The Deadliest Option (42 page)

Anxiety did an erratic time-step in Wetzon’s chest. She felt down, oppressed by the relentless heat and humidity, depressed by the events of the last weeks, and worse, disconnected from Silvestri.

David Kim a murderer. Could she have been so wrong in her judgment? Chris Gorham was the one most capable of violence, was he not? Not David—brilliant, charming David—with the world in his hands.

Automatically, she cleaned off the scattered notes and pink phone message slips from her desk and set up her calendar for Tuesday, after the long Fourth of July weekend.

“Damn it all.” Smith slammed down the phone. “I’m sick to death of four months of the-check-is-in-the-mail excuses. We have bills to pay.”

“Um.” Mind adrift, Wetzon was only vaguely aware of Smith’s grumbling comments as she went over operating expenses for the first half of the year.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Um,” Wetzon responded, dumping the contents of her briefcase onto her clean desk and methodically picking through the accumulation of papers, suspect sheets, invitations to museum and gallery openings, dance concerts—all having passed without her presence—and a sale notice from Barney’s. She tossed everything into her wastebasket but the suspect sheets; those went into her update file.

“And here’s the estimate for redoing the garden,” Smith mumbled. “Would you believe, three thousand dollars. Are we made of money here?”

“Um.” Hidden among the suspect sheets was the baggie with the rolled up list she had pieced together from Ellie’s torn scraps, the copy of the whole one she’d found on Chris Gorham’s desk. She took it out of the baggie and rerolled it in the opposite direction to smooth it out. The names and addresses meant nothing to her ... or did they? She picked up the phone and called Silvestri. She was put on hold.

A knock on the door.

“Yes?” Smith called.

B.B., casually dressed in khakis and running shoes, shirt sleeves turned up, opened the door. “Okay if I take off now?”

“Of course, sweetie pie.” Full of good will, Smith beamed at him.

Wetzon smiled, shifting the phone to her other ear. B.B. looked like a Yalie going off on a yachting weekend. “Have a good time.” She was still on hold.

The door closed behind his thank-yous.

“Where’s he going?” Smith sighed and began punching numbers into her calculator.

“East Hampton. Where else do the young and unattached in New York go on a summer weekend?” The phone was giving her an earache.

“Humpf. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young and unattached. What’s Harold up to?” Smith got up and opened the door.

“Damnation,” Wetzon said. She put the receiver down on her desk and rubbed her ear. Returning the receiver to her ear, she had a dial tone. She hung up and studied the names again.

Smith called, “Harold!” Then she returned to her desk.

Harold appeared in the doorway. “What’s up?”

“You might as well call it quits, too, sugar bun. No one’s going to be around to talk to.” Smith gave him a brilliant smile.

“Oh ... okay. “ He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m just going to get myself organized for next week.”

To Wetzon he sounded mellow. As if he were on something. When he left them, she said, “What’s with Harold?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. He sounds high—as if he’s been smoking funny cigarettes.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, sweetie. He just needed to be beaten up, and we did it. He loves it.” She turned back to the work on her desk. “I’m almost finished here. Do you want to go for a drink?”

“Um.” Wetzon was staring at the list of names, smoothing the paper so it wouldn’t roll. She fiddled with a strand of hair that had come out of her topknot, then called Silvestri again.

“Silvestri.”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Make it quick, Les.” He was irritatingly brusque.

“Okay. Did you check all the addresses on that list of names I gave you? Maybe David—”

He brushed her off with a sharp, “Mo did. Go home and cool out, Les.”

“Wait, Silvestri. Isn’t it possible that David is dead, too—murdered?”

She heard a commotion, cheering. Then, “I’ll take it. Les, get off the line. Tell Weiss.”

“Wait—” But she was listening again to a dial tone. “Damn.” He hadn’t even heard her. She replaced the receiver with a loud thunk.

“Do you mind, Wetzon? You are mumbling and grumbling. I’m trying to finish up here. It’s distracting.”

“Um.” Wetzon rose and pulled open the filing cabinet, trying to remember how she’d first met David Kim. Had someone referred him? There had to have been a résumé. The résumé file might yield something. She pulled out the file and flicked through it. God, there were résumés here from the year one. “Worthless,” she muttered, sorting through and dumping those. “Ah, here it is.” David Kim’s résumé with a letter attached. Standard letter. But the home address was not Forest Hills, it was 2904B Mott Street. “Eureka!” she cried, and flapping the résumé in her hand, she sent the file drawer home with a thud.

“That does it!” Smith threw down her pencil and turned. “What’s with you, Wetzon? You’re mumbling to yourself, slamming down phones, tearing up papers, and punishing innocent filing cabinets.”

“Look at this.” Wetzon dropped the résumé down in front of Smith. “And—” She bounced back to her desk, grabbed the list of names. “Now look at this.” She set it down next to the résumé. “What do you see?”

“Is this that list of phony accounts?” Smith’s eyes took in both the résumé and the list, swinging back and forth from one to the other. She chewed on the eraser end of her pencil, then she ran a bright coral fingernail down the list of names and stopped at one address. 2904B Mott Street, the address of one Collin Lee. It was also the address David Kim had used on his résumé.

They stared at each other.

“What—” Wetzon began.

“The police know about the list,” Smith interrupted.

“And supposedly, checked it out and came up with zip.” Wetzon put her hand on Smith’s shoulder. “Smith, listen to me a minute. What if David didn’t do it? What if he was set up by someone else at Luwisher Brothers. Hoffritz, maybe—or Destry Bird.”

“Or Doug Culver?”

“Yes. What if he’s lying hurt or dead somewhere?”

“Like 2904B Mott Street?” Smith’s smile was dazzling.

“Thank you.” Wetzon snatched the résumé and list from Smith’s desk and, folding them, packed them into her handbag. She pulled out her wallet. “Forty dollars. Good.” She had enough money.

“And what, may I ask, are you doing now?”

“I am going down to Chinatown to see what’s at 2904B Mott Street.”

“But what about our drink?”

“It’s not as if we’re never going to see each other again.”

Smith slipped her feet back into her spectators and opened the door. “Harold, Wetzon and I are leaving now. Be sure the lights are all out when you leave, and lock up after yourself.”

“Okay,” Harold called, cheerfully. “I’m almost done here.”

“What are you up to, Smith?” Wetzon slung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door.

Smith was right at her heels. “You don’t really think I’m going to let you solve this by yourself?”

C
ANAL
S
TREET, WHICH
really had been a canal and a promenade in the early eighteen hundreds, was now a merchandise mart where peddlers hawked everything from batteries and socks to fish and vegetables. It also served as the portal to another world— Chinatown, a maze of dark, winding, densely populated streets in Lower Manhattan, a perfect place to hide, particularly if you were Asian.

Bound on the north by Canal Street, by Lafayette on the west and the Bowery on the east, it teemed with immigrants, legal and illegal. Vicious street gangs sold protection to small businesses, which were mainly restaurants in storefronts one after the other on Mott, Pell, Bayard, Baxter, Division, and Chatham Square. Even more restaurants cluttered second floors and cellars. Barbecued ducks dangled glistening in the storefront windows alongside other assorted fare. Disregarding the heat, shoppers—mostly Asian—were haggling loudly with vendors, watching, veil-eyed, the two white women in business clothing.

No way, Wetzon thought, could she and Smith not be conspicuous, particularly Smith, whose height was exaggerated by her high heels. They turned right off the Bowery onto Pell Street, the raw underbelly of Chinatown, edging around people clustered on the narrow sidewalks. Everyone seemed to be shouting. Where Pell ran into Mott, they stopped. They had not spoken since getting out of the cab.

Lined on both sides with run-down tenements that appeared to lean toward each other, these cramped streets, not made for auto traffic, were snarled with trucks and cars. Exotic odors mixed with garbage rot; a bakery in yet another storefront sold rice cakes and almond cookies, and the dead air floated sugary.

“2904B Mott Street,” Wetzon murmured. “Here we are.”

Smith’s eyes searched. “Of course, they’re never around when you need them.”

“Who?” Wetzon was jostled by two elderly Chinese men, who made no apology as they kept up their dialogue as if the women were not there.

“The cops.” Smith considered the tenement with narrowed eyes. “No. We’re not going in there by ourselves.”

The storefront of the building housed yet another restaurant—the Blue Flamingo Tea House. Peering through the steamy windows, they saw a luncheonette counter with a few people sitting, smoking, bowls in front of them. On the side were Formica-topped tables where an old Chinese man sat reading a newspaper.

To the right of the restaurant and up a step, grooved out by generations of footsteps, was a door with a big grimy window. Wetzon held the door open for the reluctant Smith. They entered a dank, dirty vestibule; the mud-brown linoleumed floor was cracked and threadbare. The stench of urine and mildew pervaded. Six mailboxes with names missing or crossed out and written over were in a horizontal row on the right wall. Each was marked with a letter.

“I’m going up.” Wetzon’s voice sounded hollow.

“Listen to me,” Smith spoke in a throaty whisper. “I’m not going up there and neither are you. We could be kidnapped by white slavers and never seen again.”

Wetzon guffawed. “You have to be kidding.”

The door to the stairwell hung crookedly ajar from a broken upper hinge, which squeaked in protest when Wetzon pulled it open and peered in. A bare ceiling bulb dangled from a dirt-encrusted wire, its wattage so low, its exterior so caked with dirt and grease, that it gave off little light.

Smith leaned over Wetzon’s shoulder, taking in the dim stairwell and the dirt, and shivered in spite of the smothering heat. “It’s disgusting up there. You can’t—” She pushed Wetzon aside and blocked the doorway.

“I’m not asking you to come with me. In fact, it’s better that you don’t. And I’m not going to stand here and argue. I’ll be right back. Move.”

Smith shrugged and stepped aside, careful not to brush against the filthy wall. “I’m not waiting here. It stinks to high heaven.”

“Then wait outside.” Wetzon smirked, thinking of tall, willowy Smith, in go-to-business clothes, hanging out on the street in front of the Blue Flamingo Tea House, like a hooker.

The steep, narrow steps were covered by a ragged rubber runner, and the whole cramped building seemed to tilt to the right. Voices and the muffled sound of china and pots clattering filtered through the cracked and chipped walls.

At the top of the stairs she found a short hall, two doors, and another set of stairs going up. Somewhere above her, a child began to cry, bunched and bleating. Footsteps shook the building and the child’s crying stopped.

Wetzon listened at the first door, trying not to touch anything. Chicken soup permeated the landing, mingling with roasting meat, cabbage, all smells accumulated from those who had lived, died, or moved on from here. She knocked on the door. There was no response. Sweat dripped from her forehead, her upper lip. She licked her lips and tasted salt.
God
, she thought, and knocked on the second door.

“Hurry it up, will you.” Smith called up from the floor below, skittery.

Wetzon raised her hand to knock again, but the door opened slightly, just enough for her to see David Kim looking just as shocked to see her as she was to see him. His face, even in the bleak yellowish light from the hall, looked white, skin drawn taut over his cheekbones; his dark eyes were sunken. A death’s-head.

“My God, David.”

He backed into the room, and she pushed the door open the rest of the way, following him into a warren of small, boxy rooms. A railroad flat. A sofa and a leather easy chair. A cream-and-blue nappy carpet. Track lighting. And a very complex stereo system hooked up to a television and a VCR. A fan whirled, but it was stiflingly hot. An odd humming sound seemed to come from the sofa.

“David—thank God you’re all right.” Why wasn’t she afraid? In her heart of hearts, she knew he was innocent.

He sank into the chair and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, weeks.

“David,” she said again. “What’s happened to you? What is this about?”

He opened his eyes and she saw agony. He said, “I didn’t do it. They set me up.”

“I knew it,” she cried triumphantly. She sat down on the edge of the sofa and leaned toward him. “Who did it?” When he didn’t answer her, she said, “David, come in with me and tell them you didn’t.”

He shook his head bleakly. “I can’t. They’ll never believe me. I have no money. You have to be rich to defend yourself.”

“David, do you know who killed Ellie?”

“I’m scared.” His hands trembled. Wetzon took them in hers; they were dry and cool.

“I’ll go with you. It’ll be all right. Come on.” She stood and moved to help him up, and from that position, she saw the new Vuitton suitcase parked behind the still open door. Turning back to David, she said, “You were running away.”

He nodded, mute.

An old, black AT&T telephone lay doggo under a newspaper, off the hook, humming. She knelt, threw off the paper, replaced the receiver, and punched out Silvestri’s number at Midtown North.