The Big Killing (15 page)

They turned west on Seventy-fourth Street toward Amsterdam, Buffie talking distractedly about Barry and “her insurance.” Wetzon listened halfheartedly. The woman Barry had met wore a black leather trench coat and a scarf tied under her chin. She had seen someone dressed like that recently.

In the middle of the block, several yards away, Wetzon noticed a man getting into a cab. Tall, awkwardly thin ... glasses, smallish head ... Leon Ostrow. “Leon,” she called. “Leon!” The cab door slammed shut and the cab pulled away. She saw the dark shapes of two heads in the back seat. No. She must be wrong. What would Leon be doing in this part of town at this time of day?

Buffie was staring at her. “I thought I saw someone I know,” Wetzon explained. “Guess I was wrong.”

Buffie lived in an old residential hotel that had been converted into tiny apartments. The lobby was small and rundown, with ugly imitation wood paneling, linoleum floors, cheap Danish modern furniture. A sign on the concierge’s desk said: ALL VISITORS MUST BE ANNOUNCED, but the concierge was conspicuously absent, while the switchboard next to the desk buzzed, unattended.

There were two elevators at the end of the shallow lobby. One had an out-of-order sign on it. They took the other to the sixth floor and started down a long narrow hall with dim overhead lighting, red-flocked wallpaper. The entrance to Buffie’s apartment was in a particularly dark alcove. As Buffie started to unlock the door, Wetzon noticed something lying on the floor, partially caught in the doorjamb. She bent to pull it out. It was a narrow silk tie with mauve cabbage roses, like the one Smith had worn today. Wetzon bit her lip, perplexed. What the hell was going on?

“That’s funny.” Buffie backed away from the door.

“What’s funny?”

“It’s unlocked. I know I locked it when I left....”

“You were upset. Maybe you forgot.” Distracted, Wetzon looped the tie around the shoulder strap of her purse, thinking only that she wanted to get this over with and be on her way.”Maybe,” Buffie concurred, uncertain.

Wetzon moved around her and pushed the door open. A hideous odor hit them with the force of a sledgehammer, driving them back, unwittingly, against each other.

“My God! What’s that?” Buffie cried.

Wetzon gagged. It was an animal smell but not like the zoo as Buffie had described. It was a dead animal smell—like on the farm, when her father had slaughtered.... She couldn’t bear to think about it.

Buffie looked stunned. She pushed the door open tentatively. The stench was overpowering. The apartment was in violent disarray, furniture overturned, drawers hanging open, an imitation oriental rug flung back, exposing the stained wooden floor.

The two women moved gingerly into the room, hands over their noses. In a doorway to what might be the bedroom Wetzon saw a brown leather sandal. She moved forward, mesmerized. The sandal was attached to the foot of an individual who lay twisted unnaturally near the bedroom door. “Oh, no!” she gasped. She pivoted, instinctively trying to shield Buffie, just behind her, from seeing.

“Georgie, oh, God, Georgie!” Buffie shrieked, frozen. She covered her face and began to wail.

Wetzon willed herself to turn. Georgie’s frightening eyes were now vacant. He seemed to be floating in a mass of congealed brown slime ... there was so much of it.... She swallowed hard, put her hand over her mouth. One arm was twisted abnormally behind him. The long wooden handle of what appeared to be a butcher knife was in his hand, half out of his back, as if he had been trying to pull it out. Her stomach lurched.
Slaughtered
, she thought. The smell was ghastly.

“We’ve got to get an ambulance, the police. Come on!” Wetzon yanked Buffie away, stepping over the mess on the apartment floor, slamming the door. In the hallway Buffie doubled over and began to vomit. Wetzon pressed her lips together to keep from joining her. She had to get out of there. “Buffie,” she whispered hoarsely. The girl seemed not to hear her. “Buffie,” she implored, “please, we have to go downstairs and call the police.” The girl looked shattered. The jaunty hair drooped, the funny earrings seemed freakish, the outfit, bedraggled. Vomit was spattered on her white boots.

Wetzon, who felt the way Buffie looked, had no recourse but to take charge. They took the creaking elevator back to the lobby, where there was still no evidence of the concierge. Wetzon left Buffie on the black-and-white tweed sofa and went behind the desk and picked up the phone.

“Here, here, you can’t do that!” an angry voice yelled. A fat man in a tight blue T-shirt came out of a back room. The missing concierge. His gross belly protruded over dirty gray uniform pants. Wetzon saw a greasy gray jacket that matched the pants hanging on the back of the chair behind the desk.

“I’m calling the police,” she said. “There’s been a murder upstairs.”

“Are you crazy, lady?” When Wetzon didn’t respond, his face blanched. “You’re serious. Jesus! I’d better get the building manager.”

She took a deep breath and spoke to the 911 operator, gave her name, Buffie’s address, and reported what had happened. Then she hung up and sat next to Buffie to wait for the police. It was a kind of déjà vu. She had been here before. It was getting like quicksand. Wherever she placed her small pointed foot, she sank deeper and deeper.

She had a sudden, urgent thought. “Buffie,” Wetzon asked, “how did Georgie get into your apartment?”

Buffie made a mewing noise and looked at her, dazed. “He had a key. They all did.” She mewed again and swayed. Her head slipped to Wetzon’s shoulder. Wetzon put her arm around Buffie and held her. That’s when Wetzon noticed the silk tie on her handbag. She had forgotten it. She untwisted it awkwardly, so as not to dislodge Buffie, who was probably beyond feeling anything. She sat still and closed her eyes, trying to clear her thoughts. It appeared to be a duplicate of Smith’s. What if it was Smith’s? Smith had written “G.T.” in her appointment book. Smith was her partner. Murder. Two murders, maybe. It was more than she could cope with right now. She pushed the tie into her purse.

“Are you Ms. Wetzon?” She opened her eyes and saw a burly, overweight black man in a short-sleeved white shirt, tieless, dark pants, sportjacket over his arm. “You the lady that called about a murder?” Amber lights danced on the street. A police emergency van was parked in front of the building.

“Yes,” Wetzon said. “In six-o-five, this woman’s apartment—” She shook herself mentally. Why was she speaking like a moron? “He’s a friend of hers, Georgie Travers. I think he’s dead.”

Another man in street clothes motioned to several uniformed policemen and one policewoman. They started cordoning off the entrance to the building.

She was learning more than she had ever wanted to know about police routine.

The black detective sneezed and blew his nose.

“God bless you,” Wetzon said.

“Rose fever,” the black detective said. He spoke with an asthmatic wheeze. “I’m Walters.” There were beads of sweat on his high forehead. He mopped his brow with the handkerchief he had sneezed into. “This is Conley. We’re going upstairs. We’ll want to talk to you and—” He pointed to Buffie.

“Ann Buffolino,” Wetzon said.

“I’m going to leave you with Bellman.” He nodded to the short policewoman, who looked almost comically overburdened with the gun belt, book, billy club, and other paraphernalia that were standard-issue to uniformed police in New York City. The large hat with its patent leather brim hid most of her face. “If there’s anything you need, ask her.”

The fat concierge hovered like a toady, muttering, “Mr. Goldstone is coming, he’ll be here soon, you’ll see, he’ll be here,” as if it were an incantation. The switchboard buzzed and buzzed and buzzed. He made no move to answer it.

Silvestri should be told
, Wetzon thought. She struggled to her feet and Buffie tumbled onto the couch, half-conscious. “Detective Walters,” she called. Was he a sergeant like Silvestri? “Georgie Travers, the—uh—dead—the man upstairs—is involved in another murder case.”

Walters looked impatient. His stubby finger was on the elevator button. The elevator door opened and two men got out. “What’s this? What’s this?” the taller, older one asked.

“You have to call Silvestri, Sergeant Silvestri, at the Seventeenth Precinct,” Wetzon insisted. Her voice cracked.

Walters ignored her. “There’s been an accident,” he told the two men. “We’d like you to stay, if you would, and answer a couple of questions.”

“How exciting,” the younger man said sarcastically. The taller man poked him in the ribs, and the younger man clamped his mouth shut.

Walters raised his arm to one of the uniformed policemen. “Just get verification from the doorman,” he said. “The nervous fat guy. And keep them here till I get back.” He looked at Wetzon for a moment, thinking. “Conley, Silvestri at the Seventeenth. See if he can get over here.” He sneezed again.

“God bless you,” Wetzon said. She went back to the sofa and Buffie and waited. It was six o’clock. She would never get home in time for her date with Rick Pulasky, and even if she did, she was in no mood to see him, or anyone, for that matter.

Policewoman Bellman smiled at her kindly. She had crooked front teeth. She was perched on the arm of the sofa, trying to comfort Buffie, who was sobbing into a fresh clump of Kleenex.

“Oh God, oh God,” Buffie keened, rocking back and forth. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

People were beginning to come home from work. They were identified by the concierge and allowed in, their names and apartment numbers noted on a list. A flustered, balding man in a checked suit turned out to be the managing agent, Mr. Goldstone. He took over the switchboard, which had been buzzing incessantly.

Wetzon, watchful, saw Silvestri through the glass front doors before he saw her. Her heart did a jeté. He was wearing a dark blue suit, just as rumpled as his brown one. He flipped his I.D. at the policeman at the door, and stood aside to let a tenant in. Silvestri had a slight hook in his nose which Wetzon hadn’t noticed before. It made him even more attractive.

My knight in shining armor
; she thought. Would that he were. She remembered Smith’s possessive smile.

“Ms. Wetzon,” he said, coming forward, hands in his pockets, acknowledging her with a slight nod.

And without a morsel of feeling
, she thought.

“I’m Silvestri,” he said briskly to the policewoman. “Seventeenth. Where’s Walters?”

Bellman got to her feet respectfully. “Six-o-five.” She moved away slightly as if to give Silvestri a chance to talk with them.

“Ms. Buffolino,” Silvestri said, his voice matter-of-fact. Buffie blubbered into her wet Kleenex. Silvestri looked at Wetzon with cold, slaty eyes, taking in her suit and Reeboks. “What’s the story here?”

“Georgie Travers is dead,” Wetzon said. “He has a knife in his back. Buffie and I found him in Buffie’s apartment a little while ago.”

“Well, Ms. Wetzon, for a little lady who says she hardly knew Barry Stark, you seem to be pretty thick with all of his friends.”

“That’s not true,” Wetzon protested, bewildered. “I didn’t even know about Buffie until Georgie told me about her.”

Silvestri raised a thick, dark eyebrow at her. Why did she always feel defensive with him, as if she had to prove something?

“Things are not always what they seem, Sergeant,” she said, indignant. He had no right to treat her like a suspect.

“I’m eager to hear about it.” He turned on his heel and went upstairs.

Forty minutes later Georgie’s body was removed in a big blue bag, strapped to a rolling stretcher. Wetzon and Buffie watched, holding hands tightly.

They went with Silvestri, Walters, and Conley to the Twentieth Precinct on Eighty-second Street, where Buffie asked tearfully for the ladies’ room. Wetzon went with her and watched, impressed, as she put herself back into a semblance of the contrived kookiness she’d had when Wetzon first saw her, and then dashed out of the room. Wetzon wetted a paper towel with cold water and stared at her drawn reflection in the mirror, then held the cold towel to her face and throat. She thought about changing back into her pumps, but rejected it as too much trouble. Besides, Silvestri had already seen her in the Reeboks.

When Wetzon came out of the ladies’ room, Buffie was speaking intently to someone on the pay phone. She hung up as soon as she saw Wetzon.

“Do you have anyone—a friend—you can stay with?” Wetzon felt an odd sense of obligation, knowing with a sinking realization that she would take Buffie home with her, if the girl had nowhere to turn.

Buffie nodded. “I just spoke with him. I’m going over there after we’re finished.”

So, Wetzon thought, Barry was not the only man in Buffie’s life either.

It was after eight when a blue-and-white dropped Wetzon off outside her building. Dr. Rick would have come and gone. Too bad. She dragged herself to the elevator.

“Was anyone here for me?” she asked the night doorman, who emerged from the back hall when he heard her footsteps.

“No, Ms. Wetzon.”

Once inside her apartment, she double-locked the door and played back her messages.

“Leslie Wetzon, this is Rick Pulasky. There was a big pile-up on the FDR Drive tonight. Emergency is on O.T. Forgive me, please. Same time tomorrow night?” He left his service number. “Call me only if it’s not good. Ciao.”

She went into her bedroom and closed the blinds. In the dark she stripped down to her underwear, dropping purse, briefcase, and clothing onto the floor. Then she crawled into bed.

“Go away, world,” she said.