Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (42 page)

Down the block in front of Wetzon’s building the rolling lights of a police car were flashing red and white.

“Arthur, what do you suppose—?” She hurried forward.

The police car was double-parked in front of the building. No one was in it. She fumbled with her key until Arthur took it from her shaking fingers. Inside the lobby, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No tenant on guard duty sat at the reception table. Wetzon pressed the elevator button.

Two uniformed cops, a man and a woman, stepped out of the elevator.

“Officers, what is the problem?” Arthur asked.

“You live here?” the woman asked.

“No, Ms. Wetzon does.”

The man took out his pad and looked at it. “You’re Miss Leslie Wetzon? Twelve-D?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like someone attempted to gain entrance to your apartment.”

It was true, and not a little terrifying: Twelve-B’s housekeeper had opened the back door to put out the trash and surprised a person in a ski mask trying to jimmy open Wetzon’s door. The resourceful woman had slammed her door and called 911.

Wetzon found Izz trembling under the bed. Except for a deep gouge in her door and some scratches in the paint around the lock plates, there was nothing else to indicate the break-in. But the fact was, someone had used a crowbar between the door and the jamb.

In the kitchen, Izz’s bowl of water was upended, and the floor was dotted with clumps of dried food, now more like soggy Cheerios. “You’re as bad as Smith,” she told the dog, wiping up the bits of food with a paper towel. Izz couldn’t care less. Her tail up, she was enthralled with Arthur, sniffing his shoes, the cuffs of his trousers.

“You can’t stay here alone.” Arthur bent and patted Izz on the head absentmindedly. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“She was Susan’s.” Wetzon scooped up a squirming Izz. “And I’ll be fine, Arthur. He won’t be back. It’s too open here, and everyone in this building minds everyone else’s business. And a good thing, for me, they do.”

Arthur frowned. “Isn’t this what you told me happened to Susan Orkin before—”

“Yes, but—” The stern look on his face stopped her. “How about if I take a cab over to Alton’s?” She crossed her fingers under Izz’s warm little belly.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Arthur, you are getting more and more like Carlos every day. I promise I’ll put a chair up against this door and the service door. Okay?”

“What good will that do?”

“Please, Arthur.”

“You’ll notify Detective Bernstein about this right away?”

“Yes, I will. Scout’s honor.”

After literally pushing him out of the apartment, she did as she’d promised. She left word for Bernstein. There were now twelve messages on her answering machine, nine of which were those she hadn’t checked yesterday. Sighing, she played them back.

Two calls from Carlos, three hangups, Sonya’s call, two calls from Smith and one from Alton. All Saturday. That was nine. Between Sunday and today three more had come in. Two were hangups. The third was from Alton. He wanted her to join him and Senator Moynihan for dinner at the River Cafe. His disappointment at not reaching her was apparent.

She left word on his answering machine that she was very tired, was going to sleep early, and would phone him in the morning.

For the first time in months she slept straight through, waking with her alarm at six-thirty. She got up and tilted the blinds open. The world outside was dark taupe, the roofs of the brownstones barely discernable. On the other hand, she reminded herself, each day was beginning to lengthen as March approached. And springtime in New York was always a festival of colors, odors and sensations. When it wasn’t raining.

Izz yawned and snuggled down in the afghan.

“What do you say, Izz? Do you want to go out or are you just possibly paper trained?” That was a thought. Wetzon padded down the hall, unlocked the door and brought the
Times
and the
Journal
in before she remembered the attempted break-in. Not smart, she told herself, opening the door like that.

Pulling the sports pages, she laid them out on the bathroom floor. “Oh, Izz, come have a look at what the Knicks are doing.”

The dog sauntered into the room and sniffed at the paper. Wetzon got in the shower. When she came out Izz had inaugurated the
Times.
“Well, thank you, Isabella. You are my kind of pooch.” She rolled up the newspaper, checked the back landing through her peephole, then put the soiled paper out with the garbage.

She had a meeting at nine-fifteen with Tom Greenberg. He’d asked her to come to his office, assuring her that no one knew her there and that it didn’t matter anyway even if someone did. She wasn’t so sure.

After orange juice and her vitamins, she put up coffee and let it drip through while she did twenty minutes of yoga, moving to the barre, and finishing with a headstand. It was wonderful what a night’s sleep could do.

On a day like today, she felt she had put bad dreams behind her forever. And the break-in? It could have been just what it was, having nothing to do with anything. Who was she kidding? In her bones she felt that it might have more to do with Richard Hartmann than Susan and Dilla. Once Arthur had the papers, she wouldn’t have to think about it again.

The ring was an unfamiliar weight on her finger. But maybe it was providing some kind of ephemeral stability, as if click, click, click, everything was falling into place.

She picked up the envelope from her safe deposit box at Citibank and walked to the post office, where she had to take a number and wait. When her number flashed overhead, she presented the package slip and was handed a thick padded envelope marked
Books.

It was getting late. She shoved the padded envelope into her briefcase with the envelope for Arthur and flagged a cab heading down Columbus.

White, Mooney’s branch office in midtown was on the fourth floor at 650 Fifth Avenue. The receptionist, a young black woman with straight brown hair and purple lipstick, sat behind a glass enclosure breaking off pieces of a doughnut that lay on a greasy napkin. “Yes?” She had a powdered sugar mustache.

“Mr. Greenberg. I have a nine-fifteen appointment.”

“Your name is?”

“Mrs. Brenda Goldstein.”

The receptionist pressed several buttons and said, “Tom? There’s a Mrs. Brenda Goldstein here for you.” She looked at Wetzon and hung up the phone. “Through that door and walk straight down and make a right. He’s the third office after you make the turn.” She went back to her doughnut.

Everything in the branch was in various shades of brown. Desks were cordovan, partitions beige, carpeting sable tweed. The doors to the offices were open and she caught glimpses of brokers at precariously stacked desks talking on phones, peering into computer screens. A nameplate was posted on the glass wall next to the door of each private office. Most of the names were those of people with whom she had talked over the years but never met.

The boardroom, where the smaller, often younger, producers sat, was more of the same. Each broker had his own beige cubicle, an L-shaped brown desk, a brown chair, and paper by the gross. Two young men were standing talking over their beige partitions, drinking coffee. It was hard to know if they were exchanging gossip or ideas. The Street was a hearty mix of both. A few, men and women, were on the phones. Once again she was struck by the similarities between the Wall Street boardroom and the police squadroom.

She turned the corner, counted three offices and stopped in front of the one that said
Tom Greenberg
on the glass. Greenberg was on the phone. He pointed to the chair in front of his desk.

“We got out on the blip. Yeah. Forty and a half. I dunno. Let’s sit with it a few days. I think we’re ripe for a correction.”

Wetzon took a seat thinking he looked a bit like a wharf rat: weasily eyes, short dark Fuller Brush hair. The rat was stuffed into a gray pinstripe, the jacket of which hung over the back of his chair while he sat in his crisp white shirtsleeves. Smoke spiraled up from somewhere behind piles of papers and black ringed-binders. He was a veritable tinderbox. Greenberg had told her he was forty-five. He looked every bit of it.

“Wetzon,” he’d said, when she called him two weeks earlier and invited him for a drink. “I’ve been at six firms in twenty years. I’ll go anywhere for a check.”

His production was half a mil; otherwise, she wouldn’t have bothered.

Greenberg banged down his phone. “Brenda Goldstein, huh?” His nails were bitten to the quick.

“Well, I didn’t think it would be professional to flaunt Smith and Wetzon at a firm we pull brokers from. May I close the door?”

“Naa. What do I care?”

“I’d feel more comfortable with it closed.”

“So close it.”

She got up and closed the door, sat again. “Aren’t you worried that your manager will find out you’re looking? He’ll be all over you and your accounts before you came back from your first interview.” It was almost impossible to keep any secrets on the Street, and with brokers moving from firm to firm like nomads, a prospect was sure to be recognized. Word would travel back to his branch like brushfire.

“Hell, no. I don’t worry about that. All I have to do is turn Gloria loose on them.”

“Who’s Gloria?”

“My wife. If I’m lucky I go home and Gloria has a headache. They all know I’m afraid of Gloria, and if
I’m
afraid of her,
they
better be. You know, all Jewish men are afraid of their wives.”

“They are?” His windows faced out on Fifth Avenue. She could see the uptown side of St. Patrick’s Cathedral from where she was sitting.

“Listen, my father was afraid of
his
wife and his father was afraid of
his
wife. Whole generations of wimps.” He scowled at her and puffed on his cigarette. “So whaddaya got for me, Wetzon?”

White, Mooney—Greenberg’s firm—and Bliss Norderman—Wetzon’s client firm—were in the midst of a major feud. Each was offering huge upfront bonuses to the other’s brokers. Just last week the entire Bloomfield Hills office of Bliss Norderman, including the manager, had walked across the street and opened an office for White, Mooney. When she left Greenberg thirty minutes later, Wetzon had his okay to set him up with Bliss, Norderman. Bliss was paying headhunters a bounty, an incentive over the regular fee, to steal White, Mooney brokers away for them.

When she got to the office it was after ten. Arthur’s messenger waited in their tiny reception area. Wetzon hung up her coat and pulled the manilla envelope from her briefcase, borrowed Max’s pen and addressed it to Arthur. She handed it to the messenger. Waving to a pale and curiously agitated B.B., who had come to the doorway of his cubicle, she asked Max, “Smith in yet?”

“She came in about ten minutes ago.”

That explained B.B.’s condition. “Thanks.” She gave Max’s shoulder a squeeze and opened her door. These days, she was never quite certain what she would find, but what she saw next was clearly a surprise.

Smith had recaptured her aura. The suit she’d bought in Boston could have been designed just for her. She had a new shorter haircut and huge Donna Karan gold earrings were clipped to each earlobe.

“Tomorrow at four will be fine,” she was saying into the phone in her clipped business-development voice. “I think you’ll find our firm quite responsive to your needs. Both I and my partner, Leslie Wetzon, have experience with firms undergoing restructuring.” She hung up and made a big checkmark on her calendar.

“We do?”

“Just remember, sweetie pie, that the primary object of our business is to get the money from their pockets and into ours.”

“How could I forget?” Wetzon took the padded envelope she’d picked up that morning at the post office from her briefcase.

“What’s that?” Smith rose and rotated her shoulders. She looked very pleased with herself.

“I don’t know. It came in the mail. I don’t remember sending for a book.” She pulled the staples out with her letter opener, and peered inside. Something wrapped in bubble packing.

Removing it, she tore the scotch tape away from the packing. “Good grief!” She dropped it on the desk as if it were on fire and reached for the phone. Should she call O’Melvany or Bernstein?

“Let’s see.”

“Don’t, Smith—”

Too late. “You are a wonder, sweetie pie. I’ve
totally
misjudged you.” Onto the suspect sheets on Wetzon’s desk, Smith emptied the glittering contents of the chamois pouch Izz had presented to Wetzon in Susan’s kitchen a little over a week before.

“I think the mother did it.” Smith flashed Bernstein one of her sugar-sweet smiles. “Mothers will kill for their children.”

“What mother?” Bernstein was practically drooling over Smith.

“She means Edna Terrace,” Wetzon said. “The treasurer at the Imperial. Phil’s mother. When I was a dancer, we all knew that the treasurers kept billy clubs under their windows.”

“Jeez,” Gross said. “Did you see this?” She was holding up a star-shaped pin made entirely of diamonds.

“Just write it down, Gross, and give the ladies a receipt. We’re not shopping, for Chrissakes—pardon my French.”

“And what about that disgusting old man with the heavy cane?” Smith demanded.

“Huh?”

“She means Fran Burke.”

“I would appreciate it if you would stop translating for me, sweetie pie,” Smith said, tartly. “This nice gentleman understands me completely, don’t you, Detective—ah—Bernson?”

“That’s Ber
nstein,
Smith.” Wetzon smiled an apology at Bernstein.

“Yeah, well, maybe.” Bernstein was oblivious. “But your kid is still a suspect. I’m going up to Boston to talk to them up there.”

“They’ll be back in two and a half weeks.” Wetzon handed Gross a huge ruby ring that had rolled behind her coffee mug.

“I wanna get this closed before Purim, right, Gross?”

Smith rolled her eyes at Wetzon and mouthed,
Purim? Give me a break.

“Sure, Morg.” Gross had slipped a diamond bracelet on her wrist. She was wearing a red skirt that strained at the waistline, and wrinkled black hose. “Not bad, huh Morg?”