Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

him, but he’d turned out to be a cold calling wonder, setting up a virtual assembly line of qualified people for Wetzon to talk to and recruit. And the additional bonus: Max never got pulled into Smith’s magnetic field of lunacy.
    Behind the reception area, where Smith and Wetzon had shared an open office that looked out onto a pretty garden, was the free standing staircase to the second floor, and a small, semi-enclosed space for two associates. Under the staircase, a high tech fridge in the drawer of a low cabinet, a sink, and on the granite top of the cabinet, a new electric two sided, coffee/tea maker.
    Wetzon found a bag of Oren’s decaf in the fridge and made coffee. As she listened to the chug and burble, she wandered over to the desks in the semi-enclosed space. The black Formica top of Sean Duggen’s desk was obscured by wandering stacks of suspect sheets, scraps of paper with chicken scratch notes, and a black looseleaf notebook of client firms, executive names and titles, and managers’ names. Each person in the office had one and was responsible for keeping it up to date.
    She was dismayed by the mess. How could anybody ever find anything here? Mentally, she rolled up her sleeves. She was going to have to do some management control.
    Still, she was glad Sean hadn’t quit. It meant that he was doing a good job, or that Smith had been afraid to fire her only recruiter. Firing Sean would have meant Smith would have to talk to brokers, and she loathed stockbrokers. On a good day she referred to them as pond scum.
    They’d hired Sean after 9/11; Wetzon had trained him herself. The small firm where he’d just started working as an assistant trader had closed down in the wake of the disaster. He’d spent six years as an Army Ranger, and the trading firm had brought him on as an apprentice. But these days, all the firms were cutting back and he’d had trouble finding another job.
    Sean was perfect material for a Wall Street headhunter, and both Smith and Wetzon had felt he could be groomed. He was aggressive in a laid back way, not too tall, therefore, not threatening to the powers on the Street, who were, for the most, short. Nor was he slick or glib. He had a steady, sincere quality about him, and then there was his impressive army experience, which was a turn on for both male and female brokers.
    “He’ll be fine,” Smith had said. “You train him, I’ll control him.”
    No one had occupied the second desk when Wetzon left. Now she found two neat trays, one more dense than the other. The leaner one was marked “Hot.” No doubt about it, Max had trained this one. He always had a continuous run of “Hot” possibilities for Wetzon. She didn’t recognize the initials C.O. on the suspect sheets.
    God, it was good to be back.
    She folded her coat over her arm and climbed the stairs to the former parlor floor, amazed to hear a minuscule creak on the third rung. After all they’d paid for the renovation, a creak was outrageous.
    The parlor floor was now open space that Wetzon and Smith shared. And here a rude shock was waiting. Her desk was obscured by shopping bags of every size and color, Chanel, DKNY, Saks, Bloomingdale’s, you name it. Her desk had become Smith’s closet outpost, for God’s sake.
    And all over the bleached birchwood floor were those little indentations from Smith’s spike heels.
    With an angry sweep of her hand, the shopping bags crashed to the floor around Smith’s desk with its pristine top. I’ll kill her, Wetzon thought. And where were all of Wetzon’s treasures that always sat on her desk? Where else but in her wire wastebasket under her desk. Typical, she thought. One by one, date book, pressed glass spooner for pens and pencils, marble peach paperweight, coffee mug: THE BEST MAN ON THE CASE IS A WOMAN.
    She hung up her coat, and checked the appointments and hires on the calendar, which they kept on a portable cork board, portable so they could hide it from visitors. Three hires in January, four in February. Four brokers she’d worked with, three were Sean’s. One hire so far in March. Well, she’d juice that up a little.
    Inspired, she took her mug and went downstairs for coffee. No creak this time. On her way back, she emptied Max’s HOT tray. Before sitting at her desk, she began reading through the suspect sheets, slipping right back into the Smith and Wetzon groove.
    What Smith and Wetzon did was mysterious, in the best sense of the word, and therefore,