Tender Death (19 page)

“Y
OU LOSE A
button, miss?” A sonorous voice pierced the fog that held her close and warm. A man’s voice.

“Please go away,” Wetzon mumbled, raising her head from her arms but not opening her eyes.

“Hey!” A woman’s voice this time. Someone shook her shoulder, not too gently.

“Come on, Ms. Watson, snap out of it.” The man’s voice again.

She was reluctant to open her eyes. She might see it again. Teddy’s headless body. Teddy—her friend Teddy Lanzman— She opened her eyes. Now she remembered where she was. The precinct.

Irma Ignacio—Detective Ignacio—set a white Styrofoam cup in front of her. “Drink some of this. You’ll feel better.”

Wetzon reached for the cup with both hands and held it to her lips. Hot coffee. Inhaling deeply, she breathed steam from the hot liquid up into her sinuses, clearing her head of clumps of cotton wool, or at least that’s what it felt like. Her hands were cold and she warmed them on the cup before she swallowed what she was certain was pure caffeine.

A quilted down coat, not her coat, rested on her shoulders. She struggled to focus on her surroundings, setting the cup down on the scarred wooden desk and looking for the first time at the man who had spoken to her. He was sitting on the corner of the desk, one foot on the floor, the other swinging back and forth, smoking, watching her.

“Who are you?” She remembered seeing him with the other detectives, but she hadn’t spoken to him. Irma Ignacio had interviewed her. Interviewed?
Really, Wetzon
, she thought, you
have to get your act together here
. Question, or interrogate, were the operative words here.

“Morgan Bernstein, Detective Sergeant.”

“Where’s my coat?” she asked, pushing her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. Her voice sounded whiny. They had taken her fingerprints and then someone had painted her hand with thin wax; the paraffin test was standard procedure in cases like this, they’d told her. It would eliminate her immediately as a suspect. She had been able to wash her hands afterward, but she still felt creepy, as if she still had Teddy’s blood on them. Maybe she should have protested about taking the tests, maybe she should have demanded an attorney, but she was exhausted, and, anyway, they said it was routine in gunshot cases. Everybody had to have the test and be fingerprinted. And she had discovered the body.

Bernstein didn’t respond to her question. He had brittle blue eyes buried under bushy eyebrows which traveled like ivy in a continuous thick curly line between his eyes. He was wearing a black knitted yarmulke on his curly hair, pinned in place by a brown bobby pin. He stubbed his cigarette out in a cheap plastic ashtray and emptied the ashtray in the metal wastebasket next to his desk, banging it against the wastebasket longer and with more force than necessary.

They cased each other like two adversaries, warily. He was broad shouldered and solid as a rock, the only signs of age being a paunch that pushed past his striped shirt and stopped well over his brown leather belt and the gray threads in his brown hair.

Having taken his measure, Wetzon asked again, more firmly, “Where’s my coat?” She moved her attention to Irma Ignacio, who was small, lean, and tough in a gray polyester pantsuit and a black turtleneck sweater. She, too, was smoking. The coat behind her on the chair was a woman’s gray storm coat, smelling of cigarettes. She vaguely remembered Detective Ignacio taking it off and putting it on Wetzon’s shoulders.

“We’re holding it,” Ignacio said.

“In protective custody?”
Oh, Wetzon,
she kicked herself mentally.
Don’t be such a smart ass.

“Sure.” Bernstein wasn’t amused. “What about this button?” He shoved a shiny brass button at her, practically under her nose.

She pushed his hand away, angry. “Don’t do that! If you want me to look at the button, hand it to me like a person. You are not the gestapo.”

He dropped the button in the ashtray and with a sarcastic flourish, presented it to her. She picked it out of the ashtray, brushed the ashes off, and looked at it. It was the kind that was put on blazers. “It’s not mine.” She looked down at her brown tweed suit. Plain and simple brown bone buttons.

“Have you ever seen it before?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ve seen this one, but I’ve seen a lot that look like it.” Bernstein was waiting, swinging his foot back and forth, back and forth. Black socks, brown shoes, crepe soles. “It’s a blazer button. I think it’s fairly common.”

Bernstein put the button in a small Glycine bag and the bag in his desk drawer. “Let’s get a statement,” he said to Ignacio.

“Can I go home after I give you a statement?” Wetzon asked. Bernstein got off the desk and walked to the glass wall that looked out into the squad room. He didn’t answer her. Wetzon directed her next question to Ignacio. “Can I call someone and let him know where I am?”

Bernstein turned, his manner threatening, his voice loud. “You think you need a lawyer, Ms. Watson?” He walked back to his desk.

“I didn’t say I was going to call a lawyer.” Wetzon felt a little uneasy, as if she was missing something. Why was he yelling at her? “Should I have a lawyer? Are you holding me here for some other reason? And my name isn’t Watson, it’s Wetzon.” He shot an inquiring look at the plastic card she saw he had on the desk in front of him. The ID she had been given when she got to Channel 8. Wetzon reached down for her carryall. It wasn’t there next to her chair. “My bag—where’s my bag?”

Bernstein pulled out her carryall from somewhere behind his desk. He handed it to her without comment. His phone rang. He leaned across the desk and picked it up. “Yeah?” He listened. “Okay.” He hung up and returned his attention to Wetzon, who was digging in her bag, looking for her wallet.

“You must already know what my name is. Don’t tell me you didn’t go through my bag.” She watched him for a reaction. There was none. Just like Silvestri. She produced her wallet. Her driver’s license was in the slot where her American Express Card usually was and vice versa.

“We’d like to get a statement now while it’s still fresh,” Ignacio said, lighting up from a stub, her gold hoop earrings swinging.

Still fresh. Teddy was dead. “Oh God, Teddy is dead,” Wetzon said.

“If you were such good friends, why did he give security the wrong name?” Bernstein demanded.

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he asked someone else to do it for him. People always hear my name wrong.”

“That’s your story?”

“May I make that call now?” She already knew she wasn’t going to call Leon. She felt sad about that relationship. It would probably never be the same again. It was bad judgment to mix business with—what? Sex? It complicated everything.

“Who do you want to call?” Bernstein coughed, a dry hacking cough, and put out his cigarette in the battered ashtray.

“Silvestri. Seventeenth Precinct.”
Take that, you mean bastard.

Now she got a reaction from Bernstein. Surprise, quickly replaced by suspicion. “Silvestri? You know him?”

What does one say, she wondered. We’re an item ... he’s my boyfriend ... we’re lovers ... shit. “Yes,” she answered, staring Bernstein down. She felt her cheeks getting hot.

Bernstein looked at Ignacio, who shrugged, then picked up the phone and dialed out, then waited. “Silvestri there?” He ran a stubby finger under his yarmulke and scratched his head. “Yeah, well have him call Bernstein at Midtown North. Tell him we’re holding a friend of his over here.” He gave the word
friend
a nasty twist. “That’s it.” He replaced the phone, stretched, and walked to the door, again looking out in the squad room. “Let’s get a statement here. Ignacio? Anyone around to do it?”

“Jesus Christ, Bernstein.” Ignacio stood up, brushed around him, and went out into the squad room. She returned a second or two later. “You know God damn well no one’s around now. We want to get a statement, we put it on tape. Don’t do a number on me, man.”

Bernstein coughed and sat down at the desk, facing Wetzon.

Wetzon looked at Ignacio sympathetically. Whatever profession women pushed their way into, they were still having to face that secretary or assistant image that men had of them. It was the same in finance as it was in the police department, Wetzon thought dismally. Ignacio had been the first detective to talk to her after they’d gone over the murder scene at Channel 8. And she’d been thorough and professional. She had given Wetzon her coat when they’d taken the bloodstained mess of her own away. Teddy’s blood. She had sat in the dark in Teddy’s blood without knowing he was lying there with ... not three feet from where she sat.

Involuntarily, Wetzon flung her hand out in front of her to wipe away the hideous memory, knocking over the Stryofoam cup, spilling its contents, thick and brown with coffee grounds like coagulating blood, onto the desk. “Oh shit, I’m sorry.” She gnawed on her bottom lip and looked at Bernstein, who began wiping up the spilled coffee with a wad of Kleenex from a box Ignacio held out to him.

What had Bernstein said on the phone? He’d used the word
holding.
“ ... we’re holding a friend of his ...” “What do you mean ‘holding’?” she asked sharply.

“Just what I said.” Bernstein’s face and manner were unnecessarily nasty.

“Cool it, Bernstein.” Ignacio sat down at the other desk. She took a stack of paper forms from an inside drawer and rolled a sheet into her typewriter. “Okay, Ms. Wetzon, we already have your vitals. So why don’t you tell us how long you’ve known Ted Lanzman.”

“I think maybe I’ll just wait until Silvestri gets here.” She sat back and watched anger roll across Bernstein’s face like a movie wipe. She reached into her carryall and pulled out the paperback
Dancing on My Grave
, Gelsey Kirkland’s autobiography. She had met Gelsey at Carola Trier’s studio, where injured dancers came for physical therapy. She opened the book to the bookmark and tried to read.

Time inched along. Bernstein stewed. He stood, noisily shoving his chair against his desk. “We’ll wait, but he’s not around. It could take all night.”

“Let it. I don’t care.” She did not look up from the book, but she saw through her lashes Ignacio’s restless movement.

Ignacio clicked her nails across the keys of the typewriter, sighed, opened and closed her desk drawer. Finally, she gave Bernstein the eye. “I’ll get some more coffee.”

“Why don’t you tell us the truth, Ms. Wetzon? It’ll go easier for you in the long run.”

Wetzon had been reading one line over and over, thinking about what to do. She let her eyes meet Bernstein’s. “Are you threatening me?” She replaced the bookmark and closed the book. “Why did you take my fingerprints and give me that test?”

“It’s automatic with anyone at the scene of a crime.”

“I’ll bet.” She loathed Bernstein. He was treating her as if she were Teddy’s murderer. He had no right.

Ignacio brought three cups of coffee, holding the cups bunched together. She kicked the door closed behind her. Wetzon took a big swallow of coffee, burning her mouth and throat. She needed the caffeine to revive her. Bernstein had a right, if he thought she was the murderer, to see what he could get out of her before she asked for a lawyer. She had to have a lawyer; that was clear now. She would have to give in and call Leon. “Am I being charged with something? Because if I am, that’s it, and if I’m not, I’ll be happy to help you out with what I know.”

Ignacio looked at Bernstein, who shrugged. “I suggest you cooperate with us, one way or the other,” Ignacio said.

“Very well then, I’d like to call my lawyer,” Wetzon said.

“Be my guest.” Bernstein gave his phone a rough shove at her across the desk.

“Dial nine for outside,” Ignacio said.

She picked up the phone and dialed 9, then paused. She would call Carlos’s friend, Arthur. He was a lawyer. What the hell was Arthur’s last name? She closed her eyes ... Arthur ... Arthur ... Margolies floated right across her closed eyes like a banner flying in the wind. West End Avenue. She called information and got Arthur Margolies’s phone number.

“How long have you and Lanzman been lovers?” Bernstein moved in on her suddenly. Ignacio watched her benignly.

“We were never lovers. It wasn’t that kind of friendship.” She hung up the phone and promptly forgot Arthur’s number. Damn.

“Then what did you fight about?” Bernstein leaned over at her, crowding her.

“Back off, Bernstein,” Ignacio said, giving him a warning look. “Let the lady be.”

“Well, Ms. Wetzon?” Bernstein growled.

Good cop, bad cop,
Wetzon thought
. Were they thinking to trap her?
She started to get up.

“No, sit down, sit down.” Bernstein motioned angrily with his hand. “All we want is your story. Just the facts.” Jesus, he thought he was in
Dragnet.

She sat and picked up the phone again, going through the same process, this time dialing Arthur’s number.

“Start where you think it begins,” Ignacio said.

“It begins in Sergeant O’Melvany’s precinct,” Wetzon said abruptly, getting mild pleasure from the startled looks on both Ignacio’s and Bernstein’s faces. She sat back and listened to the steady ringing in her ear of Arthur Margolies’s unanswered phone. It was the middle of the night. Her watch said two o’clock. They had either turned off the phone or didn’t hear it. She was so tired.

There was a small click. “Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”

“Arthur, this is Leslie Wetzon. I am being held by the police at Midtown North, Detective Bernstein. Please call me here as soon as possible.” She replaced the phone. “He wasn’t there. I’ll have to try again.”

“What does O’Melvany have to do with this?” Ignacio asked.

“Peepsie Cunningham either committed suicide or was murdered in his precinct.”

“Peepsie?”

“I’m sorry. That’s a nickname. I don’t remember ...” Her brain was going. Why couldn’t she remember Peepsie’s real name? “Teddy was doing a series on the problems of the elderly ...” She felt very much alone suddenly. Isolated from her friends. She thought about the evening in Little Odessa. “Gretchen!” She had threatened Teddy and was coming down the stairs just before the murder.