The Deadliest Option (14 page)

Weiss grunted and moved toward the door. He gestured to Drake to precede him, but spoke to Wetzon, slowly and deliberately. “Where do you fit in all of this, Ms. Wetzon? Why would Ash call
you?

Obviously, neither Hoffritz nor Bird had mentioned the investigation job. “Because I work for the firm. Maybe he thought I was detached enough—gosh, I don’t know. His call came as a big surprise to me. I’d been introduced to him only yesterday. He knew I was curious about the report. I can’t believe no one else said anything about the report.”

“You have the distinction of being the first.”

“I just can’t believe it. What did they say he was doing here?”

“They said he was working for Goldie Barnes.”

“Working for Goldie?” Now she was at a loss. “I had the feeling that Goldie didn’t like him.”

Weiss put a cigarette in his mouth and this time, he lit it. He inhaled deeply and smoke came from his nostrils in a thick, white stream. “They said Ash was terminated yesterday.”

A
SH HAD BEEN
terminated, which was why he’d called her. When Wall Street terminated, keys were demanded, desks and offices were padlocked. How had he gotten into the building? Chris. Chris could have let him in.

These guys—Search and Destroy, Dougie, Chris, Neil—were all killers, but only in terms of making money. Any one of them would sell his own crippled grandmother for a profit. Would one of them also commit murder to ensure his place in the sun? What could possibly be in this report that would make someone kill two people?

Wetzon looked at Weiss, who was smoking with unconcealed gusto, getting his nicotine fix. “I guess he didn’t stay terminated,” she said.

‘Now he is,” Weiss said, the cigarette parked in the corner of his mouth. “Give Drake your address and work and home phone numbers, please.” He coughed, a hollow catarrhal cough.

Still hacking, he walked her out the door. “That finishes us here,” he said to Drake.

Silvestri, sunglasses hiding his eyes, was standing at the top of the stairs with Metzger. They were talking to a squat man carrying a medical bag, whose side-combed hair covered a center bald spot so that it looked like a bad hairpiece. They were joined by a lumpy-faced woman in a cotton shirtwaist dress. Wetzon recognized her from newspaper and television coverage as the Assistant D.A. who had just successfully prosecuted the murderer of a young coed at City U. Two attendants had wrapped Dr. Ash’s remains in a white sheet but were having difficulty packing him into a blue body bag, the same color as Ellie’s makeup bag.

“What brings you here, Silvestri?” Weiss spoke with just a hint of territoriality.

“I had a call,” Silvestri said.

Wetzon knew he was looking at her but it was disconcerting not to see his eyes. “I called him,” she said. “I thought he ought to know about it since—”

“I’m working on the Goldie Barnes case.” Silvestri cut her off. “I’d like to have a look at the First Officer Report.”

Wetzon stuck her chin out and said stiffly, “Silvestri, Dr. Ash told me he knew why Goldie was murdered.”

“Hey, Artie.” Drake clapped Metzger on the back. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”

Metzger’s basset hound face brightened. He and Drake shook hands.

“If you guys don’t need me anymore, I have an appointment.” She suddenly felt redundant, as if she had gone too far, been too much of what Silvestri always said she was, a wise-ass.

They ignored her.

“Come on, Silvestri,” Weiss said. “I’ll fill you in.” He started back to the conference room.

“Silvestri—”

“Get lost, Les.” He didn’t take off his glasses. She knew he was angry with her, and she’d hear a lot more about it later.

Why hadn’t she told him what Carlton Ash had said on the telephone?
You were playing poker, Silvestri. Shit, Les.

Going down in the talking elevator, she thought about it. It wasn’t only because Ash had sworn her to secrecy. She had not felt herself in any danger, not even when she’d been locked in the conference room.

She’d come to get a copy of the study, that’s all.

You’re rationalizing
, she told herself, getting off the elevator in the lobby. Silvestri would let her have it. Ah, yuk. Why did this always happen to her?
Because you think you’re so fucking smart
, she heard Silvestri say.

She looked at her watch. Eleven-thirty. She was supposed to meet Laura Lee at the Burger Heaven around the corner from Saks at twelve-thirty. There was just one thing she wanted to do before she headed uptown.

Circumnavigating the lobby, she found a bank of telephones. It wouldn’t have been easy for someone to kill Carlton Ash, trash his office, then race down the stairs, all sixty-seven floors. But it could have happened. For that matter even, David Kim could have called Ellie from the lobby. Ellie wouldn’t have questioned where he was calling from.

She’d better update Smith or there’d be hell to pay. “Collect, please,” she told the operator after dialing a long progression of numbers.

“Are you all right? What did he say?” Smith’s voice was distorted.

“Are you eating breakfast?” Wetzon was envious. She was starving, and it wasn’t even noon.

“Yesh. Tell me what happened.”

“Dr. Ash was dead ... to begin with.”

“What are you talking about, Wetzon? You’re making no sense.”

“It was a joke, Smith. You know, ‘Marley was dead to begin with.’”

“Who the hell is Marley, Wetzon? What does he have to do with this?”

“Forget it. I’m being silly.” She was silly to even try a literary joke on Smith. It served her right. “I mean, when I got here, no one was around. I got locked in the conference room by someone and when I was let out, Dr. Ash was lying dead on the staircase.”

“Good heavens!”

“But I’m fine, Smith, thanks for asking.”

“Don’t make jokes, please. I think maybe I should come in and be with you. You sound hysterical.” Smith made mumbling noises, obviously talking to Jake with her hand over the telephone.

“I’m not hysterical. Please don’t share this with Jake.”

“Wetzon, sweetie, you know you can trust me. I still think maybe I should come in and strategize with you.”

“Whatever. I’m hanging up now because I’m late for an appointment. I just wanted to let you know before you heard it on the news.”

She replaced the receiver, cutting off Smith’s protests and, bypassing the escalator, trotted down the covered staircase to the street, wondering if Carlton Ash had had a secretary at Goodspeed.

The heat on Vesey Street was fiery. The midday sun careened off the concrete like a drunken, suffocating blanket, leaving everyone gasping for air. Summer in New York, but it was not yet even officially summer.

Wetzon hesitated at the entrance to the World Trade Center. The thought of standing on the unair-conditioned subway platform below, where the temperature was likely to be well over one hundred, made her feel faint.

A cab pulled up directly in front of her, disgorging a man, a woman, and two teenagers, all wearing shorts, all carrying cameras from shoulder straps. They were jabbering in French, craning their necks, pointing upward to the top of the towers.

Wetzon held the cab door open. “Are you looking for a fare?”

“Get in, lady, and close the door. You’re letting all the hot air in.” The driver had dark hair in kinky curls and spoke with a Russian accent.

She got in and settled back. “Forty-ninth and Madison.” The cab was air-conditioned but you could hardly tell.

“Very hot today,” the driver said. “Over ninety, I think.”

“Um,” she said, not really wanting to talk.
Just sit here, close your eyes and think cool
, she thought. Her pantyhose clung damply to the back of her knees and thighs. She plucked at her sleeves, then turned them up to the elbow, opened a button on her shirt, then another. She could open all the way, for all the cleavage she had—or didn’t have.

She looked up and caught the driver watching her in his rearview mirror. “Just drive,” she mumbled. His I.D. said Ari Savarti.

“So what brings you downtown on such a hot day?” Ari Savarti asked, making a smooth turn onto the FDR Drive.

The East River was dotted with sailboats, giving it the illusionary look of Marblehead. The sun streamed down a brilliant yellow, deceiving someone on the air-conditioned inside into thinking it was cool and dry and breathable on the outside.

“You okay back there?”

Wetzon sighed. Her luck that she had to get a talky driver. “You want to know what brought me down there? Business.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind of business?”

“I’m a headhunter.”

“No fooling? Do you do computer people? I’m a very good programmer. I do word processing, too.”

“No. Stockbrokers only.”

“Stockbrokers? No fooling. I have a friend, is a stockbroker.”

“Oh?” She perked up and sat forward. “What firm is he with?”

“Dean Witter. Long Island. Garden City. You know it?”

“Yes. What’s his name?”

“Rueben Silver. You should call him. Maybe he’s not so happy. You can mention my name. Ari Savarti.”

When she got out of the cab at Forty-ninth and Madison, it was ten after twelve, she had an unexpected lead, and she was feeling definitely more chipper. It was too early to meet Laura Lee, which was good. She wanted to make a phone call.

The sun blazed down; the tar of the street gave under Wetzon’s little heels like dough. She slipped into Saks by the side entrance on Forty-ninth Street and made her way across the store for the phone area on the Fiftieth Street side.

The store was jammed with shoppers, locals who were doing their final shopping for the summer before heading to the Hamptons or Connecticut, and tourists, mostly Japanese, all carrying shopping bags and cameras and wads of American money.

She passed a saleswoman with a spray bottle, who offered her a splash of Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion, which she rejected, having quite enough of her own. Two other saleswomen were huckstering Estée Lauder’s latest giveaway.

An extremely tattered phone book, open on the counter, locked in a metal plate, showed Goodspeed Associates was at Forty-five Rockefeller Plaza. She jotted the phone number down on a page from her Filofax and waited her turn for a phone. Maybe she could talk with Carlton Ash’s secretary and find out what the study said. Once the police got to her, that would be it.

A gray-haired man with a Slavic face and a small paunch was just finishing a call. He was being tugged at by a small boy, barely a toddler, who took his hand and pulled him to a woman waiting with the empty stroller. “Daddy, Daddy,” the child said. The woman smiled at the boy and sat him back in the stroller. She wasn’t far from fifty herself.

So many women were waiting into their thirties and forties to have babies, which wasn’t so bad either, because children became a choice and were born because they were wanted. What a wonderful world it would be if the only children born were the ones who were wanted.

Here she was, thirty-eight years old and not particularly maternal. Did she want children? No. Certainly not now. Did she want the option to have them later? You bet.

Wetzon dialed the number for Goodspeed Associates. It was Saturday. Who knew if anyone would be there. Six rings ... seven ... eight ...

“Goodspeed Associates.” a young man’s voice, slightly high-pitched.

“Hi, I wonder if you can tell me the name of Dr. Carlton Ash’s secretary.”

“Dr. Ash?”

“Yes, Carlton Ash. He’s one of your consultants.”

“Oh, Dr. Ash hasn’t worked here in a while, six months at least.”

“Are you sure? Is this the answering service?”

“Hold on a minute.” There was a whispered conversation. “Who is this?”

Wetzon very quietly hung up the phone.

“A
ND THEN THE
check came, and mind you, there were fourteen of us, so I just divided fourteen into four hundred dollars and said everyone owed twenty-eight dollars.” Laura Lee took a vicious bite out of her Roquefort burger. “And would you believe this weenie started carryin’ on about how she hadn’t eaten any rice so she shouldn’t have to pay for it.”

Wetzon cut her Roquefort burger into four pieces, setting the top of her bun aside.

“You can well afford to eat the whole thing, you know,” Laura Lee said. “And then I said to her, do y’all think we’re just goin’ to sit here and wait till everyone figures out what he owes without an addin’ machine at eleven o’clock at night?” She took another bite out of her burger. “Annie was wild. Here we were, it was Vittorio’s birthday party. He’d invited all these people, everyone came knowin’ full well it was pay for yourself. Annie and I chipped in for the cake—damn.” Her burger was oozing out of the bun, dripping juices and melted cheese. Laura Lee dropped the burger on her plate, licked the melt off her fingers, picked it up, and finished it off.

Wetzon grinned at her. “You do have an adventurous social life.” She reached into her purse, found a Wash ’n Dry, and handed it to Laura Lee.

“And then Annie was sayin’ in such a loud voice all the way down in the elevator, ‘What a bunch of stiffs.’ I had to keep shushin’ her.” Laura Lee’s eyes gleamed. She’d let the blond tips in her chestnut hair grow out and now wore it in full waves on top of her head and very sleek and short on the sides and back. It was incredibly becoming, making her look like a sophisticated pixie.

“I do love your hair.”

“Why don’t you think about doin’ it yourself?” Laura Lee rubbed her fingers and hands with the Wash ‘n Dry.

“Doing what?”

“Changin’ your do.”

“Me? God, no. I’d never have the nerve.” Wetzon patted her topknot, which she’d worn since her early days as a dancer. “God, it would be like an amputation.”

Laura Lee laughed. “You’re such a stodge. One day I’ll get you in a weak moment.”

They finished off the Diet Cokes, paid the bill, and crossed the mushy street to Saks. If anything, the air was more humid, the sun hotter.

“Jesus,” Wetzon said. “It’s like being in hell.”

“What would you know about that, darlin’? Of course, you are dressed to the gills.” Laura Lee looked cool in a short silk skirt, black with white polka dots, and a silk tee-shirt, white with black polka dots. She had a full half dozen beaded Indian bracelets on her wrist, and her bare feet were in black patent sandals.