The Big Killing (6 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Crime Fiction
“There, miss,” Jimmy said. “You’ll be all right now. I’ll get you out of here.” He closed the door and she sank back in the seat. If this was Silvestri’s car, it was a mess. In the dim light from the street, she saw beside her, under the mitt, what looked like a bundle of laundry. On the floor near her feet were a pair of very dirty torn sneakers and two baseball bats. She leaned forward to see what was going on outside. A face pressed against the window. People were staring. Some carried cameras. The street seethed with police activity. There were barricades, blinking lights, shouts.
Jimmy got into the car. “I’ll have you up to Seventy-eighth Street in no time,” he said cheerfully. “Just sit back so you don’t get hurt.”
She sank back next to the bundle of laundry. Right now she felt like a bag of dirty laundry, too, and her longing for a hot bath intensified.
Traffic on Third Avenue was heavy, but Lyons drove quickly, as if he was in a hurry to get back to the action. She peered into the darkness, trying to see where they were, looking for a familiar store front. There was so much construction going on now on Third Avenue; a giant crane seemed perched on almost every corner.
Barry. What had he gotten himself into? She wished she could stop thinking about it.
Then Jimmy Lyons pulled up in front of Smith’s building.
“I’m all right, really,” Wetzon said to the young policeman as he helped her out of the car. He was very conspicuous in his uniform and she felt mildly embarrassed, as if she had done something wrong. It was the “what would people think” syndrome. “Bourgeois nonsense,” her friend Carlos called it.
“I’ll see you upstairs,” Jimmy Lyons said.
“No, no, it’s really all right,” she assured him. “Tony is here, and he’ll take care of me.” Smith’s doorman was coming toward her with a big welcoming smile and a greedy curiosity in his eyes.
“Okay, miss.” Jimmy seemed pleased to be rid of her, chafing to get back to the excitement at the Four Seasons.
“Hello, Ms. Wetzon,” Tony was saying. “She got in about an hour ago.” He was hovering obsequiously.
“Thanks, Tony,” she said. “What time is it anyway?”
“Almost nine o’clock. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Her voice seemed to belong to someone else.
They were in the lobby when Jimmy Lyons was suddenly back beside her, very big and very blue. In the bright light of the lobby she noticed that he had a skimpy blond mustache. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? “I almost forgot your case,” he said, putting it on the floor beside her. He beamed at her. The elevator door slid open.
“Here, I’ll take that for you,” Tony said, putting the attaché case into the elevator.
“Wait,” Wetzon said, hand extended toward Jimmy. “Wait ... this ...”
“It’s okay, miss,” Jimmy said modestly, assuming he was being thanked.
Tony held the elevator door, blocking her from Lyons. A blowsy woman with a beribboned French poodle came sailing through the lobby, staring at Jimmy, staring at Wetzon, disapproving her way past the group and into the elevator. Now she said, indignantly, “You are holding us up, if you please.” She was wearing a mink coat, yards of mink. The poodle sniffed haughtily. Its toenails were painted red.
Wetzon—nervous, upset, tired—giggled. Tony let the door go. “Tell Sergeant Silvestri ...” Wetzon called, and the door closed.
“There’s no accounting anymore.” The disapproving woman spoke to her dog. “You’d better press your floor,” she said to Wetzon, “or you’ll come up to the penthouse with us.” Meaning,
and I don’t want you near my penthouse
. The poodle sneered, showing teeth.
Wetzon pressed 5, and when they came to a stop, she started off.
“You’re forgetting your attaché case,” the woman said disdainfully.
I’m always forgetting my case
, Wetzon thought with a surge of irritation.
Maybe because it isn’t my goddam case
. She reached down and yanked the case out of the elevator and lugged it down the hall to 5G, Smith’s apartment. How stupidly heavy the damn thing was. Sighing, she pressed the doorbell.
The peephole clicked. She stuck out her tongue. In seconds the locks were flipped and the door opened.
“Hey, Ma,” Mark yelled. “It’s okay. I told you she was okay. Wetzon’s here.” Tony obviously had not announced her. So much for these fancy East Side buildings.
So Smith had been expecting her. How could she have known?
“Mom said you’d be here tonight,” Mark said proudly. “Isn’t she wonderful?”
“It can’t have ... it’s too soon ... did it come over the news already?” Wetzon stammered, struggling to understand. “Did anyone call and tell her?”
“No one told me anything,” Smith replied, a disembodied voice coming from somewhere within the apartment. “I read it in the cards. I knew something evil had happened and you were involved. The cards never lie.” She stood dramatically in the arched doorway to the living room. She wore a full robe, an “at home” of vivid reds and blacks, from Marimekko, and the towel turban around her head meant she had washed her hair, but it made her look like an exotic fortune-teller. She had been reading her Tarot cards again.
Smith swept Wetzon into her arms and gave her an Obsession-scented hug. Then she pulled back. “You look terrible,” she said. “Tell me. Tell me everything. I’m so happy you’re all right. You kept coming up in danger with death around you.”
“I was,” Wetzon said. “And I’ve got to lie down right now before I fall down.” She felt limp, light-headed. She had not eaten anything since lunch, except for the small hors d’oeuvres at the Four Seasons.
She staggered, leaning on Smith, into Smith’s bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and fell on the bed, which in typical Smith fashion was still unmade from the morning and had the accumulated disarray of several days on it. Wetzon found herself resting amid the clothes Smith had worn, the papers she’d been reading, books, a hairbrush thick with hair, blankets and bedclothes, candy wrappers, and a hair dryer.
Normally Wetzon was put off by the chaos of Smith’s home base, but now it was welcome. She was just too tired to care. Probably somewhere on the bed were those damn cards, but let Smith worry about them. She lay back and closed her eyes, then opened them, startled. Looking up at the ceiling, she saw herself looking back. Smith had mirrored the ceiling over her bed.
“Hey, Smith,” she began.
Smith had the grace to blush. “Mark, honey,” she said.
“Mom?”
“Tea and toast for our tired friend here.”
Mark was a nest-making twelve-year-old, precocious in school, nurturing at home. Smith had been divorced from his father since he was two, and his father was with American intelligence, some kind of CIA position, which Smith never wanted to talk about. Wetzon had never met him. There was no contact between Mark and his father, and Mark didn’t seem to care.
“Okay,” Smith commanded, once Mark left the room. “Let’s hear it.” She pulled the low-backed chair from her dressing table over to the bed, sat down facing Wetzon, and added her bare feet to the confusion on the bed.
Wetzon took a deep breath, laboring to assimilate the reality of what she was about to say. “Barry Stark was murdered tonight at the Four Seasons.”
“Oh, my lord, where were you?”
Wetzon talked for what seemed like hours, filling in the story, answering Smith’s barrage of questions.
“He must have said something, Wetzon. Some clue to what was going on.”
“He was afraid, I think.”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“Smith, for godsakes, believe me, you know. He
oozed
out at me.”
Smith shook her head and frowned. “You must have seen
something
.”
“Nothing. I mean it.”
“Sometimes you amaze me, Wetzon. You don’t see things right in front of you—”
“Smith, will you give me a break? Leave me alone. I’m talked out. Barry Stark was stabbed to death, and I found him. I don’t need this now.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”
Wetzon sighed and closed her eyes. She kept drifting off and coming back. At some point she took off her jacket and lay back again. She could tell Smith was disappointed because she had not been there at the Four Seasons.
Mark reappeared, carrying a pot of fragrant tea, paper tails from the bags hanging down the sides of the pot, and a plate of buttered toast on a tray, and Wetzon sat up and ate, feeling more like herself again as she did.
“Mark, this is very nice,” she said.
“Yes, he’s become a regular little homemaker, haven’t you, sweetie pie?” Smith curled her finger at him. “Come here, I just have to kiss you.” Mark came around the bed to receive his kiss. “He takes such good care of me. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
The boy swelled with pleasure and settled down on the carpet to listen.
“Wait a minute,” Smith said. “The attaché case. Where is it?” She was looking around the room.
“I brought it in. I know I had it with me....”
“It’s in the hall,” Mark said. “I’ll get it.” He ran out and came back carrying the case. “Boy, is it heavy.”
“I have to call Silvestri right away and let him know about this,” Wetzon said.
“Who is Silvestri?”
“A detective I talked to. He seemed to be in charge. He’s nice, Xenia,” she added.
“You liked him? I can’t believe it. You liked a cop? You can’t like a cop.”
“A detective. And he’s sexy.”
“Oh, spare me.”
“Where did I put his card? I know he gave me his card.” Wetzon located her handbag among the chaos on Smith’s bed and began looking through it. Finally she swung her feet to the floor, bent over, and emptied its contents on the carpet because the bed was just too much competition. “No card. Never mind. I’ll just call the precinct and they’ll get a message to him.”
She dialed information and then the precinct. It rang and rang. “Thirty ... thirty-five ... forty ... This is ridiculous!” She hung up. “A person could die waiting. I’m sorry I said that. I’ll try later.” Her head was beginning to throb.
Smith was eyeing the attaché case speculatively. She had that familiar glint in her eye.
“Wetzon,” she said, looking at the case, not Wetzon, “while we’re waiting ...”
“Do you think it’s right? What if there’re fingerprints ... no, there wouldn’t be. I’ve had it since he left me.”
They both looked at the case. It seemed to be alive, bulging, right before their eyes.
“Mark, honey,” Smith said, “it’s past time for you to be in bed. This is a school night.”
“Aw, Mom, I want to see what’s in the case, too—”
“We’re not going to open it until the detective gets here,” Smith said firmly. “So you won’t miss anything.”
“And I’m sure it’s full of papers,” Wetzon said reassuringly.
“Aw, you guys are no fun,” Mark said.
“Good night, my sweetie,” Smith said, offering her cheek.
Reluctantly, Mark kissed her and left. They waited until they heard his door close, then they both sprang toward the attaché case.
Wetzon giggled. This was silly. “Two busybodies,” she said. “Aren’t we awful?”
“Wait,” Smith said. She closed the door softly. “Try the precinct again. One more time.”
Wetzon dialed. “Twenty ... twen—”
“Seventeenth Precinct. Rivera.”
“Oh, yes, Sergeant Silvestri, please,” Wetzon said. Smith looked disappointed. Wetzon felt relieved.
“Silvestri’s not picking up.” Rivera’s response was mechanical. “I’ll have him paged.”
“He doesn’t seem to be there,” Wetzon told Smith. “They’re paging him.” Smith smiled.
“Ma’am, he’s not here right now.”
“May I leave a message?”
“Yeah.”
“Ask him, please, to call Leslie Wetzon at ...” She gave Smith’s number, spelled her name for him twice, and hung up.
They pounced on the case.
“What do you suppose is in here?” Wetzon asked, running her hands over the thick, luxurious black leather.
“It’s locked, dammit,” Smith grumbled. “I suppose it was too much to hope that it wouldn’t be.”
They were sitting on the floor, the case between them.
“Maybe a good old-fashioned hairpin,” Wetzon said, reaching up, feeling around, and then taking one out of her bun. A lock of hair slipped and curled around her ear.
Smith laughed her wicked laugh and took the hairpin. The phone rang. “Damn,” Wetzon said. “Do you suppose that’s Silvestri already?”
“Let it ring,” Smith said, working with the hairpin. “I’m making progress.”
“No, we can’t,” Wetzon said, sighing.
Smith stood up. “Here.” She handed Wetzon the hairpin. “You try.” The phone rang repeatedly. She moved with exaggerated slowness toward it. “Persistent, isn’t he?” After the tenth ring, it stopped. “Aha,” she said, “that’s better.” She came back to the attaché case.
“Mom,” Mark called loudly, from his room, “it’s for Wetzon. Sergeant Silvestri, NYPD.”
“Christ,” Smith said. “That kid is so compulsive.”
Smith and Wetzon looked at each other. Smith took the hairpin and bent over the lock. Wetzon picked up the phone.
“Hello, Sergeant Silvestri.”
“What’s the problem?” He was curt.
She felt put off by his tone. “It’s just that I forgot something that might be important.”
“Okay, make it fast.”
“I can’t make it fast.” If he could be curt, so could she. “I have to show you.”
“I’ve got a lot of work here right now, Ms. Wetzon. Can’t this wait till tomorrow?”
“No, it can’t wait,” she insisted. She wasn’t going to be left holding the goddam attaché case a minute longer than she had to.
“Where are you?”
“My partner’s home. The address is—”
“I have it.”
A loud snap came from the floor where Smith was bent over the attaché case.
The two women’s eyes met with the sound of the lock snapping open.
There was a moment of silence from Silvestri. “How long are you going to be there, Ms. Wetzon?”
“Another hour, maybe. I’m really tired, and I’d like to get home, Sergeant. Ordinarily I’d let this go, but I think it’s important.”
“I’ll get up there as soon as I can, and then I’ll take you home.”
“Okay.” Wetzon slowly replaced the receiver. That was nice. He would take her home. “I think he was still at the Four Seasons,” she said. She wondered if he was calling from the same phone booth. She shuddered. In her mind she saw Barry again, sliding out of the booth toward her. “Poor Barry,” she said.
“Poor Barry, nothing,” Smith sniffed. “The scumbag probably stuck his avaricious nose in where he shouldn’t have and got caught.” She was no longer interested in Barry, Wetzon could see, but only interested in the case—attaché case—murder case. Smith raised the lid. “And we both know that if there was a profit to be made on this information, Barry was ready to make it, legally or illegally. You have to admit that.”
“You’re right, of course,” Wetzon said, sighing. “But what could he have done to deserve being murdered?”
“Let’s just see if we can find out,” Smith said with a raunchy giggle. “We’ll take everything out piece by piece so we can put it back in the same way we found it.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this at all,” Wetzon said, but her interest was piqued, and she knew she was in just as deep as Smith. “We are probably breaking the law.”
They looked at each other and grinned.
“Let’s make a list of what we find.” Wetzon took her Filofax out of her handbag and flipped over the calendar and address pages to where she kept the note pages.
“Ready?” Smith asked. “We’ll start here and leave this stuff in the accordion file for last.”
The attaché case had a large basic compartment and an accordion compartment attached to the inside cover. Smith flipped open the cover to the bottom compartment.
“Okay, here we go. One: research reports and prospectuses from Shearson, Bache, Merrill Lynch, Paine Webber, Alex Brown, his firm ... my God, he has reams of this stuff here.”
Barry had a network of friends at all of the firms, and they were a never-ending supply of research for one another. Brokers with an instinct for self-preservation tended to develop these reciprocal relationships, cultivating sources other than their own firm’s research. They had to, because brokers swore that their firms were almost never right, and by the time the stock was recommended to the broker’s clients, the institutional investors had already bought and sold the stock and it was on its way down. It was a business of one hand washing the other, in one way or another. A business of tradeoffs, real and psychological.
Smith stacked the reports on the carpet next to the case.
“Two: A Gucci address book. Wouldn’t you know. And a very nice one, too,” she said, turning it over in her hand. “I’d like to look this over more closely, but we may not have the time.”
“What’s this?” Wetzon pulled out a large white, lumpy plastic bag. It was stamped YORK HOSPITAL in horizontal blue block letters. “It feels like snack food—M and Ms, nuts and stuff.”
“There’s another one under here,” Smith said, pulling it out.
Wetzon opened the snap and looked in. “Jesus,” she murmured.
“What is it?”
“Wait a minute. Give me that ashtray.” With rare obedience, Smith reached for the large frosted glass ashtray on the night table near her bed. A fragment of surprise skirted past Wetzon’s subconscious.... What was an ashtray doing in Smith’s bedroom? She didn’t smoke.
Wetzon emptied the contents of the plastic bag into the ashtray. Capsules spilled out, a myriad of colors, shapes, and sizes. Pills and plastic vials grew into a huge mound.
“So—the big rock-candy mountain,” Smith said softly.
“Do you believe this? What’s in the other bag?”
Smith snapped it open and peered inside. “More of the same. And there’s another bag back here.”
“Don’t touch it. Let’s just put everything back where it was. It makes me nervous. Hold this for me.” Wetzon thrust the empty plastic bag at Smith and, while Smith held it, poured the contents of the ashtray back into it.
For once Smith was silent. She snapped the bags closed the way they’d found them and tucked both bags back into the case. “Your poor Barry was into a lot more than new issues, just as I always said,” she murmured. “Not so poor Barry, after all.”
“It gives me the creeps,” Wetzon said. “Let’s quit this.”
“Wait a sec,” Smith said. “Look.” She had pulled out a minicassette recorder. She turned it over. “There’s a cassette in it, half-used. We’ve got to listen,” she said eagerly. “It might be important.”
She had taken the towel turban off her head. Excitement had brought out her vivid coloring and her dark hair had dried full and wavy.
Wetzon was excited, too. It couldn’t hurt them to know what the tape said. She pressed the rewind button on the tiny recorder and waited for the small click. Then she pressed “play” and Barry’s voice came metallically into the room.
“Can you make it louder?” Smith settled her back against the foot of the bed.
Wetzon rewound and started again.
“Tuesday, March twenty-sixth,” Barry said.
“Today,” Wetzon said.
“Shush,” Smith said.
There was the sound of a buzzer on the tape.
“Yes,” a male voice rasped.
“Mr. Seltzer,” a woman’s voice responded.
“Good,” the male voice said. “Put him through.”
“Jake?” The second man’s voice.
“Yeah, Art. What do you have?”
“They called again,” Art said. “They know something’s going on. I put them off again, but they’re starting to push, and I’m getting worried. I don’t need the SEC nosing around right now. Are you sure you can cover?”
“Yeah. Will you quit worrying?”
“Okay, okay, but what about this Mildred business?”
“That’s my department.” Jake sounded angry. “You take care of yours. I’ve got Mildred hogtied and she doesn’t even know it.” He laughed, and even though the quality of the recording was poor, the downright nastiness in the sound came through to Wetzon, chilling her. “I’ve got something on her that will take her out. Permanently.”
“Yeah, okay, but get the certificates back before you do anything.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that, pal.”
“Yeah, well, my life’s on the line here, buddy. I vouched for you in the audit. I could lose everything.”
“Okay, okay, but someone knows too much about my business for this to keep happening. We’ve got a fucking spy here, and if I catch him, I’ll kill him. Wait a minute—” Jake broke off at that point and so did the tape.
“That’s Jake Donahue,” Smith said needlessly.
“I know. Smith, Barry must have been the spy. Maybe he got caught. He looked as if he’d been in a fistfight when he met me tonight.”
“If he did, why didn’t they get the cassette and the recorder?”
Wetzon rewound the cassette and placed the recorder on the carpet next to the Gucci address book. “I don’t know, but it’s pretty small. He could have had it in his inside coat pocket. Or maybe he didn’t have it on him at all, and that’s why they beat him up.”
“What do you think he found out?” Smith said. “And who is Mildred?”
“Ah, who is Mildred?” Wetzon said playfully. “‘What is she? That all our swains commend her ...’”
Smith stared blankly at her. “Really, Wetzon, sometimes you make no sense whatsoever.”
“I forgot myself,” Wetzon mumbled. She should never try to get literary with Smith. “There’s only one well-known Mildred in this business. And she just happened to have once been married to Jake Donahue. Mildred Gleason.”
“Ah, yes,” Smith said, imitating W. C. Fields. “Let’s think about that.”
“This stuff looks like more research,” Wetzon said.
“Yes, and a ‘Standard and Poor’s Stock Guide,’” Smith held up a hardcover book. “And
Super Stocks
by one Kenneth L. Fisher.”
“No wonder that damn case was so heavy.”
A buzzer sounded from the foyer.
“Damn. Your friendly detective didn’t waste much time getting here.” Smith stood up and stretched, leaving Wetzon to clean up the mess.
Hurriedly, Wetzon put the items back in order and moved the top of the case to close it, but a heavy object that was in the accordion section slipped out, blocking the lock.
“Jesus Christ, Xenia,” Wetzon said breathlessly. “Look—a gun.”
“What?” Smith was halfway out the bedroom door and returned in a flurry of red and black to stare down at the thick, shiny nose of a small automatic.
The buzzer sounded again. “Don’t move, I’ll be right back,” she said, heading for the foyer. She spoke briefly to Tony over the intercom and was back. Wetzon hadn’t moved. She was on her knees, sitting on her heels. Her palms were damp.
They stared at the gun, half in and half out of the attaché case.
“Push it back,” Smith said urgently, whispering, although she had no need to. “No, with your pen. Don’t touch it.”
Gently, Wetzon prodded the nose of the gun back into the case. The case closed by itself from the weight of the accordion file. She pressed the top and the lock snapped into place. She was shaking.
The doorbell rang.
