Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

FBI?”
    “Judy Blue wouldn’t say. I’m hoping he was on the right side at the end. I have to.”
    “Listen, darlin’, for me, he’ll always be on the right side because he saved your life. Now enough of the serious stuff. Drink up, and let me tell you about my haul at Century 21.”
    It was not quite seven when Steve Levy arrived. She had met him only a few times, but had always liked him. He was an internist, a former ranking tennis pro, with a Park Avenue practice weighted with athletes and former athletes. A well built man in his late forties, Steve had curly brown hair and a tan that enunciated his white teeth and warm smile.
    Laura Lee watched him approach. “Well, look at this picture comin’ right toward us as if he knows us.”
    “He does. Not us, me.”
    “I thought you said—”
    “He wants to talk to me about Bill.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “No, I believe him.”
    “Leslie.” Steve took her hand and kissed her on the cheek.
    “This is my friend Laura Lee Day. Laura Lee, Dr. Steve Levy.”
    Pow! Wetzon blinked. She could feel the energy like an electric shock. They were shaking hands, eyes locked.
    “Hello, guys,” Wetzon said. “Laura Lee, don’t you have to leave?”
    “Oh, right.” Laura Lee smiled at Steve Levy. “ Falstaff .”
    “Really?” Steve Levy smiled Laura Lee. “I’m going to the Met tonight, too.”
    “You like opera?” Laura Lee asked in disbelief.
    “Love it.”
    “Get out of here, Laura Lee. I have the check.”
    Laura Lee grinned. “Okay. I’m sure we’ll run into each other again, Dr. Steve.”
    “Count on it, Laura Lee.” He sat down next to Wetzon and smiled at the naked nymphs. “I haven’t been here in ages. Stoly martini, straight up,” he told the bartender. Looked at her near empty glass. “Another, Leslie?”
    “No, I’m fine.” She waited. He drank his martini. She waited.
    “I wanted to talk to you about Bill,” he said at last.
    “Okay. Shoot.”
    “You’re angry.”
    “I don’t know what I am. He lied to me about everything, and then he saved my life.”
    “He loved you. He wanted to protect you.”
    She stared into her empty wine glass. “From what? His mob connections? His being broke? His son? God, Steve, he’d put his apartment on the market and sold his law firm and never said a word to me.”
    “He was dying, Leslie.”
    What had he said? She snapped around to him. “What?”
    “Lymphoma. Very aggressive. It’s why he took the Dooney Bellemore case, why he sold everything and moved to L.A.”
    “Oh, God, Steve, why didn’t he tell me? Did he think I would leave him because he was sick?” The tightness in her chest shattered into a thousand pieces.
    “You know him, Leslie, he wanted to be the big guy, the strong one, the one always in control. He could never show that he was weak. If he could he’d have gone up to the mountains when he thought he was close and waited it out like an Indian.”
    “Why are you telling me this now?” Sorrow forced her voice into a small place in her throat.
    “Not to make you feel guilty. He was my friend. I didn’t want you to remember him in a bad way.”
    “He saved my life, Steve. I’ll always remember how he looked in that instant.”
    She could smell the pizza before she even opened the door.
    “There you are,” Silvestri said, as Izz gave her a raucous greeting. He was wearing jeans and a singlet. Sexy, with his thick muscular arms.
    Think about the pizza, she told herself.
    “How’s Laura Lee?”
    “Good. Uncle Weaver had a second mistress in Shreveport, a stripper named Tomasina de Lay.”
    Silvestri’s laugh was full out.
    She dropped her briefcase and purse near the door, and kicked off her shoes. “I sent Lucy, the nurse at Mount Sinai, a check for a thousand, with my deepest apologies.”
    He gave her a searching look. “You okay?”
    She nodded. She’d packed sorrow away on her walk home. Zoey. Bill. The pain would recede in time and find its place in the fabric of her life, with the joys and other sorrows.
    The pizza went into the oven. He handed her a beer.
    “Silvestri.” Parking the beer on the counter, she put her arms around his waist, nestled her face in the hollow of his chest.
    He kissed the top of her head, her forehead. “It’s okay, Les. You don’t have to say anything.”
    “I love you, Silvestri. I have to say that. I never want you to go away again.”
    “Then you’ll have to promise me something.” His lips behind her ear made