The Deadliest Option by Annette Meyers Read Free Book Online Page B

Carlos hated her business, felt it was heartless and sleazy. It was a bone of contention between them, so they tried not to talk about it. Or at least, Wetzon tried and he brought it up all the time. “Where are you heading?”
    “Up to Arthur’s.” He slipped his arm around her and grabbed her briefcase.
    “How is Arthur?” She made a halfhearted attempt to get her case back, then gave up.
    “Up to his pupick in trusts and estates. How is it with the sergeant?” They began walking up Broadway.
    “He made lieutenant.”
    “Nice. Now he can afford a wife.”
    She stopped and shook her finger at him. “Look at me, monster. Do you see me as wifey?”
    He stared at her, tilted his head back and around, and closed one dark, mischief-making eye, fluttering its eyelid. “Oh, I don’t know. You might look good in an apron.”
    “Don’t you dare say another word.” They began walking again, in time. “I just took a class—”
    “I could tell.”
    “How? And if this is another humorous remark at my expense you can forget about getting the afghan back in July.” They co-owned a red, white, and blue afghan they had crocheted together in honor of the bicentennial while they were dancing in Chicago for Bob Fosse in 1976. They had agreed to share it, each taking it for a year, and this was her year—at least until July 4th.
    “No, honestly, Birdie. You’ve totally lost your sense of humor since you went into business with the Barracuda.”
    “Don’t start.” Carlos and Smith loathed each other, and Wetzon made sure to keep them apart because together there were always dangerous fireworks.
    “Darling, it makes me crazy that you don’t see what a manipulating liar that woman is.” They were walking arm in arm, lefts together, rights together.
    “What’s new in your life?”
    “Changing the subject?”
    “Trying to.”
    “Okay. I quit—for now. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Let’s see, what’s new? Oh, well, la-di-da. I’m talking to Mort Hornberg about choreographing his new musical.”
    Wetzon pulled them to a stop. “La-di-da? That’s absolutely sensational!”
    Wetzon and Carlos had known each other since Wetzon’s first week in New York, where she had come to be a dancer. They’d met in a class, partnered each other in Broadway musicals, road tours, summer stock. They’d worked with Gower Champion, Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, and Ron Field, all gone now. As chorus dancers they’d moved from show to show, opening to closing, until Wetzon had met Smith. The meeting came at a time in Wetzon’s life when, having entered her thirties, she’d felt she didn’t want to be an aging gypsy. She was tired of scrimping and saving, tired of unemployment insurance and living in a tiny, dark apartment five flights up.
    Smith had proposed they go into business together and Wetzon had listened. That all seemed a hundred years ago. Now they were the most respected, possibly the best, of the headhunters that worked the Street. Wetzon had been able to move out of her five-flight walk-up and had bought her four and a half rooms on West Eighty-sixth Street.
    Carlos, too, had seen the handwriting of time on the wall. He knew there were few parts for aging male dancers, but he’d started a business while they were still doing twinkle toes over Broadway in the chorus of 42nd Street. Princely—for Carlos Prince—Service. Princely Service employed out-of-work gypsies and was so incredibly successful that soon enough Carlos was able to run the business from his Greenwich Village apartment, sending dancers out all over the city to clean homes, shop, get dinner started for Yuppies. Then, four years ago, Marshall Bart, who had started with them in the chorus and had become a choreographer, offered Carlos an opportunity to co-choreograph a new musical with him because Marshall was handling the director’s chores as well. The rest was history. Carlos was back in the theater, now as a full-time