Rodeo Drive, the Day After : Flowers Mourn the Victims at Scene of Siege

As the day wore on, the pile of flowers grew higher.

First there were three roses on the granite doorstep of Van Cleef & Arpels, then three more.

By mid-afternoon, a bunch of coral-colored orchids hung from the door handle, three thick bunches of white and yellow chrysanthemums stood before the glass door and another vase of orchids was tucked in at the side.

“God bless the innocent who had to suffer,” said a card pinned to the mums, which had been delivered by local businessman David Levi.

Shock and Sorrow

Levi’s note spoke for many shopkeepers along Rodeo Drive, where shock and sorrow mixed with an increased concern for safety on the day after the bungled store holdup that left three hostages dead.

“I think the flowers came from the various shops here on Rodeo Drive,” said Dorothy Green, office manager of Battaglia, a men’s clothing shop next door. “We put some over there.”

Green, who was acquainted with some of the victims, said she was about to step over to Van Cleef & Arpels to have some of her own jewelry repaired when the robbery began.

“I find it so hard to believe,” she said Tuesday, recalling the orders from police to “get the hell back in the building,” and then a frantic dash to safety as the street was evacuated later in the day.

“It was like a war around here,” she said.

She described Robert Taylor, the wounded shipping clerk, as a “very decent fellow.”

And she recalled Hugh Skinner, manager of Van Cleef & Arpels, as a quiet man who kept to himself, “a very sweet, quiet guy.”

Sid Klein, a jeweler who works three doors away from Van Cleef & Arpels, also remembered Skinner, the last of the hostages to be slain, as “a very friendly competitor.”

“I knew Hugh very well. There’s a great sense of loss,” said Klein, of Frances Klein Antiques and Estate Jewels. “To have gone through all that 12 hours of horror and then get killed on the outside. . . . “

Eyes Visitors

As he spoke in the store, Klein eyed visitors on the sidewalk through a wrought-iron gate and admitted them one by one.

“It’s always been this way in our business,” he said. “You have to look for the kook and the very educated thief . . but to have it hit this close is very disconcerting.”

Like several other merchants on the stretch of chic shops that has come to symbolize conspicuous consumption to much of the world, Klein said he hopes that the publicity about Monday’s robbery would die down.

“This happens 50 times a week in 7-11s and liquor stores all across the country,” he said.

And like other jewelers, he said he was rethinking his own store’s security precautions.

“It’s a tragedy, and it’s a scary situation,” said Sergio Baril, director of Fred, a luxury jewelry showroom one block north of Van Cleef & Arpels. “Obviously we’re all a target. . . . “

Has His Doubts Now

While Baril praised the Beverly Hills police as the best in the world, he said he has his doubts about the wisdom of a massive show of force as was used in Monday’s siege.

“If he (the robber) had come in and taken whatever he wanted and gone out, three people would be alive today,” he said. “Why not have the police half a block away, wait until it’s over and take him then? . . . Everything in the store can be replaced, except a human being.”

Rodeo Drive itself was as busy as ever Tuesday. Tour buses rolled slowly down the street past parked Rolls-Royce convertibles and Mercedes-Benz sports cars with monograms painted on the doors.

Cafes were full at lunchtime and the curb-side parking spaces were all taken.

Members of the Raiderettes, a drill team associated with the L.A. Raiders football team, handed out calendars to passers-by.

One store announced a sale of up to 60%, including a linen, two-piece women’s suit for $705, marked down from $1,410.

Small knots of shoppers gathered outside the white front storefront of Van Cleef & Arpels, peering at the flowers and the small, hand-lettered sign that read “closed.”

“It was a horror story,” one woman said to her friend as they strolled past a shop window, “a horror story . . . ooh, look at that beautiful soap.”