Fatal Impressions (2 page)

Dinah looked at her watch: 11:25. She’d been in this uncomfortable reception room for two hours. If she sat in this torturous chair much longer, she wouldn’t be able to stand. She needed to move around, and she should let Bethany know she’d be late getting back to the gallery. She’d call from the elevator corridor, where she wouldn’t be overheard and the receptionist could see her.

“Greene Gallery.”

“Hi, it’s me,” Dinah said.

“Thank goodness you called―I’ve been goin’ crazy. Did we get the contract?” Bethany asked.

“Would you believe I haven’t seen the wretched man? I arrived at nine thirty to make sure I was on time for my ten o’clock appointment, and he still hasn’t turned up. We must have lost out. Why would he make me wait for good news?”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Bethany protested. “His tardiness probably doesn’t have anything to do with us. His train from Greenwich, or wherever he lives, may have been late.”

“Maybe you’re right, but if we weren’t desperate, I’d leave this minute. And it’s my fault we have to put up with being jerked around like this,” Dinah said.

“Hush that talk. No matter what, the move uptown was the right thing to do. We were barely surviving on Cornelia Street. We’d have been out of business by summer if we hadn’t moved,” Bethany said.

Dinah sighed. “We may be out of business by summer anyway. I better go. I’ll call you when I know something.”

Back in the reception room, Dinah considered shifting to another chair, but they were all designed to cripple—icy steel bent in every way except to fit the human form, scratchy upholstery the same shade of gray as the carpet. The austere reception room declared the hand of one of Manhattan’s best-known designers, but it looked and felt frigid. It was also empty of people, and this was an ordinary Tuesday, a workday. Where were the workers? The clients? She sighed and tried again to find a comfortable position.

She wished she could think of anything but the probable failure of the Greene Gallery. When she’d leased the Fifty-Seventh Street gallery in January, she’d counted on the better location to attract new artists, more customers, bigger sales. But March was halfway over, business was terrible, and the midtown Manhattan rent was murderous. In Greenwich Village she’d run her pocket-sized gallery with one assistant in a building her husband owned. The new space was much larger, and she’d been forced to hire another full-time person and two part-timers. They were graduate students, less costly than experienced gallery staff, but expenses were up, and the bottom line was red.

Today she’d learn whether she’d won the contract to select, buy, and hang art in the New York office of the management consultants Davidson, Douglas, Danbury & Weeks—DDD&W to nearly everyone. She’d been introduced to Theodore Douglas by Coleman, who’d known him from way back. He was not only one of the
D
’s in DDD&W, he also chaired the firm’s art committee. He could make or break her. Well, not break her exactly, but he could save the Greene Gallery. The fee for the job would support the gallery for a year. If Theodore Douglas ever deigned to see her.

“Ms. Greene, I’m so sorry you’ve had to wait so long! How about another cup of coffee?”

Oh, mercy, the pudgy receptionist with the coffee pot was standing in front of her, reeking of the scorched stench of the pot. Every time the woman, sporting a practiced smile, apologized for Dinah’s long wait, she refilled Dinah’s Styrofoam cup. Dinah had been too polite to reject it, but all that coffee had made her desperate to get to the ladies’ room. She was sure she’d be summoned to her meeting the minute she left the area, but the receptionist promised she would come for Dinah if Mr. Douglas called. Thank goodness the restroom was nearby.

She was applying fresh lipstick in the cul-de-sac at the far end of the L-shaped room when two women came in. Dinah couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. They squawked like parrots.

“You keep your hands off him, you pie-faced slut. He’s mine, and don’t forget it!”

The voice was cigarette husky, country South, maybe Georgia or Alabama. Dinah knew that voice, and she recognized the scent: Jungle Gardenia. Patti Sue Victor must bathe in the stuff, which Dinah knew all too well; her hated third-grade teacher had worn it. Dinah had read that it had been the favorite scent of Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, and Joan Crawford. Patti Sue, like the teacher, probably thought it would transform her into a glamour girl.

Dinah met Patti Sue when she made her presentation to the art committee. The woman, whose title was inexplicably “art curator”—there
was
no art, that’s why DDD&W needed someone to acquire it—was hostile. Part of it was turf defense. She seemed to be sure she could do the job better than any outsider. But Dinah thought there was more to it than that. She’d seen Patti Sue talking to others waiting to make proposals, and with them she’d been, if not friendly, at least civil.

She and Dinah had quarreled even before they met. Patti Sue had telephoned several times during the weeks Dinah was working on her presentation. Each time she reminded Dinah of the date and time of her appointment at DDD&W and tried to ferret out the details of Dinah’s proposal: Why was Dinah proposing several kinds of prints? Why not use all the same type? What was the difference between a lithograph and an etching? What was a screenprint? What was Dinah charging? If she was given the contract, when would she begin installing the art?

When Dinah balked and explained that both her fee and the time involved for the installation would be revealed at her presentation, Patti Sue had shouted, cursed her, and hung up. Dinah was sorry for the rift but felt she’d done the best she could in the circumstances.

The second voice, shrill and piercing, was unfamiliar, but it could shatter windows in Queens. “That’s what you think! He’s not in love with you, you redneck cracker. He knows what it’s like to be married to an idiot. Why would he want another one?”

Slap!
Dinah winced. She wasn’t surprised at Patti Sue’s role in the brawl, but her opponent seemed to be the same type. Two women who sounded as if they might be more at home mud wrestling than working at a prestigious consulting firm? Odd. A scream, thumps, groans. Should she intervene? No, she’d probably come out of it with a black eye and two enemies instead of one. She’d like to sneak out, but she couldn’t leave without being seen. She’d have to lie low and pray that Theodore Douglas didn’t ask for her while she was trapped.

She heard the hiss of the corridor door, the click of heels on the tile floor, a new voice.

“Ladies! Stop that noise at once. We cannot have this. Isn’t it bad enough that you two pursue the same married partner, and now you use fisticuffs in the ladies’ room? Get back to your desks, or I shall see that you are both dismissed. Tidy yourselves first—you look as if you’ve been through a tornado.”

Water gushed, the whish of the door again as it opened and closed. Blessed silence. Maybe she could make her escape? Oh, no, the door opened again.

“Ms. Greene? Mr. Douglas is ready to see you.” At last. Mr. Douglas’s assistant had come for her.

Dinah hurried toward the door, where the woman waited, tapping her foot and fondling her chignon. She caressed that clump of hair with an air of sexual pleasure. “Hurry up,” she urged. “We’re very late.” As if it were Dinah’s fault.

Dinah struggled to keep up with her. How did she move so fast in that tight skirt and those three-inch heels? Her white sweater and black skirt covered her gaunt body like a second skin. Dinah could count the woman’s ribs, perish the thought. Friends who worked at McKinsey—the best-known and most respected management consulting firm in the world—claimed that its leaders were fussy about appearance. Not DDD&W. At least not about the attire of the female support staff. Dinah hadn’t seen any of the women on the professional staff, but the dress code for the men appeared to be strict: dark suits, dress shirts, and subdued ties. Strange, this sartorial divide. Jonathan had told her DDD&W demanded impeccable dress and faultless behavior from its employees. Wrong. He should have seen—or heard—the spat in the ladies’ room. So far this place didn’t live up to its dignified and elegant image.

But Theodore Douglas did. When he rose to greet her, she thought, as she had when she’d met him at her presentation to the art committee, how perfectly he looked his background—Princeton, Harvard Business School, Eastern Establishment. Patrician: that was the word for C. Theodore Douglas IV. Tall and slim with blondish hair, gray at the temples. Exquisite tailoring. She’d admired his manners, too, until today.

“I’m sorry you had to wait. I was in a client meeting and couldn’t get away. Please sit down. Would you like coffee?”

Dinah repressed a shudder. She wouldn’t drink coffee again for weeks, if ever. “No, thank you, I’m fine.”

“I’ll come straight to the point. We reviewed all twenty-one of the contenders for our art project and your proposal was far and away the best. The assignment is yours.” His teeth gleamed in a Tom Cruise smile.

She wanted to jump up and down and shout for joy like a six year old. Get a grip, she told herself; remember you’re a grown-up and act dignified. “Thank you. I’m grateful for the opportunity. I’m looking forward to a great relationship with DDD&W,” she said.

“Here’s the contract—I’ve signed it. If you’ll sign here—thanks. Here’s your ID for building security. Call my assistant if you need anything. Or Patti Sue Victor. You and Ms. Victor will work together, of course.”

He spoke as if he were giving her a treat. Not. DDD&W’s so-called art curator—“the redneck cracker” of the powder room—was the wasp in the peach ice cream. Patti Sue thought she knew everything about art, but she knew nothing and never missed an opportunity to display her ignorance. She certainly wasn’t an art curator. Why did she pretend to be? And why did Douglas go along with it? There were signs that art had once hung on the walls here, but that made Patti Sue’s role all the more puzzling. If they’d owned decent art, surely they’d have hired someone competent to care for it. And above all, what became of it?

“You’ll want to see Ms. Victor and get settled,” he continued. “But first, Hunt Frederick, our managing director, wants to meet you.”

Dinah followed Douglas up a short flight of stairs to a part of the thirty-third floor she hadn’t seen
on her initial tour of the space. The thirty-second floor, where she’d waited, and the thirty-third floor had identical dark gray carpeting and light gray walls, but the offices in this area were larger, and to enter each of them you had to pass through a small secretarial room.

Douglas paused at the desk of a matronly woman in the entry area of a corner suite. “Good morning, Mrs. Thornton, this is Dinah Greene, who’ll oversee the new art program. Hunt asked me to bring her around to meet him. Is he available?”

“Mr. Frederick stepped away for a few minutes, Mr. Douglas. He asked that you wait in his office. Good morning, Ms. Greene, it’s nice to meet you,” Mrs. Thornton said.

Aha, the voice of reason in the ladies’ room. In a gray suit that matched her hair, a gray silk blouse and pearls, she looked as if she’d dressed to blend in with the carpet. Quite a contrast with the other women she’d seen. She looked like the sort of person who’d say “fisticuffs.” Her role as the managing director’s assistant explained her willingness to call off the catfight and threaten the cats.

When the Gray Lady ushered them into Frederick’s office, Dinah nearly gasped out loud. A red and blue Oriental rug covered the gray carpet. The wall-to-wall window behind the desk framed a magnificent view of the East River. Carved shelves in black oak lined the other walls, floor to ceiling. The desk, chairs, a coffee table, and a sofa matched the bookshelves. The crimson upholstery on the sofa and chairs echoed the red in the rug, and the books that filled the shelves were bound in red leather. Dark red curtains hung on either side of the windows.

“My goodness, I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. Except maybe in a film. It looked like Hollywood’s conception of the setting for a nineteenth-century executive. What a clash with the sleek modernity of the rest of the place.

“It’s something else, isn’t it?” Douglas said, looking around.

Good grief, he sounded as if he admired this hideous fake Victorian room. His tone was almost proprietary. “It’s—uh—stunning. I’m at a loss for words,” Dinah said.

A shorter, stockier man strode in. “My sentiments exactly,” he said.

“Good morning, Hunt,” Douglas said. “Dinah Greene, Hunt Austin Frederick, our managing director.”

“Ms. Greene, I’m mighty glad to meet you.”

She’d read in
Business Week
that Hunt Frederick was in his mid-forties, but he looked younger. He was about five nine, Dinah’s height in heels, despite his alligator cowboy boots, which, like her Bruno Maglis, added a good two inches. His navy blue suit, white shirt, and maroon tie were conventional, but his brown hair was cut too short—it looked almost military—and his heavy gold cufflinks were too big. His looks were clean-cut and American, with strong features, and keen hazel eyes. He moved like an athlete, as if he had grapefruit under his arms, and with slightly bowed legs.

His legs, his boots, and a slight twang hinted at his Texas background. She’d read that he’d come east to study at Deerfield, Yale, and Harvard Business School and had returned to Texas to work in the family oil business for a few years before he joined the Dallas office of DDD&W. Coleman had met him at a party in the Dallas Museum and hadn’t liked him—a puffed-up jerk, she’d said. Two months ago, when he’d been elected managing director, he moved to New York. Coleman said that the eyes of the business world were on him, keen to see what kind of job he’d do.

“How do you do?” Dinah said.

“Fine, thanks, but it’s a challenge living up to this baronial office. The furniture and the paneling have been in every managing director’s office since the firm was established in 1952. James Davidson brought it over from a castle in Scotland, and whenever DDD&W moves to new quarters, everything in here moves into an office designed to accommodate it. It’s mighty fancy for a country boy like me—I’d prefer something plainer, less grand.”