It was a steamy Sunday morning on July 4th weekend and I was being kidnapped.

Okay, not kidnapped exactly. After all, I hadn’t been forced at gunpoint and the vehicle I was riding in was a Bentley Arnage T. Its tangy cream leather seats and burr walnut trim made it tough to claim I’d been taken entirely against my will. Besides, people who owned vehicles this nice didn’t kidnap, they summoned.

Svetlana sat with her legs crossed, contentedly waggling one foot. Her laptop rested on a fold-down table. She was playing chess. Without a game or reading material, all I could do was take in the scenery. We were on the Long Island Expressway, creeping through a construction site. A workman sweated on a jackhammer, but the Bentley’s thick body blocked out the noise so it was barely audible above the A/C washing over my face. Now I knew why the very rich were so aloof: Money insulated them from all things unpleasant. Like going to a detective’s office. Or even saying what the case was about. I was seething and wanted to bail. But I needed the work.

Vivian Vaillancourt, the enigmatic heiress who wanted our help, had refused to come to us. Instead she sent her three-ton luxury tank and her niece: a college-aged girl in Daisy Dukes and a “DIOR” T-shirt. Delilah was a decent chauffeur, if a bit lead-footed, and as we reached the end of the road work, the big car surged forward, plastering Svetlana and me against the seats.

“Finally!” Delilah moaned.

Svetlana gave me a look that said, “This better be worth it.”

“I know,” I said.

We exited the expressway and moments later glided into a tunnel of stately oaks. Pristine golf courses glistened. Bronzed old men leaned on putters. This was Sands Point. I rolled down the window and drank in the salt air from the Sound. Driveway gates whooshed by.

“I wonder which place is Daisy’s,” I said.

“Who?” Delilah’s hair flounced on her shoulders. She was a blonde with brunette streaks.

“You know—Daisy Buchanan, from The Great Gatsby.” I thought every high schooler had to read that novel. I rolled up the window. “Fitzgerald used Sands Point as his model for Daisy’s East Egg. Gatsby lived across the water on West Egg. Poor guy spent all his time staring at a light on Daisy’s dock, like some weird, lovesick dog.”

“Daisy Buchanan, hmm...”  She glanced over her shoulder. The car drifted. “I’m sure I would’ve met her.”

“Must have moved,” I said. “My mistake.”

Even Svetlana, a defected Soviet, knew who I was talking about. She smiled faintly and pushed a tuft of hair behind her ear.

At a giant iron gate with a “V” crest, we motored up a long gravel drive, curved through a gauntlet of sculpted trees and ground to a stop in front of a white Italianate mansion with a red tile roof. As I helped Svetlana out of the car, at least two dozen windows glared back at us in the bright sunlight. How many rooms? Thirty? Fifty? The manor’s sweeping wings alone made my country retreat look like a tarpaper shack. When I snapped out of my trance, Delilah and the Bentley were gone, and Svetlana clutched her Gucci bag beside me. We went to the door and rang. No one answered. The distinctive boom of a shotgun echoed from behind the house.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

Svetlana batted her eyes. “Apparently...a gun.”

I sneered waggishly at her and strode across a gleaming lawn in the direction of the gunshots. The grass was like walking on memory foam. The gun went off again. It had to be Ms. Vaillancourt making that noise; no one but the owner could get away with it. Two blasts, a long pause, then two more blasts—a double-barrel. I rounded the corner of the mansion and at the bottom of a long, gentle slope was a croquet lawn. A man squatted beside a skeet trap while a woman stood poised with a shotgun. She wore khaki jodhpurs tucked into equestrian boots and a shooting vest over a polo shirt.

“Pull!” she shouted.

A pair of clay pigeons sailed toward the beach. The woman followed them with the gun and blew the discs into dust. She was good. While she reloaded, Svetlana and I walked over. The pungent odor of burnt gunpowder hung in the humid air.

“Ms. Vaillancourt?” I said.

She spun around, the breeched shotgun dangling over her forearm. A Browning Citori 12-gauge over-and-under. Elaborately engraved, it cost more than my first car. As for the woman, she was sixtyish and trim with pewter hair and imperious features.

“I am,” she said loudly. She inspected us through a pair of amber shooting glasses, then snapped the shotgun closed. “Bit overdressed, aren’t you? Pull!”

As she blew two more clays to smithereens, Svetlana and I blinked at each other. When meeting clients for the first time we liked to look professional. Svetlana was flawlessly attired in a linen sheath and strappy sandals, and I was sporting a Brooks Brothers poplin suit, pale blue Oxford shirt, and navy and canary striped tie. Maybe I should have worn my safari outfit.

Shotgun in hand, Vivian Vaillancourt marched up toward the mansion, where a shady portico loomed. I flushed beneath my suit, and it wasn’t from the heat. I took a deep breath. The man at the skeet trap jogged over in red silk shorts and a T-shirt.

“Louis Zipes.”

We shook hands. He was 5’8” of lean muscle, artificial tan, and teeth—the whitest teeth this detective had ever seen. Look up “metrosexual” and there was Louis. I got the sense he handled a lot more around here than the skeet trap.

“Dakota,” I said. “And this is Svetlana Krüsh.”

“Yes,” she said, “we spoke on the phone.”

“So, Louis,” I said. “Is she always this hospitable?”

“You’ll have to excuse Vivian. She suffered two horrible blows this week. Her favorite horse had to be put down, and now her brother’s death. She’s devastated.”

“I’m sorry for her losses,” I said. “I assume the case is about her brother.”

“She’ll have to tell you.” He led us up the hill. “I hope you weren’t put off by the shooting.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Gunfire on a Sunday morning? We love it.”

“Yes, charming,” Svetlana said.

Louis shrugged. “Skeet is her catharsis.”

When we reached the portico, Vivian was stretched out on a steamer chair with her boots crossed, gazing down a lawn three football fields in length at the Sound. Svetlana and I sat on a bench beside her, but she didn’t even blink in our direction. For all I knew, she thought we were a couple of well-dressed houseplants. The shotgun lay on a teak cocktail table in the center.

Louis emerged from the shadowy house bearing a pitcher of lemonade, two glasses and a separate tall drink, which he handed to his employer. Svetlana poured and handed me a glass. Once Louis left, the silence was heavier than a fallen soufflé.

Ice cubes rattled. A lawnmower droned. Birds batted a song back and forth like a shuttlecock. After a minute, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Nice view.” I nodded at the water.

“What?” She plucked earplugs out of her ears and tossed them on the table.

“I said, ‘Nice view.’”

“Must be,” Vivian said. “I was offered 37 million for the place last week.”

“Sounds stingy. I’d hold out.”

“Not that I’d ever sell, of course.” She gestured with her drink across the water. “That’s Great Neck over there.”

I turned to Svetlana. “West Egg.”

“Yes, I see Gatsby’s place now.” She rolled her eyes.

Beyond the peninsula, out of the haze, rose the blue-gray Manhattan skyline. A powerboat skittered out of Manhasset Bay and hooked around the point.

“And that’s Connecticut over there, of course,” Vivian said.

“Of course,” I said.

I was still seething, itching to know what I was doing here besides drinking the most exquisite lemonade I’d ever tasted. But if there was one thing I’d learned working for the rich, it was that they loathed being rushed. It could be weeks before she told me what she wanted. Down at the swimming pool, Delilah emerged from a cabana, lay face-down on a flat chaise and peeled off her bikini top. She did it with an aplomb that said trouble.

“I trust you had a pleasant trip out with my niece?” Vivian said.

The shooting glasses gave Vivian’s eyes an intense yellow glow.

“Sure, if you like NASCAR,” I said. “Seems like a nice girl though.”

“Ever since she quit Columbia,” Vivian said, “she’s been an aimless little trollop.”

Svetlana squinted at the pool. I knew what she was thinking: That tart went to Columbia?

“My sister Ursula died when Delilah was ten,” Vivian said, “and it fell upon me to raise her. It has not been easy, to say the least.”

“What about her father?”

“My sister had Delilah out of wedlock, Mr. Stevens.”

I’m a terrible therapist. I wished she’d get to the case. She drained her cocktail down to naked ice and slammed the glass on the table.

“Lou-is! Another Long Island!”

She produced a box of Treasurer Golds, jammed one into a cigarette holder and lighted it with a kitchen match. I was disturbed by the idea that this woman, who had demonstrated great skill with a gun and was now visibly intoxicated, was running around with strike-anywhere matches. Louis brought her another drink and retreated into the house.

Svetlana crossed her legs. “How did you hear about us, ma’am?”

“An acquaintance,” she said. “Judith Conover. Said you were helpful in getting evidence on that cad ex-husband of hers.”

Svetlana smiled at me. “The sharks.”

“Like I’d forget,” I said.

The breeze picked up. Down near the water, a wind chime clanged.

“You seem rather young, Mr. Stevens,” she said. “Exactly what is your experience?”

“Eleven years with the FBI, including a short stint in the crime lab, and three years with my own agency. For the past couple I’ve had my very capable associate, Svetlana Krüsh”—I tossed a hand in her direction—“who also happens to be an international grandmaster in chess.”

Vivian swirled her glass. “I recall hearing something about an art forgery ring.”

“A difficult case for us,” I said. “Now with all due respect, ma’am, we came out here on a Sunday because we were under the impression your problem was urgent, so if you could...”

I was looking down the portico when a heavyset guy in mirrored sunglasses and a crewcut rounded the far corner of the mansion. He wore a faded pair of jeans and an open dress shirt with—wait for it—not one, but three gold necklaces beneath. As he swaggered toward us, I noticed he wasn’t just big, he was tall—my height at least.

“Expecting company?” I said.

Vivian glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, Mr. Roman? Yes, he’s my next interviewee.”

“What do you mean, next interviewee?”

“Well, surely you don’t expect me to hire the first detective that comes out of the woodwork.”

“Woodwork? You called us.” I stood up. Svetlana followed my lead.

“We don’t audition for jobs,” I said.

Mr. Roman was on top of me. He raised his sunglasses and gave me the hard stare. I’d seen his type a hundred times before: guys who mistake their fat for muscle, size for strength. He stepped into my personal space and rested a Thom McAn on my Kenneth Cole.

“This the guy, Miss Vaillancourt?” he said. “Forget him—not tough enough.”

He shoved me. Rolling on my heels, I stumbled backwards until I caught myself on the bench. The shotgun was on the table. Roman was smirking to a non-existent audience as I grabbed it, snapped it closed and cracked him with the stock on the knee. He yelled and crumpled onto the brick. While he clutched his knee and groaned, I buffed the walnut stock with my sleeve.

“Forget him.” I spoke to Vivian as I put down the gun. “Not smart enough. Your niece can drive us back. We’ll send you a bill for our time.”

As we headed down to the pool, Svetlana huffed.

“What?” I said.

“That was excessive,” she said. “He was a strutting peacock. She would have seen it.”

“The guy pushed me, Svetlana, and in this business you can’t afford to get a reputation as a wimp. Besides, I didn’t like her condescension. The next time we—”

“Mr. Stevens...Ms. Krüsh!”

That throaty voice of hers certainly carried. We turned around. Vivian was power-walking down to us, flicking the cigarette in its holder.

“Please stay,” she said. “For lunch at least. We’re having lobster.”

“Wow, did you hear that, Svetlana? Lobster.”

“I was testing you,” Vivian said. “You must understand, I need someone who will stick. I have no intention of hiring Mr. Roman, but...it’s all so complicated. There’s no one I can trust.”

“Listen...”

“Please,” she said. “Hear what I have to say before you decide.”

Shoving my hands in my pockets, I took in the scene: the sailboat bobbing on the dock; the smug mansion peering out to sea; the personal assistant and possible kept man helping Mr. Roman to his feet; the lazy nymphet, waving her tanned legs; and the unstable heiress puffing her cigarette. I gave Svetlana a questioning look. Subtly, pretending to straighten her hair, she rubbed her fingers together. I smiled. Ruthless mercenary bitch, I adore you.

“All right, Vivian,” I said. “Lose the smoke and we’ll stay.”

“Agreed.” She plucked the cigarette out of its holder and tossed it on the lawn. “Go, sit.” She pointed to a gazebo near the beach. “I’ll tell Louis we’re three for lunch.”

She spun on her heels and quick-stepped up the hill. Somehow her cigarette had found the one patch of dead grass on this showpiece of a lawn. It was on fire. I stomped out the small flame and ground the butt into the dirt with my shoe.

“You know, Svetlana...Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different.”





The above excerpt is from
The Rich Are Different
© 2008 by Chris Orcutt