The Deadliest Option (24 page)

She did a hundred warm-up brushes, then twenty minutes of pliés and relevés, giving herself a fair workout, grumbling almost continuously under her breath, before collapsing on the sofa in the living room. A copy of the latest issue of
Forbes
lay on the coffee table. She flipped through it without reading anything and dropped it on the floor.

Obviously Silvestri wasn’t coming home. Too bad. She wanted to try her theory about Goldie’s death being accidental out on him. Feeling frustrated and abandoned and hungry, she drifted into the kitchen, found a bagel, cut it in three slices and stuck the two outside slices in the toaster oven. She made iced coffee with espresso beans and foraged through the refrigerator for something to eat with it.

Aha! She pulled out a container of cured olives in olive oil and half a beefsteak tomato wrapped in plastic. Her favorite sandwich was a bagel lathered in fruity olive oil and topped with thin slices of tomato, peppered and drizzled with more olive oil. Oh, boy! She dropped a few olives on the dinner plate for nibbling.

At ten o’clock she gave up on Smith and Silvestri and went to bed with the oldest living Confederate widow, but it was hard to concentrate on the page because her mind kept returning to Luwisher Brothers’s scheme to put brokers on salary. She felt betrayed. If it worked at Luwisher Brothers, you could bet that Merrill Lynch, Shearson, and Dean Witter would jump at the chance.

The words wobbled on the page.

She looked up and saw she was sitting on a bench in Central Park, near the volleyball games. Chris Gorham sat next to her in gym shorts and a shirt that said LUWISHER BROTHERS. He was bent over his hairy, muscular legs, tying the laces on his Avias.

The game was Luwisher Brothers against the Teamsters, or so the other team’s sweatshirts said. Alton Pinkus, chubby and a little winded, was playing for the Teamsters. Hoffritz and Bird, Neil, even Ellie were dolled up in matching gym shorts and tees. David Kim zapped the ball smartly back at the Teamsters. Now and then Dougie Culver would make a play while Ellie stumbled around drunkenly. The ball came back, and Hoffritz gave Ellie a hard push, knocking her down. “Get out of here,” he said. “You’re slowing us down.”

Ellie lay crumpled on the tarmac, not moving. The players stepped around her.

Wetzon jumped to her feet. “Stop!” she cried. “Someone help Ellie.” Ellie lay on her back like a corpse, hands crossed over her breast.

“Get out of here, Wetzon,” Hoffritz snarled. “It’s too late to help Ellie. She did herself in.”

“Duck, Wetzon!” Alton Pinkus shouted. “This isn’t your fight.”

The ball was coming toward her with tremendous speed. She flung it away, using both hands; the follow-through almost slammed her to the ground.

Wetzon soft-shoed herself over to Ellie, but Ellie was gone. In her place was an antique leather-and-wood pirate’s treasure chest, decorated with brass fittings. She knelt and opened the chest; it was filled with money, paper and coins. Oh, she saw it all now—they were fighting for the chest.

Silvestri put a whistle in his mouth and blew it.

“What are you doing here, Silvestri?” she demanded.

“Pay attention to the game,” he said.

“You call this a
game?
”

“Take off your clothes.” He smiled and faded away.

She stood up. The game was getting violent; the ball became a round trajectory covered with nails like a mace. Everyone was getting hurt, bleeding. Hoffritz had a bloody rag tied around his head. Neil had a bad cut on his cheek, Destry’s thigh was gashed, Chris bled profusely from a cut just over his eye, and blood ran from David Kim’s nose. Only Dougie remained untouched. Wetzon, standing on tiptoe, saw that the other team was similarly battered and bloody.

“Stop this, Dougie. They’re killing each other.” And for what? “Here!” she shrieked. She plunged her hands into the chest and flung bills and coins at both sides. “Take it, take the money, just stop this.”

Dougie took her arms and pulled her away from the trunk. With a benign smile, he said, “This is a perfect example of why women don’t belong on the Street, Wetzon.”

“Are you crazy, Dougie? Let go of me.”

“What you don’t understand is, this is only a
game
, Wetzon.”

A fierce clap of thunder tore the atmosphere, lightning following hard on. Then the sky opened up and dense snow began to fall, just like the old-fashioned paperweights you shook and turned upside down. The snow hit her face, stinging eyes and lips—but it wasn’t snow. It was a white powder of some sort.
Danger, danger,
sounded a siren in her brain. It was snowing sulfites.

All the players looked like ghosts now, covered with the white powder. The game had ended. When the next clap of thunder came, she convulsed, knocking the book to the floor, waking herself up.

Be still, my heart
, she thought, pressing her hands to her thumping chest. She’d fallen asleep with the lights on and had one of her tops-in-pops dreams. Silvestri had come home; she could hear him moving around in the foyer, rattling his keys. He’d probably slammed the door and woken her up. She looked at the clock. Twelve-thirty. She got off the bed and picked up the book.

“Hi,” he said, thumping down the hall. Before he even came into the room, she knew he was in a temper. He hung up his jacket in the closet and shrugged out of his shoulder holster, hooking it on the doorknob. Sweat stained his blue oxford-cloth shirt liberally. When he finally looked at her, she saw his eyes were red with exhaustion. His face was dark with beard bristles.

“You’re in a foul mood,” she said.

“I’ve been up for twenty straight fucking hours. I have the Chief on my back and that fucking prima donna Weiss to deal with. And the fucking Mayor making demands. You bet your ass, I’m in a foul mood.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shoes. “Shove over.”

She rolled over to his side of the bed, and he lay down and offered her his hand. He smelled of cigarettes and coffee and sweat. “I can tell you’ve been with Weiss. You smell like an ashtray.”

“I’m fucking wasted, and we’re not getting anywhere.”

“Have you had dinner?”

“Grabbed a few slices with Weiss.” He closed his eyes. He had thick silky lashes, like a girl. He opened the eye closest to her. “Nice outfit,” he mumbled and closed it again. “Sexy.”

“Anything new on the case?”

“Nada. A few odds and ends. Nothing real.”

“I have a theory. Wanna hear?”

He opened the same eye and gave her a fish-eyed turquoise look. “Do I have a choice?”

She tickled him along his ribs. “I could tell the Chief directly. He and I are like
that.”
She brought two fingers close together.

He rolled over on her without warning and pinned her down. “Oh, yeah? Talk, lady.”

“Okay. Think about this,” she said, kissing his chin whiskers. “Beast.” She rubbed her fingernail on the bristles.

“I’m waiting.”

“Okay. What if Goldie was not the target? He was sitting next to Ash at the dinner. They both had asthma or emphysema or whatever. There was so much activity at that table. Everyone was around Goldie. I think I remember a drink getting spilled. Goldie could have picked up the wrong glass ...”

Silvestri rolled off her. “Sit up, Les. I want to go back over this. You’re saying that Ash was the target and Goldie Barnes was—”

“A mistake—an unfortunate accident.”

“Tell me again what you saw.”

“Everyone was around the table talking to Goldie just before he got up to speak. Destry, Hoffritz, Dougie, Neil, Ellie, Chris. Dr. Ash was sitting next to Goldie. They each had drinks.” She closed her eyes. “Chris knocked over Goldie’s drink, and Dr. Ash jumped up to get out of the way. Some of it got on him anyway. Someone brought another drink.”

“Someone?”

“I don’t remember who.”

“A waiter?”

She racked her brain. “I don’t know. The drinks might have gotten mixed up. Can you find out if Goldie and Ash were drinking the same stuff?”

“Yup.”

“Yup, you can find out, or yup, they drank the same drink?”

“Yup, they drank the same—Jack Daniel’s on sulfites.”

“You know something, Silvestri, you have a ghoulish sense of humor.”

“Interesting theory, Les. It would mean that someone wanted to get rid of Ash badly enough to try a second time and with the same method.”

“Methodical and uncreative.”

“Panicked.” He got up and began stripping out of his clothes. “I need a shower.” He stopped in the doorway. “Oh, by the way, I dropped in on Goldman Barnes II tonight.”

“Oh? He’s not a suspect, is he?”

“We’re not ruling anyone out yet.”

“Did you get anything new out of him?” She rolled back to her side of the bed and crawled under the covers. Her eyes were heavy. She’d be asleep before he came out of the shower.

“There was a woman with him—”

“Oh?” She felt herself begin to drift off. “Anybody I know?”

“Yeah, Xenia Smith.”

W
EDNESDAY SEEPED IN
with a greasy phlegmatic haze; the local news reported that night temperatures had never dipped below eighty-five. The City vibrated heat, and New Yorkers were beginning to take on the bleary-eyed look of people living through a natural catastrophe.

Wetzon, wearing a lime short-sleeved silk shirt under her cream silk suit, the jacket folded neatly over her arm, found an air-conditioned cab on Central Park West and arrived at her office a little later than her customary time. She wasn’t moving very fast, but in this unremitting heat, nobody was.

The Times
gave the Mayor front page coverage when he announced a ban on cars holding one person only from entering the City and threatened to ban all cars entirely if the inversion continued. Days ago both
The Times
and
The Journal
had banished major coverage of the Wall Street murders to the back pages, leaving it to the hysterical headlines of the
News
and the
Post.
But now the extreme heat had pushed everything to the side, including politics.

She paid the driver with the five-dollar bill she took from the zippered compartment of her purse and made a dash to the door of her office, holding her breath, trying not to breathe the polluted air.

“She’s heee-yer,” Harold sang out. He was sitting on the edge of B.B.’s desk, reading a suspect sheet, a slightly smug expression, quickly there and gone, on his face. B.B. looked at her, then away, nervously.

“Good morning ... I think,” Wetzon said, picking up on something in the air.

“Wetzon!” Smith cried. “Get in here right away.”

“What’s going on?”

“Come in and close the door. No interruptions, B.B. Just take messages.” Smith looked frantic; her hair ragged, as if she’d been pulling at the ends. She was waving her arms and pacing the room like a caged animal, a leopard in a white-with-black polka-dot dress. “You’ve really done it now. How
could
you? You know how careful we have to be.”

“Wait one minute here. What am I supposed to have done?” Wetzon threw her handbag and briefcase on her chair and put on the jacket of her suit. Then she faced Smith, properly armored.

“John Hoffritz just called and told me you bad-mouthed Luwisher Brothers to Sharon Murphy. He says we will never work for them again. I don’t think you realize how hard I worked on that relationship, how difficult Hoffritz is to deal with. All
you
have to handle are the brokers.” She stopped pacing and stood in front of Wetzon, hands on her hips. “How
could
you?” Her voice rose in an hysterical wail. “And they owe us so much money.”

“For your information, I did
not
bad-mouth Luwisher Brothers. Who says I did?” Wetzon demanded hotly.

“You didn’t?” Smith sank into her chair, deflated. “You must have said something. They wouldn’t just make it up.”

“What I said, after telling her I thought Luwisher Brothers was about the best place on the Street to work, was to check out their debt side. She does more than fifty percent of her business in bonds, and Luwisher can’t compete with the majors on inventory.”

“This is true, of course, but did you have to
tell
her?” Smith complained.

“Smith, it’s something I would have told
our
candidates. What’s the point of sending a broker to a firm where he or she can’t do business? What happened, did she tell the other headhunter what I said?”

“What other headhunter? Didn’t we show her to Luwisher Brothers?” Smith looked confused.

“No, we didn’t. She insisted she wouldn’t go downtown. And she also does too much bond business.”

“The other headhunter, then ...” Smith said slowly, the light dawning.

“Yes. I’m calling Hoffritz right now.” Wetzon set her bag and briefcase on the floor under her desk, sat down and punched out Hoffritz’s direct number, hoping she wouldn’t be deflected by a secretary.

“Hoffritz.” Good, he’d picked up his own phone.

“John, this is Wetzon.”

“Wetzon, I’ve been reading your report on the murder. Congratulations. I want to show it to Destry and then sit down and talk with you both to strategize.”

Not a word about her bad-mouthing the firm. “John, I did not bad-mouth Luwisher Brothers, and anyone who says I did is a liar.”

“Wetzon—”

“John, I told Sharon you’re a terrific firm, that I’d want to work for Luwisher Brothers if I were a broker, and that she should check out your bond department because so much of her business is in munis. Do you want to hire a broker who does a huge bond business and then not be able to feed her?”

“We have hired on a couple of bond traders now, Wetzon, and we’re making a real effort to build up the department.”

“Fine, show her what you can do for her. Don’t wait and let it be a surprise after she’s on board. I’ve known Sharon for years. She calls me for advice all the time. She’s high-strung and has trouble making a decision, but she’s a good producer.”

“Wetzon, if you’ll help us close her, we’ll make it up to you.”