The Deadliest Option (2 page)

The changeover that had begun in the late forties, after the war, reached a crescendo in 1981, when Sandy Weill sold Shearson Hammill, Hayden Stone, Faulkner, Dawkins & Sullivan, Loeb Rhoades, Hornblower Weeks, Noyes & Trask to American Express.

At the head table, the walrus Wetzon had seen outside the men’s room was seating himself next to Goldie Barnes, watching Chris’s every gesture with a bland expression and sharp eyes. His lips moved, but Wetzon found her view thwarted by an enormous pink peony that was part of the table’s floral decoration. Standing between Goldie and the fat man was Ellie Kaplan, Luwisher Brothers’s biggest producer. Ellie’s prematurely gray hair, blow-dried into a thick fringe, spilled over her face. She was wearing a long, glittery silver dress with a scoop of a neckline that hinted at rather than revealed cleavage. Goldie reached up and patted Ellie’s cheek. She had been the first woman broker hired by Luwisher Brothers, and Goldie had sponsored her. Ellie turned to the fat man, her lips curled; she seemed to be saying something derisive. The fat man removed a nasal inhalator from an inside pocket and breathed into it, one nostril at a time, ignoring Ellie. When she backed away from the table, Hoffritz and Bird quickly took her place. Hoffritz, with his slimy smile, pushed the drinks away from the table edge and leaned into Goldie. Bird put his arm around Goldie’s shoulder. Goldie shook it off.

So now the old order was changing again. Goldie Barnes had put the fusty, dusty, century-old Luwisher Brothers on the map as a contender for the big trading dollars in equities. He was a legend, and scuttlebutt on the Street was that Search and Destroy were forcing him out.

Wetzon looked over at Smith’s table. Smith was talking animatedly with an attractive white-haired man who looked a lot like Felix Rohatyn. Leave it to Smith to find the one man in the financial world Wetzon considered sexy.

Back at the head table, Goldie had shifted in his seat so that now Wetzon had a clear view. He was a giant in a tailor-made tux with a great shock of sun-streaked, white-blond hair, combed straight back like a mane. He looked every bit the Golden Lion, the name by which he was known on the Street, and not at all his acknowledged sixty-five years. Goldie got to his feet and was leaning across the table, a glass of bourbon in his hand, as he spoke to Chris Gorham. As she watched, she saw Chris stiffen, as if from a shock. The Lion shook his mane. A small smile played havoc with his jowly face and ended, rather like the MGM lion’s, in a growl.

The grossly fat man next to the Lion seemed to be immensely amused by the exchange. Goldie set his glass down. Chris made a sweeping gesture with his arm, as if to punctuate what he was saying, and knocked over several glasses, including Goldie’s bourbon and a water goblet. The fat man heaved himself up, but not before he’d gotten splashed with some of the water.

In the confusion, John Hoffritz and Destry Bird appeared and took their seats at the head table, while Chris, anxious and apologetic, signaled to a waiter, who came and mopped up the flood with a linen napkin.

Goldie sat down again and lifted a glass to his lips. He looked over at his wife who sat talking with Alton Pinkus, a member of the board of directors of Luwisher Brothers and a former executive with the AFL-CIO. Janet Barnes had a deep crease between her eyes and she was gesturing vigorously with her fork.

Ellie Kaplan finished her somewhat agitated conversation with a waiter whose back was to Wetzon, and slipped into her seat at the table almost at the same moment Chris yanked his chair back and sat down next to Wetzon. Chris was visibly upset; probably because Neil Munchen was seated at Goldie’s table.

“Something wrong?” Wetzon skewered a tiny shrimp. How strange and tense the atmosphere in the ballroom had gotten.

Chris started to speak but was interrupted by the sound of cutlery on a glass. Everyone turned to the head table.

Goldie Barnes took a healthy swallow from his glass of bourbon and followed it with a drink of water from the goblet in front of him. He slowly rose from his chair, a peculiar half-smile on his face.

“My friends, it truly grieves me to spoil your little celebration—” He stopped and coughed and looked up at the ceiling with its famous crystal chandeliers. Surely a joke was coming. The Lion, it was said, had a great sense of humor.

Wetzon’s eyes were diverted by a muffled moan to her right. Chris sat hunched down, neck into shoulders, his head bowed.

Someone gasped.

Wetzon looked back at Goldie Barnes. His arms were flailing.

Chris’s head spun around; he jumped to his feet.

Someone cried, “Goldie!”

“No!”

“Oh, my God!”

“Help him, somebody!”

The entire room rose almost as one. Goldie’s hands clawed at his throat. He was choking, gagging, making horrible noises. His face went from red to blue. He seemed to be dancing. With one final spastic movement, he pitched over onto the head table, amid glasses and plates. The floral arrangement flew to the floor. Diners scattered.

The table rocked violently, then crashed to the floor under the dead weight of Goldie Barnes.

T
HE AFTERNOON SUN
streamed through the open French doors and the heady scents of summer wafted into the room, tickling Wetzon’s nose. She sat with her feet on her desk, eyelids drooping, struggling to concentrate on Goldie Barnes’s extensive obituary in
The New York Times.

“Dishyonotherwashashon?” Smith’s mouth was packed full of Fig Newtons.

“Kindly translate that for me.” Wetzon looked up over the edge of the newspaper at her partner, who had the unmitigated gall to look as if she’d had eight hours of restful sleep and was perky and full of energy.

“Did-you-know-he-had-a-son?”

“Who?”

“Why are you being so obtuse? Goldie Barnes, of course. Who else?”

“No, I didn’t.” She skimmed the obituary. “Here it is. ‘Survivors ... Janet Barnes ... Goldman Barnes, II.’ ... Hey, he’s with L.L. Rosenkind. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Fathers and sons,” Smith said knowingly.

Wetzon nodded, half listening to Smith and half listening to the smooth way B.B.—their assistant, Bailey Balaban—was handling a cold call. He was getting really adept, zeroing in on some good prospects for Wetzon to follow up.

“It was cardiac arrest.”

“I think I heard he had severe asthma—oxygen tank everywhere he went, that kind of thing.”

The phone rang once, twice, a third time. Wetzon reached for it. “Smith and Wetzon.”

“What do we have B.B. for?” Smith grumbled.

Wetzon put her hand over the receiver. “He’s in the middle of a cold call.”

“Hi, Wetzon, it’s Sharon.”

“Do we have a Harold Alpert here?” Smith’s question was loud and rhetorical.

“Hi, Sharon, I’ve been trying to catch up with you.” Wetzon shook her head at Smith and swung her feet off the desk, swept the newspapers to the floor, and rifled through suspect sheets until she came up with Sharon Murphy’s.

“Sharon Murphy?” Smith mouthed.

Wetzon gave her a thumbs-up signal.

Harold Alpert appeared in the doorway, looking nervous and apprehensive. It was almost four years now since Harold had started with Smith and Wetzon as a summer intern, general factotum, and cold caller. They had made him a junior associate, but on the condition that he also back up B.B. when it got busy. Smith rose and waved Harold out into the garden.

“I think I’m ready to talk to people now, Wetzon.” Sharon had a husky, sultry voice that was an immensely successful sales tool—she could get people to listen to her. “Things are just awful here ... I guess you’ve heard.”

“Heard what?” Wetzon had heard there had been major defections in that branch office. It was a shame that she hadn’t had her hand in some of it. But you couldn’t be everywhere, and she had stopped beating herself up about it. No matter how good you were, some potential candidates always slipped through the cracks.

“Well, I don’t like to say too much—I think they’re taping our calls—but we’ve lost three really big producers here in the last six months, and Wally is suddenly taking managing the office very seriously.”

“If he doesn’t, he’s going to lose the office. The Street is full of managers looking for offices.” Since the Crash in October of 1987, the absorption of Hutton by Shearson, the sale of the retail division by Drexel, Pru-Bache’s purchase of Thomson McKinnon’s retail operation, and Drexel’s spectacular bankruptcy, the retail industry had shrunk considerably; managers had become a dime a dozen, and the firms could be—and were—increasingly particular. The major problem was that a great many of the managers were second-rate, couldn’t motivate, couldn’t recruit, and couldn’t close—that is, get a broker to commit to join. It was the continuing nightmare of a headhunter to have perfect candidates lined up and have the manager unable to write the ticket.

“Morale is horrible. Wally took me to lunch—to talk about my progress, he said, after ignoring me for the three years I’ve been here—and then all he did was talk about himself, how hard it is to keep everyone happy.”

“Let’s see ... you finished last year at three-fifty thou. What do you have in for the first five months this year?”

“Two-fifty.”

“Well, of course he’s going to take you to lunch. He should have taken you to Lutèce.”

“That cheap bastard. We went to the deli around the corner. He couldn’t get into Lutèce anyway. I don’t know, Wetzon. Just to go to another wire house—I don’t know. I think I need a very aggressive cold calling atmosphere, and I want upfront. I’m not going without money.”

“You could go to Luwisher Brothers—get into a cold calling set-up. Neil Munchen runs a good program with all the support and leads you can handle. But they don’t do upfront deals.”

“And they’re downtown. I just bought an apartment on Fifty-ninth Street. I want to walk to work. Taking the subway downtown every day will make me crazy. I’ll end up spending a fortune on cabs; besides, my therapist is uptown.”

“Okay, why not talk to Dayne Becker and Loeb Dawkins? You’ll get the deal you want and maybe you can factor in your own cold caller.”

“Oh, God, all right. Set me up before I chicken out. Do one this Wednesday about five and the other next Wednesday. Midtown. And not with the Dayne Becker manager you set me up with last year. I didn’t like him. He was too laid-back.”

“Yes, you’re right. He is. There’s a super young manager on Fifty-fourth and Fifth. You’ll like him.”

Wetzon hung up as Harold shuffled past her desk, eyes downcast, and returned to his tiny cubbyhole in their outer office. They had talked him into shaving off his beard, so he didn’t look like an Orthodox rabbi anymore, but with his mustache and his horn-rimmed glasses and his slouch, he was a dead ringer for Groucho Marx. She smothered a grin.

“Well?” Smith stood in the doorway to the garden.

“She wants an aggressive atmosphere and upfront.”

“They never know what they want, Wetzon. You should never listen to them. Just tell them.”

“Where did you go last night?” Wetzon was not about to let Smith get on her kick of how brokers constantly took advantage of her. “I looked for you after—”

Smith smiled a little cat smile. “Jake knows Janet Barnes from way back. Did you know she’s a Fingerhut?” She was scrutinizing her face in a hand mirror and plucked out a stray eyebrow hair.

“The liquor dynasty? No kidding.”

“They probably got all that booze last night wholesale.” Smith put the mirror and her tweezers in her desk drawer. “Maybe I’ll call her and offer my condolences. I knew Goldie fairly well....” Her voice trailed off.

She’s scheming
, Wetzon thought, watching Smith’s mind work,
click, click, click. She‘s thinking about whether Janet Barnes could be useful in some weird way.
Smith was determined to be part of New York’s social scene, and now that she was seeing Jake Donahue, she just might make it. Jake was a conjurer when it came to connections.

Wetzon took her jacket off and hooked it on the back of her chair. “Janet is probably in good hands with family and friends, Smith. And you hardly knew Goldie at all. Perhaps a note from both of us—”

Smith cut her off with a curt, “I’ll take care of it.” She hummed something under her breath. “You know, Wetzon, you’re getting to be a regular little black cloud. “ She wrinkled her fine nose and gave Wetzon a hard look. “Do you realize people keep dropping like flies all around you?” She adjusted the silk scarf at her throat.

“Do you really think so?” Wetzon tried to keep her tone light, but faltered. The same thought had been going through her mind. “Am I some kind of magnet who makes things happen? Or is it just this crazy business we’re in?” She found herself doodling a dagger on Sharon Murphy’s suspect sheet, then caught herself and erased it.

“Honestly, sweetie, I don’t think all these insider trading and fraud indictments have helped.”

“The public perception of brokers is awful, and lately some of the people we’re dealing with make me feel so grungy I want to wash after I talk to them.”

“Stop!” Smith held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear any of that. We’re in an insane business. Just remember, our motivation is to get the money out of their pockets and into ours.” She unwrapped a refill for her gold Cross pen and replaced the old one, tossing it clattering into her brass wastebasket. “But I have to tell you that for the first time since—”

“Please don’t say it.” She knew that Smith was going to mention the last time Wetzon had been involved in a murder, the winter of the big blizzard.

Smith nodded solemnly. “The cards, sweetie pie. I don’t know ... I can’t explain ... it’s a sense of something inevitable around you.” She smiled. “Now don’t get mad. I think you should consult a psychic.”

Wetzon groaned. “Oh, Smith, no. I don’t want to know. Can’t I just let it happen? I like surprises. That’s what makes life so damn much fun.” She meant it, too. “Besides, Goldie Barnes wasn’t murdered.” She looked down at her list of people she had to talk to.

“Humpf.” Smith was miffed. “Well, I’m just making a sincere suggestion. I’m afraid you’re in for some—”