The Deadliest Option Read Online Free PDF Page B

to say. No. Fuck it, just say we were shocked by Goldie Barnes’s untimely death and are finding it hard to believe that he was murdered.”
    Ellie, shaking with emotion, leaned on Wetzon as they left the room. “Like hell,” she said.

6.
    “O H, THEY KILLED him all right. They sit there so smug, dividing up the booty. Well, there wouldn’t be anything if it weren’t for him.”
    Ellie Kaplan set a folding makeup mirror on her cluttered desk, looked at her image, and grimaced. She ran a tortoise-shell comb through the thick tangles of her silvery hair. In her midforties, she was what people generally referred to as a handsome woman, with startling gray hair and thick coal-black eyebrows. Today, however, the skin around her dark eyes was swollen and mottled. She pressed some keys on her Quotron and stared into the machine.
    Wetzon sat in a comfortable club chair in front of Ellie’s desk. “You mean Goldie really was murdered? I thought it was heart failure, from the asthma.”
    “We all did.” Ellie brushed blusher on her face with a sable-haired brush, applied red lipstick, zipped everything back into a blue nylon pouch and dropped it and the mirror into the open drawer on her right. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Didn’t Hoffritz tell you? Does he think he can hide it? Or maybe he thinks if he ignores it, it’ll go away. The police were here this morning questioning everybody. They’re saying Goldie was murdered.” She stabbed at the keyboard again, raising more information. “Uh-huh ... up a quarter.... Excuse me, Wetzon. David!”
    The door opened with such speed that Wetzon felt whoever opened it had to have been standing and listening.
    “Ellie?”
    “David Kim—Wetzon.” Ellie didn’t look up from the machine.
    “Looking good, David,” Wetzon said.
    “So’re you, Wetzon.”
    They grinned at each other, both amused that Ellie didn’t remember how he’d gotten his job with her.
    For a fraction of a second, Ellie considered them, perplexed, then she clapped her forehead with two fingers. “How could I forget you two know each other? I’ve really lost it.”
    “How could she forget I’m responsible for your being here, David?” Wetzon smiled. “A freebee, too, I might add.”
    “I don’t know, Wetzon.” David’s tone was teasing.
    “Go ahead, you two, have a good time. I’ll just sit here and try to make money.” Ellie was watching the action on the Quotron out of the corner of her eye. “Up another eighth. I think we should begin taking people out.”
    “Did you see the volume?” David Kim was tall, lean, and Asian— Korean in fact—about twenty-five or -six. He reached over Ellie’s shoulder and tapped on the keyboard. She turned her face to him in a moment of such naked intimacy that Wetzon felt like a voyeur. Then it was gone. But it had been there.
    Wetzon stood. “You’re busy, so I’ll get going.”
    “Don’t go, Wetzon.” Ellie did not look up. “Stay a minute.” She had her thick client account book open and was studying it. “David, have Dwayne bring us coffee, okay? Get everyone out in the meantime, while I talk to Wetzon.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes.
    “Decaf, please, for me.” Wetzon sat down again.
    If David Kim resented the request, there was nothing in his face or demeanor to indicate it. He smiled at the women and closed the door behind him.
    Ellie sighed. “I’m so lucky to have him. I owe you, Wetzon.”
    If everybody who “owed” her on Wall Street were to pay off, Wetzon thought, she could retire in luxury. When Wetzon had first met David Kim, he was one of the math geniuses in the Columbia Ph.D. program. He’d been referred to her because he was looking for a part-time job to cover his expenses and give him some pocket money, and Wall Street was the obvious place for his talents.
    “Good will,” Dougie Culver had called it after Wetzon introduced David to Ellie, and Ellie had promptly hired him. “Think of it as