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good will, Wetzon, and we’ll make it up to you on a real placement.”
    “What’s not real about David Kim, Dougie?” she’d asked. Make it up to you sounded a lot like I’ll take care of you, honey , and it raised her hackles.
    “You’re the best, Wetzon,” Dougie had said, and so it remained, in lieu of payment.
    Ellie pushed the account book aside. “David has a real instinct for options. I’ve brought him in as a junior partner. That is, he has his own accounts and he helps me with mine. He’s terrific at working out strategies and spreads.... I don’t know, it’s almost mystical.”
    “Do you really think one of them killed Goldie?”
    “Oh, no, I didn’t mean really killed him. Goldie had such bad asthma. He had an oxygen tank in his office, for godsakes. Look, it couldn’t have been murder, but those animals—Search and Destroy—” Ellie’s laugh was acerbic. “Those buzzards were forcing him out and he wasn’t going to go quietly.”
    Hoffritz had said that in almost the same words when Smith and Wetzon had been eavesdropping.
    Their coffee was delivered by Ellie’s sales assistant, a slim young man with a bit of a swish. “Hi!” he said, smiling at Wetzon as if he knew her.
    “Thanks, Dwayne. This is Wetzon—”
    “I know.”
    “Anyway,” Ellie didn’t even wait for Dwayne to leave the room before she continued, sitting back in her chair, arms behind her neck. “I’m going to miss Goldie horribly. He was my mentor; he got me started in this business. I used to be a teacher, you know. I taught Twoey at Fieldston.”
    “Twoey?”
    “Goldman Barnes, the second. He couldn’t say his name when he was a baby so he called himself Twoey, and it stuck. Oh, what the hell....” She’d started crying again.
    The phone buzzed. Sniffling, Ellie picked it up. “Yes. No. Let David take care of him. No calls until Wetzon leaves.”
    “Who is that fat man? Dr. what’s-his-face.”
    “Ha! Dr. Carlton Ash, that fat fuck. He’s got the same degree I have—in education—and I don’t call myself doctor.” She stood up and opened the door to a small coat closet. There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the door, and she looked at herself critically. “I look like hell.” She closed the door and sat down at her desk. “He’s with Goodspeed Associates.”
    “Goodspeed? The consulting company?”
    “Yes. The fat fuck’s written some kind of efficiency report. Search and Destroy hired him. Goldie was really upset about it. We’ve always made money the old-fashioned way, he said.” She laughed. “Hoffritz and Bird had other ideas.” She took a sip of coffee and crushed her cigarette stub in the Steuben ashtray. “Drink up, Wetzon. We may be able to do some business together.”
    “Ellie, I can’t take you out of Luwisher Brothers. You’re with a client firm.”
    “You can if I ask you to. Chances are, I’m going to get out of here one way or the other.” She lit another cigarette. “They’re up to something. I know it. Carlton Ash has been walking his fat ass around here for the last six months with his little notepad, making notes in some kind of code.”
    “Code? How do you know it’s a code?”
    “David. He’s very good at nosying around.”
    “So do you think one of them could have killed Goldie to get him out of the way?”
    “Hell, no. Listen, they’re good ole boys, real slime, but they’re not stupid. They were demanding Goldie sell his stock back. They were putting on the pressure, and he was fighting back and his asthma was kicking up. Jesus, he was in the hospital twice in the last three months. So then comes what Goldie called the night of the long knives, the night before the dinner. They got that flake Janet involved, and she wanted to protect Twoey’s interests, and then those Southern boys got out their honed steel.” She tilted her head back and finished her coffee, set the cup on the desk and parked her cigarette on the saucer. “Funny ... he