Stone picked up the paper and opened it. “A source in the New York City Police Department confirmed last night that, since her fall from the terrace of her East Side penthouse apartment, Sasha Nijinsky has been missing, and no one knows if she is alive or dead.” He didn’t read the rest. Somebody, probably somebody in this room, was talking to a reporter.

“You did the right thing, Mr. Duncan,” Stone said. “Now the car number was twenty-one, the time was about six thirty, you said?”

“That’s right, just about exactly six thirty. That was the time I had ordered the car for.”

“And the name of the car service?”

“Minute Man. I use them all the time.”

Stone held out his hand. “Thank you very much for this information, Mr. Duncan,” he said. “You may be sure that we’ll check this out thoroughly.”

Dismissed, Duncan retrieved his trench coat from Dino’s desk and made his way out of the room, giving the leering black man a wide berth.

“Cat’s out of the bag, huh?” Stone said to Dino.

“I think a more appropriate description of the situation is that the shit has hit the fan,” Dino said. “Leary wants to see us.”

“At least we’ve got some sort of lead,” Stone said. “Let’s call Minute Man first.”

After a long wait for the information, Stone was told that a Minute Man car had picked up a Ms. Balfour at the Algonquin Hotel at six thirty and had delivered her to an East Sixty-third Street address. Stone scribbled it down. “The Algonquin is right down the block from the Harvard Club; the car must have been stopped in traffic when Duncan mistook it for his.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dino said.

Armed with their new information, the two detectives faced Leary, who was an unhappy man. “I hope to God this is no fuckin’ wild-goose chase,” he said, when he had heard their story. “The chief of detectives has already been on the phone this morning, and I’m expecting a call from the mayor any minute.”

As if on cue, the phone rang. Leary put his hand on it. “Get out of here and run down that lead,” he said. “I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

Stone and Dino sat in their car outside the address, an elegant town house on East Sixty-third Street.

“I’m scared,” Dino said.

“I know how you feel,” Stone replied.

“You know how much we need this to be something, don’t you? I’d like to get a shot at the balls of the guy who leaked to the papers. I’d cut’em off and make him eat’em.”

“I’d hold him down while you did it,” Stone said. “All right, let’s go.”

They trudged up the front steps and rang the bell, then watched through iron grillwork as a uniformed maid approached the door.