Gridiron

'The Yoyogi Park building,' he said. 'What do they call that one, then?

Sorry, how do they denigrate that one? Hell of a word that — denigrate. I had to look it up. It means bad-mouth.'

'There was a piece about it in Architectural Digest,' Mitch explained.

' The Japan Times commissioned a Gallup poll about what people in Tokyo thought about it. Apparently they call it the ski jump.'

'The ski jump.' Kenny chuckled. 'I like that. It is kind of like a ski jump, isn't it? Ouch. I bet he loved that. And the Bunshaft?'

'That's a new one on me. Maybe he's seen something I haven't.'

'What gets up that sonofabitch? Maybe it's Joan. Maybe she straps one on and shoves it up his ass. She's man enough: that's what I call an Iron Lady. She could play defence for the Steelers.'

'Richardson's not the worst architect in LA, I'll say that for him. Not by a long way. Morphosis would win that prize, with Frank Gehry a close second. Ray may behave like a paranoid schizophrenic but at least his buildings don't look that way. Do you think some of those guys think that there's some kind of redemption in making buildings look as ugly as possible?'

'Hey, come on, Mitch,' chuckled Kenny. 'You know that "ugly" is not a word that has any meaning in architecture. There's avant-garde, there's very avant-garde and there's security-guard. You want your building to look fashionable these days, you make it look like a fucking state penitentiary.'

'That's good coming from the man who drives a Cadillac Protector.'

'You know how many Protectors were sold in LA last year? Eighty thousand. Mark my words, in a couple of years we'll all be driving them. You included. Joan Richardson drives one.'

'Why doesn't Ray? There are lots more people who want him dead, surely.'

'You don't think his Bentley isn't armour-plated?' Kenny shook his head. 'You can't sell a car like that in LA without armour. But frankly I prefer the Protector. It has a back-up engine, in case the first one breaks down. Not even a Bentley has that.'

'So why aren't you driving it? You've only just took delivery.'

'Nothing serious. It's just the on-board computer.'

'What's the matter with it?'

'I don't know. My eight-year-old, Michael, keeps screwing with it. He thinks it controls the car's weapons system or something, and zaps the other cars with it.'

'If only,' said Mitch, braking hard to avoid colliding with the wayward tan Ford in front, 'it were that easy.' He gritted his teeth angrily, checked the mirror and then pulled out to overtake.

'Try not to make eye contact with him, Mitch,' said Kenny nervously.

'Just in case, y'know… Have you got a gun in this car?' He opened the glove compartment.

'If a Protector had a weapons system, I'd get one today.'

'Yeah, wouldn't that be good?'

Mitch pulled in front of the tan Ford and glanced over at his passenger. 'Relax, will you? There's no gun in there. I don't have one.'

'No gun? What are you, some kind of pacifist?'

Aidan Kenny was a heavy, couch-potato type with wire-frame glasses and a wide, viscid mouth that could accommodate a whole cheeseburger. There was something about him that reminded Mitch of a minor Renaissance princeling: the eyes were small and set too close together; the nose was long and fat, adding an impression of sensuality and selfindulgence; and the chin, while not of Habsburg proportions, was prognathously stubborn and covered with a fair, boyish sort of beard that looked as if it had been grown to give the impression of maturity. His skin was as soft and white as a roll of toilet paper, as might have been expected with someone who spent most of his waking hours serving a computer terminal.

They turned south on to Hollywood Freeway.

'That's why I'm giving in and letting him have some computer games,' said Kenny. 'You know, the interactive stuff on CD-ROM.'

'Who?'

'My son. Then maybe he'll stop screwing around with the car's computer.'

'He must be the only kid in LA who doesn't already play those games.'

'Yeah, well, that's because I know how addictive they can be. I'm still attending CGA. Computer Games Anonymous.'

Mitch sneaked another sideways look at his colleague. It was easy enough to imagine him playing some fantasy game into the small hours of the morning. Not that there was anything weak-minded about Aidan Kenny. Before setting up a BMS company that Richardson had eventually bought for several milion dollars, Aidan Kenny had worked with the Stanford artificial intelligence group. That was another thing you had to hand to Ray Richardson: he hired only the best to work for him. Even if he didn't know how to hang on to them.

'Matter of fact, Mitch, he's coming in today. We're going to go to a store and he's going to pick all the games he wants.'

'Who, Michael?'

'It's his birthday. Margaret's dropping him off at the Gridiron. Whoops. The Yu building. Gee, I hope your car isn't bugged. Do you think anyone will mind Michael being there this afternoon? We're going to see the Clippers this evening and I don't want to have to go home first.'

Mitch was thinking about Allen Grabel. His attache case had still been under his desk when they left the office. And there had still been the answering machine when Mitch had phoned again. He mentioned it to Kenny.

'Do you think something could have happened to him?' he said.

'Like what?'

'I dunno. You're the one with the imagination and the Cadillac Protector. I mean, it was kind of late when he left the office last night.'

'Probably went somewhere and got himself stewed,' said Kenny. 'Allen likes a drink. Two or three if he can get away with it.'

'Yeah, maybe you're right.'

They came off the Freeway at Temple Street and approached the familiar downtown skyline, dominated by I. M. Pei's orthogonal seventythree-storey Library Tower. Mitch reflected that LA's tallest buildings (most of them banks and shopping plazas) resembled the banal, blocksquare construction he had built in the days when eight-year-olds played with simple sets of Lego bricks. Turning south on to Hope Street, he felt a surge of pride as he caught sight of the Yu building and, leaning forward in his seat, stole a quick glance up at the familiar curtain wall recessed behind the characteristic gridiron of lateral megatrusses and ivory white piers: it was not so much a frame as a three-hundred-foot ladder from which the twenty-five floors were suspended.

Despite Richardson's sensitivity about the nickname, Mitch found there was nothing inherently offensive in it. Indeed, he half suspected that there would come a time when, like the owners of New York's famous Flatiron building, the Yu Corporation would yield to popular insistence and make the nickname official. They could call it what they liked, he reflected: compared with the sullenly competent Miesian glass boxes that surrounded it, the Gridiron was, in Mitch's opinion, the most stunning piece of new architecture anywhere in America. There was nothing to touch the glistening, silver-white transparent machine that was Ray Richardson's Gridiron building. Its visible absence of colour was the most concrete of all colours and, in Mitch's eyes, the building seemed to possess the white light of a revealed truth.

Mitch slowed the car to turn down the drive that led around the side of the finished piazza to the underground car park. As he did so he felt something strike his passenger door.

'Jesus,' exclaimed Kenny and sank into his seat below the window.

'What the hell was that?'

'One of those Chinese kids threw something.'

Mitch did not stop. Like everyone else in LA he stopped for nothing except traffic lights and the LAPD. He waited until they were safe behind the rolling aluminium garage door before inspecting his car for damage. There was no dent. Not even a scratch. Just the hand-sized splatter of a piece of rotten fruit. Mitch found a tissue in the glove box, wiped the mess away and then sniffed it.