Killer Look

by Linda Fairstein

  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.

  The sexy piece of clothing didn’t fit with the word “killer.” But I was still too full of suspicion to appreciate the phrase.

  “That’s what Wolf would call it when he nailed a style dead-on. He’d point his finger and thumb at the model like he had a pistol in his hand. Then he’d say, ‘Let me dress you for the red carpet, Jennifer. You got a killer look.’”

  EIGHTEEN

  “Did you hear what he said?” I asked.

  “‘Killer look’? It’s just an expression, Coop.”

  We’d spent more than an hour being toured through the Savage offices and the building’s basement, including the loading dock, where all the hand trucks were stored. Nothing seemed to distinguish any of them from the others. All were dinged and dented, with wheels that had rolled over garbage and in fuel that dripped onto the busy street.

  We were walking up the ramp to the sidewalk and it was the first time we’d been alone together since leaving Hal Savage.

  “I wasn’t worried about his turn of phrase, Mike. I mean the ‘sick’ thing.”

  “What?”

  “Hal practically has me on the suicide motive. I mean, once you peel back the curtain, there are lots of reasons that Lily may not have known about what could have depressed her father, and that’s before we even know anything about his screwed-up personal life,” I said. “She probably didn’t realize the bigger implications of the Kwan takeover plan.”

  “I hear you,” Mike said. “I’m on the same wavelength. What are you talking about? That he dissed his secretary by calling her ‘the girl’?”

  “No, no. When he got really annoyed with me because I was skeptical about Wolf killing himself before the big launch, he said that he was ‘so sick and tired’ of hearing me go on, basically.”

  “Happens to the best of us, babe. What offended you?”

  “Nothing. Think of the suicide note, okay? Didn’t it read ‘I’m so sick’?”

  “Yeah. Over and out. That was the whole note.”

  “I know that ‘sick and tired’ is a pretty common expression, but think about it. This one cuts both ways.”

  “How?” Mike asked.

  “Well, if you buy into the suicide theory, then you have to believe that all the man wanted to say is that he was ill. Pretty shorthanded way of announcing it. Nothing about physical pain. Nothing about how much he was suffering or how long he thought he had to live. And certainly nothing about his business setbacks.”

  “Nobody said he was Shakespeare.”

  “But suppose this is a murder, which is certainly where you were headed at the end of the day. Imagine that the whole scene was staged.”

  “Got it.”

  “Have you compared Wolf’s handwriting to Hal’s? To his son’s?” I asked. “Or maybe the two brothers spent so much time together their speech patterns were similar.”

  “You’re going—where?”

  “That at some point, Wolf Savage wrote a note complaining to someone that he was ‘so sick and tired’—of something,” I said. “Let’s assume that it had nothing to do with his impending death, since in this scenario, he doesn’t know he’s going to die. Is this how he talked? Was he complaining to someone?”

  “Basically, was the piece of paper he wrote on altered? Or torn?” Mike said. “I don’t have the original. All I saw was a copy.”

  He took his vibrating phone out of his pocket. “Chapman here. Hello?”

  “You’ve still got work to do,” I said, thinking about the note and walking down the avenue toward the car while Mike talked into his phone.

  “Yeah. We’re just across town. See you in fifteen minutes.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Emma Parker. She’s got something to show us. Wants us pronto.”

  We sped up our pace. “You think she’s getting any external pressure to make a decision on the release of the body?”

  “She wouldn’t say what it’s about, but the commissioner’s walking on eggshells till she tells him wha
t she’s doing.”

  Mike squared the block and drove back to the East Side. It was noon by the time we were admitted to the ME’s Office and seated at Dr. Parker’s conference table again.

  “You want to know who we talked to?” Mike said. “What we learned in Savage country?”

  “Not till I’ve walked you through my morning,” Emma said. “Kind of a roller coaster of a day so far.”

  She leaned over the table, cued up her laptop, and projected an image on the large screen hanging on the wall.

  “This is from the Mayo Clinic records, which came through a few hours ago,” she said. “Wolf Savage had a thorough work-up. No sign of heart disease, nothing neurological. Colonoscopy normal. Just one sign of trouble, which could have set him off. See this?”

  Emma used a pointer to tap on the screen, over the area of the right lung.

  “That murky white stuff?” I asked.

  “Yes. That’s what the initial X-ray showed, which caused the docs to do a CT scan of his chest.”

  “Are we looking at lung cancer?” Mike asked. “I’ll get off my high horse if that’s how sick the guy was. We better get this body out of here now.”

  “My first thought, too,” Emma said. “But there are a lot of false positives with lung imaging. That’s why they sent him for the scan, which also kept the question mark about a malignancy wide open.”

  “C’mon, Doc. What diagnosis did they give him? What kind of treatment?”

  “Slow and steady, Detective. I want you to get this information just the way that I did, okay? They wanted Mr. Savage to stay another day, but he refused. He checked himself out. Told the team that he’d see his own internist at home.”

  “Did they prescribe anything for his pain?” I asked. “Oxy? Anything like that?”

  “No meds. He was completely asymptomatic. No pain, no cough, no other indication of a malignancy. There was nothing to prescribe unless he stayed the extra day and finished the diagnostic process, but he told them he had too much going on at work to stay.”

  “Do they know if he followed up back here?”

  “No. Three phone calls to his office went unreturned.”