The Deadliest Option Read online

  “Ms. Meyers clearly knows whereof she rips to shreds. In between theatrically executed murders, she imparts solid inside information about the business of brokering, as well as acidic commentary on the personal ethics of all the players.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Ms. Meyers, a Wall Street insider, fills her books with irresistible details about life among the big-money movers and shakers. The Deadliest Option is the most suspenseful and engaging effort yet in this series.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “Wall Street headhunters and occasional sleuths Smith and Wetzon are back in this splendid, entertaining mystery”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Deadliest Option

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition, 1991

  Bantam paperback edition, 1992

  Baker & Taylor, Replica Books, hardcover edtion, 1998

  Baker & Taylor, Replica Books, trade paper edition, 2001

  Copyright © by Annette Brafman Meyers 1991, 2012

  eBook edition, 2012

  ISBN (Kindle) 978-1-936441-48-8

  Cover Design: Allison Black

  THIS ONE IS FOR “THE GIRLS”:

  Rita, Dorothy, Anne, Goldie, and Annette

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Books by Annette Meyers

  My thanks to William Dvorine, M.D., Shirley Herz, Michael Levy, M.D., Linda Ray, Philip Rinaldi, Cathi Rosso, Chris Tomasino, Howard Weiss, Victor Gotbaum, Kathy Schrier. Marty, always. And Kate Miciak, the best.

  “I was raised to know the difference between right and wrong. I knew it wasn’t right not to tell the truth about those things. But I didn’t know it was unlawful.”

  OLIVER L. NORTH

  “The secret of success is getting the money out of their pockets into ours.”

  XENIA SMITH

  Partner, Smith and Wetzon

  1.

  “OVER MY DEAD body!”

  This verbal explosion was followed by a thump of such force that the gold-leafed mirror shook, as if someone were being shoved into the wall behind it. Wetzon’s eyes widened as her reflected image undulated in the glass; her body jerked back, for it seemed as if the argument would burst into the ladies’ room where she had come to fix her face. The scuffle—or whatever it was—was coming from the men’s room next door. Another loud thud and angry voices. Then an ominous quiet.

  The mirror covered the wall almost completely so that there was not one bare space to which she could put her curious ear. Frustrated, she watched her reflection wrinkle into a frown. “Curiosity killed the cat,” she told it.

  The door opened and a woman in a red, off-the-shoulder taffeta gown came in. Janet Barnes. Wife of Goldie Barnes, the Lion of Wall Street, chairman of Luwisher Brothers, and honoree of this evening’s dinner. A huge red bow covered Janet’s ample right bosom and most of her right arm. She swept past Wetzon to the stalls.

  The loud voices and the scuffling started up again suddenly, subsiding into a low rumble from a new voice.

  Hastily, Wetzon picked up her tiny silk clutch purse and escaped.

  Dead cat or not, she had to see who they were. She knew almost everyone here tonight; the argument had to be between people she knew.

  She parked herself unobtrusively behind a wide, pink marble column and watched the door to the men’s room, hoping she hadn’t missed whoever they were. Nosy, Wetzon, she said to herself, grinning. She was rewarded almost immediately by the appearance of the old man himself, Goldie Barnes, emerging from the men’s room, his face florid with anger, chest heaving under his pleated white dress shirt. At his heels was Neil Munchen, Goldie’s protégé, who ran the telemarketing—the fancy name for cold calling—floor for Luwisher Brothers. Neil had what looked like a faint reddish welt on his cheekbone. They walked off in the opposite direction from Wetzon’s column, toward the grand ballroom.

  She was trying to decide whether to move up behind them, when out of the men’s room came Christopher Gorham, manager of the other retail floor at Luwisher Brothers and Wetzon’s date for the evening; John Hoffritz, managing director, to whom Chris and Neil reported, known to the brokers as “Search”; and Destry Bird, third in line, not so affectionately known as “Destroy.”

  How infinitely curious. There had been some kind of pow-wow in the men’s room and whatever had ensued was not very nice. The three men, like three penguins in dinner jackets, paused in front of the door. Wetzon inched around the column, dying to know what was being said. Then, as if it were one of those circus cars with all the clowns, the men’s room door opened and yet one figure more emerged—a man like a walrus, fat and waddly, his black bow tie askew. Someone she didn’t know. As if they’d been waiting for him, the penguins opened their huddle to include the walrus. Curiouser and curiouser.

  “Sweetie pie, there you are!”

  Damnation. Depend on Smith to barge in, interrupt her eavesdropping, and even call attention to it.

  “What are you doing hiding behind that column?”

  The three penguins snapped to attention, guarded eyes in frozen faces, and the walrus faded into gray as Smith captured Wetzon’s hand and pulled her from behind the pink marble column into full view.

  2.

  “WHERE ON EARTH did you disappear to?”

  Xenia Smith, tall, slim, and glowing in her burnished gold Carolyne Roehm gown, was the other half of Smith and Wetzon, the executive search and management consulting firm that the two women had started six years earlier. “Don’t you know you should never leave a
n attractive man like Chris Gorham?”

  Had she not noticed Chris in the group outside the men’s room? Obviously not.

  “Actually,” Wetzon said, tongue in cheek, “I’ve been following Chris around so that other women can’t get at him. Now you’ve ruined everything. Didn’t you just see him come out of the men’s room?”

  Smith shot her a puzzled look. “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you, Wetzon. People will think there’s something wrong with you, and they’d be right.”

  “Oh, please, Smith, it was a joke. I’m not interested in Chris—” Oh, why bother? Wetzon sighed and let Smith tow her back to the ballroom. What was the use of arguing with Smith? She never listened and always thought she knew better. Smith would never accept the fact that Wetzon had a serious relationship with Silvestri, the NYPD detective Wetzon had met three years before, after Barry Stark was murdered.

  “Besides, you’re going to miss everything. Goldie’s announced that he wants to say a few words before dinner.”

  “I’ve already missed the most interesting event of the evening, thanks ever so,” Wetzon grumbled.

  She and Smith threaded their way through the crowd of men and women in evening clothes also intent on getting seated. It looked like a convention of tuxedos and Carolyne Roehm dresses, and here she was in her basic black silk.

  “The Street is getting to be a regular grubby UN, with all these multicolored faces, though I did see Ellie Kaplan talking to a rather attractive Chinaman at the bar.” Smith’s comment was an over-the- shoulder throwaway.

  “Nice gams,” hot breath whispered in Wetzon’s ear. A hand brushed her derriere and stayed a bit too long to be accidental. Smith was ahead of her and didn’t hear or see her latest main man, Jake Donahue, make his customary pass at Wetzon.

  “Get lost, Jake,” she hissed, swerving, dislodging his hand.

  “Oh, Jake.” Smith had turned and spotted him. He was hard to miss—big and beefy, red-haired, with intense blue eyes.

  Another oddity. Donahue had some kind of interest in Luwisher Brothers, or he wouldn’t be here tonight. With her high cheekbones, olive skin, and almond eyes, Smith was a veritable femme fatale. She had men falling all over her, so it never ceased to amaze Wetzon that she had gotten involved with Jake Donahue, the slimebag who had defrauded investors, fessed up to the government, named names, and had his knuckles rapped lightly by a few months in tennis camp, where cooperative white collar criminals served their time.

  Oh, Jake Donahue was attractive all right, in the same way all powerful men are attractive. But to Wetzon, he oozed greed. And greed was destroying the brokerage industry that she knew and loved.

  They got back to their tables just as the first course, baby shrimp en croûte, was being served by waiters in black tuxedos. Who are the keepers and who are the inmates? Wetzon wondered, and a giggle rose up in her throat.

  “I thought Goldie was going to talk.” She elbowed Smith, who was sitting at the next table.

  “Shsh.”

  She looked over at the head table. It was hard to see beyond the lavish floral arrangement. Luwisher Brothers was going all out with this retirement dinner in honor of their chairman, one of the last of the Street’s grand old men.

  The chair beside her was empty and she looked around for Chris Gorham. She had first met Chris when he was an ambitious young broker at Merrill Lynch, had kept up with him when he became an assistant manager at Drexel. His rapid rise to a management position with Luwisher Brothers had come as no surprise to Wetzon. He now could have equity in a firm because Luwisher Brothers was one of the last of the pure play partnerships left on the Street. If he made partner—and he was in line to—the stock that came with the title would guarantee that should the firm be bought out or go public, Chris would become a multimillionaire overnight. He had it all—except his home life was in tatters. Six weeks ago his wife had taken the three kids and gone home to Charleston for an extended visit.

  When he’d asked Wetzon to come with him to tonight’s banquet, she had been flattered, and interested in seeing what these inside, self-congratulatory celebrations were like. And besides, it was good for business, as Smith always said.

  She spotted him. Back to Wetzon, he was leaning over the head table, apparently trying to get Goldie Barnes’s attention. Everyone was trying to talk to Goldie Barnes, it seemed, for he was almost blocked from Wetzon’s view by hovering members of the firm.

  Goldie was part of the second establishment (if you considered the Morgans, the Schiffs, the Lehmans, and the Loebs and their ilk as the first establishment) on the Street, which included Sandy Weill, who was the inspiration for Shearson; the late Sy Lewis, the Bear of Bear Stearns; Nate Gancher of Oppenheimer; and Don Regan, who had brought Merrill Lynch into the twentieth century and come acropper in the Reagan White House. They were all men who had grabbed the ball from the private, white-shoe club of the old Wall Street and had run with it. They had pushed their way in, aggressively, and the change in trading style, the heavy volume leading to operations snafus, and finally the financial fall-out in the seventies, paved the way for them to take over leadership on the Street.

  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 hea
d 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.