Long Shot by Paul Monette Page A

arrangements Vivien’s set went in for. How could she possibly understand, this woman who slipped by crowds on horseback? She was used to the sealed-off upper floors of good hotels. She drove the streets with a motorcycle escort. How would he ever make her see that Jasper Cokes, the night he died, was utterly defenseless? She seemed to have a moat around her wide as all this empty space.
    He smacked his fingers and pressed on. As he closed the gap between him and Steepside, he stayed clear of the plate-glass reaches and the outdoor stairs and decks. Looking out for something more modest, he made for a small-windowed room on the lowest level. He flattened his nose against the glass to check it out. It was sparely furnished and quite deserted—the last and least of the guest rooms, maybe, or else the minimal quarters of a chauffeur and a maid. He eased the window open, craned an ear till he heard no sound, and slipped inside like a stowaway.
    Then straight to the bathroom to fix his tie and brush the canyon off his clothes. He put a comb through his hair, gargled with a dollop of Crest, and spot-checked the state of his winter complexion. He stopped short of using the aftershave on the sink. By the time he crossed the room and peered around the door along the hall, he was ready for a sit-down dinner.
    â€œIf anyone asks,” Sid had coached him the night before, “you say you’re with the funeral. You’ll see. The pros steer clear of each other, once they got a death going.”
    He couldn’t be sure exactly where things led, but he was game to try. He walked the length of the hall, to the foot of a circular stair. He half expected to look up into the barrel of a gun being trained on him over the banister. But there was nothing there, nor the sound of voices as he mounted. He came out into an emptiness that seemed to mirror the gray light rolling off the reservoir below. The room was long and narrow, open to the canyon—a set of bays glazed with floor-to-ceiling leaded panes, here and there shot through with a disk of blue or blood red. He’d seen it in a dozen glossy layouts over the years. This did not prevent his jaw from dropping open on the spot.
    For Steepside was afflicted with a schizophrenic split, so that only this, the western half, had been done by Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1937, Abner Willis had put the hilltop site and a seven-figure trust at the architect’s disposal. Then he went off to Europe where, carried away by all the bargains, he sent back odds and ends of things that he trusted Wright would incorporate into the grand design. A coffered medieval ceiling torn from a monks’ refectory. A paneled room from Paris. Frescoes and flower-carved balconies, dolphin-linteled doors—all of which were going to require a master feat of engineering. All of which Wright took a dutiful look at, leafing it through like the day’s junk mail, before he ordered it put into storage.
    So when Abner returned, all dosed with the chic of the royal houses he’d bought up, he nearly had a stroke. The spaceship ranch house high on the hill, with its floating planes and Mayan iconography, was as hateful to him as the suburbs. The architect was summarily dismissed—indeed, came down from Abner’s mountain swearing a blood oath never to work again for a man with too much money. Only four rooms were done right. All the molds for the hand-cast, Mayan-figured bricks were carted off. The chevron-patterned hardwood floors, alternating rows of oak and mahogany, stopped at the door to the dining room, which was Georgian. Abner finished the house with the buckboard carpenter who mended his fences in Orange County. The rest was built to wrap around his travel souvenirs. As a result of which, Steepside from the air was like a priestess locked in the arms of a landed duke.
    The place was empty. He figured he must have misread the papers. If they meant to bury him here at dusk today,