The Deadliest Option (36 page)

“The Kim produce market is in Forest Hills.” His face was a cipher.

She puckered her brow. “Oh, David Kim. He’s still a suspect?”

“We’re going to talk to Hoffritz, Bird, Culver, and Munchen, as well, although Hoffritz and Bird claim they were at a bar when Ellie Kaplan was murdered.”

“Harry’s?”

“Yeah, how do you know?”

“Half of Wall Street heads there for a drink after the close. Harry’s—huh, that’s a good one. At that hour Harry’s is like a sardine tin full of brokers and traders. Who would know whether or not they were really there?” She stared thoughtfully at him. “So they alibi each other. How convenient.” She bent her knees. “Let me try to get up.”

“Go easy, Les.” He stood and took the empty glass from her hand.

“I think one would lie and the other would swear to it.” She was wearing one of his tee shirts, which skimmed the top of her thighs.

“Are you going to be all right by yourself today?”

He sounded worried. That was nice. “Laura Lee is coming around twelve. We have the tea for Anne tomorrow. You might want to disappear.”

“The task force is on straight time till we crack this. The Mayor doesn’t want to read another murder headline while his campaign is gearing up.” He put on his tan jacket, fitting it over the shoulder holster.

“What about the list?”

He patted his breast pocket. “I’ve got it.”

“Why do I have this funny feeling that we’re the only ones who don’t know what it means?” She followed him down the hall slowly, her muscles protesting loudly with every step. The barre was a must today. And soon.

“There’s coffee.”

“Great!”

“Eat something.”

“I thought you love my svelteness.”

“Yeah. “ He patted her ass and kissed her bruised cheek. “But Rita’ll say you’re too thin.” He delivered it like a throwaway. Dum da dum dum.

Her heart pulsed a pirouette in her breast. “Oh?”

He opened the door. “The newspaper’s on the chair,” he said.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

He looked at her quizzically.

“Okay, forget it, Clint.”

He grinned at her and closed the door.

She opened it a crack. “Silvestri, Dwayne—Ellie’s assistant—is supposed to call me. I thought I’d ask him about the list. Is he a suspect?”

Silvestri came back to her door. “No, but when did you talk to him?”

“I didn’t. Carlos did. A couple of days ago, I guess.”

“Well, if he calls, find out where he is, or see if you can get him over here. Call me right away if you hear from him.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I want you to promise me you won’t try to handle this yourself.” His eyes gave her tough, gray slate.

“Okay, okay, I promise. But what’s all this about?”

“Dwayne’s gone, cleared out. Someone saw him hot-footing it out of his building Thursday night carrying a suitcase.”

L
AURA
L
EE INTERRUPTED
Wetzon’s workout about one o’clock.

“Hellooo, anyone home?” Laura Lee pushed the front door with her toe, and dumped two stuffed Zabar’s shopping bags and one equally bulging plastic bag from Fairway on the floor.

Wetzon had left the door ajar after the doorman announced that Miss Lorelei was coming up.

“In here, Miss Lorelei.” Wetzon was on her exercise mat, feet up in a shoulder stand, something she was certain she should not be doing with packing in her nose. Upside down, Wetzon saw Laura Lee was wearing denim shorts and espadrilles. Her white cotton shirt, collar up, was knotted at her waist. “You look nice.” She arched her back and put one leg on the floor, then lowered her other leg slowly until she was in a near backbend.

“Darlin’, if you can do that, you—”

“I’m okay.” Wetzon lowered herself, one vertebra at a time, until her back was flat on the mat.

“Oh, Lordy,” Laura Lee said, standing over her.

“Thank you.” Wetzon sat up and crossed her legs yoga-fashion. “It feels disgusting.”

“Y’all want to tell me what happened?”

“He wanted career advice and he didn’t like what I told him.”

“Oh, come on now, Wetzon.”

“Okay, he did want career advice, or so he said, and he asked me to have dinner with him. I said okay. I never thought ... well, he’s married, he has kids ... he said he wanted to change firms.”

“And he asked you to wait in his apartment.”

Wetzon looked at Laura Lee. “He jumped me, and when I resisted, he gave me this as a gift, from him to me, with love. Don’t say it, Laura Lee.” She looked down at her knees. It hurt to keep her head tilted up.

Laura Lee crouched down in front of her. “Wetzon, darlin’, I’m not about to say anythin’ at this point. It’s all over, and you don’t need salt rubbed in. Let me tell you, though, Chris Gorham has managed to get away with this behavior for years because no one has had him arrested—until now. You’re a heroine.”

“How do you know about him, Laura Lee?” Wetzon blinked tears away. “Do you know Abby?”

Laura Lee shook her head. “No. I knew someone he did it to, someone who was in my trainin’ class at Merrill. It was before he got married. We met him at Harry’s. We’d just gotten our Series 7 and we were celebratin .” Laura Lee sighed; she’d lost most of her soft Southern accent for the moment. “He was real slick. She started seein’ him and it was true love—at least on her part. One day she didn’t show up for work, so I called her. She sounded horrible.” Laura Lee got to her feet and held her hand out to Wetzon. “Her apartment was in a brownstone in the West Sixties. I told her I was comin’ by on my way home.” Wetzon took her hand and stood, leaving her hand in Laura Lee’s. “Let me tell you, darlin’, she looked a whole lot worse than you do.”

“You should have seen me Thursday night. What happened to her?”

“She packed up and went home to Tampa. Never called, never wrote. I guess she just wanted to wipe it all out.”

“And Chris got away with it.”

“And Chris got away with it.”

“Well, he’s not getting away with it this time,” Wetzon said. Her cotton leotard clung to her damply. “Smith is having a fit that I’m pressing charges.”

“Smith!” Laura Lee spat the name. “Your de-ah partner is only interested in the business it might hurt. Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“I suppose Hoffritz is putting pressure on.”

“No, not Hoffritz. Destry Bird.”

“Wetzon, my poor darlin’, Destry Bird is a moon.”

“A moon?”

“He reflects, that’s all he does.”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore. I want to see what you’ve bought.”

They unloaded the shopping bags of smoked salmon, breads, coffee, and cheese.

“I hope you have watercress. And eggs.”

“I do.”

“And cucumbers?”

“Yes.”

“We’re in business, then. I’ll make a chocolate pecan torte. We’ll do the sandwiches tomorrow just before they get here.”

“Here’s the flour. Butter’s in the fridge. You can use the KitchenAid, and I’ll use the hand mixer.” Wetzon took a can of pumpkin out of the closet. Using the old recipe from the can, she doctored it with vanilla and almonds and fresh nutmeg. She beat everything together and divided the batter into two buttered loaf pans, and stuck the pans in the preheated oven. She brushed the flour off her hands. “That’s the way I like to bake. One, two, three and into the oven.” She stood on tiptoe and turned the timing knob. “I’m setting the timer for forty-five minutes.”

Having used every available measuring cup and bowl, dusting flour on the quarry tile squares of Wetzon’s kitchen floor, Laura Lee poured the chocolate batter into a greased spring-form pan and slid the pan into Wetzon’s second oven. “I do love that you own two ovens, and neither one is a microwave.”

Wetzon stood on tiptoe to reach the timer again. “How long do you need?”

“Forty minutes.”

“Mine has to be in an hour and a half so we’ll time it by yours because that timer is not working and I haven’t had a chance to get someone over to fix it.” Wetzon rinsed off the utensils and loaded the dishwasher.

“What’s this?” Laura Lee had her head in the refrigerator.

“What?” Wetzon, who had wiped down her marble counter, now dried her hands and peered over Laura Lee’s shoulder. “That’s leftover pasta. Silvestri made it last night.”

“Mmmmm. Smells luscious.” She took a fork from the drawer and scarfed up the leftovers. “All that and he cooks, too. I say, let’s not let this man get away.” She looked at Wetzon from under her mascara’d lashes.

Wetzon felt herself redden. “I want to show you something, Laura Lee.” She took the roll of taped paper from her briefcase and held it out to Laura Lee, who had followed her. “What’s this look like to you? Do you want some iced tea? I have a bottle made up already in the fridge cooling.”

“Yes. Lots of lemon, please.” Laura Lee was studying the paper intently.

As she poured strong tea over ice cubes and lemon slices, Wetzon could hear her in the living room reading off the names out loud.

“You know what this is?” Laura Lee called.

“No, that’s why I showed it to you.” Wetzon came into the living room carrying two glasses.

Laura Lee flapped the paper at her. “Well, it surely looks a whole lot like a list of brokerage clients with account numbers.” She slipped off her espadrilles and curled up on the sofa.

“Those numbers are account numbers?”

“That’s the way they look on a print-out. But look-a-here, darlin’.” Laura Lee was pointing to something on the sheet of paper.

“Wait.” Wetzon set the glasses down on the glass top of her coffee table and sat down next to Laura Lee. “Okay. What?” She stared down Laura Lee’s long rosy fingernail.

“Don’t you see anything odd here?”

“Mmmm.” She read over the names. “No. What do you see?”

“Wetzon darlin’, two of these names have the same account number. See ... here.”

Wetzon saw at once that Laura Lee was right. Adam Park and Jonathan Young had the same account number.

“What’s more, they’re both to post office boxes at Knickerbocker Station.”

“I saw that, but what does it mean? People have post office boxes.”

“Darlin’, two people can’t have the same account number. It just isn’t done. Compliance would pick that up in an instant.”

Compliance
, Wetzon thought, searching her memory. “Compliance. What if the compliance director in a small firm had an accident—died, or something—”

“He would have to be replaced.” Laura Lee took a sip of tea from the sweating glass. Ice water dripped on her lap. “Where are your napkins?”

“In the top drawer, there. Laura Lee, what if an executive with the firm filled in on compliance until a replacement could be found?”

“Okay, but he’d have to know what he was doing.” She dropped a napkin in Wetzon’s lap, flopped back on the sofa, and tucked one under her drizzling glass.

“And what if this executive didn’t notice the two accounts had the same number?”

“I guess that could happen ... in that situation.” She sounded doubtful. “In a real small firm, maybe. But all this is illegal. You can’t get away with it forever.”

“You can’t get away with anything forever.” Wetzon took a sip of her tea.

“But you could make a hell of a lot of money while you were gettin’ away with it.”

Wetzon jumped up, almost spilling the tea. “Oh, Laura Lee, you’re terrific,” she cried.

“Well, thank you very much. Would you mind tellin’ me what this is all about?”

“Carlton Ash. He was killed because when he used the late, departed compliance director’s office, he discovered something illegal the compliance director had been working on.”

Laura Lee frowned and put her chin on her bent knees. “Then all you have to find out is who the broker is who handles these accounts and you have your murderer.”

T
HE QUESTION WAS
—What broker had these accounts as his clients? And what if it wasn’t just one broker involved? She’d put in a call to Midtown North and passed the information on to Metzger.

It would be easy enough to find the broker. Every brokerage account had the name of the financial consultant covering the account stored in its computer systems, and if not the name, the broker’s I.D. number. All roads led to ...

Wetzon folded memo paper into strips and tore the strips on each fold, then wrote
sandwiches
twice,
pumpkin bread, cake, biscuits, scones,
and dropped each onto the serving plate she’d laid out for it.

“There, that’s it for today.” Laura Lee came down the hall from the bathroom and found Wetzon surveying the living room.

“Does it look all right?” Wetzon felt anxious, unnerved. Her heart fluttered and throbbed, then settled down, then fluttered and throbbed again. “I hope it’ll be cool enough.” She could feel Laura Lee’s worried eyes on her and she avoided them.

“I hate like the devil to leave you.”

“Oh, no, Laura Lee. Go. I have moments of mindless panic, but really, I’m solid as a rock.” She smiled. “A slightly cracked rock. And, you can’t disappoint the general.”

Laura Lee laughed. “Can you imagine, li’l ole me with a general? Wouldn’t Daddy love it? Too bad he’ll never know.” Laura Lee delighted in torturing her parents with stories about all the Yankee Jewish liberals she was going out with. Now, standing at the door, she gave Wetzon a hug. “We women have to stick together.”

“I know. I love you for this, Laura Lee, but I’d rather be alone. Honest. I’ll walk you out, though. I want to get my mail and maybe treat myself to Mexican take-out for dinner. Then I’m going to have a good soak and get into bed with a book.” She knew she had Scott Turow’s new one somewhere in the apartment.

“Well, put somethin’ on for the street, darlin’, ’cause I want to get goin’. The general’s flyin’ up for dinner and the Juilliard String Quartet.”

Awkwardly, Wetzon slipped a cotton miniskirt over her leotard and tied the laces on her Keds. “Sounds serious.”

Laura Lee rolled her eyes. “Oh,
puh-
leeese
.
Thinkin’ about it gives me hives.”

Arranging the straw hat over her forehead and adding the sunglasses, Wetzon said, “That’s because you don’t really want to get married. I can understand that.” They grinned at each other.