18.

THE ONLY AREAS that were manageable on foot were the streets, which had been, and continued to be, snowplowed and sanded by giant white tanks, and this was where she walked now. Wetzon had agreed to meet Teddy Lanzman at Ernie’s on Broadway and Seventy-fifth Street, a noisy yuppie restaurant.

Wetzon, wrapped to the nines, a scarf over her trusty beret and another around her neck, felt as if she were Nanook of the North. She carried an umbrella from which she had to shake snow off every few yards. Thankfully, the strong northwest wind seemed to have abated.

Only two people were in line for cash at the Citibank cash machines at Eighty-sixth and Broadway. Usually the line overflowed out into the street. Otherwise, no cars and few pedestrians, only good old crazy Leslie Wetzon.

She and Teddy Lanzman went way back. They had been mildly attracted to each other at one time, but nothing physical had ever happened between them. She was either a no-man woman or a one-man woman and she didn’t want to obfuscate what she had with Silvestri.

The top of her umbrella dipped inward. She swung it around and down, opening and closing it rapidly to shake off the snow. Two skiers gave her muffled greetings as they passed her on the right, cross-country skiing down Broadway. They were so covered it was hard to tell if they were male or female or one of each.

She felt a weird sensation that if she kept walking she’d enter a different time zone. Turn of the century, perhaps. Except for the streetlights and infrequent snowplows, the city was cast in that eerie yellow-gray light. Under the streetlamp near Zabar’s she shook out her umbrella again. In the window was a huge hammered copper stockpot, almost a cauldron. A hand-scrawled sign on white cardboard in black ink said, “This pot was custom-made for a celebrity couple, but they split up. Their loss is your gain.” She laughed. Now who would that be? The West Side was full of celebrity couples. For that matter, New York was full of celebrity couples in various stages of coupling and uncoupling.

By the time she arrived at Ernie’s, it had stopped snowing.

Teddy was at the bar talking to three men in their forties wearing ABC Sports sweatshirts, as if he knew them well. The bartender, a beefy, brawler type with a Caribbean suntan, was drinking a beer and sharing a laugh with them.

Near the wide front window facing Broadway an elderly couple were intently winding pasta up on spoons. On the other side of the bar four young women were shrieking with laughter while a fifth was telling a story. Except for those few diners and the hostess and two waiters, the cavernous place was empty.

Teddy waved at her as she unwound the scarf from her head and pulled off the beret. His eyes were bright and she could tell he’d had a few drinks. “Here’s my girl,” he said to the ABC Sports men, loud enough for her to hear. He put some bills down on the bar and came toward her. Tall and striking, he was wearing a cream-colored Aran sweater over a blue-checked shirt. The light color of the sweater drew attention to his high cheekbones, large, strong nose with its narrow bridge, square chin, short wavy black hair, and dark brown skin. The combination of Caucasian features and brown tones made his skin look stained like a fine piece of mahogany. In the right costume he could have passed for an Arab prince, which was a laugh because Teddy Lanzman was Jewish.

“You are a sight for sore eyes,” he said, “if you’ll forgive the cliché.” He bent and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “You are indeed.” He looked at her as if he could see how she felt about Silvestri and she blushed. “I don’t know, must be the weather or the light in here, but you just turned a hot-pink before my eyes.”

They were seated at a table near the five women, who turned to stare as Teddy passed. He was a stunner, that was for sure, and now he was a local celebrity. Wetzon had forgotten what it was like to be with him.

“So who’s the man?” Teddy asked. He ordered two Heinekens when their waiter put a basket of rolls on the table. “You’re still Heineken, aren’t you?” he asked after the fact.

She nodded. “How do you know there’s a man?”

“Oh come on, it’s obvious. I hope he’s not a stockbroker.”

“He’s not.” She pulled a salt stick from the basket and broke it in pieces.

“Won’t talk, huh?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. Too new.”

“Well, I’m with someone, too. And you two have something in common.”

“And what would that be?”

“Not telling till you tell.”

They ordered pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and fried zucchini, and Wetzon thought, there’s something different about him. What is it?

He was staring at her. “God, Wetzi, nothing changes. We don’t see each other, but the chemistry’s still there. We can just pick up where we left off.”

“I know. I was thinking that just now.” She buttered the salt stick pieces and put one in her mouth. It was crisp and the salt melted on her tongue. “I wanted to ask you about this feature you’re doing on the elderly.”

“Yeah. It’s really something when you get into it. It’s an Emmy maker. I’m getting off on it.”

“Did you do the research yourself?”

“Most of it. I have an assistant who did some. Why?”

“I know what it is,” she said. “You’re not smoking.”

He laughed and slapped the tablecloth. “What a memory. My lady doesn’t like it. Stopped cold turkey two months ago.”

“Fantastic,” she said. “Smart lady. Sorry for the digression.” She told him about Peepsie Cunningham and Ida.

“You don’t think it was suicide?” His voice seemed loud. He looked around. A black man in a dark blue parka came into the restaurant and sat at the bar.

She shook her head. Their dinners arrived, steaming. “Peepsie was terrified about something—”

“Listen, I’ve seen Alzheimer people. I’ve talked to them. Some of them are docile, some are hostile, and some are scared—really scared— they don’t know what’s happening to them.”

“I think it may have been that, but I’m sure there was more.”

“Okay.” He spun some fettuccini on his fork and ate it. “Delicious,” he said, rolling every syllable.

“She has—had—tons of money. Enough to have a home care person, who might not have been too trustworthy. The problem is, she didn’t make much sense.”

“Not enough to go on. I’d listen to what’s-his-face—O’Melvany, what a name. Wait till the autopsy results are in—” She was disappointed and couldn’t hide it. “Look, Wetzi, I’m reporting on the best and the worst home care situations. Lately there’s been a rash of beatings, robberies, murders, even. These people are helpless. No families, or families that don’t give a damn. They’re housebound, bedbound.” He shook his head. “I never want to get old. Let me die while I still have it all.”

“It doesn’t seem to matter, does it, whether they have money or not? Helpless is helpless.”

“Sometimes.” He answered a salute from the three ABC Sports boozers at the bar. They were heaving on their coats. “Actually, the rich, like your Peepsie Cunningham, have other problems. Where is their money? How is it being invested? What about jewelry and other valuables? You’re right about that. They can be ripped off, too.” He dipped a piece of roll into the tomato sauce. “But money helps. You can’t believe the poverty some of these people live in. A lot are in public housing, living on less than five thousand a year. No one wants to know about them. They’ve outlived friends, family. They smell, they’re ugly, they whine, or they cry. Those that can get around are frail, on walkers, some can’t hear, can’t see well. Jesus, it’s depressing. Everyone would like them to disappear.”

She told him about Hazel, about her theory about having young friends. “Hazel is definitely not depressing.”

“She sounds great. Do you think she’d do an interview?”

“I’ll bet she’d love it. I’ll introduce you. She’s so full of life, she always makes me feel good.” But Wetzon frowned. Something teased at her memory.

The waiter cleared the table and rattled off desserts, including a sinfully decadent chocolate cake, which Wetzon ordered, along with brewed decaf. Teddy ordered bread pudding and regular coffee.

Two young men came in, boisterous from the snow, stamping their boots on the floor. The bartender seemed to know them. The black man at the bar moved down a couple of stools. He looked at his watch. He’d been waiting a long time for someone who was delayed or not coming.

“So how’s the headhunting business?” Teddy’s eyes had followed hers to the bar and then back. The waiter returned with their coffee and desserts and a soup plate heaping with whipped cream.

“Business is good. Fine, in fact. The stock market goes up; the stock market goes down. It doesn’t seem to matter. A lot of people are making huge amounts of money. It’s ludicrous, isn’t it, that most of the people I deal with have trouble living on a hundred thou a year?”

“Ah, the perils of capitalism,” he said, grinning, putting sugar in his coffee. “What about the insider-trading scams? Has that affected your business?”

“Not really. My area is retail sales, brokers who sell stocks and bonds and products to the individual investor. Less can go wrong there, but that doesn’t mean crooked things don’t happen. Brokers churn accounts, trade a lot for commission dollars. Clients who don’t know better think it’s okay if the market is bull and they’re making money, but the minute the market turns down, all those fat commission charges and losses bring lawsuits. I just had a broker rejected by a firm because he had chalked up thirty thousand dollars’ worth of commissions on a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar account of a retired schoolteacher.”

“Jesus!” Teddy spooned whipped cream from the bowl, dousing his bread pudding. “I just can’t see you in that cruddy business, Wetzi.”

“Listen, Teddy.” She pulled out of her buried mental files of useless information what she had been trying to recall. “I interviewed a broker the other day who is in some kind of trouble. He said there was a scam at his firm, using the elderly.”

“Oh yeah? I’d like to hear more about that. What firm? What’s the scam?”

“I can’t tell you the firm or the broker’s name without breaking confidentiality, Teddy. And he wouldn’t tell me the scam.”

Teddy groaned. “Christ, Wetzi, don’t do that to me. I’m a reporter, and that’s a tease.”

She was contrite. “It’s very involved. He told me he was working for the FBI and that’s as far as it went.”

“Can you get him to talk to me?”

“I’ll try.”

He dug into his shirt pocket for a small piece of paper from a two-by-three-inch pad. “Why don’t you just give me his name and I’ll call him. He won’t have to know where it came from.”

“I can’t do that, Teddy, but I’ll call him on Monday and see if I can get you together.” She felt terrible. “Don’t be mad at me, please. I want to ask you for a favor.”

“Quid pro quo?” Teddy said, pressing her.

She shook her head. “No commitment right now. First listen to what I want.”

“Okay.” He put up his hands, surrendering.

“Are you working tomorrow?”

“I have the Community Affairs Show at nine-thirty. It’s live.”

“And after that?”

“I’m all yours. What’ll you have?”

“I want you to come to Brighton Beach with me—”

The table shook with his sudden movement. Coffee cups overflowed coffee into their saucers. A fork fell to the floor. The black man at the bar looked up and caught Wetzon’s eyes briefly, then looked away.

“Oh, baby, you are crazy. You figure you’re going to look for Ida, the vanished home care person. Isn’t that like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack?”

“Maybe. Will you come with me?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned. She could see his mind working. “Possibly ... If I can get a company car. I’m not going all the way out there by subway and neither are you. We’re in the middle of a blizzard. Trains will be sporadic because they’re aboveground out there. The tracks will be a mess.”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to say another word. Do you think you can get a car?”

“Of course. I’ll pick you up in front of your building at eleven tomorrow, and we’ll do Little Odessa. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere. These Russians stick together.” He grinned at her again. “But it’ll give me plenty of time to work you over and get that name out of you.”

The name, she thought.

The dense chocolate of her cake was cloying, much too sweet. She pushed her plate away, slightly nauseated. The name of the broker was Russian. Tormenkov. Peter Tormenkov.