Two weeks after the shooting, as headlines screamed and talk-show hosts demanded action, the 80-year-old Mr. Morgenthau was the picture of professional distance as he discussed the case in his eighth-floor office at 1 Hogan Place. "We're proceeding carefully and thoroughly, and with all deliberate speed," he said, swinging his left leg back and forth. "We're not going to be pushed into any premature decisions, and we're not going to stall anything." He said he was leaving matters largely to his top-level staff: assistant district attorneys Angela Albertus and Christopher Beard, their supervisor, trial division chief Nancy Ryan and a handful of investigators.

Such is Mr. Morgenthau's stature after a quarter-century as Manhattan's D.A. that nobody has dared question his office's ability to handle such a sensitive and potentially explosive case. He has been there before, and, assuming he runs for an eighth four-year term in 2001, he'll be there again. And the advocates and activists in New York know it.

"One of the reasons why I get good people in this office, I don't interfere with investigations," he explained. "I get posted, you know, pretty much on a daily basis, on what's going on. I may have suggestions. But I don't tell them how to…," He paused, then added, "Nancy Ryan is supervising this. She, I guess without doubt, is the best homicide investigator in the country."

In a city fraught with racial and class tensions, Mr. Morgenthau's poker face is certainly anomalous. But Mr. Morgenthau-a former United States Attorney, World War II veteran, Democrat and father of seven-isn't fazed by much. At least that's the impression he gives. "None of this stuff seems to affect him the way it does the other D.A.'s," said a staff member for another city D.A. "If it was anybody else, they might have a problem, but because it's him, whatever happens, it won't affect him. Because there's just no way to accuse Morgenthau of being in bed with the Democratic Party. He's been in office, Christ, since they wrote the Constitution."

He certainly is no stranger to tensions between prosecutors and the police. "When I first came in, the police were making a lot of bad arrests," he said. "In [1977], we dismissed 7,000 cases…and the police commissioner and the mayor were saying what I was doing was both illegal and immoral. But as long as they were making bad arrests, we were going to dismiss 'em," he said. "You know," he added, "we prosecute a lot of police officers."

Mr. Morgenthau's wife, journalist Lucinda Franks, said she thinks some good may come of her husband's critical role in the Dorismond case. "Because of this case, he could well be the catalyst for some changes in police tactics and training, because he is an objective force," she said. "But at the same time, [he wants to] keep intact the best of those [police] operations, the ones that didn't sweep through neighborhoods and alienate people, but very quietly made busts that cleaned up whole neighborhoods."

Mr. Morgenthau's office will present its findings on the Dorismond case to a grand jury, which will either indict one or more of the cops or will drop the case. Although the decision to indict technically rests in the hands of the grand jury, the strength of the prosector's case determines whether or not an indictment is handed down. As Sol Wachtler, the former chief justice of the state Court of Appeals, famously said, a diligent prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich.

The Dorismond case is the third high-profile investigation of city police in recent months, and in the other two cases, the prosecutor in charge found himself heavily criticized. In February, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson was attacked when the four police officers indicted in the shooting of Amadou Diallo were acquitted by an Albany jury. Mr. Johnson's detractors said he had mounted an overly-vigorous prosecution that served only to stoke racial tensions.

In Brooklyn, District Attorney Charles Hynes somewhat ignominiously handed over his prosecution of the cops who tortured Haitian immigrant Abner Louima to federal prosecutors, who wound up winning several convictions last summer.

A Poignant Moment

Now the spotlight falls on Mr. Morgenthau.

"I see this as particularly poignant right now, because he feels very strongly about certain cases," said Ms. Franks. "I think he's been sickened personally…by all of the mishaps and disasters that have happened in the last year or so surrounding the criminal justice system and the police force."

In an indication of the confidence Mr. Morgenthau places in his top staff, he wasn't even told about the Dorismond shooting until he arrived at the office at around 9 A.M. on March 16, about eight hours after the post-midnight shooting. In the meantime, Ms. Albertus, a nine-year veteran of the office's trial division, had already begun to gather evidence. She was joined in short order by Christopher Beard, a 10-year assistant district attorney. At that point, the details were scant. But the fallout was almost immediate. Mr. Giuliani released Dorismond's juvenile arrest record and brought to light more recent offenses: that he had punched his girlfriend in the face and that he was a sometime marijuana user. Demonstrators at Dorismond's funeral threw urine-filled bottles at police guards. And Police Commissioner Safir, whose crackdown on street crimes and drugs has prompted cops to be more aggressive in making arrests, also came under fire. Some called for his resignation.

Meanwhile, Mr. Morgenthau and his team quietly proceeded with their investigation. "One case may get more publicity than another but that doesn't change the fact that every murder case is important to a victim's family…every case is important," he said, refusing to discuss the Dorismond shooting any further.

Most of the two dozen judges, assistant district attorneys, journalists and defense lawyers interviewed for this story expressed confidence in Mr. Morgenthau's fairness. "The only time that I can remember in covering him that he appeared to bow to public pressure is during the [Bernhard] Goetz case," said journalist Mike Pearl, referring to the gunman who wounded four black youths on a subway train in 1984. One grand jury indicted Mr. Goetz on only minor gun charges, accepting his argument that he felt threatened and acted in self-defense. Citing new evidence, Mr. Morgenthau presented the case to a second grand jury, which duly indicted Mr. Goetz on more serious charges. "He put the case before a second grand jury and mounted a trial, a pointless trial, which had Goetz acquitted anyway," noted Mr. Pearl, who at the time covered the case for the New York Post .

Other observers offered unconditional praise. "Bob Morgenthau is absolutely, positively, not influenced by politics," said Michael Cherkasky, who was the District Attorney's chief of investigations until 1993. Even with politically charged cases, Mr. Cherkasky added, Mr. Morgenthau's prosecutors never ask "what the reaction's going to be. People don't believe that, but it's absolutely true," he said.

"It was quite a nerve-racking experience to have cases in which my assistants and I would have our noses to the grindstone and the press and public are roiling around because [the cases] involved very hotly debated issues," said Linda Fairstein, the sex-crimes bureau chief and an assistant district attorney for 28 years. "[And] his advice to me…was literally to look at me in the eye and say, 'Do the right thing.' And the thing that's kept me here this long…is that I work for someone in whom I have the ultimate trust."

"Bob is not going to lay down for the New York City police, but at the same time, he's not going to call it against the police officer because that might satisfy some kind of public desire," said Charles Stillman, a defense lawyer who worked under Mr. Morgenthau at the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan until 1966. "He has nothing to gain from the way he calls his cases, and you're talking to someone who disagrees with him."

What has kept Mr. Morgenthau so high above the political fray is, ironically enough, his political savvy. Take, for example, his record on capital punishment. Both Mr. Morgenthau and his counterpart in the Bronx, Mr. Johnson, are opposed to the death penalty. In 1995, when the State Legislature and Governor Pataki reinstated capital punishment in New York, Mr. Johnson said he would never ask for the death penalty in prosecuting capital crimes. He came under intense attack from Republicans, including the Governor, who talked about superseding Mr. Johnson's authority.

Diplomatic Approach

Meanwhile Mr. Morgenthau took a more diplomatic approach. "Morgenthau…would not come out and say he's not going to request the death penalty for anybody," said Mr. Pearl. "He said, you know, 'We'll take each case by its own merits,' and the 10 or 15 cases they've had so far, none of them are going for the death penalty."

Asked about capital punishment, Mr. Morgenthau reasserted his position. "What people forget is that under the statute, there's an option. It's at our discretion," he said. "You can convict somebody…and you can seek the death penalty. Or 15, 20, 25 [years] to life. Also, there's a popular misconception about how broad the statute is. If three people break into an apartment and shoot three people, the death penalty isn't going to apply to anybody unless you know which person killed which person. You can only prosecute the shooter."

"I've said I'm opposed to it on moral grounds," he added. "And also, it's ineffective, it's expensive, it doesn't deter…I think that people are beginning to understand that, No. 1, it doesn't reduce crime, and that a lot of mistakes are made. You know, am I prosecuting the wrong guy? And maybe he's going to burn, you know?"

Mr. Morgenthau's confident, sometimes droning tone gives him a modestly regal air. In his office there are stacks upon stacks of papers, glassed-in cabinets filled with books, pictures of "the boss" (as he is known in law-enforcement circles) with various prosecutorial teams, World War II memorabilia, including an Iwo Jima poster, and a Motorola Star-Tac cellular phone powering up in the corner. Aside from a car alarm outside, the only sounds that penetrated his office during a recent interview were the clack-clack of a typewriter-yes, they're still being used, at least in this veteran's office-and the occasional high-pitched tone emitted by Mr. Morgenthau's hearing aid.

He was asked if his prosecutors sympathize with the police, who, after all, essentially play for the same team. "The cops may think they're the best investigators and we may think we're the best lawyers," he said. "Unless we're together, we're not going to be successful. But we don't hesitate to do this job."

"She did the majority of the work for Two Guys and a Girl at Moomba," said Ms. Grubman, between sips of diet Coke. "I got her the location and that sort of stuff-"

"That was Jimmy Toback," interrupted Ms. Siegal from across the banquette, referring to the film's director.

"It was great," said Ms. Grubman, "because we were able to, at that point-"

"… very old, dear friend of mine," continued Ms. Siegal, "and he's best friends with Warren Beatty, and he wrote Bugsy, and he's written a million things for Warren."

"It was probably the best premiere in New York," said Ms. Grubman.

"There was a photograph that appeared in the Post the next day of Madonna, Warren Beatty …"

"Leonardo DiCaprio," said Ms. Grubman.

"And Leonardo DiCaprio, and it said, 'It doesn't get any hotter.'"

"It was amazing," said Ms. Grubman. "And now, looking back on it, that was a very good … example …"

" Indication ," said Ms. Siegal.

"Yeah, of what we could do."

A week into the newly formed Lizzy Grubman Public Relations-Peggy Siegal Company, the two women were eagerly making the point that theirs was the best formula in the best of all possible worlds. The sunny view of the merger: The beboppy Ms. Grubman, a dark-rooted 29-year-old with a successful 3-year-old public relations company and a Rolodex full of music and nightclub clients (Britney Spears, Quincy Jones, Tommy Mottola) would join forces with Ms. Siegal, the 50-ish doyenne of the Manhattan movie premiere with a penchant for sit-down dinners at Le Cirque and a direct line to Regis Philbin.

Less generous souls might question why the famously quick-tempered Ms. Siegal had agreed to any sharing or potential dilution of her power. Despite speculation that Ms. Siegal might technically be working for Ms. Grubman, both women insist their partnership is "50-50."

"Peggy doesn't like to take orders from anyone, whether it be a studio or a boss," said a former employee of Ms. Siegal who requested anonymity, "and I would have to assume that something rather dire put her into the situation of answering to someone else. She beats to her own drummer; that's why she's so good at what she does."

Ms. Siegal said she joined up with Ms. Grubman because she wanted to "diversify and expand and ultimately be involved in a different generation."

"It is weird," said Jake Spitz, a former employee of the Peggy Siegal Company who last year co-founded his own company, Network P.R. "I think it surprised a lot of people. Peggy's so autonomous, and it's always been 'The Peggy Siegal Company.'"

He added, "It sort of makes sense. Lizzie has the bicoastal thing down, the young generation down, and I think she understands press. I think Peggy has unbelievable contacts, but could really use the youth that Lizzie has behind her to bolster her projects. Which is why I think it's a good match."

Norah Lawlor, president of Lawlor Media Group, said, "I think it's good for Lizzie, because it gets her right away to work with the film companies. I think it benefits Peggy, but I think it benefits Lizzie, really."

"What's great about me and Peggy is, we really complement the other one," said Ms. Grubman, who was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and tight, dark bluejeans. "O.K., we totally have-not totally, to a degree -we have different lists, and when we put them …"

"No, no, excuse me. We don't know the same people," Ms. Siegal said. "Would you write that down? We … do … not … know … the … same … people. O.K."

"Yeah, we don't, O.K.," said Ms. Grubman. "I'm more young Hollywood, she's more established Hollywood."

"She was gonna say old," Ms. Siegal said, eyebrow raised. "But she held her tongue."

Gwyneth and Nora

Ms. Grubman and Ms. Siegal say their first conversation about merging took place in January, when, it seems, Ms. Grubman offered Ms. Siegal some insight into lesbian chic. They had both been hired by HBO to handle the premiere of If These Walls Could Talk 2 , a provocative drama about lesbian relationships.

"I was very nervous about the subject matter," said Ms. Siegal. "I just thought, it's just going to make people uncomfortable, to watch it, right-"

"And, of course, I think the complete reverse," said Ms. Grubman. "'Cause I'm like, 'Everybody loves it! Everyone loves to watch it, it's gonna be great!' And that's when we knew that the two of us should be doing something together."

"She knew something I didn't know," said Ms. Siegal. "She knew to totally embrace the controversy, which is gonna make everybody want to come, and I knew instantly, when she said that, that she was absolutely right."

Like the media and entertainment industries, public relations-and especially its most high-profile element, special events-has fallen prey to consolidation fever. Last year, Bobby Zarem-who trained Liz Rosenberg (Madonna's publicist), Jason Weinberg (now a manager in Hollywood) and Ms. Siegal herself, abandoned his publicity gig for the more reliable consulting business. And, after telling New York magazine that what black rap stars needed was "two big-mouthed Jewish girls to tell it to these guys straight," Jen Posner disbanded her own publicity firm, PB&J, which she had founded with hip-hop specialist Ally Bernstein, who is professionally known as Ally B.

Ally B. found a home with Ms. Grubman, whose initial client list has not suffered from the fact that her father is music attorney Allen Grubman. Since 1997, Ms. Grubman's list has grown to include personalities such as Ms. Spears and corporate clients such as America Online, as well as dot-com companies and restaurants and nightclubs in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. She is known for attracting a hip crowd to parties, and her friends include actor Omar Epps and nightclub owner-Madonna pal Ingrid Casares.

Vying for the same business are several Manhattan-based firms, run largely by 20- and 30-something women: Harrison & Shriftman, London & Misher, Loving & Weintraub, not to mention the traditional powerhouses, such as Nadine Johnson Inc.

Enter Peggy Siegal, who throughout the 1980's and 1990's dominated the turf of New York movie premieres. Ms. Siegal's discerning taste and up-to-date mailing lists included the likes of Nora Ephron and 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and, more recently, Gwyneth Paltrow's family.

But in the late 1990's, Ms. Siegal's personal hands-on style of doing business may have lost a bit of ground to the corporate-backed package deals the new P.R. firms were offering to the movie studios. This February, for example, longtime Peggy Siegal client New Line Cinema used Harrison & Shriftman to open Boiler Room in Manhattan, even though Ms. Siegal had recently been on a chartered cruise arranged by New Line chairman Robert Shaye. Asked about this during a joint phone interview, Ms. Siegal handed the phone to Ms. Grubman, who said, "From my understanding, during all that stuff, she was planning on being out of town." Ms. Grubman pointed out that they are doing another New Line premiere, Love and Basketball , in April.

"Peggy used to be the only game in town for premieres," said a former Peggy Siegal employee. "But then, when Lara Shriftman broke into doing movies, she had corporate clients like Mercedes and Motorola, so instead of the studios directly paying P.R. companies a fee, it almost changed, so all of us now pitch to studios with the underwriting of us included. You know, 'We want to do this premiere, and we have a corporate client that'll pay $40,000.'"

Meanwhile, say former members of her staff, Ms. Siegal could sometimes alienate the movie studios' in-house publicists. "She'd be working with someone, and try and go over their head," said a former employee.

Ms. Grubman handled that one, too. "Can I say something here?" she said. "Peggy's relationships go far beyond the in-house P.R. departments, so she socializes with the heads of these companies. So to say that she would go over someone's head is not really, accurately, fair."

"I have developed very strong business and social relationships with the heads of studios," said Ms. Siegal. "They call me on a regular basis to pick my brain and see what's going on around town. Just because I'm hired to work on a film doesn't mean I'm not going to speak to the head of a studio."

Ms. Siegal denied industry rumors that, prior to shaking hands with Ms. Grubman, she had been feeling out a few different firms, including Harrison & Shriftman. But, according to Elizabeth Harrison, the 34-year-old co-owner of Harrison & Shriftman, Ms. Siegal did reach out to her. "I worked for Peggy, and I have a lot of respect for Peggy," she said. "I got a call from Peggy about the second week in January. I think she was trying to explore a lot of different options … And she said, 'Would you be interested in forming something? I don't know if it's a merger, if it's a partnership, I don't know what it is. But would you want to explore that?' I said I was flattered, I didn't say Yes or No … I didn't feel right at this moment that I needed to merge with anybody, but I was flattered, I really was."

"I absolutely, categorically deny that," said Ms. Siegal. "Never happened. I never asked her over the phone if she wanted to merge with me."

Ms. Grubman's offices at 270 Lafayette Street are being renovated to accommodate Ms. Siegal, who has brought two publicists and her longtime assistant, John Medina.

Because of the renovation, Ms. Siegal balked at a reporter's request for a tour.

"Peggy, it's fine," said Ms. Grubman.

Lizzie's Hernia

On the evening of March 16, Ms. Grubman and Ms. Siegal were greeting guests at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur. The occasion was the launch of real estate magnate Andrew Farkas' building-service Web site, Edificerex.com, and Ms. Grubman had been retained to help Loving & Weintraub with the guest list. Though Ms. Siegal had been mostly uninvolved in the event's planning, the venue was classic Peggy Siegal: a cultural institution, located well above 14th Street. But the scene was of an entirely different sensibility: sushi buffets, gospel-choir entertainment and 1,400 media types in their 20's. The only apparent celebrity in view was fashion designer Mary McFadden.

At 7:30 P.M., Ms. Siegal, dressed in black pants and a shimmery suit jacket, left for the opera. Ms. Grubman, surrounded by a coterie of young friends who were sneaking cigarettes, remained behind.

"I just had surgery," said Ms. Grubman, who was wearing a black sweater tank top and black pants and was sitting on the edge of the temple's platform next to her colleague Ally B. "I had a hernia operation. The doctor says it comes from lifting or working out, neither of which I do!" She said that because of the sugary foods she had eaten while recovering in bed, she was on the Atkins diet.

Asked what she thought about having Ms. Siegal on board, Ms. B. said, "Peggy's awesome. She'll, like, stuff envelopes until 12 o'clock at night. She stays in her own little area. But sometimes she'll come into your office and be like, 'We need to talk.'"

The New York Police Department "has unfortunately been slow to act to put all necessary resources on this case," complained State Senator Thomas Duane, New York City's highest-ranking openly gay politician. "The Manhattan North task force should have been assigned to this case right away … Violence and murder within the gay and lesbian and African-American communities are still not always given the attention they deserve by 1 Police Plaza."

City Council member Bill Perkins, whose district encompasses at least three of the murder sites, is especially piqued by the small-time publicity the murders have generated beyond the community level–namely, one story in the Daily News . "There has been no publicity whatsoever in any meaningful way about it, though we have been working with the police in terms of trying to get help," he told The Observer . Mr. Perkins, who visited several Harlem community board meetings in February, has spoken repeatedly about "the connections that make it seem that there is a serial murderer out there." To address concern in Harlem, he has arranged for a town hall meeting to be held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on Malcolm X Boulevard on Feb. 29.

Since the death in early 1997 of Jerry Colella, the first in the series of gay men to be murdered, little progress has been made in the search for a suspect, local officials said. "I think the officers who have been assigned to the case are excellent," said City Council member Christine Quinn, speaking of Manhattan North homicide detective Daryl Hayes and Lieut. Ellen Caniglia. "[But] they don't decide how many resources they get. I think if City Hall and the Police Commissioner's office were truly concerned, they would have more resources."

She added that she is writing a letter to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, asking that he formally announce a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a perpetrator in the murder of Hayden.

Part of what stirs community concern may be detectives' reluctance to classify the deaths of Colella, Watts, Hayden and a fourth man killed on Jan. 11 as the work of a serial murderer. The identity of the fourth man, who was not openly gay, has not been released by the Police Department, at the request of his family.

"We found at this time that there are no links between these three or four homicides," said Walter Burns, a spokesman for the department. "We're continuing our investigation on the subject, but at this time we're not linking the four of them together."

The police were already investigating the murders when a friend of Hayden who worked in Senator Duane's office triggered community involvement by contacting his boss. Senator Duane then alerted Ms. Quinn and the New York City Gay and Lesbian Antiviolence Project. Those groups have looked closely at the connections between the four murders to raise awareness both in Central Harlem and in the social circles where the victims operated: a South Bronx club called the Warehouse; St. Nicholas Park, a popular cruising spot; and various gay bars in Greenwich Village.

"In terms of the work that we're doing, the outreach, we're acting on [the deaths] in concert," said Clarence Patton, director of community organization and public advocacy at the Antiviolence Project. "The police haven't officially connected them at all yet. [But] here we have a series of murders, in the same general area, of gay men. Some of the elements of at least three of them are similar … so in terms of what we need to tell the community, they're not any different."

Details on the murders themselves are murky, because police have kept most of the particulars under wraps. But Mr. Patton's group, along with Gay Men of African Descent, Mr. Perkins and other concerned parties, have been attempting to piece together what little they know in an effort to help investigators–and fearful members of the gay community.

The first murder, that of Jerry Colella, who was white, occurred in 1997 in his apartment on 526 West 122nd Street. "From what we understand, he was pretty well connected in the neighborhood," said Mr. Patton. "He was found murdered in his apartment, stabbed in his apartment … I think he was found a couple of days after he was actually killed. And a lot of the investigative work was kind of canvassing … convenience and liquor stores in his area. He was known to befriend … transients and vagrants in the neighborhood."

A year later, Ernest (Ernie) Watts, a South Bronx native in his late 30's, was slain in his studio apartment on the second floor of 15 West 139th Street, one in a seven-building complex known as Delano Village Houses. Watts had no known employment, but was thought to hang out at the Warehouse–where he was apparently last seen–and St. Nicholas Park. Although his body was found, stabbed multiple times, on Aug. 20, it is believed that he had been slain days before–as early as Aug. 16, according to Mr. Patton. When police investigated the murder scene, they found that a telephone had been ripped out of the wall.

Of all the murder victims, the most is known about Nathaniel Hayden, called Troy, who also lived in Delano Village at 630 Lenox Avenue. According to his sister, LaTonya Harris, Hayden had moved to New York some 10 years ago after growing up in Killeen, Tex., and Louisville, Ky. He told his family he was working at the United Parcel Service. (Mr. Patton and others could not confirm that.) "He moved away when he was, like, 13, so we talked off and on," said Ms. Harris, reached at her home in Chattanooga, Tenn., where she works as a receptionist. She said that she had last spoken to her brother in early October, "a week or two" before his murder. "He [seemed] happy to me," she said. "He sounded like everything was O.K."

Carl Stokes, the head of security for Delano Village, said Hayden was known for having frequent visitors to Apartment 11K, the studio where he lived. "Visitors of all kinds: male, female, old and young, middle-aged," said Mr. Stokes. "He was just into that type of life style. We never got a call about a party. Just a lot of people in and out."

Hayden's body was found last Oct. 24 in his apartment, where, again, a telephone had been ripped off the wall. Mr. Stokes said the body was found by a building porter some time after a neighbor on the 11th floor had called in a noise complaint. "A tenant called and said, 'Listen, there's something going on. They're fighting or whatever in the apartment.' [An] officer … responded to the apartment, responded to the call, knocked on the door, nothing … Later that day, the report came down that there was a body in the apartment." Mr. Stokes added that it generally takes between one and five minutes for his staff to respond to complaints.

"If there was security, and people were hearing noises and stuff, why didn't nobody say anything?" asked Ms. Harris. "I understand that's New York or whatever, but here in the country … we hear something, we call!"

"This happened to my brother in October," she added. "It is now February, and you're calling me. Why is that? The only person I talk to all the time is Detective Hayes … It's just going to be another black man, just gone."

At the beginning of February, departmental heads at the firm's headquarters at 60 Wall Street began distributing memos to their staffs announcing the new dress policy: Effective immediately, employees would now be permitted to dress "business appropriate" five days a week. Oh, yes, they'll be expected to have a suit handy, just in case, but from now on they'll be allowed to show up for work dressed like their ideal clients, the open-collared technology entrepreneurs who have all the prospects and most of the money.

For once, the firm was ahead of the curve. While many of its competitors have experimented in recent years with casual Fridays and dress-down summers, none of the big investment banks have gone full-time casual. Now J.P. Morgan, eager to stem a tide of defections to dot-com startups and buy-side investment boutiques, has thrown a bone to its young employees and sent a signal to prospective clients: J.P. Morgan is hip.

Inside and outside the firm, the news inspired a host of reactions-relief, surprise, disgust. "That's ridiculous," said one competitor.

"It shows how desperate they are," said a banker at a rival firm, who still wears a suit to work. "You don't walk into J.P. Morgan looking for a guy in chinos."

A former Morgan employee summed it up simply: "What are the firms you would absolutely expect not to change? I would say that J.P. Morgan's at the top of the list."

But change it has, and the firm's investment bankers will simply have to adapt, broadening their fashion horizons to meet the demands of a work environment that, dress-wise, may become something of a free-for-all. Firms like Merrill Lynch & Company and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc. are already fully casual in certain departments (though not their investment banks). Other firms like Deutsche Bank A.G. and Goldman Sachs & Company have instituted casual Fridays and summers. The experience at these and other places suggest that the Wall Street is lurching into a fashion disaster, as armies of young men in golf shirts, tight khakis and Topsiders march around lower Manhattan, profaning the towers of granite, glass and steel around them.

The shedding of the business suit further erodes the boundaries between Wall Street and the rest of the world. As on-line brokerages have flourished, as the Internet has opened up the formerly arcane secrets of the Street to the investing public, the guys in the temple have ceased to be the high priests. So they are shedding their robes. If the suits aren't wearing suits, what will we call them?

Couch-Potato Friday

"The big problem is that nobody knows what casual means in specific terms," said G. Bruce Boyer, the men's fashion editor of Quest magazine and the author of several books on the topic. "A couple of years ago when this started, the boss thought it would be good to promote camaraderie and to make life easier for his workers, so he said, 'Starting next week, we're going to have a casual-Friday dress-down.' And the next Friday some of the guys came in with, you know, cutoffs and flip-flops, and the boss was in a cashmere blazer and silk Polo shirt, and he looked at them and said, 'What the hell are you doing? I said casual!'"

"Men love to make sure they don't look like fools; this is the most important thing for men's clothes," said Anne Hollander, a "scholar of dress" who wrote Sex and Suits , a history of professional wear. "You don't have to look sexy, but you do have to look right for the occasion. The only people who don't mind looking stupid are performers and people who have no power, and they can play with interesting, jolly stuff that makes them look like a fool. But this is not how your standard male person wishes to operate in the world."

"To adapt themselves to some new thing tends to make them feel very resentful and resistant," Ms. Hollander went on. "Now casual clothing is going to allow everyone to think they're being liberated, but they're all being imprisoned in a different set of rules."

Uniformity will eventually prevail. The trading desks where the casual-attire rule has been in place for a while already resemble Dockers commercials. While the bankers signing off on the idea may have envisioned cashmere blazers and gray flannels, they're getting the Gap instead. Executives' legs may no longer feel scratchy, but the belts will still feel tight.

"People have taken this dress-down Friday thing and turned it into couch-potato Friday," said Paul Wilmot, a public relations executive. "These people just look terrible."

Indeed, Wall Streeters-especially the ones still wearing suits, who have nothing to worry about yet-can vouch for the lousy taste of their casually wardrobed colleagues. "Certain departments that really aren't as client-focused have gone casual Fridays, and we are talking about people who basically take it way too far," said a 24-year-old analyst at an old-fashioned corporate bank. "They're wearing sweats. Like, maternity gear."

"I think it depends on the level," said a Merrill Lynch investment banker in his early 30's. "When you're a really junior person, you have no money, and then your casual wardrobe isn't as expensive. So with analysts, it's a little sketchy. You see people in jeans, and in my opinion that's inappropriate. And I think the secretaries, sometimes, don't really dress the way the firm would like them to dress." The banker was dressed in standard business casual attire: slacks, blazer, black Johnston & Murphy lace-up shoes and a "kicking Armani shirt" (no undershirt).

The transition into casual wear is not any easier for women. "You'd get, like, long skirts, with, like, a t-shirt," said Kate Hartwell, 24, who worked for two years as an analyst at Merrill. "It was weird, what the women would wear. I would always just wear a sweater and pants." She recalled one male colleague who got it right. "He always wore this horrendous tie clip. But on casual day, he didn't wear the tie clip."

Despite firms' attempts to offer guidelines for newly casual conference rooms and trading floors, the problem with dressing down is that there are so many options. The standard uniform has always been simple, despite variations according to taste and cost: two-piece suit, conservative dress shirt, conservative tie, black belt, black socks over the calf (intended to shield skin from view, even when legs were crossed), and black or dark brown shoes. It was a formula that worked and, what's more, it was flattering.

"The suit looks so good on everybody fat, and so good on everybody skinny, and so good on everybody who never worked out," said Ms. Hollander. "I mean, it was always just a magnificent sort of idealization of your body, without the pain every time you got dressed. You wear a thing that hides the uneasy relationship between your top and your bottom, if there is one. A harmonizing effect was possible with suits."

The simplicity, according to Mr. Boyer, was "what was great about getting dressed 50 years ago."

Naturally, the basic ensemble has its accessories, which vary according to rank-cufflinks, for instance, which an investment banker tends not to wear until he became an associate. Or suspenders, reserved for vice presidents, back-office lackeys or showboats, along with bow ties, loud colors and other attention-grabbing accouterments not appropriate for the junior staff. "You don't want to bring attention to yourself," said a 25-year-old analyst who worked at J. P. Morgan for several summers. "Because, inevitably, everyone says, 'Who does he think he is?' If you're a big swinging dick, it's perfectly fine. But if you just started, it doesn't cast you in the right light."

Still, there have always been levelers. What would Wall Street be without the Goldtoe sock? The Goldtoe, a nearly knee-high, yellow-toed dark sock with elastic so tight that it has a depilatory effect on a man's leg, is the official sock of the Street. "It stays up, almost to the point of pain," said the corporate finance analyst. "Older men on Wall Street have no leg hair below the knee-because there's been no blood to the hair. When I wear my Goldtoes with khakis, it's just kind of weird. It feels like I'm wearing pantyhose." And wearing pantyhose is not conducive to mastering one's universe-if one is a man.

What Would Pierpont Do?

The need for more casual gear is not lost on high-end clothiers, many of whom have expanded their dress-down departments. George Longoria, assistant store manager of the Brooks Brothers financial-district shop, said that almost every week he hears of companies toning down their dress policies. "It has really helped guide our business down here," he said. "We just renovated our store, going on about six to eight months ago, and expanded our casual wear. As a company, that's our biggest expanding department." Brooks Brothers also runs seminars for companies helping them to figure out how to do the casual thing.

Michael Ostrove, the general merchandise manager of Paul Stuart Inc., pointed out that while sales of suits had been flat in the last year or two, "sport jackets [are] in double-digit-percentage growth … at least three or four seasons going strong now, more than double-digit. Same thing with sport shirts, and knitwear, and sweaters … but with the suits, it's definitely a trick to hold the line."

The line is eroding, as Silicon Valley sets the tone for business practice and culture in the new century. Wall Street is now forced to cater to them, rather than the other way around.

Kristin Lemkau, a spokesman for J.P. Morgan, said the firm's new dress-down policy had a lot to do with employee input. "The idea of business-appropriate really gained momentum internally and was well accepted by both our employees and our clients," she said. "With some employees, it's actually an advantage not to wear a suit."

"There's something happening here, which is certainly related to the West Coast, but it may also be related to some subtle alteration of the generation which is now in their 20's and 30's," said Samuel Hayes, a professor emeritus of the Harvard Business School and investment banking scholar. "They are not just interested in business as a career. They want to have a quality of life which doesn't have to be postponed until they reach the top, and there may be some kind of subtle signal that's being transmitted in that shift."

Mr. Hayes was surprised that J.P. Morgan, of all places, would go casual. He recalled the firm's founder, the legendarily gruff and formal J. Pierpont Morgan. "I've never seen a picture of him where he didn't have a tie on," he said. "Even when he was on his yacht, or in his gardens. He was always dressed to the nines."

Nearly two years after he was fired from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Company, then arrested by police for trying to hack into the firm's computers, Mr. Curry, 26, has landed at Gardner Rich & Company, a small Chicago-based institutional brokerage that has an office in Trump Tower, overlooking Central Park.

That brings the number of men who are taking a chance on Mr. Curry to two. His rehabilitation is in their hands. The first is his lawyer, Benedict Morelli, who is representing Mr. Curry in his $1.8 billion discrimination lawsuit against Morgan Stanley-and is doing so on a contingency basis.

The second is Chris Gardner, the 45-year-old African-American founder and president of Gardner Rich, who, ironically, got his start in business at Dean Witter, 15 years before it merged with Morgan Stanley. Mr. Gardner, a high school dropout who was once homeless, couldn't be more different from Mr. Curry or, for that matter, from Mr. Curry's former bosses at Morgan. His career in finance began in 1981, when he met a man in a red Ferrari in a San Francisco parking lot. The driver told Mr. Gardner what he did for a living: He was a stockbroker making $80,000 a month. Mr. Gardner decided that was what he wanted to be. So, while Mr. Gardner was living in a homeless shelter with his 1 year-old son, he entered a training program and began studying for his Series 7. He became a junior trader at Dean Witter, then went to Bear Stearns & Company, where he often slept under his desk. Now, 19 years later, Mr. Gardner has a Ferrari of his own, which he bought from basketball star Michael Jordan. (The license plate says, "NOT MJ.") He also has his own firm, which invests public employee pensions. He has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to educational charities and helped produce a booklet last year called Hard Work Pays . Distributed to seventh graders nationwide, the booklet has a picture of his Ferrari on its cover.

Compare this man to Mr. Curry, the Columbia College graduate raised in a well-to-do family in Chappaqua, N.Y. His career path traveled in the opposite direction to that of his new boss. He went from working at one of the country's most prestigious investment banks to spending the night in jail.

In April 1998, shortly after nude photographs of Mr. Curry appeared in a gay pornographic magazine, Morgan Stanley fired him, citing fraudulent expense records. That August, Mr. Curry was arrested by Manhattan cops after allegedly trying to hack into the Morgan Stanley in-house computer system in an attempt to gather e-mails that would incriminate the firm in the planned racial discrimination suit. Charges against Mr. Curry were eventually dropped when Manhattan prosecutors discovered that Morgan Stanley had paid a police informant $10,000 to set up Mr. Curry in the hacking scheme. Still, the fired banker became a pariah on Wall Street, as press accounts described his lax work habits and arrogant demeanor.

Mr. Gardner and Mr. Curry met at a party last year. Mr. Gardner hired Mr. Curry to be a research associate at his New York office. The job started last fall. "He's a bright young guy, and he's going to have a career in this business if he wants it," said Mr. Gardner from his Chicago headquarters. quot;My concerns about Christian are that what I need to get done, gets done. And what he's going through with these other guys is of no interest to me. Obviously, he did something stupid, but I think when I was 20 I did some stupid shit, too. Again, bottom line, we're looking for talent. And the nice thing about this kid-and I keep calling him 'kid'; he's a young man-the nice thing about him is, he never worked on the Street long enough to form a lot of bad habits. You know what I mean? You get some folks who've been out here a while, and they've figured out seven ways to fuck you before you get out of bed in the morning! But I see in him things that kind of remind me of myself. I mean, I have come to be in this business, I'm very lucky to be in this business, very nontraditional, if you will, competing with guys who went to Harvard from kindergarten."

The Observer pointed out that Mr. Curry had attended an Ivy League school.

"Yeah, he did," Mr. Gardner said. "But where is he now? Where did that get him? What did that net him? He's at a point now where somebody's gotta say, 'O.K., you know what? I'm gonna give you a shot.' That's the strongest similarity. All right? Not where are you from, but where are you at now? And had guys at Bear Stearns not given me a shot, I would've never been in this business." Meanwhile, Mr. Curry has been lying low. "I am grateful for the opportunity Mr. Gardner has given me," he said, reached via cell phone while walking on the Columbia University campus, where he had gone to visit an undergraduate dean who he hopes will testify on his behalf as a character witness in court. He declined to comment further on the new job, explaining that Gardner Rich is "a privately held company whose policy is not to talk about its employees."

The Advocate

Mr. Curry's new shyness toward the press may have something to do with his lawyer, Mr. Morelli, who took on the employment discrimination case in early 1999. Mr. Morelli has told Mr. Curry to keep quiet while he handles the publicity for the case. Early on, Mr. Curry was a loose cannon, but now, under the tutelage of Mr. Morelli, he has developed into quite the reticent plaintiff. Still, the benefits of sympathetic press are not lost on Mr. Morelli, who was incensed last year when 20/20 , then 60 Minutes , canceled intended segments on the Curry case after Morgan Stanley refused to cooperate on the stories. Mr. Morelli loves to drop the names of reporters and news organizations that have called him about Mr. Curry. " I went on the record, right from the beginning," said Mr. Morelli, "Everybody [was saying], 'Oh, I wanna talk to Curry, I wanna talk to Curry,' and I said, 'Sure you wanna talk to him now. But if you don't treat me good, you're not gonna be able to have anything later, because Curry's the story only for a few days, and then it's about the case.'"

Since Jan. 18, Mr. Curry has been spending his days at Mr. Morelli's midtown office, giving depositions. He has taken three weeks off from his new job to concentrate on that task.

The Shadow

Then there's C. Joseph Luethke, the only character in this drama whose behavior may be more bizarre than Mr. Curry's. Mr. Luethke was the informant who was paid $10,000 by Morgan Stanley to help set up Mr. Curry in the computer hacking sting. He has proved a slippery fellow, shaking alliances, making grandiose claims and, in general, persisting in his attempts to stoke interest in his peculiar take on the case.

On the morning of Jan. 24, he stopped by the editorial offices of The Observer to drop off his latest input on the Curry case: an affidavit, or "declaration," signed by a notary public and received by the U.S. District Court in Manhattan the same day. His declaration makes all kinds of outlandish allegations, asserting, among other things, that a Chubb & Son insurance adjuster named Jonathan Kurens served as a go-between for Mr. Luethke and Morgan Stanley in the planning of the police sting; and that Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is "obstructing justice" due to his "role in the pedophilia ring, 'Club of Kings,'" a group Mr. Luethke nicknames "Cock." Mr. Kurens referred calls to Chubb's communications office, which declined comment. A press officer for Mr. Morgenthau declined comment on the court filing.

Despite several follow-up phone calls placed to The Observer , Mr. Luethke, whose phone number has been disconnected, could not be reached for comment. However, sources with knowledge of the Curry case said the U.S. Attorney's office suspects Mr. Luethke of perjuring himself; apparently, the facts he states in his affidavit don't square with those in his depositions. Marvin Smilon, the press officer for the Federal court, had no comment on whether prosecutors had launched an investigation.

Even those who claim to have even the most cursory contact with Mr. Luethke are befuddled by his elusiveness and penchant for conspiracy theory.

"I met with him one time in my life, Mr. Luethke, other than the deposition, for an hour in my office, and I wouldn't talk to him again," said Mr. Morelli. "One time, for one hour, in my office, maybe about six months ago … and it took me about 20 minutes to figure out that you could never figure out anything he's talking about."

"He tries to be very clandestine, like he's a secret agent," agreed a police source who met with Mr. Luethke last fall. "He's got this stupid baseball cap, and he's carrying a newspaper under his arm. He's been watching too many spy movies."

In this age of publicists and handlers, the right lawyer is everything for a celebrity with a sticky case. For Mr. Combs, having the right counsel could mean the difference between exoneration and 15 years in state prison, the maximum sentence for the crime of which he's accused. As Mr. Combs, who was indicted by a New York County Supreme Court grand jury on Jan. 13, moves toward his next court date, such counsel is taking the shape of one Benjamin Brafman, the criminal defense lawyer whose legal skills earned club owner Peter Gatien his freedom in 1998.

"When a person with celebrity status is injected into the criminal justice system, he or she needs people beside them who are capable not only of dealing with the facts and legal issues presented by the case, but able to deal with the onslaught of attention that comes," said the 51-year-old Mr. Brafman, who joined the Combs defense team recently at Johnnie Cochran's behest. Also on the three-lawyer defense team is Bronx attorney Harvey Slovis, who represented Mr. Combs in the beating of record executive Steve Stoute last spring.

"This is an isolated incident that is alleged to have happened on Dec. 27, 1999, and the issue-and the only issue-is, did he have a gun on that night, or did he not?" said Mr. Brafman. "And he has steadfastly maintained that he did not, and I believe him, based on the evidence that I have seen to date."

Still, the presence of Wardel Fenderson, who was driving Mr. Combs' Lincoln Navigator when the rapper was pulled over by cops after the club shooting, remains troubling for Mr. Combs and his attorneys. If Mr. Fenderson told the grand jury he saw his boss throw a gun out of the car, that direct bit of eyewitness evidence would be tough to beat in a courtroom setting. (Another loaded 9-millimeter gun was found on the floor inside the car, but legal experts said that possession count is much less of a worry for Mr. Combs.)

"[If] there's an actual witness who said they saw him throw a gun out the window, that's fairly powerful," said a defense lawyer who has followed the case. "The only way for them to attack that-on its face, at least-is [to] go after the veracity of the eyewitness." Which leads back to Mr. Brafman, whose cross-examination expertise is highly regarded.

"Ben unequivocally is probably the best-forget about lawyer-best person I've ever met in my life. He is incredible with his opening, incredible with the jury," said Mr. Gatien, who was acquitted of Federal charges of operating a drug-peddling ring out of his two Manhattan clubs, the Limelight and the Tunnel, largely due to Mr. Brafman's diligence. "I can say without hesitation that Puffy's in great hands."

Besides Mr. Gatien, Mr. Brafman's notable New York clients have included Daphne Abdela, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 1997 Central Park lakeside murder of Michael McMorrow, and Alistair Duncan, convicted in a conspiracy to steal Tiffany glass from mausoleums. He briefly represented Salvatore (the Bull) Gravano in 1991, but said they parted ways once Mr. Gravano agreed to snitch for the Government.

The Combs case, however, elevates Mr. Brafman to a new level. It parachuted him into another kind of celebrity world, one that includes superstars like actress-singer Jennifer Lopez, Mr. Combs' girlfriend who was with him on the night of the shooting, and spreads in People magazine and Vanity Fair .

Mr. Brafman is comfortable with that.

"Dealing with the media, dealing with the public, keeping a case from getting worse by exercising good judgment, and keeping people from exercising bad judgment, is part of what you develop as experience in cases like this," Mr. Brafman said, sitting at the desk in his office at 767 Third Avenue at 48th Street. In the case of Mr. Combs, it was quickly addressed, with a conservatively dressed Mr. Combs facing the press at a large-scale press conference, flanked by his three-man legal defense "dream team" of the high-profile Mr. Cochran, the bulldog Mr. Brafman and the loyal Mr. Slovis.

Mr. Brafman, who stands 5 feet 6 inches tall, is no caricature of a powerful Manhattan attorney, however. According to his peers, he is a lawyer's lawyer, and he dresses the part. Even the circular Band-Aid between the pinky and ring finger of his left hand seems carefully considered, an accouterment appropriate for his crisp shirt cuffs (buttoned at the wrist, not the forearm), his combed-back hair, his striped tie.

"Many people who are very anticriminal defense lawyer change their tune dramatically when it's their ass that's in the hot seat suddenly, and they need someone like you to stand beside them and oppose the government," he said of his life's work. "I think there are only very few things that are worse than being the defendant in a criminal case … It's a shattering experience. I've probably talked more people out of committing suicide than most psychiatrists. And a lot of being a criminal defense lawyer is being a counselor, a rabbi, a priest, a friend … What the public sees is just the fun part."

He said that his work has, in many respects, become tougher in recent years. "It's changed dramatically in the last 10 years because of the advent of the Federal sentencing guidelines, that imposed significantly harsher penalties in white-collar criminal cases, which is the bulk of my practice. And it's changed significantly as well because crime is the No. 1 issue on many people's minds."

The desk of Mr. Brafman's corner office is organized into neat stacks of case files and memos. There's an L-shaped seating area, and the walls are hung with press clippings and personal correspondence, plus a cartoonlike drawing of Mr. Brafman that reads "tough guy" in bold lettering. (An old framed note from the attorney's son, David, written in a 7-year-old's penciled hand, reads as follows: "My super hero is my father … I'm proud of my dad. He finished the Marathon. Even though he finished the Marathon when it was about 12:00 and it started at 7:00 in the morning.")

Brafman & Ross employs six attorneys altogether; Mr. Brafman is the only equity partner.

Mr. Brafman, who like so many other successful criminal defense attorneys is a former prosecutor, he in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, describes his job as "horribly stressful." He credits his sanity to his religiosity and his family-his wife, Lynda Brafman, a librarian, two grown children and two grandchildren, ages 1 and 3. Not to mention a healthy sense of mirth. "Max, my 3-year-old grandson, is someone who speaks now," a poker-faced Mr. Brafman explained. "So I finally have someone to communicate with on my own level."

The attorney, who was born in Brooklyn but lives on Long Island, is an Orthodox Jew. "A large portion of my extended family … were victims of the Holocaust," he said. "My parents both miraculously survived and made it to the United States, and came here with nothing, and built an incredible family that's very, very close. And I always believed that if members of my family could die for these principles, the least I could do was adhere to them."

Indeed, Mr. Brafman added that, were it not for his observance of Shabbat on Friday nights and Saturdays, "I would have probably died a long time ago."

A date has yet to be set for Mr. Combs' next appearance in court. Should he be convicted, the stakes will be high; Mr. Combs has a prior conviction, having pleaded guilty last April to beating Mr. Stoute, an Interscope Records executive. Mr. Combs, who was represented by Mr. Slovis at the time, was sentenced to one day in an anger-management course, which he served, accompanied by Mr. Slovis.

Most likely to trip him up, legal observers said, is Mr. Federson's testimony. "I think that if one of the people in the car is turning, or has turned, I think Ben will have his work cut out for him," said Marvyn Kornberg, the lawyer who represented police officer Justin Volpe in the Abner Louima torture case. "However, he's not beyond doing the job."

Other lawyers said Mr. Cochran has played it smart in bringing on Mr. Brafman. "I don't think Cochran can hold a candle to Brafman in the courtroom," said Mr. Kornberg.

"It's most likely that Brafman is going to be lead counsel," said another defense attorney.

Mr. Brafman defers to his colleagues' legal skills, but admits he's comfortable before a Manhattan judge. "I think Johnnie Cochran is … a smart-enough lawyer to recognize that when you're in somebody else's backyard, it's good to have someone who grew up in that neighborhood on your team," Mr. Brafman said. "A lot of lawyers in his position would not want to share the stage or the limelight and, if necessary, would hire a relatively unknown person in New York just to sort of guide him through the procedural issues. But Johnnie has maintained from the beginning that what he wanted to do was put together the best team he could, to try and resolve this case favorably. I'm grateful he picked me." (Mr. Cochran, handling a trial in Cleveland, could not be reached for comment.)

Regarding Mr. Slovis, Mr. Brafman said, "There's a great deal of information he has, there's a great deal of personal investigation he has conducted, and I think there's an opportunity for him to continue to make a valuable contribution to the case." Mr. Slovis said of Mr. Brafman: "He does great legal work."

Ms. Lebowitz wasn't finished. "I think she's a very poor role model for girls," she said. "I believe she's someone who decided at a young age that 'I want to be President, but I can't, because I'm a girl. So I'll marry the President.' I think that's so regressive." She paused for breath. "She's a poll-taker, she's a pulse-taker, she's not a leader. She doesn't really seem to have any ideas … And then she comes here and panders."

A little less than a year after she began her heavy flirtation with the 2000 Senate race, in which she'll likely face Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Mrs. Clinton, 52, is suffering from a lack of support among those who should be her voting base–white women, many of them professionals and from her own generation. If you don't believe it, look at the Jan. 11 Marist Poll of New York State voters, in which Mr. Giuliani swept the white female vote, claiming 52 percent to Mrs. Clinton's 35 percent. For the Hillary camp, that was worse news than a Dec. 16 Quinnipiac College Poll in which Mr. Giuliani claimed 47 percent of female white voters and Mrs. Clinton took 40 percent.

"It started in October!" said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac College Polling Institute. "We had missed it, because we didn't subdivide. And when we did it, we took the women. I'll be goddamned! Because she always won among women, a little bit, in each case. [But] you took black women out, and what was a narrow lead for her among women turned into a narrow lead for him among white women!"

"A year ago January, she was running much better among women," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. "Clearly, women are part of the fallout. In January of last year, she was beating Giuliani among Democratic women."

For a state with a deeply liberal reputation, New York has always been a tough nut to crack for women: Despite a long history of women in power–from Belle Moskowitz to Frances Perkins to Bella Abzug–none has ever been elected to statewide office here. The last significant female candidate, Ruth Messinger, received just 45 percent of female votes against Mayor Giuliani in 1997, according to the Marist Institute. (Even among Democratic women, Ms. Messinger received just 58 percent.) New York City has three female members of Congress; 11 men.

"New York's a pretty progressive state," said Mr. Carroll, "a tolerant place, with no real bars to women … except that the record says, they don't get elected in New York!"

"I haven't been to a dinner party recently where there hasn't been a Giuliani-Hillary Senate vote," said Ellen Levine, editor in chief of Good Housekeeping . "And what's interesting about the votes is that the women are not united, and you'd expect them to be."

Some New York City women seem to be developing a grudge against Mrs. Clinton as a representative of their sex. Those interviewed who said they won't support her–or who have real doubts about voting for her–said it's not so much about her politics, but rather Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate and health care reform. And the women interviewed seem to have dismissed the Lewinsky scandal as a factor in their view of Mrs. Clinton. Some said they couldn't relate to her on a personal level and didn't respect her as a woman, a drawback for a new girl in town full of barrier-smashing, high-voltage professionals, some of whom may hold their female peers up to a much loftier standard than they would their male ones.

Their resentment is an irritation with her persona, her tactics–what Dr. Patricia Allen, a 52-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist affiliated with New York Presbyterian Hospital, described as "unattractive, narcissistic tendencies" that she sees in the First Lady. "I wanted to like Mrs. Clinton, because she comes from a modest, Midwestern background, as I do. She worked hard for her education and her power. But, you know, I'm ashamed of her," Dr. Allen said.

"The big difference is that I always went after what I wanted for me. I never lived my life through a man. I never sought to achieve power or professional aspirations through alliance with a powerful man. I always believed that I could make it happen, simply by doing what I was taught to do as a child: to get up in the morning, and do your work, and be a person whose word can be believed."

Some of the tension seemed to arise only after Mrs. Clinton's transformation from an idealistic policy wonk in a royal blue suit to a poll-taking, listening, touring candidate surrounded by a thick cadre of campaign advisers. And to many women, the change has made her seem even more inaccessible.

Alexandra Brodsky, a filmmaker in her late 20's, was remembering her first encounter with the First Lady: a 1992 speech, given on the New Haven green at Yale University on the eve of Bill Clinton's first Presidential race. "I was so moved," said Ms. Brodsky. "I really felt like she was so intelligent, and she really was earnest, and had an agenda that I really respected. And I guess I feel now–and it's not even so much the scandal in the White House–she's been so calculated in terms of her candidacy. And every sort of statement she makes, I feel, is designed for her own political advancement. And that really is distressing to me–I don't fully trust her. It's just she's done this crazy 180."

"I've heard it since I first starting writing about Hillary in 1992," said writer Gail Sheehy, whose biography of the First Lady, Hillary's Choice , was recently published. "The first reaction I got from, shall we say, somebody in the editorial area, was: 'I can't stand her. She's too effing perfect … The women one would expect to be out there, competing to give teas for her and petitioning and making phones ring off the hook are often those most viscerally offended by her. I'm talking about liberal Democratic educated or professional women. And particularly those over 45."

"I almost feel she's underestimating New Yorkers by not jumping on real topics more," said a 24-year-old magazine writer. "Like she sort of thinks we won't notice. I have a lot of friends that feel the same way–waiting for her to have some sort of opinion, so we can know how to feel about her and the rest of the candidates."

"This idea of the fact that she's not from here really isn't a factor? It is! It is a factor," said Marcia Ann Gillespie, the 55-year-old editor of Ms. magazine. "If you want to represent us, then you need to become a lot smarter about who you are. And right now she's been off to a real slow start. There's a certain kind of resentment that, No, you can't take my vote for granted, just because I'm female."

Other women have had a bone to pick with Mrs. Clinton since her husband entered the Oval Office seven years ago. Take Brooke Hayward Duchin, the 62-year-old writer and wife of society band leader Peter Duchin. "I don't think she handled many of her public chores terribly well," she sighed. "I don't think the Travelgate thing was effective … and for some reason I feel she's unethical."

A 29-year-old television journalist agreed: "I haven't been pleased with how she handled herself as the First Lady," she said. "I don't feel like she clearly picked one or two issues [that] she could have made a difference on. I feel like she was all over the map."

"I always keep coming back to It Takes a Village ," said Tama Janowitz, novelist and mother, who described herself as being "more than 30 years old." "Which just irritates me beyond belief. What the hell is she talking about? 'It takes a village' … It's like some Midwest kind of lovely thing, this lovely sentiment. It takes a village, and then meanwhile, there is no village! It's New York City! We're trying to get through the day without getting shot!"

Still especially raw in New York is the image Mrs. Clinton created of herself during her foray into health care. "When Hillary was given the mandate to reform and help health care and make it better, she bombed," said Barbara Greenberg, a fund-raiser for Beth Israel Medical Center who is in her late 50's and the wife of Dr. Henry Greenberg, director of the coronary unit at Roosevelt Hospital. "And people fail at things. It's not that. What bothers my husband and me is that she seemed to demonize all doctors, and surround herself … with people who were peripherally involved in health care, but not doctors. She's such a bright, caring women, so why did she do this? Which makes me wonder about her, and choices she'll make in the future on other issues I certainly care about."

"I can't look at her without seeing her through a veil of half-truths, obfuscation," said Dr. Allen. "I feel strongly that she believes that she cannot be wrong and she believes she knows all the answers. [And] I started to feel that way when she decided to single-handedly overhaul the health care system."

Ms. Sheehy said she was unsurprised by these feelings from New York women. "Beginning back when they had to go in the side door of the Harvard Club, the whole idea was supposed to be that you didn't ride on a man's coattails," she said. "Or if you did, you know, you let go once they became soiled. And so I think it seems to be pretty prevalent among women, let's say, over 45, who feel that the way Hillary has made her way to the top of public life reflects badly on them."

Judith Shapiro, 57, president of Barnard College, disagrees. "I think women are always judged more harshly on things than men are," she said. "So I think to the extent that she might come across as too calculating, or too slick, she's likely to be judged more harshly than a man would for having those qualities."

According to Mr. Carroll of Quinnipiac, Mrs. Clinton could be in trouble without the support of white women, who have voted for the victor in every statewide election during the last decade, according to Mr. Carroll. "That doesn't mean that [Mr. Giuliani's] going to continue to lead among women. Not by a goddamn long shot! But! At the moment–and I'm convinced, and partly this is intuition and analysis, and partly it's people I've talked to–it's professional women, women who have made their own careers, that realized that [Mrs. Clinton's] candidacy starts with being First Lady. And there's some–I'm convinced!–some resentment in there. That, you know, well, she's starting at the top because she's married to the guy!"

Nevertheless, Mrs. Clinton may still find her hard-nosed adversary becoming her best ally. Said City Council member Ronnie Eldridge, 68, a Democrat: "I didn't think she was the strongest candidate, but she seems to be the only candidate. So I'm supporting her. I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Over a year ago, Dr. Marks announced that after 19 years' service at Sloan-Kettering, one of the most esteemed cancer care centers in the world, he would step down in order to focus on laboratory research. (Dr. Harold Varmus will succeed him on Jan. 1.) His apartment at 620 Park Avenue, which brokers said has been on and off the market in recent years, was at first being shown exclusively by Edward Lee Cave, who heads up a high-end eponymous real estate brokerage. However, real estate sources said Mr. Cave lost Dr. Marks' business when a potential buyer failed to get the prickly co-op board's approval last fall.

By the beginning of October, the exclusive sales contract had been reassigned to two firms, Stribling & Associates and Sotheby's International Real Estate, which had a total of four different brokers showing the property to apartment shoppers.

According to real estate sources, the brokers' task was not an easy one. "It's a very tough board," said one broker familiar with the building. "It's a very, very old-line, WASPy building. You need money, and you need to belong to the right clubs. Nobody famous would ever get into that building; that's what it's all about." Like a dozen or so other top Park Avenue buildings, 620 Park's co-op board demands that apartments be purchased with at least 50 percent cash.

And Mr. Koch, the president of the Long Island-based Koch International L.P., was not necessarily a shoo-in. More than one real estate wag expressed surprise that the Austrian-born music mogul, whose prior addresses included Brooklyn Heights and City Spire, a midtown condo that one broker described as "dumpy," was able to pass muster. Still, with his acceptance earlier this month, Mr. Koch appears poised to move in.

A broker familiar with Dr. Marks' situation said that the 73-year-old medical administrator and his wife will now split their time between a house in Oxbury, Conn., and a pied-à-terre they recently purchased at 825 Fifth Avenue, a co-op building near 63rd Street.

Dr. Marks' 620 Park Avenue abode, which occupies the building's whole 12th floor, went on the market in April at an asking price of $4.7 million. The 4,000-square-foot space, which originally had 12 rooms, has since been renovated into eight larger ones. There are four bedrooms, three baths, a large living room and dining room, plus four different exposures. There's also a temperature-controlled wine closet.

"It's a contemporary renovation, a family apartment turned into a couple's apartment," said a broker who had toured the space, adding that the master suite-which contains his-and-hers bathrooms-was particularly large. "[It's] kind of a 70's renovation. Somebody's gonna have to spend a lot of money."

That will be Mr. Koch, who owns the largest independent music distributor in the United States and works with artists including folk singer Ani DiFranco on his client roster. He will be leaving a five-and-a-half-room condo at the City Spire, located at 150 West 56th Street, which he bought in 1994 for $932,000.

TRIBECA

In Wake of 90210 Cameo,

Duncan Sheik Lands a Loft

He was once proclaimed a "music love god" by Mademoiselle . He was educated at Andover and has a semiotics degree from Brown University. His two albums, 1996's self-titled debut and 1998's Humming , are moody and introspective, and made him a darling of indie rock critics. The buzz landed him a spot on the ER soundtrack and a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210 . Now Duncan Sheik has bought an apartment at 195 Hudson Street, a hip, new TriBeCa building.

Mr. Sheik, who was previously renting a place in SoHo, looked around the city quite a bit before finding the right place to call home. He found a newly converted loft in a former printing factory built in 1929, for which he paid $850,500 in cash. The building's 28 apartments have been available for about 18 months, but now only three are left. Like all the other new owners, Mr. Sheik bought his third-floor space "raw" so he can design his loft exactly as he wants. He's starting out with an open concrete space except for a kitchen and bathroom. The loft also has 12-foot-high ceilings and a wood-burning fireplace, as do most of the units. (The penthouses, however, have 20-foot-high ceilings.) The factory-style windows are nine feet high and have a steel-frame exterior. Mr. Sheik plans to build a recording studio in his home; with the 2,400 square feet he's got, perhaps he can build two.

Each buyer also gets a space in the building's parking garage, which is for residential use only. There's a full-time doorman in the still-being-renovated lobby, and a common roof garden is being developed. The building has a gorgeous brick facade and is eight stories high. Two floors were added for penthouse units, each priced at $3.8 million, with 4,000 square feet inside and 2,000-square-foot terraces. The building has attracted architects, graphic designers, families keen on the good school district, and now a musician. Broker: Sinvin Realty (Bruce Sinder); Corcoran (Pat Dugan).

UPPER EAST SIDE

425 East 79th Street

Three-bed, two-bath, 1,600-square-foot co-op

Asking: $635,000. Selling: $637,500

Charges: $1,493; 50 percent tax-deductible

Time on the market: four months.

FEAR OF WALLPAPER No matter that the place needed a lot of work. The buyers, who had sold a smaller apartment in the same area, knew a good deal when they saw one. They wanted to stay in this neighborhood, in part because of its well-regarded school district (they have two young children), and they refused to schedule endless apartment-hunting trips. So they went into a bidding war and emerged triumphant. Now the real work begins. The sellers had lived in the apartment for 35 years, raising a family there. So it's time for some major updating, including a new kitchen, new bathrooms and refinished floors. But first, take down the wallpaper! Broker: Douglas Elliman (Kerry Martin); Corcoran (Marina Chimerine).

126 East 70th Street

Four-story town house

Asking: $6.75 million. Selling: $6.4 million

Time on the market: two months.

WALL STREETER SAYS, 'I'LL TAKE TWO' A Wall Street guy and his wife had been renting in the neighborhood when they became enamored of this neo-Georgian house between Park and Lexington avenues. "It was everything that they wanted," said broker Joanne Greene. It has a 30-foot-long kitchen that opens onto a patio and state-of-the-art interior renovations that make the 1860's building less formal than others they'd seen. The property, which last sold in 1994 for $2.1 million through the estate of a family that had lived there for three generations, contains three bedrooms, several maids' rooms, a library and a family room-seemingly perfect for a 30-ish couple with deep pockets and a small child. There was just one hitch: that four-bedroom condo that the couple had already signed a contract to buy. But with a Christmas bonus lurking right around the corner, this trader decided to buy the house, too, and resell the apartment in January. For a profit, of course. Broker: Leslie J. Garfield & Company; William B. May Real Estate (Joanne Greene).

328 East 69th Street

Four-story town house

Asking: $2.75 million. Selling: $2.4 million

Time on the market: three weeks.

COUPLE CONCURS

If you didn't know a thing about investment banking (which would put you on a par with a few top investment bankers), you could have scanned the summer's headlines touting a series of scandals at Morgan Stanley and arrived at the innocent conclusion that the venerable firm had fallen on some hard and tawdry times. It mattered little that business was booming. The newspapers made it sound like the place was full of sexists, sex fiends and racists, protected by inept lawyers and flacks. Two dead bodies, an insider trading case, a Playguy spread, an ear-biting episode, a host of lawsuits, firings and resignations–it was a lot to take in. As the summer wore on, when bankers from rival firms got together at the club for a little tennis or golf and complained about their own company politics or the assholes they worked for, there always seemed to be someone who would comment dryly, "Well, at least you don't work for Morgan Stanley."

They were kidding, of course. They all want to work for Morgan Stanley. It's at the top of the league tables, and the name is almost as good as the money.

The firm's summer as a tabloid staple started with the Christian Curry affair, in which Mr. Curry, a young black analyst who had been fired from the firm for padding his expenses (if not for appearing naked and aroused in a gay pornographic magazine), sued the firm for discrimination. The Morgan Stanley name suffered further when the firm's legal department was busted by the Manhattan District Attorney's office for paying a shady police informant $10,000 essentially to entrap Mr. Curry in a felonious attempt to hack into the firm's computers and bolster the claims in his lawsuit. The District Attorney instead wound up dismissing its charges against Mr. Curry and turning its investigation on Morgan Stanley. Because of the circumstances surrounding the $10,000 payment, Christine Edwards, the firm's chief legal officer, was forced to resign, amid newspaper stories about tensions in the legal department between the Morgan Stanley people and the Dean Witter people–stories that also made a few nudge-nudge-poke-poke references to the "close" relationship between Ms. Edwards and chief executive Philip Purcell, both of whom were from Dean Witter, and both of whom are married. Monroe Sonnenborn, another firm lawyer and a 16-year veteran of Morgan Stanley, was forced to resign as well.

The Curry case put the firm in the media's cross hairs. Bad p.r. comes in bunches, and now it was Morgan Stanley's turn. As Mr. Curry, his fiancée, and his lawyer, Benedict Morelli, worked the television circuit, bashing the firm at every turn, more disgruntled Morgan Stanley employees piped up. Jonathan Littman, a former Morgan Stanley stockbroker, filed a lawsuit claiming that the firm engaged in a "company-wide policy of institutional tax fraud." (The firm fired back that Mr. Littman had been fired for "hostility, insubordination and extremely poor judgment.")

A week later, the firm was taken to U.S. District Court by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which charged that in passing over a bond saleswoman named Allie Schieffelin for a managing director position, Morgan Stanley was engaging in gender-based discrimination.

Also in July, Brett Henderson, a banking analyst based in Menlo Park, Calif., was fired for insider trading after leaving a list of his illegal trades on the office photocopier. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged him on Aug. 2. And on Aug. 18, Alan Damon Harvey, a former banking analyst who had shared a bullpen with Mr. Curry, filed his own racial-discrimination suit in Manhattan Federal Court, asking for $35 million in damages. (He, too, is represented by Mr. Morelli.)

It got so ridiculous that in mid-July, when the plane carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette, a Morgan Stanley banker, crashed off Martha's Vineyard, Andy Serwer, a Fortune columnist, wrote that the word on Wall Street had it that the crash was "Morgan Stanley's fault," because they'd kept Lauren working late and thus delayed the flight.

Finally, in September, the biggest post-Curry whopper yet would hit the firm. On Sept. 7, Elena Drill, a former Russian model and Morgan Stanley administrative assistant, was found dead with a boyfriend in her Manhattan apartment, in a bizarre murder-suicide

A week later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Drill had had an affair with Robert Kitts, a $7 million-a-year Morgan Stanley managing director who during a dinner last winter bit the ear of an analyst during a fight. The Journal said that upon learning in July that he had not ended his affair with Drill, the firm forced him to resign. Subsequently, when she was not promoted as she had expected, she complained to the firm that she had been sexually harassed. (Word out of Morgan Stanley was that senior bankers were appalled not by any of the story's sordid details, but by the fact that this guy Mr. Kitts was making $7 million.)

The timing of the July resignation, according to sources familiar with the firm, was not coincidental. Burned by the Curry case, the firm's lawyers need to take a tough stance. By quietly getting rid of Mr. Kitts, they were solving the problem by making it go away. But how were they to know that two months later Drill would turn up dead, and the cycle would continue? (Morgan Stanley did not respond to a request for comment.)

For decades, Morgan Stanley has been the cream of the Street and, as the WASP counterpart to the great Jewish firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., never clear of epithets like white-shoe and blueblood. Newly situated in a gaudy tower near Times Square, it has continued to thrive in the wake of its 1997 merger with Dean Witter, a financial services giant devoted to retail brokerage. The combined giant remains a place where diligent Ivy-educated snot noses toil through the night over company valuations and modeling work (as in spreadsheets, not Playguy spreads).

And it is a haughty enough place that such a torrent of negative, often sordid, publicity barely fazes the people who work there. According to people at the firm, they think that many of the discrimination and harassment lawsuits are frivolous, and that scandal and litigation is simply part and parcel of working on the Street.

"Firms like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs are always in a fishbowl," said one investment banking executive at another firm. "Everybody likes to go after the rich guys … It's nothing to do with the culture at the firm. Nothing at all. Now it's Morgan Stanley's turn to be in the fishbowl."

Interviews with a handful of Morgan Stanley employees suggest that the people at the firm are shrugging it off. They have more important things on their minds–money, money and money–and as long as the scandals don't impair their ability to earn as much of it as possible, the racy headlines are a minor embarrassment, a titillating diversion, but little more.

"The mood is fine," said one Morgan executive. "These are clearly a cumulative series of incidents that could happen anywhere. Usually, the trouble surrounds individuals who are pigs."

In the midst of all this p.r. mess, Morgan Stanley is kicking ass. Third-quarter earnings, which are due for release Sept. 22, are expected to be strong. Analysts estimate that the firm's profits per share this year will have jumped from $4.95 last year to $6.95 this year. And 1998 was a banner year.

So far this year, according to Thomson Financial Securities Data, a provider of financial information, Morgan Stanley is ranked second to Goldman Sachs in the dollar amount of I.P.O.'s underwritten–unless one tosses out Goldman's underwriting of its own I.P.O., in which case Morgan Stanley ranks first. The firm also ranks first in the performance of their I.P.O.'s in the aftermarket, and second in mergers and acquisitions, in terms of the value of the deals it has worked on. Its biggest deal so far this year was Vodaphone Group's $65 billion purchase of Airtouch Communications Inc. It also advised Viacom on its $38 billion purchase of CBS.

But what of the culture? Is there fire where there's smoke? Wayne Outten, the lawyer for Ms. Schieffelin, the bond saleswoman, thinks so. "They say a lot of the right things," he said. "They've got policies that say all the right things. But the actions? It's kind of like a pyramid: the higher you go up the fewer women there are, and there's definitely a culture of being one of the guys to get ahead with the senior leadership of the company."

This is not a surprise. But it may turn out to be a liability.

"That story about the guy with the dead mistress? You can't have too many of those in this business," said a broker at a rival firm. Then he gloated, "We don't think it's a coincidence that we rarely land on the front pages." Oh, they'll get their chance one of these days.

What They Did Last Summer

· April 22, 1998

Christian Curry is fired from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Company.

· Aug. 20, 1998

Mr. Curry is arrested on five felony counts.

· May 18, 1999

The District Attorney drops the charges and begins investigating Morgan Stanley instead for paying off an informant.

· May 19

Mr. Curry files a $1.35 billion discrimination suit against the firm.

· June 10

Christine Edwards, Morgan Stanley's chief legal officer, resigns.

· July 14

District Attorney Robert Morgenthau concludes that officials at Morgan Stanley "exercised poor judgment" but violated no criminal laws.

· July 19

Morgan Stanley banker Lauren Bessette dies in a plane crash with Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. A Fortune columnist writes that it's "Morgan Stanley's fault."

· July 21

A New Jersey newspaper reports that Jonathan Littman, a stockbroker fired by Morgan Stanley, filed a lawsuit in April claiming that the firm had engaged in "institutional tax fraud."

· July 29

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission takes Morgan Stanley to court as part as an investigation into alleged discrimination against women at the firm.

· Aug. 2

Brett Henderson, 25, a Morgan Stanley analyst, is charged with insider trading.

· Aug. 18

Alan Damon Harvey, an office mate of Mr. Curry, files a $35 million racial discrimination suit against the firm.

· Sept. 7

Elena Drill, a 27-year old Morgan Stanley administrative assistant and former model, is found dead in her midtown apartment.

· Sept. 14

The Wall Street Journal reports that Robert Kitts, a Morgan Stanley managing director, was forced to resign in July for having an affair with Drill, who had complained to the firm that he'd sexually harassed her.

–Tinker Spitz

Commercial brokers privy to the talks said Miramax has been negotiating to buy the 189,000-square-foot building for some months with Kamran Hakim, a residential real estate developer who does not even own it yet. Mr. Hakim is expected to take ownership in early October and immediately sign a deal to flip ownership to Miramax.

"The bottom line is, that will be Miramax's headquarters," said one commercial broker.

Mr. Hakim signed a contract for more than $20 million in August 1998 to purchase the building from Summit Import Corporation. Since then, he has been taking steps to construct about 70 luxury apartments. He brought in the Corcoran Group to market the residences. But when Miramax approached Mr. Hakim months ago, he became interested in selling for a profit of around $25 million, real estate sources said. During the week of Sept. 13, a Corcoran Group source said that due to discussions with Miramax either to buy or long-term lease the Summit building, Mr. Hakim's residential development plan had been put into doubt.

"No deal is a deal until it's signed, you know," said Mr. Hakim, speaking from his car phone the evening of Sept. 14. "I can't say anything to you, because we haven't agreed on anything yet." Then he added: "In two weeks, I'll let you know." A publicist for Miramax refused comment on the story, saying no deals had yet been made.

Miramax currently occupies a collection of three different buildings in TriBeCa: 11 Beach Street, where their publicity and executive offices are located, the third floor of 375 Greenwich Street, a former coffee factory where the TriBeCa Film Center occupies seven floors, and 99 Hudson Street. Downtown real estate sources said the Messrs. Weinstein have been on the prowl for as many as four years for the right headquarters, and that, ultimately, the executives decided on the Summit Building, which occupies almost a whole city block between Hubert and Laight streets at 415-427 Greenwich Street.

"Their exclusive broker identified that this was the best opportunity for them," said a commercial broker close to the Miramax talks, who added that the film company had been frustrated in a prior attempt to purchase the property. Paul Mas, the broker at Colliers ABR Inc. said to be representing Miramax , did not return calls for comment.

The building has been owned since 1977 by the Summit Import Corporation, a Chinese food warehouse that paid $650,000 for the site. According to Gary Capetta, the commercial broker representing Summit, the import company entered into a contract of more than $20 million to sell its building to Mr. Hakim and his investment partners. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hakim began devising plans for an enormous residential development project that would result in the creation of luxury apartments.

In December 1998, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the development plans, which entailed carving out a courtyard within the building and adding penthouse spaces to the roof. Then, this spring, representatives for Mr. Hakim approached Community Board 1 with the idea, which voted this summer to support it.

Several commercial brokers said Kamran Hakim has been entertaining offers, but none except Miramax's exceeded $40 million. "When the seller turns down $40 million, there's a reason why," said one real estate broker with knowledge of the Miramax talks. "People couldn't believe it when they heard that Miramax was paying $200 a square foot." If the deal goes through with a price tag of $45 million, the Weinsteins would be spending more like $238 per square foot.

"Right now, anything is possible," said Mr. Hakim, on Sept. 14 en route to a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton at the home of someone he described as "a friend." That evening, Mrs. Clinton was scheduled to attend two fund-raisers: a party at the Upper East Side home of John Catsimatides, a businessman and Democratic Party donor, for Mrs. Clinton's all-but-announced Senate campaign, then a yacht cruise with real estate developer Larry Silverstein.