Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

about?”
    His mouth twitched again. “It’s the company she keeps.”
    “You’re being obtuse.”
    “Okay, I’ll tell you.” He was trying to keep his face straight. “Xenia’s been arrested.”

53
    “G OOD G OD ! Smith’s really been arrested?”
    Silvestri paid the toll at the Lincoln Tunnel. Traffic through the tunnel wasn’t moving. “Yup.” He didn’t even bother suppressing his laughter.
    “Stop that, Silvestri! What could she be arrested for? She’s greedy and selfish, but last I heard you can’t get arrested for narcissism.”
    “Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”
    “No. Don’t say that. She’ll be frantic. She is frantic.”
    “That she is.” He looked over at Wetzon, who was picking out numbers on her cell. “Who’re you calling?”
    “Twoey. He’ll get over there with a—Twoey! It’s Wetzon. Yes, yes, I’m okay, but Smith’s been arrested. I don’t know. She’s at—where is she, Silvestri?”
    “Federal Plaza.”
    “Hold on, Twoey. Silvestri? Federal Plaza? The FBI?”
    “Yup.”
    “Twoey, the FBI arrested her. She’s at Federal Plaza. We’re on our way there now, but we’re in New Jersey and there’s a back up at the Lincoln Tunnel.” She closed her cell. “That’s why the FBI was waiting outside Gallagher’s? For Smith, not me?”
    “It’s like what happens to dolphins.”
    “Do you have to be cryptic?”
    He smiled at her. A loving, suffusing smile. “You did great, Les,” he said.
    And she had. She had walked over her own grave and come through. Yes, she had ... hadn’t she?
    Refutation came with the wilderness that swallowed her. The man with the Gucci loafers, the bus to the Port Authority, the kidnapping. What she didn’t know, or couldn’t remember.
    They began to creep through the tunnel maybe five miles an hour, stopping and starting. Silvestri. Save me! Her arms wouldn’t move. The seat belt choked. Certainty came that if you knocked on the space beneath her breasts you would hear a hollow sound. ‘ Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveler, Knocking on the moonlit door . She loved that poem. “The Listeners.” The empty but not empty house.
    Only the listeners, only what’s left of Leslie Wetzon ...
    They cleared the tunnel and stopped for a red light. “Les?” Silvestri said, intruding.
    What was this? Resentment crept in. How could he know what she was feeling? How dare he know what she was feeling?
    “You’re on overload. I’m going to get you home.”
    “No!” The wilderness was hers. Hers to cherish. But now was not the time, she thought. She pushed it back. He was looking at her. Cars honked. “Green light, Silvestri,” she said.
    FBI headquarters at Federal Plaza, or the fortress, as Wetzon now called the building, was open for business, twenty-four seven. At least the FBI section was. Silvestri showed his badge to the security guards at the private elevator, bank A.
    “Agent Blue available?”
    “She expecting you?”
    “Why don’t you phone up?” Silvestri said. “Tell her Silvestri and Leslie Wetzon.”
    The lead guard stepped away, turned his back and made the call while the other guard kept his eye on them.
    “She’s probably gone home,” Wetzon said. “I wonder if Twoey got here.”
    The guard got off the phone. “We have to pat you down.”
    Silvestri opened his jacket. “I’m carrying.”
    “Duh,” Wetzon said. “Hey, you forgot the papers.”
    “Yeah, I did, didn’t I? I’ll put them in the mail.”
    They were given visitors passes and told, “Twenty-eighth floor.” The other guard pressed the button for the elevator.
    “You wanna let me in on your thoughts, Mr. Enigmatic?” Wetzon opened and closed her mouth to keep her ears from clogging. They clogged anyway.
    “Think about it, Les. If, and I’m saying if, we eliminate Xenia from the equation, what do we have?”
    “Befuddled old Uncle Weaver and an elderly priest. How harmless can you get?”
    “The simplicity of it.”
    “Silvestri, really, Uncle Weaver and the priest? Laura Lee’s Uncle Weaver?”
    “Two seemingly irreproachable old codgers.”
    “But Uncle Weaver is a victim. He’s a former judge who runs an insurance company in Mississippi. I think he was heavily invested in McLaughlin’s hedge fund. That’s why Laura Lee got involved. Her aunt was worried about his strange behavior. Laura Lee checked McLaughlin out and said there was something really shady about him and his business.”
    On twenty-eight, the