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

as well have them. I have another set in the office.” She glanced at the card in her hand: LOUISE ARMSTRONG, CONTRACTOR, INTERIORS. She had the same address as Carlos—West Tenth Street.
    “Oh, you’re in Carlos’s building. I’m staying in his apartment.”
    “I’m just below you, then. Good. I can call you and hand-deliver my proposal. If we agree, we can move a little faster.” They shook hands on it.
    “Give me as much detail as you can, because I have to get board approval for renovations.”
    In the lobby Wetzon asked Harry to keep collecting her mail. “I’ll come up for it a couple of times a week.”
    “Poor darlin’, you look so put-upon,” Laura Lee said. She was looking especially chic in kicky black silk pleats, a red silk T, and a longish black and red paisley jacket. “Let’s go get a blue plate special at EJ’s and I’ll tell you what happened to me today.” She tucked Wetzon’s arm into hers and they walked out on the street. The air was cold, with a raw bite to it. October.
    “Where did you say we’re going?”
    “A great place right here on Amsterdam. EJ’s. It’s diner-type food, good and cheap.”
    “And what happened to you today?”
    “I was walkin’ home on Broadway, mindin’ my own business, I might add, and this wino with a shoppin’ cart pulled over to me while I was waitin’ for the light to change, and would you believe he starts screamin’, ‘Everybody, look here, it’s Kim Novak. It’s a real movie star.’”
    Wetzon started laughing. “Kim Novak?”
    “You haven’t heard the rest, darlin’. A crowd started formin’, and this lunatic starts interviewin’ the crowd about what they think, do I or don’t I look like Kim Novak. I couldn’t believe it was happenin’, and I almost walked right out in front of a bus to get away from him. Finally, this nice man in an Armani suit, carryin’ an attaché, took pity on me and he said, ‘I don’t think she’s Kim Novak, but she’s really cute.’ And I kept duckin’ my head and thinkin’, ‘God, I’ve been really good. Please get me out of this.’”
    “You should have said, ‘Actually, I’m Tippi Hedren.’”
    Laura Lee stopped in her tracks, looked at Wetzon, and they both howled. The Dominican domino players who hung out on the street, talking and drinking, saluted them with beer cans. A radio played salsa loud. Children who should have been in bed played tag while the mothers sat on the stoops gossiping. They were a raucous bunch, but not threatening. They were all that remained of a much larger Hispanic community that had been nudged out by the new buildings and gentrification.
    A kosher pizzeria and falafel restaurant had opened on the corner of Eighty-fourth Street, and now klezmer mingled with salsa.
    “There now, darlin’,” Laura Lee said after the steaming bowls of onion soup were set in front of them. “Spill the beans. Tell me everythin’ and I mean everythin’.”
    “I can’t. I’ll just be whining, and I hate that.” Wetzon filled her spoon with soup and lifted it to her mouth, blowing on it gently.
    “You want to talk whinin’? I’m an expert. You should hear these men on the Street whine about the market. I mean, what are they doin’? Just today John Applegate called me from Charleston and went on and on. You remember him—he’s with Shearson now. May I tell you his picture appears next to ‘whine’ in the dictionary. I wanted to say to him, ‘Take me off your speed dial, sweetheart.’ So you go on, Wetzon, and whine to your friend. What else are friends for?” She swallowed a spoonful of soup and her face lit up. Is your guy still away?”
    Wetzon nodded. “That’s part of it, I guess. I can’t even get him on the phone. We play telephone tag for days, and then we have these terse, awful conversations.” She stared into her soup and poked at the gobs of melted cheese with her spoon, had a taste, set her spoon down. “This is heavenly.”
    “Didn’t I tell you?” Laura Lee had a glow about her, an incandescence, a spontaneity. Physically, she was Wetzon’s size, but with slightly rounder edges, short dark hair in a big fluff around her face. She still played the violin seriously with a chamber group two nights a week and managed a number of very sophisticated portfolios at Oppenheimer. Life, for Laura Lee, was a continuous adventure. She threw herself into it with an energy and a joie that Wetzon envied.
    “About Silvestri … I guess I got