by Клео Коул
“Down you go, lady,” shouted Tiny over the throbbing music.
At the bottom of the stairs, I found myself in a dimly lit, brick-lined basement. Tiny stopped in his tracks, then pointed to a door with a sign that read STAFF ONLY, KEEP OUT.
“In you go. He’s waiting…”
I blinked, not moving. “You’re not coming?” I asked.
“What? You suddenly miss me now?”
“I want my cell phone back,” I said stubbornly.
Tiny rolled his eyes, reached into his leather jacket and pulled out the phone. He flipped it open and checked the display. Then he closed the phone again, and tossed it at me. I caught it with both hands. A glance told me I would get no signal this far underground, so a call for help was out of the question.
“Now get in there,” Tiny barked, slapping my fanny.
Yikes. While I pushed my way through the door, Tiny and the other man turned and climbed back up the spiral staircase. In front of me was a dimly lit room about the size of a small garage. Three old brick walls were completely covered with gold-framed oil paintings of lounging and posed women, dressed in fashions from periods over the last five hundred or so years. The fourth wall was covered with about a dozen flat-paneled TV screens; four were playing high-fashion runway shows, four were playing financial news including stock tickers scrolling data from the Nikkei and the other international exchanges, and the rest were playing news broadcasts from several different countries. All had the sound off.
Background music flowed from an invisible source—not the techno dance beat continuing to pound upstairs, but a retro mix of big bold brass and sax with violins and electric guitar in the back of it. The music was surreally familiar and I suddenly realized why—it was a track from one of the James Bond movies, which Matt had been pretty much obsessed with back in his twenties.
Whatever the floor had been, it clearly had been replaced by new parquet. A huge leopard skin throw rug covered it and mountains of large silk and embroidered pillows had been heaped on top. Antique chairs rimmed the outer edges of the walls and standing glass shelves held an array of red and white wines, colorful liqueurs, and hard liquor.
Two people were immediately evident, and at my abrupt entrance a man lounging on a pile of pillows and watching one of the stock ticker screens turned his head toward me. I saw the bleached hair and knew at once it was Bryan Goldin. Beside him, a beautiful Japanese woman in a bright yellow kimono, with loose, long black hair, gently stroked his neck with small, delicate hands.
From another pile of pillows, next to a large, elaborately filigreed Moroccan hooka pipe, another figure stirred. His arms were wrapped in the finest Egyptian silk, his long legs were encased in pen jeans, his feet in Bruno Magli leather loafers. Like a spider, the man slowly uncurled himself and rose to face me.
I hadn’t seen his image many times in my life, but I recognized him now. Having just seen his younger face, I’d knew he’d once been strikingly handsome, but obviously no Dorian Gray portrait of this guy was aging in some secret vault because the man looked old beyond his years—and it occurred to me that the roadmap of creases he now displayed probably did trace the dissolute excesses of his years.
Appropriately eccentric for the international fashion scene, the man sported small silver loops in each of his ears, and his hair, once dark and wavy, now hung in a long, gray braid down his back. The conventional features of his once common life had obviously been obliterated for the expected affectations of a more famous one. With curious, intense eyes he stared at me but didn’t approach.
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions about me, Ms. Cosi.”
“Good evening, Fen. Or should I call you Mr. Goldin?”
An intrigued gray eyebrow arched. “Actually I’m still Stephen Goldin, of Goldin Associates, though few connect my financial endeavors with my line of apparel. While I try to keep a foot in two worlds, I do like to keep them separate.”
“You didn’t have to kidnap me to have a meeting,” I replied. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for days.”
“You and that tiresome detective, Quinn.” Fen waved his hand. “I have little time for such nonsense during Fashion Week.”
“There was time enough to grab me off the street, though.”
Fen chuckled. “Were you surprised by my associates?”
“Oh, no. In fact, I think I’ve seen them before—as extras on The Sopranos.”
“Some things are unavoidable, Ms. Cosi. I design and make my clothing here in America, and you know what that means. Those men…my associates…they help me avoid strikes and other union problems. They are useful in other areas as well.”
“Like kidnapping?”
“Like acquiring this place…I purchased it for a song from an entertainment entrepreneur who had an unfortunate gambling addiction, and was prone to borrowing money from the wrong men…”.
“Loan sharks, you mean. Your associates? How are they at poisoning people?” I shot a sharp glance at Bryan. He gave me a Billy Idol sneer.
Fen sighed. “Now you’re being tiresome.”
“Oh, am I? Then listen to this. I know you were Lottie Toratelli’s lover twenty years ago. I also know that you slept with Lottie’s sister during the same period, and that Mona ended up prematurely dead.”
Fen looked past me, gestured to his nephew. Bryan Goldin jumped to his feet and fetched a French Provincial chair from the corner. A matching chair came by way of the Japanese woman in the yellow kimono.
“Sit, Ms. Cosi. You have suddenly become interesting again.” I sank down, and Fen sat opposite me. He crossed his long legs and leaned toward me. “I had absolutely nothing to do with Mona Toratelli’s death. Nothing.”
Bryan Goldin appeared again and set a delicate carved table between us. The Japanese woman brought us a bottle of plum wine and two crystal glasses. Then she and Bryan Goldin slipped into the shadows of the room, appearing to vanish.
Fen picked up the bottle. While he poured the dark purple liquid into his glass, I examined my own—ran my finger inside it and sniffed. He laughed at me, a mirthless bark. “If I had wanted to poison you, Ms. Cosi, I wouldn’t have brought you to my club to do it. And I certainly wouldn’t be pouring us both drinks from the same bottle.”
I raised an eyebrow as he took the glass from my fingers and poured me a drink. “To your health,” he said, handing my glass back to me and raising his own. I watched him take a healthy swallow.
My lips were dry, my mouth parched. Needing something to calm my rattled nerves, I carefully sipped my own drink, detecting no taste of almonds or bitterness. The only two things that registered were the sweetness and the strength of the alcohol.
“Please, tell me more,” said Fen, taking another sip from his glass. “What else do you know about me—or think you do?”
I took a second sip of the sweet wine, then another before I spoke.
“I know you tried to force Rena Garcia and Tad Benedict to sell you their shares in Lottie Harmon,” I began. “I also know how you entrapped Rena in a fashion design knockoff scheme, blackmailed her, and threatened to expose her unless she sold you her shares. You even waited to make the threat until she and Tad were officially engaged so you could pull him in as well. A two-for-one, so to speak.”
Fen’s left eye twitched. I took it as a victory and pressed ahead. “I know Tad and Rena tried to outmaneuver you by selling their shares to other investors—in an effort to help Lottie retain control of her company. Poor Rena obviously died because she was trying to protect her boss.”
“Rena was a greedy little fool, Ms. Cosi, but I had nothing to do with her death, either. I was as shocked by the news as anyone.”
“Nice try. But I don’t believe you.”
Fen slammed the table with his fist. “Then you are a stupid woman. Her death has thrown her estate into legal limbo. Rena Garcia died without a will. Now I can’t touch those stocks—nobody can. Not until the legal mess is worked out.”
Fen leaned back. Forcing self-control, he coolly crossed his legs again. “So you see, Ms. Garcia’s death in no way benefits me.”
I still wasn’t convinced, but I let the subject drop. “So what were you saying about control of the Lottie Harmon label?” I asked, continuing to boost my nerve by gulping down more of the plum wine.
“Not the Lottie Harmon label. I don’t give a damn about that. I want control of Lottie.”
So, I thought, Madame had been right. “You’re still in love with her.”
Fen sighed and glanced away, his gaze raking the wall of gilded oil paintings, women posed in empire waists and velvet gowns, Elizabethan collars and powdered wigs, hoop skirts and floor-length furs. “She was addictive, back then,” he said softly. “Intense. Soft and sensual, but dangerous too. Tempestuous and totally unpredictable. Like a psychotropic drug. I’ve had countless women since her, but I’ve never met one whom I could feel even a fraction as strongly about. I want her back in my bed, you see?”
“And you’re a man who gets what he wants?”
Fen shrugged.
It was sad, really. Fen’s memories of the wildly sensual Lottie just didn’t add up to the somewhat restrained woman I knew Lottie to be now. Clearly, the woman had changed over the past twenty years, but Fen hadn’t noticed—or didn’t want to.
I didn’t know much about this Fen/Stephen Goldin character sitting across from me. Maybe the man lived his life in a succession of obsessions and Lottie was just the latest. Or maybe middle-age panic had recently kicked in and regrets were making him yearn desperately for something that simply didn’t exist anymore—if it ever did. He certainly wouldn’t be the first person to idealize a past relationship to make up for a present emptiness.
I set the glass down on the intricately carved table with a loud clink, and realized this particular plum wine was much more powerful than any I’d ever consumed. “Those feelings,” I said, a little woozy, “I suspect they all came back for you when Lottie contacted you again after all these years?”
Fen nodded as he refilled my glass. “Lottie was finished when she walked away all those years ago—from her business and me. She’d been washed up for decades. This new line of hers, the java jewelry thing, it was interesting and commercially viable—if wholly conventional. But I saw it could be lucrative. Like something Isaac might produce for Target. Or David Mintzer for the Bullseye stores—”
My jaw dropped. David Mintzer. Good lord, I thought, that’s who I’d been talking to at the Pierre Hotel, one of the most successful clothing designers in the industry. Mintzer owned two restaurant chains; three magazines; and lines of clothes, handbags, shoes, fragrances, and bath products; plus exclusive product lines just for the Bullseye chain of mass merchandisers. For god’s sake, Clare, the man regularly appears on Oprah, and you didn’t even recognize him!
I took another swig of the plum wine as Fen continued to talk. “I knew I could help sell Lottie’s collection, of course, so I helped her, expecting she’d want to become involved with me again—but she’s kept me at arm’s length for over a year now, and I’ve run out of patience.”
Then why are you trying to kill her? I wondered. Clearly, it didn’t add up. About then, the room began to spin. “So what’s the big deal, Fenny?” I found myself babbling. “Woo her. Win her. Marry her even—just like everybody else.”
“You don’t understand. She wants nothing to do with me. The past is still alive for her as it is for me. But Lottie only remembers the hurt I inflicted on her, not the ecstasy we shared. Now with her line a success, I fear she may soon not even need our business relationship. And I’m not taking the chance she’ll disappear on me again. I have the power to take over what means the most to her—so I will. Then I’ll have power over her, too, you see?”
“No, I don’t see. If you cared so much for Lottie all those years ago, then why the hell did you sleep with her sister?”
Instead of answering my question, Fen rose. He seemed taller now as he loomed over me. I looked up, startled as I realized the ceiling was a stylized mirror—inside it I saw the reflections of the oil paintings that covered three of the room’s four walls.
“My god, look at them,” I murmured, “all those women…” The room spun faster, and I couldn’t seem to control my tongue. “Oh, wait. Now I get it!” I cried, a tad too loudly. “This club of yours is called the Inferno because it’s Dante’s hell, and we’re in the Fourth Circle—the circle of the hoarders. You hoard women, Fen. You’re a hoarder!” I was now shaking my finger at the man like a scolding little nun.
He stared at me with pure disgust. “You have grown tiresome again. I would like you to leave.”
“Ha! First you kidnap me, then you throw me out. You’ve got some nerve, Fenny!” I waved my arm to emphasize my point, and knocked over the half-empty wine glass. It fell off the carved table and bounced softly off a silk pillow, staining it beyond redemption.
“No one has kidnapped you, Ms. Cosi. I merely provided a ride—and bodyguard—to keep you safe for your trip downtown. You did willingly get into my car, if you recall. I’m sure the Pierre doorman would testify to that.”
“Bull-loney.” I rose. Like a listing ship, the entire room seemed to lurch to the side. I stumbled, clutched the edge of the carved table and nearly toppled it, too.
“You say you were kidnapped, Ms. Cosi. But I say you came here to my club inebriated and became quite loud and disorderly. Indeed, you caused a scene, as my staff will attest. Why, a scandalous story like that could even reach the papers.”
“You rat!” I hollered. “You drugged me!”
“Just a healthy dose of grain alcohol, nothing to get excited about. We’re done now, Ms. Cosi, and I do hope you are, too. All this nosing around in other people’s affairs is really not a healthy pursuit. And we did drink to your health, did we not?”
Then Fen was through talking. He no sooner gave me his back than his nephew, Bryan Goldin, emerged from the shadows. Not gently, he ushered me out the door, depositing me at the bottom of the spiral staircase, which might as well have been the base camp at Mount Everest.
“Sweet dreams, Cosi.”
After taking a deep breath, I grabbed the wrought iron railings with both hands and began to climb. It took an eternity to move from one step to the next, and I had to stop for oxygen every minute or so and wait for the room to stop spinning. God, where’s a sherpa when you need one?
Finally, I reached a level I recognized—the dance floor and that long bar made of glass bricks, illuminated from within by a blood red glow. The sight of it, and the thought of all the animals slaughtered in this building, was suddenly making my stomach churn. Just then, I spied the public phone—which was in use—and the ladies room next to it.
Oh, lord, I’m going to be sick. I lunged for the bathroom. No line, thank goodness, so I pushed my way through the door. Inside I found two large stalls, both in use. I heard giggling, then voices echoing from behind one of the partitions. Whoever they were in there, they were taking up a stall without making proper use of it, and that suddenly made me furious. The grain alcohol made me bold, if not certifiably insane, and I began to pound on the stall door.
“Hey, knock it off,” a woman cried from the other side. I pounded again, then kicked the thing. It burst open.
Two young women and a young man in a business suit were crammed inside the stall—one of the women was a tall blonde with a daring leather vest and skirt that bared her belly. The other was a pretty brunette with a short velvet dress that revealed lots of leg and plenty of cleavage. Her lipstick was familiar, I suddenly realized, a garish hue I would never wear, but the exact shade I’d found on my husband’s collar the day before.
I blinked, not sure, but hoping, it was all just a nightmarish hallucination. The brunette’s eyes were as wide as a deer’s on a busy highway—not surprising since she’d been caught in the act of holding a tiny spoon full of illegal white power under her nose.
Then her familiar v
oice cried, “Mom!” and I knew this was no delusion. The brunette holding the cocaine was my daughter, Joy.
Twenty-Five
“Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“Water.”
Still holding the cool cloth over my eyes and forehead, I blindly accepted the tall glass from Matt. “Where’s the coffee?”
“It’s coming. For now, your body needs water. Drink it down, Clare. Trust me, I’ve had enough hangovers to know what helps.”
On this subject, I did implicitly trust my globetrotting ex-husband, who seemed to personify the lyric from the old hit song “One Night in Bangkok,” which, paraphrased, essentially says, all countries look the same with your head in a toilet bowl.
I myself had already worshipped the porcelain god in the Inferno, right after I discovered my barely adult daughter about to shove Bolivian marching powder up one delicate nostril.
The scene after that was a fairly horrific blur—I was about to take Joy by her wrist and drag her out of that club, but I hadn’t needed to do anything nearly that dramatic. She was so alarmed at seeing her mother inebriated to the point of passing out, she’d helped me to the door and into a cab. I pulled her in with me, refusing to let her out of my sight, then insisted she stay the night with me in the duplex.
When we got upstairs, we found Matt already home—to my stunned surprise. I would have bet the farm he’d been planning to spend the night in Breanne’s bed. But there he was, ready to take care of us both.
He’d given up his own room when he realized Joy was spending the night. After digging out one of his T-shirts to sleep in, he tucked me into the master bedroom’s four-poster. I was too shaky to ask where he was going to sleep—and once again assumed he had some other woman’s bed in mind anyway.
“Matt, you have to talk to Joy,” I said, still staring at the inside of my hangover cloth. “Straight talk.”
“I will, Clare. First thing in the morning. Let’s all just get some rest tonight.”
