Leaning against the wall, her head bent and her eyes closed, she listened to the voice a thousand miles away, now almost hysterical.
Unfortunately, she realized too late, the only flaw was that she didn’t even know her intended lover’s name.
Two
The snowfall thickened over Paris, further dimming the waning light of the winter afternoon. By four o’clock it was almost dark. Jackson Storm reached across the scarred surface of a rented desk in a building near the rue de la Paix, and snapped on a battered fluorescent lamp. The pool of grayish white light instantly illuminated the stack of papers he was reading, but his dissatisfied expression did not change.
“Why the hell couldn’t we get Lagerfeld?” Before his executive vice-president could answer, he growled, “Karl Lagerfeld brought Chanel out of the basement. The business was down on its knees until he showed up to design for them, right? That’s the kind of talent we need for this place. Christ, with the six million for promotion and advertising we’re offering to set up this thing, plus worldwide Storm King marketing, how can you beat it? These people should be falling over their asses to join up with us!” Jackson Storm hunched his shoulders. “I’ve seen Lagerfeld’s stuff,” he said grudgingly. “He’s good.”
Mindy Ferragamo examined her fingernails, trying not to smile. It was a gross understatement to describe Lagerfeld, the genius who had almost single-handedly put Chanel back on top of Paris couture, as “good.” But that was Jack, she thought. He still viewed some things with the same perspective he’d used to open a men’s tie shop on Seventh Avenue.
Fortunately, Jackson Storm’s international division hadn’t made Lagerfeld an offer. But only because their brokers hadn’t been able to get Karl to take them seriously enough to return their calls.
The small woman in her severe black business suit surveyed her boss surreptitiously from behind her gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Jack was being pushed to the limit, which was unusual. The Storm King of mass-market fashion had retained his famous urbane, unflappable cool through numerous crises. But the pressure of the Paris couture house project had been unrelenting. They’d been keeping impossible deadlines, dealing with French government red tape, and right now the Maison Louvel, Jackson Storm’s multimillion dollar haute couture baby, had to have a French designer—a licensing requirement—or they wouldn’t be able to open in Paris.
Jack had indefatigable luck, he nearly always won. But maybe not this time, Mindy was thinking. They were on risky ground. The Maison Louvel was a big undertaking, a challenge that no other American manufacturer had ever dared to attempt. Lately, too many things were going wrong. And Jack’s absences while he made the trip to the main office in New York to keep his hand on his far-flung empire made it hard to keep things on an even keel.
Not that Jack was losing his touch, Mindy told herself hastily. After all these years, Jackson Storm still had more chutzpah than any man alive. If anyone could storm the clubby, intimidating citadel of Paris haute couture, Jackson Storm was undoubtedly the man.
At the moment he was leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his leonine head, staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Maybe,” he mused, “we didn’t offer Lagerfeld enough money.”
Mindy was startled. She found it strange that Jack couldn’t understand the attitude of French designers. Didn’t he realize that just dangling American dollars in front of them wouldn’t work? The French rag trade was hostile, traditionally anti-American; after all, why should they welcome a New York manufacturer upstart like Jackson Storm? Even the French press had scoffed at Jack’s venture.
“French genius cannot be bought,” Paris Match had trumpeted self-righteously. The newspaper Le Figaro deplored Jack’s crass American commercialism, which it said was “death to art.” Le Monde predicted Jackson Storm would never find a Frenchman truly talented enough to work for him.
The irony of it was they were paying an exorbitantly high price for this new venture, and no one had really wanted it. Jackson Storm’s foray into haute couture had been a fluke from the beginning.
Two years ago the international division had bought a silk mill in Lyons to ensure a supply of quality French silk fabrics for Storm King’s upper-priced lines. In the tangle of legal and financial transactions that had followed, Jackson Storm International also acquired several other French properties, including a small strip of development land in the resort town of St. Tropez, an apartment building in a working-class district in the city of Uzes, and an old and mostly forgotten fashion establishment on the rue des Benedictines in Paris, known as the Maison Louvel.
When this rather bizarre news leaked out, the international fashion world immediately assumed Jack Storm was about to take a step only dreamed of by rivals like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. That is, issue a challenge to French fashion on its own turf by opening an American-owned, American-operated haute couture house.
Since Jackson Storm was a risk-taker, an entrepreneur in the empire-building mode that had made him a millionaire many times over, he hadn’t been able to walk away from the challenge, even though most observers compared the decision to professional suicide.
Mindy had to admit, the cost in terms of time and money had been staggering. They were four months behind schedule just renovating the building. And right now it was no secret that Jackson Storm International couldn’t proceed without a French designer. Without a Frenchman, the Maison Louvel would not qualify for membership in the all-important Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the French fashion trade association. And without recognition by the Syndicale, the Maison Louvel would never attract the European financial backers also required by law.
“Karl Lagerfeld wouldn’t touch our offer,” Mindy said quietly. “We’ve got to write him off. He did send a very nice note wishing you lots of success.”
“Jesus, what do I need with a note? I need a lousy frog designer!” Abruptly, he lowered his hands and turned back to his littered desk. “So what happened to Christian Lacroix, the pouf dress guy?” He lifted a manila folder labeled “Lacroix”. “Personally, I thought the pouf stank, but it hit the fashion market like a blast. Every woman on Fifth Avenue looked like she’d just put her legs through a pumpkin. Lacroix dragged Patou out of the toilet, too, didn’t he? Why can’t we get him?”
“Lacroix has his own problems. I think a Japanese cartel is currently backing him.”
Jackson Storm stared at the sea of reports on Paris designers covering his desk. As Mindy watched him, she recognized nothing in this magnificent man with his silver hair and his tanned, rather fleshily good-looking features that even faintly resembled the Jacob Sturm of their early years. Back then he’d been a brash tie salesman from the Bronx, a relentless wheeler-dealer willing to fight his way to the top of the cutthroat New York fashion world. These days, New York’s famous Storm King was so fabulously successful, Jack lived the tightly scheduled life of British royalty. Two corporate Lear jets routinely carried him to Taiwan and Belem and Mexico City and other points of his empire; mobile telephones and telex hookups kept him in touch with his factories in Hong Kong, his textile mills in Korea. For the past two months he’d been averaging a transatlantic trip a week to oversee the Paris project. Only a slight puffiness in the skin under the famous blue eyes showed the toll his schedule was taking.
If they could just find a French designer, they’d be on their way with this damned Paris project. The Maison Louvel couture house would sit, as Jack liked to boast, at the very pinnacle of the Storm King corporate fashion structure, exactly the reverse of the megamillion-dollar pyramids of Dior, St. Laurent, and Cardin that had grown from the bottom up to international corporations that put their franchise marks on everything from clothes to dinnerware and automobile interiors.
A sudden, intrusive bang sounded from somewhere in the interior of the old house, and they both jumped. Then there was a clatter as several objects fell and scattered.
Jack slammed his fist down on the folder detailing the work of Gil
les Vasse, assistant designer at Mortessier’s. “These clowns are supposed to be remodeling?” A half-dozen French carpenters were still working on renovations in the lower part of the building. There was another crash. “Jesus, I’m fighting my way through a multimillion-dollar start-up operation, the biggest fashion venture of the goddamned last twenty years, and I’m waiting on a bunch of French retards to fill in a—what?” He glared at the woman across the desk. “A basement?”
“Crypt,” Mindy answered. “It’s a twelfth-century crypt, Jack, not a basement. It’s medieval. You know, like a dungeon.”
She made a point of checking her watch, peering somewhat farsightedly at the diamond-encrusted dial. The Paris-New York Concorde jetliner left Charles de Gaulle in three hours. She’d promised herself she was going to be on the flight. She had to get back to the New York office and run the rest of the Storm King fashion empire while Jack was away. She couldn’t afford to get bogged down in Paris again.
“A dungeon in the basement. It figures.” He ran his fingers through his silver hair in disgust. “Jesus, this is all we need!”
Beyond the smooth glass of the elegant casement window, a light snowfall drifted down into the eighteenth-century inner courtyard. The executive office was depressingly cold, as the building’s ancient furnace was also being reconditioned. Jackson Storm had discovered that setting up a business in Paris was not the same thing as vacationing at his favorite hotel, the Plaza Athenee, with his wife and teenage daughters, which he’d done so happily in past years.
“It’s not so unusual to have a house with a crypt in Paris,” Mindy told him. “Everything’s old here.”
Somewhere in the depths of the building a telephone rang. They paused, waiting for someone to pick up. Several phone lines had been disconnected during the renovations, and it was hard for Peter Frank, the development director, and his staff to find the right phone amid the clutter of tarps and boards and ladders.
The Maison Louvel building, Number 5, rue des Benedictines, was five stories tall. Through its middle ran an open stairwell with a magnificent marble staircase that rose to a skylighted roof. The building was more than two-hundred years old, having been erected originally as a residence for a favorite mistress of Louis XIV. The original hand-carved wooden doors on the rue des Benedictines still opened into a tunnel, once an interior courtyard intended for passengers disembarking from horse-drawn coaches. The downstairs salles were decorated with priceless plasterwork, hand-forged hardware, and centuries-old parquet floors. In the United States, Number 5 would have been a museum or a national monument. In Paris, it was just another building.
“It’s not something we have any control over,” Mindy was explaining. “City officials have ordered that all cellars with access to the Parisian sewer system be sealed off because of drug smuggling. Drug dealers have been using the underground sewers to move their stuff all over Paris.”
Jack was studying the folder in his hand, not listening. “Gilles Vasse? I thought somebody said he wasn’t interested. So why have we got a report on him?”
The door to the office creaked open, and Candace Dobbs of their New York PR firm stuck her head inside. “The Fortune magazine writer is here,” she began uncertainly, “Mr. Christopher Forbes. He’s—ah, a little early, but—”
Jack’s platinum head jerked up. “So let him wait.” He swung his arm at the cluttered desk. “Jesus, can’t you see I’m tied up?”
Mindy extracted a few photographs of Gilles Vasse’s designs from the welter of papers Jack had dumped out of the folder. Unobtrusively, she shoved them to the front so that he couldn’t miss them.
“Fortune magazine, Jack, you know all about it,” Mindy reminded him. She gave the PR woman in the doorway a meaningful look. “They’re going to do a series on how you’re opening the Maison Louvel.”
“Another goddamned writer who wants to follow me around.” The public relations woman went out, closing the door behind her. He sat back in his chair, the photographs in his hand. “I said no, remember? I hate writers after what W did to me last year. I nixed the idea back in New York.”
If Jack was going to be difficult, Mindy was going to miss her flight. “We turned down the Wall Street Journal on this,” she said evenly. “It’s not just a rag trade piece, it’s straight financial news, worldwide. We could use that right now. The writer’s Chris Forbes; he won a Pulitzer Prize for a story on the American automobile industry.”
Jack made a face. “An expert on automobiles? Why not somebody who knows the fashion business? Or is that too much to ask?”
He put down the photographs and picked up copies of French Elle and Vogue marked for his attention. Several tear sheets were attached, showing Gilles Vasse’s winter collection. Jack Storm rested his elbows on the desk, his dubious expression revealing that he didn’t like Gilles Vasse’s clothes any better now than the first time he’d seen them.
“Gilles is very innovative.” Mindy craned her neck to look at the photos in Jack’s hands. “He’s definitely a comer.”
Jackson Storm examined a layout of violet felt winter coats with disbelief. On the opposite page a redheaded model wore a sheath of glitter that seemed to imprison her in laser beams. Both designs were from Rudi Mortessier’s current collection. But the credits read, “Designed by Gilles Vasse.”
“A hot, really up-front talent is what investors are looking for right now.” Mindy had never been a Gilles Vasse enthusiast, but Women’s Wear Daily and the fashion slicks were predicting big things from the designer who was still in his early twenties.
“He’s a kook.” Jack stared at the photographs. “Who’s he designing for—aliens from outer space?”
“Jack, he also does Rudi Mortessier’s bread and butter, the wedding gowns, the trousseaus, the traditional stuff. Gilles’s work can be very commercial, with the best.” Mindy looked at her watch again. “He’s a good choice. Besides,” she added, “his wife’s pregnant. He could use the money.”
Jack Storm’s tanned, fleshy face was thoughtful. It was true, investors went for hot new talent. And he was getting desperate for something to entice investors. A few months ago he had interested a French banking group in the Maison Louvel, but after an incredible amount of schlepping around, the French bankers had cooled off, citing problems with Third-World development loans. That left only a dark horse, the Palliades-Poseidon Corporation, a giant shipping line owned and operated by, in Jack’s opinion, the usual Greek lunatics. God knows how Greek ship owners felt about haute couture. Or if they even knew what it was.
He stared at the magazine layouts of Gilles Vasse’s clothes with the expression of a cornered man. “This is a coat? My Uncle Morris Lifshitz, the best cutter on Thirty-First Street, God rest his soul, wouldn’t vomit on this. It’s not a coat—it’s damned kamikaze armor!”
“Samurai, Jack.” Mindy studied the photograph. Even upside down it was startling. “Samurai armor.”
“Samurai, sushi, kamikaze, it’s the same thing.” He held up the typewritten report that said Gilles Vasse seemed eager to stretch his professional wings and leave Rudi Mortessier. It also mentioned that the young designer wasn’t making all that much money.
“The kid’s already getting a credit in Mortessier publicity,” Mindy pointed out. “He’s got a good rep.”
Jack Storm hesitated for a long moment. “I heard Gilles Vasse and Rudi Mortessier had something going once. Weren’t they lovers?”
Mindy could only stare. She’d thought they were free and clear. The French search team had assured her Gilles Vasse had no written contract with his employer. Was this a new complication?
She said cautiously, “You don’t have to make up your mind today, Jack. Look, why don’t you talk to the Fortune magazine guy, now? I’ve got to make the Concorde—”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
She sighed. “Gilles Vasse is married, Jack. He and his wife are expecting a baby.”
He snorted. “Since when does tha
t prove anything? It’s back to the closet since AIDS. He could have ten wives.” He flipped irritably through the pages of Elle and Vogue, noticing that the model wearing the Gilles Vasse creations was one and the same. “I like the girl.” With her flame-colored hair and amazing eyes, she was certainly beautiful enough to help any designer. “How much credit does she get for putting this kid’s stuff across?”
Mindy knew Jack could never resist a beautiful woman. There had been a fairly long parade of Storm King “discoveries” and most of them, much to Jack’s credit, had profited by the arrangement. Several Jackson Storm models had gone on to successful careers in television and films. And then there had been the beautiful jeans girl, their media image for Sam Laredo western wear, who had nearly broken up Jack’s marriage.
They were thinking the same thing as they turned to the silver-framed photograph propped on the edge of Jack’s desk. The picture had been taken several years ago for a layout in Town and Country magazine, and showed former model Marianna Storm seated in the living room of her elegant Connecticut house with two pretty teenage girls. Mrs. Jackson Storm and daughters.
How many newspaper and television interviews, Mindy wondered, had quoted Jack saying he loved his wife as he could never love any other woman? That he would never subject his family to the heartbreak of divorce. And though Jack loved to develop new talent, Marianna always let her husband know when she’d had enough of his “protégés.”
Mindy was still staring at the photograph when Jack turned back to the papers in front of him. “So tell me, what do Vasse’s designs look like with someone else wearing them? Is the girl part of his act?”
“Jack,” Mindy began. She was interrupted when Candace opened the old-fashioned frosted glass door again.
“Mr. Storm,” the PR woman said rapidly, “I hate to bother you a second time, but we have a problem. There’s a man here who won’t—”
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