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

eight-thirty, and she’d already been bamboozled. They’d say yes, tell themselves it was a spec sit—special situation— and do it. Eliot was right. Fifty was better than no fee, and what Schiff, McConnell had to offer was prime. Most firms took their million-dollar producers for granted, especially if they were women, figuring they wouldn’t want to disrupt their business by moving. Having become entrenched in the system, with deferred comp, stock and stock options, huge books, they’d be the body-at-rest principle. But Wetzon, hazarding a guess, thought these guys, and the few women who fit the criterion, might respond to the elegance and the pampering.
    She stopped in the lobby at the newsstand to buy the Times and the Journal , digging in her purse for change.
    “Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Ms. Sleazy, Low-life Headhunter?” Maglia was standing beside her, holding a pack of Marlboros he’d just paid for.
    “Come on, Tony.” Rona was behind him, and she looked uneasy.
    “What for?” Wetzon didn’t even try to keep the anger out of her words. He was a dirtbag opportunist, but maybe they all were. She’d just been had by the top of the line at Schiff, McConnell.
    “Let’s go, Tony,” Rona said, unable to meet Wetzon’s gaze. She began walking toward the elevators.
    “Not before I tell Wetzon that she can’t play with the big boys and expect to win. Forget it, it’s over.” He leered at her. “Rona got what she wanted. And I got what I wanted.”
    “Tony, sweetheart, you have a lot of class. Did anyone ever tell you that?” Wetzon turned her back on him and handed the clerk a dollar, dropping her change in her pocket.
    A hand on her shoulder spun her around roughly. She shook it off and made tracks out of there. Maglia’s voice followed her, fairly spitting venom. “You stay out of my face and away from my brokers, girlie, if you know what’s good for you.”

58.
    S HE WAS STILL fulminating about Maglia when she got to the office. He had threatened her—and in public, at that. Was he all mouth?
    Max, wearing a red polka-dot bow tie, was at his desk in their reception room methodically preparing his suspect sheets for the day. A thumbed-through and folded Wall Street Journal lay at his elbow. The coffee maker had a full carafe of fresh coffee, and she could hear B. B. on the phone getting someone’s availability. The wonder of the whole scene assuaged her. A smoothly working machine, that was Smith and Wetzon.
    Max looked up. “Good morning, Wetzon. Is there anything new in the industry that I should be aware of?”
    “Let’s see, Max.” She hung her coat in the closet. “We’re still looking for people for Ameribank. That’ll be one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand in gross, whistle clean, no compliance problems, five years or less in the business. And if you come up with someone doing over a mil, please give me his suspect sheet, whether he expresses interest in talking or not.” She poured herself a mug of coffee and retired to her office.
    Their garden in the back of the brownstone was a riot of dried leaves. In the murky mist it looked bleak. It looked the way she felt.
    “You dope,” she said out loud, toasting her reflection in the window. “You have your health, two men who care for you—in their own peculiar way—good friends, and no money troubles. What is there to be bleak about?” But just the same, she felt it. It seemed, now that she thought about it, since her visit to the psychic, everything had gone wrong.
    She sat down at her desk and called Sheila. She’d probably already gone off to work. Right. The answering machine again. How annoying. She left a message with her office number and hung up as Smith came through the door followed by a bearded young man in jeans. He carried a burlap sack and a box of gardening tools.
    “Good morning, sweetie pie.” Smith walked right past Wetzon and flung open the door to their garden. The young man had his hair pulled back in a ponytail, which trailed over the collar of his washed-out flannel shirt. “There you are. Wetzon, this is Philip, and he’s going to get our garden ready for winter, aren’t you, dear?” She closed the door on Philip without waiting for an answer, and brushed her palms together.
    “You must have been reading my mind.”
    “We do those things quite well, don’t we? And how did it go this morning?” She dumped her Burberry on top of the filing cabinet as if preparing for