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

Hartmann on an ego trip?”
    Smith nodded emphatically, annoyed. “And I don’t find him at all repulsive. I think he’s rather attractive. Enter, B.B.” His knock was lighter than Max’s.
    B.B. was holding Stan Lavell’s suspect sheet. “I’ve talked to Lavell and he says he’s very happy, wouldn’t think of leaving ... but he’s willing to talk to Rivington Ellis and Rosenkind, Luwisher. Shall I set it up?”
    “No, I’ll take it from here.” Smith plucked the suspect sheet from his hand.
    “Simon Loveman returning your call, Wetzon,” Max said through the open door.
    “Wetzon here.”
    “What do you have for me?”
    “No one right now, Simon. I just want to check out something I heard yesterday from Tony Maglia.”
    “Yeah?”
    “He told me that Brian made a deal to stay on at Bliss Thursday night. He showed me a signed contract.”
    Simon’s laugh was abrupt and nasty. “Wetzon, don’t be naive. Brian was playing us. He was here Thursday late, told me he’d resigned, and signed a contract with us. I can show it to you. We even advanced him money to see that his debit at Bliss was paid. What does that tell you?”
    She hung up the phone and said aloud, “That you’re an idiot, that Brian was a con man, and that Tony Maglia is a liar.”

27.
    W HO WAS TELLING the truth, Wetzon wondered, as she walked up Fifth Avenue. Maglia or Loveman? Or maybe they both were. Maybe Brian hadn’t made up his mind ... but no, he had brought his personal stuff over to Simon’s office, hadn’t he? So it had to be Maglia who was lying. Unless Maglia was blackmailing Brian into staying put. Could Maglia himself have lifted those incriminating papers? And what had happened to the money Brian had gotten from Simon Loveman?
    All of which meant that neither, or both, had a motive to kill Brian. Back to square one.
    Strolling tourists mingled with rushing, impatient New Yorkers. Snaky lines of commuters were fleshy obstructions as they waited for their express buses to take them out of the City. It was still light at five-thirty. Soon enough now the clocks would be set back an hour for Eastern Standard Time and Thanksgiving would be around the corner. The City would become a cornucopia of lights and Christmas decorations, all of which seemed to appear earlier and earlier each year.
    The Channel Gardens in Rockefeller Center was a field of fall foliage and mums, lavender and white, and deep purple. Foreigners abounded. A group of Japanese, every single one with a camera, was snapping Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders in front of 630 Fifth Avenue.
    Booksellers with their folding tables had laid claim to every corner, because you didn’t need a license to peddle books. It was a First Amendment prerogative.
    Wetzon turned west on Fifty-seventh Street, past the pretzel vendor, ignoring the enveloping lure of the honey-roasted peanuts, one dollar please. Charivari’s window was a Halloween parade of designer clothes, the mannequins all fixed with grotesque masks.
    Turning away, she caught a momentary glimpse of her solemn and solitary self, and felt such a stab of anguish, she was staggered. Her extreme sense of loss took her breath away. It was as if someone had died. Silvestri, she thought. He could be uncommunicative, gruff at times, wrapped up in the job, but oh how she missed him, and the ache seemed all-encompassing. Was it over between them? Was this what she was feeling—a sense of mourning?
    She chose a ballet class rather than jazz tonight, because the ballet movement demanded total control and pure concentration. The figure in the mirror in the faded pink leotard, ragged tights, and sagging legwarmers was still young and fit. Though in January she’d be thirty-eight, she had changed little from the eager young dancer who had come to New York seventeen years before. Her back was straight and long; her head, with its topknot, balanced regally on a slim, unlined neck. The squeak and brush of the ballet shoes was sweet to her as the dancers completed their leaps, bowed, and applauded their teacher.
    After tying her hair up in a ponytail and drying herself, Wetzon got back in uniform and folded her damp gear into her briefcase. On Fifty-seventh Street, she stopped in front of Carnegie Hall. She was ravenous. She’d call Carlos. They always told each other everything. Her feet had taken her all the way to Central Park South before she realized she was heading in the wrong direction. The Upper West