Linda Stein, property broker to stars like Sting, Billy Joel, and Donna Karan, was bludgeoned to death in her swank Fifth Avenue apartment on Tuesday evening by an unknown assailant. The news has sent nervous ripples across the Upper East Side, and we'd imagine some may well be coming from the direction of Page Six chat-king Richard Johnson.

Before her death, the outspoken Stein had become increasingly press shy, having been burned too many times—most notoriously, Johnson banned her from his column after she implied to the New York Observer that she and the Page Six honcho were somehow "involved." Were Stein still here to monitor his column inches, we're sure she'd be looking with great interest to see how he's gonna tackle this doozy.

Her last big tongue wag was with writer Steven Gaines for his 2005 book The Sky's The Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan. Gaines describes Stein, who got her start as manager for The Ramones, as an indomitable five-foot-tall firecracker, a woman clad in Louboutins with "trademark fire-engine red lipstick" who smoked Virginia Slims and had one ear permanently attached to her cell phone, always on to the next deal.

In Gaines's portrait of Stein, she is refreshingly forthright, once advising Sly Stallone against a move to the 'burbs by saying: "Rambo in Connecticut just isn't happening," and confessing to the writer, "Sometimes I think I have more hype than I have commissions. People are impressed that my clients are movie stars, but what they don't realize is that in the long run it doesn't matter if your client is a movie star or a dog. What matters is closing the deal."

Of Ron Perelman and David Geffen, who she found challenging to work with, she once famously said: "It's amazing these guys can ever make a business decision."

In the increasingly creepy, Botox-ed upper reaches of Manhattan real estate, Stein and her one-liners will be sorely missed.