The Big Killing (7 page)

Wetzon brought the attaché case into the living room and set it down near the large black marble slab of a coffee table. And there were Smith’s Tarot cards spread on the table as if she had just put them down. Great. Silvestri would think she and Smith were flakes.

It was yet another similarity between show business and the brokerage business. Everyone had an astrologer, a personal psychic, a card reader, a numerologist, and was always trying out a new one. A very straight, enormously successful stockbroker had once told Wetzon in total seriousness that he only bought stock that he had checked first with Miranda.

“Miranda?” she had the temerity to ask.

“My psychic,” he had replied.

“I’m making a pot of coffee,” Smith called from the kitchen.

Wetzon padded back into the bedroom to put on her shoes. She looked at herself in the mirror over Smith’s bureau. She was a mess. Haggard. Her hair was coming down. Where had they put her hairpin? She found it on the carpet where they had opened the case, and tried to catch up the loose tendrils of hair.

The doorbell rang again, more emphatically, and since Smith was ignoring it, Wetzon went to the door, smoothing her blouse, straightening her skirt. Her suit jacket lay where she had thrown it when she came in—in the disorder of Smith’s bed.

“Now what was so important, Ms. Wetzon?” Silvestri asked when she opened the door. He had his hands in his pockets and he looked tired. The shadow of a dark beard harshened his face. His eyes were flat and dark. Impersonal. Was he annoyed with her for bothering him?

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Wetzon said. “I didn’t expect you so soon, and I wasn’t dressed. And I’m sorry to make you come up here like this.” She was babbling, but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m sure you’ve had a long day, but I didn’t feel comfortable about letting this wait. It’s in here.” She was trying to be professional and brusque, as much as he was.

She led him into the living room, which was not in Smith’s normally disordered condition. Well, not quite. There were a pair of Reeboks near the sofa and the usual profusion of magazines—
Forbes,
Vogue
,
Fortune,
People
,
New York
, and
Cosmopolitan
—piled up on the Berber-carpeted floor. Smith’s taste in magazines was decidedly eclectic.

The sofa was one of those sweeping L-shaped sectionals covered in a fawn-colored textured velvet.

Silvestri waited expectantly, looking around. The lovely odor of coffee filled the room. His nostrils flickered.

“It’s the attaché case,” Wetzon said.

“What about it?” he asked.

Smith came sweeping into the room with a tray of coffee and fixings and set it on the marble table. “You must be Detective Silvestri,” she said, giving him the royal treatment. “I’m Xenia Smith.” She shook his hand. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”

Silvestri was clearly dazzled. He stared at her, still holding her hand. She smiled at him and at her hand. He smiled back at her and gave her hand a little pat with his other hand and then released it. He had not smiled at Wetzon that way.

He looked at Wetzon again, recovering. “The attaché case?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.
That
attaché case.”

He looked at it and at her, puzzled.

“I tried to tell you, and then Jimmy Lyons, when he brought me up here, that it isn’t mine. It’s Barry’s.”

“I see. And what were you doing with it?” Something in Silvestri’s tone made Wetzon feel guilty. He was disappointed in her. She should have tried harder, earlier, to tell him it wasn’t hers.

Smith smiled. “Now, Detective Silvestri,” she said, “Wetzon doesn’t discover a body every day. Particularly someone she knows so well. It was pretty much a shock, don’t you think?”

Why had Smith said she knew Barry so well? Smith knew that wasn’t true. And it made Wetzon seem as if she were covering up something. After all, she had already told Silvestri she hardly knew Barry.

“Barry left it with me when he went to make the phone call,” Wetzon said defensively. “When he kept me waiting so long, I carried it downstairs to give back to him ... and found him. Then everyone assumed the case was mine, and every time I remembered to tell you, you were busy, or called away, and I just forgot.” What she was saying sounded like so many weak excuses—at least to her ears.

Silvestri went over and picked up the case. “Don’t imagine there are any decent fingerprints left,” he said. “I thought it was a pretty heavy case for such a little lady. I’ll have that cup of coffee now ... black.” He smiled at Smith, who smiled back intimately. “It smells terrific.”

Smith had made another conquest. Wetzon poured the coffee. There was a plate of Oreo cookies on the tray. Wetzon hated Oreos and all packaged, processed cookies. They were full of chemicals and artificial ingredients. Smith didn’t care about those things.

Silvestri sat on the sofa, and Smith curled up opposite him on the matching ottoman. “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked eagerly.

Wetzon handed him a cup of coffee. He was looking at Smith.

“No,” he said, “I’m going to want my lab people there when we open it.” His eyes drifted from Smith to Wetzon. “You didn’t open it, by any chance?”

Wetzon busied herself pouring coffee into the other two cups, contriving not to be free to look up. “Us? Oh, no,” Smith replied innocently. “The case is police evidence, isn’t it? We wouldn’t do that.”

Silvestri looked dubious but didn’t pursue it. He sipped the coffee, checking out the room. Wetzon was certain he had seen the Tarot cards and wondered what he thought.

“Who reads the cards?” he asked, as if reading her mind.

“I do,” Smith said. “I read danger and death around Wetzon tonight. Danger and death and a dark-haired stranger.” She smiled charmingly at Silvestri. Silvestri smiled back at her. “I’ll read yours for you sometime, Detective.”

Wetzon suddenly felt de trop. She wanted desperately to be home in her apartment, in her clean, neat bed. “Do you know anything more about who killed Barry?” she asked.

With seeming reluctance, Silvestri took his eyes from Smith’s. “No … nothing conclusive. Too much data has to be gone through before we can narrow it down. We know he did make a phone call because he used a credit card, so we were able to trace the number.” He looked at Wetzon intently, as if wanting or waiting for her to react.

“But you’re not going to tell us whom the call was to,” Wetzon said.

“Right.” He finished his coffee and stood. “Now I’ll thank you, ladies. I have a long night ahead of me.” He looked at Wetzon. “Do you want that ride home?”

“Oh, no,” Smith said, obviously dismayed. “You can’t go home tonight, Wetzon. I really think you should stay here. You don’t want to be alone.”

But she did, and Smith didn’t argue with her. She knew Wetzon was immovable when she set her jaw like that. Wetzon went into the bedroom to rescue her jacket and handbag. She slipped the jacket over her shoulders and examined herself in the mirror again.
Forget it
, she thought. Silvestri wasn’t thinking of her that way. When she returned to the living room, Silvestri and Smith were still smiling at each other. Wetzon felt put upon and jealous. It was Smith’s incredible magic with men. All men. What was it about her? She wasn’t beautiful. She was tall and angular. It was an aura; something she gave off. But Wetzon had seen Silvestri first. And had even told Smith she liked him. It didn’t seem at all fair.

God, she was bone weary.

Silvestri’s silver Toyota was parked illegally in front of the building. Under the streetlight it sparkled. It was probably the cleanest car in New York City—on the outside. He wiped an invisible speck of dirt off the fender, then unlocked and opened the door for her. The inside of the car was even more of a horror than she remembered. The front seat was strewn with papers. On the floor were empty cans of Diet Pepsi. There were empty cardboard coffee containers and napkins, and half a hamburger was graying in another container ... ROY ROGERS, it said.

“Maybe I should sit in the back,” she suggested.

“Naa, just as bad.” He was right. The back was filled with the laundry bag she remembered, and several cleaning boxes of shirts she hadn’t noticed before. Silvestri collected the papers and books that were scattered on the front seat and dumped them unceremoniously on the backseat. The cartons and soda cans he swept up and stuffed in a crumpled paper bag that also lay on the seat. He leaned over and brushed the seat off with the sleeve of his jacket and helped her in, closing the door, then he carried the attaché case around to his side and put it in the back with his shirt cartons. The night was cool, and Wetzon took her jacket from her shoulders and slipped it on.

“Tell me about her,” Silvestri said after he had settled himself in his seat and started the car.

“What do you want to know?” She didn’t have to ask him who.

“Is there a husband?” He made a left on Seventy-ninth Street.

“She’s divorced. She has a twelve-year-old son, Mark. What else would you like to know?” He was squinting at the lights. He probably needed glasses.

They were taking the transverse on Seventy-ninth Street, going west through Central Park. There was very little traffic. It was well after midnight.

“How did you meet?”

Wetzon settled back in her seat and started to tell him about the chiropractor with the terrible musical about dancers, the imitation
Chorus Line,
when Silvestri stepped on the brakes hard, and if it were not for his arm, which he stretched out in front of her—an automatic gesture from the old days of no seat belts—she would have smashed her head against the dashboard harder than she did.

That’s all she remembered clearly. Dizzying pain stabbed through her head.
Hold on,
she thought.
Don’t fall, can’t fall
. But she couldn’t fall. Something shoved her down, mercilessly. “Leave me alone,” she said, but she didn’t recognize the sound of her voice.

She heard a car door open and close in the distance and then another. She heard voices, shouts. Silvestri, perhaps. Someone yelled, “Police officer!” Then a popping noise, which somehow she knew was a gunshot. And another. “Motherfucker!” someone yelled. Car horns were sounding.

She was being tormented; someone was playing a drum solo on her head. The effort of opening her eyes aggravated the fierce pounding in her head. She was half on and half off the seat of the car. She pulled herself painfully up on the seat, only half aware of the sound of fabric tearing. Everything hurt. Her arms felt as if she’d been on a torture rack. They must have been hit or have hit something.

A cool, damp breeze brushed her face. The door on Silvestri’s side was open and he wasn’t there. She heard the strident whine of police sirens; lights swirled through the darkness. A white paramedic van pulled up, narrowly missing the open door. More flashing lights. Numbly, she thought,
Silvestri’s car must be a mess
. She took hold of the steering wheel and pulled herself with some difficulty toward the open door.

Silvestri, without his jacket, his shoulder holster visible and serious, peered in at her. “Are you all right?” He touched her forehead. She pulled back, wincing. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Everything hurts like hell,” she said. “But I think nothing is broken.” A man in a blue windbreaker and white pants stood beside Silvestri.

“We’d better take care of that arm, sir,” he said. “Miss, can you slide this way?” She saw blood on Silvestri’s shirtsleeve, near his shoulder.

Wetzon looked out her right side and saw that they had smashed into a retaining wall of the transverse. God, they’d been lucky. She slid gingerly past the steering wheel, pulling her handbag with her. “I feel as if someone’s been stomping on me,” she said. No one paid any attention. The paramedic eased her out of the battered car. Poor Silvestri. His precious car. It looked totaled.

The back door was open, too. Everything that had been in the backseat was a big heap of trash. Instinctively, she leaned closer, looking for the attaché case. Silvestri was a few feet away from her, having his left arm bandaged by a female paramedic. He saw Wetzon look inside. They had ripped off one sleeve of his shirt to put on the bandage. Blood seeped through the white of the bandage.

“The bastards got the case,” he said.