Tender Death Read online

  They were eating their lunch, leaning back in their chairs. Wetzon had her boots off and her stockinged, and socked, feet were up on her desk, as she alternately flexed and pointed her toes. Her fingers were yellow with egg salad, which she was in the process of licking off.

  She had opened the blinds covering the French doors, and the great white expanse of their backyard and garden, clumpy with snow, made a postcard view. The snow fell without letup.

  “Fahnley went belly up?” Harold loved to use Wall Street slang. “Are you sure they’re not merging with another firm? Weren’t they bought by that Canadian firm, Crossman Peck?”

  “Well yes ... but they’re closing the office entirely in two weeks. Crossman is bringing in its own people.”

  “Anyone there worth working on?” Smith asked. She bent to pull off her high boots. “If I remember correctly, the average age of their brokers is a hundred and five.”

  Wetzon laughed. “Not far from wrong. I sort of recall talking to a sweet old man once. He said he didn’t think he was a likely candidate, but I could call him anytime.”

  “I’ll get the list.” Harold spun around eagerly and left them.

  “I wonder if I should order another case of wine,” Smith mused. “People drink much more in this kind of weather. Wetzon, what do you think?”

  “I think I should be checking the list of Fahnley brokers.” She didn’t move her feet from her desk. “Is Hank Brownell still the manager?”

  “Oh yes, Hank Brownell,” Smith intoned, doing her W. C. Fields imitation. “Fired from Merrill, hired by Hutton, fired by Hutton, hired by Witter, fired by Witter, hired by Fahnley.”

  “Hot for Xenia Smith,” Wetzon added impishly.

  “A little man,” Smith drawled. “In every sense of the word.”

  “Smith, you didn’t,” Wetzon said, feet hitting the floor, shocked.

  “Oh come on, Wetzon, grow up. This is the real world. Besides, sweetie pie, you know me better than that.”

  “Whew. You really had me going for a minute.” Wetzon examined the beginning of a run in her hose. “He was such a pig. But since you know him better than I do, don’t you think you should call him?”

  “Where would we place him? No, it’s a waste of time.” Smith crumpled up the paper from her roast beef sandwich and threw it away. “Want some of my cookies? They’re chocolate chip from Mrs. Fields.”

  “No thanks. I’ll stick to my apple.” Wetzon closed her eyes and frowned. “I think his name was Maurice ... Maurice ... Sanderson.”

  “Who?”

  “The old broker from Fahnley. Maybe one of our clients would take him.” She opened the file drawer next to her desk and rifled through the S’s. “Here he is. Maurice Sanderson, age sixty-nine, as of last year.” She skimmed her notes. “Well, he does a small but steady business. Writes big tickets.”

  “Wetzon, I’m telling you, it’s a waste of time.” Smith finished the last cookie and dusted the crumbs from her hands and lap.

  “I’ll talk to Maurice and you start calling around.”

  “Oh, Wetzon, honestly.” Smith threw up her hands. “You’ll be the death of me.”

  “Hi, Maurice, this is Wetzon here, remember me, of Smith and Wetzon, your favorite headhunter.”

  “Well, it’s certainly nice to hear from you right now, Ms. Wetzon.” Maurice Sanderson’s voice was formal and pleasant. He did not reveal concern in his tone, only in his words. “I think I may be in need of your services.”

  After Wetzon quickly updated Maurice’s figures and background information, she passed it on to Smith, who groaned. “Wetzon, this is humiliating. I can’t do it. How will it look to our clients? Let the old geezer retire.”

  “Consider it a good deed that’ll get you into heaven,” Wetzon said, “and us a small fee. Come on, Smith. Someone like Maurice can’t retire. This is his whole life. He loves it, and it’s all he knows after forty years in this business.”

  “Too old to bother with.”

  “Try.”

  The reactions came quickly:

  “ ... We don’t want brokers that old.”

  “ ... How old? Seventy? You’ve got to be kidding .”

  “ ... Smith, have you lost your senses?”

  “ ... We don’t want these old guys. They take up space and cost us money. How much business does he have? Forget it.”

  “ ... I’ll see him if you want me to, but I won’t hire him.’’

  After five phone calls, Smith swung around in her chair and announced, “I’m giving it up. I agree with them.”

  “Try Curtis Evans. They clear through the Bear. Tell them he writes big tickets. Please, Smith.”

  “Does he?”

  “What?”

  “Write big tickets.”

  “Of course. Would I lie to you?”

  “Humpf.”

  Twenty minutes later Wetzon called Maurice Sanderson with an appointment for the following day with Bob Curtis of Curtis Evans.

  “There now, doesn’t that make you feel saintly, Smith?” Wetzon teased, standing, looking out at their snow-blanketed garden.

  “No.”

  “It’s still snowing. You can’t even see sky up there. It feels as if we’re in an igloo.” She shivered and closed the blinds.

  “I’m going home to get everything ready,” Smith said. “Please try to come early. I need you. You know I count on you.”

  “Come on, Smith, don’t do that. Won’t Leon be there? And Mark, of course.”

  “Not good enough.” Smith hugged her again. “I need my little friend.”

  “I have Kevin De Haven to see around four, and I want to look in on Hazel. Then I’ll go home and change and come to you.”

  “You always put other people before me, even strangers come before me,” Smith said, sulking. “I am your dear and trusted friend.” She sat down to pull on her boots.

  Sometimes you are, Wetzon thought, watching her. You are certainly my most demanding friend. But she said, “Not fair, Smith. You know when you really need me, I’m there.”

  “Humpf. And who are you bringing to my table tonight? Silvestri, perhaps?”

  “No, he’s working,” Wetzon lied, not daring to look at Smith.

  “Of course, I don’t have to tell you that disgusting pervert is not welcome in my house,” Smith said.

  “Smith.” Wetzon’s voice held a warning. “I will not let you talk about Carlos like that, and if you continue to, you will not see me at your party either. And by the way, when he calls me, I expect you to give me the message. He’s my oldest friend.”

  “It’s just a wee bit like having Typhoid Mary as your friend, don’t you think?” Smith stamped out and slammed the door, leaving Wetzon furious and unfulfilled. The war between Smith and Carlos had been initiated by Smith, although Carlos was a willing participant. They— Smith in particular—now lavished guerrilla attacks on each other and Wetzon was always caught in the cross fire.

  She sat down at her desk again and wrote Maurice Sanderson’s appointment with Curtis Evans in her calendar.

  It was dismaying that the firms did not want to hire senior brokers unless they had huge books and a very active business, which was not very likely. As a broker aged he usually stopped increasing his client base; he expended less energy. His client base aged with him. To the firms, it was all a matter of money. Real estate was costly, overhead was an expensive burden, space was at a premium. Management felt it was more efficient to give desks to younger brokers who were in the process of building a client base. By law, Smith and Wetzon were not permitted to ask a candidate’s age, but their clients wanted to know, so they did, circuitously. “What college did you go to, Joe? Oh really? What year did you graduate?” It wasn’t difficult, given that information, to guess the candidate’s age.

  The older broker had become a dinosaur. He usually did a clean business, did not hustle his clients, pitched only stocks he was comfortable selling, like the Dow stocks, and generally acted like the f
amily doctor, building close relationships with clients. But more and more, the larger firms gave lip service to service, pressuring younger brokers to build up gross production, sell, sell, sell. The young brokers swiftly saw the emphasis was on selling the firm’s product whether it was good for the client or not.

  Wetzon had observed the brokerage business change radically over the last three years. The large firms pushed the broker to sell in-house products, and the young brokers generally did because the tickets for these products were bigger. The older brokers stuck to the stock and bond business, taking seriously the old name for stockbroker, “customer’s man.”

  She respected these older brokers. They had dignity and class and longevity. They considered what they did a profession. They were not in it for the big killing.

  Odd, how she kept coming back to aging. Hazel, Peepsie Cunningham, Maurice Sanderson, even the scam Peter Tormenkov had alluded to. Teddy Lanzman’s TV series on the elderly. Wait a minute. She looked at her watch. Three-thirty. The phones had gotten very quiet. She opened the door to the reception area.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Everyone’s leaving early because of the storm,” B.B. said.

  “Tell you what—”

  Harold came out of his cubbyhole and stood in the doorway.

  “Tell you what,” Wetzon said, “we’ll wait till the Market closes at four and shut down ourselves. Just tell me when you’re leaving.” She went back into her office and closed the door.

  In her address book she found Teddy Lanzman’s phone number.

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Howie Minton on 9-0,” B.B. said.

  She punched the first extension. “Hi, Howie, you should be on your way home. I hear the Island is a mess.”

  “I’m outa here. Just wanted to know what you thought of Pete Tormenkov.”

  “Well, Howie ...” Wetzon paused. These situations were problematic from an ethical point of view. Howie had recommended Peter, but what Peter had told her was confidential. “I don’t know what to tell you. He doesn’t seem ready to move anywhere.”

  “Wetzon, my friend, don’t tell me he told you that crap—excuse me—about the FBI?”

  “What are you saying, Howie?” she asked cautiously.

  “You’re a good lady, Wetzon, and I think of you as my good friend, so you can level with me. I can tell by what you’re not saying that the schmuck told you.” Howie had lost his usual unctuousness. “Pete’s working with a bunch of lowlifes. There’s no FBI, but there could be, and he’s got to get out of here before the shit hits the fan, excuse me again.”

  “Howie, whatever the truth is, he may have a compliance problem—”

  “Wetzon, believe me, would I lie to you? Peter’s okay. Let me talk to him and straighten him out. Then you can call him on Monday—and be persuasive—as I know you can. Say you’ll do it for me so I can get the hell out of here tonight.”

  “Okay, Howie, I’ll try. Hope the trip home isn’t too bad.”

  “Be well, Wetzon.”

  She sat there thinking, playing with her pen, doodling geometrics. Howie was probably right. On the other hand, nothing that she had seen happen on Wall Street was too farfetched. Anything could be true.

  She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “This is Channel Eight, serving the Empire City in the Empire State.”

  “Ted Lanzman, please.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Leslie Wetzon.”

  “Hold on a moment, please.”

  As she listened to canned Bach, Wetzon checked off the phone calls she had made from her daily list. Those she had not gotten to, she wrote on her list for Monday. After she spoke with Teddy, she’d call Kevin De Haven, who would probably want to cancel his four o’clock appointment, which was fine with her.

  “Well, well,” Teddy Lanzman said. “This is a real treat, stranger. How are you?”

  “Great, Teddy. I know how you are because I see you on the box all the time—”

  “Better than that. I’m getting my own half hour, producing and writing features. And you just caught me. I’m on my way to Detroit in a few minutes, if they’re still flying out of Kennedy tonight. Picking up an award for feature broadcasting for my series on the kids in welfare hotels.”

  “That’s wonderful, Teddy, congratulations. I saw most of it. It was heartrending.”

  “You know, Wetzi, although we don’t see each other much, I count you as one of my real friends. Did you ever get my message when that broker was murdered?”

  “Yes, I did, and I’m sorry I never got back to you. So many crazy things were happening—”

  “It’s okay. I understand. I just wanted you to know if you needed me, I was there.”

  “I knew that, Teddy, and I love you for it. But right now I’m calling you about something I’ve come across that might be of interest to you.”

  “Oh yeah?” She could hear the change in his voice.

  “The series you’re doing on the aged ... I’ve heard something about a scam against the elderly, using nurses’ aides ... I guess this doesn’t make much sense—”

  “No, no, I’m hearing you. I want to hear more, but I’ve got to get out of here now, or I’ll miss my plane.”

  “I don’t know much more than that—”

  “Have an early dinner with me on Monday,” Teddy said. “Six-thirty, seven. You may be able to fill in the blanks on something I came across in my research.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts.’ Pick me up at the studio on Monday. I’ll leave your name downstairs with security.”

  “We’re leaving now, Wetzon,” Harold said as she put down the phone slowly, brooding.

  “Okay, good night. See you Monday. Have a safe ride home.”

  She dialed Kevin De Haven’s number. It rang and rang and rang.

  “Kevin De Haven’s office,” a very familiar male voice said at last.

  “Kevin, please.”

  “He’s gone for the day. Wetzon? Is that you?”

  Damn. Tom Hasher, a broker she talked to from time to time, was in that office. “Tom? What are you doing still there in this blizzard?”

  “I live only about six blocks from here, so it’s no problem. How’ve you been, Wetzon?”

  “Great. How about you?” She had never been able to tempt him out of Merrill, but sometimes he called her with a tip about a fellow broker who was unhappy.

  “Real well. Listen,” he said in a low voice, “you’ve got a good one with Kevin. He’s going to have to move.”

  “Oh?” That sounded bad.

  “Don’t worry. No real problems. Just a style of business that doesn’t blend well here. He does a lot with hedge funds.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Tom.”

  She hung up and walked to the French doors, parting the blinds slightly. The windows were steamy. She cleaned off a spot and peered out. A deep grayness covered the sky and the mounds of snow on the ground reflected grays and pale yellows from the bleary lights in the buildings above.

  The window quickly steamed up again, and she drew a big heart and wrote “Wetzon loves Silvestri” with an end of an arrow going in one side and the point coming out the other. A feeling of panic hit her as she realized what she’d done unconsciously, and, embarrassed, she rubbed her fist on the pane, obliterating the words.

  13.

  WHEN SHE CAME out on the street, the ceiling of the sky was so low she felt if she stood on tiptoes, she could actually touch it. It didn’t seem as cold as it had been. A sulfurous aura hung over everything.

  The snow was still falling but it was lighter now. Still, at least a foot had fallen already and, blown by the wind, the drifts were deep. Supers or handymen from the surrounding brownstones had made an attempt to shovel the sidewalks, and she could hear the sounds of metal shovels on cement, but walking was difficult. To get the bus uptown on Third Avenue would be a major expedition.

  Dim lights made the turn f
rom First Avenue and crawled along Forty-ninth Street toward her. The car pulled up to the house next door. It was a cab, and Wetzon, joyously, got to the door as the passenger disembarked.

  “Thank God,” she said to the driver after she’d climbed in. “And thank you.”

  The driver, a heavy black woman, with a Mets cap jammed low on her forehead, nodded. “Where to? I’m not going to Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx.” She wore red leather gloves with the fingertips cut off.

  Wetzon gave her Hazel’s address on East Ninety-second Street.

  Traffic was bumper to bumper, creeping up Third Avenue. It took over twenty minutes just to make the turn from Forty-ninth Street, normally a three-minute trip. The side streets were choked with snow, in dire need of snowplows.

  Outside Hazel’s apartment building, Wetzon hesitantly asked the driver if she would wait and take her through the Park to Eighty-sixth Street near Amsterdam. The meter already read almost nine dollars.

  “Okay,” the woman said pleasantly. “How about I turn off my clock, and we settle on twenty bucks for the works.”

  “Terrific.” Wetzon opened the door and promptly stepped into a snowdrift.

  The driver leaned out. “But make it fast. I don’t want to get stuck here for the night.” She flicked her flag up, turning off the meter.

  Hazel answered her door, wearing a quilted pink robe blooming with pink blossoms and a ruffled pink cap. She was holding a pair of chopsticks.

  “Leslie dear, you shouldn’t have come. It’s a terrible night,” Hazel said. Her eyes were bright and two round rosy spots burned on her cheeks. She looked exceedingly pleased with herself.

  “Hazel, what are you up to?”

  “Your Silvestri bought me shrimp fried rice after we talked with Sergeant O’Melvany, and then he brought me home. He knew just what would make me happy.”

  “He’s not my Silvestri,” Wetzon said automatically, thinking that Hazel looked like a turn-of-the-century little girl.

  “Well, let’s work on it,” Hazel said cheerfully. “But right now I want you to go home, and I’m going to get into bed with my shrimp fried rice and Woody Allen.”