“Oh, my, yes,” Bobbie said. “She certainly is.”
Wetzon was revolted by both of them. “I’d like to help you, Mildred, but I don’t know what I can—”
“You can tell me what he told you. I know you were close. He always spoke so highly of you.”
“But he didn’t tell me anything, just that he was in big trouble, serious trouble. And we were not close,” Wetzon corrected, annoyed.
“You’re holding something back. That can’t be all. Try to remember,” Mildred cried, leaning toward Wetzon, flourishing her cigarette. Its smoke stung Wetzon’s throat. “Or maybe you’re playing games with me.” There was menace in her voice. The tendons in her neck twisted. “I don’t like games.”
Bobbie half-rose, moaned, and sank back in the chair. Gleason moved quickly to her and grasped her hand. “Mildred had high hopes for Barry, I’m afraid,” Bobbie said softly. “She’s such a kind person. He was having trouble with Jake, wasn’t he, Mildred? We all know Jake’s a liar and a thief. Barry came to see Mildred, as a friend. Jake hadn’t kept his agreement with Barry. No surprise there. I think that’s what it was, right, Mildred?” Bobbie’s hand still clasped between hers, Mildred grew visibly calmer. Bobbie went on. “We think Barry found out something about Jake and that’s why Jake killed him. He’s a violent man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.” She spoke with a fevered vehemence. Her features were blurred in the dusky light.
“Yes,” Mildred said, pulling away, pacing the room restlessly. “Jake could have done it. He’s capable of anything. Trust me. That’s why I have to know where Barry—” She stopped short and sat near Wetzon on the sofa.
Roberta gave a whimpering sigh.
“Really, Mildred, I don’t know. He started talking about repos....” Wetzon fidgeted, trying to move away from her. This close, Mildred Gleason seemed incredibly malevolent, like a child’s image of a witch, come to life. And Roberta’s persistent moaning was eerie. If she was in this kind of pain, why was she sitting there with them?
“Go on ... that’s not it, but go on,” Mildred urged her potent cigarette breath enveloping Wetzon. Wetzon drew back.
“That’s all. He asked if I knew what they were and I said no and he started to explain.”
Mildred’s face spasmed. “No, there has to be more. He must have said something else. Did he mention what he was doing for me?”
“No. He never mentioned you at all. He was very upset. More than that, he was frightened. He said he had to make a phone call, and he left.”
“He didn’t mention the tapes?”
“The tapes? What tapes?” Wetzon remembered the cassette from the attaché case that she and Smith had listened to. So it had been made for Mildred Gleason. And there were more of them somewhere. “No.” Wetzon shook her head. She wished Gleason would put out that horrible cigarette. “No, he never mentioned tapes, or you.”
Roberta rose, a tall and slim-hipped shadow, and leaned on the back of the chair, as if she was about to leave the room.
“Did he have anything with him?” Mildred’s attention floated disconcertedly between Wetzon and Roberta.
“Just his attaché case.”
“Where is it? That’s it,” Mildred said, excited, clawing her arm. “What did you do with it?”
“Please, you’re hurting me,” Wetzon said, pulling her arm away She thought fast. She didn’t want to get into an explanation of the accident in the park and the robbery. “Why would I have it? The police have it.”
“God damn it!” Mildred’s gravelly voice cracked. “It was my big chance. I’ll never get another one like that.” Her nervous fingers tore at the gold buckle on her belt.
“This is a colossal waste of time,” Roberta announced in a loud voice.
“What did Barry say to you over the phone?” Wetzon asked, watching Roberta uneasily.
“I don’t want to have to hear this again,” Roberta said. She opened a side door and went through, closing the door behind her.
“I’m sorry,” Mildred said. “She doesn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that dreadful migraine, and she’s so upset about everything that’s happened.” She took a long pull on her cigarette, choked, venting acrid smoke.
“I understand,” Wetzon said, trying to be sympathetic, but failing. Nausea swept over her. She shook her head. “You were telling me about what Barry said.” Her voice was strained.
“He didn’t finish ... he said ... ‘The bitch, we’re fucked ...’ then he laughed this weird laugh ... ‘but I’ve got the tapes.’ I said, ‘What tapes, Barry?’ He never told me how he was going to do it, you see. Then he said, ‘What are you ... are you crazy?’ Then he made some noises, awful noises, then nothing.”
A toilet flushed. Wetzon started.
“I couldn’t disconnect,” Mildred continued, not reacting to the sound. “I kept trying to hang up. I didn’t know what to do. I knew something terrible had happened. I knew the police would get to me eventually ... I needed time ... to think ... I couldn’t call them, you see....”
“You should have done it right away.”
Mildred’s thin-lipped mouth twisted over smooth, white, capped teeth. “Oh, what difference does it make now? I’ve got to get those tapes before ... they were my last chance....” Her voice drifted off. Her face sagged with hopelessness and defeat. Her skin tone had faded to a yellow-tinged gray.
Wetzon stood up. “Maybe the police have them,” she said. She had been there long enough.
“No, Barry was too smart for that ... he would have hidden them somewhere. Oh, God, I was so close— One more week, he said, and we’d have Jake just where we wanted him. He’d been working on it all winter. He didn’t tell me what or how. He was so smart. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t even know about the tapes until the phone call.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you see? The tapes. They would have finished off that double-dealing son of a bitch Jake Donahue, don’t you see? It would have been all over. Over.” She put her face in her hands.
Loud voices could be heard outside. A woman shouted angrily, and a door slammed. The noise came down the hall, closer.
Despite her repulsion, Wetzon felt a twinge of pity for Mildred Gleason. She put her hand on Mildred’s bent and bony shoulder. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Mildred.” She moved toward the door. Sure, Barry had been so smart he had gotten himself murdered.
The door burst open without preamble, and a powerfully built man stood there in a purple rage. His face was distorted with fury and a thick vein throbbed in his forehead. “You fucking cunt!” he screamed, shaking his fist at Mildred, who sprang to her feet, equally enraged. Jake Donahue.
Wetzon backed out of the way. Lately she always seemed to be in the line of fire.
Brokers and staff spilled from the bright hallway into the murky room, the men grabbing Jake and pulling him back, away from Mildred.
Wetzon drifted toward the door. She certainly didn’t want to run into Silvestri here.
“I’ll kill you, you hear, you fucking bitch! You stay out of my business or I’ll kill you!”
“Bastard, bastard!” Mildred shrieked. “Get out of here!” She clutched at him, hands like claws, raking his face, before she was pulled back.
There were so many people crowded into the office now that no one saw Wetzon duck out. Jake wasn’t going to kill Mildred, and everyone would calm him down and send him home. He had brooked Mildred’s sanctum sanctorum, and that was enough to drive her over the edge. Wetzon could hear Mildred screaming incoherently as she slipped unnoticed out of the office.
The saddest thing in all of this was that no one was mourning Barry Stark, not even she, Wetzon thought, as she pulled her Burberry from the closet in the reception room. The black leather trench coat that had been next to it was gone.
33
Laura Lee Day’s office in Oppenheimer Tower of the World Financial Center was the dream of almost every broker Wetzon had
met. It was deeply spacious, with velvety taupe carpeting, and an extraordinary view of lower Manhattan, including the Statue of Liberty.
“You sit right down here, darlin’, and rest yourself,” Laura Lee said. “I just have one more phone call.” Laura Lee was wearing a deep purple wool crepe suit with enormous shoulder pads, a white silk blouse which fell in folds from her throat, and huge mabé pearl earrings. Her slim legs were in sheer black hose, and she tottered slightly on extra-high heels. She was a little woman who thought big.
Wetzon curled up in a peach and milk-chocolate striped club chair in front of Laura Lee’s expanse of black lacquer desk, on which papers, reports, and files in multicolored folders were neatly stacked next to a Quotron and a small calculator.
Laura Lee pulled a lavender folder out of the rainbow stack, then pressed a button on her phone without picking it up.
“Yes, Laura Lee,” Laura Lee’s sales assistant said.
“Get Harry Cleveland for me, please, Joanne. Then no more calls. Wetzon and I have an important business appointment outside at three-thirty.” She flashed Wetzon a dazzling smile.
Wetzon wondered vaguely why Laura Lee was so specific about the time.
Her phone buzzed.
“I’ve got this little old seven-figure trust fund to deal with,” Laura Lee intoned, taking some papers out of the lavender folder and settling into her desk chair. “And then we’ll get some silk next to our skin. Wetzon, you have no idea what a difference it—” She smiled a cool, professional smile. “Yes, Harry, I’m just fine. I hope y’all are well? Good.” She became brisk, losing most of her southern accent. “The check arrived this morning. I have studied the portfolio, and I am in the process of writing out an analysis, but why don’t I share a few ideas with you now? As we discussed, I think we should sell the oils. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of movement there for the present. No. The area can be volatile, too much so for this portfolio. There should be more play in the food group or the consumer group. Maybe P. and G. Yes. I’d get out of the banks. If we see interest rates blip up in the next few months, that group will suffer, as will your utilities. I will go through your utility holdings and make some decisions about which ones to keep. No. Wrong timing. We want to stay away from anything that is interest-rate sensitive. I have to think that through carefully. I like the drugs at this juncture so we’ll keep them for the time being. Yes, I agree. They are undervalued.”
Laura Lee looked up and smiled at Wetzon. “Harry, I’d like to reallocate some of the assets because I think you are overweighted in certain categories,” she continued, “and I think the portfolio could use a conservative real estate investment. The rest I think we should keep liquid, either in money market or T-bills. But all of this will be much more complete when you receive my analysis.” She listened intently, then punched some buttons on her Quotron. “Mmm. Yes. I just checked. Forty-eight and an eighth. Near its low. Good time to buy, I think.” There was a pause as she listened again. “No, I don’t like it. It’s too much of a high flyer for this type of account ... Why thank you, Harry. I’ll call you after I hear from him. Not at all. The pleasure is mine.” She hung up, eyes bright. “What a doll. He’s referring Jerry Goldwater to me. Jerry Goldwater, the real estate mogul, who just bought himself a movie company!”
“Laura Lee,” Wetzon said, impressed. “I am simply overwhelmed. You are fantastic.”
“There. Now that that’s settled, Wetzon darlin’, suppose you tell Laura Lee what this is all about.” Laura Lee plunked herself down in a loveseat covered in the same peach and milk-chocolate fabric as the chair in which Wetzon was sitting. On the small chrome coffee table between them was a huge glass bowl filled with anemones in various shades of purple. “You’re looking downright frayed and not your usual bright and cheery self.”
“I don’t feel like my bright and cheery self,” Wetzon said dryly.
“It can only be that dear old Barry is reaching back from the grave.”
“Laura Lee, don’t joke.”
“I’m not.” Her round face was solemn. “Don’t forget, I knew both of them—Barry better than Georgie, of course. We were all in the same training class, but I was sent to a different branch office.”
“I’d forgotten—or maybe I never knew.” Wetzon was weary. She had not had a chance to mentally process her meeting with Mildred and Roberta. “I feel as if I’m getting pulled into something I don’t understand and I can’t seem to stop it.” She sighed. “I feel as if I’ve lost control of my life, that I’ve failed in some strange way.”
“Listen to me, Wetzon. You are a genuinely nice person, and there aren’t many people I can say that about, let alone headhunters.”
There was a soft knock on the door and the door opened a crack. “I’m going for coffee, Laura Lee,” Joanne said. “Do you or Ms. Wetzon want anything?”
“Not for me. How about you, Wetzon?”
“No, thanks anyway, Joanne.”
“Now, where were we?” Laura Lee asked.
“You were telling me how nice I am,” Wetzon said. Laura Lee was funny in her serious mode.
“Don’t make fun of yourself, Wetzon,” Laura Lee scolded. “I wouldn’t be here and have all this”—she waved her arm around her office—”if it weren’t for you. I was ready to leave the business when I met you. Remember?”
Wetzon nodded. She remembered. Two years ago, Laura Lee had been discouraged and depressed. The stock market plunge on Black Monday had devastated her, as it had every broker, particularly those who had never seen the market do anything but go up. Laura Lee felt her business wasn’t developing in the right direction, and she was being harassed by someone she worked with. Wetzon had asked her, “Did you like it when you started out in the business? Do you like the act of selling? And do you like making money?”
Laura Lee had answered yes to all three questions, and Wetzon had suggested she look at Oppenheimer, Bear, Stearns, and Alex Brown, three classy boutiques, where all the paperwork, posting, recordkeeping were done by qualified assistants, where all a broker had to do was sell, where the products were super-sophisticated, designed for the high net worth individual.
“You changed my life, Wetzon,” Laura Lee said. “I don’t know where I’d be now if it weren’t for you. You told me I was terrific. You gave me confidence. You believed in me. I love what I do, and I’m really good at it. I am a professional. I help people. And you do, too. Which brings me to—” She pressed the button on her phone. “That’s it, Joanne. I’ll be back in an hour.” She stood up and pulled Wetzon up. “Let’s go, darlin’. I want to talk to you about a friend of mine. She’s meeting us at Century Twenty-one at three-thirty.”
34
“What did you think of Barry?” Wetzon asked curiously as they walked up crowded sidewalks, past clogged traffic, on Broadway to Cortlandt Street. Cortlandt ran into historic Trinity Place, behind Old Trinity Church. Cortlandt to Trinity, Dutch to English.
“Barry? A handsome devil,” Laura Lee said, knotting the belt of her shiny red raincoat. “Dimples, cleft chin. Great body. All in all, a hunk.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t ‘oh’ me, Wetzon. I’ve got the same kind of hormones every girl has. He came on with me, but he wasn’t my type.”
“What’s your type, pray tell?”
“Barry Stark was a boy, Wetzon. And dumb. I like men. Successful men. Smart men. What do you like?”
What did she like? “You’re right about Barry,” she said. “He was a boy—”
“Come on, Wetzon, don’t try to wriggle out. What do you like?”
“Brains, I guess. Humor.” Silvestri.
“Well, the late Barry Stark didn’t fit any of our categories, but he had no trouble attracting other women. They loved him.”
Wetzon nodded. “I’m not surprised.”
“Actually, to be frank, Wetzon, he was a loudmouthed animal with no class, and he did a big business selling drugs—both he and Georgie did—until Georgie got into
the disco business.”
“I’d heard that rumor about Barry.”
“It’s the godshonest truth. Take it from me, darlin’. I was there. Everybody knew. Eventually, he would have gotten caught. It was only a matter of time ... with the insider trading scandals, and all ... everyone is looking for dirt.”
“Maybe that’s why he was killed.”
“Maybe. Who knows?” Laura Lee frowned at a pushcart chef who was creating billows of acrid smoke as he grilled shish kebab over hot coals. “He wasn’t all bad, though. He was real nice to me, even after he knew I wasn’t buying—him or the drugs. He used to help some of us in the class with our cold calling pitches. He was really good at it. So was Georgie, but Georgie wouldn’t help his own grandmother if she was in a wheelchair barreling down a hill.” She made a face. “Georgie was a pig.” She took Wetzon’s arm. “You know, once, after he went to Donahue’s, Barry even referred a big account to me. Someone who wanted to buy half a mil in bonds. It knocked me out. I called to thank him, and he said I should take good care of the guy. I think he was embarrassed. Can you imagine Barry Stark embarrassed?”
“No,” Wetzon agreed.
“I still have that account,” Laura Lee mused.
“What a strange thing for him to do.”
“Not so strange. He knew I wouldn’t burn the guy out.”
Laura Lee opened the door to Century 21, and they entered what at first looked like a job-lot store. Shoppers, mostly women, were milling among piles of merchandise. A stubby, middle-aged woman and her look-alike teenage daughter were systematically going through the boxes of shoes that were stacked in tottering, uneven rows against a wall. Tables overflowed with merchandise, and women jostled one another for positions.
The Big Killing Page 20