Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (49 page)

“Thank you. I’m going to a friend’s wedding.”

He stopped across from the Municipal Building with its majestic columns and the U.S. and New York flags waving languidly in the soft spring breeze. “Maybe your friend is Muslim,” he said.

“I don’t think so.” She handed him twenty-five dollars and told him to keep the change.

He handed her a pamphlet. “Maybe your friend would like to read this, or maybe it is for you.”

It was an introduction to the Koran. She thanked him profusely and got out of the cab, making sure Mohammed was out of sight before she dumped the pamphlet in the trash basket.

The sun was overhead now, beaming down on the traffic gridlock in front of the massive building. Office workers sat in the park across the way eating their lunches amid the emissions from thousands of cars.

Wetzon felt a strong sense of history when she entered the old building and followed the signs in English and Spanish to the Marriage Chapel, across the floor of tiny tiles and up a circuitous marble staircase. She was walking in the footsteps of so many who had gone before.

It was exactly one o’clock when she opened the door to Room 257, the Marriage Chapel waiting room. At first all she saw was a garden of wedding dresses, most of them white, but one was yellow, and another ecru. The faces of the people sitting in auditorium rows were New York: white, black, yellow, red and brown.

“Leslie!” Sonya sat in the second row wearing a mauve silk shantung suit. In her hand was a nosegay of pink and white roses. She looked luminous. O’Melvany wore a white rose on his lapel and he looked nervous in his dark blue suit. He stood as Wetzon approached.

“Paredes party,” the clerk, a weary-looking woman with mousy hair, called. A group rose, four adults and two little girls. The women and the girls carried fat bouquets of flowers, the men wore boutonnieres. The long train of the wedding gown was held barely above the floor by the little girls. They were directed into a room behind the clerk.

“You guys look great,” Wetzon said, touching their hands.

“We’re so glad you could come,” Sonya said, kissing her.

O’Melvany looked at his watch and back at the door. He was really nervous.

“I’m so glad you asked me. Do you want me to hold the ring, Eddie?”

“Uh ... excuse me a minute.” O’Melvany left the room.

“I guess he’s nervous.” Wetzon grinned at Sonya. “I guess this is harder on them than us.”
Speak for yourself
she thought.

The Paredes party burst excitedly into the room, heading for the door, just as O’Melvany returned.

“O’Melvany party,” the clerk said in a bored voice.

Sonya and Wetzon rose. Eddie was threading his way through the boisterous Paredes celebrants. “Let’s go on in,” Sonya said, taking Wetzon’s arm. “Eddie will find us.”

The Marriage Chapel was a triangular-shaped room with white moire wallpaper and blue carpeting. Not much to look at. The service would be performed on a one-step-up platform. A middle-aged man whose back hair was combed forward over his baldness motioned them in. He was probably a justice of the peace or something like that. He greeted Sonya with, “You’re the bride?” When she nodded, he said, “If you will stand here.” He looked beyond them to the doorway. “Which is the groom?”

Which is the groom? Wetzon turned. She saw O’Melvany first. Her heart thudded. Silvestri was right behind O’Melvany. A much thinner Silvestri, also in a dark blue suit.

O’Melvany stood next to Sonya and took her hand. Silvestri stopped just inside the doorway. He looked as if he’d been punched.

“Come in, young man,” the justice said. “Do you have the ring?”

Silvestri patted his pocket automatically, but his eyes never left Wetzon. He stood next to O’Melvany, and the service began.

Wetzon felt faint. They had been set up.

“Do you ...” filtered through her consciousness. And “Will you ...” She wasn’t handling this well at all. “Yes, I will,” someone said. She saw Silvestri’s hand shake as he handed O’Melvany the ring. O’Melvany slipped it on Sonya’s finger. Silvestri was standing only two people away and she could feel his pain as if it were her own. It
was
her own.

“... husband and wife,” the justice said.

O’Melvany was kissing Sonya, Sonya was kissing Silvestri, O’Melvany kissed Wetzon.

On the street in front of the building, O’Melvany said, “Come on, you two, we have plans for a little trip.”

“I don’t—” Wetzon said.

“No, I—” Silvestri said.

“We won’t take no for an answer. This is our day.” O’Melvany hailed a cab and helped Wetzon and Sonya in, got in himself and closed the door. Silvestri sat in the front with the driver.

Wetzon watched the back of his stiff neck turn red and wanted to touch him, but was glad for the protective glass between them.

“Leslie,” Sonya whispered.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” Wetzon responded.

“Oh, come off it, you two,” O’Melvany said. “Take us to the ferry,” he told the driver.

Sonya smiled and held O’Melvany’s hand.

“The ferry? The Staten Island Ferry?” Wetzon hadn’t been on the ferry since her first year in New York.

The Staten Island Ferry terminal lay at the foot of Broadway below Battery Park. The ferry was just loading when they got there. People streamed onto the boat, whose name was
AL. AL,
Wetzon thought. A ferry named AL? And then she saw that the life preservers were all marked
American Legion.

She walked out on the front deck. The metal awning overhead held more life preservers. A warm breeze ruffled her hair as a lover might. She bit her lip to hold back the tears. How had she ever thought she could live without him? The realization made her numb.

The sky was an ingenuous blue with little white clouds. Essence of salt water and seaweed brought memories of the Jersey shore where she’d grown up. Below her the water was flecked with foam. Manhattan receded slowly. To her right, the Stature of Liberty stood majestic in New York Harbor. The ferry’s engine hummed as the boat swept across the river. Tourists called out to one another and took pictures; a child in a stroller cried.

“Are you all right?” Sonya asked.

“Not really, but I’ll manage.”

“I’m sorry. Eddie thought ... I thought—” Sonya looked sad.

“S’okay. This is your day. Be happy.”

Eddie kissed her on the forehead and they left, holding hands.

After a while she walked inside. An old Greek shoeshine man with an ancient kit was singsonging, “Shine ‘em, shine ‘em.”

She took the center staircase up to the bridge deck and went outside. There were fewer people here. She leaned against the railing staring down into the churning water. Somewhere below someone played a guitar and sang a Beatles song. She thought,
I’m going to die
, and clutched the wire of the railing.

“Where’s your ring?” His shoulder touched hers.

She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. “I gave it back.”

“Why?” He slipped his hand under the jacket of her suit and the skin on her bare back tingled. She felt herself melting into him.

“Oh, God, Silvestri, what are you doing to me?”

“I love you, Les.”

She let that settle on her for a while. His hand burned her skin. When they made the turnaround on Staten Island, he paid her fare, not letting go of her hand. Ahead of them, Sonya turned and smiled.

They faced Manhattan together on the bridge deck. Lower Manhattan sat in miniature on the platter of landfill, skimming the Bay.

“‘We were very tired, we were very merry ... ’” Wetzon’s eyes teared and she let them.

“‘—we had gone back and forth all night on the ferry ...’” Silvestri finished the Millay quote for her and looked pleased with himself.

“What’s going to happen to us, Silvestri?” She looked up at him as the ferry nudged into the slip. His eyes were a brilliant turquoise. She raised her face to his, and he kissed her.

The ferry quavered for a moment before it rested.

“No promises, Les. Let’s just play it one day at a time.”

She pushed him away and stood facing him, hands on hips. “Godammit, Silvestri. I bet you think you’re the love of my life.”

He brushed the strands of hair from her eyes. His laugh was pure joy. “Yup,” he said.

I appreciate the time and input from a bountiful group of theatre friends who helped with sources and advice and memories.

Stephen Finn and David Colfer of the Colonial Theatre in Boston; producer Elizabeth I. McCann and Jeff Bieganek; Mary Bryant, Shirley Herz and Philip Rinaldi, publicists; Ann Ledley of Actors Equity; lighting designer Richard Winkler, Steve Terry of Production Arts; Joan Fisher; and Fran Lewin.

And my thanks go to the many who preferred to remain anonymous. But let me hasten to add that despite all the help I received for this novel, there are no real-life counterparts lurking behind my fictional cast of characters, all of whom are, in every way, purely the product of my imagination. For the purposes of verisimilitude, however, I have occasionally referred to well-known Theatre people, and, with some minor physical changes, I have borrowed the Imperial Theatre, where
Les Miserables
is currently playing, as the home for my fictional
Hotshot: The Musical.

Further thanks to Josip Novakovich; Cathi Rosso; Linda Ray; Gail Shapiro; Detective George Lotti, Boston Police Department; Michael Levy, M.D., of Mt. Sinai; Russell Perreault of Doubleday; my agent, Chris Tomasino; Marty, who keeps me honest; and my wonderful editor, Kate Miciak, who encouraged me to go back.

I have taken a liberty by making Leslie Wetzon a graduate of Douglass College, Class of 1975. And further liberty in giving her my memories of the Class of 1955.

The Smith and Wetzon Mysteries

The Big Killing

Tender Death

The Deadliest Option

Murder: The Musical

Blood on the Street

These Bones Were Made for Dancin'

The Groaning Board

Hedging

The Olivia Brown Mysteries

Free Love

Murder Me Now

Repentances

and writing with Martin Meyers as Maan Meyers

The Dutchman

The Kingsbridge Plot

The High Constable

The Dutchman's Dilemma

The House on Mulberry Street

The Lucifer Contract

The Organ Grinder

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Doubleday hard cover edition/ September, 1993

Bantam paperback edition/August, 1994

Replica Books hard cover edtion/1998

Replica Books trade paper edition/ 2000

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from
Collected Poems
, HarperCollins. Copyright 1922, 1950, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, literary executor.

All rights reserved.

Copyright 1993, by Annette Brafman Meyers

ISBN 978-1-936441-27-3

Cover Design: Allison Black