The Emperor of Ocean Park (73 page)

“I’m sure.” Maxine flits briefly through my mind, but I push her away. “I only love my wife,” I tell both women, truthfully. “And my son.”

“And your father.”

“Huh?”

Although my wife’s tired eyelids have resumed their droop, her full lips curve into a smile. “You love that old man, Misha. That’s why you keep searching so hard.”

Love? Love the Judge? This is, tragically, a concept I have not previously considered. Maxine said she knew I couldn’t stop chasing the arrangements. Now Kimmer is saying the same thing. “Maybe so,” I finally say. “I’m sorry. I just want to know what happened.”

My wife seems to understand. “No, no, it’s okay, honey. It’s okay.” Her eyes have drifted closed again, and her voice is starting to slur. “I understand, Misha. I do. But promise you’ll come back to us.”

“Come back to you from where?”

“From Aspen,” Kimmer murmurs. She yawns.

“Aspen?”

“Oh, come on, Misha. I’m not gonna be a federal judge. That’s over. So you might as well go see your Uncle Jack.” She opens one eye, winks, then closes it again. “Just say hello to the FBI for me, okay?”

“Uh, okay.”

“Bastards,” she mutters, and is asleep. I sit awake for a while, stroking her back, on the one hand confident that she loves me after all, on the other wondering who phoned the house and called her
baby.

Two weeks.

CHAPTER 44
STORMY WEATHER

(I)

I
HAVE VISITED
the small and stunningly rich community of Aspen, Colorado, three times in my life, the first time on a ski vacation with my old college friends John and Janice Brown, back before Bentley was born, a misbegotten expedition in which I sprained my ankle quite badly on the very first day, in the very first hour of my very first lesson, and so spent the remaining four days alone in the tiny condo, the world’s thickest snowflakes swirling outside, the television cable failing intermittently, and the fireplace too grimy to be of use, as John and Janice, veterans of the sport, went streaking down the slopes, and Kimmer, who used to ski in her college days at Mount Holyoke but hardly ever since meeting dull me, reconnected with her lost skill. On that first visit, the bumpy, prayer-inducing descent in the turboprop persuaded me that the four-hour drive from Denver up through the Rockies, high, winding, fenceless passes and all, was the less intimidating choice. Indeed, I swore at the time that I would never fly to Aspen again. So, for my next two trips, both to attend excellent seminars at the Aspen Institute—one with Kimmer, one without—I rented a car at the Denver airport and drove up.

But there are such things as blizzards that bury mountain highways, and the only way to be sure the roads are always open is to stay away from the mountains unless it is summer. Since that first trip, John and Janice have often invited us to join them on the slopes, or even to use their time-share when they can’t. Kimmer has gone twice, once with the Browns and once, just last year, ostensibly alone: “Some time apart to think will do us both some good, Misha, honey.” I have stayed home both times, honoring my oath never again to try to get into Aspen in the winter. But the Lord, we all know, has ways of confounding proud
mortals who swear oaths too lightly. So here it is February, and here I am on my way to Aspen in another snowstorm, flying in defiance of my own rules, the small jet buffeted by the gusty Rocky Mountain winds, the skiers drinking hard, the rest of us turning green.

The plane lands safely, and, by the time we roll to a stop, the mid-afternoon sky even begins to clear. It occurs to me, as I scurry across the tarmac to the small but modern terminal building, that the people who live here year-round are not as crazy as I have always thought. The snow-dappled mountains are gorgeous in the winter sunlight, which picks out the details with a crystal clarity. The evergreens marching toward the summit are, if anything, more dramatic in February than in August, like winter-weather troops wearing green-and-white alpine uniforms. Most of my fellow passengers are wearing uniforms too, after a fashion, and their brightly colored ski parkas look very serious indeed.

I have time to savor this vision only until I turn toward the baggage claim area and find waiting there the lean bodyguard I remember from the cemetery, whom I know only as Mr. Henderson. The temperature is in the teens—the very low teens—but he is wearing only a light wind-breaker. He summons a dazzling smile and even a few words: “Welcome to Aspen, Professor,” delivered in an eerily familiar voice, a voice so sleek, so velvetly delicious, that I can readily imagine anybody he tries to seduce sliding willingly downward to oblivion. Yet there is nothing of the voluptuary about Mr. Henderson. He is, instead, rather standoffish—as a good sentinel surely must be—as well as alert, energetic, feline in his compact grace, somehow complete.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I reply.

Mr. Henderson nods politely. He does not offer to take my bag.

Moving on remarkably light feet, he leads me out to the car, which, this being Aspen in winter, is a silver Range Rover. He reminds me to buckle my seat belt. He tells me in his sinuous voice that Mr. Ziegler has been looking forward to renewing our acquaintance. All of this while, apologizing for the necessity, he runs a hand-held metal detector over my clothes and then, when I assume the indignities are done, repeats this activity with a small rectangular device complete with LED digital readout, perhaps to discover whether I am broadcasting. I keep my tongue in check: the meeting, after all, was my idea. “It will take us half an hour or so to get up to the property,” Mr. Henderson says as we pull out of the parking lot. Not the
house,
I register. Not the
estate.
The
property.
A good Rocky Mountain word.

I nod. We exit the airport onto Route 82, which parallels the Roaring
Fork River into the town of Aspen. At first the scenery is broad white fields and scattered houses and the occasional gas station or convenience store, always against the backdrop of some of the most glorious mountains in North America, which frame the valley on every side. Then the clusters of dwellings grow thicker . . . and, on the distant highlands, noticeably larger. Bunched townhouses announce the city limits. Even before entering the town, one can see, to the north, the garish homes along the ridges of Red Mountain, looming over the town like a kitschy reminder of the yawning chasm between money and taste. Then we are inside Aspen proper, home to what might be the most expensive real estate in the United States. I watch the town pass by, almost too neat and picturesque in its bright frame of sun and snow. As always, I gawk at the tiny, perfect Victorians of the West End, painted a happy variety of earth tones, each selling at probably ten times what the same building, on a larger lot, would bring in Elm Harbor. Realtors refer to the Aspen housing market as “sticker shock for the rich,” swapping gleeful stories of well-to-do couples who break down in tears upon realizing how little a four-or five-million-dollar nest egg will buy. It is said that one of every eleven year-round residents works at least part-time selling real estate, and no wonder. A single six-percent commission can make your year. The
median
price of a home in Aspen is more than two million dollars, which is perhaps a fifth of what the medium-sized estates on Red Mountain fetch. On the mountain, prices of twenty million or more are not uncommon.

Jack Ziegler lives on Red Mountain.

The Range Rover sails into downtown Aspen, where every pedestrian seems to be carrying skis. The police wear jeans and drive sport-utility vehicles or sky-blue Saabs. Mr. Henderson steers swiftly and confidently through the snow. The only American cars I see are Jeeps and Explorers and Navigators. We pass a couple of filling stations, then three or four short blocks of restaurants, town offices, and shops. In the center of town, we hang a sharp left, turning north. (For some reason, maps of Aspen are usually drawn upside down, with Red Mountain, which lies to the north, at the bottom, and Aspen Mountain, which lies to the south, at the top.) We pass one of the town’s two supermarkets, cross a short bridge, take another sharp left, and, suddenly, we are climbing the winding road that is the only way up Red Mountain.

“I assume the meeting is just the two of us,” I say.

“As far as I know.” His battle-hard gray eyes never leave the road. I
realize that Mr. Henderson has not given me quite the reassurance I need, perhaps because I did not ask quite the right question.

“Nobody else knows I’m coming?”

“Oh, I would guess that everybody does.”

“Everybody?”

“Mr. Ziegler is a popular man,” he says cryptically, and I realize that I am not going to get any more information than I already have, but what I already know is enough to keep my nerves humming.

The Range Rover corners hard to the right at a switchback and then, moments later, hard to the left at another. All around us lies the tawdry evidence of the madness of the
nouveaux riches.
To describe the mansions surrounding us as large does not quite capture the phenomenon of Red Mountain. They are immense testaments to misspent wealth, decorated with enough multi-tiered fountains, tennis courts under all-weather bubbles, four-car garages, turrets, indoor pools, and terrorist-proof gates to fill several museums, as perhaps in the future they will—the Museum of American Waste, our grandchildren’s grandchildren might decide to call it. Further confirmation, my favorite student, Crysta Smallwood, would likely say, of the determination of the white race to destroy itself—in this case, by spending itself to death.

The Range Rover makes another sharp turn, and suddenly we are facing a heavy gate and Mr. Henderson is whispering seductively into a speaker along the side of the road. A tiny light turns green, and the gate rolls back. A wide, unmarked road stretches upward. At first, I imagine that we are entering Jack Ziegler’s estate, which I have never seen but have always imagined to be sprawling and walled. I realize a moment later that I am mistaken. We are inside a private development, a subdivision for people whose wealth is in nine figures. Mailboxes are all clustered together near the entrance, and, moments later, individual driveways appear. The houses are no smaller than elsewhere on the mountain, but they are quieter somehow, less gaudy, their residents concerned more with privacy than showing off. Turning a wide corner, we pass a Grand Cherokee marked with the logo of a private security firm, and the two hard white faces inside look more like Green Berets than ordinary rent-a-cops.

We are in a cul-de-sac. The second driveway on the right is Jack Ziegler’s.

Uncle Jack lives in what is sometimes called an upside-down house, because you enter on the top floor. From the outside, it is rather unpretentious,
flat and rectangular with unassuming stucco walls and a garage that holds a mere three cars. But the secret, it turns out, is on the inside. We are admitted to the house by another quiet bodyguard, this one named Harrison, who is very nearly Henderson’s twin, not in appearance but in behavior, for their affects are as confusingly similar as their names. The marble-floored entry hall is actually a balcony from which one looks down into the main part of the house; the dwelling is built into the side of Red Mountain, and to descend the stairs to the lower level, which is where they lead me, is to descend the mountain itself. The windows looking out on the town below and Aspen Mountain beyond are two stories high. The view is alarmingly beautiful.

I do not generally suffer from vertigo, but as I pick my way down the stairs I cannot resist the sensation that I am strolling into thin air, right off the side of the cliff, and one of the interchangeable bodyguards seizes my upper arm because I begin to sway.

“Everyone has that reaction at first,” Mr. Henderson says kindly.

“Almost everyone,” corrects his partner, who looks like a man who has never been dizzy in his life. Harrison is skinny, the wide receiver to Henderson’s linebacker. I would figure Henderson as the intimidator, Harrison as the silent killer. They share the same dead eyes and cold, pale stare. But my imagination is running away with me: Uncle Jack is, after all, retired.

From whatever.

“Don’t let the illusion deceive you,” adds Henderson in his smooth voice, as though reciting to a group of tourists. “There is plenty of solid rock underneath us, and the ground outside is mostly flat.” He points toward the window, probably to indicate a lawn, but I am unable to follow his gesture without having my head begin to reel.

“Mr. Ziegler will be with you momentarily,” Harrison grumbles before trudging off down one of the two hallways that run from the immense ground-floor room into the wings of the house.

“Perhaps you should sit down,” Henderson suggests, gesturing toward the several seating arrangements in the vast room: one white leather, another some brown tweed fabric, a third a bright floral print, all sharply distinct, yet blending somehow into a harmonious whole.

“No, I’m fine,” I assure him, speaking for the first time since entering the house, and pleased that my voice is steady.

“May I offer you something to drink?”

“I’m fine,” I repeat.

“At altitude, it is important to stay hydrated, especially the first few days.”

I look up at him, wondering if he is after all, as I first suspected on the day we buried the Judge, not a bodyguard but a nurse.

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Very well,” says Henderson, withdrawing down a different hallway from the one that swallowed Harrison, and suddenly I am alone in the lair of the beast. For Jack Ziegler, I have come to realize, is not simply a source of information about the misery that has overtaken my family; he is, in some sense, its author. Where, after all, would my father turn if he wanted to hire a killer? There was really only one possibility, and that is the reason I am here.

I circle the room, admiring the art, pausing here and there, waiting. In the air is the scent of something zesty—paprika, perhaps—and I wonder whether Uncle Jack plans to offer me lunch. I sigh. I do not want to stay very long in this house. I do not want to stay very long in this town. My preference would be to talk to Uncle Jack and immediately leave again, but the depressing magic of time zones and the mundane obstacle of finding a flight out have combined to make that impossible. Uncle Jack, fortunately, made no offer to put me up for the night, and our rickety family budget would never bear the price of an Aspen hotel room in the high winter season, even were one available. So I have arranged to use John and Janice’s time-share for this one night; it isn’t their week, but they ascertained that it would be vacant and switched with whoever is scheduled to occupy it.