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

go through and was rewarded, this time, with a busy signal. “Either he’s there or someone else is trying to get in touch with him.”
    They looked at each other. Smith said, “Where does the rotten scum live? Still in that town house on the Upper East Side?”
    “No, he and Rona split, don’t you remember? She’s got the town house, the baby, and the nanny—”
    “And he got the business.”
    Rona Middleton had been a stockbroker and had built up a nice book. Brian had been a slip-and-fall lawyer. Rona had brought her husband into the business, got him registered, and they began working together. When Rona got pregnant for the first time—at the age of forty—her concentration transferred to her pregnancy and Brian serviced the accounts. The plan had been for both of them to move to Rosenkind, Luwisher. Rona would go first, then three months later Brian would join her. They’d agreed to tell everyone they were splitting up their business. Their manager would not give out Rona’s accounts, because Brian would have them. But as soon as Rona settled in at Rosenkind, Luwisher, Brian announced he wanted a divorce. He’d never had any intention of moving. In the fallout, most of Rona’s clients had stayed with Brian.
    “I feel for her. She’s struggling. He took an apartment on the West Side. Seventy-ninth Street near Columbus. I ran into him on the coffee line at Zabar’s last week.” Wetzon’s eyes drifted down her schedule. Lots of people to call, but no appointments. She tried Brian again. Still busy. She pushed back her chair. “I’m going up there and waylay him. I don’t want to take a loss here.”
    “I’ll come with you.” Smith rose and checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the inside of their bathroom door. She gave her reflection a seductive smile.
    Well, thank you very much , Wetzon thought, slipping into her jacket. She said, with more acerbity than she intended, “I don’t need an escort.”
    “I’m protecting our investment, sweetie pie. Besides, I have a five-thirty at Enzo, who, if you remember, is on Central Park South, then dinner with Twoey—”
    “Spare me the itsy-bitsy, minute-by-minute of your schedule.” She was usually able to let Smith’s eccentricities roll off her back, but not today, and worse, she hated when Smith was proved right in her low opinion of stockbrokers. Because the truth was Wetzon liked most of the candidates she worked with. They were talented, dramatic and egocentric, and insecure—just like the people she’d worked with in the theater when she was a Broadway chorus dancer. And Smith made sure to needle her whenever something happened that proved Smith’s thesis.
    Peeved, and feeling childish because of it, Wetzon put three suspect sheets into her briefcase. She’d call them later. Some brokers, concerned about confidentiality—it was almost impossible to keep anything secret on the Street—preferred calls at home. “Well, come on, then,” she drawled to Smith, making an effort to recapture her good humor, “let’s get outa here.”
    In their small reception area, which had been part of the original kitchen, there were three upholstered chairs, the coffee machine on a side table, and a desk. The desk had first been Harold’s, their general assistant, then B.B. had sat there for two years while he worked as a cold caller and general assistant, and Harold had become an associate.
    Last year, after the duplicitous Harold Alpert left them, they’d moved B.B. into the cubbyhole office that had been Harold’s, and began to interview replacements for B.B.’s old job. It had been a fiasco. They’d hired people who never showed up, and the ones who did, never lasted more than three or four weeks. The desk now belonged to Max Orchard, a round, balding, sixty-six-year-old retired accountant who wore gum-soled shoes. He worked part time Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and didn’t want full time.
    Smith had resisted hiring him, but they’d been so desperate, Max was given a shot. After four months, even Smith had to admit he was effective, and even better, reliable. They paid him ten dollars an hour and gave him five percent of the fee they earned on each placement generated by one of his prospects. Three such placements had panned out in the short time he’d been with them.
    But today was Friday, and Max was not there. On top of his desk was a neat, fat blue folder in which he filed suspect sheets by area of