Killer Look (12 page)

“I don't have to show you a damn thing, Chapman. I try to be a good guy and give you a window on my brother and his life, but you don't know what playing nice means, do you?” Hal Savage said. “We'll all get the straight news from the lawyer when he lets us hear about the will this afternoon. If any of that's your business, I'm sure that Lily will be blowing smoke up your nose the minute the meeting ends. But if you want the company's books, get a subpoena.”

“May I try to be the voice of reason?” I said, looking back and forth between the two men. “We didn't come here to make trouble for you or for Reed. We didn't know we'd walk into George Kwan or any of this mess this morning. But Mike and I are trying to do the right thing, if you can believe that.”

“Right thing? Really? For me?”

“No, actually. For your dead brother,” I said. “And we're in the middle of a world that we don't quite understand.”

Hal sat up and gave me his fiercest stare.

“From the perspective of your niece, Lily, it looks like her
father had everything to live for at the moment,” I said. “So of course we're interested in the financials of the company. We have to be.”

“Then ask Reed how come he missed the news about the market in the Middle East. He's the one who put us in the shark tank, Ms. Cooper.”

I moved to the edge of my seat, hoping to engage Hal Savage in a conversation about his expertise while keeping Mike out of his face.

“I'm really puzzled by this whole idea of Dubai and China and those emerging markets as such a big piece of the action. What's that about? Devout Muslim women have to dress in hijabs and abayas, don't they?” I asked.

“Sure, Ms. Cooper. We get that. In our business we call it ‘modest fashion'—you know, like a euphemism that covers the needs of Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and even Muslims,” Hal said. “Let me ask you. Do you know who owns Harrods?”

I remembered when Princess Diana was killed with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, in the car crash in Paris. It was his father that owned the famed London department store. “The Fayed family, isn't it?”

“Got you there, didn't I?” Hal wagged his finger at me and smiled. “The Harrods started the business in 1824. Grew it to the great store it is today with the best instincts in the business. They put in the first commercial moving staircase in the world in 1898. You know what I mean? An escalator. First one ever. Gave the nervous shoppers a brandy when they stepped off at the top. Very cool move, that one. A million square feet of retail space—one solid million.”

“The Fayeds sold the store?” I asked.

“Yes, to the Qatari royal family,” Hal said. “Sort of a crossroad moment for Western fashion and Islam or other religions. On the top floor there's a shoe salon—Shoe Heaven, they call it. A
thousand dollars gets a girl bejeweled sandals—just a touch of bling to stick out from under her sari or her abaya.”

“That touch, as you say, can't be what brought your nephew down.”

“You know what Reed missed? He may have seen the tip of the sandals and the handbags with solid gold clasps and the sunglasses with diamonds on the frames, but he lost the big picture. Just a couple of years ago, Muslim women worldwide spent more than two hundred and fifty billion dollars on clothing and footwear. That's billion with a capital
B
, Ms. Cooper. And by next year that figure is supposed to double. Five hundred billion, how's that?”

“What do they do?” Mike asked. “Just hang the stuff in their closets and stare at it?”

“You sound like Reed,” Hal said, shaking his head. “You know how many women in the world buy haute couture? Do you have any idea?”

“C'mon, Coop,” Mike said. “Earn your keep. What's it mean? Oat what?”

“I hope you're better at murder than at French, Mr. Chapman,” Hal said. “Haute couture translates into ‘high fashion,' Detective. Exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Expensive fabrics, constructed by hand from start to finish, with the most perfect needlework. Not machine made. No mass production. You take Ms. Cooper here over to Paris and set her up at Dior or Chanel, they'll make her a one-of-a-kind-garment that's tailored to her body, every measurement done just for her. Then you can invite her to the policeman's ball.”

“If you weren't so condescending, you might almost be funny,” Mike said.

Hal Savage ignored him and turned back to me. “The haute couture market only serves about two thousand customers worldwide. That's it. And Muslim women are about half of the market,
although the hardest to identify. In public, they wear the black cloaks made by their own designers back home, but under those abayas or behind closed doors they're head to toe in Dolce & Gabbana.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“The smart houses picked up on the fact that rich Arab women—I call them the Royals and Oils who shop abroad, if you get my drift—have a real thing for expensive beading. The high-end dresses are beaded and sequined from their necklines to their ankles, beaded stockings and beaded gloves, beads where nobody saw beads before. The brands that make high-end lingerie? Their profits are going through the roof.”

“Before you blame Reed,” I said, “didn't Wolf get any of this? Didn't he see it as a way to romance his look all the way to the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai?”

Hal got up from the chair and walked around the desk, sitting on the edge of it, just opposite to me. “God bless my brother, and I hope he's resting in peace, but I have to tell you I think he was a bit prejudiced—not that he would ever admit it.”

“Prejudiced? In what way?”

“Listen, Ms. Cooper. The European fashion houses were milking the Arabs mercilessly by the 1980s, like they were cash cows,” Hal said. “Wolf? He was a little bit afraid of that. Afraid the Savitsky name would surface under the Savage label—that maybe he'd put too much into that Middle Eastern market and he'd fail miserably once they cottoned on to who he really was. Fear and prejudice—they beget each other.”

“But he's already huge,” Mike said.

“America? He's one of the kings. Europe? Wolf represented American style, just like Ralph and Donna. The desert? C'mon, he was afraid he'd wind up in quicksand.”

“But other big companies?” I asked. “Have they bought into it?”

“Dubai's a luxury retail paradise. Gucci's there, Stella McCartney, D&G,” Hal said. “Look, all the things this business worships—vanity, sensuality, materialism—they're the kiss of death in many religions, like Islam. My brother thought it was crass exploitation, and even if Chanel could get away with it, he'd be just the one to crash and burn.”

“Is what you're telling me that because he was Jewish, he'd be singled out for that?”

“There was a bit of that fear in his world view. Not to mention the fact that we were hit with a big lawsuit a few years back.”

“To do with this issue?”

“Yeah,” Hal said. “Directly this issue. Our sportswear line was competing head-to-head with Abercrombie & Fitch for that lower-price-point preppy look. One of our managers at a mall store we opened in the Hamptons refused to hire a young applicant because she wore a hijab. He told her it was against our ‘look policy.'”

“That's pretty revolting,” Mike said. “You've got a look policy?”

“You can be sure the schmuck who thought up that idea doesn't work here anymore, Detective,” Hal said. “The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. A discrimination suit, which scared the daylights out of all of us.”

“Which hopefully you lost,” I said. “And that made your brother even more skittish?”

“Lately, everything made my brother jumpy. Like out-of-his-skin jumpy. I'm telling you he got some bad news at Mayo.”

The intercom buzzed and Hal Savage turned around to pick up the phone. “I'll be with her in five minutes, okay? Just ask her to wait. Make nice. Give her an advance copy of the program for the show. And when you see the detectives leaving, bring in that white silk jumpsuit that I want JLaw to wear Monday night. I want it hanging in here for that meeting.”

Mike perked up at the mention of his favorite actress's name. I was allowed to swoon over Bradley Cooper and Idris Elba while Mike fantasized about Jennifer Lawrence and Cate Blanchett.

“That's
Women's Wear Daily
coming in to interview me, Detective. It's the bible of our business, so let's cut this short.”

“This has been really helpful to me,” Mike said. “I'm seeing another side of your brother that may explain his death. I'm trying to get a handle on this part of Wolf that was facing a failure, maybe for the first time in his career.”

“It wasn't so long ago, Detective, that American designers dressed people to go to work. Do you understand that?” Hal asked. “You, Ms. Cooper, you ever hear of Anne Klein?”

“No, sir. Afraid not.”

“You got a mother? Ask your mother,” he said. “In the '60s, it was Anne Klein who changed the way American women dressed for the workplace. Got them out of shirtwaists and into separates. Moderate pricing. Revolutionized the look and made it possible for cheaper brands to knock it off for ladies all over the country. By the way? Anne was born Hannah Golofski—also in Brooklyn. I'm telling you, Russian Jews have done more to style American women than all the Chanels and their peers ever did. She eventually sold her company to a hot young designer named Donna Karan.”

I nodded.

“Now I'm talking, right? Everybody knows Donna Karan,” Hal said. “Donna, Ralph, Oscar, Calvin, Wolf—pure American style. Pure class. Then what happens?”

“Got me,” Mike said.

“A bump in the road called casual Friday. The beginning of the end. Now we've got an entire generation that goes to work in hoodies and jeans. Hoodies and jeans, can you imagine? Tech kids wouldn't know a style from a stained T-shirt. It's been a nightmare to our business.”

I'd never thought about the drastic change in the workplace. My prosecutorial colleagues were still wearing suits for courtroom appearances and jury trials, but most of my other friends dressed down in almost every other line of work.

“The pressure in this business is enormous, Detective. Wolf not only had the bad news from the Mayo Clinic, but he had his creative life crashing down around him on every side.”

“But he also had this spectacular event launching just next week,” I said. “That's what doesn't make sense to me.”

“What I really want to say to you, Missy, is that I'm so sick and tired of hearing your skepticism about what makes sense to you or not.” Hal was on his feet again, frustrated with our conversation. “You ever hear of Alexander McQueen? A young Brit who was at the top of his game.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Forty years old, with early success and a bright future, so it seemed to me and the rest of the design world. Loaded up with pills and cocaine, and then he hanged himself, just days before his hot show at London's Fashion Week.”

Hal was making his point by stabbing his forefinger into the desktop on every fourth or fifth word.

“L'Wren Scott? How about her? Right nearby in Chelsea, probably on your watch, Detective,” he said, snapping at Mike. “Did you give her people a hard time, too?”

Everyone in New York knew the story, which had made headlines a few years back. The glam model turned designer who was Mick Jagger's girlfriend at the time she died also hanged herself—from a doorknob in her apartment, with a silk scarf wrapped around her neck—at the age of forty-nine.

“Scott's luxury brand was in debt up to its eyeballs. She canceled her Fashion Week entry—the whole industry was in turmoil—shortly before the event,” Hal said. “When this business
tanks, it sucks all the life out of you. Trust me, Detective. I'm putting on a good face for the media so my brother goes out on top. I'm doing everything I can to keep this company alive.”

He was on his feet, waving his hands to shoo us out of his office. “Now, if you two don't mind, I've got things to do. Time, tide, and Anna Wintour wait for no man, Detective. You're keeping
Women's Wear
out in the cold, and then a kid from
Vogue
has to interview me, and after that a group of runway models who are going to light up the sky for us on Monday night come in to get their marching orders.”

“Must help with the mourning process,” Mike said.

“You release Wolf's body and then I'll do the proper mourning. Meanwhile, I think we're done.”

As I approached the door, I could see the svelte secretary ready to come in as Hal had directed.

“Can you have someone show us around?” Mike asked. “I'd like to see where the garment racks—you know, the hand trucks like the one that was in your brother's hotel room—are kept.”

“I've got no problem with that, Mr. Chapman. The girl will get you someone to show you around.”

I winced at that old-fashioned reference to the secretarial assistant as “the girl.”

“Thanks.”

“These offices upstairs and the basements. Chock-full of hand trucks. They're the workhorses of Seventh Avenue. Watch that you don't get run over by one on your way out,” Hal said. “Now, are we quite done?”

“For today,” Mike said. “Appreciate your time.”

Hal opened the door and took the slinky white garment from his secretary. He held the hook of the hanger up in the air and twirled the piece around, so that we could see all of it.

“You've really got Jennifer Lawrence coming to your extravaganza?” Mike asked.

“I'm an optimist, Detective. So far, she's not returning my calls. But my brother dressed her for her first Golden Globes, so hope springs eternal.”

“She'd be stunning in that,” I said.

“It's a killer look,” Hal said, lowering the jumpsuit and hanging it from a hook that extended out from the bookshelf behind the massive desk.