The Crasher Read online

  If you’re an unknown fashion designer,

  you live by taking risks…

  to get noticed…

  to get famous…

  or maybe to get murdered.

  THE CRASHER

  “True to her roots, Shirley Lord has Calvin and Donna and Oscar, not to mention Bloomingdale’s and Barney’s and Saks, put in cameos…. It all sounds like the stuff of which ‘major motion picture’ are made.”

  —Vogue

  “A delicious read.”

  —Newsday

  “A dizzying mix of murder… old-fashioned gumption.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Glitz and glamour.”

  —Library Journal

  “Lord takes you behind the scenes of fashion and into Manhattan’s most exclusive parties, revealing a world of glamour, intrigue, and murder.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A satisfying thriller.”

  —Southern Pines Pilot (NC)

  “An informal, fresh, and fascinating picture of how New York’s elite conduct themselves.”

  —Neshoba Democrat (Philadelphia, PA)

  ALSO BY SHIRLEY LORD

  Small Beer at Claridges

  The Easy Way to Good Looks

  You Are Beautiful and How to Prove It

  Golden Hill

  One of My Very Best Friends

  Faces

  My Sister’s Keeper

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, incidents, and dialogues, except for incidental references to public figures, are imaginary and are not intended to refer to any living persons.

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1998 by Shirley Lord

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: November 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-57105-0

  Contents

  ALSO BY SHIRLEY LORD

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  1990

  CHAPTER ONE

  1993

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  1994

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  1995

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1997

  To my husband

  I am indebted to the late, great, brave Brandon Tartikoff, who inspired this book. Thank you, Brandon. It was a joy to know you.

  My thanks to Maria Quiros, the San Francisco design consultant, for the excellent crash course on fashion designing she gave me one lovely Labor Day weekend in the Napa Valley; to Eliza Reed, vice president, business development, Oscar de la Renta, for her advice and diligent fact checking; to Michael Gross, author of Model, aninformed guide to the world of modeling; to Washington Times correspondent Elaine Shannon, author of Desperados, Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen and the War America Can’t Win; to Tom Constantine, DEA administrator, for facts and figures about international drug trafficking; to Ann Landers for her words of wisdom; to Washington attorney and author Ronald Goldfarb, and Adam Zion, assistant district attorney, Kings County, for their patience and help in ensuring certain portions of this book are legally correct; to Beth Harmon, marketing manager of the New York Public Library for her guided tour; to my son Mark Hussey, professor of English, Pace University, and his wife, Evelyn Leong, adjunct instructor, women’s studies, for help with Ginny’s early education.

  I also especially want to thank my dedicated agent, Owen Laster, my brilliant editor Maureen Egen (both of whom know how to guide and spur a writer on… and on and on to better work) and my powerhouse of an assistant Zina Berthi-aume, who typed and retyped this manuscript so perfectly without once losing her radiant smile.

  The last person I want to thank is the most important. It is fair to say this book owes the most to my husband, A. M. Rosenthal, for his encouragement, support, and always (being the genius of an editor and writer that he is) insightful advice.

  PROLOGUE

  He obviously hadn’t remembered her name.

  “Madame Designer,” he’d mockingly called her, through thin, spoiled lips.

  She’d made a point of telling him she knew who he was. “Mr. Stern,” she’d said more than once, with obvious deference.

  “Arthur—call me Arthur,” he’d replied, with the leer she remembered from their first meeting.

  What a big-headed fool she’d been, sipping champagne at the reception, her confidence climbing as no one challenged her right to be there.

  She’d congratulated herself that once again, despite increased nerves, she’d managed to crash this important party so successfully, the party she’d hoped would change her life and put an end to her crashing forever.

  The young girl shuddered. It had changed her life all right, in a way that even in her worst dreams she could never have foreseen.

  False smiles, arch movements. There had been plenty of both, as she’d tried to impress the fashion magnate. She’d even walked in a certain way to emphasize the sensual swirl of silk around her legs, as she’d accompanied Mr. Stern so lightheartedly to the darkened upper hall.

  In total control, she’d thought she was, her body the perfect mannequin to show off the dream of a dress she’d designed for the evening’s grand affair.

  Who cared that there might be an invitation in the way she turned her shoulder to allow one of the pale slender straps to slip slightly, but not too far, onto her pale, cool arm? Not she. Mr. Stern would recognize her style, her flair, the cunning construction of her dress. That was all that had mattered then.

  Who cared that he was married? That was the point, or rather his wife, Muriel Matilda Stern, was the point; the influential wife who really held the purse strings, who was known to prefer to stay home, allowing her husband to roam to discover new talent for their fashion empire.

  This new talent had been so sure she could handle the passes, the leers, the suggestive innuendos of all the Arthur Sterns of the world. She’d encountered enough of them at events she’d crashed in the past. Hadn’t she always handled them before?

  But no, not this man she couldn’t; not this time she hadn’t.

  She gagged as she thought of her futile struggle as Stern had pinned her to the wall, ripping her precious dress as if it was a rag, wasting no time in his fierce attempted rape.

  But then had come the startling distraction—shouts from the end of the hall, a gunshot. Stern had turned; they’d both turned to see two men violently fighting, one using maniacal strength to push the other over the balustrade. There had been a high scream of fear and a horrifying crash of body, bone, matter on the marble floor below. It had all happened in a matter of seconds.

  Could the victim still be alive? The girl cowered back in her hiding place, the scream again filling her head. She was shivering so much, she felt she could go into convulsions, like the homeless woman Johnny had made famous in his columns. Johnny. She sobbed silently. He would never forgive her.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to calm down, but it was impossible.

  Where was Stern now? Looking for her or denying her existence as he rearranged his perfect tuxedo and restored his sangfroid?

  And where was the other man in the fight, the perpetrator, the shadowy figure who’d disappeared so quickly through the narrow door she herself was now hiding behind? Who was he?

  She had to be wrong about his identity. She was imagining things; she’d only seen him in silhouette, a
nd yet there was something that tugged at her memory, something significant she knew she should remember. What was it? And where was he now? Waiting for her below, in the darker dark?

  Stop the panic.

  Her dress felt wet. With sweat? Or was it semen, blood? How long did she have before her hiding place was discovered? Not long. She was in shock, but she had to get out—now. But how?

  Wait, you know this place, the warrens, the maze of corridors, the doorways that never held doors, the unexpected exits around forgotten corners.

  A week, a carefree lifetime ago, came to mind, when she’d worked as a volunteer for Vogue’s One Hundredth Birthday Party. Sulkily she had gone in and out, indoors and outdoors, like a slave laborer, fetching, carrying, backward and forward. Yes, she knew this place.

  She tensed, hearing voices, footsteps getting closer. Heels. Her stiletto sandals were off in seconds. She maneuvered herself down the narrow inside stairwell, one, two, three flights down into the old giant of a building, the grating hurting the soles of her feet.

  A door at the bottom screeched as she pushed it open. She froze, as still as an owl. A solitary dim lightbulb hung in the corridor stretching ahead. Was anyone waiting in the shadows? She saw figures who were not there, but slowly, as she inched along, hugging the wall for protection, recognition was coming back.

  Twice left, past a row of wooden filing cabinets, which carried a sad, old smell of cedar and wallpaper primer, immediately right past a thin tall door, another long corridor, left, left again and there was the fire door.

  She had been warned before, it would set off an alarm if she tried to open it, but it was the only way out for her now. She knew she would find herself in Bryant Park, no longer covered by the huge fashion tent, the tent from which she had been ignominiously rejected the year her dreams had been so optimistic and fresh.

  The door was heavy and awkward, but it opened without a sound. She looked to the left, to the right. No one. She came out running, across the park with a blustery rainy wind blowing a sense that the ocean wasn’t far away.

  Some island

  With the sea’s silence on it.

  Browning, Pippa Passes.

  One of her father’s favorite poems. Why was it suddenly in her head? Crazy. She was running in Manhattan, the noisiest island on earth. The noisiest, nosiest, and yet, please God, let it be true, the most private, too.

  Her breath was a continuing sob, her feet were getting cut. She ran on and the rain helped hide her wild flight. She stopped for a second to put on her sandals. Even in this neighborhood people would remember a sobbing young woman running in a torn silk dress. But no one stopped to stare; no one turned around.

  She had no idea how long it took her to reach her walk-up loft apartment, so beloved only a few hours before.

  She double-locked the door and threw herself, still panting, groaning with a leg cramp, across her white divan. The pain in her feet and the thought of dirt and blood spoiling the immaculate piqué surface brought her back to reality.

  She staggered to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and wept again. She was disfigured, disgraced, swollen with crying, her eyes small slits in a face she hardly recognized.

  She ran a hot bath, pouring in the expensive bath oil she usually rationed out drop by drop, but as she soaked, the terror came back.

  Had the man who crashed on the marble floor lived? How could he have lived?

  Who had pushed him?

  Would they find her? But how could they know who she was?

  She wasn’t on the guest list. As usual, she had gate-crashed the party, but this time with a definite purpose: to put an end to her problems.

  Her mother had often said her raging ambition would lead her into real trouble one day. Now it had come true.

  She was finished. She would move to Florida to be near her parents. She would work for her father as he had always wanted her to do. She would never design or make another piece of clothing in her life. She would sell her sewing machine. She would live simply, quietly. She was finished.

  Limping back to the divan, she saw one of her sandals, but not the other. It must have fallen off on the way home, but she had no memory of it happening. Somehow she had managed to bring back her tiny evening purse. There it was, damp, carelessly thrown on the hall table as if she had just returned home like a normal partygoer.

  She opened it and saw her best lace handkerchief. Beneath it was a cloakroom ticket.

  It was only then, as the phone began to ring, Ginny remembered her cloak, the spectacular one-of-a-kind Napoleonic cloak she had spent weeks making, for what was to have been such a momentous occasion.

  She had arrived wearing the cloak. She had left it behind in the cloakroom of the New York Public Library.

  1990

  CHAPTER ONE

  1645 EAST CLARENDON, DALLAS, TEXAS

  “How old was Ginny when she stole the sheepskin car seat, Virginia?”

  “Oh, Graham, don’t say that. She didn’t steal it; she…she borrowed it to make a lamb’s costume for the school’s nativity play…”

  Outside the living room door Ginny fumed. That old story! She couldn’t believe it. She’d been planning to give them a surprise and add a little sparkle to their evening, but as so often happened she was getting a rude surprise herself. What exactly was her father trying to prove this time?

  “Borrowed, stole. What’s the difference? She cut it up so it was unusable afterwards. Hey! I’ve got gin!”

  “Damn! Graham, you’re not fair. You take my mind off the game by talking so much and telling us all your stories, then you always win.” Ginny heard Lucy Douglas giggle, but she bet she wasn’t really amused. Her mother had told her Lucy hated to lose and so did her drab husband.

  Since moving to Dallas in ‘88, her parents had drifted into these Sunday night gin games with the Douglases. Her mother wished they hadn’t, although it had started because Dad loved playing the game and so did Lucy, who worked at Neiman Marcus, where her mother also worked as a fitter.

  A chair squeaked and Ginny heard her mother say in the cheery-trying-to-be-pleasant-at-all-costs tone she knew so well, “Let’s have some coffee, shall we?” Ginny clenched her teeth. Please, Dad, don’t go on with the car seat story. She didn’t have much hope.

  “So what was I saying? Oh yes, well it was when we were still in San Diego, so I suppose Ginny was about ten, eleven.”

  “Nine and a half,” Ginny murmured.

  On the way to the kitchen Virginia shot Graham a warning sign to shut up. Everything he said would be all over the alterations department in the morning. She’d warned him before, but as usual he took no notice.

  “Seems Ginny didn’t get the part of Mary or even one of the angels in this nativity play, so what did she do? She didn’t sulk or moan. She got the car seat—she’s like her mother, good with the needle—made it into this lamb’s costume, then, plucky kid, went uninvited to a rehearsal wearing the damn thing and one, two, three, convinced the teacher that to add authenticity to the stable scene she should bleat her way throughout the performance, right in front of blessed Mary, too.” Graham whacked his leg with gusto. “How’s that for chutzpah? How’s that for showing initiative, something, I might add, Ginny knows I always highlight in my courses as one of the crucial elements for success.”

  Initiative! Virginia groaned. So that’s what he was calling it now.

  Lucy screamed with laughter. “What a character. If she was like that at ten, what will she get up to at twenty?” Virginia wanted to hit her. “Where is Ms. Sweet Sixteen, anyway? Out on a date, I s’pose?”

  Ginny had had enough. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

  “Here I am, evening Mr. Douglas, Mrs. Douglas…”

  She struck a pose in the doorway, hand on one hip, cane in the other, five feet seven inches and still growing. She tossed her head back and winked, before giving the startled group the benefit of her most mischievous grin.

  Her mother gasped,
“What on earth…?”

  With every strand of her generally tousled chestnut hair hidden out of sight under a curious black turban, her slanted cheekbones made more so with powder blush, her dark eyes—inherited from her Italian grandmother—made still darker with kohl, Ginny Walker was wearing—could it really be possible—the jacket of her father’s old-fashioned tuxedo. Belted tightly around her tiny waist, the jacket ended well above her knees, her lanky legs in shiny black tights looking as if they reached up to her armpits.

  Trouble, she looked like nothing but trouble. A line from her favorite Bette Davis movie, All About Eve, came into Virginia’s mind. “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night”

  Sure enough, even as Graham was giving Ginny his usual mixed signal of aggravation and reluctant admiration, half smiling a fatuous smile while shaking his head sorrowfully, Ginny plumped down on the sofa and said, ‘That’s right, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas. I learned everything I know about initiative from Dad. Did you tell them, Dad, about that other time in San Diego, when the Von Karajan concert was sold out and you, eh, pretended to the old Mother Hubbard at the box office you’d given the tickets to me and I’d lost them?”

  As her father’s face reddened, Ginny rocked backward and forward, a determined look on her face. There was no stopping her now. “Of course, I didn’t know then Dad was pretending, that there never had been any tickets, otherwise I wouldn’t have bawled my eyes out as he made me empty my pockets to find nothing there… and the kind old Mother Hubbard wouldn’t have taken pity on us, would she, Dad? She gave us some standing room tickets meant for others in the line just to shut me up.”

  The smile was gone from Graham’s face. “Ginny, watch that loose tongue of yours.” He suddenly realized what she was wearing. “And who gave you permission to wear my jacket? What do you think you’re doing? What d’you think you look like anyway?”