The Big Killing

by Annette Meyers

  “You doing all right, Ms. Wetzon?” he asked politely. She nodded. He had a nice face, dark hair, thinning at the top of a high forehead. “Now then, I want you to think carefully and tell me everything that happened here. You found the body?”

  “I found him,” she said, moving her lips, but her voice wasn’t working. No sound came out. She began to shiver.

  Silvestri put his thick hand over hers and said, “All right now. Take deep breaths,” in a calm, authoritative tone. There was something reassuring about him, and Wetzon started breathing again, deeply, as a dancer breathes. The shaking began to subside. There were fine dark hairs on the back of his hand.

  Silvestri withdrew his hand from hers and took something out of his inner coat pocket. It was a black leather billfold. He took some identification cards from the billfold, and she saw it was Barry’s billfold because there were his securities registration, a driver’s license, and some credit cards—a Visa and a MasterCard, American Express, and others. Silvestri placed them on the table in front of him and appeared to study them.

  “He called me this afternoon,” Wetzon said. “It was urgent, he said, and he had to see me. Some problem he was having, I think, in the office or ...” Her voice trailed off as she looked across at Silvestri.

  He was looking back at her, surprise on his face. “Let me understand this,” he said slowly. “You knew him? You knew Barry Stark?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course. I thought you understood that. I’ve known Barry for at least three years.”

  Silvestri settled back. “Okay, Ms. Leslie Wetzon.” His tone of voice changed perceptibly; his manner was less friendly. “Tell me about Barry Stark,” he said.

  6

  Wetzon’s eyes burned, as if her mascara had run. She blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry,” she said, hands on either side of her head. “This is such a mess. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “All right, take your time,” Silvestri said patiently. He took a small notebook from his inside pocket and waited expectantly. “Who was Barry Stark?”

  Who was Barry Stark, indeed, she thought, closing her eyes. Was, past tense. Barry Stark was over. No more Barry Stark. She fought to control a giggle that rose in her throat. She opened her eyes and stared at the impassive detective, embarrassed and confused.

  “No, this will not do,” she said. “Barry Stark ... Barry Stark was a stockbroker. With Jacob Donahue and Company.”

  “Jacob Donahue and Company?” Silvestri wrote in his notebook. “I never heard of it.”

  “It’s a small brokerage firm, downtown, on Hanover Square.”

  “You mean, like Merrill Lynch, only small?”

  “No, not at all.” She shook her head vehemently and her hair in its once neat knot loosened precariously. “The major brokerage firms, the wire houses like Paine Webber, Dean Witter, Merrill Lynch, Shearson, and Pru-Bache are all full-service firms with branches all over the country, the world.”

  “Wire houses?”

  Wetzon pinned her hair firmly back in place. “In the old days when a firm had many branches, business was conducted through the main office from the branches by wire. Hence the name ‘wire house.’ It doesn’t apply anymore because everything everywhere is computerized, but the designation of wire house has come to mean the major firms.” She patted her hair, satisfied that it was as good a job as she could do under the circumstances.

  Silvestri nodded. “Go on,” he said. “Tell me about ...” He looked at his notebook. “Jacob Donahue and Company.”

  “It’s a small, new-issues house with about seventy-five brokers and no branches anywhere else,” she said. “Jake Donahue likes to have complete control. I don’t think he could handle a branch system. It would dilute his command power.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not personally. But everybody knows Jake. He’s colorful. He gets interviewed in magazines like Manhattan, Inc. and Forbes, and he gets quoted all the time.” She frowned. “You know, I probably wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him. He’s big, though, physically. Kind of fleshy.”

  Silvestri’s eyes followed her hands, and she suddenly realized that she was talking with her hands, describing Jake Donahue’s supposed physique by hand motions. It was something she always did unconsciously. Chagrined, she dropped them back to her lap.

  “Anyway,” she said, looking down at her hands, commanding them to stay still, “he says he likes to work with his brokers personally. He hand-picks them, gives them good deals, a fifty percent payout—”

  Silvestri stopped her with his eyes. There was an odd magnetism about him that she had not felt when she first saw him. Or perhaps, tired and confused, she was simply drawn to an orderliness that he conveyed.

  “Most brokers average a thirty-five percent payout on gross commissions,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “Jake pays his brokers fifty percent, but they have to sell what he tells them to, to earn that commission. He demands loyalty and total commitment to his way of doing business. It’s unique. But it’s not for everyone. And Jake can be a dangerous enemy.”

  Silvestri made another note, but there seemed to be no connection between when he jotted a note and what she was saying.

  A blue uniform came to the table. “Sergeant, the M.E. is here. And the Lieutenant’s on his way.” Silvestri looked up, shrugged his shoulders unapologetically. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  She did not respond, knowing there was nothing to say. The ball was in his court.

  What was M.E.? she thought. Her mind wasn’t working. Come on, Wetzon, she scolded herself, shape up, get it together. Silvestri would be back, and she didn’t want to seem like a dummy or, God help her, an H.W.—hysterical woman.

  M.E. had to be medical examiner. Of course. Good girl. But just the same, she felt dazed and fuzzy-minded. She knew she was going through some sort of shock reaction. She felt frozen in time until Silvestri’s voice brought her back.

  “He was still warm. Figure dead less than an hour,” she heard him say to one of the other detectives, a tall, round-shouldered man with deep pouches under his eyes. Silvestri sat down opposite her again. “I’d really like to get a complete statement from you as soon as possible, Ms. Wetzon.”

  “Still warm,” he’d said. He was talking about Barry as if he were a thing.

  She heard someone groan and realized with a start that it was she. Silvestri’s eyes turned soft and personal, as if he really saw her, her ... Leslie Wetzon ... not a witness. He had blue-green eyes and dark lashes, she noticed. Turquoise eyes. Funny. She was sure they hadn’t been that color earlier. It was as if he didn’t allow color to come into his eyes when he was being professional.

  “Silvestri, a moment please.” A man in his late fifties, incongruously dressed in evening clothes, motioned to Silvestri from the top of the stairs in the Grill Room.

  Silvestri’s eyes turned dark. “Sorry,” he mumbled, moving away again.

  The man in the evening clothes spoke tersely to Silvestri, a hand on his shoulder. Silvestri listened, nodding. The older man went back down the stairs to the lobby, and Silvestri talked to one of the uniforms and then headed back to Wetzon on the balcony.

  “They’re taking the body away now,” he said. “Do you know any next of kin? There was nothing in the wallet.”

  It was still hard to believe. Like an expressionistic dream. Dark shadows, distorted figures. Sharp, violent colors.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know him all that well. This is only the third time I met him.” What had she known about his personal life? She had only known him professionally. She thought for a minute. “He once said he’d grown up in the Bronx....” What had he said ... where can a poor kid from the Bronx make all this money ... and legitimately ... except as a stockbroker. Something like that.

  Silvestri’s attention strayed over the balcony railing to the Grill Room floor. He stood. Another detective was motioning to him from below. “The Lieutenant’s here,” the detective called
.

  “Excuse me,” Silvestri said. “Do you need anything? I may be a while—”

  Wetzon shook her head, abstracted, not even seeing him go. She was remembering the second time she had met Barry Stark ... at Jake Donahue’s office.

  7

  Donahue & Co. was located downtown in Hanover Square, one of those little, unlikely oases in the Wall Street area. The offices looked down on a tiny park, a rectangle of grass and benches and pigeons, a multitude of pigeons. It was a mecca at lunchtime in good weather. Brokers and operations people, sales help and traders, ate lunch on the benches and exchanged information. The hottest tip, gossip about other brokers, inside information about a particular firm or stock. Every day was market day. Drugs were bought and sold openly amid food vendors who also crowded the small space. One could indulge in Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, or good old American hot dogs, all purchased from pushcarts crowding into the area around noon every weekday.

  The Hanover Square building was a renovated modern version of old splendor. Columns painted to look like marble, trompe l’oeil vaulted ceilings.

  Donahue & Co. took a whole floor. The elevator doors opened right into a reception area. Wetzon had gotten off the elevator and looked around the drab, almost unfurnished room. A bench with brown Naugahyde cushions and three metal and plastic chairs, artlessly arranged. The floors were covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting. The color was an ugly pale mustard. In these buildings the leases generally called for some floor covering, and this was probably as cheap as Donahue could get. A scarred black metal reception desk stood on the far side of the small space to the left of the elevators; a sign on the wall over the desk read JACOB DONAHUE & CO., INC. A modern phone system stood on the desk, blinking and burping, but no one sat there.

  Wetzon had stood for a while, then looked back at the bench. Perhaps she should sit and wait. She was a little early There were some magazines, Barron’s, Forbes, and Business Week, on a square glass-topped table with a chrome base. On top of the table with the magazines was a hideous pink marble ashtray of formidable size. The ashtray was brimming with butts, and the harsh odor of cigarettes hung in the air. It was the end of another long day on Wall Street.

  She didn’t sit down. She had the distinct feeling that dirt and ashes would rub off on her.

  Next to the reception desk was a door that presumably led to the boardroom and the rest of the offices. It didn’t look much different from garment-center offices, but why should it? Wasn’t that the business that Jake Donahue had come out of?

  She was thinking about what she’d read regarding Jake Donahue and his origins when the elevator doors opened and a young woman got off. She was wearing tight jeans and stiletto-heeled sandals. Smoke trailed from the cigarette in her fingers. She had dozens of little gold chains of varying lengths around her neck, and the rest of her was barely concealed in a tight red T-shirt with the words BROKERS DO IT ON THE FLOOR printed on it in big black letters. Her hair was a shaggy mane, streaked blonde on blonde, and she carried a paper bag, food or sodas or cigarettes.

  “Hi,” the blonde said amiably. “Can I help you? I guess Jackie took a break.” Jackie was obviously the missing receptionist.

  Wetzon looked at her and felt uncomfortably overdressed.

  “Yes,” Wetzon said. “I’m here to see Barry Stark.”

  “Sure, he’s got the office on the right, straight back. Just come through here.”

  She threw open the door, releasing such a blast of noise that Wetzon involuntarily took a step backward, assailed by a cacophony of voices, raised and subdued, blaring phones, newsprinters and teletype machines, squawk boxes droning information about particular stocks. She stepped into the room, and the young woman bumped the door shut behind her with the seat of her jeans.

  “Straight back there.” The blonde pointed past a dense clutter of desks. It seemed for all the world like one of those thirties prison movies with the long rows of dining-hall tables and row upon row of men crowded together, all moving in different directions. But this was the Wall Street version, so there was a sprinkling of women, and the table contained Quotron machines and black looseleaf “books,” which were the brokers’ customer records. Everyone was pitching product, and the noise was deafening. Here, in the case of Jake Donahue, the product was their new issues. Donahue was bringing companies public at an almost alarming rate, and there was so much demand for these new issues that Donahue & Co. didn’t have to syndicate any shares to the other houses. They kept it all in house, divided it among their special customers, and the broker’s share of fifty percent on gross commissions was an exceptionally attractive hiring tool. In addition, Wetzon knew, Donahue had been writing big checks for upfront money deals to get the best, the hottest salespeople on Wall Street.

  Cardboard coffee containers, crumpled paper bags, half-eaten danishes, probably left over from breakfast, sandwiches, soda cans, and Chinese food containers lay amid the chaos on the desks. The air was a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, and the smell in the room was a stale stew of sweat, perfume, cigarettes, fried rice, and, “Greed,” she said, “don’t forget the common denominator.” She had spoken out loud, but in the din, no one could hear her.

  So this was what Barry had left Merrill for. This and over two hundred thousand dollars.

  The brokers were dressed in everything from jeans and Tshirts to suits similar to hers, but these were definitely in the minority. She could not differentiate among the women, some of whom were brokers and some sales assistants. Looking around, Wetzon decided that those who looked like expensive call girls must be the brokers. Their on-phone and off-phone attitudes conveyed an electric sense of power. The average age in the room couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. And a quick count told her there were over seventy people jammed into this small area.

  Wetzon had to admit there was something exciting about it, as sleazy as it appeared, the excitement of making money.

  Brokers with phones crooked between ear and shoulder were writing up ticket after ticket as she passed by, and they contacted one another by shouting back and forth.

  “Ten thou, sure, yeah, more play.”

  “Listen, I’ll try to get more for you, but I can’t promise. Everyone wants in.”

  “Up two points today. More tomorrow. Yeah. Well, you could sell five, take profits, and ride the rest out.”

  “We’re all going to get rich on this one!”

  Wetzon knew that five did not mean five shares and probably not even five hundred shares. The big players were attracted to the new-issues market. They might have a regular account with Merrill Lynch or Shearson for the CMA or FMA—the cash-management accounts—but for the excitement of the ride, they came to Donahue’s.

  Barry’s office did not have a door, but it was an office with a window, and just as cluttered with papers, books, and discarded food containers as the boardroom she had just left. Barry was in shirtsleeves, smoking a cigar, his jacket on the back of his chair, his feet up on his desk. Behind him, the grimy window looked out on yet another grimy window. Obviously his production didn’t warrant a scenic view of Hanover Square. This was still Wall Street, and the old Wall Street area was a warren of narrow streets and tall, old buildings wearing the dirt of generations. Firms like Jacob Donahue left the brick-and-mortar grandeur and stylish interiors to the major houses. It all boiled down to dollars and cents, or better, dollars and sense. Keep overhead down, impress people with the money you make for them, and they won’t care if you’re working from a phone booth on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway. The net-net was that it worked.

  Barry waved at her with his cigar hand when he saw her in the doorway, motioning toward the chair. Or at least what was probably a chair. You could hardly see it under the stack of newspapers and stock prospectuses. She waved back at him but remained standing.

  “Yes, babes, I promise you,” Barry was saying expansively, “this one will go through the roof. Wait till you hear this....” He
lowered his voice. “They have this new process, a thermometer that’s attached to a home computer, that will tell you everything from your cholesterol to whether you’re pregnant.” He stopped and laughed wickedly. “Really, darling? I had no idea.” He made mocking movements with his head, acting out for Wetzon. “You’re kidding. I certainly couldn’t tell from your voice. Well, that’s not old, come on now. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was, that’s what old Satchel Paige used to say.” He listened and laughed again. “Well, of course I know who Satchel Paige was.”

  He was making sweeping motions with his hand, so Wetzon finally picked up the litter from the chair and put it on the floor. When she straightened up, he was smirking at her, and she realized she had bent over without thinking, like a dancer, from the hip instead of with bent knees.

  Ah, well, he was so obvious. She sat. The only reason she was here was to see the place and take Barry out for a drink to thank him for the list of Merrill brokers he had sent her.

  “So, sweetheart, why not take ten thou then?” he was saying. “The downside risk is only slight. It’ll open at five and I guarantee you’ll double your money.” His other phone rang. “Stay with me, sweetheart.” He tucked the receiver into his shoulder and picked up the other phone. “Stark.” He frowned. “Only two thou. I’ve got someone who’ll take ten. Don’t think too long.” He hung up that phone and spoke again into the first. “So what do you say, darling?”

  Wetzon was fascinated by him. He was really good, really persuasive. Either he didn’t know, which is unlikely, or, more likely, he didn’t care that it was illegal to promise people they’d make money in that way.

  He’d gotten his order and hung up the phone. “Beautiful, bee-u-tee-ful,” he crowed. “I—”

  A noise like a police siren drowned out his self-satisfied voice. Wetzon jumped, startled. “What was that?”

  “It’s the close. Jerry Walsh does it every day at four. Just part of the action around here.”