“Fine. Put the demo tape for Code 187 on in the lounge while they’re waiting for me, so everyone has heard it before I get there.”
He stepped into his shoes, tied his necktie, and put on his coat. Kimberly was beside him, still repeating “before I get there” while her hands smoothed the coat on his shoulders and adjusted the back of his shirt collar so the tie was not rolled beneath it. They walked together through the master bedroom. “There was a call in to Mr. Densmore, but he hasn’t returned it yet. His assistant says he’s in court, but she’s covering.”
“When he returns the call, switch it to my cell,” said Schelling.
They made their way down the long hallway, across the huge two-story living room, the two-way conversation between Tiffany and Schelling-Kimberly continuing all the way to Kimberly’s office on the ground floor, and then out to the car in the cobblestone turnaround outside the main entrance. His dog King came trotting around the house to be petted. Scott scratched him under the chin once, and Kimberly held King’s collar so he couldn’t get dog hairs on Scott’s suit.
Carl was waiting beside the car. He opened the door to admit Schelling and held it so Kimberly could slide in, but she shook her head, so he closed it and got into the driver’s seat.
Schelling looked out his window while Carl put the car in gear. Kimberly was talking into her headphone again, and although her eyes were on Schelling, they were blank, unseeing. The car slid forward around the turnaround to the driveway, and Carl hit the button to open the gate.
Schelling was pleased with Kimberly and Tiffany. Together they were doing an excellent job, but even with their sharp understanding of detail and information, he could not have kept them around if they had not been decorative, too. He was in a business where death stalked people who weren’t fashionable.
The two assistants also were participating in one of his experiments. He’d had sex with Tiffany only once, a year after she had come to work for him. It had been late at night, after everyone had gone and the office had been locked up. It had been a droit de seigneur kind of sex: He had merely been claiming her as a member of his staff. He had left her alone after that. He had wanted her to wonder whether it was going to happen again, and then to wonder why it had not. Right now, he knew, she was trying to form theories about whether it would be more to her advantage if it did or didn’t, and how to accomplish one or the other.
With Kimberly he had decided to behave differently. Since she had come to work for him, he had treated her as a sexless personal servant, maybe even an appliance. He paid no attention to her, or to what she might be thinking. Today and for the past few months, he had summoned her into the dressing room while he was still naked, as though she were his valet, and begun their work while he was getting dressed. He knew that the two assistants spoke to each other all day long every day.
He also knew that both of the assistants were supplementing their income and preparing the way for promotion by sharing his schedule and the substance of his business activities with his boss, Ray Klein, the CEO of Aggregate Industries. He didn’t mind that at all, because it gave him two extra ways to feed Klein what he wanted him to know.
As the car moved along the street toward Sunset he said, “Carl, what’s the situation on Densmore?”
“Those two guys he hired to hang out at the DA’s office had more balls than brains.”
“I know that.” People weren’t supposed to tell Schelling things that he already knew.
“Sorry, Scotty. Kaprilow and Stevens are watching his house and his office this morning. His Mercedes was in its spot at his office before they got there, and the engine wasn’t warm. His wife is at his house, and she doesn’t seem to be doing anything. She’s not packing to run off and meet him in Brazil or something. She hasn’t left the house yet.”
“Any signs of police at his house or his office?”
“Not yet.”
“Let me know right away if anything like that turns up.”
“Will do.”
“You’re doing a good job, Carl.” Schelling had made a decision to say that long before he had left the house. Carl was not doing an especially good job, but he could be made to work harder and smarter with a few words of encouragement, and he would turn sullen if he felt unappreciated. He paid Carl very well, but no amount of money was enough to keep a man like Carl absolutely loyal. His best interests had to be exactly the same as Scott Schelling’s. To keep the connection strong, Schelling sometimes reminisced with Carl about things that they’d done together, but he couldn’t face that today.
In the old days, Carl had often scouted the fashionable bars and clubs to find women for Scott. Schelling had been a young music-company executive, barely out of business school. He had already discovered he could make surprisingly good money in the music business, but he had not been very successful at attracting women.
Carl procured an introduction to Kit Stoddard at the bar in Gazebo at around midnight one night, and called Scott immediately. Schelling had been getting ready to leave for a business party, but he had already had enough experience with Carl to know that he should come when Carl called. While Carl was waiting for Schelling to arrive, he started a conversation to stall for time. Carl was a muscular, athletic-looking man in his mid-twenties, with lots of wavy black hair, strong, sculpted features, and a tanning-salon tan. Scott Schelling had never, even now, met a man who looked that way and was intelligent. It was some obscure law of genetics that prevented anyone from having every advantage at once.
Carl kept Kit and her companions amused with his patter. Schelling had heard enough of it on other occasions to know what he must have said. “You’re actresses, aren’t you? I thought you had to be. How do I know? It’s just a look, like a glow. Either a woman has it, or she doesn’t, and you do. And besides, what are the chances that three such amazing women would be together unless they were acting, or they were triplets? You’re not triplets, right? Am I disappointed? No. I’ll admit triplets are a fantasy, but I have so many others I have to get through first. I’m still working on things I promised myself at age fourteen. Anyway, let’s be honest. I’m not in your league. A woman like you deserves to be with a man who can buy you things and take you places. Who? My boss, for instance. He’s barely thirty and he’s a gazillionaire. He’s in the music business.”
In those days, Scott had not been comfortable trying to meet women. He was small-boned, narrow-shouldered, and wore thick glasses. He had a New York accent, and had been out of the city long enough to know that women in the rest of the world found it a cause for suspicion.
Whenever Carl managed to get him successfully connected with a new woman, he had given Carl a bonus with his next paycheck. As Scott sat in the car thinking about it, he remembered that Nancy Russo and Carol Peters, the two before Kit, had each earned Carl ten thousand dollars. Carl must have made at least fifty thousand in bonuses that year. But Carl seemed to get more out of these services than money. It occurred to Schelling that Carl enjoyed some vicarious sexual titillation, too, because he was the one who had accomplished the initial seduction.
When Scott walked into Gazebo that night he was aware of the importance of first impressions. He had worn a dark Armani suit that had been altered beautifully to fit him, a pair of handmade Italian shoes, and his most expensive Rolex. When a woman looked at him, she didn’t see the prematurely middle-aged slouch. She saw the suit. She didn’t see the dull brown hair that had already begun to thin on top and still looked unruly after a two-hundred–dollar haircut. She saw the two-hundred–dollar haircut.