Wetzon turned her attention to Silvestri and felt a wave of warmth rise from her fingertips to her cheeks. She was so attracted to him that she was afraid it showed. She looked down at her hands. She wanted so much to make a good impression. He cleared his throat politely, and she looked up. Silvestri was waiting expectantly, as if he’d just asked her a question.
“I’m sorry.” She was flustered. “Did you say something?”
“Yes. I asked if you were ready to begin.”
Wetzon nodded, swallowing with difficulty.
“Try to relax,” he said sympathetically. “Just answer the questions as carefully as possible. I’m not going to give you the third degree. Would you like some coffee or a Coke?”
She shook her head, feeling very much alone. “Just water, please, and I’m ready.”
22
Silvestri took off his jacket with exaggerated care, one arm at a time, and put it on the back of his chair. He was wearing a blue-and-white-striped shirt and a tan lambswool sleeveless sweater, and Wetzon could see the bulge of the bandage beneath his shirtsleeve near his left shoulder. There was no gun in view. Why isn‘t his arm in a sling, she thought. He has to be having some pain. When he went out into the squad room to get her the water and himself some coffee, she noticed another bulge under his sweater near his waist in the middle of his back. His gun.
Nervous, Wetzon looked around. The room she was sitting in was smaller than the office she and Smith shared, but it gave the illusion of more space because it was glass from midway up. There were blinds all around on the half-windows, so privacy was obviously available if needed. A large map of the City was on the wall behind Silvestri’s desk and a calendar hung from a nail on the side wall. The calendar was still on February.
Everything needed a coat of paint. There was an ugly brown spot on the ceiling from what looked like a leak, where the plaster had puckered and dried, and there were scuff marks and chipped places on the walls. Someone had written a phone number on the wall with a magic marker.
Hanging from the low ledge around the office, where window met wall, were clipboards. Cases, probably. She saw that out in the squad room Silvestri had stopped to talk to another detective, who had his pants leg up, his foot on a chair. He was adjusting his sock—no, it wasn’t his sock, it was an ankle holster. She was so fascinated that she got up out of her chair and came close to the window to get a better look.
Metzger eased himself up as if to see what she was looking at so intently, and muttered, “Goddam cowboy.”
The other detective rolled down his pants leg, picked up a black leather jacket, and left the squad room.
Metzger’s phone rang once. “Yeah?” He listened, made a note in his book, opened his desk drawer, and closed it hard. “I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone and nodded at Wetzon. Then he went out to meet Silvestri, who was precariously carrying two cardboard cups by their lips in his right hand. Metzger relieved him of one of the cups. They put their heads together and looked around at her once. Metzger returned to the office with the cup he had taken from Silvestri and set it on Silvestri’s desk. Steam rose in a delicate cone from the cup. Metzger went back to the squad room and beckoned to one of the other detectives, who scooped up some material from his desk and left the squad room with him.
The clock on the opposite wall of the squad room said four-thirty. Silvestri stood in his doorway, glanced at it, and sighed. He handed Wetzon the cup of water and sat down at his desk.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the water. She was anxious to tell him about the key and get rid of it. She felt it was literally burning a hole in her pocket.
The stenotypist, who had been reading a battered copy of New York magazine, totally disinterested in the activity in the small office, put it down on the floor under his chair and readied himself.
Silvestri leaned back and studied her. She shifted uneasily in her chair. She hated being looked at like that, as if she were a specimen.
The stenotypist cleared his throat. Silvestri nodded. “Are you ready?” he asked her again.
“Before we start about last night, I want to show you ...” She took the key out of her pocket and held it out to him. Her hand shook. “I found this in the pocket of my suit jacket after I got home last night.”
He leaned forward with an almost unobtrusive wince and took the key, his hand brushing hers, completely unaware of her attraction to him. She wondered what kind of vibes she gave off that were so different from Smith’s. Or did she just give off no vibes at all?
“Well, well, well,” Silvestri was saying, concentrating on the small key. “You say this was in your pocket?”
Didn’t he believe her? “Yes, Barry must have put it there when he took my arm at the Four Seasons. I don’t know how else it could have gotten there.”
“Did you take your jacket off at any time before you got home?”
That was a thought. Of course she had. “Yes ... at Smith’s, which is ridiculous because why would Smith—” She stopped.
“Yes?” Silvestri was watching her thoughtfully. His eyes were flat, revealing nothing. His manner was totally professional.
Why would Smith want a copy of the key if it was her key? Of course she would want a copy of the key if it was hers. No, it didn’t make sense. “There’s no reason for Smith to have put a key in my pocket and not tell me,” Wetzon said firmly.
“Okay.” He spoke slowly, running his fingers around the edge of the key. “What about York Hospital?”
“Yes, my jacket was taken off when we got there, but what reason would anybody have to put a key in my pocket?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll check it out. Meantime, let’s assume that Barry Stark put it in your pocket.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
“You mean, why would he? I don’t know, maybe because he was afraid of someone.”
“Good. Did he react to anyone at the restaurant or at the bar when he came in?”
She strained to remember. He had looked over at the bar several times. “I don’t know. He looked over at the bar ... it was very crowded. But Barry was the kind of guy who was always looking around in a room, looking for the next possibility, the next sale. He had this nervous energy, like a motor that was always racing. A lot of brokers have it.”
“And after you were seated?”
“He kept talking to me, but looking around. I think he either saw someone or thought of something, because all at once he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. He turned a ghastly white and jumped up, saying he had to make a phone call.”
“Did you notice anyone looking at him?”
“No. It was very crowded. Unusually crowded.” And noisy. The bar had been jammed with people—
“Did you see Jacob Donahue there?”
“Jacob Donahue? Was he there? I didn’t know that.” She was puzzled. Surely Barry would have said something if he’d spotted his employer in the crowd? “I’ve never seen him in person, only in newspaper photographs, so I’m not sure I would have recognized him. Was he there?” she asked again.
Silvestri ignored her question. “What did Stark say to you? Start at the beginning, when he phoned you yesterday.”
She concentrated, wanting to be accurate. “He said he had a problem, that he wanted to see me. I thought it was a problem in his office. Barry always had problems. He made a lot of money, but he was always complaining about not making enough. And the new-issues market is dead.” And so was Barry.
“Explain, please.”
“New issues are companies that are brought public. They’re known as I.P.O.s—Initial Public Offerings. All of the major brokerage houses are involved in this, more or less. To put it simply, a private company pays a brokerage firm big money to bring them public, sell their stock to the public. The salesmen—the brokers—of the firm then sell these shares for the company that’s going public. The big houses like Shearson and Merrill usually syndicate the best of these, offering chunks of shares to oth
er, smaller brokerage firms. Firms like Donahue’s take on the smaller, more marginal companies that want to go public, those with more risk to the future shareholders, the ones the more established firms are wary of.” Wetzon leaned forward as she spoke, engrossed, relaxing visibly.
“Donahue’s normally does not syndicate shares in what they bring public. They keep everything in-house and that’s what their brokers sell almost exclusively. When these new issues come to market, the firm puts a price on the stock, and if the market is down, the price is low. Therefore, a company often waits to go public to get a better price on its stock. When the market is bear and sinking rather than rising, the new-issues market goes dead, and brokers at firms like Donahue’s, who have built their books with just new-issue clients, don’t make any money. This is all very simplistic, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically.
“But they can sell other stock besides these new issues, can’t they?” Silvestri asked, frowning. “They could be doing that at the same time, couldn’t they?”
“Yes, but most of them don’t. I know, it doesn’t make sense to specialize, but a lot of brokers do it. They shift into whatever product they perceive they can make big money in. Barry was like that. Many brokers look on this as a long-term career. They want to build a client base and do well for their clients and keep adding to that base over the years, through referrals, building up a decent, steady business. But others, like Barry, say they’re in it for the short haul. They want to make the big killing—make their million and get out before they’re thirty-five.”
Silvestri’s eyes widened. She continued, a little guilty about enjoying herself. “And some of them do. Others make their million and live up to it. Cars, houses, alcohol, drugs, gambling, women, divorces. A million dollars doesn’t go very far with the government and the mob as your partners. A lot of these brokers are burnout cases by the time they’re thirty-five. I’ve interviewed guys of twenty-four or twenty-five who sat with me, literally shaking—high on stuff—I don’t know what.” She was gesturing, showing him. “These kids are taking home three-quarters of a million dollars, more or less. What does a twenty-five-year-old kid do with all this money? ‘How much do you need?’ I always ask, because I’m curious. I never get a straight answer, but I know the answer is, ‘More, more, more, as much as I can get.’” She paused. “‘ If it kills me.’”
The stenotypist looked up.
Silvestri was staring at her. “Gosh,” she said, “I’m sorry. I get a little carried away, I guess. See what you started.” She smiled at him ruefully.
“I don’t know much about the stock market,” Silvestri said. “It always struck me as being a crapshoot.”
She smiled at him again. “This is a business where most people—even those at the top—are looking for the quick buck, the big killing. I’m repeating myself, but it’s about money. It’s about greed.”
“Didn’t the SEC institute all kinds of checks and balances after the Crash in ’87?”
“Sure, but you can’t legislate away greed. I’m sure you see it all the time.”
“You must be good at your business,” Silvestri said, showing dark-rimmed turquoise eyes.
She considered that. “I am. Funny about the language of making money. All death words. Dead market. Big killing. Barry Stark was always looking for the big killing.”
“Tell me about when you met him last night.”
“He was a little late, and he seemed nervous, almost frantic. He kept talking about repos.”
Silvestri looked at her quizzically.
“Repos are repurchase agreements,” she said patiently. “I didn’t know either. He explained it to me. It’s a financial transaction—in this case, with government securities. It’s pretty tricky, and it sounded as if he’d stumbled into a compliance problem.”
“Compliance?”
“Compliance to the SEC and federal law. Every brokerage firm has a compliance department to protect it from doing anything wrong. It’s like internal affairs in the police department.”
Silvestri nodded.
“It sounded as if Barry had come on something that for once he couldn’t handle.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I’m tired,” she said wearily, “so I’m telling you that this is a whore’s business. People will do anything for money, including breaking the law, if they think they can get away with it, or leaking or selling information, selling speculative stocks to their own grandmothers. Anything. And Barry was not one who would let a little illegal action bother him.”
“So?”
“So this problem that he had stumbled onto had to be life-threatening. He was scared.”
“Okay, what happened when he left?”
“He jumped up, said he had to make a phone call, that he’d forgotten something and would be right back. And he left, practically on the run. That was it.” She was getting tired of repeating it.
“And what did you do?”
“I waited. Oh, yes, and when I stretched my legs under the table I bumped his attaché case. Otherwise I would have forgotten about it. I waited about twenty minutes or so. I was getting edgy. I couldn’t imagine what was taking him so long, and I wanted to go home. So I paid the bill and took the case with me downstairs to the phone booths. I was going to tell him I couldn’t wait, that I had another appointment.”
“Did you see anyone follow him down the stairs?”
“No one specific. People were going up and down constantly.”
“Did you see anyone around the phone area when you got there?”
“No.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I went straight to where Barry seemed to be talking on the phone. He was all hunched up over the receiver.”
“You couldn’t tell something was wrong with him?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you think he was in a strange position?” Silvestri’s voice was skeptical. Maybe she had been too wrapped up in herself. She should have noticed, now that she thought about it, how odd Barry had looked, all scrunched up like that. She shrugged.
“I can’t explain why I didn’t get suspicious except to say that I’ve never seen someone dead before, let alone violently dead.”
“Okay, then what?”
“The rest you know.”
“Tell me.”
She shuddered, reliving it. “I knocked on the glass to get his attention, but he didn’t move. I was getting really annoyed. I pushed the door open slightly, and he ... his body ... slipped toward me, out, almost falling on me ... I had to get out of the way. It was horrible.” She choked. She pushed back her chair as if to get away from the thing that Barry had become.
“Take a deep breath,” Silvestri said loudly. “Keep breathing deeply. Come on now. Slowly.”
She broke out in a cold sweat, but kept breathing deeply. She was afraid not to. Tears came awkwardly. “Oh, God,” she gasped, “I’m sorry. This is so tacky.”
Silvestri stood up and sat on the front corner of his desk, near her, his right hand resting lightly on her shoulder. “Keep breathing,” he said.
There was an agitated knocking on the glass, and Wetzon and Silvestri looked up to see Smith, furious, eyes flashing. “What are you doing to her?” she mouthed to Silvestri, pointing to Wetzon.
“It’s okay,” Silvestri said. His hand left Wetzon’s shoulder. “No more questions for now.” He shrugged lopsidedly at Smith, an I-didn’t-do-anything expression on his face. Nodding to the stenotypist, he opened the door.
“What are you doing to her, Silvestri?” Smith demanded. “Don’t you see she’s ready to collapse?”
“I know, I’m sorry. We had to finish it.”
“It’s okay, Smith. I’m okay.” Wetzon’s voice trailed off, high and distant.
“I’ll have one of the men take you home,” Silvestri said, turning to look at her.
“I’m going with her,” Smith said. “You can pick me up there.”
It was only when
they got to Wetzon’s building that Wetzon remembered she hadn’t asked Silvestri if they’d found out anything about the missing attaché case.
23
“I’m all right, I really am,” Wetzon insisted. “Please stop fussing over me.” They were on the sidewalk in front of her building. Larry, the doorman, his coat off, was leaning against the building, smoking, talking to one of the locals, ignoring them. “It was just talking again about finding Barry that did it.”
“You looked as if you were about to pass out,” Smith said. “You didn’t tell him about the other key, did you?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t do that without telling you first.”
One of those new Honda scooters pulled up to the curb near them, and a man in a huge gray crash helmet and goggles, wearing a white lab coat, tie slightly askew, got off and looked curiously at Smith and Wetzon.
He removed the crash helmet, revealing curly gray hair, and, taking off the goggles, crossed the sidewalk to talk to Larry. Larry, bored, pointed vaguely at Smith and Wetzon and went back to his conversation.
The man in the white coat turned and came back to them. “Miss Wetzon?” he asked, looking from Smith to Wetzon.
“I’m Leslie Wetzon,” Wetzon said, dodging Smith’s elbow. “You were looking for me?”
“Yes, I’m Dr. Pulasky, Rick Pulasky, from York Hospital.” He smiled at her. He had a nice smile and warm, dark brown eyes. His hair was tousled. Too old to be an intern or even a resident. “I handle outpatient supervision for Emergency Services at York.”
“Oh, how nice,” Wetzon said, impressed. “I didn’t know hospitals had such a service.”
He flashed her another smile. “It’s experimental, and we’re the only ones in the City who are trying it right now. I’m here to monitor how you’re doing.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said lightly. “No problems.” Liar, she thought, “As you can see.” She spread out her arms and stifled a gasp.
“Dr. Pulasky,” Smith said in her soft, breathy voice, emphasizing “doctor.” She smiled seductively and offered him her hand.
The Big Killing Page 13