Killer Look (11 page)

“Coop—Ms. Cooper told me you've got stores all over Europe. How bad can it be?”

“Yeah. I opened a huge boutique on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. We've been on Bond Street forever, and the Via Veneto. I even pushed us into Moscow when things loosened up there. But it hasn't been enough.”

“What does it look like on the books?” I asked.

Reed turned around to face us and dug his hands into his pants pockets. “Two years ago, we had products in twenty countries. Our revenue was about two hundred fifty million dollars.”

Mike let out a low whistle. “Not hurting there.”

“You don't understand, Detective. Last year it was up a fraction, but fell below that two-fifty figure by the end of the year. That number is nothing in our business.”

“Kwan blames you for that drop?” Mike said.

“Kwan told my father that we can no longer manage this as a family business. A luxury company, but not family-run,” Reed said. “That we have to move to a second phase now, in order to develop a strong global brand.”

“But you're the global guy,” Mike said.

“I wasn't invited to those early meetings, Detective,” Reed said, his teeth clenched and his hands balled up in his pockets. “No one told me about the plan.”

“What exactly was the plan?”

“Kwan Enterprises offered to buy up a percentage of WolfWear.” Reed's answer was short and clipped.

“How much?” I asked.

“I feel like I'm tripping over my tongue when I speak the number,” he said. “George Kwan wants eighty percent of my father's business. The family would keep twenty. And he was willing to let Wolf remain CEO.”

“That must have been a blow to your father,” I said.

“By the time I was let in on the negotiations, he was feeling crushed. His mood ranged from angry to despondent,” Reed said.

I thought Reed was making a subtle play for his father's suicide motive. But Lily had used a similar point to argue against the fact that Wolf took his own life.

“My uncle Hal and I?” he went on. “We were the sacrificial lambs.”

“You mean you two were to be axed?” Mike asked. “Why so?”

“George Kwan put the blame squarely on our shoulders. Said we had to go.”

“What blame?”

“Look, Wolf was the design genius. He was completely hands-on about the creative part of the business, confident about what women wanted and how much they would pay for it,” Reed
said. “We're strong in American and Europe, as you know. But we're completely unknown in the shopping districts of Beijing and Mumbai. We don't have the slightest footprint in Dubai.”

“Footprint in Dubai? Are you supposed to be making hijabs and abayas now?” Mike asked, referring to the traditional headscarves and cloaks.

“Yeah, Detective. Actually, we are. Arab women are the world's biggest buyers of high-fashion items,” Reed said. “My father was slower to realize that than many other companies. That's one of the reasons we're stumbling.”

“So Kwan Enterprises will use its fortune and its experience in this industry to develop your company in new markets,” I said, still trying to figure under what circumstances the religious Arab women would use these expensive clothes.

“Yeah, the markets I missed, in particular.”

I was looking for the silver lining. “But isn't there a good side to this? Won't it ensure the longevity of your brand, and maybe, with your father's death, that there will be a place for you in the business?”

“Ms. Cooper,” Reed said, “Hal and I are trying to claw our way into this deal with our fingernails. We love this brand. It's everything my father spent a lifetime building and expanding.”

“How much of your father's money do you have to put up for the buy-in?” Mike asked.

“Most of what's left, unfortunately.”

“‘What's left'?” I asked, repeating Reed's words.

Reed practically collapsed back into his chair, glaring at me. “You all seem to think that Hal and I are after Wolf's fortune. Like Lily does. Like everyone else who's been hanging off him like a remora on a shark, waiting for him to die.”

“I guess you'll know exactly how much after you meet with the lawyer this afternoon,” Mike said, getting up to leave.

“That's what George Kwan is threatening to go to the media about, Mr. Chapman,” Reed Savage said, elbows on his desk, holding his head in his hands. “Wolf must have been doing some kind of disappearing act with his money, Detective. Or cooking the company's books. There's barely enough money to keep this place afloat.”

Hal Savage wasn't about to be put off by Reed's secretary. He opened the door and went directly toward Mike, holding out his hand.

“First thing I want to do is apologize, Detective,” Hal said. “It's been a tough week.”

“Not a problem,” Mike said, wiggling his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “No direct hit. No damage done.”

Then it was business as usual for Hal, the apology obviously just a way to move us out of the Savage offices.

“Reed, I know you want to talk about your dad with the detectives, but we've got a lot of catching up to do,” Hal said to his nephew. “I'm shifting responsibility to you for the caterer, liquor, florist—”

“You're planning a memorial service for Wolf?” Mike asked.

“In time, Chapman. In time,” Hal said. “We're behind the eight ball here. I need you to move on with your work and let Reed get on with his day.”

“These arrangements are for the big show next week,
Detective,” Reed said, trying to shake off the last few minutes of our conversation. “My father's effort to go one-up on Fashion Week.”

“The show goes on?” Mike asked. “Despite Wolf's death?”

“What my brother planned is really a bold move,” Hal said. “I think it's one of the things that overwhelmed him in the end, to tell you the truth. After all, he'd been working for almost a year on this break from Fashion Week, this big plunge to go to the Met. We would not only hurt the brand by canceling his plans, but we'd be out of pocket a small fortune.”

“Yeah, can we talk about that?” Mike asked.

“About the show?” Hal asked, halfway out the door, holding it open for us. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Not the show. That expression you used: ‘small fortune.' I'm wondering—”

“Wonder on your own dime, Mr. Chapman,” Hal said. He stormed back down the hallway, clapping his hands and shouting out to anyone who might have been in range, behind closed doors. “Get to work, everybody. We've got a tight deadline. We've got to rock the runway for Wolf!”

“I think he's done with us,” I said, ready to head for the lobby.

“Hey, Hal,” Mike called out. “What's the medical update on your brother?”

The man stopped in his tracks. “I won't miss the second time I swing at you, Detective. The answer to that is between me and the medical examiner, got it?”

“Can't we talk?” Mike said. “About Wolf's death?”

Hal Savage slammed one hand against the wall. “Out of the hallway, Chapman. You win. The whole staff doesn't have to hear this.”

Hal opened the door to Wolf's suite at the end of the long corridor and we traipsed down after him. This time, the room was empty. There was no sign of George Kwan or the other employees.

“Quite a disappearing act,” Mike said. “What'd you do with Kwan?”

The glass-fronted offices should have made it obvious to us had he left while we were with Reed.

“Not so sinister as you might think, Detective. There's a private elevator behind that door,” he said pointing. “The one that looks like a closet. My brother didn't like everything he did to be quite so transparent as the architects who designed the offices for him expected.”

I looked around the room. There were half a dozen life-size mannequins, some wearing the most casual styles and others dressed to the nines. One seemed perfect for a young woman working in a law office, trying to appear more stylish than her H&M-dressed colleagues, and another was a daring backless gown with just enough straps holding up the top to avoid a fashion mishap.

“Reed was telling us about some of the business problems you were up against,” Mike said. “I'm thinking it helps explain why Wolf could have been so depressed.”

Hal Savage raised an eyebrow and looked at Mike quizzically. “What? You're ready to admit that you're wrong? You'll let me—?”

“I'm saying if I knew a little more, maybe—”

“You'll let me give my brother a proper burial before the hoopla starts next week? You know that's the decent thing to do.”

“Reed says—”

“Look, the kid told me he wanted to give you some background, help you understand my brother a little better. Didn't he?”

“Not so much background,” I said, “as the current state of the business.”

“He wasn't supposed to do that,” Hal said. “I know he's grieving, but he wanted to explain his father to you. I guess it's his own way of dealing with circumstances.”

There was some serious gaming going on. Unless something that Reed said to us flipped him 180 degrees, Mike was just playing at understanding the dead man's depressed state of mind. And I just as seriously doubted that Reed was sent in to deal with us on anything other than Hal's agenda.

“So, medically?” Mike asked.

“Like I said, that nice lady doc will deal with it. Wolf flew out to the Mayo Clinic every year to have a full exam. That's what they do out there. You check in like it's the Ritz and they do a full work-up,” Hal said. “He got some tough news this time—kept it close to the vest, like he did with most personal things in his life.”

“Sorry to hear that. Everyone says he looked so healthy.”

Hal Savage shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving, Detective. You ought to know that.”

“I've been fooled by the best of them,” Mike said.

The smile on his face was fake and forced. It might work on Hal Savage, but not on me.

“I'm kind of fascinated by the brother bit,” Mike said. “Me, I've only got sisters. I can't imagine what it would be like to work with any one of them for more than a day, if you know what I mean.”

“Would it help you to understand us if I tell you what we came out of? What made Wolf so proud—well, vain's a better word for it—and why a fall would be so hard?”

“Yeah. You want to do that? Yeah.”

Hal Savage walked over to one of the trophy-filled cabinets, featuring awards from every corner of the design industry, and reached up to the top shelf. He came down holding a black fedora—a men's hat that looked like it had some age on it.

“Hold this, young lady, will you?” he said, passing the hat to me. “Read the label inside it. Tell me what you see.”

I turned it over and noticed the black silk label with gold thread. “Savitsky Hatters. Brooklyn, New York.”

“You mocked me, Detective, when I used the name of my father—and my grandfather—when we met yesterday, but this hat explains why I did that. It explains Wolf and me, whether you like it or not.”

“Try me again,” Mike said.

“What do you think that's made of, Ms. Cooper?”

I stroked the soft fur of the brim. “Velour?” I guessed. “Rabbit? I'm not really sure.”

“Ah! The cheap hats of today are rabbit, I can tell you that. This one, the pride of my father's shop, was beaver. Real beaver.”

“My grandfather used to have one just like that,” I said.

“Are you Jewish, Ms. Cooper?” Hal said, stepping closer and smiling at me.

“Yes, my father's family came from Russia,” I said. “My mother converted to Judaism when she married.”

“Then you know, most likely, that religious Jews keep their heads covered as a sign of respect for God,” Hal said, pivoting to explain the rest to Mike. “Observant Jews wear the traditional skullcaps, Mr. Chapman, like you mentioned, and many even wear them under other headgear, like my father's favorite fedora here.”

He took the hat from me and rubbed his hand around the brim.

“The various styles go back hundreds of years, Detective, to Hasidic courts in Poland and Romania. And this is what my father did,” Hal said. “He made hats for his people, okay. Three, maybe four hundred a year. That kept him in business.”

“Always the same hat?” Mike asked.

“No, sir. Not a chance. Maybe the brim and the crown look the same to you, but styles change, like with every other fashion.
Some preferred hats with curled-up brims, or scaled-down sizes for bar mitzvah boys, higher crowns and even what Papa called the Lubavitch pinch—three dents in the crown, favored by the late Rebbe, you know?” Hal said, laughing at something, probably a memory that was associated with his father. “A Lubavitcher might be good for several each year, the way they go through them.”

“So your old man made hats,” Mike said. “And you and Wolf started in the business with him.”

“At his knee, Detective. Watching him break his back, competing against the Greenbaums and the Goldsteins. Listening to him go on about how he was building the foundation so that the two of us could take it over, follow in his footsteps. Today—right now, today—if you went to Williamsburg to buy one of the damn rabbit hats they sell? You'd pay a hundred dollars for one of them. So my father? Back when I was a kid? He was probably getting eight or ten dollars a hat for the real deal,” Hal said. “Enough to give my brother and me a quarter each to go to the movies on a Sunday. Can you think of any better reason to get out of his business? You sweat all day to make someone else who lives down the street from you look good, and you get eight fucking dollars for it? Can you imagine that?”

Mike shook his head.

“I didn't mean to be vulgar, Ms. Cooper. I'm just under a lot of stress here.”

“I'm trying my best to imagine it,” Mike said. “My father started out walking a beat on a Brooklyn street—wouldn't have known a beaver fedora from Davy Crockett's coonskin cap. Taught me how to slip past the ticket girl at the Loews Orpheum when he couldn't come up with the money to take me to the movies, but still I wanted to walk in his shoes from the moment I was old enough to know what he did and why he loved it so much. Getting rich was never part of the program.”

Hal Savage placed the hat in the middle of his brother's empty desk.

“I'm more like you,” Hal said, pointing a finger at Mike. “I could have stayed with my old man forever, if it hadn't been for Wolf.”

Now he was winning the contest for most disingenuous, I thought as my eyes roamed from his wolf-head cufflinks with ruby eyes to his manicured nails to the lines of his bespoke Brioni suit.

“So this whole business start-up was his doing?” Mike asked.

“You've got to give him all the credit. I'm the older one, but he had the vision,” Hal said, lifting his arms up and waving his hands in the air. “Hey, Wolf figured if it was good enough for Lifshitz, it was good enough for him.”

“Lifshitz? What do you mean?”

“You got to be kidding me, Detective. Just what I said. You've been living under a rock all these years?”

“Lifshitz,” I said to Mike. “That's Ralph Lauren's real name. He was born in the Bronx as Ralph Lifshitz.”

“You're pulling my leg now, aren't you?” Mike said. “Some guy named Lifshitz has all those lily-white models sporting polo ponies on their breasts? Has grown men wearing sports jackets with crests on their pockets? Sells flannel shirts, dungarees, and lumber jackets costing more than I make a week to look like they're auditioning for a John Wayne movie? You're making a bad joke, Coop.”

“She's making my point, Detective,” Hal said. “You can sell furry fedoras till the cows come home if your name is Velvel Savitsky. But you've got a much better shot at couture if the world knows you as Wolf Savage. My brother figured that out by the time he was out of high school.”

“And you left your old man in the dust to follow Wolf?” Mike said.

“We were damn good to my father, Mr. Chapman, to the end.
I wouldn't go there if I were you,” Hal said, back to his snappish mood. “Blood has always been thicker than water to Wolf.”

“Except for now, when he was ready to cut you and Reed out of the business.”

“
What?
”

“You're the Chief Financial Officer, Hal,” Mike said. “Reed says you two got the blame for driving the company off a cliff. He told us that Wolf was ready to make the deal with Kwan Enterprises—the deal that took you two off the marquee.”

“What did that kid tell you?” Hal Savage looked as though his head might explode.

“C'mon, man. I may look stupid, but not so much as you think,” Mike said. “You sent Reed out to us to deliver a message. That's what he did.”

“He could only spill as much as he knows. My nephew's a decent young man.”

“Decent enough to go with you to the medical examiner to give you some cover, wasn't he?”

“Truth is, he flat-out missed the mark in the international market. The Kwans are trying to turn this place around, Detective. They've got no use for him. I'm trying to hold on to him by the scruff of his neck.”

“How about you?” I asked. “Reed says you two were in the same boat.”

“My brother was a genius, Ms. Cooper. The fashion world—this entire business—is about fantasy. Fantasy and dreams. It's about a designer who can seduce you into thinking you need what he's selling. ‘If I had that dress,'” he said, pointing at the slinky bare-backed number on the mannequin, “‘I could have gotten the guy who shot me down last week,' or ‘If I wore that suit to a job interview, I know I'd get hired.'”

Hal Savage sat down at his late brother's desk. “Wolf knew
better than anyone in this business how to romance a look. That's what he did, season after season.”

“No offense,” Mike said, “but if he was such a genius, what exactly did he need you for?”

He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “From the time I was a kid, Detective, I used to keep my father's books. Did all his accounting for him from the age of ten. Wolf got all the creative talent, and I got the brains for business.”

“Well, maybe Reed leaked out a little bit more than he should have,” Mike said. “If you're the brains behind the books, why don't you just show us the
money?”