The Deadliest Option (39 page)

Wetzon put two dollar bills on the counter and followed the odd couple out and up the moving stairs to the renovated Penn Station waiting room. Departing trains were being announced, the digital board was clicking with changes on incoming trains, and people milled around, even at eight forty-five on a Sunday night, waiting for trains home.

Dwayne’s heels tapped rat-a-tat-tat on the marble floor. They took another escalator up and exited at the cab station, where Silvestri’s black Toyota was waiting for them, Mo at the wheel. A long line of exhausted, bedraggled travelers stretched out toward Thirty-third Street waiting for cabs that didn’t come.

“Les, slide in front with Mo,” Silvestri ordered, opening the door.

Wetzon climbed in. “Hi.” Silvestri slammed her door shut and opened the back door, pushing Dwayne in first, hand on his curly red head, then following him.

“Hi.” Mo’s eyes were on Dwayne. “Lovely,” she said.

“Pull up near Thirty-second,” Silvestri said. A driver behind them leaned on his horn. “And stick up the light.”

Mo started the car and they rolled a few yards forward, then she stopped, took the bubble light from the seat, reached a long arm out the window and up, planting it on the roof. The amber light roiled from the roof of the car, making mad reflections on the cement surroundings.

“Am I under arrest?” Dwayne’s voice was ragged.

“Not yet. Take off those goddam glasses.”

“Oh, God.” He took off his glasses and buried his face in his hands. “What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to tell the truth. You have that list, Les?”

Dwayne sat up. His eyelids were caked with gray eye shadow and black mascara all run together. Wetzon handed Silvestri the list and Silvestri unfolded it and thrust it at Dwayne. “Let’s have it all, Dwayne. Come on. You’re a target. We know you didn’t kill anybody, but you were in on the scam, weren’t you?”

“No. I wasn’t. I didn’t. Wetzon—”

“Don’t look to her for help, man. Let’s have it.”

“I told Wetzon. They’re clients.”

“Whose clients?”

“Ellie s, but—”

“What about these accounts? Why did Ellie tear up the list? Cough it up or I’ll haul your ass down to the House of Detention.”

“Oh, no, please.”

“You’re being a little hard on him, Silvestri,” Mo said. “Come on, Dwayne. Tell him.”

“She was upset. I don’t know. Dr. Ash sent the list to her and said he was going to tell everything unless she cut him in. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but when she checked, they were all under her AE number. “

“But you knew what he was talking about, didn’t you, Dwayne?”

“I didn’t know anything, honest to God,” Dwayne blubbered.

“Who knew?”

“Chris Gorham. I mean, we found out afterward that he got the same letter from the fat fuck, but it was the day of the dinner for Goldie, and no one had time to check it out. Then Goldie died and everything began to get crazy.”

“Who called the early meeting last Saturday?”

Dwayne scrunched up his face and sniffled. His mascara gave him black eyes. “The fat—Dr. Ash. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. Please—”

“Was Gorham in on whatever was going on?” Silvestri asked. Wetzon knew he’d love to nail Chris on a murder charge.

“I don’t know. I guess he was going to have to cough up some money, too.”

“Wait a minute,” Silvestri said. “I’m not following you. Gorham and Ellie were being blackmailed? By Ash? Why?”

Dwayne stared at Silvestri, then at Wetzon. “I thought you knew.” He licked his lips, then pressed them shut. “I’d like to talk to a lawyer.”

“Dwayne,” Mo said. “We can hold you as a material witness.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“Dwayne, come on,” Wetzon said. “Didn’t you tell me you were scared of someone?”

Dwayne nodded.

“Who are you afraid of?” Silvestri leaned in on him. “Who killed Ellie? Better tell us because he’s sure to come after you if you know who he is. He’s killed three, maybe four people already.”

Dwayne choked. “I didn’t know at first. I didn’t understand. Ellie figured it out after she saw the list, but she didn’t believe it. She was going to talk to him, have him explain.”

“Him? What didn’t she believe?”

“The trades. Ellie did the spreads and picked the stocks—she didn’t know the good trades would go into the phony accounts and the bad ones went into the clients’ accounts.”

“Jesus,” Wetzon said.

“How long had this been going on?”

“I don’t know ... a year, maybe. Clients were complaining about losing money.”

“But it wasn’t Ellie. She couldn’t have known about it,” Wetzon said.

Silvestri gave her a warning look.

“She didn’t.”

“Then who did? Say it, man. Say it and you’re safe.”

Dwayne’s Adam’s apple bobbed twice. He said: “It was David Kim.”

“D
O YOU WANT
some coffee?” Mo asked. Her voice was flat as the dead air in the windowless room. Through the open doors of the offices that fed into this room, the window air-conditioners sang a medley of moans and drones and power surges, but the anteroom remained stifling.

Dwayne shook his head. “Could I have a Diet Coke with lemon and lots of ice?” His hand was hot and moist in Wetzon’s. He’d been holding on to her for dear life since they’d gotten to the Midtown North precinct house.

Mo smirked at him and raised an eyebrow at Wetzon. “How about you, Leslie?”

“Thanks, no. I’m fine.” It wasn’t true, though. She wasn’t fine. She was feverish and tired. A dull, throbbing ache banded the crown of her head. She was feeling roundly guilty about Dwayne’s misery. And his pointing the finger at David Kim had rattled her. She was having a hard time dealing with it. The David Kim she knew—
thought
she knew— wasn’t—
couldn’t
be—hadn’t seemed like a murderer.

Mo left the room briefly and returned with a can of Tab. She snapped it open and set it down in front of Dwayne on the scratched and gouged metal table.

“Oh,” Dwayne said. He let go of Wetzon’s hand to take the can. Sweat reeked from every pore—flop sweat, made fetid by fear.

Silvestri and Weiss were holed up in another office with an assistant D. A. and Arthur Margolies, Carlos’s attorney friend, whom Wetzon had called on Dwayne’s behalf.

Dwayne’s red curly wig lay on the table like a hairy dead creature. He fingered the curls. “This girl must look a sight,” he murmured, sipping the Tab. In fact, with his slim body and small features, short hair and feminine makeup, he looked androgynous. His backpack had been confiscated. “Do you have a mirror?” He looked at Wetzon.

“I don’t know.” Wetzon opened her purse and found a mirror in the zipper compartment. She held it out to Dwayne.

“Don’t!” Mo leaned over and grabbed the mirror, handing it back to Wetzon. “Just hold it up for him, don’t give it to him.”

God, Wetzon thought, were they worried Dwayne was suicidal?

“Precautions,” Mo said, answering her thought.

Wetzon held the mirror up for Dwayne, and he took one look at himself and dissolved, sobbing childlike, head in his arms on the table. She patted him on the back. “Come on, Dwayne. It’ll be all right. And you know they’ll protect you from David.” She exchanged glances with Mo.

The door opened, wafting a brief draft of cool air toward them, and Arthur emerged, followed by Silvestri, Weiss, and Rachel Konstantin, the assistant D.A. Konstantin carried a loose-leaf notebook in black leather. They all looked pleased with themselves.

“Dwayne,” Arthur said, putting his hand on Dwayne’s shoulder. “I want to talk to my client privately for a few minutes and then we’ll come back to you.” Arthur looked so reasonable and calm with his neat gray beard and horn-rimmed glasses that Dwayne stopped crying. A clarion blast sounded as he blew his nose into the tissue Wetzon handed him, then he meekly retired with Arthur to the room that had just been vacated.

“What’s the story?” Mo asked.

“We have a deal,” Silvestri said. “He’s got immunity and we get to tape his story, so let’s get it set up.” Mo rose and left the room.

Wetzon had seen pictures of Rachel Konstantin in
The Times
because she’d been getting some really big cases, but the pictures had not been flattering. The assistant district attorney had red hair, the same color as Dwayne’s wig, but she wore hers cropped close to her head. Her face was a little too broad and a little too pink and freckled to look attractive on television, but nevertheless, in the flesh, she had a glint in her eyes and crackling electricity in her manner. She drew attention like a magnet.

Silvestri said, “Stay put, Les. We’re going to need you to fill in the blanks.”

Konstantin picked up the phone, punched one key, waited, then turned her back and began talking at top speed into the phone, gesturing all the while. She was wearing a yellow-and-white shirt and a black stretch skirt that stopped about three inches above her knees. She had the wrong knees for the skirt.

Weiss stood with Silvestri near the door to the hall. Weiss shook a cigarette out of a pack and lit it with a high-flame lighter. He said something to Silvestri about a search warrant, but she couldn’t quite catch it.

When Weiss left, Silvestri pulled a chair out of the way and sat on the edge of the table facing Wetzon. Konstantin kept her back to them. Silvestri traced the line of her cheekbone to her lips with a gentle finger.

“Search warrant?” she asked. She kissed his finger, took his hand in hers.

“We’re looking for sulfites.”

“Where?”

He brought her hand to his lips. “The Kim produce market.”

She felt dizzy, collected her hand. “Then you think David Kim did it?”

“He had the best motive.” His voice was husky.

“Can you arrest him on motive?”

“No, but we sure as hell can bring him in and try to get a confession.”

“Is he a citizen?”

“Don’t know. Metzger is working on Immigration.”

Konstantin hung up and turned around. “We’re in business.” She looked at Wetzon and folded her arms.

“You might try to find out what happened to the head of compliance at Luwisher Brothers, the one who had the accident in the subway. I don’t even know when it was—seven or eight months ago.”

“Yeah.” Konstantin nodded. “He jumped, fell, or was pushed, October, November last year. Angelo La Rocca.”

“I figure he caught on and must have let David know. Then he had a convenient accident.”

“I find it hard to believe that Kaplan didn’t know what was going on right under her nose.”

“Ellie was in love with him, Ms. Konstantin. If she’d had even an inkling of doubt early on, I think she would have brushed it away. People do uncharacteristic things when they’re in love.”

Konstantin nodded.

“I think,” Wetzon continued, “it wasn’t until Dr. Ash tried to blackmail her—he wasn’t content with just taking from David—that she began to suspect something … Oh, my God!”

“What, Les?”

“Ms. Wetzon?”

“I’m sorry. I just realized how terrible this is going to be for Luwisher Brothers. They could go under when this gets out. Clients will lose faith in the firm. It’ll be horrible for the whole Street. Public confidence in Wall Street will be damaged again. One bad apple and the party is over.”

“More than one, Les. Why wasn’t this monitored internally? Someone was in on it—or maybe looked the other way.”

She thought immediately of Doug Culver. He should have been handling this. Who had told her he was in charge of compliance until they found someone ... ? Did Dougie have his own agenda? What had he been doing meeting with Janet and Twoey Barnes? She said, “The SEC has people who watch for things like this, but they don’t always have enough manpower, and it comes down to a spot check. The firms have to learn how to police themselves, the industry has to.”

“They’ll never do it,” Konstantin said.

“Why would David kill Goldie? That doesn’t make sense. Unless it really was an accident.”

“We’re going to find out,” Silvestri said, looking at Konstantin. “We haven’t got Kim placed at the banquet yet. No one seems to remember if he was there. He wasn’t on the guest list. Did you see him, Les?”

“No.” Wetzon scanned through her memory of that evening, heard bits of the angry words in the men’s room, which now, with hindsight, she realized had more to do with salarying brokers than ... she saw Goldie and Neil on one side, Hoffritz and Bird on the other. And Culver leaning toward Hoffritz and Bird. Gorham ... she couldn’t think about Chris without feeling a flutter of panic. She saw the investment community in their finery ... Jack Donahue, Smith, Ellie ... the table. Wait. Roll back to Smith.

Clear as a bell she heard Smith say, “Wall Street is getting to be a regular grubby United Nations with brown, black, and yellow faces, though I did see Ellie Kaplan talking to a rather attractive Chinaman at the bar....”

W
ETZON CAME OUT
of Bellevue Hospital and took a cab to the office. Monday. No let-up in the heat wave.
The Times
had another op-ed article by a scientist predicting global warming unless the ozone layer was protected. Her knee was healing nicely; and having had the packing removed, she could breathe through her nose again, although it felt really strange, as if she had to relearn how.

What she really needed was an oxygen mask or—she remembered the runner in the breathing mask, making the turn from Ellie’s street and running down West End Avenue. He’d had dark hair and long legs. Had that been David Kim? Had he killed Ellie and left the rose because they’d been lovers?

It was early, only eight-thirty. She hadn’t been able to reach Smith last night, and she’d tried her again at seven-thirty this morning before she left for the hospital. Still no answer. Smith hadn’t come home last night. Actually, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard from Smith since they’d argued on Friday about Wetzon’s decision to file a complaint against Chris. This was most unlike Smith.

Uptown traffic on First Avenue wasn’t bad this morning, but the City and its people had lost their usual up-’n-at-’em Monday morning killer New York energy. She didn’t have it herself. Even the cab driver was just driving, not talking. It was an effort to make conversation. The perfect climate for a headhunter whose lifeblood was talk. She smiled and didn’t feel the stiffness as much. At least her face was returning to normal.