13.

WHEN SHE CAME out on the street, the ceiling of the sky was so low she felt if she stood on tiptoes, she could actually touch it. It didn’t seem as cold as it had been. A sulfurous aura hung over everything.

The snow was still falling but it was lighter now. Still, at least a foot had fallen already and, blown by the wind, the drifts were deep. Supers or handymen from the surrounding brownstones had made an attempt to shovel the sidewalks, and she could hear the sounds of metal shovels on cement, but walking was difficult. To get the bus uptown on Third Avenue would be a major expedition.

Dim lights made the turn from First Avenue and crawled along Forty-ninth Street toward her. The car pulled up to the house next door. It was a cab, and Wetzon, joyously, got to the door as the passenger disembarked.

“Thank God,” she said to the driver after she’d climbed in. “And thank you.”

The driver, a heavy black woman, with a Mets cap jammed low on her forehead, nodded. “Where to? I’m not going to Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx.” She wore red leather gloves with the fingertips cut off.

Wetzon gave her Hazel’s address on East Ninety-second Street.

Traffic was bumper to bumper, creeping up Third Avenue. It took over twenty minutes just to make the turn from Forty-ninth Street, normally a three-minute trip. The side streets were choked with snow, in dire need of snowplows.

Outside Hazel’s apartment building, Wetzon hesitantly asked the driver if she would wait and take her through the Park to Eighty-sixth Street near Amsterdam. The meter already read almost nine dollars.

“Okay,” the woman said pleasantly. “How about I turn off my clock, and we settle on twenty bucks for the works.”

“Terrific.” Wetzon opened the door and promptly stepped into a snowdrift.

The driver leaned out. “But make it fast. I don’t want to get stuck here for the night.” She flicked her flag up, turning off the meter.

Hazel answered her door, wearing a quilted pink robe blooming with pink blossoms and a ruffled pink cap. She was holding a pair of chopsticks.

“Leslie dear, you shouldn’t have come. It’s a terrible night,” Hazel said. Her eyes were bright and two round rosy spots burned on her cheeks. She looked exceedingly pleased with herself.

“Hazel, what are you up to?”

“Your Silvestri bought me shrimp fried rice after we talked with Sergeant O’Melvany, and then he brought me home. He knew just what would make me happy.”

“He’s not my Silvestri,” Wetzon said automatically, thinking that Hazel looked like a turn-of-the-century little girl.

“Well, let’s work on it,” Hazel said cheerfully. “But right now I want you to go home, and I’m going to get into bed with my shrimp fried rice and Woody Allen.”

“Woody Allen?”

“Sleeper is on television tonight.”

Moments later, satisfied that Hazel was considerably improved, Wetzon was back in the cab, and they were heading for the West Side.

“Is the transverse open?” Wetzon asked, rubbing the vapor from the window, straining to see outside. She remembered the night that Barry Stark was murdered, when she and Silvestri were cut off on the transverse and Silvestri had been shot.

The driver grunted, and the cab turned into the Eighty-sixth Street transverse through Central Park that connected the East Side and the West Side of Manhattan. Here, the winding, sloping road, which in some places became an underpass, could be treacherously slippery. The driver was bent over the steering wheel, wiping moisture off the windshield with her gloved hand. The windshield wipers moved back and forth dully and not too effectively. Twice, when traffic stalled, she got out to clean the wipers.

When they arrived at her apartment building, Wetzon handed the woman a twenty-dollar bill. “Thank you for the safe ride,” she said. “You were great.”

The woman touched the visor of her Mets cap. The eyes that met Wetzon’s for an instant were shrewd. “My name is Judy Blue, and if you ever need a cab for hire, call me.” She proffered a blue business card, which Wetzon slipped into her pocket.

“Thank you, Judy Blue.”

She was singing, “‘The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing ...’” softly under her breath as she searched for her key, stamping her boots free of snow on her doormat. It didn’t take much to make her feel good. Hazel looking much better, Silvestri ...

Her door swung open just as she was about to put the key in the lock.

“Boy, am I glad to see you, little one,” Carlos said, grabbing her and giving her a bear hug.

She dropped her carryall, and they danced around her foyer together in an impromptu Fred and Ginger number, narrowly missing the white bench and a brass footrest. They ended on the floor, tangled in Wetzon’s black coat, laughing.

“You are so crazy,” she scolded. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Stick with me, and I promise you, we’ll stay young forever,” Carlos said, very seriously.

“You will always be young, my man,” Wetzon said. “But I, au contraire, am aging rapidly.”

She stood and helped him to his feet. He took her coat and hung it in the hall closet.

“What’s that I smell?” she asked, leaning against the wall to pull off her boots. She put them on the mat outside her door. “Hot cocoa?”

“’Tis that. Made it for you from scratch. Although you didn’t have the grace to return my call.”

“Oh yum,” she said, licking her lips and following him into the kitchen. “God, how I’ve missed you, Carlos.”

“Well, I can see that,” Carlos said sternly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“You are the world’s worst housekeeper. Dust everywhere, no food in the fridge except bagels, the cupboards bare except for tuna fish, pasta, and chocolate.” He stopped. She was grinning at him. “Well, at least try to look ashamed.”

She aped ashamed, hanging her head. Then they looked at each other and laughed.

“You are incorrigible,” he said, checking the pot of chocolate heating on the stove.

“So are you,” she responded. “Let us not forget, you deserted me. I relied on you to be my housekeeper, and then you ran back to the stage—”

“My art was calling me,” Carlos intoned dramatically, hand to his brow.

“I’ll bet. Art who?”

He stirred the hot chocolate and poured it into two mugs. “As a matter of fact,” he said very casually, “Arthur Margolies, Esquire.”

“Carlos, you devil. There’s a new love in your life. An esquire, no less.”

Carlos merely smiled and looked smug. “Come on,” she pleaded. “Tell.”

“Yes, a lawyer, and with a big law firm. Very handsome. The truth is, ‘I’m in love again,’” he sang.

“‘I’m in love again,’” Wetzon sang in response, her arm around his slim waist.

“‘We’re in love again ... good news,’” they harmonized, and clicked mugs, toasting each other with hot chocolate.

“I think it’s only right,” she said, smiling at him. She loved Carlos. They were like two peas in a pod, one light, one dark. They had danced together in musicals, on Broadway, in stock, industrials, taken classes together, cried together over men and careers, and had both left the theater about the same time. Or as they viewed it, the theater had left them. It just wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t fun after Gower Champion, their mentor, had died.

“This is great cocoa,” she said, licking the mustache of chocolate off her lips. “And I’m so glad to see you.” She checked her watch. “I have to change and get to Smith’s party.”

“You are not going out on a night like this?” Carlos was incredulous. “And to that—”

“I have to. Smith would never forgive me.”

“You don’t have to—you know that.”

“Carlos, don’t butt in. Smith has been so nervous about this party. I couldn’t do it to her.”

“She would do it to you.”

“I don’t believe that. I can’t. She’s my partner, and she’s my friend. She’s just a little eccentric—”

“Ha!” Carlos said. “There’s the understatement of the year.” He poured the rest of the cocoa into their mugs, and they went into the living room and curled up on her sofa.

“It’s going to be hard for you to get back down to the Village,” she said. “Do you want to spend the night?” She didn’t know if Silvestri would be coming now or not. “ ... um ... Silvestri might come by later.” She was trying to be blasé, but it didn’t work on Carlos.

“Well, well, my darling,” Carlos said, pleased. “You don’t think I’d horn in on that.”

“But—”

He waved her faltering protestations aside. “Besides, Arthur Margolies, Esquire, lives on West End Avenue and Ninetieth Street.” He smiled a very self-satisfied smile.

“How convenient, you little devil,” Wetzon said, kicking him playfully with her toes.

“Listen, my darling, I think it’s only right that the two of us, good clean celibates, have found companions in our old age.” He grinned at her lasciviously.

“To safe sex,” she said solemnly, holding her mug out.

“Safe sex,” he said, touching her mug with his. They looked at each other for a long moment.

“How’s the show?” she asked.

“The show is great. It’s like having an annuity,” Carlos said almost apologetically. “I go in and take out the improvements—you know how these gypsies are.” He chuckled. “They keep trying to make the show better.”

“Now how would I know a thing like that?” Wetzon laughed, knowing that not so long ago, she and Carlos had been guilty of doing that very thing.

“And Marshall’s reading material, looking for another show for us to do.”

“Why Marshall? How about you, solo?”

“Oh, Les, you know I don’t have that kind of ambition. Just give me a little love, a little money, good friends, good health, happy days.”

“Carlos,” she said. “I just love you to pieces.” She pounced on him and kissed him.

Then she told him about Hazel and Peepsie Cunningham.

“Poor Hazel,” Carlos said. “No—wrong—good, decent, wonderful Hazel. I’ll call her tomorrow. Maybe we can get her to tell us the real origin of Peepsie.”

“There’s just one thing I left out,” Wetzon said.

“Uh oh. I knew it was too simple. Let’s have it.”

“Well, there’s this shoe I found—”

“What shoe?”

“I found a small dark blue Gucci walking shoe like the one Peepsie Cunningham was wearing, in the gutter near the building when Hazel and I got into the cab.”

“And?”

“And I picked it up and put it in my bag.”

Carlos groaned loudly.

“I’m sure it was Peepsie Cunningham’s.”

“So?”

“So the newspaper said she was wearing bedroom slippers when she jumped ... or fell.”

“Or fell?” Carlos flung himself backward on the sofa. “My girl, you have done it again. I don’t believe it. You’ve walked yourself right into a murder.”