The Big Killing (7 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Crime Fiction
Wetzon brought the attaché case into the living room and set it down near the large black marble slab of a coffee table. And there were Smith’s Tarot cards spread on the table as if she had just put them down. Great. Silvestri would think she and Smith were flakes.
It was yet another similarity between show business and the brokerage business. Everyone had an astrologer, a personal psychic, a card reader, a numerologist, and was always trying out a new one. A very straight, enormously successful stockbroker had once told Wetzon in total seriousness that he only bought stock that he had checked first with Miranda.
“Miranda?” she had the temerity to ask.
“My psychic,” he had replied.
“I’m making a pot of coffee,” Smith called from the kitchen.
Wetzon padded back into the bedroom to put on her shoes. She looked at herself in the mirror over Smith’s bureau. She was a mess. Haggard. Her hair was coming down. Where had they put her hairpin? She found it on the carpet where they had opened the case, and tried to catch up the loose tendrils of hair.
The doorbell rang again, more emphatically, and since Smith was ignoring it, Wetzon went to the door, smoothing her blouse, straightening her skirt. Her suit jacket lay where she had thrown it when she came in—in the disorder of Smith’s bed.
“Now what was so important, Ms. Wetzon?” Silvestri asked when she opened the door. He had his hands in his pockets and he looked tired. The shadow of a dark beard harshened his face. His eyes were flat and dark. Impersonal. Was he annoyed with her for bothering him?
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Wetzon said. “I didn’t expect you so soon, and I wasn’t dressed. And I’m sorry to make you come up here like this.” She was babbling, but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m sure you’ve had a long day, but I didn’t feel comfortable about letting this wait. It’s in here.” She was trying to be professional and brusque, as much as he was.
She led him into the living room, which was not in Smith’s normally disordered condition. Well, not quite. There were a pair of Reeboks near the sofa and the usual profusion of magazines—
Forbes,
Vogue
,
Fortune,
People
,
New York
, and
Cosmopolitan
—piled up on the Berber-carpeted floor. Smith’s taste in magazines was decidedly eclectic.
The sofa was one of those sweeping L-shaped sectionals covered in a fawn-colored textured velvet.
Silvestri waited expectantly, looking around. The lovely odor of coffee filled the room. His nostrils flickered.
“It’s the attaché case,” Wetzon said.
“What about it?” he asked.
Smith came sweeping into the room with a tray of coffee and fixings and set it on the marble table. “You must be Detective Silvestri,” she said, giving him the royal treatment. “I’m Xenia Smith.” She shook his hand. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
Silvestri was clearly dazzled. He stared at her, still holding her hand. She smiled at him and at her hand. He smiled back at her and gave her hand a little pat with his other hand and then released it. He had not smiled at Wetzon that way.
He looked at Wetzon again, recovering. “The attaché case?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.
That
attaché case.”
He looked at it and at her, puzzled.
“I tried to tell you, and then Jimmy Lyons, when he brought me up here, that it isn’t mine. It’s Barry’s.”
“I see. And what were you doing with it?” Something in Silvestri’s tone made Wetzon feel guilty. He was disappointed in her. She should have tried harder, earlier, to tell him it wasn’t hers.
Smith smiled. “Now, Detective Silvestri,” she said, “Wetzon doesn’t discover a body every day. Particularly someone she knows so well. It was pretty much a shock, don’t you think?”
Why had Smith said she knew Barry so well? Smith knew that wasn’t true. And it made Wetzon seem as if she were covering up something. After all, she had already told Silvestri she hardly knew Barry.
“Barry left it with me when he went to make the phone call,” Wetzon said defensively. “When he kept me waiting so long, I carried it downstairs to give back to him ... and found him. Then everyone assumed the case was mine, and every time I remembered to tell you, you were busy, or called away, and I just forgot.” What she was saying sounded like so many weak excuses—at least to her ears.
Silvestri went over and picked up the case. “Don’t imagine there are any decent fingerprints left,” he said. “I thought it was a pretty heavy case for such a little lady. I’ll have that cup of coffee now ... black.” He smiled at Smith, who smiled back intimately. “It smells terrific.”
Smith had made another conquest. Wetzon poured the coffee. There was a plate of Oreo cookies on the tray. Wetzon hated Oreos and all packaged, processed cookies. They were full of chemicals and artificial ingredients. Smith didn’t care about those things.
Silvestri sat on the sofa, and Smith curled up opposite him on the matching ottoman. “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked eagerly.
Wetzon handed him a cup of coffee. He was looking at Smith.
“No,” he said, “I’m going to want my lab people there when we open it.” His eyes drifted from Smith to Wetzon. “You didn’t open it, by any chance?”
Wetzon busied herself pouring coffee into the other two cups, contriving not to be free to look up. “Us? Oh, no,” Smith replied innocently. “The case is police evidence, isn’t it? We wouldn’t do that.”
Silvestri looked dubious but didn’t pursue it. He sipped the coffee, checking out the room. Wetzon was certain he had seen the Tarot cards and wondered what he thought.
“Who reads the cards?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
“I do,” Smith said. “I read danger and death around Wetzon tonight. Danger and death and a dark-haired stranger.” She smiled charmingly at Silvestri. Silvestri smiled back at her. “I’ll read yours for you sometime, Detective.”
Wetzon suddenly felt de trop. She wanted desperately to be home in her apartment, in her clean, neat bed. “Do you know anything more about who killed Barry?” she asked.
With seeming reluctance, Silvestri took his eyes from Smith’s. “No … nothing conclusive. Too much data has to be gone through before we can narrow it down. We know he did make a phone call because he used a credit card, so we were able to trace the number.” He looked at Wetzon intently, as if wanting or waiting for her to react.
“But you’re not going to tell us whom the call was to,” Wetzon said.
“Right.” He finished his coffee and stood. “Now I’ll thank you, ladies. I have a long night ahead of me.” He looked at Wetzon. “Do you want that ride home?”
“Oh, no,” Smith said, obviously dismayed. “You can’t go home tonight, Wetzon. I really think you should stay here. You don’t want to be alone.”
But she did, and Smith didn’t argue with her. She knew Wetzon was immovable when she set her jaw like that. Wetzon went into the bedroom to rescue her jacket and handbag. She slipped the jacket over her shoulders and examined herself in the mirror again.
Forget it
, she thought. Silvestri wasn’t thinking of her that way. When she returned to the living room, Silvestri and Smith were still smiling at each other. Wetzon felt put upon and jealous. It was Smith’s incredible magic with men. All men. What was it about her? She wasn’t beautiful. She was tall and angular. It was an aura; something she gave off. But Wetzon had seen Silvestri first. And had even told Smith she liked him. It didn’t seem at all fair.
God, she was bone weary.
Silvestri’s silver Toyota was parked illegally in front of the building. Under the streetlight it sparkled. It was probably the cleanest car in New York City—on the outside. He wiped an invisible speck of dirt off the fender, then unlocked and opened the door for her. The inside of the car was even more of a horror than she remembered. The front seat was strewn with papers. On the floor were empty cans of Diet Pepsi. There were empty cardboard coffee containers and napkins, and half a hamburger was graying in another container ... ROY ROGERS, it said.
“Maybe I should sit in the back,” she suggested.
“Naa, just as bad.” He was right. The back was filled with the laundry bag she remembered, and several cleaning boxes of shirts she hadn’t noticed before. Silvestri collected the papers and books that were scattered on the front seat and dumped them unceremoniously on the backseat. The cartons and soda cans he swept up and stuffed in a crumpled paper bag that also lay on the seat. He leaned over and brushed the seat off with the sleeve of his jacket and helped her in, closing the door, then he carried the attaché case around to his side and put it in the back with his shirt cartons. The night was cool, and Wetzon took her jacket from her shoulders and slipped it on.
“Tell me about her,” Silvestri said after he had settled himself in his seat and started the car.
“What do you want to know?” She didn’t have to ask him who.
“Is there a husband?” He made a left on Seventy-ninth Street.
“She’s divorced. She has a twelve-year-old son, Mark. What else would you like to know?” He was squinting at the lights. He probably needed glasses.
They were taking the transverse on Seventy-ninth Street, going west through Central Park. There was very little traffic. It was well after midnight.
“How did you meet?”
Wetzon settled back in her seat and started to tell him about the chiropractor with the terrible musical about dancers, the imitation
Chorus Line,
when Silvestri stepped on the brakes hard, and if it were not for his arm, which he stretched out in front of her—an automatic gesture from the old days of no seat belts—she would have smashed her head against the dashboard harder than she did.
That’s all she remembered clearly. Dizzying pain stabbed through her head.
Hold on,
she thought.
Don’t fall, can’t fall
. But she couldn’t fall. Something shoved her down, mercilessly. “Leave me alone,” she said, but she didn’t recognize the sound of her voice.
She heard a car door open and close in the distance and then another. She heard voices, shouts. Silvestri, perhaps. Someone yelled, “Police officer!” Then a popping noise, which somehow she knew was a gunshot. And another. “Motherfucker!” someone yelled. Car horns were sounding.
She was being tormented; someone was playing a drum solo on her head. The effort of opening her eyes aggravated the fierce pounding in her head. She was half on and half off the seat of the car. She pulled herself painfully up on the seat, only half aware of the sound of fabric tearing. Everything hurt. Her arms felt as if she’d been on a torture rack. They must have been hit or have hit something.
A cool, damp breeze brushed her face. The door on Silvestri’s side was open and he wasn’t there. She heard the strident whine of police sirens; lights swirled through the darkness. A white paramedic van pulled up, narrowly missing the open door. More flashing lights. Numbly, she thought,
Silvestri’s car must be a mess
. She took hold of the steering wheel and pulled herself with some difficulty toward the open door.
Silvestri, without his jacket, his shoulder holster visible and serious, peered in at her. “Are you all right?” He touched her forehead. She pulled back, wincing. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Everything hurts like hell,” she said. “But I think nothing is broken.” A man in a blue windbreaker and white pants stood beside Silvestri.
“We’d better take care of that arm, sir,” he said. “Miss, can you slide this way?” She saw blood on Silvestri’s shirtsleeve, near his shoulder.
Wetzon looked out her right side and saw that they had smashed into a retaining wall of the transverse. God, they’d been lucky. She slid gingerly past the steering wheel, pulling her handbag with her. “I feel as if someone’s been stomping on me,” she said. No one paid any attention. The paramedic eased her out of the battered car. Poor Silvestri. His precious car. It looked totaled.
The back door was open, too. Everything that had been in the backseat was a big heap of trash. Instinctively, she leaned closer, looking for the attaché case. Silvestri was a few feet away from her, having his left arm bandaged by a female paramedic. He saw Wetzon look inside. They had ripped off one sleeve of his shirt to put on the bandage. Blood seeped through the white of the bandage.
“The bastards got the case,” he said.
There were a thousand reasons why she didn’t want to go to York Hospital, but Silvestri and the paramedics insisted, and Wetzon had no strength left to argue.
Lights from the police cars and the paramedic van spun like a kaleidoscope around her, swirling her up into the madness. Her head continued to complain loudly about the sudden meeting with the dashboard, and although the paramedics had patched the spot, she could feel the warm sensation of oozing blood.
She touched her hair and flinched at the surprising pain that shot through her lower back. Well, why not? Perfect way to end a perfect day: her lower back would go out. She tried to ignore the pain and awkwardly repinned her hair, not as neatly as she would have liked, but well enough.
There was a pseudocarnival atmosphere that belied the fact that there had been an accident, and a shooting. The radio phones in the police cars crackled on and off, issuing and receiving information.
They seemed to be waiting for Silvestri to finish up with the police on the scene before they left. Wetzon saw that the transverse had been blocked by police cars on both sides, and there was probably a car stationed at both the east and west entrances to the Park. The Park grounds above her also seemed ablaze with light, so they must have been searching for whoever had caused the accident and somehow stolen the attaché case.
She was sitting on a stretcher inside the van, concentrating on getting her thoughts together. Her face felt crusty, her lips and tongue thick and dry. She touched her face. Dirt or dried blood. Great. How beautiful she must look. Fumbling in her bag, she took out a small Wash ’n Dri envelope, tore open the wrapper, unfolded the sheet, and carefully dabbed at her face.
“What the hell are you doing?” Silvestri’s arrival was so unexpected that she dropped the sheet. The second paramedic was helping him into the van. He carried his gun in its leather holster under his right arm.
“I’m cleaning myself up. What do you think I’m doing?”
“Do you always carry your own wet towel?” He seemed grumpy and annoyed. He sat on the stretcher opposite her. He looked awful.
“Yes.” Her tone was snippy. He wasn’t the only one feeling grumpy and annoyed.
Someone slammed the doors shut, closing them in. A siren blared.
“It would be best if you laid down,” the female paramedic said from the driver’s seat.
“I’m sorry,” Silvestri said sheepishly to Wetzon, ignoring the paramedic. “I’m grumpy and annoyed.”
She gave him a small, stiff smile. “So am I.”
“Come on, folks,” the other paramedic said. “We know you’re tough, but down you go.”
Wetzon pulled her feet up and lay back, astonished by how good it felt. She looked over at Silvestri. He had done the same. They stared at each other across the van as if from twin beds.
Aren’t you ashamed
? she said to herself.
No,
she replied.
They began to move.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
“Some SOB in a pickup truck passed us and cut us off—”
“I didn’t see a truck.”
“No, there must have been two of them, because the one driving the truck took off, and the other got the attaché case while we were dealing with the crash.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“Not good enough. He was wearing dark sweats and something over his face, a ski mask. I went after him and he took a shot at me.” His mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a real smile. “Lucky for me he wasn’t any good.”
Wetzon looked at his bandaged arm. The dressing was stained red. She had never seen a gunshot wound. On the other hand, she had never seen someone murdered, either, until today. Or rather, yesterday.
“I heard more than one shot, I think,” she said.
“Yeah, I got off a couple, but he got away. His buddy with the truck probably swung around and picked him up somewhere in the Park.”
“They must have been watching for us when we left Smith’s apartment. They saw where you put the case and followed us.”
“Yeah.” He sounded disgusted. “I’m a real schmuck. I should have been more careful.”
“You couldn’t think of everything,” she said.
“I’m supposed to think of everything. It’s my job.”
Her head was throbbing and her ears felt strange. Silvestri’s voice was funny. His lips were moving, but he wasn’t making any sounds.
“What could have been in the case that was so important?” she asked, but the question seemed to come from far away.
She saw Silvestri lean toward her as she started to slip off the stretcher. She fell against a soft but resisting object.
“Oooof,” Silvestri said.
This is ludicrous
, she thought, but she couldn’t move. Silvestri’s face was looming over her.
“I don’t know,” he said as if from a great distance. “You tell me.”
“Hey, Pulasky, you know they’re searching the lockers?”
“I heard. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re a little late, man.”
“They’ll be doing us next.”
“It’s no joke, man.”
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“Yeah, well, you better get rid of the—”
“Later. We’ve got company.”
Thunderous noise. It was as if she were in a cafeteria, and people were talking loudly and slamming crockery and metal trays. How was she going to sleep? She tried to open her eyes. Her head ached. The sudden light stung her eyes. There were two blurry faces above her, one black, one white, both wearing white coats.
“Ah, there you are,” the white-coated black person said. “Welcome back.”
She started to sit up, but he put his hand gently on her shoulder. An involuntary groan. She sagged back on the table. “Wait a minute before you try to do anything. Then we’ll get you into a wheelchair.”
“A wheelchair?”
“I just want to get a few X rays to make sure there are no breaks, cracks, or chips,” he said. He had a stethoscope tucked in his upper pocket and a name tag on the pocket that she couldn’t read. Doctor something or other. The other man in the white coat winked at her and disappeared. For a moment she thought maybe he had never been there at all.
Silvestri stuck his head through the barely closed curtains, pulling the nurse who was rebandaging his arm along with him.
“One of my uniforms is here for you,” he said. “If they spring you, he’ll take you home. Intact,” he added sheepishly.
In the bright light she could see a muscular arm and lots of dark hair.
Hirsuted
, she thought, feeling silly.
“Sergeant, hold still, please, or you’ll start bleeding again,” an impatient voice said, and Silvestri disappeared behind the curtain.
They wheeled her through a battery of X rays and what seemed like hours of manhandling and then back down to the doctor in the emergency room.
“You’re okay,” he told her. “Lucky girl. No stitches, no fractures, just a mighty headache. I’m going to check you in overnight.”
“No way.” Wetzon was firm. “If I can stand up and walk, I’m going home to my warm bed.”
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to get tough with me.” The doctor threw up his hands mockingly. “Here’s something for that headache you’re having.” He gave her a couple of capsules in a small, white plastic envelope that looked familiar.
“What are these?” she asked suspiciously.
“Aspirin, what do you think? They just have a little codeine added.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t like to take pills. Do I have to take them?”
“Not if you don’t need them.”
“Where did you hide my jacket?” she asked. She stood up cautiously. Everything still seemed to be working. “I feel bruised and banged up, but I’m all right.” She looked down at her blouse. There was a tear in the shoulder, and there was dirt and blood on her clothes, probably from Silvestri’s car floor and her cut head.
“You’ve had a bad crack on the head,” the doctor said, “and you’re going to be a Technicolor delight for the next week or so, but I predict you’ll live.”
A nurse brought her jacket and her bag and wheeled her to the exit, where a uniformed policeman was waiting. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of police in and around the emergency room. Silvestri must have summoned them, but it seemed a little redundant now that the case was gone. She looked back at the doctor to say goodbye, to thank him, but he was already handling the next emergency.
The ride home was fast, and when they got to her building she leaned forward to get out of the car. “You can just drop me here.”
“No, ma’am, I have orders to see you into your apartment and check it out before I leave you.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t going to argue with that. She was relieved that Silvestri had thought of it. But, as he had said, it was his job.
Her apartment was dark and quiet. She put on the lights in each room, and the cop walked through, looked quickly around. There was really no place for anyone to hide. The door had been double-locked as she had left it.
“Okay to check the closets?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have a fire escape on this building?”
“No.”
“A back door?”
“Yes. This way.”
He opened the back door. It was clear. He closed it, turning the lock.
“I’ll say good night, then,” he said. She let him out and double-locked her door. Leaning on it, she kicked off her shoes.
“Jesus, what a night.” She glanced at her watch. It took a moment before the hands floated into sight. Three-thirty.
She dropped her jacket and handbag on the bed and went down the hall to the bathroom. She flipped the light switch on, and a hideous black waterbug was revealed in the middle of her bathroom floor.
“Oh, my God,” she cried. “This is too much.” She knew she had to kill it because she couldn’t stand the thought of it being alive somewhere in the apartment.
Considering how battered she was, she moved quickly, stepping on the disgusting creature with her stockinged foot. She felt it squirm horribly under the ball of her foot, but she continued the pressure until her foot touched the cold tile of the floor.
Gagging, she grabbed a wad of tissues from the box on the counter and wiped the mess from her foot and the floor, flushing the evidence down the toilet. She tore off her pantyhose and dropped them to the floor, bent over the toilet bowl, and vomited the remnants of the tea and toast she had had at Smith’s all those hours ago. Sweat and tears rolled down her face. She turned on the shower and got into it with her clothes still on, tearing them off under the hot water. The gash in her forehead stung terribly, but the heat and the water were cleansing. Slowly, she began to relax. She took the rest of the pins out of her hair and put them on the side of the tub and let the hot water pour over her.
She left the bathroom wrapped in a big raspberry-colored bathtowel, with another towel around her head. Making a beeline for the bed, she pulled back the quilt and crawled in.
Something clanked on the bare floor. She groaned and peered down over the bed. Her jacket and handbag had fallen to the floor but neither would have made that metallic sound. Something must have dropped out of her jacket pocket.
What now
? she thought.
On the floor near her jacket was a matchbook. It shouldn’t have made that noise. She leaned over and reached for it. The effort was agonizing. Her hand closed on the matchbook. She turned it over in her hand. It was gray. Something metallic was sticking out of the matchbook, wedged under the matches. She pulled it out. It was a small key.