Tender Death (5 page)

P
ETER
T
ORMENKOV WAS
late, which was no surprise. Brokers were always late. She spent her life waiting for brokers. She had left her name and Tormenkov’s with the hostess and asked to be seated at a table near the skating rink.

“Decaf coffee, please,” she told the waitress. “Someone else will be coming and we’ll order then.” The waitress left two menus and returned immediately with a small pot of coffee and a basket of mixed muffins. Wetzon took a sip of the coffee—it was scalding hot—and slipped out of her scarf and coat, carefully removing the beret so as not to mess her topknot. She rubbed the tips of her cold ears to warm them.

The cafe was nearly empty, but soon it would begin to fill up for the “power breakfast” meetings that went on all over the city. It was her favorite early meeting place in midtown because it was less frenetic than the Rendezvous or the Drake or even the Crystal Fountain in the Grand Hyatt.

A motorized unit like a combination vacuum cleaner and lawn mower was being driven over the ice on the rink, readying it for the early skaters. The tentative flurries from earlier that morning had become the real thing, scattering in the quickening northwest wind.

Smith was going to be irate if the weather ruined her party. She had been planning this party for weeks.

Voices caught her attention as two people were being seated near her. A very attractive, light-skinned black woman, perhaps about Wetzon’s age, impeccably dressed in a black Chanel knit suit, a mink-lined coat over her shoulders, and a younger man, bearded, wearing a foreign-looking brown fur hat and a long L.L. Bean coat over a business suit.

“Ms. Wetzon?” a man in a tan raincoat asked, looking around the cafe at the other tables. He was tall, very thin, with curly brown hair badly in need of cutting, and very young. He had a barely discernible accent. Eastern European, perhaps.

“Peter?” Smiling, Wetzon put out her hand. He had a limp, damp handshake. “You must be cold. How about some coffee right away and then we’ll order.”

A second pot of coffee and a basket of sweet rolls arrived with speed.

“I really appreciate your seeing me on such short notice, Ms. Wetzon,” Tormenkov said nervously. Under the raincoat he was wearing a finely tailored blue pin-striped suit, rather like Wetzon’s, and a crisp white cotton shirt.

“Everyone calls me Wetzon, without the Ms.,” she said, trying to put him at ease. “Howie tells me you’re a winner.”

“Howie? Oh yeah, right, Howie Minton.” He fiddled with a sugar packet, opened it, refolded it, opened it again, and emptied it into his coffee.

“Let’s order so we can talk,” she suggested, impatient to move the interview along.

He ordered scrambled eggs and bacon and she ordered her usual, yogurt and fresh fruit. After the waitress left, Wetzon said, “You didn’t tell me very much about yourself on the telephone. How can I help you?”

“You know I’m at L. L. Rosenkind ...”

She nodded. Two aging, overweight skaters came out on the ice and began a waltz, spinning and twirling effortlessly around the rink.

“We are basically ... you know ... a stock and bond house, and I do a good clean business ...”

They all say that, Wetzon thought. The next thing he would say is that he did a lot of listed business. She waited for him to begin again, but he stared down at his blueberry muffin, mute.

“So you do a mix of both stocks and bonds?” she prompted.

“Oh no, I do a lot of ... you know ... listed stock, you know ... the Dow stocks and ... you know ... options. No bonds.”

“What did you do before you came to L. L. Rosenkind?” If he said “you know” again, she would go mad.

“I was with a penny stock house. Randall, Patchin. You heard of them?”

“Yes.” Randall, Patchin was a disreputable firm that was constantly in trouble with the SEC, always on the verge of being closed down.

“I know,” Tormenkov said, reading her face. “I know what you think of Randall, Patchin. I thought so, too, but no one else would give me a job on Wall Street, so I went there and I left as soon as I could get another job.”

Wetzon nodded. She had met many brokers who had started their careers in bad houses and had succeeded at the majors, but many brokers from the penny houses could not make the transition. They were unable to sell the quality stock and product. “And where were you before Randall, Patchin?”

“Brooklyn College.”

“Major, business administration?” Of course.

“And economics.”

The waitress placed their breakfast orders on the table unobtrusively and left.

“How long have you been with Rosenkind, then?”

“About a year. I worked ... you know ... as a cold caller at Lehman ... you know ... six months before that....” Tormenkov smeared thick gobs of butter on his toast and talked with his mouth full of egg. “I wanted to stay there and be a ... you know ... broker, but they said to go ... you know ... somewhere else and ... you know ... build up a book and come back.”

“Why did you choose Rosenkind? You probably could have gone to Merrill or Dean Witter or any of the big houses with a training program.”

“Well, you know ... I didn’t finish at Brooklyn. I only did two years. They all want college degrees, so ... you know ... my uncle knew some guy at Rosenkind through the union. My uncle is a glazier. Anyway, you know ... he was going to help me get started.”

“And?” It was taking Tormenkov forever to get to the point. If he sold stock that way, he would never make it, she thought.

“He did. But he ... you know ... I can’t stay there anymore.” He wiped up the residue of egg on his plate with the remainder of his toast.

“Why? Can you be more specific? If I’m going to represent you to a client firm, Peter, I have to know everything. Do you have any customer complaints against you? Any compliance problems?”

He shook his head. “No. My U4 is clean”

“Then why do you want to leave? They will ask when you interview elsewhere. What will you say?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said, finally lifting his eyes from his plate and looking directly at her for the first time. “I can’t stay there.”

“What do you want to do, then?” Wetzon’s sixth sense told her there was something wrong with him. “Unless you want to diversify your business, you won’t be happy at a big firm. If you want to stick to stocks and options, you’re better off with Bear, Oppenheimer, or Lehman. What is your trailing twelve in gross?”

He frowned.

“I mean,” she said patiently, “what is your gross production for the last twelve months?”

Tormenkov stood abruptly. “Would you excuse me for a minute?”

“Of course,” she said, feeling a chill. Every time a broker left her in the middle of a meeting these days, she thought of Barry Stark. She felt, irrationally, that he would never come back, or worse, be as dead as Barry was when she went looking for him. Don’t be a fool, she scolded herself, Pete Tormenkov had left his coat. Much difference that made. Barry, after all, had left his attaché case.

Come on, Wetzon, old girl. Get out of this. She focused on the skaters, weaving and dipping to music she couldn’t hear. The older couple were still waltzing, stopping here and there to execute self-conscious little turns, aware they were attracting an audience. A young girl did a lovely pirouette.

“David, you have to keep an open mind,” she heard someone say in a warm but professional tone. “Talk to them and see for yourself. They are getting top-quality work. S and C is referring work to them.”

A murmured response came from David. Wetzon turned her head slightly, trying to find the speaker. There were certain code words, phrases, that headhunters used: “keep an open mind,” “see for yourself,” “test the waters,” “explore the possibilities,” and her all-time favorite, “you owe it to yourself.”

“Don’t let someone else make a judgment for you,” the female voice continued, persuasively. “You owe it to yourself—”

Bingo
, Wetzon thought.

“Okay,” the man said. “I’ll check it out. How does it work? I’ve never done this before.”

“I know they’re looking for an ’85 litigator with your kind of credentials, so I’m going to send your resumé to Larry Simpson, the hiring partner—”

“I’m sorry,” Peter Tormenkov said, pulling out his chair and sitting.

Wetzon, almost disappointed he’d returned, shifted in her chair and saw that the people whose conversation she was eavesdropping on were the attractive black woman and her younger companion.

“So, Peter Tormenkov,” Wetzon said, giving him her full attention again. “I’d like to let you get back to work. Let’s talk about what you want to do.”

“Well ... you know ... I can’t do anything ... you know ... right now. I got ... you know ... this deal I’m working on....” he said, doing a complete about-face. “I’m not supposed to ... you know ... talk about it.”

“I thought you couldn’t stay there? Now you’ve decided to stay?”

“Yes.” Tormenkov didn’t look at her.

“Okay. You have to do what you have to do.” Why was she sitting here wasting her time talking to him? She was feeling decidedly ungracious.

He checked out the restaurant elaborately, then he pulled his chair closer to hers. “Can you keep ... you know ... this confidential?”

“That’s part of my job, Peter,” she said, smiling through clenched teeth. “I wouldn’t be around very long if I didn’t keep confidences.” She looked at her watch. Eight forty-five. God, what a bore. Time to cut this short. Tormenkov was clearly in some kind of trouble, so he was sure to be unplaceable. She would not earn a fee on this one. Smith had been right.

Tormenkov cupped his hand to his mouth. “I’m working for the FBI.”

She snapped up, eyes wide. This was a new one. “What did you say?”

“It’s a scam. I was ... you know ... contacted by this group ... you know ... they work as nurses’ aides for these ... you know ... senile old people ...”He glanced around nervously, as if he thought perhaps the skaters beyond the pane of glass could hear him. “I better not say ... you know ... anything more. It’s a secret. I just called them and they said ... you know ... I can’t leave ... I gotta work for them until it’s over ... I could lose my license ... if I didn’t.” He was on his feet again, shrugging into his coat. “I thought maybe ... you know ... after ... you could ...” His voice trailed off.

“Why don’t you call me when your work with the FBI is finished,” she said. This was a new bit of craziness. Just the thought of the FBI using this twit as an operative made her dizzy. And she’d thought she’d heard everything. Brokers tended to overdramatize the already theatrical situation of brokering. The whole business was built on the grand story, the pitch, the hyperbole, the exaggeration. You couldn’t take any of it too seriously.

“Thanks for breakfast,” he said. At least he left without you knowing her one last time.

“Whew. Have some breakfast, Wetzon,” she murmured, watching Tormenkov weave gracelessly around the busy tables. She dug a strawberry out of her yogurt and poured the remaining coffee from the little pot into her cup. Outside, a teacher was giving a lesson to a slim man in a heavy hand-knit ski sweater, who stood stiffly erect on his skates. The wind blew powdery snow indiscriminately over the hardy few.

She dreaded going back outside, but procrastinating only made it worse. She put her credit card on the bill and the waitress, who had been watching, came and took everything away.

“Hello, excuse me, I couldn’t help recognizing—”

Wetzon looked up and into the dark, lively eyes of the woman from the next table. Her probable comrade-in-arms. The woman smiled and put out her hand. “Diantha Anderson,” she said.

“Leslie Wetzon.” Wetzon took her hand. “I recognized a few familiar phrases here and there myself.”

“Lawyers,” Diantha Anderson said, smiling, presenting her card. She wound a long lime-green cashmere scarf around her head and neck.

“Stockbrokers,” Wetzon said, rising, presenting her own card.

“Can I drop you?” Diantha Anderson said. “My office is in the Chanin Building on Forty-second and Lex.”

“No thanks, wrong direction. My office is at Forty-ninth, off Second.”

Diantha Anderson nodded. “Well, nice to meet you, Leslie. Let’s have a drink sometime and talk shop.”

“I’d like that,” Wetzon said. “I’ll call you.”

They shook gloved hands and parted on Fifth Avenue, where Diantha Anderson got into a cab and Wetzon, brushing off the dry snow from her coat, strode off eastward to her office.