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

hotel. You know, the Park Royale.”

37.
    A FTER S TU AND Larry left, Wetzon ordered an Amstel Light and sat on the banquette making notes about each broker, his production, business mix, choice of firms, and availability for appointments. But she couldn’t keep what they’d told her about Rona and Tony Maglia from intruding. Had Brian known? Was that why he’d refused to acknowledge Megan as his child?
    What strange alliances resulted. Brian and Tony against Rona after she moved to Rosenkind, Luwisher. Brian and Tony against Penny Ann Boyd, Brian’s client. And Tabitha Ann Boyd, Tony, and Brian against Penny Ann. Were Rona and Tony still involved? And what about Tony’s wife? How did she figure in all of this?
    She played with the beer glass, turning it around and around, doodling in the frost, sipping it, and watched the group clustered around the bar. The silver-haired man had been joined by a young woman who was not his daughter. Daughters don’t stroke their father’s lapels and fathers don’t fondle their daughter’s necks. At least not that way. But oh, well, yes, do lighten up, Wetzon.
    She remembered once, when she was still in college, spending the day with a date in Manhattan. She’d known Alan at Rutgers and then he went to law school at Cornell. They’d gone to a bar in the Village and met another couple: Howard, a law-school chum of Alan’s, and another man, who was Howard’s friend, a teacher, and his fiancée, a social worker. It was easy to see that everyone but Wetzon and the fiancée thought Howard was terrific. He dominated the conversation, made it circle around him. The fiancée and Howard argued about everything. It was a clash of wills, and everyone seemed to enjoy it except Wetzon.
    On the ride home Alan had asked, didn’t Wetzon think Howard was wonderful. Wetzon replied that Howard was loud, coarse, egocentric, and rude. All the things, she now thought, that probably made a good criminal lawyer.
    “The women love him,” Alan had countered, as if that made him a deity.
    “Not this woman. And certainly not his friend’s fiancée.”
    “That’s how much you know. Howard’s making it with her.”
    All these years later, she was having the same reaction about Rona and Tony, and she wondered, with slow amazement, did she live her life in another dimension from everyone else? Smith wouldn’t have been shocked, nor would Carlos. And certainly not Silvestri.
    Carlos always kidded her with “You can take the girl out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl.” It must be true, for growing up on the farm had isolated her from the world, had colored her approach to life, and she still found herself shocked by deceit, greed, and gratuitous evil.
    She paid the bill and went downstairs to collect her coat from the checkroom. Coat on, tip in tray, she was ready to go up to Mt. Sinai to meet Alton Pinkus. The phone booths—two of them—were in a private cubbyhole, each in its own private mahogany casing. The right thing to do first was to call Smith and report the latest news about Rona and Tony Maglia, but the almost four-year-old image of Barry Stark, sliding out of one of the booths very dead, gave her pause.
    Come on, you’re a big girl now , she told herself, and marched into the cubbyhole. Barry’s booth was occupied; relieved, she slipped into the other and called Smith. The phone rang fifteen times and she hung up, thinking Smith’s not having an answering machine was a manipulation. You had to keep calling her, and that meant your time and concentration were always revolving around her.
    She got up and left the booth, standing a moment and feeling a chill as if someone had walked over her grave again. Brushing it away, she hurried out of the Four Seasons onto Fifty-second Street. She caught a cab that was dropping an English couple, who greeted the doorman by his first name, as if they were frequent visitors.
    In the cab she thought of Silvestri. She’d met him that same day Barry was murdered.
    The cabdriver, a youngish man with a heavy Russian accent, was not a talker. His radio was playing a WNEW tribute to Sinatra. Wetzon leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.
    “Hey!”
    She woke with a start. The cabdriver was knocking on the glass partition. “Sorry.” She fumbled in her bag and gave him a ten. “Give me two dollars back, please.”
    It had turned warm again, and pleasant. The sun, having made a first brief appearance while she was