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and Wetzon for ten thousand dollars.
    “Hey! They’ve put us on a retainer. No kidding. That’s terrific, Smith.”
    “No, sugar. Brokers are still contingency. This is for something a lot more interesting.”
    Wetzon felt that familiar little hot coal burning her midsection. “Smith, what have you gotten us into?”
    “Listen, Wetzon, with our experience—”
    “Our experience?”
    “Well, I told them it was your suggestion. You have contacts ... knowledge from previous murder cases. They want us to find the murderer before the police do.”
    “Oh, no, Smith, you—”
    Smith smiled triumphantly. “They’ve hired us to find out who killed Goldie Barnes.”

7.
    “I CAN ’ T GIVE him a thirty-five-hundred-dollar guarantee for three months. Not with the figures he gave me. I need his runs.”
    “Did you ask him for them?” Wetzon expertly kept the exasperation she felt out of her voice.
    “Well, no. I thought you could do that.”
    “Okay, I will, but let me make a suggestion. Let’s be creative. If you can’t offer him thirty-five hundred, and he loves the higher payout on the back end as an incentive bonus, which he tells me he does, why not make it all incentive? What if he can keep a hundred percent of his gross for the first two months, then eighty percent for the next two months, then sixty percent for the rest of the year? It’s a guarantee that he’ll work his butt off.”
    “Say, Wetzon, that’s really good. I never thought of that. I’ll try it.”
    Wetzon hung up the phone and screamed. “What’s worse than a broker who won’t move?”
    “A manager who can’t close,” B.B. and Harold chanted dutifully, this being Wetzon’s big bugaboo.
    Smith turned a baleful face to them. “Close the door behind you, please.” She flipped her hand in a dismissing motion.
    “Hold on,” Wetzon said. “Just remember we’re looking for the new Luwisher profile, whatever that is. Let’s start putting a file together of people who fit. We’ll prepare a spiel and start pitching them tomorrow.”
    “What’s the matter with today?” Smith’s tone was borderline belligerent. She stamped across the space of the office they shared, which had been the dining room of the nineteenth-century brownstone, gave Harold an extra little push across the saddle, and firmly shut the door. The front room, where once there had been a large kitchen and pantry, as well as entrance hall, was their modest reception area. It held B.B.’s desk, a small loveseat, and three narrow chairs. A cubicle of privacy had been created for Harold.
    The southern wall of Smith and Wetzon’s office was all windows and French doors leading to a garden, where they lunched in fair and middling weather from the first sign of spring to the first nip of autumn. The white iron furniture had been resprayed that spring and looked regal amid the reds and pinks of the tulips and the thick vines of purple wisteria that climbed the brick walls separating their garden from the houses to the right and left.
    “What’s the matter with starting the calls today, may I ask?” Smith said again, coming to stand beside Wetzon who was enjoying the garden.
    Wetzon narrowed her eyes at her partner. “God, you’re grouchy. That’s what happens when you load up on caffeine and don’t eat. Let’s sit outside and talk.” She took her straw hat with the tall daisy decoration from the shelf over her desk and opened the multi-windowed door. “I’m hungry and our sandwiches have to be getting soggy.” They had stopped on their way back to the office at their favorite sandwich shop, What’s Cooking, and picked up chicken salad with broccoli and dill on pita bread. “If we don’t eat, I’m going to be as bad-tempered as you.”
    “You are absolutely right, sweetie pie.” Smith’s mood turned suddenly sunny. “Here, I’ll take everything out and you get the plates.” She gathered up the various paper bags efficiently, including her Diet Coke and