Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

stroking her. One of them propped her up, mumbling what sounded like “Leslie” through the hideous face. Wetzon was crying. “My hair, look, my hair.”
    “Police! Stay where you are!” A man’s voice bounced around the alcove. The gorilla women straightened, fading into the darkness, giving Wetzon a clearer view of the speaker. It was the derelict in the sombrero. Two cops in uniform raced toward them.
    Wetzon tried to stand, couldn’t, sank back against the archway. Sombrero said, “Hey,” and gave her a quick once-over.
    “I’m all right, I think.”
    “Where’d he go?” He was peering down the staircase.
    “He’s at the bottom of the steps. Down there. He fell.” She began laughing. “You can’t miss him. You’ll know him by his red dress.” It was so funny, she couldn’t stop. Smith’s tarot reading had been only a little off. It wasn’t a very powerful woman. It was a man in a dress.
    One of the cops shone his flashlight down the stairs, moving it around, while Sombrero went down cautiously, gun up. People were running about, shouting, all around her now. The gorilla girls were gone. Or maybe, they had never been. A siren wailed close by, then stopped. Her eyelids were so heavy. One of the gorilla women had come back, was holding her hand.
    Footsteps on the stairs, voices, cut through the fog. She was being prodded. “Leave me alone.” They were cleaning her face with some sort of disinfectant, and it stung.
    “Bag this.”
    She forced her eyelids open. Sombrero was dropping the little gun into an evidence bag. “She okay?” He got down on one knee and squinted at her.
    He was holding a cat. “Is he dead?” She could hardly hear her own voice. Hands lifted her, held her when her knees collapsed. Sombrero twirled the cat on his fingers. But it wasn’t a cat. She could see that now. It was a blond wig. “Is he dead?” she asked again.
    “He wasn’t there.”

65.
    “M S. W ETZON.” SOMETHING touched Wetzon’s arm. The noise became horrific. Someone was crying. She heard moans.
    Her eyes took their own sweet time about obeying her command to open. When they did, she saw she was in a hospital emergency room. St. Vincent’s it had to be. It was closest. She was sitting, half leaning, head against the wall.
    “Uh?” She moved her head, and the throbbing began. Touched bandage. Followed it with her fingertips down under her chin and back up again to her throbbing head. She rotated her head carefully to the left. Marissa Peiser was sitting there. “How did you get here so fast?”
    “Detective Ferrante. He told me what happened. Said you refused to talk to anybody but me.”
    “I did?” Her mouth was parched. “Did they find him?”
    “They picked up a man in a red dress in the PATH station in Jersey City. Martens went to check him out.”
    She was having trouble swallowing. “Can you get me something to drink? Black coffee?”
    Peiser left her, and Wetzon began to focus on her environment. The emergency room was busy with the aftermath of Halloween— accidents, sick children, some mugging victims, one knifing. There were a lot of blue uniforms, most of them clustered farther down the corridor past where she was sitting.
    Two men, both Hispanics in orderly whites, pushed a gurney holding a patient up the corridor past her and into an examining room. The patient was attached to an IV.
    Wetzon stood up. She was wrapped in an oversize hospital gown, and when she checked, no dress, no fake Chanel chains, no panty hose, just the black silk teddy, assorted bruises and scrapes and her shoes. It felt good to be on her feet. She stretched her legs. Where was there a bathroom? She started to walk, a bit unsteadily.
    The orderlies came out of the room. Shaking his head, one said, “You see that, man? Jeeezus!”
    “Yeah. Who got him?”
    “Doc Levy.”
    They walked past Wetzon, taking no notice of her. Wetzon stretched again and did a plié. A slittle stiff, but not bad. What was that on the floor? Lying at her feet were two red sequins. What the hell? She bent to pick them up and slipped to her knees.
    “You probably got up too quickly.” Peiser was standing over her, holding orange juice in a clear plastic glass. She offered Wetzon her hand, and Wetzon dropped the two sequins in it. “What’s this?” She handed Wetzon the orange juice, and Wetzon, still on her knees on the polished vinyl floor, drank it down.
    “He’s here.” Wetzon got to her