The Hard Way (18 page)

Richard was in
when I arrived in the morning. “She's having a cow,” he whispered.

“Meredith?”

He rolled his dark eyes and pointed to the ceiling. “Madam,” he said, “is the one having the cow.”

“How come?”

“You know the knockoffs they sell on the street?”

I nodded. Even before I'd started reading the fashion pages, finding them so funny I thought they'd been done for
Saturday Night Live,
I knew that the Rolex for twenty bucks or the fifty-dollar Luis Vuitton backpack were not the real McCoy. “What? They're selling the Jackie bag on the corner?”

“That's old news. The new news is that a leather shop on Greenwich Avenue is selling the real ones for eighteen hundred. And they have them in stock, now, in seven colors.”

“How did that happen?”

“Eleanor thinks they get them from the factories.”

“From Spain?”

“France in this case.”

“But how?”

“She thinks they bribe someone, maybe the manager. She's not sure. It's one of the real problems of the business, much worse than
the cheapie versions you see on the street, because no one who's got the kind of money to buy the genuine ones would be fooled by the copies. But the bags she saw yesterday, they're legit. It's driving her crazy.”

“What can she do?”

“Not much. If she changes factories, she'll lose a season or more. And it would eventually end up the same way.”

“There's no one honest in the business?”

Richard looked startled. “You are a tyro, aren't you? Either that or you've had an unusually lucky life.”

I began to shake my head.

“Then you know what people do for money. Why question it?”

I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, began to unbutton my coat. In Eleanor's absence, it was Richard who checked my outfit and nodded. “Red today,” he said. “The short one with the zipper. It's you.”

“A different jacket?”

“She can afford it,” he said. “Besides,” reaching for my hair and fluffing it up, “you gots to spend it to make it. The people who shop here wouldn't sit down and have a drink with you, but when they see the jacket on you, they want it.”

“Odd.”

“You are what you wear, hon. Keep that in mind. Now, how about the hunk? I think he should wear the fur-collared one today. After all, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”

Richard cut the tags off a short red jacket and I slipped it on even though I'd be spending the next few hours upstairs. He handed me a new motorcycle jacket for Dashiell.

“They get donated to charity at the end of the season,” he whispered. “She writes them off. You don't ever have to worry about Eleanor.”

“Never a sale?”

“Bite your tongue.”

“But Jeffrey has sales. Armani has sales. I don't—”

“When you see a sale at Tiffany's, you'll see one here.”

Upstairs, after hanging the red jacket in the small closet in the corner of my office, I started an Internet search on GR Leather, thinking that if anything had been in the news, I should see it. I was hoping for a battle over the prestigious site of the meat-market building or something about another leather place going under, but that wasn't what turned up.

There was a short article about the shooting of Coleman Hughes, the night watchman. It said that the robber, a man in his late teens, had come in through the back intent on grabbing the cash and fleeing, that he'd been surprised to find anyone in the store—a boy who apparently hadn't done his homework—and that he had emptied his gun into Hughes and then fled without taking a dime. The police caught him because he'd been so scared by what happened, he couldn't stop talking about it, and when one of his buddies was arrested as a suspect in another robbery, one that had actually netted him fifty-eight dollars, he immediately began to talk to get himself a better deal.

The cops always say that at least two people know about every crime, the one who did it and the one he told about it.

Hughes's only relative was an aunt who lived in a nursing home in South Carolina. Revenge may be sweet, but even if she'd blamed Gardner for the death of her nephew, I doubted she could have made the trip.

The second article was from
Forbes
. It was a list of companies whose profits had taken an unusual jump in the last year. Despite the loss of potential income from the sale of stolen Jackie bags, the sort of practice that probably started on the road that led away from the Garden of Eden with the sale of genuine Eden fig leaves, GR Leather was on that list. In the year that was ending, their profits had gone up by a whopping 26 percent.

Yet Eleanor had insisted her salespeople take a cut in their commissions. I wondered what Gardner's policies had been, if, in the past, employees were asked to live on less so that the owners could
live on more and more and more. Was this what was meant by the “pursuit of happiness”? Sometimes it seemed that way.

I went back into the files and began checking the headings on the file folders, finding one that said, “Noncompetition Agreements.” That was usual for designers, say. They'd sign an agreement saying that they wouldn't design competing products for x number of years. I hadn't gone upstairs yet to meet the designers, but what was in the file might be more interesting. There were eight agreements in it. Three were signed by designers, the two working upstairs and one who, according to the note on the agreement, had retired. One was signed by the manager of the uptown store, another by the manager of the Soho store. I guess there were enough secrets about how the business ran that they had agreed not to work for retailers of “fine leather goods” for five years after leaving GR, something that might inspire them to stay put despite any cuts suggested by the management. I was beginning to get the picture. Meredith had no agreement. Neither did Richard. They probably didn't know enough, like the location of the factories in Spain, France and Italy. But Nina would, and she'd signed a noncompetition agreement for seven years. Like it or not, Nina was here for the duration.

I looked toward the door of the office, which I'd closed for privacy's sake. Nina didn't seem unhappy. She hadn't complained the way Meredith and Richard had. Of course Nina would be harder to replace and might have been treated in a way that recognized that. Leaving the file open, I pulled her personnel file out. Nina, in fact, had been given both a raise and a substantial bonus this year.

The buyer who had the job before Nina, Alison Ruiz, had also signed a noncompetition agreement, in her case for ten years. I again rolled the chair over to the file that had the personnel folders and found hers in the back, where the files of employees no longer working for GR were kept, the dead files, so to speak.

Alison Ruiz had worked for GR for twelve years, which, according to her date of birth, might have made this her first or sec
ond job. She'd originally worked out of the Madison Avenue shop, starting in sales and a year and a half later, getting promoted to assistant buyer with barely a raise in pay. Still, she was getting training for a better position and that must have been worth a lot. I looked at her history of raises, bonuses and her promotion from assistant buyer to senior buyer. I checked her work record, and it seemed she was hardly ever sick and sometimes cut vacation time short to go to Spain or Italy and check out this or that factory. There was a notation about maternity leave at one point, a mere two months, and then Alison was back on the job. There was nothing in the file about her premature demise. She'd been only thirty-two years old. I circled her name on my list and put a question mark next to it.

I turned to the next folder, and that was more interesting than all the others. The wording was different on this agreement. It was dated last June. It was a promise not to open a competing business or to work for anyone whose trade consisted of the manufacture and sale of fine leather goods, not excluding footwear, outerwear and handbags, and it was signed by Gardner Redstone. I made some notes and put the files away. Then I called Sylvia.

“You didn't tell me Gardner was thinking of retiring,” I said, not bothering to say hello, my usual get it done in a New York minute way of dealing with the world.

“Rachel?”

“Sorry. Hi, Sylvia. I was going to call anyway, to thank you for seeing me last night.” Squeezing my eyes shut and seeing my mother, who had tried in vain to teach me better manners. “It was very kind of you.”

“Cut to the chase, kiddo. I know you're on the clock.”

I laughed. “Right. I found a document in the file that led me to believe—”

“Water under the bridge,” she said.

I wondered if she was sitting in that lounge chair, looking out at the river.

“You mean because he's gone?”

“No. I mean because he changed his mind.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Oh, darling. What happened, you ask. He was thinking we'd move to Florida. He said his whole life, he would picture himself standing on the beach fishing. I don't even know if that's the kind of fishing you do there. He didn't know either. He never had the time to find out. Or to try it and see if it was something he'd really enjoy. It was just an old man's dream of relaxation, of not working until the day before he was in the grave. Which is what ended up happening.”

“So what interfered with his plans?”

“Not what, darling. Who.”

I thought about the pay cuts. I hadn't yet checked to see if Gardner had run the business that way, too. I pulled out Meredith's file while I listened to Sylvia continue.

“Eleanor?”

“Who else? She wanted the business in her own name. She wanted to be the CEO. She's a very,” pause, “ambitious woman. But she also wanted her father to keep working.”

“Because?”

“Because most of the good ideas came from him. At the end of the day, you can't fool yourself about certain truths that are beyond question. He was the heart and soul of the business.”

“And she is?”

“The wallet.”

“She made the financial decisions?”

“That's what I surmised,” she said.

“So the Jackie bag, that was his idea?”

“Of course. He knew her. She used to shop at the Madison Avenue store. He directed all the design. He even did a lot of it himself. He knew the skins, what you could do with them and what you couldn't. And he loved making beautiful things.”

“Not the money?”

“Yes, the money. He needed to take care of his family.”

“But it got way beyond that.”

“Darling, that's how things happen in life. You start with a necessity and a good idea and you get waylaid. What was a necessity to keep your family alive and to keep your business going becomes an obsession, an addiction. I'm not saying that didn't happen to him. It wasn't only Eleanor. But he was thinking it was time to let go of it, and she wouldn't let him.”

After I hung up, I pulled that file back out, checking what I hadn't read before. Along with the agreement not to compete was an agreement to stay on as a consultant. One way or another, GR Leather had become Gardner's roach motel. He'd checked in, but he couldn't check out.

Until he'd actually checked out, the way Coleman Hughes and Alison Ruiz had.

As I guessed, Meredith had been with GR for a long time and had twice before taken commission cuts. One had been temporary. Seven years ago there had been a dock strike and the shipment of containers from Spain could not be unloaded in time for the fall/ winter season. It was a devastating loss for the company, and I was sure everyone took a cut in take-home pay one way or another. The other time had been four years ago. There was no note about why. Who wants to write “greed” in the file?

Nina knocked, as she had the day before, to let me know it was time to go down to the shop. I slipped on the red jacket. She smoothed the shoulders and made sure the collar was standing up. Then she put the motorcycle jacket on Dashiell and adjusted the ridiculous fur collar, as if he needed it to stand up to keep the wind off his nose tackle's neck. When she noticed the tag was still on, she pulled a little folding scissors from her skirt pocket and clipped it off.

“The woman who had this job before you,” I said, pausing to let her continue what I'd started.

“Alison?”

I nodded. “I see in the file she was only thirty-two.” Waiting for a response again.

This time Nina nodded.

“That's awfully young,” I prompted.

“An accident.”

“Here?”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I'm sure I would have heard. Come on. We better go. It's noon.”

There were eight customers in the shop. All turned as Dashiell jumped down the last two steps, always the showman, and sauntered into the center of the store as if he knew why he was wearing the motorcycle jacket despite the fact that he was indoors.

A young man touched Richard's shoulder and nodded toward Dashiell. He was wearing a sport coat but with a cashmere scarf elaborately tied around his neck—according to the latest rules and regulations of the fashion world, all scarves must be twirled and tied the same way—as if knowing that would keep him warm enough without a coat. Of course, it had nothing to do with warmth, only with style, showing you had it even if you froze to death in the process. Beyond him, and beyond the dog motorcycle jacket in the window, I saw the snow still coming down, as relentless as death. And while he was asking whether or not the motorcycle jacket was “water resistant,” because, hell, for all that money that was the least you could ask for, I was wondering where Eddie was and if he was warm enough, if he'd had something to eat, if I'd ever find him again so that I could tell him what his name was and the rest of the surprising things Brody had told me.