The Hard Way (19 page)

A blonde in her forties but as slim as a nine-year-old was touching my sleeve now. I walked her over to where the little red jackets hung and took one of the smallest ones off the hanger for her to try on. I watched her regarding herself in the three-way mirror, then glanced around the shop. Richard was showing the man in the scarf how easily the dog coat went on and off. Nina was at the register, ringing up a sale—a six-hundred-dollar tote bag. What on earth did other women carry around with them in those oversize bags? Meredith was helping a woman into a long, chocolate brown
leather coat with a fur collar. That's when I remembered that it was a few days before Christmas, but at least half the shoppers were buying things for themselves, not others. God helps those who help themselves.

At two, there was a lull. I took a cup of tea from the little table where shoppers could help themselves to tea or coffee—or ask their salesperson to fetch it for them—and Richard walked over to join me.

“We're almost out of Poochie coats,” he said.

“Does Dashiell get credit for those, too?”

“You bet. They see him in his jacket and they're stricken with guilt that their dog only has a cashmere sweater in all this snow, or worse, their poor mutt is as naked as the day he was born.”

I shook my head. “I sold two of these,” I told him, rubbing the soft sleeve of the little red jacket, “one motorcycle jacket in extra large for a dog who'll schvitz buckets just looking at it and two of the clutch zip bags to the same lady, one for her, obviously, the other one gift wrapped.”

Richard began to laugh. “Lesson number forty-six. If they buy someone a gift, half the time they want one for themselves as well. Or,” looking around to make sure no one could hear him, “a more expensive one for themselves because they wouldn't be caught dead carrying the one they're going to give away.”

“Time for me to sneak upstairs and get back to the files? Eleanor's having me redo the system, make things more efficient.”

“Oh, looks like someone's going to be offered a permanent position,” he whispered. “Whatever she offers you, hold out for more. She can afford it and she tends to screw us, but not her ‘upstairs' people. She's too dependent on you guys. We're too dependent on her. Particularly starting next week when the Christmas rush is over and all the stores will be letting people go.”

“I thought it's only the temporary help they let go after the holidays.”

“I wish.”

“Are you in danger of…”

“No. I took my commission cut like a man,” he said, laying on the accent even thicker. “What do you think? I'm trying for what's-his-face, the one who married Melanie Griffith before she had her lips done.”

“Antonio Banderas,” I said.

“Right. How'd I do?”

I smiled. “Richard,” I whispered.

“Watch that.”

“Ricardo.”

“Sí.”

“I saw something in the files about the buyer who was here before Nina.”

He glanced around. So did I. Nina had already gone back up to her office. Richard drew a finger across his throat.

“Murdered?”

“Oh, no. Wrong sign? I just meant dead.”

“Here? Was she killed during that robbery?” Practicing my specialty of playing dumb.

“No. Anyway, that happened after the shop was closed, and it wasn't here. It was at the Soho store.”

“Oh,” I said. “So what about Alison Ruiz? You knew her, right?”

He looked at me for what seemed like a long time. “Not well,” he said. “She traveled a lot, the way Nina does. That's the nature of the job. And when she was here, she was busy, busy, busy. I don't know how they do it. You don't think Nina was born that nervous, do you?” He looked around the store again, then took the cup he'd taken and put it back.

“No drinks after work?”

He shrugged. “She had a kid. When she was finished here, she went straight home.”

“That's a lot of stress,” I said.

“Oh, come on. You want to hear stress, I'll tell you the story of
my life, Meredith'll tell you hers. Who's not stressed out nowadays? Anyone you know?”

But before I had the chance to answer him, Richard was tilting his chin toward the door. “We better get back to work.”

I turned to look. Two shoppers had just blown in, along with some snow, and a moment later they were both chirping at Dashiell in high-pitched voices, kvelling over his
fabulous
leather coat. From the number of shopping bags they were carrying and the clothes they were wearing, I thought Richard stood a good chance of making up in volume for the percent he was losing on his commissions. I took another look at the ladies who shop. It might be a tight year for some of us, but for the very wealthy, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

“You take it,” I said. “I've got work to do upstairs.”

I stood
for a moment outside Eleanor's door, then changed my mind. I hadn't been up to the third floor yet, the place where Gardner Redstone spent most of his time. I took the stairs and found myself in one large bright room. There were six drawing tables, but only two people working, a man in his sixties and a woman in her thirties. There was a radio playing, classical music, but the woman, I noticed, had her own sound going. There was a tiny iPod clipped to her belt and earphones in her ears. I went over to the man first, noticing that the jacket he was designing was in a pale color—one I'd never seen before in leather—and that the collar and cuffs were in animal prints. A warm, pale dove gray jacket had zebra print on the trim. The buff-color jacket was trimmed in leopard. There were swatches of leather taped along the top of the drawing table and even without touching them, I could tell that they didn't only differ in color, that the textures were different as well.

He didn't stop working when I approached so I waited, watching the way his hand moved in swift, short strokes, working out the shape of the sleeve on the side of the page, a long, fitted cuff, then a bell-shaped cuff with just a hint of print, then a split cuff with the lining barely visible, not folding out against the outside of the jacket.

When he looked up, I introduced myself as Eleanor's new assis
tant. He said his name was Abraham, that Abe would do. I knew the name from checking the employee records, Abraham Meyerwitz, and that he'd been with the firm for thirty-eight years. Without my asking, he took me over to Delia's desk. Delia Simmons. She pulled out one earphone, nodded and went back to work. Delia was working on handbags. I guessed all the designs were for at least a year and half away, but that was only a guess, and I didn't ask. It wasn't really the point. By the time these perfectly fitted jackets were copied enough to trickle down to what my wallet could manage, I might as well just go to the Gap for a jeans jacket. Having worn two of GR's creations, I knew it wasn't possible to get a knockoff that related in any meaningful way to the original. What made these jackets so beautiful and so expensive was not only the quality of the leather. It was the cut, the fit, the way they draped. It was the handmade buttonholes, the quality of the lining, the attention paid to every seam. There was no way to duplicate that kind of workmanship for less money.

On the other hand, a jeans jacket had advantages, too. You never had to worry when your dog put a muddy paw on your arm to ask for a game or a small piece of your pizza, and you also didn't have to worry about dripping grease or tomato sauce from that very slice of pizza onto what you were wearing. The jackets Abe was working on would be stained permanently by spills or scratched and stained by an exuberant dog. The jeans jacket could just get tossed into the washing machine and look as good as ever when it came out.

If more people thought the way I did, Fourteenth Street might go back to the tranny hookers and the wholesale butchers. Luckily for Abe and Delia, they didn't. People seemed to covet the things they were designing, jackets and handbags that cost upward of $5,000 and looked as if they belonged in a museum rather than in someone's closet.

Abe showed me some of the other items he was working on, a long coat, like a leather duster, the skins so fine, he said, it would
flow back like the lightest silk when you walked, and a vest that was the last thing Gardner had been working on, with a bag to match. He said Gardner thought they would be their signature items one day, but design and manufacture had come to a halt when he was killed.

“But you're working on them now?”

“Off and on,” he said. “Sometimes at his table. Come.”

He took my arm and led me to the drawing table in the opposite corner. It was smaller than the one he worked at, half the size and beat up from years of use. There were holes in the wood where things had been tacked, pen marks, even places where someone had tested colors or perhaps spilled coffee, maybe both.

“He wouldn't work on one of the new ones,” Abe said. “They're laminate. He wanted wood, only wood. Not only that, he wanted this table, the one he'd always worked on.”

“And you?”

“The same. But Eleanor liked the look of the new ones.” He shrugged.

“But she couldn't tell her father what to do?”

“She tried,” he said, raising his eyebrows, shaking his head back and forth, sighing, his whole body getting in on the act. “Every generation goes its own way,” he said, tilting his head toward where Delia was working. “My daughter,” he whispered.

I nodded.

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

“Of course, of course. You have to do that.”

“I was wondering about Alison. She was so young…”

He shook his head. “The longer you live, the more friends you lose.”

“You were friends?”

“We traveled together many times, especially in the beginning. The skins are everything. I have to see them, feel them, know how they drape. It took a long time to teach her. But even after she knew, once or twice a year I would go with her. You can't even talk
on the phone if you haven't been there, if you haven't met with the people who are producing your designs. We spent a lot of time together. A lovely woman.”

“What happened?”

“What happened?” he repeated, reminding me of my uncle Isaac, my father's brother, who answered every question by first repeating it. “A suicide, they said.” He lifted one hand in despair, letting it come back down to Gardner's drawing table, grounding himself by touching the table where Gardner once worked and now he did sometimes. “She went up to the roof of the building where she lived and…,” he said, again raising his hand, shaking his head, his lips pressed tight.

“The police, they were sure it was suicide?”

He nodded. “That's what we were told, yes. Who would want to hurt Alison? She couldn't have had an enemy in the world.”

“That nice?”

“Nicer than you would imagine, a pressured job like this. She worked hard, she took care of her family, and if I needed something, she'd be the first one there to offer help. They don't make people like that anymore.”

“And Mr. Redstone? Was he also nice? Too nice to have an enemy?”

Abe looked at me for a long time, glancing back at Delia and then at me again. “Eleanor told me,” he whispered, though I was sure Delia wouldn't have heard him unless he shouted. “She said she couldn't sleep, that she needed to do something, to find out where this man was. This is why you're here? Am I right? You're the detective.” When I didn't respond, he said, “Maryann never takes a vacation in the winter and she's the best assistant Eleanor ever had, one of the few who could cope with her temper.”

There was no use lying to him. “Can this stay between us?” I asked.

He reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

“This was his desk,” he said, letting go of my hand and walking
to the old desk on the adjacent wall. “Here, I don't sit. Only there,” pointing to the stool at Gardner's drawing table. “This no one has touched in all this time.”

I touched the top of the desk, coming away with dust on my fingers. Apparently even the cleaning person didn't touch Gardner's desk.

“It's like a superstition, I think.” He looked toward the big windows and then back at me. “I keep thinking it's time to retire. Enough is enough. It's what he was thinking, too. He said, ‘Florida, Abe. Who needs this weather?' That was last winter. And the winter before. But then spring comes and you think, ‘Who could do the work if I'm no longer doing it? Where would the designs come from?'” He sighed. “Together, we did this. How can I abandon the work now that he's gone?”

I waited.

“If you want this to stay between us,” he whispered, “it will stay between us. I hope you find the man. But then what? It won't bring my friend back, will it?”

“No, it won't. Eleanor said she was afraid he'd do it again, to someone else.”

“Then this is good work you are doing, good work.” He stopped and looked at me again. “But why are you
here
?”

“I need to understand more about him, about his life, his friends, any possible enemies he might have had.”

“Enemies? We're back to enemies?”

“Someone who blamed him for the death of the night watchman, say, or for Alison's death. What about her husband? Did he think her suicide was job related?”

“Her husband? There was no husband, not since right after the kid was born.”

“He took off?”

Abe flapped a hand at me. “Hers, too,” he whispered, tilting his head to indicate the side of the room where Delia was working, bobbing her head to the music only she could hear. “But no children. Not like Alison.”

“That must have been tough on Alison, all that traveling with a little kid to care for.” Thinking of all the women who managed to raise kids without a partner and without falling apart so totally that they ended their own lives. I would think that in the depths of despair, the thought that they had a child dependent on them would be what kept them alive. “Was she a devoted mother?” I asked.

“He has asthma, the little boy, and every night after work she'd go home and vacuum the apartment to make it better for him. It's easy to tell a child you love him. It's not so easy to vacuum every night after working all day, to care that much, to be there for him like that.”

“Except when she was traveling.”

“Of course.”

“Who took care of him then?” And, not waiting for his answer, “Does his father have him now?”

“He's gone, too. He died a year after they split up. She never talked here, there wasn't a free minute, but when you sit on a plane for eight and a half hours, you talk. What else is there to do? He had a drug problem, she told me. Even when they were together, it was killing him, killing her, too, I think.”

“You mean she also had a drug problem?”

“Alison? No, no, no. But seeing what it did to him,” he said, shaking his head, “it was no good. It turned him into a liar, into a thief. She earned the money, he'd make it disappear, as much of it as he could get his hands on. He'd tell her he lost his wallet, he got robbed at the ATM, he'd paid the bills and needed more, something to live on, and then she'd get the second notice. The bills hadn't been paid. It was a terrible way to live, the husband lying, killing himself with drugs, the money always gone. She was in debt for years after he left.”

“So what happened to the kid?”

“Kenny?”

“She was lucky in one thing. Her mother took care of him when she was working.”

I nodded. “And now?”

“And now,” he said.

“And what about the night watchman, the one who was killed on the job? Did he have any family?”

“She came here once,” he said.

“Who did?”

“His girlfriend.”

“And?”

“I was in the office with Eleanor when she came. She was very angry, very upset. She was crying.”

“So what happened?”

“Eleanor indicated to me that I should leave the office.” He shook his head. “I never heard another word. I never saw her again. I think Eleanor took care of it,” he said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

“Paid her off?”

“I can't say for sure, but that's what I think.”

“What about the business, Abe? Did someone else want this space, this building, for example? Did another handbag company go under because of GR's success?”

“Space? Going out of business? People kill for these reasons?”

“The smallest insult, no matter how trivial, envy, an imagined relationship, someone's killed because of it.” I shook my head.

“Think of the famous people killed by stalkers who fixate on them. Or the one who shot President Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. So, any enemies?”

Abe shook his head. “None that I know of. He was an honorable man.” He smoothed his brow with one hand. “And what does this have to do with how he died? They said it was a homeless man, a crazy person.”

“It's just part of the job, checking everything.”

“Good,” he said. “That's good.” He patted my hand, and I was hoping that was the end of it, of his questions, of his wondering why I was here instead of casing subway stations looking for the man who'd pushed Gardner Redstone in front of the train.

I was wondering when they left work, Abe and Delia, and I was happy to see that when you came upstairs, you were in the studio. There was no door to lock, no impediment to checking out the drawers of the old desk we were standing near. I glanced at the desk again. There were no locks on the drawers. I hoped Abe was right, that no one had touched it, thinking of the contrast between the work environment of father and daughter, both fathers and daughters, and how easy it is for the young to trivialize the old, what they've done, what they think should be done. I wondered if Abe could work with Delia the way he had with Gardner. And I wondered about Eleanor and Gardner, when they thought the same way and when they didn't. Whatever the answer, it was something I felt I had to know.