The Deadliest Option (30 page)

Gail Munchen turned up only minutes later, young, very blond, and moderately pregnant. She wore a loose red cotton top over pink cotton leggings and Tretorn sneakers and carried a tennis racket in a canvas cover with G.L.M. in gold letters.

“How far are you along, dear?” Smith asked. “Will you have tea or coffee?” Smith’s face was still sodden with sleep, or the lack of it, and Gail’s fresh, youthful appearance was a marked contrast that even Smith could not miss.

“Five and a half months. Orange juice.” Gail gave Melissa a hug and kissed the top of her head, stroking her wild hair.

Smith glowered at Gail and stepped into the kitchen. Wetzon smiled. Smith was behaving as if she’d had the tragedy in her life and everyone was being selfish and uncaring.

“I’ll get my things,” Melissa murmured. Head down, she left the room, her orange juice untouched.

“This is a terrible thing,” Gail said to Wetzon.

“I would have been happy to keep Melissa. She’s a lovely child,” Smith said, handing Gail a tulip glass of orange juice. “But my work, you know ...”

“Ellie was a good friend to us. She would want us to take Melissa.”

“Why don’t you sit down for a moment?” Smith said, picking at the ink stains on her fingers, the remnant of last night’s fingerprinting. Wetzon’s were already on file with the department, and Ellie’s apartment had been thoroughly dusted. “Of course, you’ll have to get in touch with her father.”

Wetzon started, remembering her feeling that Melissa and Twoey looked enough alike to be related. Brother and sister? Goldie’s progeny. Goldie’s
heirs.
And Goldie was dead.

Gail did not respond to Smith’s ploy for information, but lowered herself into a chair.

“Weren’t you concerned when Ellie didn’t show up for the meeting last night?” Wetzon asked, cutting a bran muffin into quarters. She felt, rather than saw, Smith’s attention.

“Oh, you know about it, then?” Gail looked at Smith, then at Wetzon.

“Well, of course we do,” Smith said. “We’re with Neil all the way.”

“Actually, I think Alton was even more upset than Neil. They thought she’d copped out on them, but I told them Ellie isn’t that kind. She’s true to her word.”

Alton,
Wetzon thought, chewing on a piece of the bran muffin.
Alton Pinkus.
She said, “Alton is a visionary if he thinks brokers can be organized.” She wiped her greasy fingers on a small paper napkin she pulled from a package Smith had dumped rather ungraciously on the table.

“I would see it more as a threat to management, wouldn’t you, Gail dear?” Smith asked coyly.

“Only if Luwisher backs down and the other firms don’t go along. If it should become Street policy, the brokers will go union,” Gail said.

“They’ll have to,” Wetzon added, “to survive.”

Smith’s scowl at Wetzon was lost because at that moment Melissa dragged her duffel into the foyer, and Smith muttered, “She’s scratching my floor.”

“Here, let me help you.” Gail got to her feet.

After Gail and Melissa left, Smith piled the dishes in the sink and Wetzon packed away the muffins.

They cabbed it to the office and got there in time to hear the market was dropping like a stone. It had opened down ten on bad news about the trade deficit. Then word seeped out that the junk bonds for the LBO of Southeast Delta weren’t selling. The halcyon days of leveraged buyouts were over. Down twenty-five. By ten-thirty the program-trading sell orders kicked in and the market really began to plummet.

Over the wire came Luwisher Brothers’s announcement that brokers would be offered a salaried base up to $250,000 of gross commissions earned. Anyone grossing more than that would earn incremental bonuses. The announcement officially marked the death knell for commission sales, at least at Luwisher Brothers. Whether the other firms would follow remained to be seen.

Laura Lee had called with the news, saying, “Don’t freak out.”

“Thanks a heap, Laura Lee, bearer of glad tidings.” Wetzon hung up. “Well, they did it.” She looked over at Smith, who had a pensive expression on her face. “‘Every day a little death,” Wetzon sighed. “So now we know what the meeting was about.”

“I thought that was very clever of me.” Smith came out of her fugue.

“Yes, very clever. You did it all yourself.” Smith was at her narcissistic best and was beginning to irritate her.

“I didn’t see anything in
The Times
about Ellie.”

“The Times
doesn’t follow murders, usually.”

Smith opened the door to the reception room. “B. B., run out and get the
News
and the
Post
, there’s a dear. Harold can cover the phones.”

“We’ve had some calls from Luwisher brokers who want to jump ship. What do we do?” Harold stood in the doorway behind B.B. atypically well-dressed in a new light-gray pinstripe and yellow power tie.

“That was fast. Just say I’ll get back to them, not to do anything in haste,” Wetzon said.

“We shouldn’t say we work for the firm and can’t take them out?” B.B. asked.

“Not yet,” Smith said. “This is only Thursday—by Monday we may no longer be working for them. Be circumspect. They owe us money. We can’t look as if we’re taking brokers out, even if we are. On your way, B.B.” She closed the door.

“I’m supposed to have dinner with Chris Gorham tonight.” Wetzon rubbed her tired eyes and smeared her mascara. “Damn!”

“Eat with brokers, get up with fleas.”

Wetzon laughed. “I think the expression is, sleep with dogs, get up with fleas.”

“I know that, for pitysakes.” Smith sat down at her desk and pawed through her papers. “I’ll probably have to tell Hoffritz and Bird who we think murdered Goldie. They called.” She held up her messages. “So leave Monday clear.”

“Enlighten me, oh sagacious one,” Wetzon intoned. “Who did it? We’ve lost one of our suspects, so now we’re down to”—she ticked them off on her fingers—”Hoffritz, Bird, Culver, Gorham, Munchen, that’s five, and David Kim is six.”

“If I had to choose now, I couldn’t, and I’ve never even met this David Kim person,” Smith admitted. “But I’m going to do a deep meditation tonight before I consult the tarot, and I’m sure it will all come to me.”

The phone rang, stopped, rang again, stopped. A light blinked. “There’s a call on hold. Harold must be on the first line.”

Come to think of it, Harold was pretty unobtrusive today, Wetzon thought, considering the condition of the market and the explosive announcement from Luwisher Brothers.
Subdued
was a better word. But subdued in an expensive new suit and tie. Maybe he was thinking he might be forced to go to graduate school after all, as he’d originally planned when he’d been their summer intern.

Wetzon picked up the third line when the phone rang again. “Smith and Wetzon.”

“I’ll come by for you at six.” It was Chris Gorham and he sounded harassed.

“How did the announcement go over?”

“Great. At least no one has gotten up and left. I hear Merrill and Shearson are creaming.”

“It’s awful about Ellie, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, you can’t always keep your clients happy.”

She wasn’t even shocked. Long ago, she’d learned the denizens of the Street had particularly ghoulish senses of humor and spewed out vulgarities with a relish that defied good taste. “It could have been a breakin, or perhaps it’s related to Goldie and Dr. Ash.”

“Sure,” Chris said offhandedly. “She killed them and then killed herself because she couldn’t live with it.”

“Chris, that makes no sense. Ellie was strangled.”

“Whatever you say, Wetzon. The auditors are here and I’m up to my ass.” He hung up.

Baffled, Wetzon cradled the phone. Was she crazy or were everyone’s reactions decidedly odd today, starting with Smith and ending with Chris Gorham?

B.B. had returned with the papers, and Smith was holding up the
Post
, shaking it at Wetzon. The headline read: STOCKBROKER STRANGLED. A picture of Ellie in a bathing suit, looking twenty years younger, decorated the bottom left of the front page.

“Tasteful,” Wetzon said. “I hope Melissa doesn’t see that.”

The phone rang.

The
News
headline, like the
Post’s
in heavy 100-point type, screamed, MILLION $ MURDER, and hinted at dark secrets involving sex and money with Ellie’s business at Luwisher Brothers, citing unnamed sources.

B.B. knocked at their open door. “Destry Bird for you, Smith.”

“Okay. Close the door, please.” Smith dropped the papers on the floor and reached for the phone. “This is it. We’ve got to know by Monday.” Her look at Wetzon was accusing, as if it were Wetzon’s fault they didn’t know who did it. “Destry, congratulations,” she oozed seductively into the phone. “Well done.” She listened intently. “Monday. No, we’ll come to you. After the close is fine.” She replaced the receiver.

“Goddammit, you should never have told them we knew. You’ve made us an open target.” All the pent-up fury Wetzon had been holding back came spewing out.

“Nonsense.” Smith sucked on her stained fingertips.

“In all the mess about Ellie, I never got the chance to tell Silvestri what you did, but I will. And he’ll be furious.”

“Oh, my, I’m just shivering with fear,” Smith drawled.

“It was a particularly stupid thing to do, Smith. You’ve put our lives in danger—”

“Puh-leeese, Wetzon, you constantly overdramatize everything. All those years in the theater ...” Smith let her words hang there.

“Oh, shut up, Smith.” Wetzon jerked out her chair, then plunked herself down. Smith made her feel like a pouting child, yet Wetzon knew she was right. “Doug Culver called me last night.”

“Oh? What did he want?”

“I wasn’t home, remember? I’m going to call him back now. Do you think he knows you told Hoffritz who the—”

“Don’t say anything, sweetie pie, just in case.”

“‘Don’t say anything, sweetie pie,’” Wetzon muttered. She punched out Dougie’s direct number.

“Doug Culver.”

The outside doorbell rang.

“Doug, this is Wetzon. You called me last night? I was at Ellie’s—”

“Oh? Tragic.”

“Yes.” She let a vacuum develop, waiting for him to say something to fill it, which he finally did.

“Do you have plans for dinner?”

“Yes, I do. What’s on your mind, Dougie?”

“I hear you gals know who murdered Goldie.”

“How on earth did you hear that?”

“Everyone here knows. You can’t keep something like that a secret for very long. Is it true?”

B.B. knocked at their door.

“Come,” Smith called. “What do you have there?”

“A package for Wetzon and Mr. Barnes on the phone for you, Smith.”

“No, it’s not true, Doug.”

“Well, fine, then. I’d like to try an idea out on you, Wetzon,” Dougie was saying.

“Me? I’m flattered.” Wetzon played with the clasp of the package, which was candy-box sized, in a fat manila envelope sealed with thick tape. “How about if I call you when I get home? Where do you live?”

“Gramercy Park.” He gave her his phone number.

Wetzon hung up the phone and looked over at Smith, who was making love to the telephone. Sighing, she turned her attention to the package. No return address. She picked it up and turned it over, squeezing it gently. It wasn’t a book. She reached for the letter opener. Stopped. The label said “Wetzon, Smith and Wetzon,” in dot matrix printing.
Private and Confidential
was written directly under their names.

She stood up slowly. What was it? She held the envelope in front of her. Was she being stupid or overreacting or—

Smith hung up the phone. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

Wetzon didn’t answer her. Her only thought was,
Get it out of here.
She opened the door to the garden and ran out into a wall of heat and humidity.
Move it, move it,
she told herself. She set the thick envelope down carefully on the bricks in the middle of the garden and ran back to the office. “Smith,” she cried, “get away from the window!” She pulled Smith after her into the reception room and closed the door. “Everybody, down. Now! B.B., call 911,” she commanded.

Smith, still standing hands on hips, began, “What is the matter with you, Wetzon? I—”

A loud boom, like a giant backfire, came from their garden, followed almost immediately by the sound of shattering glass.

A
DEADLY STILLNESS
.

Wetzon raised her head and looked around. She was kneeling in front of B.B.’s desk. Smith was prostrate, mouth agape, on one of the chairs. Harold stood in the doorway of his cubicle, looking dazed. Her bad knee began throbbing.

B.B. was clutching the receiver in midair, speechless, while a metallic voice repeated, with increasing irritation, “911 operator, hel
lo
.”

From their inner office, Wetzon heard a delicate tinkling sound and hoped it wasn’t the glass on their Andy Warhol drawing. She stood up and took the phone from B.B.’s rigid fist, giving the emergency operator her name and their address. “I think,” she said, very calmly, “a bomb just went off in our garden.”

“A bomb?” B.B.’s eyes were blue pennies.

“Jesus.” Harold took his glasses off and rubbed his face.

“I don’t believe this! I don’t believe any of this,” Smith muttered.

The phone rang. “At least our phones are still working.” Wetzon opened the door to the inner office with trepidation.

“Smith and Wetzon,” B.B. said in a squeaky voice behind her.

Shards of glass lay everywhere, smithereens. And dirt—garden dirt, shreds of plants and flowers. It must have been blown through the windows, all of which were broken. The air-conditioner groaned mightily, surging, not comprehending why it had become impossible to cool the large room. The blinds hung awry, twisted and torn by the blast. They would have to be replaced. The smell of sulphur, as if a thousand matches had been lit all at once, filled the room.

Suspect sheets and papers and loose pages of newspapers were scattered helter-skelter on the floor, but that seemed to be all the damage. Andy Warhol was whole.