The Last Weynfeldt (6 page)

The saleswoman nodded.

“You can take the other things away, thank you.”

Lorena removed the Lagerfeld and put her own things back on: a raspberry-colored DKNY getup with a short skirt, coupled with opaque black pantyhose. She had stolen it last year from a boutique in Basel when she'd been working as a trade-fair hostess.

She took her handbag, left the cubicle, smiled at the saleswoman and tripped toward the door.

There she was met by a slender woman with a bob. Probably in her late fifties, impeccably made-up, she wore an outfit that looked very Jil Sander. She smiled at Lorena. “My name is Melanie Gabel. I'm the proprietor.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Lorena smiled back.

“Would you mind terribly opening your handbag?”

L
ATE MORNING ONE END-OF-THE-MONTH
T
HURSDAY
, hardly the busiest time in the men's department of a boutique like Spotlight: Pedroni was bored, and grateful for the show the little redhead was putting on downstairs. He stood on the spiral staircase and watched as she emerged from the cubicle time and time again like a star on the stage at Caesar's Palace. She was good. His guess was that she had neither a credit card nor enough cash even to pay for a handkerchief from Spotlight, but that moron Manon was attending to her, and obviously thought she'd gotten a big fish on the end of her line.

Theo L. Pedroni was no newcomer to the business. He would soon turn thirty-nine, his last birthday with a three on the left, and had spent over half these years in the fashion industry, first as a sales intern in a big department store, then in various boutiques, two of them his own. Not concurrently, and only briefly, but still his. Both times he had filed for bankruptcy, in one case fraudulently, according to the court, which had made his return to employment difficult and forced him to relocate.

Pedroni had always viewed working in sales as a temporary situation, and always had some big project on the side intended to solve his money problems once and for all. Most of these diversification experiments had taken place in his home territory, fashion. He had entered the accessories business several times. He'd begun with small production runs, producing belts, watch straps, cigarette lighter pouches and—with particular zeal—cell phone pouches. He had taken care of the production, sales and marketing side each time. For the creative side he had collaborated with students from the school of art and design and with a young copywriter. He had ceased collaboration with the latter in 1989 after he suggested printing T-shirts with the slogan “Save the Wall!”

Later he began free-form diversification, as he put it. He was more interested in the money than the product anyway. As Charlie Sheen's character in
Wall Street
said, “I buy and sell money.” During the period when illegal clubs were sprouting up all over the city like mushrooms, he was one of the cofounders of Schmelzpunkt, which was a huge success at first, and survived three raids unscathed. During the fourth the cops found several grams of coke, which Pedroni was convinced had been planted by one of the men behind Nachtzug, a competitor. He had been seen at Schmelzpunkt the same evening.

In any case, Pedroni's involvement with the club scene brought him into contact with people who knew where to get coke. That was the start of the most lucrative phase of his career. His day job then, at one of the most fashionable boutiques of the time, fit perfectly with this new side gig. The customers at New Label were mainly from the fashion and banking worlds and the majority were also private customers of his. In no time Pedroni was able to move to a better apartment and buy an almost new Porsche Carrera with a reliable history.

This phase of his career was accompanied by social, not just financial, ascent. He was suddenly treated as more than just a salesman by these people; he was one of them. He had something they needed urgently; they could get it from him conveniently and discreetly, and they shared a secret with him.

By the time Pedroni was busted, his turnover had exceeded two million francs—the courts found evidence for at least half this sum—and he had made more than four hundred thousand francs profit. He only received four years jail time, however, first because he admitted to the offenses, second because he was highly cooperative and compromised a few illustrious figures in the banking and finance world. Including his time spent in custody, he served around two years of the sentence, and soon found another job in a boutique. There were various people in the fashion business keen to secure his discretion.

His income was modest, however, and his days were typically spent hanging around the men's department wearing a shiny gold Comme des Garçons suit with baggy trousers and a jacket with three buttons—the proprietor declaring the top one must be done up—and, if he was lucky, getting to watch a redhead pretending to be a big spender.

Suddenly he realized what she was up to. She was going to steal something. She was trying to behave so conspicuously no one would dream she intended to steal something. Her plan was to distract her audience like a magician, then make something disappear: hocus-pocus!

Perhaps she had already done it, and no one had noticed.

Now she was looking through the Prada rack, occasionally taking a dress out, hanging it back up, or throwing it carelessly over the back of a nearby chair, which normally provided waiting menfolk the chance to sit down.

She took the iridescent violet and black one out and held it up in front of herself.

Too sack-like, girl, a waste of your narrow hips. And too violet for your hair color.

She seemed to agree, and hung it back.

She took the simple black one out. Yes, that's the one. That's your style, girl.

She went back to the violet one, took it out again and compared it to the black one.

The black one, the black one. No question: the black one.

But then she put them both back.

Then she changed her mind again. She took the violet one back off the rack, put it with the others over the back of the chair and took the whole pile into the cubicle.

Had she taken only the violet one? Hadn't he seen a flash of something black behind it, just for a second?

He laughed to himself. Hocus-pocus. That was her magic trick. The black Prada has vanished into thin air. And no one noticed. Almost no one. Respect!

Pedroni walked up the rest of the stairs to the men's department and positioned himself in a spot where he could still see the changing rooms.

Manon slid up to the changing room. Did she have an inkling?

Now the curtain was thrown open and the redhead waved Manon into the cubicle itself, had her assisting with the zipper. Did his eyes deceive him, or was this chick really so cold-blooded, she was giving Manon the opportunity to look inside?

It was approaching twelve now. The first lunchtime customers were coming in. Pedroni had to serve one of them. He had fewer chances to glance downstairs. The redhead was still modeling one outfit after the other.

As he accompanied a customer to the exit—obviously he hadn't bought anything—Manon emerged from the cubicle with an armful of clothes. She placed three items to one side on the counter, and hung the others back on the rails.

Clever. The redhead had reserved three items and returned the rest. In a few minutes she would leave the changing room she had let the sales assistant empty personally.

And here she came. In a DKNY outfit from last season, with a Prada handbag too small to fit a dress in. Unless there was barely anything else in it.

She passed the counter in an over-the-top mannequin walk, gave Manon a rather patronizing smile and headed for the exit.

Now he saw that Frau Gabel was standing at the exit.

It would have to be a very special kind of customer for the boss to consider coming to the door to say goodbye in person. The redhead certainly didn't belong to this category.

He wouldn't be surprised if Frau Gabel asked her to open her handbag.

“W
HEN THEY BAN SMOKING IN RESTAURANTS
I'
LL CLOSE
down,” Nunzio Agustoni always claimed. This was said in an exaggerated Italian accent that was an essential part of the Trattoria Agustoni's style, along with the squat Chianti bottles used as candleholders, and the white paper tablecloths from a roll, changed after each sitting. When it seemed the issue was refusing to go away, Agustoni installed a non-smoking table—between the coat stand and the entrance to the toilets—and made fun of any guests who actually sat there, with gestures and grimaces to the regulars.

Agustoni's had been there for over forty years, and throughout this time the menu had remained unchanged. It served the Italian standards—
antipasti
,
vitello tonnato
, homemade pasta,
manzo
,
ossobucco
,
picata Milanese
,
bistecca fiorentina
, pizza,
saltimbocca
, tiramisu,
zabaione
and mascarpone—at a consistent quality. The prices had been adjusted to fit the changing clientele, which had shifted over the years from workers, students and artists to a business, theatre and gallery-opening crowd who felt like eating somewhere frequented by workers, students and artists.

Adrian Weynfeldt ate there every Thursday lunch-time with a few friends. Always at the same table, always the same thing:
insalata mista
and
scaloppini al limone
with risotto. He washed it down with San Pellegrino and a little Brunello di Montalcino, because the house wine, which everyone else drank, gave him a headache.

Like most Thursdays, Weynfeldt was the first person at the table, laid for ten, five on each side. He sat at his usual seat, the last on the left, at the end. He would have been embarrassed to claim one of the center seats. It would have looked like he was playing the host. Of course he always paid the check, but not as the host; simply as the one with the most money at his disposal. Weynfeldt joined his own Thursday lunch club like a guest he and everyone else was generous enough to tolerate.

In his circle of younger friends he often found his financial situation embarrassing. He had absolutely no problem playing paymaster, but he worried it could be interpreted as showy or condescending. So he showed his generosity very discreetly. For years he had visited the bathroom toward the end of the meal, intercepting the waiter on the way back and dealing with the bill swiftly and without checking it. In this way no one would be put in the awkward situation of having to thank him. Weynfeldt's idea of good manners included making it easy for his friends to profit from him.

The surrounding tables began to fill up; now he was the only one sitting alone. Sometimes Weynfeldt suspected his friends always came late because no one wanted to be the first, and to have to sit next to him.

He didn't think they didn't like him. He didn't have an inferiority complex; it seemed more likely that his friends didn't want to give each other the impression they were sucking up to him because they wanted something from him.

Not that none of them ever wanted anything from him, of course. But such matters were not brought to the Thursday lunch club. In that situation they would arrange to meet discreetly at another establishment, or in Weynfeldt's apartment.

This time is was Hausmann who arrived first: Claudio Hausmann, filmmaker. Weynfeldt could see he would have preferred to turn right around when he saw him alone at the table; he averted his gaze, pretended not to have seen him, to give him the chance to disappear again and wait for the others outside Agustoni's. To save him from having to talk about
Working Title: Hemingway's Suitcase
.

Working Title: Hemingway's Suitcase
was a film project Claudio Hausmann was developing. Hemingway had spent four months of 1922 in the Pension de la Forêt in Chamby sur Montreux, a cheap guesthouse. Hadley Richardson came to visit, his first wife, bringing a suitcase containing his complete unpublished fiction, which she lost on the way.

Hausmann had been given the brush-off by all the film funding bodies and had eventually persuaded Weynfeldt to fund the script development. Hausmann was an auteur, which meant that Weynfeldt's private script funding was transferred straight to his account. So far there had been a short synopsis and—after a further transfer—a more detailed treatment, which the film funding bodies had not deemed worthy of support. Adrian was not in a position to say whether they were right or not; film was not his field. And his suggestion of placing more emphasis on the fate of the suitcase, and less on the incident's effect on Hemingway's first marriage, was rejected by Hausmann as “too Hollywood.”

The project had now grown to include the document “Four Sample Scenes” along with several folders of research Hausmann had done, and continued to do, on location in Paris and Montreux, also at Weynfeldt's expense.

Weynfeldt would never dream of alluding to the fact that his script development funding had represented Claudio Hausmann's sole source of income for nearly two years. In fact he avoided the subject of
Working Title: Hemingway's Suitcase
altogether where possible. It was Hausmann who was sometimes forced to broach it. Four weeks ago it was with the promise, unprompted, that he would have a first draft finished within three weeks. Weynfeldt had never got to see the initial two or three unfinished versions. Hausmann claimed they would have given a false impression.

Weynfeldt reached for his wineglass and took a sip, making a concerted effort to avert his gaze so Hausmann had more time.

Then a woman's voice said, “Been here long?”

So Hausmann had sent Alice Waldner on ahead, the sculptor. Weynfeldt got up, buttoned up his jacket, shook Alice's tiny hand, blackened as ever, and greeted her with three kisses, on alternate cheeks. He waited till she had sat down opposite him, sat back down himself and waved the waiter over.