She had perched on an arm of the big leather sofa. She undid her robes, and they fell aside to reveal a bright red dress that went particularly well with her blonde hair. She crossed her legs.

They look awfully good, he thought. Something stirred in him for the first time in a long while.

“I read about the Nijinsky case, of course,” she said. “I believe you discovered Ms. Nijinsky in a thoroughly dead condition.”

“That’s right, Judge. She was what a friend of mine calls ‘New York Dead.’”

“In that case, I will remind you of our wager of some time past,” O’Neal said, uncrossing her legs and recrossing them in the other direction.

He had forgotten.

“You, sir, owe me a dinner,” she said.

Stone smiled. “Yes, Your Honor,” he replied.

Acknowledgments

The Public Affairs Department of the New York City Police Department was not helpful in the research for this book. Individual officers were, however, and I would particularly like to thank Detective Jerry Giorgio of the 34th Squad Homicide Team for some enlightening conversations.

I thank Elaine Kaufman for keeping the home fires burning on Second Avenue and for running a place where a writer can get a decent table.

I am grateful to my editor, Ed Breslin, my London publisher, Eddie Bell, and all their colleagues at HarperCollins for their appreciation of this book and their hard work on its behalf.

Once again, I want to extend my gratitude to my agent, Morton Janklow, his associate, Anne Sibbald, and all the people at Janklow & Nesbit for their continuing care and concern for my career.

Stone Barrington: The First Five

New York Dead; Dirt; Dead in the Water; Swimming to Catalina; Worst Fears Realized

New York Dead

Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he’s too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out.

Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper, and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country’s hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.

No matter where he turns, the case is waiting for him, haunting his nights and turning his days into a living hell. Stone finds himself caught in a perilous web of unspeakable crimes, dangerous friends, and sexual depravity that has throughout it one common thread: Sasha.

“Hollywood-slick and fast-moving”
—Los Angeles Daily News

“Suspenseful and surprising”
—Atlanta Constitution

Dirt

Feared and disliked both for her poison pen and for her ice-queen persona, gossip columnist Amanda Dart finds the tables have turned. When an anonymous gossipmonger begins faxing the scathing details of Amanda’s sexual indiscretions to national opinion makers, she turns to Stone Barrington—ex-cop, fulltime lawyer, and sometime investigator—for help.