"Damn it, Ames!" I shouted into the phone. "I know you're there. If you can hear me, turn this goddamned thing off and talk to me."
The woman's voice was stifled. Ames ' voice came on the line.
"Here I am, Beau. What do you need?"
"The closing. I know when it is, but I don't know where."
"Downtown in Columbia Center. Up on the seventieth floor. Ellis and Wheeler. It's getting pretty late. Want to meet me there? I can bring your car."
"Fine," I answered curtly. "See you there." I hung up again.
"You don't have to be such a hard-ass about it," Peters chided me as I stood up to leave. "I'm sure Ames thought he was helping you out. There are times I'd like to have one of those gadgets myself."
"Great," I grumbled. "I've got a terrific idea. We'll unplug it from my house and plug it back in in yours."
Peters smiled. "When are you going to give up and accept the inevitable? Automation and microchips are here to stay."
"Not in my house they aren't," I replied, then stalked from the room with Peters right behind me.
I'm one of those people they'll have to pull kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, if I live to be that old.
I have no intention of going quietly.
CHAPTER 22
On Friday afternoon, traffic in Seattle is a nightmare. We made it back across the bridge with barely enough time for Peters to make it to Darwin Ridley's funeral at the Mount Baker Baptist Church. Peters dropped me off at a bus stop on Rainier Avenue South. I grabbed a Metro bus jammed with rowdy schoolkids for a snail's-pace ride downtown. If I were into jogging and physical fitness, I probably could have beaten the bus on foot.
Once downtown however, Columbia Center isn't hard to find. It's the tallest building west of the Mississippi, to say nothing of being the tallest building in Seattle. The lobby is a maze, however, and it took a while to locate the proper bank of elevators for an ear-popping ride to the seventieth floor.
Stepping out of the elevator, the carpet beneath my feet was so new and thick that it caught the soles of my shoes and sent me flying. I came within inches of tumbling into the lap of a startled, brunette receptionist, who managed to scramble out of the way.
There's nothing like making a suave and elegant grand entrance.
"J. P. Beaumont," I said archly, once I was upright again, hoping somehow to regain my shattered dignity. "I'm supposed to meet Ralph Ames here."
It didn't work. Dignity was irretrievable. The receptionist had to stifle a giggle before she answered me. "Mr. Ames is already inside," she said. "This way, please."
Rising, she turned and led me down a short, book-lined hallway. As she looked away, the corners of her mouth continued to crinkle in a vain attempt to keep a straight face.
At the end of the hallway we came to another desk. There, the receptionist handed me off to another sweet young thing, a blonde with incredibly long eyelashes and matching legs. It was clear the personnel manager in that office had an eye for beauty. I wondered if these ladies had any office skills, or if good looks constituted their sole qualification for employment.
"Mr. Rogers told me to show you right in," the blonde said. She opened a door into a spacious office with a spectacular view of Seattle 's humming waterfront on Elliot Bay. In one corner of the room sat Ralph Ames and another man hunched over a conference table piled high with a formidable stack of legal documents.
"So there you are," Ames said, glancing up as I entered the room. "It's about time you got here. I'd like to introduce Dale Rogers. He's representing the syndicate. This whole transaction is complicated by the fact that you're both buyer and seller."
Ames has a penchant for understatment. The process of buying my new condominium was actually far more than complicated. It was downright mystifying.
Months before, acting on Ames ' suggestion that I'd best do some investing with my recent inheritance, I had joined with a group of other investors to syndicate the purchase of a new, luxury condominium high-rise in downtown Seattle. Now, operating as an individual, I was purchasing an individual condominium unit from the syndicate.
Ames and the other attorney busily passed papers back and forth, both of them telling me where and when to sign. Between times, when my signature was not required, I sat and examined the contrast between the panoramic view of water and mountains through the window and the impossibly ugly but obviously original oil painting on the opposite wall. I couldn't help but speculate about how much this exercise in penmanship was costing me on a per-minute basis, and how many square inches of that painting I personally had paid for.
In less time and for more money than I had thought possible, I was signed, sealed, and delivered as the legal owner of my new home at Second and Broad. Ralph Ames literally beamed as I scrawled one final signature on the dotted line.
"Good for you, Beau. It's a great move."
Dale Rogers nodded in agreement. "That's right, Mr. Beaumont. As soon as the weather turns good, you'll have to have us all over for a barbecue. I understand there's a terrific barbecue on the recreation floor. My wife is dying to see the inside of that building."
"Sure thing," I said. My enthusiasm hardly matched theirs, however. I didn't feel much like a proud new home owner. I felt a lot more like a frustrated detective battling a case that was going nowhere fast, fighting the war of too much work and not enough sleep.
It was ten after five when we walked out of Columbia Center onto Fourth Avenue with a crush of nine-to-fivers eagerly abandoning work.
"Where's the car?" I asked.
"In the Four Seasons' parking garage," Ames answered. "But we've got one more appointment before we can pick it up."
I sighed and shook my head. I wanted to go home, have a drink, and put my feet up. "Who with now?"
"Michael Browder, the interior designer, remember? I told you about it on the phone. He's meeting us in the bar of the Four Seasons at five-thirty. Now that you've closed on the deal, he needs a go-ahead for the work. He told me the other day that you still haven't even looked at his preliminary drawings."
Bull's-eye! I had to admit Ames had me dead to rights. I had been actively avoiding Michael Browder, but I didn't care to confide in Ames that the main reason was that Michael Browder was gay. Ames had dropped that bit of information in passing one day. It didn't seem to make any difference to Ames, but it did to me.
I'm not homophobic, exactly, but I confess to being prejudiced. I don't like gays. I had never met one I liked. Or at least hadn't knowingly met one I liked.
Ames and I found a small corner table and ordered drinks. I sat back in my chair to watch the traffic, convinced I'd be able to pick out a wimp like Michael Browder the instant he sashayed into the room.
Wrong.
The man who, a few minutes later, stopped in front of our table and held out his hand was almost as tall as I am. Broad shoulders filled out a well-cut, immaculate, three-piece gray suit. He had neatly trimmed short brown hair. The solid handshake he offered me was accompanied by a ready smile.
"Mr. Beaumont?" he said to me with a polite nod in Ralph Ames' direction. "Michael Browder. Glad to meet you, finally."
No limp wrist. No lisp. No earrings.
Old prejudices die hard.
Settling comfortably back into a chair, Browder ordered a glass of Perrier. "Mr. Ames has been a big help," he continued. "He's given me as much information about you as he could, but it's very difficult to design a home for someone I don't know personally, Mr. Beaumont. I've been told, for instance, that you're sentimentally attached to an old recliner, but that's secondhand information. I told Mr. Ames that unless I talked to you, in person, I was leaving the project."