by Stuart Woods
“You did a fine job for us, and I’m sorry the result had to cause you pain.”
“Thank you, Frank.”
“Enough said about that. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you have the effects of Sasha Nijinsky that the NYPD took.”
“They sent them back to me a couple of weeks ago. After going through them myself, I sent them to Sasha’s father.”
“I see.”
“Why? Did you want to see them again?”
“Yes, I wanted to get a look at her handwriting again.”
“Why?”
Stone handed Woodman a copy of the letter.
Woodman read it through twice, and his expression revealed nothing. “What do you make of this?” he asked at last.
“I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. A friend of mine at the 19th Precinct is getting it looked at by the lab, but I wanted to compare the handwriting to something of Sasha’s.”
“That’s no problem,” Woodman said, rising and going to a file cabinet. “Sasha didn’t type. She told me once that she refused to learn, so that she wouldn’t get shunted aside into ‘woman’s’ work.” He flipped through a folder, extracted a letter, and handed it to Stone. “She did all her correspondence by hand.”
Stone laid the two letters side by side on the desk, and both men bent over them. Woodman produced a magnifying glass, and they examined them closely.
“They’re a lot alike, I’d say, but the one sent to you looks a little cramped,” Woodman said.
“The lines are not as straight, either,” Stone added.
“This is over my head,” Woodman said, picking up the phone. “Sophie, please find the name of that handwriting man we used on the mineral rights case last year, then see if you can get him over here right away.” He hung up. “When did you get this, Stone? It’s not dated.”
“Friday. It was posted the day before at Penn Station.”
“It must be some kind of crank who read your name in the papers as being associated with the case.”
“That seems more than just possible. Still, there’s the handwriting.”
“I suppose someone who knew Sasha might have had a letter of hers and used that to make a forgery.”
“But why?”
“Maybe someone who isn’t satisfied with the outcome of the case. A lot of people aren’t; I’m one of them. Maybe someone’s just trying to get you interested again.”
“The letter certainly had that effect,” Stone said.
The phone rang, and Woodman picked it up. “Good,” he said, then hung up. “Man’s name is Weaver. His office is only a couple of blocks away; he’s coming over.” Woodman looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Stone, I get the impression that you are at least considering the possibility that Sasha might still be alive. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Stone replied. “I think it’s just possible.” He explained the circumstances of Sasha’s fall and his terminal velocity theory.
“Jesus Christ,” Woodman said.
Weaver was a tall, thin man in his sixties. He looked at both letters carefully. Woodman had folded the letters so that the signatures did not show. “This is a Xerox copy, I presume,” he said, holding up Stone’s letter.
“Yes, I don’t have the original at the moment.”
“I’d like to see it, but it probably wouldn’t make much difference in my opinion.”
“What is your opinion, Mr. Weaver?” Woodman asked.
“I’d say there’s about an eighty percent chance that the same person wrote both letters.”
“Why can’t you be sure?” Stone asked.
“Well, the similarity in the shaping of the letters is pro-found, but there’s anomaly that could mean it’s a forgery. You see, here, the spacing in the more recent letter is closer; it has a cramped quality. Its lines aren’t as straight, either.”
“We noticed that,” Woodman said. “Could there be some other reason than forgery for the difference between the two letters?”
“Well, yes. The recent letter doesn’t have quite the vitality of style that the earlier one exhibits. That’s a common trait of forgeries, but it often turns up, too, when the writer is ill or injured or is convalescing.” Weaver held his right elbow close to his side and demonstrated. “A person who is weakened or in pain would characteristically hold his arm in like this, restricting the movement of his hand. This would especially be true in the event of injury – say, a broken arm or ribs. That could quite easily account for the cramped nature of the second letter.”
Stone and Woodman exchanged a look. Woodman raised his eyebrows.
Weaver continued. “In my experience, this characteristic of what you might call the ‘wounded writer’ would be more evident in the writing of a woman, but both these letters were, of course, written by a man.”
“By a man?” Stone asked, incredulously.
“In my opinion, yes; definitely,” Weaver replied.
“Anything else you can tell us?” Woodman asked.
“That’s about it, I think, though I would like to see the original of the second letter.”
Woodman escorted the man to the door. “Thank you, Mr. Weaver, and please send me your bill.” Woodman came back to his desk and sat down. “This is the goddamndest thing I ever heard,” he said.
“Frank, are you certain that Sasha, herself, wrote you this letter?”
Woodman went back to his file and extracted a small sheet of paper. “I watched her write this,” he said. “She was sitting where you are now.”
Stone picked up the paper. It was the address and phone number of Sasha’s new, Fifth Avenue apartment. He compared the note with the first letter, then the second. “The handwriting seems identical to me,” he said, handing Woodman the papers.
“Me, too,” Woodman said, poring over them.
“Now, why would Weaver think the writer was a man?”
“Well,” said Woodman, “for a lady, Sasha always had incredible balls.”
At home, Stone built a fire in the study, poured himself a drink, and stretched out on the leather sofa before the fireplace. He sipped the drink and cast his mind back over the events surrounding Sasha Nijinsky’s dive from the terrace, letting them run though his mind without hindrance, comparing one event with another, listening to fragments of conversation from people he had interviewed. Something nagged at him, something he should be remembering. The phone rang.
He reached out to the extension on the coffee table. “Hello?” he said.
“Hello.”
Stone tightened his grip on the phone. Images flew before his eyes – a breast, a wrist. He felt her body against his, her hair in his face, her legs locked around him, her mouth on his penis.
“I want to see you,” she said.
Stone wanted to speak, but his throat tightened.
“I want to see you tonight,” she said.
He made a huge effort to control himself, to make his voice work, to tamp down the rage and hurt inside him. It didn’t work. He hung up the phone.
He lay on the sofa through what should have been dinner, until past midnight, waiting for a knock on the door or another call. Neither came.
Chapter 42
Dino Bacchetti and Mary Ann Bianchi were married at San Gennaro’s Church in Little Italy on Sunday. Stone had never worn a tuxedo at two o’clock in the afternoon, but he stood as best man for Dino, and he was impressed with the elaborate and somber Roman Catholic ceremony. Dino kissed his bride, and the wedding party began moving back down the aisle, the happy couple leading the bridesmaids and groomsmen.
Near the back of the church, Stone glanced to his right and stopped in his tracks. Cary Hilliard was sitting in the back pew, bundled in a mink coat. Somebody behind Stone stepped on his heels, and he moved on with the wedding party. Stone was trapped on the front steps of the church as the party posed for photographs, then the group was bundled into limousines and driven to a restaurant for the reception, so he did not see
what became of Cary.
The restaurant was not large, and two hundred happy people were crammed into it, singing, dancing, and generally raising hell. The only non-Italians, besides Stone, were the Irish, Puerto Rican, and black cops who worked with or for Dino. Stone kissed the bride and was surprised at the enthusiasm with which she responded.
He shook Dino’s hand. “Well, you did it,” he said, laughing.
Dino looked supremely happy. “You goddamned right I did, paisan.”
“Speaking of paisans,” Stone said, nodding at a group of severe-looking people across the room, “who’s that?”
“That’s Mary Ann’s people,” Dino replied. “Her old man’s a capo in the Bonanno family. Well respected.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Why do they look so… unhappy?”
“Because their most beautiful daughter got knocked up by a cop, that’s why. The old man’s really pissed off. If I wasn’t Italian, I’d be at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay with a concrete block stuck up my ass.”
“Dino, you better be very, very good to that girl,” Stone said gravely.
“Don’t worry.” Dino took an envelope from his inside pocket. “Here’s your report on the letter,” he said. “I don’t want to hear about it again, okay?”
Stone put the envelope in his pocket. “Okay.”
“Guess who sent us a real nice piece of silver?” Dino said.
“Who?”
Dino nodded. “The very beautiful lady over there,” he said.
Stone followed Dino’s gaze and found Cary standing on the opposite side of the dance floor.
“See you later, pal,” Dino said, and vanished.
Stone stood and watched her make her way across the dance floor toward him. Under the mink coat, she was wearing a very short silk dress that made her legs seem longer than he remembered. Stone’s mouth went dry.
She took his hand and led him onto the floor; the band was playing something romantic and Italian; he followed her dumbly. They began to move together; she laid her head on his shoulder and kissed him on the neck.
“God, but I’ve missed you,” she said.
Stone was unable to say anything; he put his hand inside the coat and pulled her to him. The familiarity of those curves pressed against his body made him light-headed, and he lost himself in the music and the feel of her. Her cool hand was on the back of his neck, her fingers in his hair, her tongue played at his ear. The music continued – a medley – and she seemed to become more and more a part of him. Suddenly, she stopped dancing.
“Come with me,” she said, tugging at his hand.
He followed her across the dance floor, through the crowd, along a wall to a door. She opened it, looked in, then pulled him inside with her. They were in a small office – only a desk, a chair, and an old sofa. She closed the door and locked it.
“Where have you-”
“Shhhh,” she whispered, throwing the mink coat onto the sofa and snaking an arm around his neck. “Don’t say anything.” She was unzipping his trousers; in a moment, she had him in her hand.
After that, things happened effortlessly. They were on the sofa, on the luxurious coat, his trousers around his knees, her legs around him. She wasn’t wearing underwear. They both gave themselves to the moment, made it last, then came with a roar of blood in the ears, her cries mixing with the music, loud through the thin walls.
They lay limp in each other’s arms for a few minutes, then Cary found a toilet off the office, and Stone tried to make himself presentable again. She was a long time in the john, and, when she came out, Stone was reading the lab report.
“What’s that?” she asked, putting a hand at the back of his neck and reading over his shoulder.
Stone handed her the letter without comment.
She read it, and her eyes went wide. “Sasha’s alive?” she asked, stunned.
“It would seem so,” Stone said, reading the report. “An expert says it’s almost certainly her handwriting, and her fingerprints are on the letter.” He read on. “They were very clear, because she had olive oil on her fingers – extra virgin olive oil, according to this.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” she said, incredulously.
“No, it doesn’t,” he replied. “Nevertheless…”
She walked over to the sofa and retrieved her coat, seemingly lost in thought. “That means she’s going to be able to identify whoever pushed her off that balcony, doesn’t it?”
“I hope so. I wonder why she hasn’t done it already.”
Cary slipped into her coat and walked to the door, unlocking it.
“You’re leaving? When can I see you?”
“I’ll call you,” she said. “I’ve left my job, and I’m staying with a friend. Don’t worry, we’ll see each other. You’ll see me sooner than you think. Pay no attention to what you hear.”
“What am I going to hear?” he asked.
She ignored his question; her brow was furrowed. “There’s something I never told you,” she said. “I should have told you a long time ago.” She seemed to be wrestling with whether to tell him now.
“What is it?”
She looked at the floor. “Barron wasn’t on that airplane from Rome.”
Stone stared at her. “But Dino saw him…”
She looked up at him, then slipped through the door. “Dino didn’t do his job,” she said, then closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in the room.
Stone went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face, his mind racing. Then he rejoined the crowd and found Dino, who was making his way out of the party with Mary Ann. He could see the car outside, festooned with tin cans and old shoes.
“Dino, when you went to the airport to meet Barron Hark-ness’s plane, did you actually see him get off?”
“Stone, c’mon, okay?” He kissed an old lady on the lips.
Stone managed to stay alongside him. “You didn’t actually see him, did you?”
“I checked the manifest, all right? Hey, Cheech, how you doin’?”
Stone bodily prevented a fat woman from squeezing between them. “Dino, you didn’t see him.”
“Stone, I’m leaving on my honeymoon; gimme a major fucking break, will you?”
Stone stopped moving, and the crowd surged past him. He watched Dino carried along by the crowd to the car, then he was driving away, waving.
Chapter 43
Late in the evening, as Stone was drifting off to sleep, the telephone rang. He fumbled for it. “Hello?”
“Mr. Barrington?” The voice was vaguely familiar.
“Yes?”
“This is Herbert Van Fleet.”
Stone looked at the clock. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “What is it?”
“I know I must have awakened you. I’m very sorry.”
“What do you want, Mr. Van Fleet?”
“I want to retain you.”
“Retain me?”
“I understand that you are practicing law now.”
“Yes, that’s right, but why do we need to talk about this at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night? Can you call my office number tomorrow morning?”
“I’m afraid it’s more urgent than that. I’ve been arrested.”
Stone sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What were you arrested for, Mr. Van Fleet?”
“Please call me Herb.”
Annoyed. “What were you arrested for, Herb?”
“They’re calling it attempted rape. They want to arraign me in a couple of hours, in night court.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m in a place called the Tombs. They let me make this one call.”
“You’re going to need to raise bail, Herb. Can you lay your hands on some money?”
“How much money?”
“I should think that, with no previous arrests, the judge might want as much as twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, or you can
put up ten percent and some property to a bail bondsman. You won’t get the ten percent back.”
“I’ve got about forty thousand dollars in a money market account,” Van Fleet said.
“That should do it,” Stone said. “All right, Herb, I’ll represent you at the arraignment. My fee for that will be a thousand dollars. If you want me to represent you after that, we can talk about a further retainer.”
“All right, that’s acceptable.”
“I’ll meet you at night court.” Stone hung up, oddly elated. Herbert Van Fleet was a strange person, but this was the first time somebody had asked Stone to represent him, his first client outside Woodman amp; Weld. It promised to be a fairly lucrative representation too. He began to get dressed.
Night court was a zoo. Every prostitute, vagrant, and petty criminal arrested during the past few hours would be arraigned there, and the crowd was colorful and noisy. From the back of the huge courtroom, Stone could barely hear the judge, who was shouting.
Stone counted. Standing before the bench, looking at the floor and shifting their weight from one foot to the other, were twenty-four Chinese men, all neatly dressed in business suits. He took a seat down front and listened, curious. The men had been gambling in the basement of a restaurant in Chinatown, only a few blocks away, and an old lady next door had turned them in. Their Anglo lawyer, in unctuous tones, was explaining to the somewhat amused judge that his clients were all respected members of the community, businessmen out for an evening of diversion. They were not criminals, not really, and were very sorry to have disturbed the old woman’s sleep. The judge released the men on their own recognizance.
Stone got up, introduced himself to the bailiff at the door to the holding cells, and, shortly, Herbert Van Fleet appeared, in handcuffs. Stone sat him down in one of the little rooms set aside for consultation with attorneys. “All right, Herb, tell me exactly what happened.”
Van Fleet sighed. “I was at the Tribeca Grill, having a drink, and I got to talking to this girl. I offered her a ride home – she said she lived in the West Village – and, on the way, we were getting sort of friendly, and-”
