Dead is the New Black (13 page)

She thought for a moment, hoping she wasn’t misunderstanding him, and then put her fingertips against his, pressing her palm to the warm part of the partition.

He mouthed the words, “Thank you,” and she reluctantly moved her hand, walking away without so much as a “You’re welcome.” It would have seemed insufficient.

CHAPTER 14.

Laura didn’t read Jeremy’s notes until she settled on the downtown train. They were detailed instructions on how to correct the fits and style the models. He trusted her to make sure pants were comfortable in the crotch, but when it came to their length and concept, he was the master. He removed pockets, added belt loops, lengthened hems, and had her turn collars up or down for the show. He reminded her to make sure a jacket was open so the photographers could see the buttons on the shirt. He sketched shapes and made diagrams—“More tail on the shirttail.” He made big declarations—“Skirts must be six inches above the knee or eight inches below. No more, no less”—and lastly, in a scribble that illustrated massive fatigue, one note on the Amanda. “Crochet approved. Bare to skin at back—approved.”

She basked in that warm nugget of validation until the train stopped at 49th street. There was an announcement as the doors closed. A female conductor apologized for the inconvenience and made an explanation that the speakers garbled. Or it was in a foreign tongue. A few passengers lunged for the doors, holding them open with umbrellas and bags, using all their strength to keep the doors open wide enough to get out. Others stared at each other, asking into the air, “What did she say?” More got out on faith; even more stayed for the same reason. Laura was too comfortable to budge, wondering how Jeremy, who loved his business more than life itself, who could never compromise, who worked so hard he made himself sick about four times a year, could have killed the one woman capable of keeping the company afloat. More importantly, how could the police think that? What piece of evidence did they have that she couldn’t see? It couldn’t be a missing TOP sample. Or was it just an ignorance of who he was and what made him tick? There was too much she didn’t know, and it frustrated her. The show took up too much time, time she could be using to help Jeremy.

The train slowed by 42nd, but didn’t stop. By the time they got to 34th street, the passengers didn’t expect to stop, just going back to their papers, or gritting their teeth and mumbling with their faces pressed against the windows that looked into the blackness of the tunnel. Finally, at Union Station, the train stopped, and the doors snapped open. Laura got out with the angry flow and started her walk uptown.

The crowds got thicker as she traveled up Lexington. Sawhorses blocked traffic, and pedestrians were relegated to the sidewalks, further snarling movement. It felt like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, which she had never braved. Helicopters gurgled overhead, and news vans lined up in loading zones. Akiko Kamichura stood in the middle of the street with a Liz Claiborne scarf and a microphone shaped like a baguette, sweeping her hand over the crowd, which roared when they became the subject of the newscast. A big red Mercedes convertible with the top closed drove behind the hearse. Laura craned her neck to see who got first billing and, naturally, Sheldon sat behind the wheel, obviously not too sad to drive. She wanted to look for a tissue, or a hanky, or someone else in the car patting his back, but she was pushed three feet and lost sight of him.

Men and woman in winter wear jostled, pushed, and pinned Laura with their bags, coats, and boots. There were no chants, posters, or placards, just a disorganized mess of bodies with no direction, creating chaos with their presence in one place at the same time. The gates and the blocked street of Gramercy Park ahead clued her in to the fact that she stood in the middle of the culture jam, the theory of which was simple. Stop the culture from working. Subvert it. Apprehend it. Gather together, legally, in one place, in such a way as to prevent the machine from churning out the news story it expects. Turn an inconvenience over a rich woman’s funeral into an event where the rich woman is no longer the story. The massive, chaotic, traffic-stopping presence of the non-rich becomes the news.

Stu was there, somewhere, collecting facts and impressions for his column in CullChahBusted New York. It would be smart, witty, erudite, and sharp. Laura looked around for him, but the crowd was thick. As she watched the procession of limos go by, she felt the pull of Gracie’s funeral.

The killer would be there, pretending to mourn, and she’d know, and she’d nail him, and the nightmare would be over. But the train to Queens was behind her and, as she pushed through the crowd to get to the stairs, the two cops drew a line of plastic tape across the railings, closing the station.

Like a woman trapped in a fire, Laura pushed her way back through the crowd. She crawled under a blue sawhorse and lurched into the street, running to the center, hell-bent on catching the limo.

The crowd, seeing someone break into the zone of cops and news people, broke into wild cheering. It took a second for the chaotic ovations to take on a form, and shape the words, “Go! Go! Go!” She was just running for the train and didn’t care about the closed street or income inequality. Laura found herself in the middle of a circle of flashing lights and yelling police officers. The crowd was wild, and she was surrounded by uniforms. She froze, and her mind cleared. She waved and tried to scuttle into the path of an oncoming limo, but it was not to be. In a flash, they had her arms pinned, her feet off the ground, kicking. They pulled her off the street and back into the crowd. She felt heat and noise, and couldn’t control her body as her face was turned toward the sky.

They took her across the street, but she was all turned around and couldn’t tell if she was going north or south. Then there were voices, and her direction changed. She didn’t know if she should be happy about that or not.

Carmella’s face was before her in a blur, and David’s, which she barely recognized away from the reception desk. She longed for Jeremy’s to appear in the dream, too. Even sick. Even with the flaking bald spot and rheumy eyes. She shut her eyes and thought of him as someone yanked her into a closed space.

Slam.

Quiet. A gentle rumble beneath where she sat. Laura kept her eyes closed and sank into what felt like the seat of a car. She opened one eye. She was in a limo, a small one with only two back seats, driving slowly through the river of emptiness between the shores of sawhorses.

“What happened?” Carmella’s Italian accent and wide eyes gave the moment far more drama than it warranted.

“I missed the pickup.” Laura brushed herself off as if this were a completely normal way to catch your limo. “Sorry,” she said to David, who sat across from her. He closed a nine-by-twelve brown portfolio with red piping. She glimpsed fashion illustrations and aesthetically arranged fabric cuttings, before he slipped it into his bag.

“It’s a good thing I stepped out and grabbed you,” David said. “They were ready to taze you.” Laura didn’t remember that, but it had been a very confusing thirty seconds. He continued, “If I thought you were just late for the limo, I would have waited.”

“Laura’s never late,” Carmella said, waving David off. “In Milano, the funeral is at home. You put a
notica
on the door, and people come.”

David chimed in unexpectedly, “In Milan, they put it in the paper. In the villages, it’s on the door.” He stared at Carmella, and she stared back, mouth open to disagree, but something held her back. “Right?”

“Right,” she said softly. Looking at Laura she added, “I meant in Umbria, where my family is from.” Carmella tugged on Laura’s skirt. “You’re wearing brown to a funeral?”

“It’s the new black.” Laura smoothed the maxi skirt. It had survived the jamming action and manhandling by the police, but was wet where it had soaked up sludge. She glanced up at David, who tapped on his phone, lips pursed, avoiding her gaze. She’d just used up a favor with him, for sure.

“Have you been to Queens?” Carmella asked.

“Of course,” Laura replied. She had once picked up Ruby from a disgusting warehouse club in Hunter’s Point when she ditched her date. There were other times. Parties. A friend seeking cheap rent. A detoured train.

“Did you see Jeremy this morning?”

“Yeah, he’s having some court thing today.”

“How did he look?”

With David sitting there, the truth wasn’t an option. “Same as always. But grouchier.”

“You have my iPad?” Carmella asked. “Or did you break it chasing the car?”

She pulled it out. “I guess you want to go over the notes later?”

“Let’s kill some time together.”

Laura opened up the photos and notes and reviewed them with her. Carmella made notes on Jeremy’s yellow legal pad, interjecting his loose pencil marks with her neat ballpoint print. When they got to Noë’s bare back, she took a breath.

“That will be an incredible turn,” she said, referring to the model’s last spin at the end of the runway, showing the glittering white crochet against Noë’s black skin.

“She’s going to be beautiful,” Laura replied.

“Have you ever seen her without makeup?”

“I can’t tell.”

Carmella leaned closer and dropped her voice. David tapped something on a laptop and, in all likelihood, listened to every word. “I saw her at this dinner with Pierre Sevion, at Grotto. Saturday night.”

“Oh, my God, Carmella. What time was that? Did the police ask you about it?”

“Of course they did. It was nothing, really. But what I was telling you was that Noë was crying in the bathroom, and all the makeup came off. You cannot believe she is a model.”

“You can hardly decide that when someone’s crying.”

“Yes, because these models must have tough skin, Gracie called her a licorice stick to Pierre, and he laughed, and you cannot believe how she reacted.”

“That was mean,” Laura said.

Carmella shrugged. “So she goes to the bathroom for half the night, and Gracie sends me in after her, like we are in school. She has a hundred balls of napkins on the sink with this makeup on it. She won’t even look at me, but I have to stay in there, because of Gracie and, you know, and I have to be nice. She was such a bitch.” In her Italian accent, the “i” in bitch sounded filthy.

“She’s crying because Gracie makes a racist remark in front of Pierre Sevion, and how is she a bitch?”

“She was awful. I don’t even want to talk about it.” Carmella’s face blanched just a little. She really didn’t want to talk about it. There must have been some real ugliness in the bathroom at Grotto.

Laura glanced at David with his ample nose and tiny yarmulke, to see if he had heard any of that. Apparently, he hadn’t. She wondered why he would get his own limo with Carmella. “Nice limo for a receptionist.”

“We both have big job descriptions.” David smiled.

She made a mental note to be more cautious around him, which made her feel diligent, which made her shoot off her mouth. “What is Sheldon looking for, David?”

“What do you mean?”

“Laura!” Carmella exclaimed. “Really!”

“Really, nothing. His wife is murdered one day, and the next day he’s going through the books? What’s he looking for? Loose change? I mean, come on. Don’t you think that if you tell me, I might be able to help you?”

“I thought you were just a patternmaker?”

“Maybe that’s what you need. Because whatever he’s looking for, it’s not something he knows how to find. He can’t be looking for the contract, because he’s a lawyer, so he’d have it or he’d have access to it. Same for his wife’s taxes. The company books are with the accountant on Madison Ave, and even if he found them, what is he looking for? A loss? A gain? A reason to close us? A reason to keep us open? What’s there that’s so important that he comes in two seconds after Jeremy is arrested? Is he trying to pin something on Jeremy? And if he is, what is he trying to pin on him with what’s going to be on a computer hard drive? Listen, David, I’m just curious. This guy comes into the office and threatens to close us because he’s having a bad day, and I start to wonder what he’s after, okay? Because, you know, I want to help him find it so he’ll just go away and let us work.”

David leaned back in his seat and tapped his long finger to his lips. “Have you considered that he loved his wife?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“No, I can see you don’t. His wife is murdered in the office. Of course, he does a forensic accounting of Gracie’s business. What would you do?”

“Drink. Go out with my friends. Sleep at my mother’s house, lots of things.”

“No. If you’re Sheldon Pomerantz, you look for a reason why you lost her.”

“Ok, well, that’s not in the ledger.” The car stopped at some anonymous road in a cemetery in Queens.

“You’re right,” David said. “You’re a patternmaker.”

The remark didn’t sound cruel or ill-humored, but the punctuation of the car door opening made it feel like a challenge.

The funeral could have been a scene from a movie. Everyone wore black. Prada. Thakoon. Poppy Delevigne. Not a hair stood out of place, even in the frigid dampness. No one shivered or jammed their hands in their pockets. Except Laura, of course. She hadn’t finished her makeup or hair in Tinto’s car, and felt like a glob of jam on a white blouse whenever she was in a room full of rich people.