The Deadliest Option (32 page)

Peter Diamantidou was the block superintendent. He saw to all the brownstones and townhouses. It was a time-consuming job, but not as difficult as being the super in a highrise co-op or condo and having to deal with a hundred or more diverse families. A short, dark man of about fifty, he spoke with a transitional Greek-American accent.

“Oh boy, oh boy,” he was saying as he surveyed the mess, hands waving, his gray workpants hanging baggy on his hips. Swaybacked, belly protruding, he was not at all fat. “Whatta job I got here. “ He gave off the rank odor of many layers of dried sweat. “I dunno what Mr. H. is going to say.” He had his worry beads out and was rolling them in his fingers.

“I think we’re insured, so we’ll be responsible,” Wetzon said, hoping she was right and trying not to breathe in through her nose. The stagnant air in the room was rapidly taking on his ripe smell.

“Okay, okay, don’t you worry, miss. I gonna get a glass man in.” He inspected the door, turning it. “No damage, just needs a touch-up and maybe new hinges. I check the bolt.” He stared at the bomb squad technicians, who were finishing up their work in the garden, and backed away from the opening as they barred the door to the garden with yellow police line tape.

After the technicians trooped out, Wetzon said, “I’m going to leave all this in your capable hands, Mr. Diamantidou. We just have to be able to work here tomorrow with the air-conditioner operating.”

“Okay, okay, miss. I do my best.” His calloused hands were stained dark with the marks of his job. He wouldn’t even notice ink stains if he were fingerprinted ...

Damn. Her mind was wandering.
Concentrate,
she told herself. She had only one more call that needed to be made, then she would go out for a quick late lunch at Il Nido Cafe. She had a sudden craving for a stuffed artichoke and an icy espresso. But first she’d call Chris and switch their meeting place.

“He’s on the other line, Wetzon, do you want to hold?” Chris’s assistant Ruth asked.

“Tell him we’re having some work done in the office so it’s better if I meet him at the restaurant.” Specks of glass winked and twinkled at her from various places on her desk.

“Okay, hold on. I’ll see if I can get his attention.”

“How’s the market behaving, B.B.?” she called. Their phones had become eerily still.

B.B. opened the door. He’d finally washed his face, although his suit was a mess. “It’s recovering. The buy programs kicked in after it dropped a hundred and sixty points and now it’s only off twenty-nine.”

Wetzon shook her head. This was the second precipitous drop in as many months, each time triggered by something wrong with a junk bond or commercial paper, a company’s being over-leveraged, or worry about the strong dollar, the weak dollar, inflation, recession, inventories, or the balance of trade. And each time there was a drop, the brokers had margin calls up the wazoo. Which explained why Smith and Wetzon’s phones had stopped ringing.
Hi, there, Mr. Wazoo. You’ve got a margin call. You’ll either have to sell some stock, or you’ll have to quickly send me a check for a mil to cover.

“Wetzon?”

“Yes, Ruth.” The heat was getting to her brain. She took a hard look at the Andy Warhol; it was hanging rakishly cockeyed. She got up to straighten it.

“Chris says to meet him at six at the Bloomsbury Court. It’s on the corner of Madison and Twenty-ninth.”

“The Bloomsbury Court? I don’t know that restaurant. Is it new?” When Ruth didn’t answer, Wetzon thought they’d been cut off. “Ruth?”

“That’s not a restaurant, Wetzon. That’s where he lives.”

A
N ACRID HAZE
hovered over the City like the remnants of a smoky brushfire. The cut on her knee twinged under her pantyhose. It began to itch.

A Tuscan restaurant on the expensive side, II Nido had, as did several other restaurants, a less costly cafe. This one was wedged into the atrium of 875 Third Avenue, between Fifty-second and Fifty-third Streets. The string quartet on the balcony, the cathedral-like sweep of ceiling, four rows of faux marble cafe tables one next to the other, linen napkins, gave the spot, which was open to the public, a cafe-in-a-garden atmosphere.

Along the far wall was the showcase of foods for taking out or eating in, everything from veggie lasagna to sweet pepper salad, hot and cold. After looking at the tempting offerings, Wetzon ordered a stuffed artichoke and a decaf espresso freddo from the waiter and sat down at one of the tables. It was two o’clock. The lunch crowd was back at their desks, tourists were minimal. A gray-haired man with horn-rimmed glasses, torn jeans, and a short-sleeved workshirt was sitting at a table drinking an espresso and writing in a notebook.

Wetzon’s stomach growled. It was cool as an oasis here, with none of that New York feeling of obsessive energy. She dug into the artichoke and listened to the music. She could feel herself loosening up, letting the tension go.

“More coffee for the
signorina
?”

She shook her head at the waiter.

An elderly couple, both bent, looking so alike they could have been twins, came and sat down near her, holding hands across the top of the table.

Somehow she couldn’t picture herself and Silvestri that way.

With her front teeth she continued to scrape the flesh of the artichoke leaves until she got to the tender heart. She and Silvestri would be the old couple who yakked at each other. She laughed. Where were her thoughts leading her? Dangerous territory. Was she thinking about spending the rest of her life with Silvestri? She felt a sudden sense of panic.
Afraid of commitment, Les?
she asked herself. Maybe. She actually felt more panic at the thought of marriage than she’d felt about the bomb.

She picked at the heart of the artichoke. Think about something else. The list of names, for example. She patted her briefcase. It must have something to do with the three murders. Why would Ellie have torn up a Xeroxed memo from Carlton Ash but not thrown it away? Perhaps she had torn it up in anger, then realized it was important. Who would know, then, what it meant? Someone who worked with Ash?

Replenished, Wetzon left money on the table for the check and tip and caught a cab on Third Avenue, letting her thoughts spin and roil unfettered. But, alas, no new ideas, no inspired possibilities came to her.

At home, once all the air-conditioners were humming, Wetzon unrolled the paper and studied the list of names. Two had the same post office box numbers. She took a Diet Pepsi from the fridge and filled a glass with ice, pouring the soda over it, watching as the bubbles subsided, thinking.

David Kim might know what this meant. She chewed on her lip. She ought to call him anyway—offer condolences about Ellie. What would he do now? she wondered. He would have all of Ellie’s business. His line rang and rang. No one answered. The Luwisher Brothers operator didn’t even pick up. She hung up.

Dwayne. She called Carlos and left word on his answering machine that she had to talk to Dwayne about something important and to please leave his phone number on her machine. Then she peeled off her damp, wilted clothing, took another icy sink bath and stretched out on her bed in her terry robe.

It was a real puzzle. Everything was connected, but unconnected.

The phone woke her. She grabbed it and mumbled, “Hello.”

“Well, Ms. Birdie Marple, I was wondering when you’d get around to calling your best friend.” Then, more seriously, Carlos said, “I read about Ellie. I’m really sorry. She was a nice lady.”

“Carlos—”

“And why are you not haunting the caverns of Wall Street today looking for warm bodies?”

“Well, you see, our office exploded.”

“La-di-da. Just another day in the life of Leslie Wetzon, headhunter.”

“Carlos, I’m not kidding.”

“Birdie—” His tone changed.

“I wasn’t hurt. No one was hurt,” she added, answering the question he wasn’t going to ask.

“Dare I inquire whether it was one of Con Ed’s fine asbestos-lined gas mains?”

“More like a package bomb. Smith let it be known that we know who the murderer is.”

“Wouldn’t you just know the Wicked Witch of the North would do that to make herself look good.”

“It almost made us look dead.”

“Do you know who the murderer is?”

“Not a clue.”

“And I’ll bet you’re not going to let a few minor things like explosions and murders scare you off, hardhead.”

“You win.”

“Birdie, I hate this. You need a keeper, you do, and I’m getting too old to keep up with you. Dwayne’s at home. Why do you want to talk to him?”

“A hunch.”

“Good God, when this lady has a hunch, the sky falls in.”

“Never you mind. Just give me Dwayne’s phone number.”

He gave her the number. “Now be careful.”

“It’s okay. Silvestri knows about everything and he said he’d cover me.”

“Oh, great,” Carlos groaned. “You’ll get caught in a shoot-out.”

She hung up and called Dwayne. His answering machine picked up and played “What I did for Love” from
A Chorus Line. Give me a break,
she thought. After his message and the beep, she left word for him to call her after nine.

She put on her black silk suit with the green lining and the matching green-with-black-polka-dots shell and low patent leather pumps and took a cab to Twenty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue. She felt naked without her briefcase.

The cab let her off in front of a grand newish condominium. This was a strange neighborhood. Until recently the streets here had been seething with derelicts and the homeless because they were being housed in the Armory nearby. The area had the piquant, pervasive odor of curry issuing from the many Indian restaurants and foodshops that proliferated in this section of New York, and which would probably soon be driven out by gentrification. And on Twenty-ninth Street, near Fifth Avenue, was the landmark Church of the Transfiguration, known as the Little Church Around the Corner, dating back to before the Civil War. It became known as the actors’ church in 1870, because unlike most other churches it didn’t refuse to admit actors. Edwin Booth had worshipped there, as had Sarah Bernhardt. It was a beautiful, accessible church.

She looked around at parked cars, at pedestrians. If she was being watched, she couldn’t find the detective. A boy practicing jumps on a skateboard narrowly missed her as she stood under the wine-colored awning in front of the building. Glass and brass was the motif of the facade and continued into the lobby.

A doorman in a gray uniform approached her. “Yes, Miss?” His accent was Hispanic, but not Puerto Rican.

“I’m here to see Mr. Gorham.”

“Your name, please.”

“Ms. Wetzon. W-E-T-Z-O-N.”

“Please wait. I don’t think he’s come home yet.”

“Miss Wetzon for Mr. Gorham in 24L,” the doorman told a second, younger man who was carrying a package into what was probably the mail room.

The second man returned after a minute. “No answer. He’s not home yet, and the wife is out of town.” He looked Wetzon over appraisingly.

“Do you want to wait?” the first man asked. “Is he expecting you?”

“Yes,” she said with a finality that finished off the conversation. She sat down on a black leather chair next to a potted tree to wait for Chris, and watched a continuous stream of men and women in business suits coming home from work. It was after six; Chris would be late; they would have dinner late; she would get home late.... Dammit all.

She’d about worked herself into a snit when she heard the doorman say, “Here he is now,” as if he were saying,
H-ee-ere’s Johnny.

Chris came down the four steps to the dropped lobby, where she sat vegetating with the vegetation. “Oh, Wetzon, good, you’re here.” He looked harried. His shirt collar was limp and slightly yellowed around the neck. His dark suit was wrinkled. He took her proffered hand, and instead of shaking it, tucked it into the dank gabardine crook of his arm, carrying her along to the bank of three elevators.

“Where are we going?” she asked. He seemed to have taken possession of her.

“I thought maybe Park Bistro.”

“I think we’re going in the wrong direction then.”

“It’s been a really tough day. I don’t have to tell you,” he said, pressing 24. The button lit up. The elevator was small and sleek, glass and brass again. “And I’ve got the goddam auditors.”

“I thought we were having dinner,” she said, trying to take her hand back. She felt the muscles tighten in his arm. He had done this to her before, the day Ash was murdered. She felt a tremor of uncertainty.

“We are. I just want to shower and change my clothes. I wouldn’t want to offend.”

“You wouldn’t.” She laughed nervously. “You don’t.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, why do you think my wife left me?” When he saw she wasn’t laughing, he said, “All you have to do is have a drink and wait for me in cool comfort. How’s that?”

“Sounds okay to me,” she said, but she thought,
this is a little odd.
She didn’t want to seem unsophisticated, it was just not the kind of thing she did. In fact, she didn’t remember ever going to a broker’s home— except for Laura Lee’s, of course.

“Here we are,” he said, setting his attaché case on the houndstooth carpet and unlocking the door. The corridor had been cool, but nothing like the blast of cold air that shot out of Chris’s apartment. “Ah,” Chris said. He held the door for her to walk in before him.

One wall of the apartment, which had a huge L-shaped living room, was window with a door leading to the terrace. She walked as if pulled by a magnet to the wall of windows. “What an incredible view. “ Straight ahead she could see all of downtown New York, past the pointed gazebo spire of the Met Life Building to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. To her left she saw the East River and to her right, the Hudson and the cliffs of New Jersey. The whole scene looked like a set piece, painted on, unreal. She turned to say so to Chris.

He had taken his jacket off. He was wearing red paisley suspenders. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, flexing muscular forearms. “What are you drinking?”