42.

A DEADLY STILLNESS.

Wetzon raised her head and looked around. She was kneeling in front of B.B.’s desk. Smith was prostrate, mouth agape, on one of the chairs. Harold stood in the doorway of his cubicle, looking dazed. Her bad knee began throbbing.

B.B. was clutching the receiver in midair, speechless, while a metallic voice repeated, with increasing irritation, “911 operator, hello.”

From their inner office, Wetzon heard a delicate tinkling sound and hoped it wasn’t the glass on their Andy Warhol drawing. She stood up and took the phone from B.B.’s rigid fist, giving the emergency operator her name and their address. “I think,” she said, very calmly, “a bomb just went off in our garden.”

“A bomb?” B.B.’s eyes were blue pennies.

“Jesus.” Harold took his glasses off and rubbed his face.

“I don’t believe this! I don’t believe any of this,” Smith muttered.

The phone rang. “At least our phones are still working.” Wetzon opened the door to the inner office with trepidation.

“Smith and Wetzon,” B.B. said in a squeaky voice behind her.

Shards of glass lay everywhere, smithereens. And dirt—garden dirt, shreds of plants and flowers. It must have been blown through the windows, all of which were broken. The air-conditioner groaned mightily, surging, not comprehending why it had become impossible to cool the large room. The blinds hung awry, twisted and torn by the blast. They would have to be replaced. The smell of sulphur, as if a thousand matches had been lit all at once, filled the room.

Suspect sheets and papers and loose pages of newspapers were scattered helter-skelter on the floor, but that seemed to be all the damage. Andy Warhol was whole.

A siren came closer and then stopped in front of their office. Wetzon came back through the reception area and opened the door to the street. The heat and humidity fell on her, weighing her down. She rubbed her tearing eyes. A blue-and-white van that looked like a combination tank and cement mixer was parked in front of the house. And in front of the van was a red fire car with a blinking red light on its roof.

“Please, sugar, I’m all right,” she heard Smith say irritably. “Of course I miss you, but I can’t talk now because the police are here.”

Leave it to Jake to phone at the proper time, Wetzon thought.

Another siren shrieked over and over, and a fire engine turned down the street from First Avenue. Three hulking spacemen in blue padded suits and blue caps came toward her carrying metal suitcases. She could hear them bitching about the firemen and hoped this wasn’t going to become a competition between the police and fire departments, as it often was in New York.

“It’s already gone off,” Wetzon said. “In the garden.” She followed them as they tramped through the mess on the floor and out the back door, which had been blown off its hinges.

Two sweating firemen in rubber coats trudged through, carrying axes. “Stand back, Miss,” one of the men said. Another lifted the door and leaned it against the side wall. They went out slowly, checking the area, and collided with the two men from the NYPD bomb squad.

“Hey, this is our job, get the fuck outta here. You’re destroying evidence,” a burly fireman said.

“Can it,” one of the spacemen from the bomb squad replied. “There’s no fire here. You boys can take your little red engine and go back to your little red house.”

“Listen, you muth—”

“Hey, you guys,” Wetzon, pissed off, called from the dirt-laden brick deck. “A bomb exploded here. Can we please concentrate on that?”

The garden was a mess. Chunks of bricks lay everywhere; plants were uprooted. She could see a charred hole where she had set the envelope. People were standing at windows, calling down questions. Some of the windows looked blown, though most of the explosion seemed to have been contained in the garden.

“This is what happens when you get us involved in one of your murders,” Smith hissed, just behind her.

“When I? When who? Goddammit, Smith.” Wetzon found herself quivering. “This is your doing. We’re lucky we’re not in little slivers all over this room.”

Smith burst into tears. Dammit, Wetzon thought. And not one clean spot to sit or stand.

“Oh, shit, stop that. Go home. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of everything.” Wetzon put her arm around Smith. Why did she always end up apologizing to Smith for something Smith had done? “Harold!”

Harold was standing in the doorway gawking at the chaos. The phones rang incessantly. “B.B., get the goddam phones. Harold, go out and get a cab. Smith is going home.”

“I can’t go home,” Smith sniffled. “Our papers, our work.” She pulled a tissue from a box on her desk, shook off the dirt, and dried her eyes.

“We’ll take care of it. You go home and get into bed. I’ll call you later.”

“Cab’s outside,” Harold crooned. “Do you want me to see you home, Smith?”

“No,” Wetzon said, walking Smith to the cab. “My, isn’t he sweet and solicitous.”

“Who?”

“Harold.” She smiled. “Gee, Smith, we must have made Tom Keegen really mad.”

“Tom Keegen?” Smith had opened the cab door. “You think this was his doing?”

“No! Don’t get so excited. I was kidding. No, what I’m really saying is, this is what I warned you about. Telling Hoffritz we know who the murderer is has put our lives in danger.”

“You’re wrong. It was Tom Keegen. I know.” Smith got into the cab and closed the door. The cab pulled away, then screeched to a stop and backed up. Smith rolled down the window. “The tarot never lies. Call me later.”

Spare me, Wetzon thought. Trust Smith to try to cast off culpability. She said, “I’m having dinner with Chris.”

“Good. Work him over, but be careful. He may be the one.”

“I doubt it, but thanks.”

Smith rolled up the window and the cab took off.

“Silvestri,” Wetzon murmured. It was all getting too confusing.

Three more technicians, probably fire department because they came in a red station wagon, arrived and began combing through the debris in the garden, packing things up in plastic bags. Wetzon gathered up the storm of papers and sorted them, which were hers, which were Smith’s.

“B.B., see if you can get Mr. Diamantidou over here,” she said. “I want a glazier to fix these windows today. Without air-conditioning, we won’t be able to work.”

After a technician sifted through the mess in the office, Wetzon swept the dirt and glass from the desktops to the floor and then gathered the floor mess into one pile in case the bomb detectives wanted to go through it once more. Silvestri, she thought again. She couldn’t put off calling him. The office was uncomfortably warm although she’d left the air conditioner on ... but of course, there were no windows ... Her knees began to shake violently. She tipped her chair to empty it of glass and dirt and sat down, putting her head on the desk. A hand touched her arm and she jumped.

“Sorry, Miss. Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Sergeant Gans. I’d like to go over what happened.” Gans was well over six feet tall, and broad, broader still because of the padding. Sweat stood out in glistening beads on his face, dripped from under his cap, and ran through his hair, which was long even for a present-day cop.

“A bulky package came—”

“In the mail?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember postage on it. B.B?”

“Yes?” B.B. came to the door. There was a long smear of dirt on his face.

“Did that package come in the mail?”

“No. A messenger delivered it.”

“Did you sign for it?” Gans asked.

“No ... yes. Yes, I think so.” B.B. rubbed his cheek, smearing more dirt on his face. “Wait. Yes.” He went back to his desk and began searching through papers. “I know it’s here.”

“Take your time,” Gans said.

“Sergeant.” Wetzon returned to her desk and sat down. She was beat. Her neck and shoulders were stiff. Her knee was killing her. At this rate it would never heal. “Close the door and pull up a chair,” she said.

Gans closed the door and pulled Smith’s chair over, shaking off a gnarled bit of rosebush, and sat down near Wetzon.

“I’m working with the P.D. as a consultant on a case,” Wetzon said. “There’ve been three murders of Wall Street people.” She stopped. Gans was listening politely, but he was registering doubt.

“Let me get this straight. You got this package, but didn’t open it.” He took off his cap and mopped his head, which was mostly bare scalp, with a handkerchief. Wetzon wondered whether he combed the long side hair over the bald spot when he was off duty. Gans put the cap back on and took out a notepad. “What made you take it outside? And good thing you did,” he added.

“I don’t know. No return address ... Intuition ... Something. Look, I know you’re having trouble believing me, and I’m having trouble finding words for all this.” She swept her hand around the room. “Call Midtown North. Ask for either Lieutenant Silvestri, or Weiss ... or Sergeant Metzger. Here.” She shoved the phone at him. “Wait.” She found her Filofax undamaged in her briefcase under her desk, looked up the direct number and gave it to him.

Gans punched out the number and waited. “Silvestri,” he said. “Gans, bomb squad.”

“Excuse me,” Wetzon said. “I’d rather not be involved in another explosion.” Gans threw her a this-lady-is-off-the-wall as she went into the bathroom and closed the door, turning on the cold-water tap full force. She washed her face and neck, patted the moisture off with a paper towel, and stared at her drawn face in the mirror. Strings of hair flew every which way. You do look insane, she thought. No wonder Gans hadn’t believed her. She undid her topknot and combed her hair with her fingers, rolling it up again into a neat knot. Okay, Wetzon old girl, she thought. Gird your loins. She opened the door.

“Yeah. We have a piece of the envelope,” Gans said. “The kid is looking for the messenger slip. Yeah. One big firecracker can do a shitload of damage. Yeah.” He looked at Wetzon. “Here she is.” He held out the phone.

She took the receiver and lilted cheerily, “Hi, there.”

“Les.” Silvestri cleared his throat. “Gans says you’re okay.”

“I am. I’m fine. I’m scared, though. I should have mentioned it yesterday, but with everything ... Smith told the guys at Luwisher Brothers that we know who the murderer is and we’ll tell them on Monday.”

“Of all the fucking, harebrained—”

“Stop!”

“That’s it. I want you off the case.”

“It’s too late for that.” She could hear him fuming over the wires. “I’m having dinner with Chris Gorham tonight and Doug Culver called me. I’m supposed to call him back later tonight.”

Gans got up and looked outside. The head of the fire department crew came over and they talked quietly, turning once and looking at Wetzon.

“Fuck that shit, Les.” Exasperation colored his every carefully spaced word.

“Silvestri, please—just give me some protection. And Smith, too, I guess.”

“I’d feel a damn sight better if you were out of this, but I know you’d find a way back in. Okay, okay. I’ll cover you. How long will you be there?”

“I’m going to call Chris and see if I can meet him at the restaurant.”

A triumphant shout came from B.B.

“Les, be careful. No chances, do you hear me?”

“Yes, honest, Silvestri. I’ll be good. You can depend on that.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He hung up.

The door popped open with a bang-slam. “I found it.” B.B. was waving a yellow slip of paper. “It was in my pocket all the time.”

Wetzon reached for it.

“Here, I’ll take that.” Gans was across the room in three steps. He took the paper and held it out in front of him and they both looked at it.

It was a narrow slip of paper, about three inches by six inches.

Across the top it said: LUWISHER BROTHERS.