50.

WETZON HAD HOPED to find the ubiquitous Michael Stewart downstairs waiting for her, but she was disappointed. She stood under the canopy in front of Smith’s building, looking up the street for a cab, holding the collar of her coat closed at the throat.

“Cab, miss?” Smith’s doorman came out and stood beside her. “Cold night, isn’t it?”

“Yes, a cab, please, and, yes, it’s a cold night.”

“There’ll be one along soon, I’m sure.” He turned a switch that lit a cab light on the front of the awning. “There always is at this time.” He slapped his hands together in his leather gloves and turned up his coat collar.

But he was wrong. She waited impatiently, hunching her shoulders against the cold, then gave up. “I’m going out on Third Avenue. Thanks anyway.” She moved off in almost a trot, veering around a fur-wrapped woman in dark glasses carrying a heavy briefcase in one hand and a Chinese take-out bag from Pig Heaven in the other.

At the curb on Third Avenue an old woman was being helped out of a cab by an old man, and from the corner of her eye, Wetzon saw a well-dressed young couple across the avenue dart in front of traffic toward the cab, weaving and screaming. Wetzon put on a burst of speed and got there first in a flurry of raccoon. The old man, dignified in a cloth overcoat and English tweed cap, smiled at Wetzon and held the door open for her after depositing his wife on the sidewalk.

She settled into the cab and he slammed the door closed. The disappointed couple shouted at her angrily and cursed out the driver, who shrugged. “Where to?”

“Ninety-second, between Park and Madison, as fast as you can.”

She sat back. Smith was the owner of Tender Care, and Arleen Grossman was running it for her. What a mess. How could Leon have possibly let Smith get into it? What kind of lawyer...? No ... wait ... how could she blame Leon? It was, after all, a profitable company. Oh my, was it ever profitable. She wondered how the money from the sale of the stock certificates was fed into the company. Or was it? Maybe it just went into Arleen’s and her partners’ pockets. Arleen had certainly manipulated both Smith and Leon.

But now what? Arleen had said she might have to take an extended trip. She would try to leave the country to avoid being arrested.

Why had she worked so hard to befriend Wetzon? Because Smith had probably told her about Peepsie Cunningham’s death. Arleen had wanted to confuse Wetzon, make her doubt Smith, perhaps even make Smith look guilty.

Damn, what was taking so long? The red light seemed endless. “Please, please hurry.”

Smith had bought a company whose purpose was to defraud. Did that make Smith responsible, liable? What were the legal ramifications of all this? Poor Smith.

For once, Wetzon’s caution had worked to her benefit. How much money had Smith paid for the company? The cab stopped and didn’t continue. “What’s holding us up?” She crossed and uncrossed her legs.

“There’s some problem up ahead,” the driver said. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “Traffic’s backed up on Ninety-second Street. Street’s blocked.”

“Problem?” She rolled down her window and peered out. What was happening up ahead? She saw rolling red-and-blue lights of police cars. It was Hazel’s block. What if it was Hazel? Her hands began to tremble. “I have to get out here.” She paid the driver and got out.

As all the residential streets in upper Manhattan were, Ninety-second Street was narrow. There were frozen banks of snow, cars parked on both sides of the street, and also police cars, an emergency van, lights, people. Curious bystanders clustered on the street or leaned out of apartment house and brownstone windows. Tragedy, even in New York, was an event.

The activity was concentrated in front of Hazel’s building. A fat woman in a purple all-weather coat, with a child in a stroller, blocked the sidewalk. What the hell was she doing out in this cold at this time of the evening? The child was bundled in a bright red-and-blue snowsuit and hat, its face pale in the streetlights, its eyes round and frightened. The woman, whose mittened hands rested on the curved handle of the stroller, was dark-skinned and appeared too old to be the mother. She was probably a nursemaid or baby-sitter, drawn outside by the noise.

Wetzon pushed by the woman, angry that she had to run an obstacle course to get to Hazel’s building. She dodged two boys in torn jeans and Jets jackets, one holding a skateboard, and was stopped by a policewoman. “You can’t go any farther,” the woman said, blocking her.

“Please, Officer—” Something caught in her throat. “Please. My friend is in that building.”

She saw O’Melvany first. You couldn’t miss him—he was that tall. Men in street clothes, probably detectives, were milling all over the area. Police in uniform were stopping foot traffic. An EMS van was parked on a slant near the front of the building, its lights flashing.

“Please, please, let me through. I have to get through.” She felt herself panicking. “Sergeant O’Melvany!”

Two blue-coated EMS men wheeled someone out of the building on a stretcher. A man in a red down jacket was with them, bent over, talking to the person on the stretcher. It took her several seconds to process Silvestri.

In the eerie-colored lights, the raised voices, police car radios squawking, it seemed a scene from Walpurgisnacht. Silvestri was scrunched down over the figure on the stretcher. A scream rose up from the cold pit of her stomach and filled her, spilling out, “Silvestri,” in a wail of pain. She was oblivious to the people around.

Detectives, police, onlookers, heads swiveled in her direction. Silvestri straightened, looking for the source, and she saw him as another pale face above the red down jacket. Round-eyed and pale like the child. He was holding someone’s hand. Someone on the stretcher. His eyes swept the crowd.

She saw the IV then and another EMS attendant. Silvestri spotted her, waved, and pointed, and they were escorting her through the throng, and she was rushing, stumbling toward them—toward Silvestri, toward the figure on the stretcher, about to be moved into the van.

Silvestri’s arm came around her shoulders like a vise, fiercely protective, holding her, but moving her forward. He was saying something but her heartbeat was exploding in her ears, drowning out every sound but its own thumping.

Hazel lay wrapped in gray blankets. The right side of her face was swollen and discolored, her head was covered by a gauze bandage.

Wetzon clutched the hard edge of the stretcher. “Hazel.” Her voice came out thin, trailing. Hazel’s good eye found her. “Leslie ... dear ...” The good side of her face tilted into a grotesque smile. “I did it ... didn’t I?” Hazel’s eye went to Silvestri, with a bit of the old sparkle. “Got the goods on them, didn’t I?”

Wetzon took off her glove and touched the lined cheek, lines like railroad tracks, deep creases. She felt Silvestri’s warm breath on her face, his arm tight around her. “You let her be a decoy, Silvestri.” She pulled away from him, accusing.

“Sergeant, we’ve got to get going,” one of the EMS men interrupted.

“She set herself up, Les.”

“I did.” Hazel’s voice was weak but sure.

They folded up the wheels and moved the stretcher into the van. Hazel’s body rolled helplessly from the action. “Where are you taking her? I’m going along.”

“Leslie ... dear ...”

“Yes?” She leaned into the van, bending to catch the failing voice.

“My purse ... it’s upstairs. Lock up for me, please.”

“But I want to go with you.”

“Please ... I’ll feel better if I know you’re doing it.”

“I’ll go with her,” Silvestri said. “I want to get a statement anyway.” He left them and went to speak to a policeman near the entrance to the building, returned quickly, and got into the van behind the first paramedic.

“Silvestri! Don’t let anything happen to her.” Wetzon stood there, letting the unspoken words hang between them. His turquoise eyes made her a promise they both knew he might not be able to keep. She watched as the second paramedic slammed the doors of the van and climbed into the front. The whining siren cut through the protective shell she’d put between her and the people on the street, leaving her alone. She saw faces staring at her from across police lines, curious faces, hungry for information.

The policeman on the door let her through into the lobby. O’Melvany and another detective were talking to a small, muscular woman in a white uniform. Reddish scratches covered one cheek, and her bleached platinum hair was in wild disarray. The woman’s hands were cuffed behind her. She looked terrified.

“Basha,” Wetzon said out loud as she pressed the elevator button. She would have thought the elevator and the elevator man would be in the lobby.

The woman jerked her head up. O’Melvany nodded to Wetzon, his hands resting on lean hips.

She was thinking that Basha would be sent back to Russia, or wherever she had come from, and this was good. The elevator door opened, and she got on.

“Oh, Ms. Wilson,” the elevator man said. “Awful about Ms. Osborn, isn’t it? It’s a terrible world we’re living in now. You just can’t trust anyone anymore.” He took her up to the fifth floor without saying anything else.

Hazel’s door was wide open and all the lights were on in the apartment. A strange man in a white jogging suit stood in the middle of Hazel’s living room holding one of her large Staffordshire dogs upside down, looking at the markings on the base.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The man looked up without embarrassment. He had a salt-and-pepper, close-cropped beard. He set the Staffordshire piece down on an end table. “I’m just a concerned neighbor,” he said with a slight German or Austrian accent. “I thought I’d see if there was something I could do for the poor lady, but I see there is nothing, so I will be going now.”

“You bet you’ll be going now.” Wetzon followed him to the door and closed it behind him firmly.

“Is nothing sacred?” She went back into the living room and righted the rocking chair, which was on its side. Books were out of the bookcase, on the floor, open, every which way. Someone had been looking for something. The bedroom was a real mess, drawers emptied, bedclothes on the floor, the mattress turned. A perfume bottle had broken and L’Air du Temps, though a light scent, cloyed. The bedside lamp lay on its side on the floor, still lit, its shade bent out of shape. She replaced the lamp on the night table, leaving the shade where it was on the floor.

Hot tears began to slide down her face. What if Hazel had died? Damn Arleen! Damn her. And she was going to get away with it, because she had surely left the country by now.

Hazel’s large black leather purse was on the floor, its contents beside it. Saul Bellow’s More Die of Heartbreak was lying next to it, half open. The receiver of the telephone dangled loose, off the hook, down the side of the night table. She put the receiver back on the phone and, kneeling, gathered up the scattered contents of Hazel’s purse, putting everything back as neatly as she could, holding onto the house keys in their little leather pouch.

On the floor, almost hidden under the night table, was a small notepad. She picked it up to place it back on the table near the telephone. There were some numbers on the pad. She stood up and put the Bellow book into Hazel’s purse. Hazel could read it while she was getting better.

Enough of this. She would come back later and straighten out the apartment. She turned out the lights in the doorway and started down the short hall to the door, stopped, came back, and turned the lights on in the bedroom again. She went over to the night table and picked up the pad. It was definitely a phone number but the handwriting was not Hazel’s.

Puzzled, she sat down on the tilted mattress, picked up the phone, and punched out the numbers.

One ring ... two ... three ... four ...

“Hello? Hello?”

Wetzon hung up the phone quietly.

The voice was Arleen Grossman’s.