The Deadliest Option (8 page)

Smith, phone clamped to her ear, mouthed,
it’s about time
, and made a big X on the suspect sheet in front of her, her loathing for brokers oozing from every pore. “Yes, well, you can be assured we’ll do the very best for you, but at your level you don’t have much choice.” She made a silent
I’m throwing up
finger-in-mouth motion. “We’ll get back to you with some suggestions.” She hung up the phone. “Lying scuzzball. Can you imagine? He told B.B. his production was half a mil. Sure, it was—in 1984.” Her tone turned petulant. “You’re never here when I need you.”

“I know, I know. But I’m here now and I’ll take over so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.”

“Wetzon, you know something? You’ve become impossible. You have a smart answer for everything.”

“Oh, please!” Wetzon dumped her briefcase under her desk and flipped through her messages. Laura Lee had called. They were planning a tea party for a friend of Laura Lee’s with whom Wetzon had become friendly as well. The friend, Anne Altman, had just gotten engaged.

In Wetzon’s early days as a headhunter she had met Laura Lee Day when Laura Lee was a stockbroker with Merrill and helped her make a move to Oppenheimer. They’d become good friends, much to Smith’s chagrin. Smith was, in fact, jealous of all of Wetzon’s friends, forever trying to cast them in a bad light.

“Okay, forget it,” Smith said. “I can see you’re in a foul mood. I don’t want to fight.” She smiled at Wetzon as if Wetzon were an impossible creature and had to be humored. “I want to talk about Janet Barnes. I spoke with Johnny this morning and told him she’d invited us to lunch on Monday.”

“Excuse me. Johnny?”

“Johnny Hoffritz. Good heavens, sweetie, who else? He says Janet had every reason to want Goldie pushing up daisies.”

Wetzon, who had not been in a foul mood, felt herself losing.
Pushing up daisies? Ye gods
. She looked down at her datebook. No interviews. Just notes on whom she should talk to. She planted herself in her chair with a thump.

“Smith, if we’re going to do this so-called investigation, let’s do it right. We’ll keep files, notes, and send a report every week on our progress. Let’s not turn this into a raging river of gossip, for godsakes. Who are we supposed to report to?”

“Johnny.”

“Oh sure, Johnny.”

B.B. knocked on the door and opened it. “Bruce Pecora for you, Wetzon.”

“Oh, great,” Smith groaned. “Tell him she’s not here. Don’t you dare talk to him, Wetzon. That dirtbag’s got compliance problems up the yin-yang. They’re pulling his license.”

“My, my, how quickly we change.” Wetzon punched the hold button. “Hello, Bruce, how are you doing?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Wetzon.” Bruce sounded like a low-life thug, but as long as he was producing big numbers, no one cared. However, now that he was in trouble—real trouble as opposed to potential problems—everyone pointed out his
déclassé
New York street accent. “I’m sitting on the beach waiting for those fuckers to reinstate me—and I don’t like waiting. I’m not making any money. I want you to show me someplace else. I got business to do and it’s piling up.”

“Bruce, I don’t know what the nature of this trouble is, but you can’t go anywhere until it’s cleared up. You took a hundred and fifty thou upfront from Loeb Dawkins. Even if they clear your license with the Exchange, they won’t transfer it until you pay it all back.”

“Fuck that, Wetzon. What do you think I was doing there for three months, jerking off? I did real business, more than most of those losers in that office. They fuckin’
owe
me. Besides, I guarantee they’ll transfer my license. They have no choice.”

“Dirtbag,” Smith said loudly from her corner of the room.

Wetzon turned her back on Smith. “I don’t understand, Bruce. Am I missing something?”

“I went to work with a wire the last week. I have everything on tape. I’ll talk to the SEC if they fuck with me.”

“Scuzz,” Smith said.

Wetzon’s head began to throb. “Bruce, look, I didn’t hear that. Okay? I’m afraid I can’t help you this time. They’re my clients.”

“Sleazebag,” Smith said.

“Okay, Wetzon, no hard feelings.”

“No hard feelings, Bruce.” She put the phone down slowly. Again, where were her obligations? Should she tell her clients that the broker she placed there claims he has illegal dealings on tape?

“Well?” Smith demanded.

“I need a moral judgment here. Let’s talk about this, Smith. Seriously.”

“No hard feelings.” Smith giggled. “Just a nice hard fee we get to keep because he waited three months before he self-destructed, thank-you-very-much.”

“Somehow, that makes me feel grubby.”

“Get real, Wetzon.” She laughed. “Precisely what kind of moral judgment do you want to discuss?”

“I’m not sure you’re the right person to discuss moral judgments with. I’d be better off with Oliver North.”

“If you’re finished being funny Wetzon, I want to tell you that Oliver North is a patriot and a hero. I’d feel privileged to be associated with Oliver North.”

Wetzon laughed. Smith was so dead-on serious, she was funny. “Okay, partner mine, try this on for size. Bruce Pecora just told me he’d be reinstated and Loeb Dawkins would transfer his license because he’s got them on tape doing something illegal.”

“Oh, shit! Did he really?” Grudging respect crept into Smith’s voice. “I didn’t know the sleaze was that smart.”

“Wait a goddam minute, Smith. Before you get too carried away with Bruce’s brilliance, we have a problem—”

“What problem? We don’t have a problem. We’ve gotten paid.”

“Don’t we have to tell Mike Norman that Bruce was wired?”

Smith jumped to her feet. “Are you crazy? We’ll do no such thing. In fact, we don’t know about it, never knew about it. Read my lips, Wetzon, never never never.”

“Okay, okay.” Wetzon threw up her hands. “He never called here.”

“We can say he called and wanted us to move him—which is true, right?”

“Right.”

“And we said no, right? We
did
say no, didn’t we?”

“
We did
.”

“You’d better leave me a copy of his suspect sheet just in case Mike calls when you’re not here. Do we have Pecora’s home number?”

B.B. knocked and opened the door. “Sam Herlihy for you, Smith.”

“Mmm. That’s nice. Stroking managers does pay off sometimes.” She sat down at her desk, yawned elaborately and picked up the phone. “Well, hi there, Sam. How are you doing?”

“B.B., make a copy of Pecora’s sheet for Smith.”

“Okay, but who’s Sam Herlihy? He got nasty on the phone. Didn’t want to hold—”

Wetzon looked over at Smith. Her body language spelled fury.

“He’s the manager at L.L. Rosenkind.”

Smith rose out of her chair, the icy calm before the storm. “I will do nothing of the kind and don’t threaten me. Oh, really? I beg your pardon, Sam, but we will talk to
anyone
from your office who calls us and we will continue to call into your office and talk to
anyone
who is referred to us. And there’s nothing
you
can do about it.” She paused. “I’ll convey your feelings to her.” She crashed the receiver down into the base. “What nerve! He demanded—would you believe—
demanded
that we stay the hell out of his office.”

Wetzon smiled. “Well, of course he wants us to keep off the grass and not pick his prize flowers. Did he think he was going to intimidate two poor helpless women?”

“You bet your ass he did. So it’s a good thing I talked to him first.”

“You act as if I’m easily intimidated.”

“And you’re not?”

“Bullshit. Was that last bit a message for me?”

“Yes. Sam said after all the years we’ve known each other, he is not surprised by anything I do, but you are a whole different story. He is shocked, get it—
shocked
, that you would try to steal his brokers and make him look bad to new management.”

Wetzon laughed. “Business is business.”

Smith raised her eyes heavenward. “Thank God she’s finally learning.”

The calls started heating up then. Neither had a chance to talk until just before lunch.

“It’s too hot for me to sit out there today,” Wetzon said, having gone out to the garden and stood in the oppressive heat and humidity. “I’ll stay in with the air-conditioning, blessings on Con Edison.”

“Fine. I’ve set up six people next week. Harold or you can do the follow-ups. I hate talking to them. I’m going to leave now and try to get up to Redding early and flake out at the pool. What are your plans for the weekend?”

“Let’s see. I’m meeting Silvestri—”

“Great! See what you can find out about Goldie’s murder.”

“Look, Silvestri wants to know about Luwisher Brothers, the inside dope, and the poop on all the top people there.”

“Of course he does. Silvestri wants someone else to do his job for him. Just give him a few crumbs—you know, the throwaway stuff. You haven’t told him about our deal, have you?”

“No. No. Not yet, anyway.”

“Not ever, if you please. That’s proprietary to
our
partnership.”

“Smith, I—”

“I mean that, Wetzon. There is no discussion. Do you want to drive up and spend the day with us tomorrow? The City is going to be horrendous.”

“No, I can’t.” She thought for a minute. “Actually, there is something I haven’t told you, and I want you to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“What? Of course I won’t tell. You know you can trust me, sweetie. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

No, she didn’t know that she could trust her. Smith had done some really appalling things in the past, but this was different. They were on an assignment. She would take a chance and tell her. Seven-thirty in the morning on Wall Street on a Saturday was a little spooky. Someone had to know where she was going, and she’d just as soon not tell Silvestri.

“Cross your heart and hope to die,” Wetzon repeated. “Okay, if you tell I’ll kill you.”

“Will you tell me already.”

“I’m meeting Dr. Ash at his request at seven-thirty tomorrow morning at Luwisher Brothers.”

“On a Saturday? Whatever for?”

“He wouldn’t tell me over the phone. He said he has to show me. I think it has something to do with this study he’s writing. He says he knows why Goldie was murdered.”

“That means he must know who did it. Maybe I should go with you.”

“Saturday morning, seven-thirty, Smith. No. Besides, he specifically said I was to come alone.”

“Humpf. Okay. But you have to call me and tell me everything as soon as you leave him.”

“I will.” Wetzon turned back to her work and reached for the phone.

“Now I’m going to tell you something that you must absolutely keep secret.”

Wetzon looked at Smith. “Okay.”

“Johnny wants us to outplace Ellie Kaplan and her paramour as soon as possible.”

T
HE HEAT WAS
blast-furnace intensity, the sun still blazing at four-thirty, with the kind of humidity that left one gasping for air. The pavement radiated under the soles of Wetzon’s Ferragamos. She took off her jacket and folded it over her arm.

On Fridays in the summer, the Street emptied with the closing bell. At four o’clock, everyone was on his way to the Hamptons.

The truth was, the City became saner, more accessible on summer weekends. Restaurants weren’t crowded, movie and theater tickets were easier to get, and the City burst forth with a plethora of activities—street fairs, flea markets, craft shows. And Wetzon and Carlos were the ultimate scavengers.

She was dawdling, no doubt about it. She didn’t want to talk with Silvestri and his detectives. Not yet. What was it Smith had said? Give them what they’ll find out anyway.

The Seventeenth Precinct was on Fifty-first Street, but Wetzon’s feet took her farther up Second Avenue to Fifty-third, where she knew there was a Haagen-Dazs. She bought a scoop of chocolate chocolate chip and had them put it in a container rather than a cone so she wouldn’t drip all over herself.

The precinct house looked more like a grade school than a police station. The police had become institutionalized. She wanted to see police stations in formidable concrete, black with the dirt and soot of years, with massive doors, tall stone steps, and the desk sergeant up high on a platform behind the desk so you had to crane your neck to see him.

By humanizing the police precinct house, perhaps the forbidden wrong seemed less so. In a strange way it trivialized crime, because entering a precinct house was no longer frightening and intimidating.

But Wetzon entered the Seventeenth with a feeling of foreboding. She was going to have a fight with Silvestri.

The civilian at the desk, a woman in a blue polyester pantsuit and orange hair, was new and didn’t recognize her, so she was put through the formality of being announced.

The noise from the squadroom spilled out into the corridor. Inside, five or six detectives were sitting at battered gray metal desks, in various states of procedure, typing reports and on the phone. An unhappy Midwestern mom and pop and two round-eyed children in chocolate-stained overalls were reporting their Ford station wagon stolen. Typewriters clacked and two hookers were complaining about being picked up for no reason. Plastic and paper containers of food and coffee proliferated. Around the available walls were gray filing cabinets. A holding cell had one occupant, a disreputable lump who was snoring loudly. Notices were taped to every bit of wall space or were tacked to bulletin boards that hung crookedly. Dog-eared calendars were abundant, displaying everything from scenic views to cheesecake.

On the floor in a crowded corner a monstrous plant drooped, more dead than alive. A roach rested audaciously on one of its petals.
Yuk
, she thought. This place needed major sprucing up.

Silvestri had his own office now, for what it was worth, a slightly larger room among rabbit warrens, without a window, just like all the rest except for the rear wall, which was all plaster because it was an outside wall. Drab linoleum tiles covered the floor. The other walls were chipped and smudged plaster for about four feet up and then the rest was glass. Clipboards hung from nails around the perimeter of the room; on the rear wall behind Silvestri’s newly painted black metal desk was a big cork bulletin board to which a map of the City was tacked and, to the side, some worksheets and yet another dog-eared calendar.