Stuart Woods - New York Dead

“ Houston Street and the river,” Stone said, and leaned his head back against the seat. Heavy raindrops began pounding against the windows. If he had been off women for a while, Stone reflected, he had been off booze, too, and the double shot of 101-proof bourbon had made itself felt. He dozed.

Stone was jerked awake by the short stop of the cab. He fumbled for some money, gave the cabbie five dollars, and struggled out of the cab. It was pouring rain now, and he got across the street as quickly as he could with his sore knee. A uniformed security guard sat at a desk, and Stone gave him Cary Hilliard’s name. Before the man could dial the number, an elevator door opened, and a young woman walked out.

“Detective Barrington?” she asked, offering a hand.

“That’s right,” Stone replied, thinking how long and cool her fingers were. All of her, in fact, was long and cool. She was nearly six feet tall, he reckoned, slim but not thin, dressed in a black cashmere sweater that did not conceal full breasts and a houndstooth skirt that ended below the knee.

“I’m Cary Hilliard,” she said. “Come on, let’s go up to the studio. Barron will be on the air in a few minutes, and we can watch from the control room.” They turned toward the elevator. “By the way, a Detective Bacchetti called and left a message for you. He said, and I quote, ‘Your man was where he was supposed to be’ and ‘Tell Detective Barrington that I’ve been detained, and I’ll see him tomorrow.’”

“Thank you.” Detained, my ass, Stone thought. Detained by some stewardess, maybe.

She led him upstairs and through a heavy door. A dozen people worked in a room that held at least twenty-five television monitors and thousands of knobs and switches. “We can sit here,” she said, showing him to a comfortable chair on a tier above the control console.

The whole of the top row of monitors displayed the face, in close-up, of Barron Harkness, “the idol of the airlanes,” someone had called him, stealing Jan Garber’s sobriquet. Tissue paper was tucked into his collar, and a 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?”