Sun Tzu

 

Griff parked the Chrysler rental car down the street from Cliff Nickolson’s contemporary-style mansion near the Stone Canyon Reservoir in Bel Air. Watching and waiting until the regular cleaning crew left, he noted the company name, website, phone number, and license plate number on the Dodge Caravan parked in the driveway. Through the telephoto lens on his Cannon Rebel T6, he took close-up shots of each of the four women who got in the Maid-In-LA minivan. He wanted to put eyes on the people who were regularly inside Cliff Nickolson’s home. He planned to come back the next day to similarly scout the landscaping crew. Both companies were holdovers retained by the realtor to maintain the thirty-nine-million-dollar listing in pristine condition for prospective buyers.

He waited a half hour, then did a perimeter walk of the property before approaching the house. Once at the front door, he discreetly donned latex gloves from a small tool bag. Using the code Lance got from the listing agent for the lock box, he quietly let himself into the mansion and stepped into the posh setting for Helena’s formative years.

Griff punched the security code into the keypad to disable the alarm system and stood still in the foyer for a full three minutes, listening closely for any human sound. He then quickly walked the memorized floor plan, clearing each room and closet of the three-story house. A half-hour later, he was back at the front door ready to go to work.

The interior was pristinely kept but also very much unalive, having been unoccupied since the helicopter crash in Pebble Beach eighteen months prior while JR and the family lawyers sorted out the final affairs of the elder Nickolsons. Fresh flowers did little to cut the pervasive odor of cleaning solvents. Of course, there were no lingering aromas of cooking or any human hints of cologne, perfumes, bath soaps, or even body odors. Only Glade air fresheners in the closets, which were empty of any apparel. The home had a sad sterility to it. Marble mantles, walls and staircases, along with the granite countertops in the bathrooms, wet bars and kitchen chilled the luxurious ambiance, like a morgue. The effect was aided and abetted by predominantly arctic white furniture. Griff highly doubted the residence would yield up any items on Helena’s list, as the home had been meticulously scrubbed of any personally identifying effects—no doubt in part to mask the family tragedy that put the house on the market, which made a big splash in the national media at the time.

Nevertheless, he worked the rooms methodically, checking every closet, drawer, and shelf for drill. What he really hoped to gain was at least a faint sense of the family dynamic when the Nickolson family was alive, intact and filling the house with life, so once his search for physical items was done, Griff took the time to sit in each room, surveying them from every different angle and perspective the furnishings allowed. He worked his way from the first floor up, spending the most time in Cliff Nickolson’s office. All evidence of his personal collection of memorabilia had been polished out of the bookshelves lining the walls, which were now filled with fake books.

Upstairs, JR’s and Helena’s rooms betrayed their former occupants: Dark wood furniture, browns, and an LA Dodgers poster for JR; a white enamel canopy bed, matching dresser, and warmer blue colors—not lavender or purple—with a Van Gogh print of Starry Night for Helena. He went to her bedroom window and, as the sun set, absorbed the panoramic view of Los Angeles that surely filled Helena’s childhood dreams and wondered what those dreams might have been.

Griff’s phone rang. He knew who it was before even looking at the screen. “Hello…Helena…”

“You must be stalking me through the past, no? You certainly aren’t going to find anything there. The realtor made sure of that.”

“If you know the enemy, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,” Griff said, quoting Sun Tzu.

“Forgetting something, aren’t you?”

“What’s that?”

“If you know the enemy and know yourself…”

Griff smiled at her correction. “You never fail to surprise me.”

“I know. That’s my job.”

“Thank you. It keeps life interesting.”

“Yeah, and I know how interested you are in interesting things.”

“Nice place.” The lights of LA began to glitter in the gathering darkness like spilt diamonds below.

“I had a happy childhood.”

“I’ll bet. So, you going to get the thirty-nine million asking price?”

“Doesn’t really matter. Daddy bought it with petty cash for nine hundred thousand out of foreclosure in the Nineties.”

Lance is right, Griff thought, way above my weight class.

“Some movie producer bet the farm on an Oscar and flopped hard.”

Don’t do it—do not ask—don’t, don’t don’t, Griff told himself inside his head, but he could not resist is own instincts. “And where are you now?”

“Just doing a little shopping.”

“Fifth Avenue or the Miracle Mile?”

Helena laughed. “Why, you are a sly devil, aren’t you?”

“Say hi to Lance for me.”

“Maybe I’ll buy you a little something.”

“Like a five-thousand-dollar bottle of scotch?”

“You no like?”

“It is awesome.”

“Well, there you go. Don’t forget to stop by Daddy’s office.”

“Next on the list.”

“Off you go then. We’ll talk again soon.”

Before Griff could put the iPhone back in his pocket, it dinged with a text message: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

Griff could only smile.

 

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