The Deadliest Option (22 page)

“I was going to tell you—honestly,” Harold said. “But you weren’t here when I got back.”

“You could have told me,” Wetzon said. “I was here, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, but I wanted to tell you
together
.” He’d stopped stammering and was gaining confidence. “He offered me a job.”

“Did he indeed?” Smith said, with an exaggerated yawn.

“Did you talk numbers?” Wetzon asked. Now she felt he was telling the truth.

“Well, yes. He said I would make a lot more money with him.”

“Give me a break,” Smith said. “Haven’t you heard that line before? Haven’t you used it yourself?”

“But, Smith, I wouldn’t think of leaving you. You taught me everything I know and I feel good here—”

“I’d like to remind you, Harold,” Smith said, “that you have a contract with us. You signed it when you started and it is understood unless there is a three-month notice on either part, it is renewed every year.”

Wetzon had forgotten the contract. Now she remembered that Leon, their original attorney, had drawn it up at Smith’s insistence, with the comment that it probably wouldn’t hold up in court.

“Oh. Right ... the contract.” Wetzon could tell that Harold had forgotten it, too. “But I would never do anything with Tom Keegen. You don’t have to worry.”

“Loyalty is all that we want, Harold.”

“Did Keegen ask you anything about how we do business?” Wetzon said.

“He asked, but of course, I wouldn’t tell him.”

“We’d like your word on this, Harold,” Smith said.

“Honestly. I swear. You don’t have to worry about me.” He held up his hand as if he were taking an oath.

Smith stood up. “All right, then, Harold. You may leave us.”

Harold, with unnatural dignity, turned and left, closing the door softly behind him.

“Do you
believe
him?” Smith demanded, hands on her hips. “I’d like to
kill
him.”

“Kill Harold? He’s not worth it.”

“Harold? No, that dirtbag Keegen.”

“Forget it. About Harold, I don’t know. Let’s not make anything more of it for now, but I think we should keep our eye on him.”

Smith sighed and sat down. “It depresses me that we can’t even trust him. But he was right, about meeting with Keegen. Either one of us would have done it to hear what the slime had to say.” She smacked the top of her desk with the palm of her hand. “The
nerve
of him.
Who
does he think he is? I have half a mind to call him and let him know what to do with himself.”

“A waste of energy. Doing well is always the best revenge,” Wetzon said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should raise Harold’s percentage up to thirty-five.”

“I hate to reward the creep when he’s been disloyal.”

“We don’t know that. It’s all circumstantial evidence, isn’t it?” Wetzon smiled. “Think about it.” She looked down at the papers on her desk. “I have a ton of work to do....”

“Do you want to have dinner tonight and talk this through?”

“Can’t tonight. I’m meeting
la belle
Ellie for a drink. Where’s Jake?”

“In Atlanta checking out a company that wants to go public.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“You’re on.”

“We could go have pasta at Baci.”

“But that’s on the West Side.”

“So? What’s wrong with the West Side? Too ethnic for you?”

“Oh, for pitysakes.”

Wetzon grinned at her, picked up the phone, and called Sharon Murphy. “I’m confirming your appointment today with Marty Rosen at Loeb Dawkins, four-thirty.”

“Oh, Wetzon, I’m glad you called. I’m really nervous about going there. Someone might recognize me. I just can’t do it. Please see if he can meet me outside.”

“All right. I’ll call you back.” Wetzon looked at Smith, who was making notes on a yellow legal pad.

“Now what?” Smith asked, not raising her head.

“She wants to meet outside the office.”

“You indulge their paranoia.”

“Sharon has a point, Smith. Everyone knows everyone on the Street. Someone in Marty’s office could recognize her and let someone in her office know, and that someone could tell her manager....” Wetzon tapped out Marty Rosen’s number.

“Sure,” Rosen said. “Tell her I’ll meet her at the Pierre at five o’clock. And tell her what I look like, Wetzon.”

“What
do
you look like, Marty?”

“Like a broker, Wetzon. Dark blue suit, glasses, six feet, one eighty, dark hair. Who am I looking for?”

“I’d spot you anywhere. Sharon looks a bit like Tina Turner, if Tina were Irish.”

“Is that white Irish or black Irish?”

“You figure it out.”

Rosen chuckled. “Well, that’ll be interesting.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Marty. Remember, Sharon’s looking for an aggressive office, wants her own cold-caller, and she’s really nervous about making a move.”

“Trust me, Wetzon.”

Wetzon hung up. She was not reassured. The phrase
trust me
always triggered the memory of what a broker told her in her first year in the business—
”Trust me
is code for
fuck you.
”

“Marty Rosen just said ‘trust me,’”she said.

Smith sighed and threw down her pen. “I can’t concentrate on this now.”

“What are you doing?”

“The report for Hoffritz. I’m still furious about Tom Keegen. We just can’t let him get away with it. I have half a mind to—”

“We have no choice unless you put your devious mind to work and come up with a way of fixing Keegen without hurting us. Come on, let’s work on the report. We don’t have that much to say, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll fudge it.”

“What are you going to say about yesterday’s lunch with Janet
et
al
?”

“Just that we talked with Janet and Twoey, and we’ve eliminated Twoey as a suspect.”

“That’s a real work of genius. Jeezus, Smith, Twoey is the only one who couldn’t possibly have done either murder. And Janet wasn’t around for Dr. Ash’s, so we should probably tell them that we’ve eliminated her as a suspect.”

“Okay.” Smith began writing again. Wetzon stood up and came to look at Smith’s scrawls over her shoulder.

“By the way, both Goldie and Dr. Ash were killed with sulfites.”

“Sulfites? What’s that?”

“It’s a colorless, tasteless powder that some people are horribly allergic to.”

“You mean both Goldie and Dr. Ash?”

“Yes ... Good God, how could the murderer possibly know they were
both
allergic to sulfites? Isn’t that a little bizarre?”

“How about a little coincidental?” Smith added. Her eyes glinted. “I wonder if Tom Keegen is allergic to sulfites.”

“Oh, Smith, be serious. Cool it on Keegen. You’re letting him get to you. What are you writing?”

“That they were both killed by sulphur.”

“Sulfites.”

“Whatever. It’ll look good on the report. Was it in their food?”

“Yes. Goldie via his drink. Dr. Ash, probably in coffee.” The nub of a thought darted through her mind and was gone. She frowned. It was too coincidental. Smith was right. And one death followed hard on the other. She remembered that Ash had been seated next to Goldie at the dinner.

“Ouch, Wetzon, what’s the matter with you?” Smith pulled her shoulder away from Wetzon’s squeezing hand and stared at her.

“God, I’m sorry. I just had an incredible thought. The killer couldn’t be sure the sulfites would kill his victim, so he had to be really desperate and have no other options. And he might have gotten away with it if there hadn’t been a double fluke of another allergic person sitting at the same table. A person who picked up Ash’s drink by mistake.”

“What are you babbling about, Wetzon?” Smith made an exasperated face at her.

“Try this on for size. What if Goldie was not the intended victim?”

E
LLIE
K
APLAN WAS
late. So what else was new. It gave Wetzon time to think about her theory. If Carlton Ash was the intended victim all along, Goldie had been killed by mistake. Then either Neil or Ellie could have done it. It all led back to the study Ash was doing.

The Oak Bar of the Plaza was crowded with end-of-the-day people having their little drinkies. Tourists mostly. It was not a place she normally met brokers, although it wasn’t a bad place to meet someone who didn’t wish to be seen by anyone else in the industry. There was something a little tacky and run-down about it. The waiters were older, jaded, their black tuxedo uniforms seedy; the service was terrible, the contents of the snack bowls often stale. It was nothing like Wetzon’s beloved Four Seasons, which she preferred over any other environment for an after-the-close drink.

But the Oak Bar had been Ellie’s choice.

Actually, Ellie’s choice had been not to meet at all, when Wetzon had called her to confirm their appointment.

“I’d like to put it off,” Ellie’d said, her voice thick and foggy. “I just can’t deal with anything in my life right now, especially moving.”

“We don’t have to talk about that at all. Come on. We’ll do girl talk.”

“Girl talk,” Ellie had repeated. “God. All right, Wetzon, but remember, I warned you.”

“Duly warned,” Wetzon now murmured to herself, plucking a cheese-flavored fish cracker from the bowl in front of her and sipping the Perrier. She looked out at Central Park South at the clustered cabs and limousines. Rush-hour traffic clogged the broad, spacious street that fronted the lower portion of Central Park. The street temperature still hovered in the high nineties, and people walked slowly, looking wilted and frazzled. The horses and carriages, usually in evidence, were banished to their shelters according to law when the heat was excessive.

“Oooooh, Dar!” The scream came from a middle-aged woman at the table next to her with thick, curly ash-blonde hair and thick curly bangs that covered her eyebrows. She waved wildly to another woman who had paused in the entrance to look around. Dar had the same hairdo in brown. Another woman with the same hairdo joined the two, and now there were so many shopping bags—Saks, Bergdorf’s, Bloomie’s, Bendel’s—that they needed two extra chairs. It was some kind of reunion, and Wetzon, eavesdropping as always, learned that Dar had flown in from Boston. They were soon joined by a tall woman with a cap of reddish hair and another, about Wetzon’s height, with bobbed white hair. They seemed so glad to see each other that Wetzon, watching them, smiled.

She never learned the occasion for their reunion. Ellie Kaplan appeared, and Wetzon raised her hand high to get her attention.

Ellie, at quick glance, could have been a bag lady. Her yellow linen dress was wrinkled, her silver hair hung dank in her eyes. With its smear of makeup and swollen raccoon eyes, her face looked ravaged.

Brushing her hair back with a nervous gesture, Ellie sat down heavily. “I’ll have a Booth martini, straight up and very dry,” she told the waiter. She took a gold cigarette case from her handbag, opened it, and offered a cigarette to Wetzon, who shook her head.

“Nice case.”

Ellie removed a cigarette, closed the case with a snap, tapped the cigarette smartly on the closed case, and lit it with a gold lighter. She gave Wetzon an intense, appraising look. “Let’s not talk about where we get our hair done.”

“Okay.”

Instead, they talked about the early heat spell, transportation in the City, politics, and had just polished off an assessment of the nation’s budget deficit when the waiter, an aged man in a threadbare tuxedo, brought the martini and set it in front of her. An olive pierced by a toothpick lay at the bottom of the glass. Ellie spoke to him. “Why don’t you just bring me another one now so I don’t have to look for you later? Is that okay, Wetzon?” She took a short, sharp drag on her cigarette, inhaling the smoke and exhaling through her nostrils.

“Of course.” Ellie had been drinking, Wetzon saw, and was well on her way to being drunk.

“I know you want to talk business, Wetzon. You’re in business; I’m in business.” Ellie laughed. “And I don’t want to talk about business. What else do you have to offer?” She drained half the martini, took hold of the toothpick with thick fingers, and popped the olive into her mouth, then broke the toothpick into little pieces.

“I
love
it!” one of the women at the next table shrieked.

“How about friendship?” Wetzon said.

“How about it?” Ellie finished the martini and stared into the empty glass. “Do you know what it’s like for women in this business if you don’t play along with Them?” She stared at Wetzon. “What’s the matter with me? Of course you know. I’m sorry, Wetzon. You know, life never turns out the way you want it. You make plans, you think you have it right, and then it just melts away, and the detritus is worse than what was before.”

Wetzon shooshed the ice around in her glass. Was Ellie talking about David?

“You’re not saying anything, Wetzon. Come on, you have to keep up your end of the conversation.”

“Where are you from, Ellie?”

“Originally?” She took a big swallow of the martini.

Wetzon nodded. Ellie was sitting with her back to the window, and Wetzon, facing her, saw only her silhouette framed in the late-day sunlight.

“Grew up in Forest Hills. My father taught history at Queens College. I went to Vassar on a scholarship, and ended up teaching at Fieldston, where Goldie Henry-Higginsed me.” Her words began to slur badly. “Should never have ... should have let me be....” She took another sip of the martini, holding the liquid in her mouth before swallowing. “Too many fucking responsibilities ... I could use a friend....” She stared at Wetzon, then let her chin sink wearily to her breast. “… Someone who won’t judge me. Will you be my friend, Wetzon?”

Wetzon felt a rush of sympathy; she reached out and touched Ellie’s hand. “Ellie, talk to me about what you do. The options market is so specialized, I’d love to learn more about it.”

Ellie pulled her hand away. “Is this from course number two-oh-two, humor the broker? Get her to talk about herself.”

“There aren’t very many people on the Street who do with options what you do, and certainly not very many women. I’d really like to understand it.”