The Groaning Board

me.”
    “Oh, you don’t count, babycakes. I’m
thinking of introducing her to Mark.”
    “A.T.?”
    “No. Ellen.”
    Wetzon groaned. “Mark is gay, Smith.”
    “Oh, it’s just a little adolescent
fad he’s going through. He’ll get over it. Now about tomorrow night—”
    “Look, I’m sorry about the empty
seat.” Tomorrow was Smith’s sit-down dinner party, catered by The Groaning
Board, and Wetzon was coming alone.
    Smith removed a wooden folding
measure from her handbag. “There was no empty seat, sweetie pie. Let’s face it,
Dick Tracy never fit into our world. He has no respect for what we do. Besides,
I knew he wouldn’t come. The Tarot told me that you and he were finished.”
    “Oh, it did, did it? It would have
been nice if you’d told me. I might have been able to prevent it.” And then
again, maybe she would have let the fates take it...
    “Exactly.” Smith was so absolutely
delighted with herself that Wetzon threw up her hands.
    “I give up. You win. Just tell me one
thing. Did the fabulous Tarot seer mention that I’m getting phone calls from a
breather?”
    The folding measure in Smith’s hands
creaked from the pressure of her squeeze. “What kind of breather?”
    “A breather. Are there different
kinds?”
    “A threatening breather?” Creak.
    “Oh, please, don’t all breathers come
with an implied threat?”
    “At home or in the office?” Creak.
    “Both.”
    “Well, I’m not surprised.” Creak.
    “What do you mean you’re not
surprised?”
    “What you deal with every day. Pond
scum. And you’re always giving them your home number. It’s a wonder it hasn’t
happened before.”
    “You think they’re from a broker?”
    “What else?” Creak, creak.
    “After all these years? I don’t think
that’s likely.” But maybe Smith was right. A disgruntled broker. Someone Wetzon
or Darlene had turned away. Yet Wetzon turned no one away if she could help it.
“I take it you’re not getting any strange phone calls?”
    “I’m not. Did you tell Dick Tracy?”
    “No.” Why hadn’t she told Silvestri?
She’d meant to, but he’d been so wrapped up in his old girlfriend’s death that
there was no room for her.
    “What does he do besides breathe?” Creak.
    “God, Smith, will you stop that?”
    “Stop what?”
    “Creaking that measure. It’s making
me crazy.”
    “Oh, for pity sakes!” She set the
measure on her desk. “You haven’t answered my question.”
    “What was your question?”
    “Does he do anything besides
breathe?” She picked the measure up again.
    “Isn’t that enough? Forget it. I’ll
talk to Artie Metzger. I have to speak to him about something else anyway.”
    Darlene knocked on the door, then
opened it. “The furniture is here, Smith. And, Wetzon, Keith Pullman is on the
phone for you.”
    “Take the call, then come up,” Smith
commanded. She was already sprinting up the stairs.
    Damn her! She was forty-two, didn’t
diet, was tall, slim, and moved like a gazelle.
    Wetzon pressed the blinking button
and picked up the receiver. “Keith? How are you?”
    “Wetzon, I have heard from every
other headhunter I know, and even some I never heard of. Why haven’t you called
me?”
    “Now, Keith, we’ve been talking for
years. Tell me honestly, are you ever going to make a move? How many years have
you been there?”
    “It was E. F. Hutton when I sat down.
Then it was Shearson Lehman Hutton, then it was Shearson American Express, then
it was Shearson Lehman Brothers, and now it’s Smith Barney.”
    “And in all that time you haven’t
even changed your seat. So why now?”
    “The CRAP Plan.”
    “I don’t think that’s what Smith
Barney calls it.”
    Keith was talking about the Capital
Appreciation Plan— the CAP plan. It had come out of the merger of Shearson and
Smith Barney and had been instituted by Smith Barney in order to reward top
brokers and tie them to the firm by paying bonuses in stock instead of cash.
The stock is purchased at a twenty-five percent discount and restricted for a
three-year period, meaning it cannot be sold within that time. Disgruntled
Shearson brokers had immediately dubbed it the CRAP Plan, and so it remained.
    “It’s crap all the same, Wetzon. If I
leave before three years or if they throw me out for any reason at all, I get
nothing and any stock I’ve bought with my money they get to keep. A nice scam,
don’t you think?”
    “So who do you want to talk to?
Merrill Lynch?”
    “Are you