New York Dead (Stone Barrington 1)

“That’s it,” Dino said soothingly, “let it all come out; you’re going to feel a lot better when you tell me about it.”

Morgan continued to nod but said nothing.

“Look, Hank, tell me about it, and I guarantee you won’t do any time. You had a tussle, and Sasha fell; no judge is going to send you to prison.”

At the word prison, Morgan’s body jerked convulsively. “I don’t want to go to prison,” she said.

Stone stared at her. The woman was starting to come apart; in another minute she would plead to the Kennedy assassination, if Dino wanted her to.

“I won’t let them send you to prison,” Dino said, “if you’ll just tell me the truth, tell me what happened. It was Sasha’s fault, wasn’t it?”

Morgan broke down now. The sobbing shook her body, and she made a terrible keening noise. She grabbed hold of Dino’s forearm. “I’ll say anything you want,” she wailed, “just don’t send me to prison.”

“All right,” Dino said, “I’m going to tell you what it was like, and we’re going to write it down.” He handed her a pen and shoved a legal pad in front of her.

Stone began to feel ill. He wanted to pick up a chair and throw it through the mirror. Then the door to the interrogation room opened, and Lieutenant Leary walked in, accompanied by Carlton Palmer.

“That will be quite enough of this!” Palmer shouted, going to Morgan’s side and putting an arm around her. “You’ve got a lot of nerve pulling this sort of stunt!” he yelled at Dino. “I’ll have your badge before I’m done.”

“Aw, go fuck yourself, Counselor,” Dino said, and walked out of the room, slamming the door.

Stone found him pacing up and down alongside his desk in the squad room.

“Two more minutes!” Dino said, slamming his fist into his palm. “Two more fucking minutes, and I’d have had her!”

“Come on, Dino,” Stone said. “It would never have stood up; you know that. She’d have recanted on the stand, and the jury would have believed her.”

“I’ve still got her for the gun, though,” Dino said. “I’ll nail her for that. I won’t let the DA deal on it either. I’ll send her up for it.”

“Dino, stop it. You’re dreaming. You can’t even convince me she had anything to do with Nijinsky, so how is the DA going to convince a grand jury, let alone get a conviction? The woman had nothing to do with it.” A hard voice behind him caused Stone to spin around.

“Horseshit,” Leary said. “You better get with the program, Barrington, or the world’s gonna fall on you.”

“You mean Deputy Commissioner Waldron?”

“And the chief of detectives, and the district attorney, and me, and the whole world. We’ve got a chance for a good bust on this one, after you’ve fucked around getting nowhere all this time, and you’d better not get in the way of it.”

Stone felt anger rush through him. “That woman had nothing to do with Nijinsky’s fall, and you’re not going to prove she did. If I thought you could make a jury believe it, I’d testify for the defense myself.”

“If you pull something like that,” Leary said, his voice low and cold, “I’ll take you out in the alley and shoot you myself.” The lieutenant turned and walked away.

Stone turned to Dino. “What about you? Is that how you feel?”

“I’ll hold you while he pulls the trigger,” Dino said, his voice shaking.

Chapter 26

As Stone trudged up the front steps of the Turtle Bay house, his downstairs tenant, dressed in a white nylon coat, came out of the professional suite and caught up with him.

“Mr. Barrington?”

“Hello, Dr. Feldstein,” Stone said.

Feldstein was a short, stocky, pink-faced man in his late sixties. Stone had always liked him, not least because he had overlooked chronic problems with the downstairs plumbing in return for a reasonable rent. Feldstein thrust an envelope at Stone.

“What?

??s this?”