The Big Killing (29 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Crime Fiction
Jake shuffled a strange dance and slipped to his knees.
The answering machine clicked on and whoever it was hung up.
There was a soft thump as the marble peach made contact with Roberta’s forehead. She stopped, stepped toward Wetzon casually, as if she was about to begin a conversation.
“No, please,” Wetzon cried.
Roberta’s eyes burned. The marble peach hit the floor and shattered. Roberta took another step, then fell.
“Oh, God, I’ve killed her.” Wetzon’s face was wet. She hadn’t known she was crying. She swayed. The room was heady with the sickening, sweet smell of blood mixed with lily of the valley. Gasping, she made her way to the bathroom, gathered up all the towels, and brought them back to Jake, who was kneeling on the blood-spattered floor.
He looked up at her, face streaked with blood. She almost didn’t hear what he said, his voice was so low. “Lady, you are something else.”
His hands were badly cut, bleeding profusely. Docile as a child, he held them out to her and she wrapped them as best she could. His clothing was in streamers of tailor-made blue pinstripe and white shirting. The left lapel was cut away from the jacket and his shirt became various shades of pink to crimson as she worked. The red paisley silk tie was red on red among the tangles of his suit.
Jake’s face twisted in pain. She bent over to touch him.
“If you get too close to me,” he said harshly, “I’ll get you dirty, too.” He stood up awkwardly, swaying, and then slumped into Smith’s chair. Blood seeped from an ugly gash on his left cheek.
“You need a doctor,” she said.
“We’ll have to do something about that first,” he said, pointing to Roberta’s motionless body. “You didn’t kill her, worse luck, and the crazy bitch’ll come to and—”
“I’ll call the police.” She was amazed. Jake was taking no responsibility for what had happened, and yet, by buying Roberta, Wetzon knew he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of at least three people. Four, if she counted Sugar Joe. Was it really possible that Roberta had followed her that day from Mildred’s office, then had struck at her on the dark and quiet street as she crossed Amsterdam Avenue? She shivered, thinking of Roberta watching as she met with Laura Lee, with Amanda, and Howie, of her watching as she stood in line at Zabar’s. It was not something a sane person did. But Roberta was not sane.
“We can’t stop for that now,” Jake said. “I’m in no shape to fight her off.” Roberta moaned. “And you may not have another—what the hell was that anyway?”
“A marble peach.” Wetzon stared at the fragments of the marble peach. She couldn’t believe what she had done. She had saved their lives.
“A marble peach,” he repeated. “For chrissakes. Does any door here lock from the outside?” He was beginning to assume his old role of command.
“Yes. The supply closet. There.”
“Good. I’ll help, but you’re going to have to do most of the work.” He gestured with his clumsily bandaged hands. Blood was already seeping through the towels, staining them pink, then red. Wetzon looked away. The office was a mess. Smith would be furious. “What’s with you?” Jake growled. “Get that fucking knife away from her.”
She pulled some Kleenex from the box on her desk and picked up the bloody knife by the handle. She placed it squeamishly on her desk.
She leaned over Roberta’s body. The air in the room reeked, and she began to gag. She touched Roberta’s ankles tentatively. Leather boots, very expensive, high heeled, black leather boots, bloody leather boots ... red leather boots ... She swallowed a nervous giggle.
“What are you waiting for?” Jake demanded. “Pull.”
She pulled and Jake pushed, until Roberta was propped up in the supply closet like a bag of old clothes. Jake slammed the door with his foot and Wetzon locked it.
They nodded at each other like coconspirators. Crimson dripped into his eyes from a gash on his forehead. “Christ, I think I’m going to pass out,” he said, grimacing. He sat back down in Smith’s chair, heavily.
Wetzon washed her hands, shrinking from the color of the water in the sink, then wet a paper towel with cold water, taking it back to Jake, gently blotting up some of the blood from his face.
Jake opened his eyes. “I love you, Leslie Wetzon,” he said. His eyes closed.
She took a deep breath and dialed 911.
“My name is Leslie Wetzon. I’m at Six-ninety A East Forty-ninth Street. Please send an ambulance right away. Someone’s been badly hurt. Yes. There is also a murderer locked in the closet.” She paused. “I know, please believe me, and please notify Sergeant Silvestri at the Seventeenth Precinct immediately.”
Jake opened his eyes. “You’re not going to give me any time.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. It’s too late.”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, not arguing.
“I hope it doesn’t go too badly for you,” she said haltingly, not sure she meant it.
“Hey, I’ll be okay. I’m a survivor. I came on the Street without a penny, without a contact, and look where I am today.”
“Yes, look.”
Just like a broker
, she thought.
“Yeah.” Derisively.
At that moment there was a loud noise at the front door, and Metzger—tall, melancholic, and pouchy-eyed, but indescribably beautiful—appeared, followed by the detective with the ankle holster Wetzon had seen at the precinct house.
“God, I’m glad to see you,” she said, starting to cry again. She clung to Metzger’s arm, wanting to hug him, holding tightly to his arm. “She’s in the closet, the closet ... we put her in the c-c-closet....” She couldn’t get the words out. Her mouth was too dry. Her heart was pumping with such force, she wasn’t able to stand still.
“Are you all right?” Metzger gave her a skeptical once-over.
“Yes, yes, yes. But, but Jake—”
“In here,” Jake called weakly from the next room.
Metzger motioned with his head, but the other detective and two uniformed police had already moved into the back room.
Wetzon kept nodding at Metzger that she was all right, but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t let go of his arm. Where was Silvestri?
“Here now,” Metzger said, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Sit down.” Metzger put her in one of the reception chairs, took his arm away gently, and went into the back room. Wetzon could hear Jake and the others talking. Sirens blared and stopped. An ambulance arrived. More police. More noise.
Wetzon dried her eyes with the back of her hands and stood at the door to her and Smith’s office, leaning on the door frame. The room was a mess. The smell of blood mixed with antiseptic.
A white-coated medic was cleaning Jake’s wounds and had him on an IV. “These are going to need stitching,” he said to the other paramedic. “Let’s get out of here.” The other nodded. He was down on one knee near Roberta, who was slumped on the floor, leaning against Wetzon’s desk. The medic was trying to put a white patch on her forehead, but Roberta kept moving her head from side to side, not fully conscious, resisting. One of the uniformed policemen stood over her, handcuffs swinging from his index finger.
Metzger and the other detective were talking to Jake. They both glanced at Wetzon. She backed out and into the reception room and sat down at Harold’s desk, face in her hands, eyes closed.
She heard Metzger come back and opened her eyes. He sat uneasy, in one of the small chairs. He looked silly, like a giant, mournful beagle. She started to giggle, then put her hand over her mouth.
“Are you up to talking?”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and ran quickly through Roberta’s call, Jake’s unexpected arrival, Roberta’s entrance. “She never phoned Silvestri, did she?”
Metzger shook his head. “He would have told me. He would have been here.”
“Where is he now?”
Why isn’t he here when I need him?
is what she wanted to say. She felt an overwhelming desire to have him frown disapprovingly at her.
“He’s on another case. Couldn’t reach him. I knew something was wrong when you called.”
“She murdered Barry and Georgie Travers and Mildred Gleason,” Wetzon said, “and she would have killed us—”
“You did a good job on her,” Metzger said solemnly. “We’re going over to Bellevue now. You look okay, but you should have them give you the once-over. After that, we’ll need to talk to you at the precinct.”
She shook her head. “If you don’t need me right away, I’d rather go home, clean myself up. I promise I’ll come over to the precinct later.” She knew what she was going to do, if she could summon up the strength. She felt an enormous calm, in control for the first time since seeing Barry’s body slide from the phone booth a week ago.
A skeptical Metzger studied her for a moment, then nodded.
The group moved out, Roberta in handcuffs, head down, a policeman on each side, supporting her. Wings of copper hair hid her face. Jake followed, leaning on a paramedic. “Take care, Jake,” Wetzon said.
“I’m a hard man to keep down, Leslie Wetzon,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
The outside door closed. The sudden silence was a sedative. Wetzon continued sitting at Harold’s desk, losing touch with time.
The phone rang. Rang again. Her hand reached out and picked it up. “Smith and Wetzon,” she said.
“Oh, hi, Wetzon. I’m glad you’re still there. I have to talk to you.”
“Who—”
Why in hell are you talking on the phone, Wetzon?
she thought.
The woman kept chattering. “I had a really good meeting at Alex Brown,” she said.
Amanda. “That’s wonderful, Amanda.” Wetzon was happy for her. “When do you start?”
“Well, that’s just the thing I wanted to talk to you about, Wetzon. I told them I’d get back to them. After all, why should I take the first offer? I think I should be looking at other firms, don’t you? I’d like to talk to Pru-Bache. I hear they’re giving the best deals—”
If you were really smart, you’d hang up on her right now
, Wetzon told herself.
She deserves to be hung up on
. But she said, “Can we talk about it in the morning, Amanda?”
“Sure, I’m clear all day. Call me as soon as you set the appointment. ‘Bye, Wetzon.” She hung up.
Not even a thank-you,
Wetzon thought. She replaced the receiver and went into the bathroom and washed her face thoroughly with cold water. Her shoes were stained with blood, and she wiped them passingly with a wet towel. They were ruined. Maybe it would be dark at the Caravanserie and no one would notice. “Get going,” she told her pale reflection in the mirror, as she hastily pinned her hair back in place. She looked like a ghost. There was nothing she could do about it.
She pulled her handbag and her briefcase from under her desk.
She took a long last look around the office and forced herself to walk away from it. She didn’t have time to think about it now. She was late.
On the corner of First Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, a well-dressed woman was sitting on a suitcase heartily singing, “But square shaped or pear shaped, these rocks don’t lose their shape ...” Only a few people paused to stare. It was, after all, New York.
Wetzon took a deep breath to steady herself and hailed a cab. She was desperate to get away from the insanity she had just been part of. It was almost over. She had to do this one more thing, finish it up, hand the tapes over to Silvestri, and write an end to this nightmare. Just a little while longer.
The crowd going into the Caravanserie this early evening wore business suits, even the women. It was a convention of gray pinstripes. It would have to be; it was Wall Street Night.
The world of Wall Street was no different from that of other professions: there was a costume that helped create the conservative aura, which quietly said: “We are taking good care of your money. Trust us.”
She remembered Harvey Inman, a stockbroker she had met in her first year as a recruiter. “‘Trust me,’” he had told her facetiously, “is really code for ‘fuck you.’”
Wetzon felt weak and disconnected. There‘d been blood everywhere. She had almost been murdered. Jake Donahue had been badly cut. She didn’t know if she could go through with this. Her head began to pound as she presented her invitation and her business card with six dollars at a small table just inside the entrance of the Caravanserie.
She followed the stream of people into the room with the long bar. A good mix of men and women were standing around in small groups drinking and talking, exchanging business cards and gossip. She paid for a Perrier and lime and wished she could get rid of the cloying smell of Roberta’s lily of the valley perfume.
“Hi there.” A tall, light-skinned black woman with a very short Afro approached her. “I’m Gail Enders.” She offered her hand, which Wetzon took, shifting her briefcase to under her left arm. “My card.” It said:
Gail Enders, Vice President, R. A. Lane, Licensed Real Estate Brokers, for the sales of condominiums and cooperatives.
“You’re not a stockbroker, then,” Wetzon said, reading the card.
“No”—wide smile, an expanse of slightly bucked teeth—”but I sell a lot of apartments to stockbrokers, and other people, of course,” she added hastily. “Are you a stockbroker?”
“No, I’m a headhunter I work with stockbrokers.”
Mechanically, Wetzon exchanged cards and conversation with a man from the trust department at Citibank, a woman who did marketing for the New York Stock Exchange, and an ex-stockbroker, whom she had known from Paine Webber, who was now on the staff of
Money
magazine. She kept checking her watch. The ache in her head worsened. Migrainelike, it had settled on the right side of her head, pressing painfully on her eye. She dipped her fingertips in the ice-filled Perrier and touched her right cheekbone: for a moment the pain receded. Someone named Al Comfort tried to sell her insurance, term life, and annuities.
She talked to an attorney with a major corporate law firm, who wanted to cross over into corporate finance with an investment bank. It was almost seven. The pain in her head beat on without respite.
She bought herself a refill of her Perrier and strolled into the Day-Glo-colored lounge, feeling jumpy and apprehensive. She sat down on a shocking pink plastic chair that was molded like a mushroom, one of the sixties’ ugliest designs, and tried to think things through. Men and women in business suits, clones of one another, passed in and out of the restrooms, talking gibberish, or so it seemed to Wetzon. On the hem of her skirt she saw a dark red stain of dried blood. She looked away. She couldn’t let herself think about it now. She needed all her will to finish this.
There was a powder-blue pay telephone to her right, built into a wall painted the same shade. Gail Enders, of condominiums and cooperatives, strode in, punched out some numbers, left a message for Charley on his machine that she was still at the office, and went back to the bar fluttering her fingers at Wetzon, not even a little embarrassed.
Rick did not appear, and it was almost quarter past seven. She had been foolish to try to do this herself, not to mention headstrong. Maybe Rick wasn’t going to be able to come after all. There could have been an emergency, and he would have no way of getting in touch with her. She’d better try to reach Silvestri. By this time Metzger would have located him and told him what had happened with Roberta. She put the Perrier on the powder-blue ledge near the phone, fished a quarter out of her purse, and dialed, gnawing on her lip as she waited for someone to answer.
“Cooperman.”
“Is Sergeant Silvestri there?”
“He just left. Wait a minute—who’s calling?”
“Wetzon. Leslie Wetzon.”
“Hey,” Silvestri came on the line, his voice warm in her ear, “I’ve been trying to find you, lady. Where are you?”
“At the Caravanserie.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way.”
“Oh—God—” She jumped. The center door that she had been watching so carefully opened a crack, and she saw Rick peering through. What a relief.
“Les? Are you all right?” Silvestri sounded uncharacteristically anxious.
“Sure ... yes. Have to go. Talk later.” She hung up, picked up her briefcase, and went to the door to the health club. A fat woman in a tight white wool dress came out of the bathroom and looked at her curiously. Another woman followed almost immediately and they left together.
“Come on,” Rick said urgently and held the door wide. She slipped through, closing it quickly behind her.
He pushed the jacket of her suit away, grasping hands rough around her waist. “Mmmm, you feel good, babe.” Her back was pressed against the wall, which she could feel was carpeted, like the floors, with that crisp indoor-outdoor carpeting. Then he was kissing her, passionate, demanding kisses, but his eyes were shiny and hard.
Silvestri had called her Les.
She broke away from Rick, faking dizziness. “Come back to me,” he said, catching her. “Whatsa matter?” His speech was slurred. “You look a little pale.”
She thought of telling him what had happened, but didn’t, not knowing why. He seemed as nervous as she was. More. He was holding her so tightly her ribs ached. His large duffel bag rested on the carpeted floor beside them.
“What’s this?” she asked, joking, straining to lighten up. “I hope you weren’t expecting to empty a lot of stuff out of the locker.”
“Hell, no.” Rick laughed, agitated. But he let her go, leaning against the wall over her, an arm on either side of her head, closing her off, making a cage. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you ... I’m going to the Coast tonight. That’s why I called you—to see if we could get it on before I left.”
“Oh, Rick, I’m so sorry.” She was mortified. How selfish of her. No wonder he was nervous. “I’m so single-minded, this was all I was thinking about.”
“It’s okay, babe, but now you have to come out to the airport to make it up to me.” He smiled, coaxing. Jake had smiled at Roberta that way.... She felt herself begin to tense.
“But—” First she had to get the tapes and take them to Silvestri. If Barry really had another locker and it was here, and if the tapes were—
“No buts. Let’s get this show on the road. I have a nine o’clock flight from Kennedy. Where are those numbers?”
She checked her watch. “We’re cutting it awfully close,” she said doubtfully. She took the matchbook out of her jacket pocket, opened it, and showed him the numbers.
“Here, let me have that,” he said, grabbing the matchbook from her hand, shocking her, making no apology.
He was in a hurry, and he was doing her a favor, she thought, forgiving him. He glanced at the writing in the matchbook. God, he was hyper. She had never seen him like this. She shook the thought away. Why was she so suspicious? He was in a rush, on his way to California. It was a major career move for him.
But it was something even more than that. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
Club members in sweats, shorts, women in gleaming color-coordinated leotards and tights, everyone in the absolute best possible shape, came down the hall, passing them singly and in chattering groups, on the way to and from racquetball, tennis, exercise machines, classes. Every so often someone gave them a searching look, for Wetzon still wore her business suit. Rick, at least, was wearing jeans and a sweat top.
He pointed behind her. “Follow this corridor and make a left, and you’ll see the entrance to the health club. Wait for me there. I’ll be right back.” He slipped the matchbook in his sweatshirt pocket, picked up his big duffel, and moved in the opposite direction.
She hated to part with the matchbook, but there was no other way. Why hadn’t she copied the numbers in the matchbook when she was in the office? The pain in her head gripped her and crept down into her neck.
“Rick,” she called after him, “why are you taking your bag? I can take it with me.”
“It’s too heavy for you, little girl,” he said. “Besides, where am I going to put—what did you say we’re looking for in that locker?”
In the confusion, she had forgotten to tell him. And he had almost forgotten to ask her. They must both be a little crazed.
He swaggered back to her, hips forward, teasing. He was selling seduction in his tight jeans and bulky white cotton sweatshirt. She wasn’t buying.
“The tapes Barry made. Anything that looks like cassettes or tapes,” she said. “A diary or notebooks—papers, stuff like documents.”
“Okay, babe, you know you can rely on old Dr. Rick.” He leaned over and kissed her ear, then turned and sprinted up the corridor.
