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

call me and give me another shot at her.... What do you think they offered her?”
    “I don’t know, but I’ll find out. I’m really sorry about this, Fred.” These days she found she was spending more and more time apologizing for bad behavior, for downright rudeness, for thoughtlessness. This was a business where you never burn your bridges. There was no telling, with mergers, acquisitions, and insolvencies, where people you’ve stepped on will end up. After she hung up, Wetzon sat and stared at her papers without really seeing them.
    When Smith finished her conversation with Neil Munchen, she was triumphant. “All right! Now we’re talking! Neil’s agreed to give us three months. If Rona’s not back by then, it’s a loss.” She rose and looked at her watch. “I’ve got to run over to Saks to get a few odds and ends. How about lunch?”
    “I’ll order in. I have my meeting to confirm and people to talk to. Seymour Wells, for example.” She picked out his number. Wells was the producing manager at White, Mooney, and Wetzon had known him when he was a wild rookie. It was hard to believe he was a manager now.
    “You mean Sleazemore Wells, don’t you?” Smith shrugged into the jacket of her suit.
    “Good morning, thank you for calling White, Mooney,” an operator announced in a lilting voice.
    “Slea—I mean Seymour Wells, please.” She put her fingers over the mouthpiece to cover Smith’s naughty laughter and hissed, “Get out of here, will you, before I throw this at you.” She gestured with the phone.
    “You might call one of your police contacts and find out what they have on Rona.”
    Wetzon made hissing noises at Smith.
    “Seymour Wells.”
    Wetzon threw Smith her best hard-eyed look, then smiled into the phone and said, “Seymour, how are you? This is Wetzon. I’m just calling to see where we stand with—”
    “Wetzon, talk fast. I haven’t got time. I have someone who’s a real recruiter on the other line.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I’m going to talk to a real recruiter. You know, one who doesn’t look like a Donna Mills doll.”
    “Donna Mills? Seymour, what are you talking about?” She was almost sputtering with rage.
    “Lighten up, doll,” Seymour said. “Talk to you later.”
    Left with a dial tone, Wetzon slammed the receiver down. “Lighten up!”
    Smith, the door half open—one step out—stopped. “Now what?”
    “Men! They will never take us seriously on the Street. I don’t know why we bother. I was talking to him as a professional and he gives me this crap about how I’m a doll recruiter—Donna Mills, to be exact—and he had a real recruiter on the other line, and when I protest he says to lighten up.”
    Smith’s eyes flared. “Donna Mills looks like a—”
    “Exactly. A sex object.”
    “It’s what I always say, and you never listen. The male rats crossed the electrified grid for sex more than food.” Smith closed the door behind her. Which was a good thing, because Wetzon threw her Filofax and hit the door with a loud thud.
    Wetzon was frazzled. Loose ends were all around her. Her work, her life, this case. And nothing got settled. Everything just kept getting more and more complicated. And she needed things to be settled.
    Smith was right. If they could find out what the police had on Rona—but wouldn’t Dickie be able to fill that in for them? She picked up the phone. Ferrante wouldn’t tell her, that was for sure. Walters?
    No. She tapped at the numbers for the Seventeenth Precinct and asked to speak to Artie Metzger, Silvestri’s partner.
    “Metzger.” Metzger’s voice was funereal and suited his basset-hound face.
    “Hi, Artie, this is Leslie.”
    “Leslie! How are you?” She could hear phones ringing and the familiar general precinct clamor.
    “I don’t really know, Artie. Can we get together and talk? Do you have any time for me?”
    “Always. You tell me.”
    “I need some information. A broker was murdered in the Conservatory Garden and then a girl who worked as his assistant was killed at Lincoln Center yesterday. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
    “Yeah. Some.”
    “Well, another broker—the ex-wife—has been arrested for the murders. I need to know as much about it as you can tell me, legally.”
    “Uh, you know ...”
    “I don’t want to put you on the spot, Artie, but if you can ...” She let it hang there.
    “I’ll see what I can dig up, but I’m not promising.”
    They fixed a meeting at