Rolling Hills is a distant suburb of Los Angeles, as far from the dark dangers of the surly downtown as it is possible to get. The other Hills—Beverly—gets a lot more attention, but Rolling Hills has the highest per capita income of any independent incorporated town in California, and one of the highest in the United States. It sits on a magnificently beautiful section of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, so pristine and well-regulated it never even makes the news. The residents are not A-list party types. The houses do not mushroom into unsightly French château wannabes. In fact, they do not mushroom at all. They don’t even sprawl. They are just big, in a one-story, manicured sort of way.
Not that you get to see them in the ordinary way of things. Even squinting through the foliage down the carpets of lawn isn’t possible unless you can get through the community entrance gates. There are no surprise visitors in Rolling Hills.
I drove up the hill from Redondo Beach (checking the backseat before I got into the car), ascending through ever-increasing levels of affluence as I went, like Dante in reverse. It was June, so the brilliant bougainvillea blossoms—hot pink and orange—blew like leaves across the road. A few riders cantered along the horse trails. The ocean was cerulean.
The gatekeeper had my name on a clipboard and waved me through. An older couple in a white Mercedes and a single man in a Jaguar got enthusiastic “Good Mornings!” and greetings by name as they whizzed by. I got a nod, but it was a friendly one.
I had been to the house twice before, the first time when Jordan Jensen’s secretary had arranged for me to see it when it was being “renovated.” In post–Proposition 13 “taxpayer revolution” days, that meant that one exterior wall was left standing while you gutted the rest of the house. This is a perfectly legal scam to avoid paying the property tax on the total increased value of your property. And they wonder why the schools don’t have any money.
Mira and Jordan were newlyweds—her first; his second, or maybe third. The house met all the art-jury specifications on the outside, but inside it was alarmingly minimalist. The decorator, an affected Vlad the Impaler look-alike named Valentin, had furnished everything in pale gray and eggshell. Other than that, there were no colors. It was hard to tell one room from the next.
Building a love nest in such arctic surroundings would seem to be a daunting task. The kitchen was so sleek and bare that even a morsel of celery would have seemed wildly untidy, not to mention riotously colorful. The bedroom was dominated by a giant white bed, the cover too straight and taut for sitting, much less lying down. You expected someone in a nurse’s uniform to round the corner any minute. Even the plants were sort of white, which was some trick.
Maybe the acres of eggshell walls had served as an inspiration, because the Jensens had decided to become Collectors. At least that’s what Jordan had told me, his voice breathless with the significance of it all. He had made a large pile of money in some venture capital deal in Brazil and now he wanted to acquire some art. Along the way he had acquired Mira as well, and that was the problem.
Mira opened the door before I could ring the bell, which was fortunate, since my hands were full. Ignoring my dilemma, she extended a slender hand and waited while I put down the projector and slides and sheaf of materials and took it. “Hello, Ellen,” she said.
Every cliché you have ever heard about trophy wives came out of hiding for Mira Jensen. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Stunning. Sensual. Slender. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer in the brains department, but not an embarrassment, either. She was dressed all in black, except for the silver concho belt accentuating her tiny waist—a stagy, if admittedly impressive, effect against the blanched interior. Her streaked blond hair might have made Catherine Deneuve look twice. She wasn’t a day over thirty, if that.
“Valentin isn’t here yet,” she announced. “Come into the living room and have some tea while you wait.” She led me past a full-length mirror with frosted, beveled edges. I caught sight of my reflection: I looked severe and unadorned in my navy blue St. John suit, like a Congresswoman on a fact-finding junket. Buttoned up and pared down. Though perfectly correct, it was not, as I had previously believed, a case of Less is More. Surrounded by so much white, it was like seeing yourself inside the refrigerator, without the food.
Standing there in the ice palace, I wondered whether I hadn’t been overdoing the ascetic approach to dressing, never mind to life. Sometimes More is More, too. You just have to know when.
“The house looks lovely,” I said, giving Mira an Amway Distributor smile. I might have been feeling cranky about my buttoned-up life, but I wasn’t about to let on that I found the architectural equivalent of snow camping anything but delightful. I looked around; there wasn’t a book anywhere in sight. Not even a magazine. Not a single object reflected the taste or interests of its owners; the effect was as impersonal as the doctor’s office, and about as welcoming. “Charming,” I reiterated. It gave new meaning to the term “white lie.”
I’m a practiced deceiver. In my business you have to be, when you see what kinds of things people pick out as art. Mira smiled graciously. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Jordan might have been interested in becoming a collector (with secret visions of the Jordan and Mira Jensen Wing at L.A. County Museum of Art, if he made it really big), but Mira was more interested in art as decoration. She even called it “choosing accessories,” before Jordan corrected her in a pained tone.
She’d told me, over a lovely glass of Cambria Chardonnay, that she and Valentin the Awful had visited galleries all over L.A. for six days in a row without finding anything she liked. That’s how I got the job of finding something that would satisfy both Mira’s desire for a nonconfrontational but tasteful commodity to fill the wall space as well as Jordan’s fantasy to become the Norton Simon of the suburbs. So far, aesthetic appreciation hadn’t entered into the equation, but I was used to that.
“I hope,” said Mira, delicately sipping her passion fruit tea, “that we’ll be able to find something soon. We’d like to have something up for the party we’re giving at the end of the month. Even if it has to go back afterward.”
A lot of art consultants don’t want to do this kind of work. In the eighties, when all the money lying around loose fueled a huge surge in the art market, people could afford to be choosier about their clients. In the best of all possible worlds, the consultant acts as an intermediary between museums and artists, artists and collectors, collectors and dealers, and between different organizations and individuals. You might originate the contacts for a sale or exhibition, advise on acquisitions, define or reshape an art collection, and, if you move in the rarified upper echelons, direct the preparation of catalogues.
What you really do is try to make your clients look good, which means keeping quiet after the acquisition so that they can get all the credit for being knowledgeable. And sometimes, although the top people in the profession would never willingly admit it, you’re just a glorified interior decorator. When you walk into a gallery and the assistant greets you with “Small, medium, or large?” it’s hard to draw any other conclusion.
Gallery owners are sometimes unwilling to educate the untutored buyer, and I admit it can get tedious to try to explain exactly why the figure’s breast looks like it’s growing out of the side of her neck, but negotiating the terrain of cultivated tastes and exalted prices can be intimidating. Besides, all the aesthetic posturing is sometimes just an advanced form of one-upmanship, in which if you don’t profess to admire mounted lengths of twine or a twelve-by-twelve-foot square of glass balls on the floor, you are somehow lacking in sophistication. If you doubt the power of such fears to move people to idiotic departures from common sense, remember “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” If Hans Christian Andersen were writing today, the Emperor would be walking through a Jeff Koons exhibition, pontificating on the urinals.
Still, even with a more tolerant view of aesthetic apostasy, Mira was going to present a bit of a challenge.
“Tell me about the party,” I told her.
She shrugged. “Just a few dozen of our closest friends,” she said without irony. “Everyone’s been asking to see what we’ve done to the house, so we thought this would be the easiest way.” She put down her teacup. “I know I told you there was no hurry, but, naturally, we hoped that the art…”
Her voice trailed off naturally. She was being nice about putting the squeeze on me, but I was used to that from clients, too. Once, I “furnished” an entire suite of offices over a weekend, because the representatives from the head office in Japan were due in town on Monday morning.
“Yes, I know,” I said quickly. “I’ve put together quite a few slides for you based on our discussions. I’m sorry not to be able to get back to you sooner, but I did tell you that I was going to be tied up with jury duty for several weeks,” I reminded her gently.
“Oh, yes,” she said vaguely, uninterested. Or maybe it was just that such a preposterous activity was outside her scope of imagination.
She looked at her watch. Valentin was obviously late. He made it a habit, which is one reason I found him so irritating. She roused herself to make small talk. “What kind of trial was it?”
“Murder,” I said.
Even a witless mannequin would have to have had some reaction, and Mira was something more than that. Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes. You might have read about it in the newspaper. The Natasha Ivanova case.”
The doorbell rang. Mira got to her feet gracefully but promptly. The door was a good half acre away, so she might have needed a running start.
She paused. “I do know about it,” she said, looking serious. “The thing is, I met her a couple of times. I’m glad they caught the killer.”
This was intriguing. “Where?” I asked, as she was disappearing down the hall.
She turned back a little and shrugged. “At parties.” Obviously not an unusual event. Frowning, she pressed her hands together. “As a matter of fact, she’s the one who introduced me to my husband.”
Valentin swept in before I had a chance to digest this, so I didn’t pursue it. But—wow—could the rich and handsome venture capitalist and the gorgeous ex-model really have required the services of a matchmaker to get together? It boggled the mind.
Everybody in the South Bay suddenly seemed to know something about Natasha Ivanova. Everybody, that is, except the jury who’d been sitting on the case for weeks.
Valentin was not in a friendly mood, which meant that his usually biting sarcasm was even more corrosive than usual. He was a big man, with a shock of gray-white hair (one of his favorite colors, apparently), high Slavic cheekbones, and dark piercing eyes without a trace of warmth. Like Mira, he was wearing black. The two of them could have been going to audition for a particularly stylish symphony orchestra.
Valentin’s irritation might have been due to his unsuccessful six-day shopping excursion with the Jensens, which meant that now he would have to give the art commission to me. He didn’t enjoy my company any more than I did his, but he had to work with me because there weren’t many people who specialized in Latin American art. I’d “discovered” it before it got hot, so I had all the contacts. Brazilians were especially popular right now, and of course the Mexicans had been a big draw for years. I did lots of other things, too, but in Southern California, Latin America had the advantage of being politically correct as well as out of the ordinary. At least for the time being.
Valentin settled himself grumpily onto the Jensens’ eggshell leather couch. It probably cost as much as my Camry. “I hope you brought lots of slides,” he announced. “Mira and Jordan are very selective.”
Mira acknowledged what she apparently believed was a graceful compliment with a small, satisfied smile. Some clients relish the idea that they are difficult, so you have to humor them by acknowledging it. The best thing is to do it in a way that doesn’t encourage them to get even worse.
“Did you tell Ellen about the party?” he asked her, leaning over to reposition a glass bowl on the table. It was white, naturally. He turned to me without waiting for her response. “We need these now, Ellen, I hope you understand. This is going to be a very exclusive gathering.” His tone suggested that, by comparison, the Last Supper was far too democratic.
“But I—we—would like both of you to come, too,” said Mira disingenuously.
Well, not too exclusive, apparently.
“People might have questions about the art and furnishings,” she added, by way of explanation.
Valentin looked as if he smelled something awful, but since that was his habitual look, it was difficult to tell if he was seriously displeased. “Thank you,” he said abruptly. “I think we should get on with the slides.”
I started with my less-than-top choices because whatever I put on first had a good chance of being rejected by Valentin out of ill humor and by Mira out of a determination to prove how selective she was.
“Here’s one I think might be very striking,” I told them, after the first four or five had passed without any comment except indecipherable muttering from Valentin. “The colors are very strong, and the lines are simple.” It was a white ceramic bowl of fruit against a yellow background.
I put the slide on the screen. “Unfortunately, this artist’s work does tend to be rather expensive.” Mira sat up straighter on the couch, leaning forward.
“Mira doesn’t like fruit,” Valentin said decisively.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“How about flowers?”
“Even worse,” Valentin answered for her. “I like the lines and colors, but what we’d really like is a bowl without the fruit.”
“Or a pot without the flowers,” I said.
He looked at me suspiciously, to see if I was making fun of him. I was, but I’d heard far worse and it didn’t show.
“How expensive?” asked Mira suddenly.
I tried not to smile. “Something major by the same artist went for just over two hundred thousand dollars at a Christie’s Latin American art auction. But that was before the collapse of the market. This one would probably be in the twenty-to-fifty-thousand-dollar range.”
“We could probably manage that,” she said smoothly.
“I’ll contact the gallery and arrange for you to see it, if you think you might be interested. Most of the artist’s works are represented in New York, but this one is in Santa Monica.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s not too far. I hate it when you have to drive really far to look at something.”
“Or when they make you walk up the stairs,” I said sympathetically.
I mean, come on. Valentin was looking at me suspiciously again, so I thought better of scoring more points off my client—a dangerous thrill in the best of circumstances.
By the end of the slide show, I had also interested her in two “horizontals” and a “vertical” as well as a very high-tech piece of sculpture for the bathroom. They were lots less expensive than the fruit bowl, but it was a great morning’s work. Valentin gave grudging approval to the selections. I would have to keep my fingers crossed about Jordan, but the biggest battle was already won.
I put the slides and catalogues back into my briefcase and picked up the projector. “I’ll call you in the next day or so, so we can get moving on any of these you like,” I promised her.
“Speed is of the essence,” Valentin reminded me nastily. “We won’t be dropping out of sight again any time soon, will we?”
“I certainly hope not,” I told him.
Mira came unexpectedly to my defense. “Ellen’s been on jury duty,” she said.
“How lovely for you,” murmured Valentin.
“The Garcia trial,” she persisted. “You know, the boy that killed Natasha Ivanova.”
He drew himself up to his imperial height. In the shadowed entryway, his skin tone was as pallid as the decor. He gave me the creeps. “I’m afraid I don’t follow that sort of news story,” he said dismissively.
“I was just telling Ellen before you got here that she was the one who introduced me to Jordan,” she chirped.
Ordinarily, I would have expected this to elicit some enthusiastic comment from Valentin, who, despite his dyspeptic outlook, still knew how many beans make five. He said nothing, however. I couldn’t think of the right response, either.
She caught us looking at her. Enlightenment dawned. “Oh, not like that,” she said, with a lovely, silvery laugh. “I mean, I know she had a matchmaking business, but I didn’t know her that way. She was an art collector,” she said to me. “She gave these fabulous art soirées. I’m surprised you didn’t know her, Ellen. Lots of our friends did.”
I remembered the Erté statue. “Well, maybe she collected art I don’t usually handle,” I told her.
She frowned. “Yes, maybe that’s it.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “She was a Russian aristocrat, you know. The Soviets killed all her family, like the czar.”
I refrained from pointing out that the aristocracy had disappeared in 1917, which would have made Natasha a bit long in the tooth by the time of her death. Michael’s specialty had been prerevolutionary Russia. I didn’t mention that, either.
“Really?” I inquired politely.
She nodded. “Yes. You can always tell. Something in the way she carried herself. Those dramatic clothes and jewels. And those tragic eyes.” She turned to Valentin. “I thought she had a beautiful house, didn’t you?”
He put his hand on the doorknob and opened the door. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” he said in a tone that bordered on rudeness. He amended it moments afterward by kissing his patroness’s hand, a gesture she seemed to find in no way unusual. Maybe he was inspired by all that talk of aristocrats. I settled for a handshake.
“I fear I must leave à l’instant,” he said. He looked at us, apparently considering whether this required a translation. He decided against it. “Coming, Ellen?” He practically propelled me out the door. Since my arms were full, I was powerless to resist him.
“What? What is it?” I said, when the two of us were alone outside. I almost blinked in the sunlight, the colors were so bright after Igloo Jensen. The courtyard seemed improbably lush and tropical, full of potted palms and other exotica. A wild peacock, the bane of peninsula residents, shrieked close by. I jumped.
Valentin walked me over to the car, his grip tight on my arm. “I don’t want you seeing her alone,” he said seriously, releasing his hold.
“Why not?” I asked stupidly.
“Don’t think I don’t realize what’s going on here. You’d like to cut me out of the loop. Don’t think I didn’t pick up on all your little innuendos.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I told him.
“Is it? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of how much more you could make if I weren’t in the picture. Don’t tell me you didn’t arrive early on purpose.”
“Valentin, stop it with the ‘don’t tell me’s’. You’re being paranoid. In the first place, I wasn’t early; you were late.” I forbore mentioning that he was always late. “I know how these things work. I have no interest in cutting you out of anything.” I tried to make a joke out of it. “This isn’t real estate, for God’s sake.”
“I hope you do know how they work.” He reached across me and opened the car door. His nails were polished to a high gloss. “Nobody cuts me out, Ellen. Just so we understand each other. Nobody.”