Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

Stark was murdered. “I’m a recruiter, a headhunter. I persuade stockbrokers to move from one firm to another.”
    “You’re a personnel agency.”
    “No. We don’t have to be licensed as personnel agencies do. We get paid a percentage of the broker’s gross commissions. Brian was one of my hires. Or rather, he would have been. He was to have started today at Loeb Dawkins.”
    Ferrante had gone uptown to get Rona Middleton. She was next of kin. They were separated, not divorced yet.
    “He didn’t call?”
    “No. He just didn’t show. I spoke with him last night about nine-thirty. Everything was cool. I can’t figure what he’d be doing in the Conservatory Garden,” she said. “Especially on the day he was to start a new job.”
    “Did he have a girlfriend over there?”
    She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” She finished the juice and tossed the container into a nearby brown plastic waste receptacle. Just like the big fee they now didn’t have and never would have, she thought. Smith would be wild.
    “You want to give us a guess on time of death, Doc?”
    Jennie Vose frowned. “Don’t hold me to it. I’d say maybe seven, seven-thirty A.M.”
    “Look,” Wetzon said, “why would he go out for a walk in an isolated section of Central Park at that hour?” She stood and stretched her legs. She was getting stiff. “And in serious clothes. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Brian wasn’t stupid ... but he always carried a lot of money on him.” She remembered having lunch with him and then his walking her into Tiffany’s and peeling off wads of bills for a tennis bracelet for Rona. All diamonds. All retail. Top dollar. And she’d thought at the time that neither she nor anyone she knew would ever buy jewelry retail. New Yorkers just didn’t ... not even to show off.
    Rona. Rona would get the business now. Clients feel safer with people they know. They would all come back to her. Rona would do well in her first year at Rosenkind, Luwisher, and Smith and Wetzon would do well because their compensation agreement with Rosenkind was based on Rona’s future production. That would please Smith no end.
    And what about you, you mercenary bitch , she asked herself. She couldn’t put it all off on Smith. Leslie Wetzon liked making money, too. No doubt about it.
    Dr. Vose excused herself, and Wetzon sat down and looked at Martens.
    “You want some coffee?” Martens said it so halfheartedly that she laughed.
    “No, thanks.” Hunger had become a dull ache. Her head was throbbing. “I’ve never been to the Conservatory Garden,” she said.
    “Nice place. Peaceful.” Martens rose and began pacing. He was antsy, a tall, angular African-American whose bearing and grace, not to mention bone structure, made him look like a Masai warrior in Western garb.
    “Is Martens a French name?”
    “Yeah. Somewhere way back. My grandparents came from Martinique.” He came to a stop in front of her. “You said he was supposed to start a new job today?”
    “Yes. And he would have collected a big upfront check for two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars once he was on board.”
    A long whistle squeezed through Martens’s teeth. “Was that a secret?”
    “No. Everyone involved knew. Actually, everyone on the Street knows what the deals are.”
    “But he didn’t collect it because he didn’t start.”
    “As far as I know. I’ve never heard of an instance where someone collected a deal before he started.”
    There was no window in the room, and Wetzon began to feel claustrophobic. Her suit jacket weighed down on her, and her face was numb.
    A phone somewhere close, perhaps the next office, began to ring. She counted twenty before someone finally answered it.
    “Excuse me.” A young woman in a lab coat stood in the doorway, her hair braided in a coronet on top of her head. Her glasses clung to the top of her nose. “Detective Martens? Ms. Wetzon?”
    Martens stopped pacing. “Yeah?”
    “You’re both wanted downstairs.” She nodded at them distractedly and left.
    Wetzon followed Martens to the lobby, where Rona Middleton greeted her with an hysterical shriek and threw herself into Wetzon’s arms, a highly difficult feat because Rona was a big woman and easily a head taller than Wetzon, closer to Smith’s height. Rona was an athlete, an avid tennis player and a fanatical jogger. Her muscles had muscles. She did five miles a day around the reservoir, or she hated herself, so she said. She