Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

the coming week.
    On her legal pad, she put Monday’s date on top of the page, and listed calls to be made, appointments to confirm. Eleven items. She went through the suspect sheets and set them up in the order she would call them.
    “I’m going to do a spread,” Smith said, coming back into the room. She closed and locked the door to the terrace.
    “Don’t involve me.” In the bathroom, Wetzon unpinned her hair, brushed it smooth, and redid it in the dancer’s knot.
    When she came out, Smith was making little moaning noises. “I don’t want to know.”
    “Look, the Tower. Catastrophe! Failure!”
    Wetzon sighed. “Stay calm. Whose catastrophe? Maybe you’re reading Bill’s spread.”
    “Oh, no, here’s the Nine of Swords. It’s the worst. Ruin.” What are we going to do?” She bent over as if in pain. “I won’t have it. This is someone else’s spread. You see, the King of Swords, reversed.” She sent the cards flying from her desk and stamped her foot. “Evil.”
    “They’re only cards, for godsakes,” Wetzon said. Smith was scary when she got like this. “Why let them upset you?” She was stooping to pick them up when Smith shrieked.
    “Don’t touch them! It’s bad karma.”
    Wetzon held up her hands. “Okay, okay.”
    “Better that they cool where they are. I may have to put this deck to sleep.”
    Smith’s dread was contagious. Wetzon tried to shake it off. Chocolate. That was what she needed. “Powder your nose, we have to get going. We don’t want to be late for my inheritance.”
    Smith brightened. Out came her makeup mirror and the accoutrements.
    “You look beautiful, Smith. Let’s go.” When Smith began on her eyes, Wetzon went downstairs. The crew were taking a coffee break as most brokers did not want to talk in the last thirty minutes before the close.
    “We’re off,” Wetzon said. “Have a good weekend.” She called up to Smith. “Come on, Smith.” No response. “Tell Smith when she gets her ass down here, that I’ve started walking.”
    Smith caught up with her crossing Second Avenue. “We have to get a cab.”
    There were barricades and police. No traffic. “And where do you think we’ll get one? The president is at the U.N. today.”
    “Oh, for pity sakes.”
    “You’d think your president would check with you when he’s coming to town, wouldn’t you?” Wetzon laughed. “Manolos aren’t made for walking, eh?”
    “Oh, you just think you’re hilarious.”
    They walked up to Fifty-third Street and headed west. It was not quite four when they came to the Museum of Modern Art.. Smith was trying not to hobble.
    “Come with me.” Wetzon took Smith’s arm and guided her to the museum and a bench just inside the museum bookshop. “Just sit here for a few minutes.”
    “I can’t believe you made me walk the whole way,” Smith said. She leaned back against the travertine wall and slipped her tender feet out of her heels.
    “Think what good exercise it was.”
    Smith rolled her eyes. She never exercised, ate whatever she wanted, never put on weight. She scorned personal trainers as being for fat people.
    Outside, along Fifty-third Street, a scraggly-haired young man was playing his guitar. A small crowd surrounded him.
    “Oh, look,” Smith said, sitting up. “There’s Lincoln.”
    Wetzon followed Smith’s pointed finger. Her chest compressed.
    “Lincoln? You mean Lincoln Farber?”
    “Yes.” Feet back into her Manolos. “Hurry and we’ll catch up to him.”
    “Don’t move,” Wetzon said, holding Smith down, keeping Smith in front of her, though there was no reason to any more as Lincoln Farber was no longer in sight.
    It didn’t matter.
    She was never going to be in the same room as Lincoln Farber because Lincoln Farber was the man in the gray Mercedes, the man who’d claimed to be her uncle, the man who was trying to kill her.

58
    “W HAT’S GOTTEN in to you?” Smith said, trying to shake off Wetzon’s iron grip and failing. “You’re hurting me.”
    “Smith, listen to me.” The wilderness was back. She fought to control it, one word at a time. “Lincoln Farber is the man who killed Carolyn Dorley and tried to kill me. He was at the site of the explosion.”
    “Oh, for pity sakes. You’ve lost your mind. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
    “This time you have to believe me. We’re not going up there. I’m calling Silvestri.” She released Smith and dug in her bag for her cell. “We can’t