When I emerged from the plane, the first thing that happened was that the sun completely blinded me. I’ve never seen such glare. Tears poured from my eyes in spite of my dark glasses. And then, as I walked toward the terminal and a cloud passed overhead, I realized that in the sun it was warm; in the shade, it was cold as hell. The air was exhilarating, sharp, and clean. Without question, the healthiest air I’d ever breathed.
Armand met us, as I knew he would. I believed his intentions toward Madam were entirely honorable—he was an honorable man. I’ve known criminals, intimately, and he exhibited none of their characteristics. He wasn’t furtive or paranoid. He conducted his business openly, in front of Madam, sometimes even in bed. He didn’t excuse himself, retreat to another room, speak in whispers, or babble in truncated codes. Much of what he did was confidential, to be sure, but he trusted her. Oh, God, what am I saying? He trusted her, and she was spying on him for the government. Brutal.
His ski clothes had been selected with the same sort of careful eye to understated power that he gave his business suits. The man was a rock of style and substance. He had on a black baseball cap with no logo, a bright red Armani parka, black stretch pants, and dark glasses. His face was more tanned than usual, which made his teeth, beneath his black mustache, as white as the snow.
“Jacqueline.” He rushed halfway across the tarmac to greet her, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her on both cheeks. “I am so glad you’re here. Look at you in your hat and boots. You look like a native. Hello, Nigel.” He shook my hand with a good, strong, genuine grasp. “Welcome to Aspen. How was your flight? Everything okay?” He took Madam’s hand luggage. “I’m sorry I couldn’t send my plane, but, you know,” he gave a Gallic shrug, “business.”
So what else is new? We never will have a plane. Even if she married him, he’d probably never let her use it. We needed someone who was so rich his plane was for fun. Whose company, or better yet, companies, had their own planes to use for business. That was the one problem with Armand, as far as I was concerned—business, business, business. Unfortunately, the ones whose planes were for fun were the ones like Junior. Nobody gets to have everything.
“It was perfect,” she answered, her words coming out in puffs from the cold. She was so happy to see him, she would have said anything on earth, even the most horrible natural disaster, was perfect. “We were totally comfortable thanks to all your special arrangements.”
“Good. Good.”
“Is everyone here already?”
“Yes, they all came in last night. You’re the last to arrive. Everyone’s on the mountain.”
“All I want to do is kiss you,” she laughed. She had her arm locked into his as though it were a life-preserver. “Did you go skiing this morning?”
“Of course. The snow is spectacular. There’s still time for us to get in a couple of runs this afternoon if we hurry. We’ll grab a light lunch at the club. Have you been there yet?”
“Where?”
“The Aspen Mountain Club.”
“No,” Madam answered enthusiastically. “I can’t wait.
I’ve heard so much about it.” She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
I knew all about it, but the chances of my ever seeing the Aspen Mountain Club—a private affair situated halfway up Ajax Mountain—were virtually nil. The founders’ initiation fee had been one hundred thousand and they’d sold out in a week. The standard initiation was then reduced to fifty thousand. The members weren’t really my crowd anyway, or rather, the crowd I would choose if I had a choice. They weren’t Madam’s either, but I knew they were about to be, if they were Armand’s.
“One change,” Armand was saying. “The Burneys canceled at the last minute and I invited Junior in their place. He’s been through so much, I felt sorry for him. That family seems to attract disaster. Also, I’m on to a couple of pieces he’ll be interested in.”
“Terrific.” She huddled closer. “I love Junior. I think he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known in my life.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as that, but at least his heart’s in the right place.”
Huh? I’m so ambivalent sometimes, I can’t stand myself. The truth is, according to Madam, Junior is fun, a big spoiled rich kid with a heart of gold, but I swear to God, if he called me a nigra again, I’d—well, I’m not sure what I’d do. Kill him, maybe.
All this while, Armand had been leading us through the terminal and out to the parking lot, where we stopped at a twinkling navy blue Ford Excursion so big it looked like a locomotive. I’d read about these cars: They had forty gallon tanks and got eight miles to the gallon, which seems cockeyed and hypocritical in a town that prides itself on its environmental awareness.
“Nigel, do you need help with the luggage?” Armand asked.
“No sir,” I answered, stowing my carry-on on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time,” he said. “We’re on vacation—no rushing.” He turned to kiss Madam, pinning her against the voluptuous hood of the car like a teenager.
I studied my surroundings as I waited for the luggage. The baggage claim area was jam-packed, wall-to-wall, with attractive people. Even the luggage handlers looked like tanned movie stars in their jeans and Sorel boots, Bogner parkas, and cowboy hats. I flagged down one with a large cart and we made small talk as we waited for the bags to start flowing in on the conveyor. By the time he’d lifted the four Eddie Bauer duffles, packed with clothes Madam could not afford and would never wear again, onto the cart, found her boot bag, which looked like everyone else’s, except for the thin scrap of brown Hermès ribbon I’d tied on the handle to make it easier to identify, and transferred her ski carrier, he’d asked me if I’d like to join him and some of his friends for a beer after work.
“Just give me a call. Here’s my number.” He handed me a card. Jeremy, it said. “Everybody’s pretty laid back.”
“Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t going to give Jeremy a call. I didn’t make my friends among anonymous baggage handlers, no matter how handsome, but the invitation reminded me of how alone I was, how lonely my profession is. If I wasn’t serving time in jail at the grace of Her Majesty, then it was at Madam’s. Always someone else’s grace, never my own. It was the trade I’d made not to accept responsibility for myself. Fernando’s face flashed through my mind—his slightly obvious toupee and snappy, pencil mustache, the gusto of his belly laugh and his wry sense of humor. I hadn’t met anyone even vaguely like him who was worth a nickel of my time. It had only been a couple of months ago—although it seemed like years—that Lynette Payne’s yacht had vanished into a ball of flame. I’d been in New York almost the whole time since then, while most of my buddies were with their bosses in Florida or the islands for the winter. But, of course, most of them were working for geezers.
And now I was in the baggage claim area of the Aspen airport getting hustled by a twenty-five-year-old. What on earth has become of discretion? This boy was a child, a fool, and playing a dangerous game. He was the epitome of how people these days approached every aspect of life: Let’s just do everything in public. Let’s just do what the Beatles said: Let’s do it in the road. Just the opposite of what’s proper. David Breashears, the man who’s climbed Everest five times (and made the IMAX movie during that deadly climb in May of 1996 when twelve people perished attempting to descend from the summit) was a real first class fellow. When he and his team completed their ascent, they came across the bodies of the two dead expedition leaders, but he kept the lens covers on his cameras out of respect for them. “Just because it happened, doesn’t mean it’s public,” he said. Bravo, Mr. Breashears. Let us follow his example. Let’s not do it in the road.
I gave Jeremy a twenty once the bags were loaded into the car, avoiding his attempt to brush my hand, and once I was buckled in, Armand pulled onto the plowed highway and proceeded toward town at a maddeningly slow pace. He was on the phone before we were out of the parking lot.
“Just one more call and I’m done, darling,” he said. Six times. We crawled along in the right-turn-only busses-only lane, sticking behind a local school-style bus as though it were towing us. It had racks packed with skis running along its sides. When it stopped, we stopped. Skiers piled on and off. Traffic flew past. Bus fumes filled our car.
Every now and then, as if to demonstrate how happy he was that Madam was with him and how sorry he was that his business was interrupting their good time, he’d point out the window and mouth words like “Buttermilk,” or “all golf course around here,” or “Aspen Highlands,” or “Music Festival tent over that way.” Madam looked wherever he directed and did her best to look interested rather than disappointed. Or miffed. We crept across a rickety, pot-holed suspension bridge, and the gorge it traversed was so deep, the bottom—where, a sign claimed, Maroon Creek ran—wasn’t visible. Mansions clung to its shadowy cliffs.
We passed a sign at the city limits: Aspen, Colorado. Elev: 7908 feet. My head began to throb. I was probably suffering from a little altitude sickness, oxygen deprivation, and so forth. Like exhaust fumes.
I reminded myself of two things: I was here to do my job, which was to make Madam’s life comfortable; and she was here to see if Armand Weil had stolen the Gardner Museum pieces and hidden them in a large vault deep in the mountainside beneath his house. That done, the government people would leave us alone and stop trying to wreck our life. This was a business trip for both of us and it was important to keep that in mind. I reached inside my jacket pocket and fingered the envelope that held the floor plans provided by the FBI.
Once past the snow-covered fields, we made two sharp turns, one right, one left, passed the bus, and emerged onto a snow-banked boulevard with old-fashioned street lights, trees still twinkling with Christmas lights, and brightly painted, restored little Victorian houses, interspersed with 1960s motels done up as chalets and given Old Country names such as Ullr Lodge, Tyrolean Lodge, Innsbuck Inn, Christiana, L’Auberge d’Aspen. Nothing local until, finally, the Molly Gibson.
Armand took a right onto Mill Street—I saw the famous old Hotel Jerome there on the corner—and showed us the town, wending his way along snow-packed streets lined with two-story red-brick Victorian buildings filled with restaurants and so many chic boutiques we could have been on Madison Avenue. The sidewalks were bustling with unbelievably good-looking people, most of them in tight-fitting ski clothes, some in full-length fur coats—coyotes included—and, I was glad to see, Prada after-ski boots just like Madam’s. “One of the must-haves,” the Gorsuch manager had insisted. We passed the skating rink; the plaza with its steps leading to the Silver Queen Gondola and its milling crowd of skiers waiting to board; Gorsuch itself, in the Little Nell Hotel; and the tiny Aspen Book Store. “There it is, Aspen,” Armand announced, “now we’ll go home.”
Moments later we approached the Hotel Jerome again from the opposite direction, turned down a steep hill, and started up the opposite side of the valley. All around us, packed like sardines, were private houses as large as the American Embassy in Paris. There was no air between them, and with all their different styles of architecture, tucked into each other as they were, they looked like super-impositions in an architect’s sales brochure.
We crossed a beautiful, hand-laid stone bridge over a frozen creek and started to climb what Armand, who had finally hung up the phone because the terrain required both hands on the wheel, explained was Red Mountain, so named because it was made of a heavy clay that turned red in the rain. Little snow stuck to the side of Red Mountain since it had a southwestern exposure, and there were almost no trees except those planted to screen the gargantuan residences. Halfway up, he turned off the road, crossed onto a snowy plateau, and passed through an electronically operated security gate set in a split-rail fence.
“Welcome, my darling, to my little hideaway.” He took Madam’s hand and kissed it.
One more turn, and the property—concealed behind a thick screen of towering Colorado Blue Spruce and groves of bare aspen trees—opened to reveal a sandstone and glass house, its flat roof studded with chimneys. Unlike the houses we’d been passing, Armand’s, in the school of Frank Lloyd Wright, fit unobtrusively into its pristine setting. The driveway was heated. Before we pulled into the garage, I looked out at the view of the entire Aspen Valley, the town itself, and the main ski area beyond. We had entered a postcard.
“I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” Madam told Armand, giving him one last smooch before we headed down a gallery-like hallway hung with paintings most museums would sell their souls for.