“Not at the moment, Mr. Van Fleet. I expect we’ll talk again.”
Van Fleet nodded. “Any time. My pleasure. But there’s something I think you should consider.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s quite true that I have a history of what some people would call annoying Sasha Nijinsky. But I’m sure you can tell from the letters I wrote her that I had only admiration for her, that, certainly, I had no reason to cause her harm.”
“We’ll take that into consideration in our inquiry,” Stone said.
“I hope you will, Detective Barrington, because, while I will help you in any way I feel I reasonably can, I do not intend to have my privacy unduly disturbed, nor do I wish to have my name splashed about in the tabloids, nor my professional reputation besmirched.”
“Well, we’ll leave you to your work, Mr. Van Fleet.”
“Call, if you think of anything else.”
“We will.”
The front of the funeral parlor was deserted when they passed back through.
“He’s dirty,” Dino said, when they were on the street again.
“I don’t know,” Stone replied. “He said pretty much what I’d have said in the circumstances, if I were innocent.”
“Maybe he’s not dirty on Nijinsky, but he’s dirty on something,” Dino said emphatically. “He’s a gold miner, for a start.”
“A what?”
“A gold miner. You’re so fucking naive, Stone, you really are. When we got there, he had just finished pulling that corpse’s gold teeth. He put ’em in the Coke can. Didn’t you hear it rattle? Why do you think he was sewing her mouth shut? Doesn’t want anybody poking around in there, that’s why.”
“Jesus Christ, Dino, how do you think of this stuff?”
“I got a suspicious nature, didn’t you know that?”
“I knew that.”
“I think when this Nijinsky thing is over, we want to take a closer look at fuckin’ Doc Van Fleet.”
“Let’s not wait until then,” Stone said.
They reached the car, and Dino looked at his watch. “You still want me to meet Barron Harkness’s plane?”
“Yeah. I wanted us to see Hiram Barker this afternoon, but seeing if Harkness is on that airplane is more important.”
“You go on and see Barker, and I’ll meet the plane.”
“It would be better if we both were there.”
“Fuck procedure. We got a lot to do, right? I’ll meet you at the TV studio at six forty-five, and we’ll do Harkness together.”
“Okay, you take the car, and I’ll get a cab.”
As Dino drove away and Stone looked for a cab, he drew deep breaths of fresh, polluted New York City air into his lungs. From now on he’d have different memories when he caught the scent of formaldehyde.
Chapter 7
Stone went to the Vanity Fair offices in midtown and, after a phone call was made, he was given Hiram Barker’s address. As he entered the lobby of United Nations Plaza, he remembered a line about the apartment house from an old movie: “If there is a god,” a character had said, “he probably lives in this building.” After another phone call, the deskman sent him up to a high floor.
“I can just imagine why you’re here,” Barker said as he opened the door.