Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

Not that my little shop, Hair Apparent, could ever be considered a true threat to Miles’s chain of mega-salons, His and Hairs. There were four His and Hairs in the Baltimore metropolitan area, combination hair-and-nail emporia where Baltimore’s celebrities went to get their ’dos done. In our city, celebrity is defined as female television anchors, the wives of the pastors at the mega-churches, and strippers, although not necessarily in that order. Miles had started doing hair in college as a way of meeting women and discovered he was actually good at it, especially when it came to taking a woman who was close to bald-headed and transforming her into Rapunzel. He was the king of the weave.

He shared his empire with his older sister Janice who had renamed herself Kylani and taken to playing the role of Dragon Lady, complete with super-long talon nails and makeup that emphasized her Asian features. I had never much liked her and I wasn’t alone. She was condescending to everyone and she made a big show of how much money she and her brother were raking in. Miles oversaw the beauty shops, she managed the nail business, and they both joked that their success was based on combining all the salon stereotypes-African-American stylists on one side, Asian nail technicians on the other, gossip everywhere.

Kylani was ambitious, always pushing Miles to expand the business into Washington, D.C. or maybe even New York. Vain as Miles was, he at least recognized that it was better to be a big fish in Baltimore than a small fish anywhere else. He was all about expanding the businesses they already owned and plowing the profits into better equipment, the newest technology, and anything else that made the salon more upscale. Kylani seemed to be all about directing her share toward her wardrobe, trips, and cars. Miles told plenty of people that the nail side of the business would never have been profitable without his constant improvements.

I was privy to such confidences because I was publicity chair for our local branch of Cosmetology Representatives and Appearance Professionals-an organization of hairdressers, makeup artists, nail technicians, and fashion stylists that is known by the unfortunate acronym CRAAP. Miles was president of CRAAP, so we spent more time together as competitors than we ever had as kids growing up in the same neighborhood.

“Now Jordan, I know this is way more than you’re used to handling,” he had told me at our last planning session, picking pieces of lint from the oversize sweater he wore. These Bill Cosby throwbacks were Miles’s trademark, an odd choice given the fact that his salons were so ultra-chic. The joke around town was that he did it to reinforce the image that he was straight because no gay man would ever allow himself to be seen looking so unstylish. Maybe so, but the things were dust and dirt catchers, picking up more stuff than a Swiffer.

“I’m on top of it,” I said. “I’ve got Cathy Hughes’s local radio stations on board and you’re going to be on Larry Young’s talk show on 1010.”

“You’re doing fine locally.” Pick, pick, pick-the sweater and me were both getting raked over. “But we have to pull this thing off with class. So no ghetto fashion shows or tacky discos. Think high-end. See if you can get the D.C. stations and maybe Philly to cover this. You have to reach beyond your usual comfort level.”

Just who did he think he was talking to, I seethed. Whose marketing plan had landed us Hair Dynasty? I may have been only twenty-three, but it was my brainstorm to send crab cakes, Utz potato chips, and gallons of “half-and-half” to the organizers. Half-and-half is a local concoction, a mix of iced tea and lemonade, and it is pure ambrosia. I was positive that it had sealed the deal.

Half-and-half is a good analogy for hair shows-you didn’t have to grow up in a black neighborhood to get it, but it sure helped. Black hair care is big time, a billion-dollar-ayear business these days. But a hair show is more three-ring circus than sedate gathering of professionals, with every stylist scheming to steal the show. Demure chignons and sleek pageboy cuts were not the norm at Hair Dynasty. You’d be more likely to see a woman with the Statue of Liberty rising from her hairline, woven from suitably patriotic red, white, and blue hairpieces. Or a model strutting the catwalk in an haute couture “hair dress” that started at her temples, crisscrossed around her neck, and extended down her body to form a sweeping floor-length gown. The overall effect made the wearer look like a slightly less hairy version of Cousin Itt.

Wefts of hair were sewn or glued in, blow-dried, sprayed, teased, and pinned. There were perms and curls, braids and weaves, and more dyed-color combinations than they have at Sherwin-Williams. People still talked about the year a Chicago stylist sent out a model with a weave designed to look like a satellite dish and a television. The thing actually worked and got pretty good reception. We never figured out how he pulled it off without showing any wires or electrocuting the girl who had to balance it.

And now the whole circus had come to Baltimore, whose motto could be: A Small Town With Big Hair. We take hair very seriously in my hometown. I’d taken the credit for getting the show here and now I had to take responsibility for making it a success. It was all going according to plan-until Miles’s body was discovered.

It was late morning on the first day of the convention and I felt I looked like quite the young professional in my cream-colored linen suit. Sure, almost everyone else would be in basic black, the calling card of the beauty business, but I wasn’t working any heads that day so I thought I could afford to dress up. Besides, as publicity chair, I needed to be camera-ready. Just because I was barely 5’4” and about wenty pounds overweight didn’t mean I couldn’t be fly.

I walked the exhibition floor with pride, enjoying the happy buzz of a convention in full swing-flamboyant demonstrations of new styling techniques, salespeople hawking the latest shampoos and conditioners absolutely guaranteed to give the user thick, glossy, long hair in two days. Loud was good, a sign of people enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, the happy din of the convention center wasn’t loud enough to drown out the screams of the unfortunate young woman who found Miles.

His impromptu shroud of fake hair was behind some dividers that had been used to create a storage area and her screams bounced off the convention center’s concrete walls. The acoustics made it hard to figure out exactly where the ruckus was. By the time I got there, security was cordoning off the area with those elastic stands usually used in banks and airports. The ones where if you lift the top portion, the band snaps right back into the pole like a hyper rubber band. Several people had surrounded the woman and were trying to quiet her hysterics.

It was looking more and more likely that I would be on television, but not in the celebratory manner I had envisioned.

“Let me through,” I said, as I attempted to squeeze by what looked like a crowd trying to make it into a hot nightspot. “I’m with the organizing committee and I need to know what’s going on.”

Luckily, my best friend and business partner Jennifer was close by. She waved me over as she tried to dispense tissues in the general direction of the weeping.

“Listen up,” she said loudly, trying to be heard over the now gulping sobs of the crying girl. “This is Jordan Rivers and she is going to escort this poor child to a quiet area where she can relax and prepare herself to speak with the authorities.”

The girl was wearing the standard stylist uniform of black T-shirt and black slacks, and she looked up from the center of the group with red-rimmed eyes, which were set off nicely by the black lines of mascara streaking her face. “Authorities,” she moaned. “I have to talk to the cops?”