Stuart Woods: New York Dead

Stone hung up the car phone. “The company dispatcher says the wagon is going to Lenox Hill Hospital, but the driver hasn’t radioed in to confirm the delivery yet.”

“Seventy-seventh and Park,” Dino said, hanging a right.

Dino always drove as if he’d just stolen the car. Being Italian didn’t hurt either.

The two had been partners for nearly four years when Stone had got his knee shot up. It hadn’t even been their business, that call, but everybody responded to “officer needs assistance.” The officer had needed assistance half a minute before Stone and Dino arrived on the scene; the officer was dead, and the man who had shot him was trying to start his patrol car. He’d fired one wild shot before Dino killed him, and it had found its way unerringly to Stone’s knee. It had been nothing but a run-of-the-mill domestic disturbance, until the moment the officer had died and the bullet had changed Stone’s life.

Dino had won an automatic commendation for killing a perp who had killed a cop. Stone had won four hours in surgery and an extremely boring amount of physical therapy. He rubbed the knee. It didn’t feel so terrible now; maybe he hadn’t screwed it up as badly as he had thought.

They screeched to a halt at the emergency entrance to Lenox Hill, and Stone limped into the building after Dino.

“You’ve got a woman named Nijinsky here,” Dino said to the woman behind the desk, flashing his badge. “We need to see her now.”

“I didn’t get her name, but she’s in room number one, first door on your right. Dr. Holmes is with her.”

Dino led the way.

“I’d never have guessed her name was Nijinsky,” the woman said after them.

They found the room and a resident taping a bandage to a woman’s forehead. The woman was black.

“Dr. Holmes?” Stone said.

The young man turned.

“Yes?”

Stone limped into the room. “You’ve got another patient, a woman, here.”

“Nope, this is it,” Holmes said. “An uncommonly slow night.”

“You’re sure?” Stone asked, puzzled.

The doctor nodded at the black woman. “The only customer we’ve had for two hours,” he replied. He watched Stone shift his weight and wince. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I just banged my knee; no problem.”

“Let’s have a look.”

“Yeah,” said Dino, “let’s have a look.”

Stone pulled up his trouser leg.

Dino whistled. “Oh, that looks great, Stone.”

“Tell me about it,” the doctor said.

Stone gave him an abbreviated history.

The doctor went to a refrigerator, came back with a flat ice pack, and fastened it to Stone’s knee with an Ace bandage. Then he retrieved a small box of pills from a shelf. “Keep the ice on until you can’t stand it anymore, and take one of these pills now and every four hours after that. See your doctor in the morning.”

“What are the pills?” Stone asked.

“A nonsteroid, antiinflammatory agent. If you haven’t completely undone your surgery, the knee will feel better in the morning.”

Stone thanked him, and they left.

“What now?” Dino asked as they turned onto Lexington Avenue.

Stone was about to answer when they saw the flashing lights. At Seventy-fifth and Lexington there was a god-awful mess, lit by half a dozen flashing lights. “Pull over, Dino,” he said.

Dino pulled over. Stone got out and approached a uniformed officer. He pointed at a mass of twisted metal. “Was that smoking ruin once an ambulance?” he asked the cop.

“Yeah, and what used to be a fire truck hit it broadside.” He pointed at the truck, which was only moderately bent.

“What about the occupants?”

“On their way to Bellevue,” the cop said. “Seven from the fire truck, two or three from the ambulance.”

“Anybody left alive?”

“I just got here; you’ll have to check Bellevue.”

Stone thanked him and got back into the car.

“Is that the same ambulance?” Dino asked.

“It’s the same service.” Stone stuck a flashing light on the dashboard. “Stand on it, Fittipaldi.”

Fangio stood on it.

The emergency room at Bellevue was usually a zoo, but this was incredible. People were lying on carts everywhere, overflowing into the hallways, screaming, crying, while harried medical personnel moved among them, expediting the more serious cases.

“What the hell happened?” Dino asked a sweating nurse.

“Subway fire in the Twenty-third Street Station,” she replied, “not to mention half a dozen firemen and a couple of ambulance drivers. We caught it all.”

“There’s nobody at the desk,” Stone said. “How can we find out if somebody’s been admitted?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, wheeling a cart containing a screaming woman down the hallway. “Paperwork’s out the window.”

“Come on,” Stone said, “let’s start looking.”

Fifteen minutes later, they hadn’t found her. Dino was looking unwell.

“I gotta get outta here, Stone,” he said, mopping his brow. “I’m not cut out for this blood-and-guts stuff.”

“Wait a minute,” Stone said, pointing across the room at a man on a stretcher. “A white coat.”

They made their way across the room to the stretcher. The man’s eyes were closed, but he was conscious; he was holding a bloody handful of gauze to an ear.

“Are you an ambulance driver?” Stone asked. “The one the fire truck hit?”

The man nodded, then grimaced at the pain the motion brought.

“What happened to your patient?” Stone asked.

“I don’t know,” the man whimpered. “My partner’s dead; I don’t know what happened to her.”

Stone straightened up. “Then she’s got to be here,” he said.

“But she’s not,” Dino replied. “We’ve looked at every human being, alive or dead, in this place. She is definitely not here.”

They looked again, anyway, even though Dino wasn’t very happy about it. Dino was right. Sasha Nijinsky wasn’t there.

“Downstairs,” Stone said.

“Do we have to?”

“You sit this one out.”

Stone walked down to the basement and checked with the Bellevue morgue. There had been two admissions that evening, both of them from the subway fire, both men. Stone looked at them to be sure.

He trudged back up the stairs and went to the main admissions desk. “Have you admitted an emergency patient, a woman, named Nijinsky?” he asked. “Probably a private room.”

“We don’t have a private room available tonight,” the nurse said. “In fact, we don’t have a bed. If she came into the emergency room, she’s on a gurney in a hallway somewhere.”

Stone walked the halls on the way back to the ER, where he found Dino in conversation with a pretty nurse. “Say good night, Dino,” Stone said.

“Good night, Dino,” Dino replied, doing a perfect Dick Martin.

The nurse laughed.

“She’s not here,” Stone said.

“So, now what?”

“The city morgue,” Stone said.

Compared with Bellevue, the city morgue, just up the street, was an island of serenity.

“Female Caucasian, name of Nijinsky,” Dino told the night man. “You got one of those?”

The man consulted a logbook. “Nope.”

“You got a Caucasian Jane Doe?”

“I got three of them,” the man replied. He pointed. “They’re still on tables.”

Stone walked into the large autopsy room, the sound of his heels echoing off the tile walls. “Let’s look,” he said.

The first was at least seventy and very dirty.

“Bag lady,” the attendant said.

The second was no older than fifteen, wearing a black leather microskirt.

“ Times Square hooker, picked up the wrong trick.”