr. Van Fleet. I expect we’ll talk again.”

Van Fleet nodded. “Any time. My pleasure. But there’s something I think you should consider.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s quite true that I have a history of what some people would call annoying Sasha Nijinsky. But I’m sure you can tell from the letters I wrote her that I had only admiration for her, that, certainly, I had no reason to cause her harm.”

“We’ll take that into consideration in our inquiry,” Stone said.

“I hope you will, Detective Barrington, because, while I will help you in any way I feel I reasonably can, I do not intend to have my privacy unduly disturbed, nor do I wish to have my name splashed about in the tabloids, nor my professional reputation besmirched.”

“Well, we’ll leave you to your work, Mr. Van Fleet.”

“Call, if you think of anything else.”

“We will.”

The front of the funeral parlor was deserted when they passed back through.

“He’s dirty,” Dino said, when they were on the street again.

“I don’t know,” Stone replied. “He said pretty much what I’d have said in the circumstances, if I were innocent.”

“Maybe he’s not dirty on Nijinsky, but he’s dirty on something,” Dino said emphatically. “He’s a gold miner, for a start.”

“A what?”

“A gold miner. You’re so fucking naive, Stone, you really are. When we got there, he had just finished pulling that corpse’s gold teeth. He put ’em in the Coke can. Didn’t you hear it rattle? Why do you think he was sewing her mouth shut? Doesn’t want anybody poking around in there, that’s why.”

“Jesus Christ, Dino, how do you think of this stuff?”

“I got a suspicious nature, didn’t you know that?”

“I knew that.”

“I think when this Nijinsky thing is over, we want to take a closer look at fuckin’ Doc Van Fleet.”

“Let’s not wait until then,” Stone said.

They reached the car, and Dino looked at his watch. “You still want me to meet Barron Harkness’s plane?”

“Yeah. I wanted us to see Hiram Barker this afternoon, but seeing if Harkness is on that airplane is more important.”

“You go on and see Barker, and I’ll meet the plane.”

“It would be better if we both were there.”

“Fuck procedure. We got a lot to do, right? I’ll meet you at the TV studio at six forty-five, and we’ll do Harkness together.”

“Okay, you take the car, and I’ll get a cab.”

As Dino drove away and Stone looked for a cab, he drew deep breaths of fresh, polluted New York City air into his lungs. From now on he’d have different memories when he caught the scent of formaldehyde.

Chapter 7

Stone went to the Vanity Fair offices in midtown and, after a phone call was made, he was given Hiram Barker’s address. As he entered the lobby of United Nations Plaza, he remembered a line about the apartment house from an old movie: “If there is a god,” a character had said, “he probably lives in this building.” After another phone call, the deskman sent him up to a high floor.

“I can just imagine why you’re here,” Barker said as he opened the door.

He was larger than Stone had expected, in both height and weight, a little over six feet tall and broad at the