Hollywood Hills

THREE

Leona Brueger had always referred to her home located high in the Hollywood Hills, almost to Woodrow Wilson Drive, as a mini-estate. Three residential lots had been bought and cleared of aging houses and tied together to make it the largest parcel in that part of the Hills, with a splendid view almost to the ocean. Her late husband, Sammy Brueger, had made most of his early money by buying into three wholesale meat distributors at a time when people said you couldn’t make real money in that business.

Sammy Brueger proved them wrong and did it with a slogan that his first wife dreamed up: “You can’t beat Sammy’s meat.” And then, early in the presidency of Richard Nixon, Sammy started following the New York Stock Exchange and became interested in a stock for no other reason than that its NASDAQ symbol, POND, was the maiden name of his wife. He was a born gambler, and when he learned that POND stood for Ponderosa Steak House in Dayton, Ohio, he thought that Lady Luck was calling him. The stock symbol bore his wife’s name, and the product was something that he bought and sold every day-meat! So Sammy plowed everything he had into that stock and it zoomed upward an astounding 10,000 percent and he became very rich. He divorced the wife named Pond and married a failed actress whose surname never helped him, and neither did she. Because of the prenuptial, the second one wasn’t so expensive to unload.

His third and final wife, Leona, thirty-two years younger than Sammy, told other trophy wives at her Pilates class that the meat slogan had certainly been true in the last ten years of the old man’s life, and she thanked God for it. She still shuddered when she thought of him in his old age crawling over her at night like a centipede.

Leona Brueger was still a size two, and was trainer-firm, with expressive brown eyes, delicate facial bones, and a Mediterranean skin tone that bore no evidence of the considerable work she had bought in order to stay looking so good at the age of sixty. Her last birthday had been devastating, no matter how much she had tried to prepare for it psychologically. Leona Brueger’s natural hair color had been milk chocolate brown at one time, and she hated to think what color it would be now if she ever stopped the monthly color and highlights.

On a summer afternoon while sitting by the pool skimming Elle and Vogue and reading Wine Spectator cover to cover, she happened to see a mention of a Beverly Hills art gallery where Sammy had bought three very expensive pieces of Impressionist art, two by French artists and one by a Swede. Leona couldn’t remember much about the artists and hardly noticed the paintings back when Sammy was alive, opining to girlfriends that trees and flowers should look as though they were living things distinct from the land that nourished them. And the nearly nude body of a peasant woman feeding a kitten in one of the paintings depressed her. She feared that she would look like that when, despite Pilates and a weekly game of tennis on the Brueger tennis court with her Pilates partners, her ass finally gave up and collapsed from boredom and fatigue.

But the article she was reading made her wonder why it had taken her so long to have the paintings appraised after Sammy died, trusting him that they were of “museum quality.” He’d always said that the very pricey pieces should hang exactly where he’d placed them: in their great room, the dining room, and along the main corridor of “Casa Brueger.”

She strolled inside from the pool, sipping an iced tea, wishing it were late enough for a nice glass of cool Fumé Blanc, and studied the three oldest pieces to try to see why anyone would think they were so valuable. She stood before the largest, the one of a woman squatting beside what looked to Leona like a pond or a lagoon. She decided to call the Wickland Gallery on Wilshire Boulevard to ask Nigel Wickland when he’d be coming back for the appraisal. The art dealer had stopped by a week earlier at her request and taken a preliminary look, but he’d said he needed to “research the provenance” before he could give her accurate information. It was hard for her to think about appraisals or any other business when she was about to embark on one of the great adventures of her life.

She’d leased a villa in Tuscany for three months and was going there with Rudy Ressler, the movie director/producer she’d been dating off and on for more than a year. Rudy was amusing and had lots of show-business anecdotes that he could relate by mimicking the voices of the players involved. He wasn’t as young as she would like if she decided to marry again, but he was controllable and an amazingly unselfish lover, even though that didn’t matter as much as it used to. And he still knew enough people very active in show business to ensure that they’d always have interesting dining partners. His one Oscar-nominated film had kept him on the A-list for the past twenty years. If they ever married, she figured she’d end up supporting him, but what the hell, she was bucks-up rich. Sammy had left her more than she could ever spend in her lifetime. And that reminded her again that she was now sixty years old. How much of a life did she have left?

For a moment Leona couldn’t remember what she was about to do, but then she remembered: call the Wickland Gallery. She got Nigel Wickland on the phone and made an appointment for the following afternoon, when he would have a closer look at the thirteen pieces of art. She’d have to make a note to ask the gallery owner if he thought her security system was adequate to protect the artwork while she was in Tuscany. But then she thought, screw it. Sammy had the art so heavily insured that she almost hoped someone would steal all of it. Then she could buy some paintings that were vibrant and alive. It was time for Leona Brueger to get out and really live, away from her palatial cocoon in the Hollywood Hills. She might finally take the risk and buy a vineyard and winery up in Napa Valley.

Raleigh L. Dibble was in his third-floor apartment in east Hollywood, getting ready for the part-time job he was doing that evening on the only day off from his regular work. It paid chump change, but it helped with the rent and the car payment on his nine-year-old Toyota Corolla, which needed tires and a tune-up. He stood before the mirror and adjusted his black bow tie, a real one, not one of those crappy clip-ons that everyone wore nowadays. He fastened the black cummerbund over his starched dress shirt and slipped into his tuxedo jacket for a big dinner party in the Hollywood Hills celebrating the release of a third-rate movie by some hack he had never heard of.

All Raleigh knew about the homeowner tonight was that the guy was a junior partner in a Century City law firm who needed an experienced man like Raleigh to augment his hired caterers and make sure that things ran smoothly. Raleigh’s past life as the owner of a West Los Angeles catering business had qualified him for these quasi-butler jobs where nouveaus could pretend they knew their ass from corned beef. Raleigh had met a lot of wealthy people and earned a good reputation, which brought him a small but steady income and had kept him from drinking the Kool-Aid after his business had gone belly-up.

He thought he didn’t look too bad in the tux. Mother Nature, the pitiless cunt, had put macaroni-and-cheese handles around his middle, and it was getting scary. At only five foot seven he wasn’t tall enough to carry the blubber overload. Though he didn’t have much hair left, what he had was nutmeg brown with the help of Grecian Formula. And his jawline was holding up, but only because the extra fat had puffed his cheeks like a goddamn woodchuck. Now he had a double chin-no, make it a triple. If he could ever earn enough money, he hoped to get a quarter of his body siphoned into the garbage can by one of the zillion cosmetic surgeons plying their trade on the west side of Los Angeles. Then maybe a hair transplant and even an eye lift to complete the overhaul, because his eyes, the color of faded denim, were shrinking from the encroachment of the upper lids. Enough money could rectify all of that.

Before he left the apartment for that night’s gig, he figured he’d better call Julius Hampton, his full-time boss for the past six months. The old man had just turned eighty-nine years of age when he’d hired Raleigh, who was thirty-one years younger almost to the day. Raleigh had been hired the month after Barack Obama took office, and it was an okay job being a live-in butler/chef and all-around caretaker six days a week for the old coot. He was being paid by a downtown lawyer who administered the Hampton trust fund, but the lawyer was a tight ass who acted like it was his money, and Raleigh had had to practically beg for a wage increase in early summer.

Julius Hampton had been an indefatigable and flamboyant cruiser of Santa Monica Boulevard in his day, but he’d never made any kind of pass at Raleigh even before learning that his new employee was straight. Raleigh figured that gay or straight, it wouldn’t matter to the old man anyway, since Raleigh was no George Clooney, and the geezer was through with sex. Julius Hampton was left only with fantasies stoked by their weekly visits to west Hollywood gay bars, more out of nostalgia than anything else.

This boss had been a longtime friend of a lot of other rich old men on the west side, not all of them gay by any means. Raleigh had driven Julius Hampton to many dinner parties where Raleigh would hang around the kitchen with the other help until the party was over or his boss got tired. On nights when the old man’s phlebitis was bothering him, Raleigh would bring the collapsible wheelchair from the car and wheel him out to the old Cadillac sedan that his boss loved and Raleigh hated. Raleigh figured that in his day, Julius Hampton probably had a lot of boy sex in that Cadillac, back when his plumbing still worked. Maybe sitting on those beat-up leather seats brought him delicious memories. In any case, his boss had dismissed the suggestion every time Raleigh urged him to junk the Cadillac and buy a new car.

Raleigh L. Dibble had been in the catering business almost continually since his high school days in San Pedro, the third child and only son of a longshoreman and a hairdresser. As a young man he’d begun concentrating on using good diction while he was on a job, any job. He’d read a self-improvement book stressing that good diction could trump a poor education, and Raleigh had never gone to college. All he’d ever known was working for inadequate wages in food service until he went into business as a working partner with Nellie Foster of Culver City, who made the best hors d’oeuvres and gave the best blow jobs he’d ever known. They’d done pretty well in the catering business when times were good, working out of a storefront on Pico Boulevard. But they’d gotten into some “difficulties,” as he always described his fall from grace.

Raleigh had been forced by circumstance to write several NSF checks, and after that was straightened out, the IRS got on them like a swarm of leeches, sucking their blood and tormenting them for over a year until a criminal case for fraud and tax evasion was filed in federal court. Raleigh had done the manly thing at that time and taken the bullet for both himself and Nellie, claiming to authorities that she knew nothing about the “edgy paperwork” that had helped to keep them afloat temporarily.

He’d been sentenced to one year in prison to be served at the Federal Correctional Complex in Lompoc, California, and the night before he had to report to federal marshals, Nellie gave him a tearful good-bye and thanked him for saving her ass. She promised to write and to visit him often. But she’d seldom written and never visited, and she married a house painter two months after Raleigh was behind bars. And he didn’t even get a farewell blow job.

Raleigh had served eight months of his sentence, gotten paroled, rented a cheap apartment in a risky gang neighborhood in east Hollywood, and lived by hiring out as a waiter to various caterers he’d known when he was in the business. Then he’d stumbled into the position with Julius Hampton as what the old man called his “gentleman’s gentleman.” Julius had seen too many English movies, Raleigh figured, but he made sure his diction was always up to par when he was in his boss’s presence.

The dinner party in the Hollywood Hills that night turned out to be disastrous because the lawyer homeowner had hired a Mexican caterer to serve what was supposed to be Asian fusion. As far as Raleigh was concerned, there was nothing more dangerous than a Mexican with a saltshaker, and everything tasted of sea salt. Raleigh played his role to the hilt, but Stephen Fry as Jeeves the butler couldn’t have saved this one. His feet and knees were killing him when the night finally ended and he could get home to bed.

The next morning Raleigh was up early and on his way to pick up Julius Hampton to take him to Cedars-Sinai for a checkup with his cardiologist. After that, they went back to the Hampton house, where the old man had his afternoon nap, and he was raring to go again when he woke up and remembered that it was the night for his weekly lobster dinner at the Palm. Raleigh had never been crazy about lobster but he could have a rib eye and a couple of Jack Daniel’s to get him through the rest of the evening at one of the west Hollywood gay bars that the old man still liked to frequent at least one night a week.

By the time they’d finished dining and arrived at the gay bar, it was filling up with other customers also arriving after dinner, and they were lucky to get a small table. The sweating waiters couldn’t deliver drinks to the customers fast enough. Raleigh and his elderly boss were sipping martinis close enough to the three-deep bar patrons for the old letch to gawk at all the muscular buns in tight pants, some of which Raleigh figured were butt-pad inserts. Many of the younger hustlers wore tight Ralph Lauren jerseys with jeans or shorts, and the old boy gazed at them with melancholy. Raleigh was certain that their crotch mounds were from stuffing socks in their Calvins. He figured the youthful hustlers must buy socks by the gross at Costco.

Julius Hampton recognized Nigel Wickland before the Beverly Hills art dealer recognized him. “Nigel!” he said as the art dealer was passing their table on his way back from the restroom.

At first Raleigh thought that Nigel Wickland was about sixty years old, but up close, he looked more like sixty-five. He was tall and fashionably thin, with a prominent chin, heavy dark eyebrows, and a full head of hair so white that it looked mauve under the mood lighting. He wore a tailor-made, double-breasted navy blazer, a pale blue Oxford cotton shirt, and an honest-to-god blue ascot impeccably folded against his throat. Raleigh wondered if the blazer was Hugo Boss or maybe Valentino, or was it a Men’s Wearhouse copy? And how about the shoes? Were they O.J. Simpson Bruno Maglis or knockoffs? Nigel Wickland wore his clothes so well that you couldn’t tell if they were the real things.

Then Raleigh’s attention was drawn to the man’s exquisite hands. The fingers were long and tapered, the nails beautifully manicured, and there were no prominent veins to be seen, which there should have been on a man his age. Raleigh wondered if guys even had cosmetic surgeons do their hands around here, and if so, whether they called it a hand job.

The art dealer stroked his chin and seemed nonplussed for a moment, probably thinking that Julius was just another dotty old queen who frequented the west Hollywood clubs, until the octogenarian said, “It’s me, Julius Hampton. Remember? We played bridge at the Bruegers’ a couple of times before Sammy passed away.”

“Julius!” Nigel Wickland said. “Of course I remember. How are you?”

As they shook hands, Julius Hampton said, “Still upright, more or less, with the help of my man here. I’d like you to meet Raleigh Dibble. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Sit down and join us.”

The art dealer extended his graceful hand to Raleigh and said, “Nigel Wickland. Pleased to meet you.”

“Same here, Mr. Wickland,” Raleigh said.

“Nigel, please,” the art dealer said to him. “And may I call you Raleigh?”

“Of course,” Raleigh said.

Raleigh wondered if the toffee-nosed accent was legit or something the art dealer affected for L.A.’s west-side nouveau. Raleigh had spent nearly six months bumming around Europe as a young man and had lived in London for a summer, waiting tables at a bistro. He’d even considered affecting an Oxbridge accent like Nigel Wickland’s when he’d been in the catering business but decided that it could backfire if his customers found him out. They liked their phonies to be less obvious phonies around these parts.

“What’ll you have?” Julius Hampton said to the art dealer, and Raleigh noticed that the old man’s bony hands were trembling most of the time. It was hard for him to hold a martini glass anymore without spilling it.

Nigel Wickland ordered a banana daiquiri and chatted with Julius Hampton about the bargains now available at the Wickland Gallery. Raleigh Dibble figured he knew the Nigel Wickland type well enough. The west side of L.A. was full of them. Given the art dealer’s obvious ego, the gallery would of course bear his name. And even though a man as old as Julius Hampton would be an unlikely prospect for a sale, Nigel Wickland seemed compelled to chat him up about the treasures to be had just a few blocks away on Wilshire Boulevard. Raleigh figured that the art dealer was constantly chumming the waters in case any of Julius Hampton’s less grizzled friends or neighbors was ever tempted to take the bait.

“The bloody recession is forcing people to sell for indecently low prices,” Nigel told them, and signaled to the waiter for another round when his glass was still half full.

Boozer, Raleigh thought, but then reminded himself that in the gay bars everyone seemed to drink more to bolster their courage for encounters that were often risky.

It was then that Nigel Wickland said, “Have you been to the Brueger house since Sammy passed? I sometimes wonder how Leona is really holding up.”

Old Julius Hampton cackled and said, “The merriest of widows is dear Leona. I understand she sometimes dates a filmmaker named Rudy Ressler when he’s not molesting children at UCLA, where he lectures at the film school. He’s one of those people who make cheap indie films that probably go straight to DVD.”

Raleigh had been impressed many times by his employer’s knowledge of the movie business as well as any other business that was peculiarly relevant to Angelenos. Like his father before him, Julius Hampton had made his fortune as a real-estate developer, and the Hampton brokers bought and sold to real Hollywood names on a regular basis, not to second-raters like Rudy Ressler. As Julius Hampton and Nigel Wickland chatted about people they knew in common, Raleigh excused himself and went to the restroom.

While Raleigh was gone, Nigel Wickland said, “Nice chap. Seems competent.”

“Very,” Julius Hampton said, with just enough drink in him to gossip. “His catering business failed some time ago and he’s eking out a living now. He’s basically very honest but he got in some tax trouble with Uncle Sam back then. Had to spend some time locked up in federal prison. I have a PI do a background on everyone I hire. I’ve never questioned Raleigh about his past even though I know a lot about it. I can tell you that he cooks like Julia Child.”

“The poor fellow,” Nigel Wickland said. “That is certainly a spot of bother to live down, isn’t it? Still, many people around here have had similar problems with the IRS. That doesn’t make him a criminal.”

When Raleigh returned from the restroom, Nigel Wickland started paying more attention to him than to Julius Hampton. Raleigh didn’t sense that it was a gay thing. It just seemed that Nigel Wickland wanted to learn about his work history. Nigel asked if this was his first job as a butler/chef. And he seemed very interested in Raleigh’s former catering business, saying he thought he remembered Raleigh’s employees catering some soirees at the Wickland Gallery. Raleigh thought that was just bullshit until he remembered that Nellie had catered a fancy gig at a Beverly Hills art gallery. They’d lost money on it when she’d failed to anticipate the amount of champagne needed, and she’d had to quickly run to the nearest liquor store and buy cases at retail. Was that the Wickland Gallery? He couldn’t remember.

Then Nigel Wickland started to wheeze. He took a few short deep breaths that didn’t seem to help him. He muttered, “Please forgive me,” and took an inhaler from his trousers pocket, turning away from Raleigh and Julius Hampton. He put the inhaler in his mouth and pressed the canister, simultaneously inhaling deeply, holding the steroid in his lungs as long as possible.

When he exhaled, he turned back to them and said, “I’m sorry. Adult-onset asthma. It started three years ago. Part of the indignities of advancing age.”

Julius Hampton said, “You think you’re old? Like Willie Nelson said, I’ve outlived my dick. I wouldn’t want to outlive my liver. Without a decent martini, what’s the point in any of it?”

Nigel Wickland then said to Raleigh, “Did you ever think about starting up your catering business again? I don’t mean in the middle of this recession but later.”

“It takes starter money to get a business like that going,” Raleigh said. “I’d have to win the lottery or something.”

“Still, there’s nothing like the feeling of independence that being one’s own boss can give. Especially with men of a certain age, like you and me.”

Julius Hampton said, “What it all boils down to is relevancy. All the elderly understand that. You will, too, sooner than you think. Marty Brueger always talks about it. He says when he started feeling irrelevant, he knew he was through with living. That’s what he’s doing in Leona’s guesthouse-waiting to die.”

“Well, you’re not irrelevant, Mr. Hampton,” Raleigh said quickly.

Nigel Wickland said, “Hear me, god. Save us all from irrelevance.”

As Nigel returned to pumping the chubby butler about his work history, Julius Hampton began getting restless at being left out of the conversation. After the second martini, the old man said, “Well, Raleigh, is it time to go home and see what’s on TV tonight?”

Then Nigel Wickland said quickly, “Raleigh, here’s my card. Give me a ring and I’ll show you around the gallery. Any time at all. I think you’d enjoy it.”

When they were driving home, Julius Hampton said, “Well, well, Nigel Wickland seemed smitten with you, Raleigh. What’s the secret of your attraction?”

“Unless he likes Pillsbury Doughboys, it couldn’t be physical,” Raleigh said, patting his belly. “I’ve got so much flab spilling over my belt that my hips look like a muffin top. I think he was just being friendly, Mr. Hampton.”

“Nigel doesn’t strike me as the overly friendly type,” Julius Hampton said, looking at Raleigh as though he certainly couldn’t figure out Nigel’s interest.

The next afternoon before taking his nap, Raleigh’s employer told him he could take the afternoon off. Raleigh couldn’t decide whether or not to visit Sharon, his older sister in San Pedro. His other sister had died of lung cancer when he was in prison, and both parents were gone, so Sharon was the only close relative he had left. But she was an Evangelical Christian who always spent at least half of every visit trying to bring him to Jesus. He decided he didn’t feel up to it today.

He thought about going to a movie in Westwood, or maybe visiting an old friend who used to work for him and Nellie in the catering business. She was a busty Brazilian in her midforties. Alma was hopelessly clumsy and had broken more glasses than the Sylmar earthquake, but she’d sleep with him if she was in the mood, and he loved to kid her that she had tits from here to paternity. Raleigh couldn’t remember the last time he got laid and was almost horny enough to buy a knobber from one of those Asian masseuses on Hollywood Boulevard. He phoned Alma but the number was no longer in service, so on a whim he drove his Toyota to the Wickland Gallery and popped in unannounced.

A prim young woman in a jacket and skirt and very sensible heels said, “Good afternoon, my name’s Ruth Langley. Is there anything I can help you with today or would you just care to have a look around?”

“Mr. Wickland’s invited me to stop in for a personal tour of the gallery,” he said. “The name’s Raleigh Dibble.”

When she escorted him to Nigel Wickland’s office, the art dealer stood up, came around his massive mahogany desk, and shook hands energetically.

“So glad you came. You’re just in time to come and have a drink with me,” Nigel Wickland said, donning his linen blazer, the color of a martini olive.

Raleigh figured the ascot must be for evenings in gay bars, because the art dealer was wearing a white shirt with a forest-green silk necktie. He made Raleigh feel shabby in his off-the-rack rusty brown sport jacket worn over chinos, with black leather loafers that needed the heels replaced.

They went to the bar at the Ivy and took a table. Just as before, Nigel Wickland ordered a banana daiquiri, and a second one before he’d finished the first. In the light of day Raleigh could see that the art dealer’s eyes were watery and there were broken veins on the sides of his nose. A juicehead for sure, he figured. Still, he was buying the drinks and Raleigh’s curiosity was killing him, so he ordered a Jack on the rocks.

After he was half finished with the second drink, Nigel Wickland said, “If you don’t mind my asking, Raleigh, did you actually sell your catering business or…”

“It tanked,” Raleigh said with a wry grin, starting to feel the Jack Daniel’s already. “I got nothing out of it. So here I am, a domestic servant.”

“Hardly that,” Nigel Wickland said. “I’m sure you’re a valued employee to Julius. But I can’t imagine that the pay is very good.”

“A living,” Raleigh said. “Sort of. But the food’s great because I buy and cook it for both of us. Mr. Hampton still has a young man’s appetite.” Raleigh drained the glass, and Nigel Wickland immediately signaled for another.

“I’d like to rely on you to be discreet, Raleigh,” the art dealer said. “I know you’ve been with Julius a relatively short time, but I might be able to offer you a better position.”

“With you?” Raleigh said. “I’m an art Neanderthal.”

“I don’t mean in my gallery,” Nigel Wickland said. “After meeting you the other night I realized that you have exactly the qualifications that a client of mine needs at this time. You heard Julius and me mention her name. Leona Brueger?”

“I vaguely remember that,” Raleigh said, getting into the second Jack, a delicious golden burn sliding down his throat and making him feel the glow coming on.

“I’ve recently learned that Leona Brueger is deeply involved with Rudy Ressler, the filmmaker that Julius mentioned.”

“The child molester?” Raleigh said. “That’s what Mr. Hampton called him.”

Nigel Wickland smiled and said, “He doesn’t try to entice children with a kitten and chocolate bars, believe me. College coeds, his targets of choice, are not exactly children, even if they do behave that way. But Rudy’s changing his ways and has been getting increasingly serious about mature women, especially the widow Brueger.”

“It sounds like you know them pretty well,” Raleigh said.

Nigel said, “I’ve come to know more than a little about Leona Brueger after having been contacted to appraise the late Sammy Brueger’s formidable art collection. I’ve been led by her to believe that she’s going to sell it all, along with the house, perhaps to marry Ressler and move to Napa, where she’ll grow grapes or whatever people do when they have more money than good sense.”

“Nigel,” Raleigh said finally, “this is all very interesting, but I don’t see how I could possibly fit in here.”

Nigel said, “Leona Brueger has been saddled with Sammy’s brother Marty, who is eighty-seven years old and ailing. Marty spends most of his time in Leona’s guesthouse, but occasionally he likes to get out and about. She needs the services of a butler/driver/companion who can cook three meals a day for him. Just as you do for Julius. Leona Brueger also likes an occasional little dinner party at home, but the people she’s hired have been unsatisfactory. It’s not so easy for her to find a man who can cook and manage a dinner party as well as do the rest of it for her brother-in-law. After we met, I realized that with your background and experience, you’re just what she’s been looking for. You’re a perfect fit, Raleigh.”

“But I’ve got a job,” Raleigh said. “And it’s permanent, not temporary.”

“If you’re happy where you are, forget I mentioned it,” Nigel Wickland said. “But Leona told me she’d pay seven thousand dollars a month to the right man, and of course you’d have luxury quarters to live in and meals you’d prepared yourself. You can buy anything you’d like from the markets and bill it to your employer’s account. You’d have no living expenses. The job would probably end around the first of next year. After that, she’s going to arrange for a luxurious retirement home for Marty Brueger when she sells the house. She’d do it now, but he refuses to go, and his lifetime care and contentment are prominently mentioned in Sammy’s will, so she must accommodate him. But by year’s end, his growing dementia will probably take care of things. The urgency here and now is that she wants to leave for a long holiday in Tuscany and she’s in need of the right man ASAP.”

Raleigh was quiet for a moment and then said, “Of course that’s a whole lot more than I make, but my job’s permanent. I don’t know about quitting Mr. Hampton for a temporary job.”

“How permanent is any job with a boss who’s eighty-nine years old?” Nigel Wickland asked. “Do think about it and let me know if you’re interested. I’m just doing this as a favor to my client Leona Brueger. It’s nothing to me one way or the other.”

Raleigh thought there was something not quite right, and he said, “I remember that when you and Mr. Hampton talked about Leona Brueger, you wondered if she was holding up well since her husband’s death. It seemed like you didn’t know all that much about her.”

Then it was Nigel Wickland’s turn to pause. He finally said, “Frankly, since I’ve been involved in the appraisal of her artwork, I’ve come to know her well enough that I’ve learned about her plans. Naturally I couldn’t mention to Julius that I thought you’d be so much better off working for my client. If it weren’t that you’re just so perfect for this job, I wouldn’t be bringing it up to you at all. So whatever you decide, mum’s the word, Raleigh.”

“I’ve got to think about this,” Raleigh said.

“Yes, do have a think,” Nigel said.

When Raleigh left Nigel Wickland, he decided that the prospect of earning that kind of easy money was tempting, but after the job ended, what would he do? He’d successfully completed his parole, but memories of prison had kept him superstraight. He’d even been afraid to tell lies on job résumés, and it was no cinch for an ex-con to get decent employment after mentioning a prison record. Yet it was true that with an eighty-nine-year-old boss, how permanent could his current job be? And he was sick of having to plead with the shyster who managed the Hampton trust fund to give him the pay he deserved.

Raleigh Dibble hardly slept that night. The next morning he phoned Nigel Wickland, and when he reached the art dealer, he said, “Nigel, it’s Raleigh Dibble here. When can I have an interview with Mrs. Brueger?”