The Deadliest Option (25 page)

Wetzon knew that was bullshit. Where money and loyalty were concerned, the men at the top had short memories. “Thanks, John, but I really resent your jumping to conclusions about what I said and I resent the threat—”

“Ahem!” Smith was waving her hand back and forth, trying to get her to stop talking.

“Oh, I was just letting off a little steam, Wetzon. You know I didn’t mean it.”

“Sure, John. Do you want to tell me who the other headhunter is?”

“I have no problem with that. He’s a good man. Tom Keegen. Talk to you later, Wetzon.”

Wetzon put the receiver down in a fury.

“Who was it?” a subdued Smith asked.

“Need you ask?”

“I’m going to kill him,” Smith said through gritted teeth. “In a slow, painful way.”

“Not if I get to him first. I’d like to nail Tom Keegen’s thumbs to the outside sill of the penthouse in Luwisher Tower.” Her mouth was dry and she headed for the door to get a cup of coffee.

Smith rose and stood in her way. “I’m really sorry I attacked you, sweetie pie.”

“You should be. Why do you always think the worst of me? We’ve been together almost eight years. I’m not the girl from the chorus anymore who’s learning the business. I’ve learned it. Don’t you think it’s time you accepted that? And what makes you think that dealing with brokers is any easier than dealing with clients?”

“You’re absolutely right, I know.” Smith put her arms around Wetzon and gave her a quick hug. “It’s just that you’re so tiny I think you’re a little girl. I forget. Please forgive me, sweetie. You know I love you. You’re my best friend.”

“Okay, okay, you may stop groveling.”

“Are you kidding? It’s part of our job, what we do best.”

Wetzon laughed. Smith was so right. She held Smith at arm’s length and decided Smith was definitely mellowing. “We have some more important things to talk about right now.”

“Oh?” Smith flushed and looked down, as if contemplating some important object on the floor. “I suppose that nosy boyfriend of yours told you—”

“Told me what?” She was not about to give Silvestri away. “I tried to call you all last evening, but you weren’t home, and without an answering machine, how was I to leave an important message?”

“Oh, good,” Smith said coyly, ignoring what Wetzon had just said. “Well, if you must know, I was with Twoey last night ...”

“Really?” Wetzon said.

“He’s wonderful.”

“And rich.”

“Very
rich.”

“I’m ׳thrilled your love life has taken this magical turn, Smith, but we really do have a problem. Are we still on for dinner tonight, or are you ditching me for the new love in your life?”

“Harold seems to have settled down, I think, but why would you think I’d ditch you for Twoey? We had a date. Dinner is fine. Baci’s at seven.”

Wetzon laughed. Smith would have no compunction about cancelling if something more interesting came up. “This is not about Harold. I heard last night that Luwisher Brothers is going to put their brokers on salary.”

“I’m sorry?” Smith stared at her, wrinkling her brow.

“Wait a minute.” Wetzon took her Filofax out of her briefcase and tore her notes from the book. “We’re going to be out of business if this goes through. I’d better spruce up my buck and wing.” She handed the pages to Smith, who barely glanced at them, then threw them on her desk.

“What are you talking about, Wetzon? I can never make sense of you. You
heard
they’re putting brokers on salary? You have to be wrong. They can’t do that; it would
kill
incentive.”

“It would
kill
the headhunter.”

“Damn it all, Wetzon, you must be wrong. How would you hear about it, anyway? I have the inside track with management.” When she saw Wetzon’s face, she held up her palms and shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Ellie told me that’s what Dr. Ash’s missing study was about, and then Laura Lee called me and told me they are going to announce it tomorrow at a news conference.”

“They can’t do that without telling me—us.”

“Oh, yeah? Do you think they told Keegen?”

“We’re going to have to confront them.”

“I don’t trust them, Smith.” Wetzon opened the door. “Give us our messages now, B.B.” She took the two pink stacks and handed Smith’s to her.

“We must have a policy, a response ready, because we’ll be asked how it affects us.”

“Yes. I can just see the front page of
The Journal
—Headhunters accuse Luwisher Brothers of castration.” She laughed.

“This is no time for your weird humor, Wetzon.” Smith scowled and thumbed through her messages. “This is serious. It’s our livelihood. We’re going to have to fight it, but not before they pay us what they owe us.”

“We can work out some strategy over dinner.” Strategy. That reminded her of Hoffritz’s comment about the report Smith had given him.

“God, just when everything was going so well.” Smith lowered her heavy eyelids and gave Wetzon a sultry smile.

“You’re just dying to tell me about it.”

“Mmmm. Sex in hot weather is so low-down and dirty. I love it.”

“I can’t wait to see how you’re going to handle Jake.”
This might be fun to watch
, Wetzon thought. The worm would finally get his.

“We’ll work out that strategy tonight, too. I can use your input.”

Strategy again. “Haven’t the phones been eerily quiet? It’s as if the industry is on the brink, waiting.”

“It’s not that, it’s this godawful weather. Everyone is too hot to think about anything—”

“Except sex.”

“Oh, shush. Did Ellie agree to see some firms?”

“Yes. I’m going to set her up next week with Tucker.” Wetzon sat down at her desk and took her notes out of her briefcase. “By the way, what did you say in that report you sent to Hoffritz? He congratulated me and said he wants to sit down and strategize.” When there was no response from Smith, Wetzon looked up. “Smith?”

Smith, ran her fingers through her hair dramatically. She sauntered over to her desk and made a show of looking through her papers, all in slow motion.

“Smith!” Wetzon shrieked.

“Don’t get so excited, sweetie pie, and lower your voice, please.”

“What did you say?”

“I just told them that we know who the murderer is.”

I
T HAD BEEN
a long, dull day. At five o’clock Wetzon called it quits and declared she was going home. She’d meet Smith at seven at Baci.

The heat glanced off concrete, glass, stone, and steel. It had to be one hundred and ten in the shade, and there was not one cab in sight. Eyes burning, Wetzon walked over to First Avenue and took a bus uptown, transferring for the crosstown at Eighty-sixth Street, where, wonder of wonders, she got a seat. It was then she noticed that the air-conditioning had broken down, and the open windows let in more hot, unbreathable air. As more and more people crowded on, weary and rank with sweat, the bus took on the aspect of a cattle car. An elderly woman fainted somewhere up front, and people were so jammed together that no one noticed until the Central Park West stop, when everyone began to push out.

The driver radio’d for an EMS truck, and two men picked up the poor woman and laid her across the front seats, fanning her with hot air as they waited for the paramedics. An athletic young woman in Reeboks took a bottle of Evian water from her backpack, poured a little into the cap and pressed it to the woman’s lips.

Wetzon got off the back exit of the bus and walked the block and a half to her apartment, finding it more and more difficult just to pick up one foot and then the other, counting in her head,
left then right then left then right.

She took a cold shower and lay on her bed letting the air-conditioner revive her body, get her brain functioning again.

Smith had done a colossally stupid thing.
If we know who the murderer is, and the murderer is among us, then Smith has put us both in imminent danger.
Wetzon plucked her phone from the painted washstand next to her bed, balanced it on her stomach, and picked out Silvestri’s office number.

A strange voice answered his phone. “Brafman.”

“Hi, this is Leslie Wetzon.” She vaguely remembered him. Short, blondish, thin.

“Oh, yeah.” He seemed to know who she was. “He’s not here. Try Midtown North.”

“Is Metzger around?”

“They’re all at Midtown North. Silvestri, Metzger, and Mo.”

Silvestri, Metzger & Mo. It sounded like a law firm. “Do you have the number there?”

“Hold on.” Brafman came back on the line and gave it to her.

“Thanks.” She hung up and called Midtown North, asked for Silvestri, then Metzger, and finally Weiss, got passed around for ten minutes, gave up and left her number. She probably should have asked for Mo, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She put the phone back in its place. He’d taken Mo with him.
Get a grip on yourself, dummy,
she commanded.
The heat is definitely affecting your brain.

In the dining room, which alternated as a workout studio, she rolled a mat out on the floor and did some slow yoga stretches, the bridge, then rolled into a shoulder stand. The blood rushed to her brain as she did deep, measured breathing.

The cast of characters with the opportunity in both murders could be narrowed down to Hoffritz, Bird, Dougie Culver, Neil Munchen, Chris Gorham, Ellie Kaplan, and possibly David Kim, if he had attended the dinner. Still in the shoulder stand, she swung her legs apart and then behind her. Earlier, she had mentally eliminated both Ellie and Neil because of their obvious affection for Goldie, but if Goldie’s death had been an accident, they had to go back on the list. All told, seven. The not-so-magnificent seven.

She stretched her legs up in the air, holding hands on hips, and continued deep breathing. She felt a pink glow, a brilliance surge through her.
Oh, dear God,
she thought. What if all this business about Carlton Ash’s report had nothing at all to do with the murders? The study was a distraction, a wrong turn, all unfortunately her own creation.

Slowly, she came out of the shoulder stand into a backbend and lowered herself, vertebra by vertebra, into the sponge position and lay there. Better than a massage because the brain was not left out.

Carlton Ash had stumbled on something when he was nosing around Luwisher Brothers working on his study. Something that had made him quit his job. As a consultant with Goodspeed, Ash had to have had an income of upwards of six figures. So unless he had a trust fund, he couldn’t afford to just quit a job like that.

If he’d had an independent income, he probably wouldn’t have been breaking his ass working at Goodspeed, because they were notorious for working their people into burn-out. He had to have felt that whatever he’d discovered was going to fix him for life. Except it had fixed him for death.

Damn Smith. Damn every last one of the magnificent seven. It had to be one of them. She was fairly certain that neither Ellie nor David would be privy to Smith’s report for Luwisher Brothers. Ergo, if someone tried to kill Smith and Wetzon, they could narrow the suspects down to five.
Very funny, Wetzon,
she thought.

Regretfully, she rolled herself up into a standing position and did a few pliés. Her skin tingled. Where was Silvestri? She didn’t want to go out without talking to him, telling him how Smith had set them up as decoys.

“Well, quack, quack, sweetie pie,” she said, mimicking Smith, and danced into the bedroom. She dressed in a long white Bis skirt and short-sleeved, V-neck cotton shirt, slipped sandals on her bare feet. Tying her hair back in a ponytail, she covered the band with a violet-and-white cotton scarf.

How brave you are, Wetzon,
she thought, mocking herself. She was not frightened, just a bit hyper. Was she being stupid? Her watch said quarter to seven. She went into the kitchen and pulled a Post-it off the pack next to the phone, and stuck it to the outside of her door under the peephole. Then she wrote on it: S—
Meeting Smith at Baci’s at
7.
Urgent news. Please come. L.

It all seemed melodramatic, and he would probably return her call and not get this message until he came home, which he might not even do.
Merde.
She went back inside, grabbed her handbag, went out, closed the door, double-locked it.

A phone rang. She put her ear to the door. Her phone. Damnation. She fumbled with the lock, got it open, lunged for the phone before the fifth ring when the answering machine would activate. “Hello,” she gasped.

“Wetzon?”

“This is Wetzon. I can hardly hear you. Please speak louder. Who is this?”

“Wetzon,” the voice whispered. “You said you’d be my friend. I need a friend right now.”

“Ellie? Is that you? What’s wrong?”

“Wetzon ... help me ... please. Everything went wrong somehow ... I ...” A clattering noise, as if Ellie had dropped the phone.

“Ellie, speak clearly. I can’t follow you.”

There was no response.

“Ellie? Ellie!”

She heard a soft cry like the mew of a cat and then the line went dead.

W
ETZON CRADLED THE
receiver. Ellie was drinking. Ellie had passed out and dropped the phone. Ellie was in some kind of trouble. Should she call 911? Nah, that would be overreacting.

“Okay, let’s think this through carefully,” she said aloud. Where did Ellie live? Wetzon searched her memory. Somewhere on the West Side ... Lincoln Towers?

The NYNEX white pages listed thirty E. Kaplans, seven of whom were West Siders, and one Ellie, in the wrong part of town. What to do? She didn’t remember taking Ellie’s home address for the suspect sheet—always a bad move, as she’d frequently admonished Harold and B.B.—but her home phone number was probably neatly written in, and it was on her desk in the office.

She sat down on the floor, legs crossed yoga style, and closed her eyes. Think. Maybe it would come to her. The phone rang and she grabbed it, relieved. Silvestri would know what to do. “God, I’m glad you called,” she said, without saying hello or waiting.