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

was thinking how nice it was that he and Silvestri both loved to cook. The wine was tart and acidy on her tongue, and she sighed.
    “What are you thinking?” he asked, helping himself to more salad.
    “Boring things.” She finished everything on her plate.
    “Try me.” He emptied the bottle of wine, a bit in each glass.
    “The mess in my apartment, business—which is not so good right now because one of my brokers didn’t make a planned move— and a complicated, convoluted consulting problem.” There was no reason to bring murder into it.
    “Do you know this fellow Middleton who was murdered last week?” He got off the stool and took a package of coffee from his freezer, holding it up. “Decaf espresso?”
    “Fine. Yes, I know him—knew him. Don’t look so surprised. There are very few brokers in New York I don’t know. Brian, however, was the broker who didn’t make the move I’d planned for him.” Her smile was rueful.
    He began measuring coffee into an electric Krups, and he didn’t respond at first. She thought he hadn’t heard her. She picked up the plates and silver and put them in the sink, then watched him cut strips of rind from a lemon and put them on a small plate. The coffee maker pshshed and pshshed. Smiling down at her, Alton touched her face, and she caught the lemon scent from his hands.
    “Does your hair ever come down?” He took her in his arms.
    “Never,” she said. It felt good to be held, like being snug under a blanket, but she wasn’t ready for this. The coffee maker sputtered and spit, finished, and she eased away. “Where’s your bathroom?”
    His bathroom was at the end of a short hallway past his bedroom. She took a quick surreptitious peek. Tan wall-to-wall carpet,terra-cotta walls, two wing chairs in front of a fireplace, bookshelves, big bed. Keep moving, Wetzon.
    In the bathroom she took her hair down and rolled it up again tightly, reapplied her lipstick, smiled at herself to make sure there was no food in her teeth. Her eyelids were heavy and dark, darker than the shadow she normally used.
    It felt good to be wanted, to have someone like Alton Pinkus desire her, but she was starting to feel like a zombie.
    When she came back down the hall, he called to her, “In here,” and she followed his voice into the living room. He had a fire going in the fireplace, that seducer Mozart on the stereo; on the coffee table, coffee cups sat on a silver tray with a carafe of coffee next to a bottle of liqueur and two small glasses.
    The furniture was traditional, leaning toward the modern, the floor covered with a huge Oriental in lush rusts and earth colors. She sat on the sand-colored sofa and curled her feet up under her, watching Alton pour the coffee and twist the lemon peel into each cup.
    “Sambuca?”
    “Un poco .” She indicated with her thumb and forefinger, then took the glass after he filled it. She thought in Smith’s voice: You are going to hell, sweetie pie. The sambuca coated her tongue licorice.
    Handing her a cup of coffee, Alton sat down opposite her on a club chair.
    “What’s the arbitration process like?” she asked, sipping her coffee. “I mean, when it’s client v. broker and brokerage firm?”
    He leaned forward and set his cup down on the table. “The client files a complaint against his or her broker and the firm.”
    She was having trouble keeping her eyes open. They kept sliding shut and daring her to open them.
    “It works for quarrels between firms, between employees and firms and clients. You know, of course, clients sign a mandatory arbitration clause when they open an account with any firm.”
    She nodded, covering her mouth over a yawn.
    “In June of ’87, probably because of heavy lobbying by Shearson, the Supreme Court ruled that clients must arbitrate even claims of violations of securities law, rather than go to court. The arbitrators are chosen from a list of candidates recruited by the brokerage firms.”
    “Sounds a bit biased to me. How many arbitrators make up a panel?”
    “Three. One from the securities industry, two from the public.”
    “Where do you fit in?” Her hand trembled, and she set the coffee cup down.
    “I’m no longer on the board of Luwisher Brothers—not since Luwisher Brothers merged with L.L. Rosenkind—and I have no real connection with the industry.”
    “And you have a reputation for being fair-minded and … ” she searched for the right word. Her brain wasn’t working.