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

her robe from the door and her makeup box and ran for her intercom, parking the Lucite box on the floor near her feet.
    She pressed the button on the house phone rapidly two or three times. Four times. No response. Think, think.
    The elderly couple above her were in Florida, but someone was staying in the apartment. A grandson or something. Wetzon pulled on her terry-cloth robe, which one could hardly call dry, stuck her feet in her shoes lying where she’d left them in the dining room, and raced up the back stairs.
    Hard rock music thumped a pulsing heartbeat through the door. She could hear water running. She rang the bell. Heard nothing. Rang again, furiously, three, four, five, six, seven—the rock music stopped. She began pounding on the door. “Turn off the goddam water!”
    Behind her, a door opened and a sleepy neighbor stuck her head out. “What’s the trouble?”
    “I’ve got Niagara Falls in my apartment because this fool must have gone to sleep with the tub water running.” Wetzon punctuated each word with a thump on the closed door.
    Then she heard an exclamation and running footsteps. The sound of flowing water stopped. He never came to the door.
    “You can sue the shit out of them,” Wetzon heard her neighbor say enviously as she ran down the back stairs.
    Her apartment was a mess. Water had come through the ceiling in her dining room and had even puckered a huge corner of the living-room ceiling, from which plaster was flaking like snow. She threw her arms up and howled.
    The doorbell rang and she flung the door open in a fury, expecting the culprit. It took a moment to recognize the angry face of Roger Levine, attorney, president of the co-op board and her directly-below downstairs neighbor. He was wearing jeans, an Izod shirt, and Weejuns without socks.
    “Don’t say a word,” she warned as he opened his mouth. “It’s that asshole upstairs. Come on in and see for yourself.” Anger and frustration made her gasp for breath as she stamped down the hall, splashing through the overflow. “Look, just look at my beautiful apartment.”
    He followed, somewhat mollified. When he saw her bedroom, he ordered, “Unplug your appliances and take Polaroids of everything. I’ve got water coming through my ceiling fixtures, but you’ve got a disaster.”
    They went back upstairs together and pounded on the door, but couldn’t raise an answer. “See what I mean?” Wetzon sniffled into a ragged tissue.
    Levine banged on the door one last time. Then he said, “Fuck this. Let’s get Albert up here.”
    An hour later Wetzon was sitting in Roger’s apartment with his wife, Holly, a drug analyst with Smith Barney. There was an untouched cup of coffee in front of her. “I’m really sorry about this.”
    “Forget it, Leslie. It’s not your fault,” Holly said. She was five months pregnant and just beginning to swell out under the tie belt of her robe.
    “Yeah,” Roger added. “We’re not too bad, but your place is a horror.”
    Tears rolled down Wetzon’s cheeks, etching wet salty trails in the grime.
    “Oh, Roger,” Holly murmured.
    “It’s true though, Holly. I’m going back upstairs and move things out of harm’s way. And pack what I need so I can live in the living room until everything is repaired.”
    “I hate to say this, Leslie,” Roger said, “but I think you should move out until everything is fixed. The ceilings could come down on your head. It’s too dangerous.”
    “Oh, I’m sure I—”
    “Do you have a place you can stay?” Holly asked.
    “I suppose so.” She thought, Smith? Carlos? He was staying at Arthur’s, but he’d sublet his apartment in the Village. Silvestri’s apartment in Chelsea was empty, maybe, but was it livable? She’d never even been there. He used it for his poker nights. Laura Lee? Wetzon hated the thought of living in a strange place. She loved her home.
    She climbed the single flight back up to her apartment. Albert, the super, was just leaving. “What do you think, Albert? When can you fix my ceiling?”
    He shook his head. “It’s a big job, and it’s got to dry out first. Maybe three, four weeks minimum. You can’t stay here.”
    “I can stay in the living room, can’t I?”
    His brow furrowed. “If it were me, I wouldn’t. That ceiling in the bathroom isn’t going to make it.... You could get hurt.”
    Her low moan was spontaneous. Albert patted her shoulder awkwardly, then left her. She closed the door and