The Deadliest Option (5 page)

Their coffee was delivered by Ellie’s sales assistant, a slim young man with a bit of a swish. “Hi!” he said, smiling at Wetzon as if he knew her.

“Thanks, Dwayne. This is Wetzon—”

“I know.”

“Anyway,” Ellie didn’t even wait for Dwayne to leave the room before she continued, sitting back in her chair, arms behind her neck. “I’m going to miss Goldie horribly. He was my mentor; he got me started in this business. I used to be a teacher, you know. I taught Twoey at Fieldston.”

“Twoey?”

“Goldman Barnes, the second. He couldn’t say his name when he was a baby so he called himself Twoey, and it stuck. Oh, what the hell....” She’d started crying again.

The phone buzzed. Sniffling, Ellie picked it up. “Yes. No. Let David take care of him. No calls until Wetzon leaves.”

“Who is that fat man? Dr. what’s-his-face.”

“Ha! Dr. Carlton Ash, that fat fuck. He’s got the same degree I have—in education—and I don’t call myself doctor.” She stood up and opened the door to a small coat closet. There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the door, and she looked at herself critically. “I look like hell.” She closed the door and sat down at her desk. “He’s with Goodspeed Associates.”

“Goodspeed? The consulting company?”

“Yes. The fat fuck’s written some kind of efficiency report. Search and Destroy hired him. Goldie was really upset about it. We’ve always made money the old-fashioned way, he said.” She laughed. “Hoffritz and Bird had other ideas.” She took a sip of coffee and crushed her cigarette stub in the Steuben ashtray. “Drink up, Wetzon. We may be able to do some business together.”

“Ellie, I can’t take you out of Luwisher Brothers. You’re with a client firm.”

“You can if I ask you to. Chances are, I’m going to get out of here one way or the other.” She lit another cigarette. “They’re up to something. I know it. Carlton Ash has been walking his fat ass around here for the last six months with his little notepad, making notes in some kind of code.”

“Code? How do you know it’s a code?”

“David. He’s very good at nosying around.”

“So do you think one of them could have killed Goldie to get him out of the way?”

“Hell, no. Listen, they’re good ole boys, real slime, but they’re not stupid. They were demanding Goldie sell his stock back. They were putting on the pressure, and he was fighting back and his asthma was kicking up. Jesus, he was in the hospital twice in the last three months. So then comes what Goldie called the night of the long knives, the night before the dinner. They got that flake Janet involved, and she wanted to protect Twoey’s interests, and then those Southern boys got out their honed steel.” She tilted her head back and finished her coffee, set the cup on the desk and parked her cigarette on the saucer. “Funny ... he stopped by my office the day of the dinner, said he had one last card up his sleeve.”

“What is the report about?”

“I don’t know.” She touched some of the keys again and watched the machine. “The fat fuck kept hinting that it was going to shake out the industry. The Ash Report, he kept calling it, the pompous asshole. Pompous Ash-hole.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I’m going to miss that wonderful old man.”

Wetzon took a swallow of the bitter coffee. “Do you remember what Goldie said just before he collapsed? Didn’t he say something about disappointing people?”

The phone buzzed.

“I honestly don’t remember, Wetzon. The police asked me the same question.” She frowned a furrow between her thick, dark eyebrows and picked up the phone. “Everybody? Good. And the other? Yes.” She hung up. “I’ve got to get back to work.” Her eyes focused on the machine. “Thanks, Wetzon.”

Wetzon pulled her cardcase from her suit pocket. “Here’s my card, Ellie. I’m putting my home number on the back. Call me.” Her pen scratched a blob of ink on the number so she switched a fresh card for the one with the inkblot.

“Sure, Wetzon. We’ll talk again.”

They shook hands and Wetzon stepped out of the office.

She paused at the door to David Kim’s office on her way back to the conference room. He was hunched over his phone and didn’t see her. “It’s important. Just sign it,” he was saying. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Smith would say she was a fool because they hadn’t gotten paid for the placement, but Wetzon was proud of what David Kim had made of himself. She walked down the wide corridor featuring the Georgia O’Keeffes and was back in the reception area.

“How is poor Ellie?” Maggie Gray asked without much interest as Wetzon passed her.

“She’s okay.” Wetzon climbed the curved stairs and got to the door of the conference room just as everyone was leaving.

“Ah, Wetzon,” John Hoffritz said when he saw her. “I want to thank you for your suggestion. We really appreciate this.” He shook Smith’s hand firmly. Smith was purring benignly, looking for all the world like the Cheshire Cat. “I’m sure this will work out well for all of us.” His mouth parted slightly in a constipated smile. “We’ll clear the way so that you can talk to people freely.”

That Smith
, Wetzon thought, and was interrupted by Carlton Ash.

“A pleasure meeting you,” the fat man said to Wetzon, leaning into her too closely.

She drew back. “I understand you’re doing a study of the industry.” He stared at her. “I’d love to read it. That is, if it’s not proprietary information.”

His eyes drooped. Little beads of perspiration dotted his hairline and upper lip. “What report? I don’t know anything about a report.”

“Whatever you say. But if you’re really going to shake up the industry, I’d appreciate knowing about it.” She gave him a warm and friendly smile, and judged herself to be as phony as all the rest.

“I’m here as a consulting psychologist.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have a business card?”

“Come on, Wetzon,” Smith said. “Let’s go. We have a lot of work to do.”

“Just a minute.” Wetzon shook off Smith’s insistent fingers plucking away at her sleeve and gave Dr. Ash her card.

Smith had them on the street and into a cab heading back uptown to their office in less than ten minutes.

“How about telling me what the big rush is about, Smith?”

Smith settled back in her seat and studied her scarlet fingernails. She looked at Wetzon coyly out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t respond.

“What did Hoffritz mean ... clear the way so that we can talk to people? What suggestion was he thanking me for so profusely?”

“We’re going to do some detective work for them, along with the recruiting. “ Smith pulled out a piece of paper from her briefcase. It was a Luwisher Brothers check made out to Smith and Wetzon for ten thousand dollars.

“Hey! They’ve put us on a retainer. No kidding. That’s terrific, Smith.”

“No, sugar. Brokers are still contingency. This is for something a
lot
more interesting.”

Wetzon felt that familiar little hot coal burning her midsection. “Smith, what have you gotten us into?”

“Listen, Wetzon, with our experience—”

“Our
experience?”

“Well, I told them it was your suggestion. You have contacts ... knowledge from previous murder cases. They want us to find the murderer before the police do.”

“Oh, no, Smith, you—”

Smith smiled triumphantly. “They’ve hired us to find out who killed Goldie Barnes.”

“I
CAN
’
T GIVE
him a thirty-five-hundred-dollar guarantee for three months. Not with the figures he gave me. I need his runs.”

“Did you ask him for them?” Wetzon expertly kept the exasperation she felt out of her voice.

“Well, no. I thought you could do that.”

“Okay, I will, but let me make a suggestion. Let’s be creative. If you can’t offer him thirty-five hundred, and he loves the higher payout on the back end as an incentive bonus, which he tells me he does, why not make it all incentive? What if he can keep a hundred percent of his gross for the first two months, then eighty percent for the next two months, then sixty percent for the rest of the year? It’s a guarantee that he’ll work his butt off.”

“Say, Wetzon, that’s really good. I never thought of that. I’ll try it.”

Wetzon hung up the phone and screamed. “What’s worse than a broker who won’t move?”

“A manager who can’t close,” B.B. and Harold chanted dutifully, this being Wetzon’s big bugaboo.

Smith turned a baleful face to them. “Close the door behind you, please.” She flipped her hand in a dismissing motion.

“Hold on,” Wetzon said. “Just remember we’re looking for the new Luwisher profile, whatever that is. Let’s start putting a file together of people who fit. We’ll prepare a spiel and start pitching them tomorrow.”

“What’s the matter with today?” Smith’s tone was borderline belligerent. She stamped across the space of the office they shared, which had been the dining room of the nineteenth-century brownstone, gave Harold an extra little push across the saddle, and firmly shut the door. The front room, where once there had been a large kitchen and pantry, as well as entrance hall, was their modest reception area. It held B.B.’s desk, a small loveseat, and three narrow chairs. A cubicle of privacy had been created for Harold.

The southern wall of Smith and Wetzon’s office was all windows and French doors leading to a garden, where they lunched in fair and middling weather from the first sign of spring to the first nip of autumn. The white iron furniture had been resprayed that spring and looked regal amid the reds and pinks of the tulips and the thick vines of purple wisteria that climbed the brick walls separating their garden from the houses to the right and left.

“What’s the matter with starting the calls today, may I ask?” Smith said again, coming to stand beside Wetzon who was enjoying the garden.

Wetzon narrowed her eyes at her partner. “God, you’re grouchy. That’s what happens when you load up on caffeine and don’t eat. Let’s sit outside and talk.” She took her straw hat with the tall daisy decoration from the shelf over her desk and opened the multi-windowed door. “I’m hungry and our sandwiches have to be getting soggy.” They had stopped on their way back to the office at their favorite sandwich shop, What’s Cooking, and picked up chicken salad with broccoli and dill on pita bread. “If we don’t eat, I’m going to be as bad-tempered as you.”

“You are absolutely right, sweetie pie.” Smith’s mood turned suddenly sunny. “Here, I’ll take everything out and you get the plates.” She gathered up the various paper bags efficiently, including her Diet Coke and Wetzon’s Perrier, and was out the door before Wetzon could close her astonished mouth.

“Shit!” Wetzon said to the empty room, to the Andy Warhol drawing of the roll of dollar bills that they had bought when they first went into business together, to Smith’s desk with its clutter of papers and personal items. She took two plastic plates and two plastic cups from the utility cabinet in their bathroom and joined Smith in the warm benevolence of their garden.

“Now, isn’t this nice?” Smith said, as if it were all her idea. She’d pulled one of the iron chairs out into full sunlight and was using her reflector. Already her lovely olive tones were shading to a luminous bronze.

Wetzon looked at her enviously. The sun was an anathema to her own pale skin, and she used sun block creams all year round, wearing a hat as soon as the first glimmer of spring sunshine appeared. Her friend Carlos said she had a hat fetish, which she did, having at least twenty-five or thirty hats in boxes, on hooks, and piled high on the old wooden hat block in her apartment.

Smith opened the Diet Coke and the Perrier with a snap and poured with a champagne flourish. She smiled at Wetzon. “Pull your chair out and get some sun, for godsakes. You look all washed out, sugar.”

Wetzon left her chair where it was, in partial shade, and sat down, feeling all at once angry and disgruntled. Somehow Smith had reversed moods with her.

“Smith, I think we should talk about this mess you’ve gotten us into.”

“What mess? Wetzon, please. After all this time, you still don’t understand this business the way I do. By investigating the murder—”

“We have no credentials to do a murder investigation, Smith.” She shifted in her chair, beginning to sweat. It had gotten hot, just on the edge of downright uncomfortable.

“Look at it this way. Whatever we find out, we can turn over to your precious police. But more important, we can insinuate ourselves into Luwisher Brothers. We’ll discover where all the bodies are buried and dig up so much dirt ...” She licked her lips suggestively. “It will lock us into the company for life.”

“Smith! Goddammit, that’s blackmail.”

“Wetzon, stop being so naive. This is business.” She took another big bite out of her sandwich. “Mmmm. Delish,” she mumbled, leaving considerable doubt in Wetzon’s mind whether she was talking about the situation or the sandwich. “Come on, you negative old drip, this’ll be fun—not to say lucrative.”

“But we’ll be interfering in a murder investigation.”

“How? Just tell me how. By asking a few questions, fishing around a little? How?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Wetzon gripped her sandwich and chicken salad oozed out of a torn space in the pita pocket.

“So, we’re doing it. Okay?”

“You’re too much for me. I don’t want to argue.” She found herself nibbling around the edges of her sandwich as if she were eating a melting Popsicle. “But I want you to promise me that if we get in the way, if the police tell us to back off, we will.” Silvestri would be furious with her—and this wasn’t even her fault. She had tried to stay out of it.

Smith beamed. “Well, that’s easy to promise. Sweetie, I would never want us to—”

“Oh, shut up, Smith.” Wetzon ate the rest of her sandwich feeling that in spite of herself, she’d been manipulated by Smith yet one more time. On the other hand, she was forced to admit, to herself only, that she found the situation they were in intriguing.

Smith put down the reflector and looked hurt. “You don’t have to be so ungracious. I know you. If this had been your idea, you would be flaunting it. Besides, it sure didn’t look like murder to me. It was obviously a stroke.”