On Sunday night, Maurizio agreed to a movie and dinner with a group of Paola’s friends. At home together later that evening, he and Paola brainstormed for a name for the chain of small luxury hotels Maurizio wanted to open. His eye fell on a book of Chinese fairy tales on his night table entitled Il Paradiso nella Giara, or Paradise in a Jar.
“That’s it,” he thought, repeating the name over and over again before he fell asleep. “‘Paradise in a Jar’; it’s perfect.”
Maurizio showered the next morning in the spacious marble tiled bathroom next to their bedroom, thinking about the day ahead. His first appointment was at 9:30 A.M. in his office with Antonietta, whose opinion he wanted on some of his project ideas. Afterward he had a meeting with Franchini and a business lunch to which he had also invited Paola. However, he hoped to make it a short day—he had recently bought a new set of billiard sticks for his table and he wanted to get home early and give them a whirl.
Maurizio walked back into the bedroom after his shower just as Paola lifted her disheveled head off the pillow. Leaning over to give her a kiss, he picked up the remote control to open the automatic blinds covering the picture windows at the far end of their room. She blinked sleepily as the blinds lifted, flooding the room with morning light. An oasis of green foliage appeared outside their windows, creating the illusion that they were living in a garden paradise rather than downtown Milan.
Maurizio dressed, picking out a gray wool Prince of Wales suit, a crisp blue shirt, and a blue silk Gucci tie. Maurizio refused to give up Gucci ties after the sale of the company, and didn’t see why he should. He sent Liliana into the shop from time to time to buy them for him—by that time, De Sole had graciously offered him a discount, although up to then, no members of the Gucci family were offered discounts in Gucci stores. He strapped on the brown leather band of his Tiffany watch and tucked a pocket diary in his jacket, along with some notes he had made for himself over the weekend. He slipped a coral and gold good luck charm into his right front pants pocket, a metal plaque with an enameled face of Jesus into the back pocket. Paola wriggled into a robe and they walked down the hall together, greeted by the smell of fresh coffee wafting out of the kitchen. Adriana, the cook, had prepared breakfast, which Paola’s Somalian maid served them in the grand dining room. Maurizio picked up the paper and glanced at the day’s headlines as he ate a breakfast roll and sipped his coffee. Paola—always careful about her waistline—spooned up a yogurt.
Maurizio put the paper down, drained his coffee cup, and looked over at her with a warm smile.
“You’ll come over around twelve-thirty?” he asked, reaching over to cup her hand in his. She smiled and nodded. Maurizio got up, poked his head in the kitchen to say goodbye to Adriana, and walked out to the hallway, Paola behind him. He slipped on his camel overcoat because the morning air still had a nip to it. Putting his arms around Paola, he said to her, “Go back to bed if you like, sweetheart,” he said. “There’s plenty of time until lunch. Take your time, there’s no need to rush.”
He kissed her goodbye and walked quickly down the regal stone staircase, running his hand over the marble obelisks on the landing. Stepping through the great wooden doors and out onto the sidewalk, he glanced at his watch—just after 8:30 A.M. He waited at the corner for the light to change and crossed over Corso Venezia before walking briskly up the sidewalk along Via Palestro, in a hurry to put his papers in order before Antonietta arrived. He scanned the park across the street and counted his paces as he had so many times before: one hundred steps from door to door. Being able to walk to work was a true luxury, he mused as he neared the entryway at Via Palestro 20. He hardly noticed the dark-haired man standing on the sidewalk looking up at the number of the building as though checking the address.
Arms swinging, Maurizio walked in through the doorway of his building and greeted the doorman, Giuseppe Onorato, as he bounded up the stairs.
“Buongiorno!”
“Buongiorno, Dottore,” said Giuseppe Onorato, looking up from his sweeping.
ONLY THE MAID saw Patrizia Reggiani sobbing uncontrollably the morning of March 27, 1995, after she heard the news of Maurizio’s death. Afterward, she dried her tears, pulled herself together, and penned a single word in her Cartier diary, all in capital letters: PARADEISOS, meaning “paradise” in Greek. With her pen, she slowly drew a bold black border around the date. At three o’clock that afternoon, Patrizia walked the few blocks from her apartment in Piazza San Babila to Corso Venezia 38, along with her lawyer, Piero Giuseppe Parodi, and her oldest daughter, Alessandra. She rang the bell of Maurizio’s apartment and asked for Paola Franchi, who was trying to take a nap.
That morning, a distraught Antonietta had come to the door shortly after Maurizio had left, asking for Paola. Antonietta said she had reported to Maurizio’s office for their appointment, but had been unable to enter because of the growing crowd. She had rushed over immediately to tell Paola something was wrong. Paola had flung on some clothes and run across the street, pushing her way through the journalists crowding around the big doors.
“I’m the wife! I’m the wife!” she had cried breathlessly to the carabinieri who were restraining the journalists. They let her pass. Just as she was about to enter the wide wooden doors, Maurizio’s friend, Carlo Bruno, came out of the crowd and pulled her away.
“Paola,” he said gravely, “don’t go in there. Come with me.”
“Is it Maurizio?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Is he hurt? I want to go to him,” she whimpered, pressing back against Bruno’s arm as they walked alongside the park. They had reached the intersection of Via Palestro with Corso Venezia.
“There’s nothing more to be done,” he said softly as she looked at him in disbelief. A few hours later, Paola went to see Maurizio in the city morgue.
“He was lying on the table, stomach-down, with his face turned to one side,” Paola said. “He had a tiny little hole in his temple, but otherwise he was perfect. That was the incredible thing about him, when he traveled, when he slept, he was always perfect. He never seemed to wrinkle or look rumpled.”
That afternoon, Milan magistrate Nocerino interrogated Paola about the murder, asking her if Maurizio had any enemies.
“The only thing I can tell you is that in the fall of 1994, Maurizio was worried because he learned from his lawyer, Franchini, that Patrizia had told her lawyer, Auletta, she wanted to have him killed,” Paola said dully. “I remember that after those threats Franchini seemed more worried than Maurizio did, telling him to protect himself in some way. But Maurizio just let it roll off his back.”
Nocerino raised his dark eyebrows skeptically. “And you, signora, were you protected in any way?” he asked.
“No, there was no piece of paper, no economic agreement between us, if that is what you want to know,” said Paola stiffly, offended. “Our relationship was purely emotional.”
Paola had gone back to Corso Venezia and was trying to sleep when Patrizia rang the bell and demanded to come up, saying they had important legal matters to discuss. When the servant said no, Paola was resting, Alessandra began to cry, asking if she could at least have a memento of her father, one of his cashmere sweaters. Paola refused to receive Patrizia, but instructed the servant to give Alessandra a sweater, which the girl received gratefully, burying her head in it to breath her father’s scent.
Paola called Franchini to ask what she should do, but found little comfort. He told her she could only step aside. The relationship contract Maurizio had asked him to prepare was still an unsigned draft in Franchini’s office. Paola had no legal claim to Maurizio’s estate, which would go directly to his daughters. She should make arrangements to evacuate Corso Venezia as soon as possible.
The next morning, Patrizia came back—but not before a court official arrived to seal off the house based on a court sequester filed by “the heirs of Maurizio Gucci” at 11 A.M. the day before. Paola looked at the official, aghast.
<
br /> “At eleven A.M. yesterday, Maurizio Gucci had only been dead a few hours,” she protested. She persuaded the official to seal off only one room. “I live here with my son,” she said. “How do you expect us to go so soon?”
Patrizia had moved quickly, but so had Paola—after her conversation with Franchini she made several phone calls and by late afternoon, a squad of movers loaded furniture, light fixtures, drapes, china, cutlery, and more into three moving vans parked in front of Corso Venezia 38. The next day, Patrizia’s lawyers ordered Paola to return everything, although in the end she was permitted to keep pieces she said were hers, including a set of green silk living room draperies that Patrizia had hotly contested.
“I am here as a mother, not as a wife,” Patrizia said coldly as she was ushered into the living room of Corso Venezia 38 the next morning. “You must leave as soon as possible,” Patrizia explained. “This was Maurizio’s house and now it will be the house of his heirs,” she said, looking around the room. “What exactly do you plan to take with you?”
At 10 A.M. on Monday, April 3, a black Mercedes carrying Maurizio Gucci’s coffin pulled up in Milan’s Piazza San Babila in front of the church of San Carlo, whose yellow facade was in full view of the terrace of Patrizia’s penthouse apartment. Four pallbearers got out and carried the coffin into the church, where few mourners had yet arrived. Liliana, standing outside with her husband, peeked inside the church and saw the coffin, draped in gray velvet with three large wreaths of gray and white flowers on top, standing alone in front of the altar. She put a hand on her husband’s arm.
“Let’s go inside with Maurizio,” she said in a quavering voice. “I can’t bear to see him there all alone.”
Patrizia had made all the funeral arrangements. Paola stayed home. That morning, Patrizia played the perfect widow, wearing a black veil over dark black sunglasses, black suit, and black leather gloves. She didn’t hide her true feelings, however.
“On a human level, I’m sorry; on a personal level, I can’t say the same thing,” Patrizia said flippantly to waiting journalists.
She took her place in the front row of mourners, alongside Alessandra and Allegra, who also wore large black sunglasses to hide their tears. No more than two hundred people showed up and of these, only a few friends, such as Beppe Diana, Rina Alemagna, Chicca Olivetti, names from the ranks of northern Italian industrial aristocracy. Many others had stayed home, fearing scandal surrounding Gucci’s sinister death. For the same reason, many more refrained from placing the customary death announcements in the local newspapers in solidarity with the family of the deceased. The news stories were filled with speculation about Gucci’s mafia-style execution and conjecture about shady business deals—infuriating Bruno and Franchini and others close to Maurizio who knew his affairs were above suspicion. Most of the people who came to the funeral were former employees who wanted to bid Maurizio goodbye, as well as journalists and curious onlookers. Giorgio Gucci flew up from Rome with his wife, Maria Pia, and their son Guccio Gucci, who had been named for his grandfather. They sat in a pew several rows behind Patrizia. Paolo’s daughter Patrizia also came. Maurizio had taken pity on her despite his conflicts with her father and hired her to work in Gucci’s public relations office in the years before he sold to Investcorp.
“Here we say goodbye to Maurizio Gucci and to all the Maurizios who lose their lives because of all the Cains of all time,” said the priest, Don Mariano Merlo, as two undercover carabinieri secretly filmed and photographed the short ceremony and scrutinized the guest book, looking for possible clues leading to the killer. After the ceremony, the dark Mercedes pulled away and headed for Saint Moritz, where Patrizia had decided Maurizio would be buried, instead of with his family in Florence.
Afterward, Antonio, the sacristan, murmured sadly, “there were more television cameras and curious onlookers than friends.”
“The atmosphere was more strange than sad,” observed Lina Sotis, a society columnist for Corriere della Sera, speculating mischievously whether the murderer might have really been present at the funeral, as in the best mysteries. Sotis coolly remarked that despite his name and his wealth, Maurizio had never found a niche in Milan, Italy’s financial and fashion capital.
“Maurizio Gucci, in this city, was in the shadows. Everybody knew his name, but few knew him,” she wrote in her report the next day. “‘Milan is too tough for me,’ he confided once to a friend. That blond-haired, blue-eyed boy could permit himself everything—everything except for a loving woman at his side and a tough city like Milan.”
The next day, Paola organized her own mass for Maurizio in the San Bartolomeo Church near Via Moscova on the other side of the Giardini Pubblici from the Corso Venezia apartment.
“You knew how to win our hearts, but someone did not love you as much as we did,” said Denis Le Cordeur, Paola’s cousin and a friend of Maurizio’s, reading a brief commemoration. “Someone who not only committed one crime, but ten, twenty, fifty crimes—as many as we are here today, because in every one of us who knew you, something has been killed.”
A few months later, Patrizia triumphantly moved into Corso Venezia 38, where she had gotten rid of every trace of Paola, who returned to her ex-husband’s condominium. In the girls’ rooms, Patrizia had ordered the flowered wallpaper torn from the walls and the frilly canopy beds moved out. She redid the rooms in her own taste with polished Venetian furniture and printed fabrics and transformed the children’s living room, which Paola had decorated with dark wine colors, into a television room for herself and the girls, painting the walls a bright salmon pink. She moved in her pink, blue, and yellow floral couches and tassel-trimmed curtains to match from the Galleria Passarella penthouse. From one wall, she hung a larger-than-life oil portrait of herself, her face framed by the long gleaming locks of brown hair she had always desired.
Downstairs, she changed as little as possible, although she sold the billiard table and restyled the game room as a living room. At night, she slept in Maurizio’s grand Empire bed, waking up to the sounds of peacocks squawking in the Invernizzi gardens below. In the mornings, after her bath, she donned Maurizio’s cozy terry cloth bathrobe.
“He may have died,” she told a friend, “but I have just begun to live.”
At the beginning of 1996 she penned a phrase on the inside cover of a new leather-bound Cartier diary: “Few women can truly capture the heart of a man—even fewer manage to own it.”
16
TURNAROUND
On Monday morning, September 26, 1993, the first workday that Investcorp controlled 100 percent of Gucci, Bill Flanz and a small group of executives found themselves huddling outdoors in the courtyard of Piazza San Fedele: locked out of their own offices.
After closing the transaction with Maurizio and giving him the time to clear out his personal belongings, Flanz had given instructions to Massetti to secure the building during the weekend.
“I organized an airtight security service from Friday evening at nine P.M. to Monday morning at nine A.M.,” recalled Massetti. “I gave strict orders that nobody, but nobody, would be allowed to enter the building before nine A.M.”
Bill Flanz, Investcorp’s man-in-charge, asked the top Gucci executives and managers to report to Piazza San Fedele early Monday morning to tackle the most urgent financial and staffing problems immediately. But when they arrived at Gucci’s double front doors at 8:00 A.M.—eager to get started—the guards refused to let them in. Even when Flanz explained that he was in charge, the guards just shook their heads and followed their orders. The group entered the building at 9:01 A.M.
“They didn’t care if we were from Investcorp or not,” Flanz recalled sheepishly. “They followed their orders—and we had to start our meeting out in the courtyard!”
Restructuring began that morning with an emergency transfer of $15 million from Investcorp to pay off the most urgent accounts. Rick Swanson calculated that the company would need a total of about $50 million, including the initi
al $15 million, to pay off its obligations and get up and running again, money that Investcorp quickly injected into the company.
“Each [Gucci] company had its own debt problem,” Swanson recalled. “It was like having a bunch of little hungry birds that all had to eat at once.”
Even though he had been a frequent visitor to the fifth floor of Piazza San Fedele, Flanz felt somewhat awed when he took over Maurizio’s office. He sat in Maurizio’s antique chair and ran his hands over the smooth, carved lion’s heads on the front of the armrests and looked at his surroundings as though in disbelief. The professor’s son who grew up in Yonkers and mowed lawns for pocket money was at the helm of one of the best-known luxury names in the world.
“I had worked at Chase Manhattan Bank, met often with David Rockefeller in his office, visited captains of industry and heads of state around the world, and I don’t think I had ever seen a more elegant office than the one I inherited from Maurizio,” Flanz said later.
That Monday, the first day Gucci opened its doors without a Gucci at its helm, Maurizio turned forty-five years old. The day before, Bill Flanz had turned forty-nine.
“It was a big birthday for each of us,” Flanz said later. “Maurizio got $120 million and I got to run Gucci!”
The next day, Flanz took the train to Florence to soothe Gucci’s angry workers as best he could, with the help of a translator. The disgruntled workers feared that Investcorp would scrap all in-house production and turn Gucci into a large buying office, sourcing all of its products from outside suppliers.
About a week later, Flanz asked Maurizio to attend a Gucci board meeting to formalize the change of leadership. Investcorp had appointed Flanz head of a committee composed of Gucci and Investcorp managers and given him all executive powers to handle the transition. They met on neutral territory, the offices of one of their lawyers in Milan. Again, Maurizio and his advisors were ushered into one room while Flanz and his colleagues sat in another. Flanz finally decided the separation was ridiculous and walked down the hall to greet Maurizio.
The House of Gucci Page 33