Murder: The Musical

by Meyers, Annette

  “Help—” was all she could choke out as the pain swept over her. The receiver slipped from her hands and bounced once on the floor before coming to a rest. Great chunks of time fell away. A noise at her service door yanked her back, almost fainting with terror. She crawled, panting, into the living room before it came to her that the sound was merely night collection of garbage.

  Freezing cold, she found refuge under her dining room table, head on knees, hugging her knees tightly, trying to confine the shaking. Her teeth chattered to their own rhythm. Slowly, she felt herself begin to disappear....

  “Les?” She heard his voice. The lights came on. “Where are you? Les?” She tried to call him, but nothing came out. He went into the kitchen; she heard him hang up the phone she’d left off the hook. “Les?”

  Fear. She heard it in his voice. His footsteps raced down the hall, into her bedroom, back out in the hall. She wanted to shout, “Here I am!”

  “Les.” His voice softened. “Les. What are you doing there?” He was on his knees, pulling her from her hiding place.

  She thought: I must look like hell

  “Come on, come here, it’s okay. Everything’ll be okay.” Gently, he pulled her hands from her knees, and checked her out. “Are you hurt? Where? Show me.” If she weren’t dying, she might be turned on, she thought.

  Then he was lifting her, carrying her, and she felt the shoulder harness against her breast through his sportjacket. He put her in bed and covered her with the quilt and the red, white, and blue afghan that she and Carlos had crocheted when they were in Bob Fosse’s Chicago during the Bicentennial. But she couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Cold,” she moaned. “Hurts. S’matter with me?”

  He stroked her hair and bent over her. His eyes were deep turquoise, and she tried to thank him for coming but couldn’t get the words formed.

  “Les, listen to me. Can you hear me?”

  “Y-y-yes. So ... cold.” She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the trembling. He was moving around the bedroom. Then he was in bed beside her, holding her against him.

  “Les.” His warm breath made her skin tingle. He radiated heat. “Breathe very slowly.” He held her tight. “I’m here. Don’t be afraid.”

  She shuddered, then rested her forehead against his chest. The trembling slowed. The wild heartbeats began to subside. His heat brought warmth back to her. The tightness in her chest eased. “Oh, Silvestri,” she murmured. She put her arms around him and held on for dear life.

  8.

  Shortly before six-thirty, when her alarm would go off, Wetzon awoke with a sensation of euphoria that seemed so alien that she was filled with the wonder of it. It was similar to the aftermath of a migraine, when the pain is gone and the muscles are relaxed and the sense of peace and joy are heightened. Was it possible that only a few short hours ago she was sure she was dying?

  Lying in Silvestri’s arms, her head on his chest rising and falling to his even breathing, she thought: This is where I belong. They had made love twice during the night with an intensity that had amazed and perhaps even frightened her.

  She tilted her head and kissed his chin with its familiar dark stubble. He stirred and opened his eyes. A brief flicker of puzzlement about where he was, and then his arms tightened around her.

  “What are you feeling?” His voice was gruff and scratchy.

  “Peace,” she said. She eased herself on top of him. “And love.”

  His hands found the small of her back and ambled up her spine. “Les—”

  His beeper went off, and before they could react, her alarm. “Damn,” she said.

  They looked at each other. It was funny. Wetzon rolled over on her back, stretched out her hand, and turned off the alarm. Silvestri reached for the telephone and called in.

  The T-shirt she’d been wearing was on the floor near the bed. She pulled it over her head, aware of Silvestri’s eyes following her, and suddenly she felt shy. Her feet in her moccasins, she danced into the kitchen and got the coffee going, opened her front door and brought in the Times and The Wall Street Journal from her doormat. She wondered what the Times would have on Dilla’s murder.

  Silvestri was still talking on the phone in a hushed voice when she stuck her head into the bedroom, so she brushed her teeth and got into a steaming shower. She did some bends and stretches. Well, all right! So what had happened to her last night? But that’s as far as she got because Silvestri joined her, and it wasn’t until they were having coffee that he brought it up.

  He put down his mug. “Les, have you talked to anybody about last year?” His eyes demanded she look at him.

  “What about last year?” She folded her napkin, folded it again.

  “Don’t hide,” he said gently. “About getting shot. I’m talking about a shrink.”

  “Oh, Silvestri—” She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. She wanted to stop herself, but she couldn’t. It was as if he pressed the buttons and off she went.

  “Don’t ‘Oh, Silvestri’ me.” He grabbed her floating hand. “What you had last night was a full-blown, classic anxiety attack.”

  She stared at him, shocked. An anxiety attack? She felt foolish. “How do you know?” It came out unintentionally belligerent. Or maybe it was intentional. She pulled her hand away from his.

  “I’ve had a couple myself in my time. The shrinks call it post-traumatic stress syndrome. They’re particularly likely to follow a life-threatening situation.”

  “But that was last year, Silvestri.” She unwound the turban of towel from her head, dropped it on her shoulders, and ran her fingers through her damp hair. Her fingers sought the tiny ridge in her scalp; she shuddered.

  He took her hand away from her head, where it seemed to have frozen. “It doesn’t matter when. You haven’t dealt with it. You have—”

  “I think I’ve dealt okay with it.”

  “Don’t get on your high horse, Les. Okay?” He sounded exasperated. “I know you. I can bet you parked it away in your mind somewhere and left it there. And now you’re up to your ass in this new thing.”

  She tugged at her hand. She was furious. “You know me? You don’t know me at all, Silvestri. I haven’t seen you in eight months, and you still think you can tell me what to do.”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine? Is it really?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, God, nine months ...

  “And I’ll bet you have that dream at least once a week.”

  “What dream?”

  “The dream about getting shot.”

  “How do you—”

  “I told you, Les. I’ve seen big brave cops and soldiers have panic attacks.”

  “It felt real to me. It’s not psychosomatic.”

  “It was real.”

  “Silvestri.” Her voice was so tiny, she could barely hear herself. “I dream I see the flash of the flame from the gun. I can smell the cordite, feel the sting. But I’ve never had an anxiety attack before.”

  “Then you’re lucky, Les. What happened yesterday did it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Dilla Crosby murder.”

  “Dilla.”

  “Your subconscious is trying to tell you something, Les. You’re in overdrive. Listen to it. You’re not going to be okay till you learn how to ask for help.”

  She sighed. “You’ve changed, Silvestri.”

  He looked confused, frowned. “This is not about me, Les. Stick to the subject.”

  She ignored him. Refolded the napkin the other way. “Are you doing one of your psych profiles on me?”

  “Maybe I should. I might figure out why I—” He stopped short, rose and left the room.

  She was stricken. She pushed away the coffee mugs, put her head on her arms on the table. When he returned, he was dressed, except for his jacket. He was adjusting the shoulder harness.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured without lifting her head. “Thank you for last night.”

 
He put his palm on her head. “Oh, Les, you’re such hard work.”

  She bristled—she couldn’t help herself—and stood up to him, all sixty-two inches of her. “Thanks a heap, Silvestri.”

  “Tell me you’re not.”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you still seeing Pinkus?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s too old for you.” Then he added, “And you probably have him wound around your little finger. He never says no to you, does he? Poor slob.”

  “Get out of here, Silvestri. Stop telling me what to do.” She was burning; her hands were fists.

  But Silvestri only seemed amused, which made her even more furious. And Alton never did say no to her. That was true.

  “Must be a little boring.” He put on his jacket.

  “Huh?”

  “Like having a Big Daddy—”

  She flew at him, pelting him with punches, and he laughed, catching her hands, and kissed her, and they were back to square one again.

  “Get out of my life, Silvestri,” she whispered into his shirt.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “Besides, I’ll be working with Bernstein on the Crosby case.”

  9.

  “Chump change, Wetzon. That’s what he offered me. He wants me to fucking relocate to New York and take a pay cut.”

  “Let me get this straight, David. He offered you ten K a month for six months versus a sixty percent payout? That’s not chicken feed.”

  “Wetzon, he offered me a draw, a goddamn draw, of ten K a month with a payback if I don’t make it. I want fifteen or I’m not coming. You tell him if he fucking thinks he’s such hot stuff and can make me a million-dollar producer, he can fucking take a risk, too. He wants me to take all the risk. Do you know what it costs to live in New York?”

  Do I ever; she thought. “I’ll see what I can work out, David.”

  “Wetzon, listen to me. All he has to do is make it fifteen a month for six months versus sixty percent and I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  She hung up. This wasn’t going to work. There were very few surprises for her left in the business after almost seven years. She’d developed a sixth sense for which situations were going to work and which would not. In this case, two gigantic egos were dueling and both would lose.

  The phones bleated, blinking lights. It was busy. It had been for the past year since the brokerage industry had burst out of the recession while the recession continued to hold the rest of the country in a death grip.

  “I’m not going to kill myself over this,” she told Smith, who had just arrived, bringing a cold breeze in with her.

  Their office was in the ground floor of a townhouse on East Forty-ninth Street between First and Second avenues. It had been an apartment once, and where the kitchen had been was now their reception area. B.B., whose birth certificate read Bailey Hinson Balaban, had a tiny cubbyhole of an office in a corner of the room. The big room Smith and Wetzon shared, and their rear windows looked out on their own private garden. After renting for years, they had bought the building for a bargain price in 1992, when real estate had bottomed in New York. Now they were landlords.

  Smith was all gussied up this morning in a copper knit suit. Her slim skirt came only to mid-thigh and her hose and shoes were a perfect match with her outfit. Now how had she managed that, Wetzon wondered.

  “What did you say, sweetie pie?” Smith sat down at her desk and crossed one fabulous leg over the other, posing.

  “I said, how nice you look, Smith.” Wetzon grinned at her partner. They were both such phonies.

  “Well, we do have a lunch appointment, don’t we?” Smith lowered her lids to slits and peered at Wetzon. “What’s the matter with you? You have no color in your face. And I don’t like the foundation you’re using. It makes your skin sallow.”

  “Gosh, I love spending time with you, Smith. You always make me feel so good.”

  “I see. You miss Alton.”

  “Let’s not discuss Alton.” No, I don’t miss Alton. I like being with him, but I don’t miss him when he’s not here. He’d been gone three days and she’d been glad to be alone in her apartment—at least until last night. “And for your information, I don’t miss him.”

  “There is a God.” Smith gave Wetzon a smug nod of approval. “Just remember what I told you, sweetie. A relationship is only good if he loves you more than you love him.”

  Give me a break, Wetzon thought. She looked down at her suspect sheets, shuffling the most likely candidates to the top of the pile.

  “How are we doing with David Dwyer?” Smith demanded.

  “Yeah, well, what looked like an easy slam-dunk placement, isn’t working. I don’t think David is asking too much—fifteen a month for six months, but Ron has dug his heels in and won’t budge.”

  “Set him up somewhere else.”

  “He isn’t interested in any other firm.”

  Smith sent Wetzon a you’re-not-trying-hard-enough look and turned her back. “I can’t believe all these messages.” She flipped through the pink slips, folded the lot in half and dropped them into her waste basket. Smith made a fetish of never returning phone calls. It drove Wetzon crazy.

  “How do you know there wasn’t something important in one of those?” Wetzon demanded.

  “Oh puh-lease. If it’s important, they’ll call back. Anything new?”

  “B.B. had a start this morning.” Their young associate B.B. had come a long way since Smith and Wetzon had hired him right out of college. He had joined them, a preppy cold caller. In those days their associate had been the duplicitous Harold Alpert, who had subsequently betrayed them and gone to work for their major competition, Tom Keegen and Associates.

  Last year they had added Max Orchard, a retired accountant, as a part-time cold caller, over Smith’s loud objections, and he had turned out to be a gem, reliable and efficient. Net-net, they both agreed now, Max was a winner.

  “B.B. did? Where? How much? Who?”

  “Larry Cooper. Three hundred thou. We’ll see fifteen on him. Rivington Ellis.”

  “Larry Cooper? The guy the Stock Exchange censured for laundering money?”

  “The very one. He’s a bundle of charm. I hate to work with these guys. They make me want to wash my hands after a simple phone call.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad you put him at Rivington Ellis. At least they pay us on trailing twelve.”

  “Do you think I’m a fool, partner? Who knows how long he’ll be around?”

  “Let’s light a few candles. You should probably hold his hand until the ninety days are up.”

  “I fully intend to, but it’s a toss-up. His past will catch up to him, or he’ll do something terrible at Rivington Ellis. These guys can’t stop themselves before they kill again.” Yikes, Wetzon thought. She had murder on the brain.

  Smith tapped her mauve fingernails together and looked up at the Andy Warhol pencil drawing of a roll of dollar bills on the wall. They had purchased it years earlier to celebrate their first fee, both thinking it wonderfully symbolic. “Well, they didn’t buy a pig in a poke.”

  “They know what he is. They wanted him anyway. Laura Lee claims Larry had a moral bypass at birth.”

  “Humpf. That Laura Lee Day thinks she’s so clever. When are you going to understand that you can’t be friends with these scum?”

  “Smith, you know very well that Laura Lee has been a good friend to me. So keep your opinions to yourself.”

  “Oh, for pitysakes.” Smith threw up her hands. “What time is lunch?”

  “Twelve-thirty. I think maybe I should war—tell Twoey you’re coming, don’t you?”

  “If you do, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  Wetzon shook her finger at Smith. “You’re going to torture him. He’s still in love with you.”

  Smith’s only rejoinder was her slow feline smile. She wrinkled her repouse nose.

  Now it was Wetzon’s turn to throw up her hands.

 
“Enter,” Smith called imperiously in response to the knock on their door. “Ah, Max, sweetie pie.” She winked at Wetzon. “You are such a fashion plate today.”

  Max was wearing his usual shiny brown suit, white socks, and brown gum-soled shoes. His pants were pulled up to his lower chest and held in place by suspenders. Today he had added a jaunty red-and-white polka-dot tie. A matching handkerchief drooped from the upper left pocket of his coat.

  “Thank you.” Max always treated Smith indulgently as if she were an errant daughter. “Your son is on line two.”

  Smith blew Max a kiss and scooped up the phone, purring, “How’s my baby boy?” She made kissy-poo noises into the receiver.

  “Oh, Smith,” Wetzon groaned. “He’s seventeen years old, for godsakes.”

  Smith glared at her. Mark was finishing his final term at Choate and would enter Harvard in the fall, yet Smith still referred to him as her baby boy. It was a wonder he’d managed to grow up at all.

  Wetzon picked out Carlos’s number, listened to the phone ring. When the answering machine came on, she said succinctly, “Please call me,” and hung up. He was probably at rehearsal. But still, a little spot of apprehension niggled at her.

  The phone rang. Three lines were lit and the in-coming call was on four. Wetzon answered, “Smith and Wetzon. Leslie Wetzon speaking.”

  “Oh, hi, Leslie. This is Sunny Browning, Mort Hornberg’s assistant.”

  “Right. Are we still on for lunch today?”

  “Yes, we are. I just wanted to confirm twelve-thirty at the Four Seasons. I’ve made a reservation for four.”

  “Okay, babycakes,” Smith said into her phone.

  “Four? Oh, you heard my partner is coming?”

  Smith hung up with a clatter and turned her chair ostentatiously to listen to Wetzon’s conversation.

  “No. I guess it should be for five then,” Sunny said. “I’m the fourth because I’m in charge of capitalizing Mort’s shows.”

  “Okay, make it for five then. My partner, Xenia Smith, is very interested in investing in the show.”

  Smith began applauding in slow motion and Wetzon ended the conversation.

  “Who was that?” Smith’s expression was pure Eloise.