“Leary. How’s the soft life, Barrington?”
“Let me speak to him.”
“He’s in the can. I just saw him go in there with a Hustler, so he’ll be awhile.”
“Tell him I’ve stumbled onto a possible homicide. Lady took a twelve-story dive. I’m in her apartment now.” He gave the address. “An ambulance is already here, but we’ll need a team to work the scene. Rumble whoever’s on call. Bacchetti and I will take the case.”
“But you’re on limited duty.”
“Not anymore. Tell Leary to get moving.”
“I’ll tell him when he comes out.”
“I wouldn’t wait.” He hung up. He had not mentioned the victim’s name; that would get them here in too much of a hurry. He heard the elevator doors open.
“Stone?” Bacchetti called from outside the door.
“It’s open. Careful about prints.”
Dino Bacchetti entered the room as he might a fashionable restaurant. He was dressed to kill, in a silk Italian suit with what Stone liked to think of as melting lapels. “So?” he asked, looking around, trying to sound bored.
“Sasha Nijinsky went thataway,” Stone said, pointing to the terrace.
“No shit?” Dino said, no longer bored. “That explains the crowd on the sidewalk.”
“Yeah. I was passing, on my way home.”
Dino walked over and clapped his hands onto Stone’s cheeks. “I got the luckiest partner on the force,” he said, beaming.
Stone ducked before Dino could kiss him. “Not so lucky. I chased the probable perp down the stairs and blew it on the last landing. He walked.”
“A right-away bust would have been too good to be true,” Dino said. “Now we get to track the fucker down. Much, much better.” He rubbed his hands together. “Whatta we got here?”
“She was moving to a new apartment tomorrow,” Stone said. He beckoned Dino to the table and opened the diary with the pen.
“Not in the best of moods, was she?” Dino said, reading. “Skydiving without a parachute. The papers are going to love that.”
“Yeah, they’re going to love the whole thing.”
Dino looked up. “Maybe she jumped,” he said. “Who’s to say she was pushed?”
“Then who went pounding down the stairs at the moment I arrived on the scene?” Stone asked. “The moving men?”
“No sign of a struggle,” Dino observed.
“In a room full of cardboard boxes, who can say?”
“No glasses out for a guest, if What’s-his-name did show.”
“The liquor’s packed, like everything else. I’ve had a look around, I didn’t see any. She didn’t sound in any mood to offer him a drink, anyway.” Stone sighed. “Come on, let’s go over the place before the Keystone Kops get here.”
“Yeah, Leary’s got the watch,” Dino said.
The two men combed the apartment from one end to the other. Stone used a penlight to search the corners of the terrace.
“Nothing,” Dino said, when they were through.
“Maybe everything,” Stone said. “We’ve got the diary, her address book, and a stack of change-of-address cards, already addressed. Those are the important people, I reckon. I’ll bet the perp is in that stack.” He took out his notebook and began jotting down names and addresses. Apart from the department stores and credit card companies, there were fewer than a dozen. Had she had so few friends, or had she just not gotten through the list before she died? He looked over the names: alphabetical. She had made it through the W’s.