New York Dead

Sasha Nijinsky is dead, and even the police have not tried to link Morgan to her disappearance. It looks to this observer that the best the cops can hope for is an indictment for attempted murder, and one wonders how they could get a conviction on even that charge without producing either Nijinsky or her dead body.
    It was starting now. The groundwork was being laid for a failure to convict Hank Morgan of anything, the implication being that, even though the police couldn’t get enough evidence against her, they knew she was the guilty party. They had solved the crime, and that would get the department off the hook; never mind that Morgan, supposedly innocent until proven guilty, would be branded as a murderer and would live the rest of her life under a cloud.
    For the first time, he felt glad to be out of the department. He looked at the photograph of Hank Morgan leaving the court with her attorney, mobbed by photographers and reporters, their lips curled back, screaming their questions. The woman looked terrified, even worse than she had looked in the interrogation room. There was the real victim in all this; Sasha herself had become a secondary figure to the newspapers and television news programs.
    Stone forced himself to jog home, and he arrived thoroughly winded.
    The answering machine was blinking; he pushed the button.
    “Hello, there Det… uh, Mr. Barrington. This is Herbert Van Fleet. I was very sorry to read in the newspapers about your retirement from the police force. I hope my mother’s letters to the mayor didn’t have anything to do with this. She has been a big contributor to his campaigns, you know, and she’s known him for years. I don’t guess I’ll be seeing you in the line of duty anymore — the FBI seems to have taken over, anyway. Can I buy you lunch sometime? You can always get me at the funeral parlor.” He chuckled. “I guess you have the number.” Stone gave a little shudder at the thought of having lunch with Herbert Van Fleet.
    There was a message from Cary, too. “Sorry I couldn’t get over. We worked past midnight, and I was exhausted. I wouldn’t have been any good to you. It’s all over on Friday, though, and I promise to be fresh and ready for anything on Saturday night. I’ll have a car; pick you up at eight?” There was one more message. “Stone, it’s Bill Eggers, your old law school buddy, of Woodman & Weld? I heard about your departure from the cop shop. I’m in LA right now on a case, but I’ll be back in the office on Monday. Let me buy you dinner next week? I want to talk about something that might interest you. I’ll call you Monday.”
    Stone spent the rest of the week working furiously on the house, making remarkable progress, now that he had the time. There were five coats of varnish on the bookshelves by the weekend, and they were looking good. He got all the floors sanded with rented equipment and got the tile floor laid in the kitchen. A few weeks more, and the place would start to look like home. A bill came from the upholsterer that put a serious dent in his bank account, and he remembered the letter from his banker and the note, which would be due soon. He tried to put money out of his mind. It didn’t work.
    Dino didn’t call.

Chapter
29

    On Saturday night, Cary turned up not in just a black car but in a limousine. Stone was waiting at the curb, and he slid into the backseat laughing.
    He gave the driver the address and turned to Cary. “Are you sure the network can afford this?”
    She raised the black window that separated them from the driver and slid close to him. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been putting in so much overtime, they owe me.” She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.
    “There goes the lipstick,” he said.
    “Fuck the lipstick.” She kissed him again and ran her hand up his thigh to the crotch. “Fuck me, too.”
    “In a limousine?”
    “Why not? The driver can’t see anything.”
    “We’ll be at Barker’s building in three minutes.”
    “That’s just time enough,” she said, unzipping his fly.
    Before Stone could move he was in her mouth.
    She was very good, and he was very fast; by the time the chauffeur opened the door, Stone had already adjusted his clothing, and Cary had reapplied her lipstick.
    “You’re amazing,” Stone whispered as they entered the building. He was trying to bring his breathing back to normal.
    “It was the least I could do,” she said, “after I abandoned you