“No, I don’t, not really. However, I don’t think you have a good enough reason to ask. If you do have a good enough reason, then you can get a search warrant, can’t you?”

“It would certainly make us feel better about you if we had your cooperation, Mr. Van Fleet.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, Detective Barrington, I’m most anxious to help. I greatly admire Sasha, and I would do anything I could to help you resolve what happened to her. But I don’t really see how visiting my home would help you, and I think such a visit would be an unwarranted invasion of my privacy. Of course, a judge may feel differently, and, if so, I’ll be happy to cooperate.”

“I see,” Stone said. He was getting nowhere.

“Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

“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.