Big Ticket | Sold for $17.9 Million

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times965 Fifth Avenue

A sun-kissed duplex penthouse wrapped in terraces at the pinnacle of 965 Fifth Avenue, No. 18-19A, sold for its listing price of $17.9 million, making it the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

But the detail that makes the transaction the most sensational sale of the week is that it included an adjoining one-bedroom apartment, No. 18C, where the celebrity real estate broker Linda S. Stein, a former co-manager of the Ramones whose client list included Madonna, Sting, Michael Douglas and Billy Joel, was bludgeoned to death in her living room by her personal assistant in 2007. The assistant received a prison sentence of 25 years to life in 2010.

The sellers of the penthouse, Steven and Kathleen Carroll, bought No. 18C from the Stein estate in 2008 for just over $1 million but did not expand the penthouse, which would have given the lower level the full 18th floor. According to the listing by Prudential Douglas Elliman, the firm with which Ms. Stein was affiliated, the duplex and the one-bedroom have the potential to be combined into a six-bedroom six-bath residence. The other option is not to add No. 18C, which also offers Central Park views; that way it can be used as a guest apartment or separate quarters for staff.

Joan Swift, the listing broker, was unavailable for comment. The buyer of the three-unit compendium is, according to public records, Jamie Zimmerman, a founder of the hedge fund Litespeed Management. The property went into contract in less than a month.

The architect of 965 Fifth Avenue, built in 1938, was Irving Margon, a member of the des ign team that built the famed El Dorado on the West Side. The 19-story building, which has just two apartments per floor, underwent a co-op conversion in 1982.

The duplex penthouse has four bedrooms and four baths, multiple fireplaces, and a wine cellar concealed behind wooden panels in the dining room. Wrought-iron French doors lead to a profusion of terrace space; on the upper level, the 40-foot-long terrace is accessible from three of the four bedrooms. Ms. Stein's so-called penthouse apartment, fancifully decorated in 19th-century mode during her solo tenancy, has one bedroom and two baths.

It was widely reported that the shrewd real estate agent in the 1987 film was based on the opinionated Ms. Stein, whose loquacity and appetite for deal-making were exhaustive. In the film, the real estate agent gives a terse tutorial to her client, played by Charlie Sheen, on the preferability of the Upper East Side to the Upper West: “Everybody tells you they hate the Upper East Side. They wanna live on the West Side. But believe me, when it's resale time, the East Side moves all the time. I mean, what do you got on the West Side? Sean and Madonna?” One of Ms. Stein's first celebrity clients was Madonna, for whom she found an apartment on Central Park West.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.