Latte Trouble (19 page)

“Fen thought so, too,” Breanne said with a suggestive tone.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Buzz was he slept with both of the sisters at the same time.”

Matteo seemed suddenly interested. “Slept with both women at the same time?”

“No, no,” laughed Breanne. “Fen was in love with Lottie, but he had an affair with Mona. Separately.” Then she touched Matt’s hand. “But I like the way you think, tiger!”

I looked away in disgust, noticed Lloyd Newhaven was urgently gabbing on a purple cell phone. When I glanced back, I found Breanne finally scanning her own article.

“What do you know about the other partner?” I asked. “Harriet Tasky?”

Breanne shrugged. “Not much. She wasn’t the big club hopper. Nose to the grindstone type; shy, like Mona, and not very glamorous. Harriet was heavy, too—a big girl, you know.” She pointed to the picture of the large blond woman on the dance floor. “That’s her, of course, not very photogenic, which is probably why we didn’t mention her in the caption. Remember, the eighties was the age of physical fitness. Then again, thin has always been in.”

“Marilyn Monroe was a size fourteen,” I pointed out. “Or is that piece of fashion history too ancient?”

Breanne made a little moue and squinted. “Whatever.”

“Speaking of whatever…whatever happened to Mona and Harriet? Do you know?”

I already knew, of course. Mona was dead. And Harriet had opened a vintage clothing business in London. I simply wanted to see how widely known those facts were.

“No idea,” said Breanne. “And, frankly, after Lottie Harmon shut down her label in the late eighties, no one cared. There were other designers to spotlight, other fashion forward folk to follow. Maybe those two women are still around, slaving away in Lottie’s studio. That’s the way she wanted it back then. They created the jewelry, she sold it. Nothing new in the big, bad, big leagues, my dear.”

Clearly bored with the topic, Breanne rose, her manicured fingers firmly curling around the finely tailored fabric covering Matteo’s chiseled bicep.

To my surprise, Matt actually looked uncomfortable with her possessive touch. He cast an anxious glance in my direction, as if to ask, “Do you really want me to go off with her? Don’t you want me for yourself?”

I sat back in my chair and waved my hand. “Go,” I silently mouthed. My look said it all: If it wasn’t her, it would be some other woman.

“Come, Matt, I have more people for you to meet.”

A moment later, they were gone. I rose, folded up the article, stuffed it back into my evening clutch, then headed for the exit. In the Pierre’s lobby, I tried to reach Quinn on my cell phone. I got his voicemail, so I left a message, asking him to call me when he got the message—no matter how late or early it was.

I was now more convinced than ever that the designer Fen was in the middle of this mystery, and I wanted to know what Mike had learned during his questioning of the elusive fashion king.

Outside, the early autumn night was cool and crisp. I didn’t see the limousine Matteo and I had arrived in, so I asked the doorman to call me a cab. He’d barely raised his hand when one of the line of black limos with darkly tinted windows that had been waiting across the street veered into traffic and screeched to a halt right in front of me.

Matt was obviously going to be staying at the
Trend
party for the duration, and I assumed there’d be plenty of time for me to borrow his limo for a quick trip down to the Blend. Once I got there, I’d send it right back to the Pierre—no harm done. So when the doorman opened the car door, I slipped inside.

The lock clicked as I settled back into the comfortable leather seat, but when I looked up, I realized the man in the driver’s seat wasn’t the same chauffeur we’d had on the trip up—and there was a second man up front, in the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m in the wrong car.” I yanked the door handle, but the door was locked and I didn’t see any way to unlock it myself. “Can you unlock the door, please?” I asked.

Instead of letting me out, the driver gunned the engine and pulled away from the hotel, into Fifth Avenue’s downtown flow.

“Hey!” I cried. “I know you heard me. Let me out!”

I leaned forward to grab his arm, but almost lost my hand when a glass partition quickly rolled up between the front seat and the back. My fist hit the window and I yelled something unintelligible. Then I heard an electronic crackle as a speaker sprang to life somewhere in the back seat compartment.

“Just relax and cooperate, Ms. Cosi,” a male voice commanded. “And your ride will be a short one.”

G
OD
almighty, I’m being kidnapped
. My heart was racing, and I began to hyperventilate.
Stay calm, Clare. Think
.

I fumbled in my purse, then brandished my cell phone like a handgun. “Let me out right now or I’ll call 911!” I cried, my thumb already hitting the 9.

The driver’s eyes flashed angrily in the rearview mirror. He braked the vehicle so violently I had to throw out my arm to avoid being slammed up against the back of the driver’s seat. The cell phone flew out of my hand and bounced across the floor.

With a bump and a squeal of tires on pavement, the limo jerked to a halt. The momentum threw me to the carpet. I landed on my knees—convenient, since I wanted to find my cell. But as my fingers closed on my small silver savior, I heard the front passenger door open. A large body slid onto the seat. A strong hand grabbed my wrist and beefy fingers yanked the cell out of my hand.

“Hey, buster! Gimme that,” I hollered, pushing hair out of my face.
Note to self. Next time you’re being kidnapped, don’t
threaten
to dial 911. Just dial it!

I lunged for my phone, but the giant wearing jeans and a black leather coat raised his big hands to fend me of easily. His pinky ring looked large enough for me to wear as a bracelet.

“Sit back and enjoy the ride,” the man warned in a low octave, hoisting me up on the seat beside him.

He stared at me with Basset Hound dark eyes over a smashed nose. His large round head was topped with short-cropped black hair. His ears stuck out and seemed to be askew. I met his intimidating gaze and raised balled fists.

“Give me my phone and let me out of this car!” I demanded.

As if on cue, the vehicle’s abrupt acceleration slammed me back into the leather seat and the limo raced away from the curb and hurled through midtown.

“You want out, lady?” The man reached across me to pop the door open. I gasped as he brutishly brushed my cleavage in the process. The hiss of tires on pavement filled the compartment. We swerved in and out of traffic and only his thick-muscled arm kept the door from flying open, and me pinned to the seat.

“Go on, go then,” the man said, laughing.

An electronic crackle sounded, then the voice of the driver, loud over the intercom. “Cut the crap, Tiny.”

The door slammed, the automatic lock clicked again and Tiny sat back. Without the weight of his arm crushing me, I could breathe again.

“Pull over!” I screamed.

Suddenly a finger as thick as a banana was under my nose. “Not another word out of you or I’ll stuff this phone in your mouth and hold it shut until we get where we’re going.”

The accent was South Brooklyn—which told me these men were tough customers, and most likely mobbed up. I could almost hear my dear old bookie dad’s advice—
Cupcake, sometimes goin’ through a brick wall will only get your head broken. You gotta know when to just play along and see what comes.

My jaw immediately snapped shut, and I spoke no more.

“That’s better,” said Tiny. Then the man folded his massive arms and stared straight ahead.

I actually admired Tiny’s calm, considering the insane manner in which the driver was bobbing in and out of traffic, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and vehicles alike as he raced around corners and through yellow lights.

When I heard sirens and saw flashing red lights, I prayed a traffic cop had observed the man’s manic driving and was about to force us over. But the limo driver wasn’t the cause of the commotion, and he didn’t slow down, not even when a half dozen New York City police cars raced alongside us. I would have waved to the officers, signaled my plight, but I knew the limousine’s windows were tinted so darkly no one outside could see in—which is exactly why I hadn’t noticed the man in the passenger seat before I’d entered the limo at the Pierre.

As the police cars swerved onto Forty-second Street and sped away, Tiny chuckled. Clearly, the irony had amused him.
A giant named Tiny amused at irony? Imagine that.

My heart still racing, I sat back and rifled through options. Despite Tiny’s order to stay quiet, I considered risking polite conversation—something that might yield a clue as to where I was going and why. But with one more glance at the man’s curled lip and glowering expression, I concluded he would not be keen on idle chitchat. And I certainly wasn’t keen on eating my own cell phone.

At Thirty-fourth Street, we headed west, turning downtown again at Ninth Avenue. When we hit Fourteenth, the limo slowed with the traffic. A few quick turns and we were near Hudson Street—not far, in fact, from the Village Blend. For an insanely hopeful moment, I thought these two men really did intend to give me a ride home, and I had a fantasy of tripping across the sidewalk and into the cozy, familiar sanctuary of the Blend’s interior. Instead we turned down a dark, cobblestone street lined with nineteenth-century industrial buildings fronted by glittering new eateries.

Years ago, when I’d been a young newlywed and first began to manage the Blend, I knew all about the Meatpacking District. By day, its streets were populated by coarse men in bloody aprons, who carried hacksaws, hog carcasses, or haunches of beef on their broad backs. They spoke with outer-boroughs accents and drank beer in the area’s dive bars at just about any hour of the day. At night, a different sort of trade ruled those sidewalks, and I was so young and naive it actually took me a little time to figure out why the painted women tottering on high heels were so tall and had such deep voices and sometimes even facial stubble. (Coming from an old Italian neighborhood in Pennsylvania, women and facial hair wasn’t all that big a deal, but I figured the Meatpacking deal out eventually.)

Just a few years after that, some of the slaughterhouses (or “abattoirs” as Madame had referred to them) had been replaced by bars and clubs that catered to the harder edged gay community—pardon the pun. Then, in the 1990s, the Meatpacking District was transformed by gentrification. Some excellent butchers could still be found here—like my buddy, Ron Gerson, famed for his prime rib—but for the most part, urban spaces that once held meat processing plants were transformed into chic restaurants and trendy clubs catering to all clientele. With retail gentrification came changes in housing, and many a loft that once quartered factory workers now housed co-ops for the wealthy.

The limousine continued to wend its way through Saturday-night traffic. Sidewalks teemed with laughing partygoers, illuminated by the garish fluorescence of the Hotel Gansevoort. We were moving quite slowly now, and I causally rested my arm on the door handle. As the limo slowed to a crawl, I tried once more to throw the door open, only to find its lock firm as ever. Once again, I heard Tiny’s annoying chuckle, a deep rumble.

The limo halted in front of a driveway until there was a break in the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk, then it veered into a dark, narrow alley lined with garbage cans and dumpsters, a stream of brackish water running down the middle of the cobblestone surface. We stopped in front of a brick wall bearing the flaking remnants of a hand-painted sign, part of a fifty-year-old billboard hawking “Gansevoort Hams, Bacon, and other Quality Pork Products.”

The driver stepped out and opened the door from the outside. Tiny’s strong hand closed over my upper arm and he pushed me forward. I gripped my evening clutch as my heels hit the stone street. In the alley’s dim light, other senses took over. Smell, for one. Rotting garbage, mildew, and urine surrounded me.
Lovely
.

It would be a horrid place to die, and I considered trying to break free of Tiny’s grip, kicking off my heels and running back to the crowded sidewalk. But even if I made it out of his grasp, I doubted I would get more than a few feet before he grabbed me again, or worse—

Did he have a gun? I suddenly wondered. If I tried to run, would he shoot me in the back?

While I pondered these charming possibilities, Tiny and his partner, who was short and wiry like my father but barely in his thirties and wearing a penny-dreadful moustache, led me to an anonymous steel door unmarked and undistinguished, except by layers and layers of graffiti that covered every inch of its surface. A kind of industrial throbbing sounded from the other side of the portal, as if gigantic engines were constantly turning inside the brick building.

Tiny continued to clutch my arm as he banged the door with one massive hand, his pinky ring clacking loudly against the metal. A bolt was thrown, and the door yawned. From the opening, a ghastly lavender florescent hue illuminated the gloom and a pounding wall of techno dance music washed over me.

A dark shape framed by the light came into view. I could feel the man’s eyes studying me, then my abductors.

“Yo, Virgil, it’s us,” said Tiny.

The silhouette in the doorway nodded, then backed up to admit us. Tiny pushed me over the threshold, and in the lavender light I saw that the man guarding the door was draped head to toe in a finely tailored ebony suit. Pale green eyes locked with mine.

“Welcome to the Inferno,” he said without smiling.

The space I entered seemed massive, yet most of its size was lost in dark shadows. To my right was an island of light where a neon bar served up cocktails to a handful of languid lounge lizards.

“This way,” said Tiny, pushing me toward a long inclined ramp that led down to the next level. The floor was concrete, with tall wooden barricades on either side. I realized with a start that I was following the livestock chute. Cattle, pigs, or sheep once ran down this very concrete slope to the slaughter. I hoped I wasn’t following in their hoofprints.

At the bottom of the ramp a wooden gate blocked our progress. Tiny looked up and I followed his stare—surprised to see a man in a leather apron and chaps standing on a wooden platform suspended above us. He gripped a large sledgehammer with both hands, the muscles on his hairy arms rippling against its weight.

“Where is he?” Tiny asked the gatekeeper.

“The Fourth Circle,” the man with the hammer called back. “And watch what you say. He’s in a real pissed-off mood.”

A loud clatter sudden enough to make me jump, and the wooden gate rose. Beyond it only a long concrete hallway illuminated by indigo neon tubes lining the floor, the walls, the ceiling. At the end of that corridor I spied black curtains, heard music and voices from the other side. A pornographic mural on the wall announced in elaborate script that we were now among the “Lustful.”

Beyond the veil, there was a vast area filled to capacity with boisterous partygoers—young, attractive, and affluent, with a smattering of older men and women, sugar daddies and mommies no doubt. The dance floor was large, but not especially user friendly. All the walls and floor were covered with square white tiles, the ceiling crisscrossed with lead pipes and stark aluminum vents; disco and laser lighting scattered about, bathing the revelers in hues of light and dark crimson.

I noticed drains covered by cast iron grates on the gently sloped floor, once used to dispose of the blood and offal of slaughtered animals. On the walls hung bone saws and carving knives. Blades dangled Damocles-like over the dancers. Smoke wafting through the space told me New York City’s rigorous antismoking laws were being only technically enforced—i.e., there was plenty of smoking going on, but none of it smelled like tobacco.

Running along the walls, stainless steel meat-cutting tables doubled for bar space, with a well-stocked raw bar replacing raw meat, and perfectly mixed Bloody Marys substituted for the gore that once pooled here.

It took a few minutes for Tiny and his silent partner to lead me through the throng to the opposite side of the dance floor. We passed a long bar made of glass bricks, illuminated from within by a sanguine red glow. Near the ladies room, I was shown a spiral staircase of heavy cast iron.

“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.