The Hard Way (16 page)

Pulling the chair closer to the desk, I began to read the files on all the employees, seeing if anyone had requested a raise or a better position and had been turned down. There was a list of former employees, too, dating back for the last ten years. Most who left had left to go to other jobs, some that paid better, some that gave a salesclerk the chance to manage another shop. Several people had been fired, but none recently. Still, I wrote down those names and whatever address was in the file. Two employees had died while in the employ of GR Leather, a modest number, I thought, for a ten-year span. One was the former buyer, Alison Ruiz. There was
no mention in the files of why she'd died. I'd have to ask to find out. The other deceased employee was a night watchman, Coleman Hughes, who'd died during an after-hours robbery. Both the deaths were recent, during the past year. I added those names to my list as well.

Then I swiveled the chair around so that I could look out the window at the pink brick of the building behind the one I was in, the snow falling between the two. I closed my eyes and pictured Gardner Redstone standing on the platform, facing the tracks, his attaché case in one hand. What was in the other? No one had said. Was he reading his folded-up newspaper? Was it possible after all that there was someone he knew on the platform, someone he hadn't noticed?

In what seemed like no time, Nina was back. I followed her down the marble steps into Oz, Dashiell, in the black jacket, following me. From the number of people in the shop, you'd think we were in Toys “R” Us and there was a half-price sale and it was the day before Christmas. Did this many people have that much money? But before I could come up with an answer, Dashiell had been surrounded. Being the fast learner I always thought I was, I entered the circle, too, a motorcycle jacket hanging from a padded hanger in each hand.

I spent a lot of the next few hours crouched down next to Dashiell demonstrating how easily the jacket, with or without a fur collar, could be put on or taken off and showing off the side pocket where Fido could carry his own pickup bags or a little mad money. We, meaning Dashiell and I, sold seven jackets during the lunch-hour rush, which lasted from noon until three-thirty. By then, even he knew the drill—greet each new person at the door, sit, wag tail, let self and jacket be handled. While he continued to do that, I went back upstairs to read the files, concentrating this time on performance reports.

After the shop closed, I called Sylvia Greene, who called me “dear” and said I could come by anytime. When I told her I had a
dog with me, she asked if she should prepare something special for him. I told her no, he was fine, slipping off the jacket as I spoke, and reaching for my own coat. Sylvia sounded like someone who would never hurt a fly. But you never know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, or women, and that aside, I knew next to nothing about Gardner Redstone and this, I thought, was my chance to learn something about the man whose killer I was trying to find.

I hadn't had the chance
to do more than introduce myself to Ricardo and Meredith on the selling floor. From the moment I'd gone down the marble steps until the moment I once again ascended them, I was answering questions about the motorcycle jacket and about Dashiell, shoppers wanting to know the usual, what his name was, how old he was, did he do any tricks? I'd even sold a jacket by demonstrating how easily a dog could do a trick while wearing one. But when it was time to wrap it up for the day, at least the part where I was poking into files and making notes, Dashiell wasn't the only one waiting for me downstairs. Ricardo was there, too, his arms folded across his chest, Meredith at the center of the store, closing down the register.

“Come on,” he said, “your consolation drinks are on us. Merrie will be ready in two shakes.”

“Consolation drinks? Have I been fired already?”

“You should be so lucky,” she called out from the behind the counter.

“I don't get it.”

Instead of explaining herself, she bent and hit a switch, all the lights dimming except the one lighting up what appeared to be a red doctor's satchel.

“What's with that?” I asked
“You never saw her carry it? Well, pictures of her carrying it?” Ricardo asked.

I shook my head.

“Oh, dear.” He turned to Meredith now. “What planet is she from? She doesn't know the Jackie bag.”

I didn't know the Kelly bag either, but declined to say so.

“Eleven thousand bucks. And there's a waiting list,” Meredith said, locking the register, looking around to make sure everything was just so. She was in her early fifties, her short hair white and makeup so perfect at the end of the day that except for her age, she could have been one of the mannequins across the street at Stella McCartney's. Fifty didn't compute in this part of town, at least not among the shoppers. But perhaps when you were about to spend $11,000 on a bag, you wanted someone credible, someone with experience to whisper in your ear that you were doing the right thing, the only thing. After all, wasn't
that
what fashion was all about, following trends, buying, wearing, using only that which was in? Except for the creative few, the trendsetters, fashion was about someone else making the choices, the decisions. And who better as a guide than Meredith? Everything about her exuded confidence. But for those who needed something else, or someone else, someone to assure them that in a GR leather jacket, perhaps one of those short red ones to show off a tiny waist, a flat stomach, a hipless torso, that anything, or anyone, would be within reach. For those women, there was Ricardo, whose dark eyes and olive skin made him precisely dangerous enough to be listened to. Meredith must have thought so, too.

“Where to?” she asked him.

Was that a wink? A wicked grin? He ran his hands over the sides of his slick, dark hair, hair that looked wet despite the fact that he'd been working indoors for the last seven hours or so. Black slacks, a black leather blazer, a black turtleneck, the man you flirt with in your dreams.

They both slipped off their jackets and hung them on padded
hangers. Meredith took the hangers, holding out an extra two, one for my jacket and one for Dashiell's. But then she handed me only one of the hangers.

“He can wear his out,” she said. “Just this once.”

Eleanor had left with Nina before the shop closed. They were going over to Jeffrey, she said, to see how things were moving. And to gloat, I thought. After all, Jeffrey didn't have Dashiell.

The night guard was waiting near the door, a slim black man in a turtleneck and blazer, not in one of those rent-a-cop uniforms most of them get to wear. The great majority of stores just locked up. Not this one apparently. I wondered what had changed since the death of Coleman Hughes. Was this guard only for show, or was he actually armed?

I thought we'd head over to Hogs & Heifers, the motorcycle bar on Washington Street, that that was why they'd wanted Dashiell to wear the jacket. But once outside, they turned the other way, and we ended up at Vento, a triangular-shaped restaurant at the intersection of Ninth and Fourteenth, just a block away. I had told Sylvia I'd come right after work, and I still thought I would once a restaurant employee saw Dashiell, but when I told Ricardo that they wouldn't let Dashiell in, he brushed the thought away with one gloved hand.

“Not when they see the jacket,” he said.

We sat next to a window, Dashiell lying down against the wall. Ricardo ordered the drinks. For a moment, I looked out at the snow, wondering if this storm would set a record, wondering if it would ever stop, wondering where Eddie was and if somehow he was able to keep warm, wondering how he could do that without his coat. How strange the world was, people buying coats for dogs who have their own fur coats, thank you very much, and letting humans, coatless humans, remain out in the cold without a chance of a decent meal or a warm, dry place to sleep, when they wouldn't do
that
to an animal.

When the drinks came, Meredith made the toast. “To the salt mine,” she said, and Ricardo grinned.

“It's that bad?”

Meredith wrinkled her nose. “Not that bad. But you're asked to give your all, sometimes more than your all, and the favor isn't returned.”

“Meaning?”

She picked up her glass and took a small sip, then turned to look at Ricardo. He shrugged. The ball was in her court.

“We were just told there'd be no raise for next year.”

“Come on, Merrie. If you're telling her, tell her.”

“It doesn't matter to Rachel,” she said to him. And then to me, “You're not planning on making GR a career, are you? Isn't this just a stop along the way for you?”

“I guess that depends on how well I do, how quickly I learn and what opportunities there might be…,” stopping when I noticed Meredith wrinkling her nose as if Dashiell, perhaps, had done something untoward and she'd just gotten wind of it.

“Look, it's the way things are everywhere now. It's just business.”

“What is?”

“You think if you do a good job, if you're dedicated and hardworking, that you'll be rewarded.”

“But that's not the case?”

She turned toward Ricardo again with an expression that said she'd given up on me, that I was too dim-witted for her to go on.

“There used to be three of us on the floor. Now we're down to two, but the workload is the same. Are you following?”

“I am,” I said, refraining from saying I'd seen that happen a lot after 9/11. And with so many people out of work, then and now, what were you supposed to do, quit your job and have nothing? But I didn't say that because the more naive I seemed, the more they would “explain” things to me. And keeping them talking was what I wanted.

“It gets worse,” he said.

“Worse than more work but not more money?”

“Exactly.” Meredith this time. “We were asked to take a cut in our commissions because it's so expensive to run a business and Eleanor didn't want to fire anyone else. So the threat was obvious, you see? Take the fucking cut or get canned.” She took a big swig of her drink and caught the waiter's eye, twirling her hand around the table to signal another round. I'd barely touched my first one and was wishing there was a potted plant nearby that I could dump it in.

“It used to be that if you had a good job with a solid company and you worked hard, you were set for the future,” she said. For a moment, Meredith looked her age. Even in the flattering lighting of Vento and the glow of the streetlights coming in the windows, I could see the lines around her eyes that her makeup tried to mask. I could see the worry in her eyes. Perhaps she was older than I'd guessed. Perhaps she was closer to retirement than she seemed. Or maybe she was just looking ahead, worrying about ending up like Eddie, like so many other people who did their best and found it not good enough to keep them safe.

“Give her a break,” Ricardo said, that hint of Barcelona in the moonlight suddenly replaced with a bit of Brooklynese. “She's just starting out in retail, right?”

I nodded.

“What were you doing before?” he asked.

“What's your real name?” I asked him back.

He glanced at Meredith and they both began to laugh.

“Richard,” he said. “Richard Goldberg. The accent was Eleanor's idea. She even paid for it. ‘Think Valentino,' she told me. So I asked her, ‘How so? No one ever heard him speak, at least not in the movies they didn't. Besides, these women, they're too young to know who he was.' But Eleanor just sighed. You heard her sigh yet? It means the discussion is so over. ‘Just do it,' she tells me. So I did.”

“How'd you do it? Lessons?”

“Two sessions with a voice coach, the same one who worked
with Edie Falco for
The Sopranos,
a set of tapes and I went along on one of the trips to Spain.” He laughed again, showing off his white teeth.

“And those?” Tapping my own.

“The caps were my idea. Anything to make a sale.”

“I sure hope you have good insurance coverage.”

The waiter came with three more drinks, taking Meredith and Richard's empties away, setting my second cocktail down next to my first.

I glanced down at Dashiell in the motorcycle jacket. “Are you saying business isn't good? That today wasn't typical?”

“Today was more typical than you'd imagine,” Richard said, leaning across the table and whispering. “Business is up.”

“And so is greed?”

“You said it, cookie, not me.” Then in a stage whisper to Meredith, “She's not nearly as dumb as you said she was.”

Maybe it was that comment, maybe just the cocktails, maybe the futility of it all, but suddenly we were all laughing. I glanced at my watch and wondered about Sylvia, but if she'd been Gardner Redstone's ladyfriend, she knew the business and it wouldn't surprise her one bit to have me show up an hour or two later than expected.

“So have lots of people been canned after years of working for GR?” I asked, getting back to what really interested me. “You're thinking I shouldn't buy a plant for my office? I shouldn't settle in?”

“You don't have anything to worry about. You'll move on once you get some experience under your belt.”

I looked at Meredith, who was looking out the window. “It's true no matter who you work for,” she said. “They want as much coming in and as little going out as they can manage. That's just good business.”

I was getting the feeling I'd hear that again. Perhaps it was the explanation for everything.

Meredith paid for the drinks, and we walked back out into the snow. She pointed north, saying she lived nearby in Chelsea. Richard asked if I was taking the subway. He said he lived in Brooklyn, making a face as he said it. I wondered if he still lived with his parents. After Richard and Meredith left, I checked my watch and then headed back to GR. I wanted to drop the jacket off before heading downtown to see Sylvia, and it occurred to me that dropping the jacket off was a credible excuse for a chance to talk to the guard.

If it was me, I'd be sitting on that Eames chair and reading a good book, but Darnell White—I had his name on my list—was standing just inside the door, the way guards did when the store was open. He recognized me. I pointed to the motorcycle jacket. He unlocked the door.

At first, what little we said was strained. I took the jacket off Dashiell and was about to hang it with the others when he shook his head.

“Goes in the back, with the ones they wore and you wore. Can't go back on the rack once it's been worn.”

“No kidding? You mean she won't sell this one?”

“That's right, ma'am.”

“I guess it's worth it, the number of them she sold today when people saw them on Dash.”

“She knows the business,” he said, nervously scraping his bottom lip with his teeth. Was he saying too much? How tight was I with Eleanor? He looked out at the snow, waiting for me to hang the jacket in the back and leave. But I stood there holding it.

“You from an agency?” I asked.

“No, ma'am. Ms. Redstone no longer uses an agency. We work directly for her,” he said. And when I said nothing else, he added, “Most of us are police officers.”

“Retired?”

“Moonlighting.”

I nodded.

“That sounds hard, two full-time jobs.”

“Not much time for sleep,” he said, letting me know why he was standing rather than sitting. “My wife and I are separated. I've got two boys.” He shook his head. “Not much choice in the matter. The department money goes to take care of the family. I live on this.”

“Then I guess you're lucky to have it.”

“That's the way I look at it.”

“What made Ms. Redstone stop using the agency?” I asked.

He looked out at the street, the streetlights on, the snow falling, the street no longer full of shoppers with bags from Alexander McQueen, Jeffrey, GR Leather. “There was an incident,” he said.

“A robbery?”

He nodded. “The funny thing was, they went straight for the register. They never touched any of the merchandise. These things are worth thousands of dollars. New York City, you can sell anything. You name it, someone will buy it. It's like they had blinders on.”

“But they killed the guard, didn't they?”

“She told you about that?”

“I've been familiarizing myself with the files.”

He nodded. “They didn't expect there'd be anyone in the store. Most places just lock up at night, even in the bad neighborhoods where robbery is more common.” He shook his head. “So dumb, they didn't notice they were getting taped.”

“Security cameras?”

He nodded. “They're in all the GR stores.”

“And what did they get away with?”