Judith Krantz (43 page)

“That’s in a good year,” Mike said softly, furious that this stranger was in possession of accurate facts that he couldn’t possibly have found out without the assistance of an expert. Rosemont was putting his hand in his pocket and counting his money.

“Even in a bad year you still have your steady income from your tenant farmers, your flower growers, your strawberry growers, your citrus growers. And you’ve been smart enough to stay out of the horse-breeding business, which eats up profits like nothing else.”

“Now that you’ve explained my own business to me, why don’t you explain
your
business to me?”

“I’m a man who helps other men to maximize their assets. Obviously I do it for profit, but I make people rich, Mr. Kilkullen. Incredibly rich, totally independent of anything that can happen to them in life except death. Taxes aren’t a problem, if you’re rich enough. As we sit here, you could become, with a single decision, one of the richest men in the entire world because you’ve been smart enough to hang on to your land, instead of selling too soon.”

“Some people don’t call me smart, just stub-born,” Mike said lazily.

“No doubt. But I’m sure you’re a man of reason as well. Look around at your neighbors, your old friends, the families you’ve grown up with. Take the Segerstroms, for instance. They were lima bean farmers until the end of World War II. Now the family’s worth well over half a billion dollars in real estate and shopping malls. Have you ever visited South Coast Plaza, Mr. Kilkullen?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. Henry invited me to the opening of the Noguchi sculpture garden there—I particularly liked the rock formation Noguchi called
The Spirit of the Lima Bean
—a long-awaited tribute to an underrated vegetable, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Rosemont?”

“Magnificent, splendid. But I’m just as impressed by what the Segerstroms have been able to do for Orange County. They’re the spirit behind the opening of the Performing Arts Center, they gave the land and six million in cash—the Center has been internationally acclaimed, and it will mean
immortality
for the Segerstrom name. They couldn’t have done that if they’d been content to stick to growing lima beans.”

“You won’t get an argument from me on that.”

“Take the Irvines as another example. When they gave the land for UC Irvine, before they sold, they created a great university where nothing had stood before. Today, as you must know, Mr. Kilkullen, UC Irvine attracts some of the greatest scholars in the world, to say nothing of one hell of a football team.
Even though they no longer own the land, the Irvines too have achieved immortality.”

“Are you trying to make me rich, Mr. Rosemont, or immortal?” Mike asked, opening another bottle of Perrier.

“Rich, Mr. Kilkullen. Very rich. Immortality is something many rich men seek when they have all they can spend and as much as they want to give their heirs. Immortality is an option.” Jimmy Rosemont shrugged eloquently.

“I’m here to point out,” he continued, “that you have in your immediate grasp every possibility that any man could ever dream of. There would be nothing on earth you couldn’t do with your life. You could become a great collector, you could sail your own yacht around the world, you could establish your own charities, you could do what Bren does and become the largest contributor to the Republican Party in California, you could buy a football franchise—the whole wide world is there for you, Mr. Kilkullen …”

“And all I have to do is sell you my ranch.”

“Precisely.”

“Why would I want to do that now, when I’ve refused to do it over and over again for the last thirty years?” Mike asked mildly.

“Because you can’t live forever, Mr. Kilkullen. I’m old enough myself not to feel uncomfortable saying that to you. In twenty-five years you’ll be ninety, and if you’re still here—and I heartily hope you will be—you can’t deny that you’ll have lived your life. Will it be the same routine life you’ve known, day in and day out, for as long as you can remember, or will it be a life full of rich memories of the amazing potential that is open to you right now, while you’re in the best of health and have many of your best years to look forward to?”

“You make a sound case, Mr. Rosemont. You’re a most persuasive man, and you’re not afraid to mention the unmentionable. No one who has ever tried to buy me out has mentioned death before. Taxes, yes,
but not death. Tell me, purely out of curiosity, where would I live if I did decide to sell the ranch? As you point out, I’m sixty-five, and naturally I’m deeply attached to this family home. There’s no other place in the world where I’d rather live—and die, for that matter.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem. You’d decide on the limits of your private property, and it would be excluded from the sale. You could live right here, and never notice any change around you. With these gardens and trees protecting you, there’s complete privacy.”

“Just a little noise, I suppose? Construction work and so on?”

“Well, naturally, there would have to be that. But if you kept out, oh, let’s say a hundred acres for yourself, enough for a huge spread, you wouldn’t notice anything much, if at all.”

“And my cattle business?”

“You’d no longer be a cattle rancher in Southern California. But you could buy another ranch, Mr. Kilkullen, there are ranches for sale all over, ranches that could use men of your experience to run them properly.”

“Montana, Texas, places like that?”

“Exactly!”

“Inland ranches. No seacoast, no mountains.”

“True, but the country is magnificent.”

“Like in the Marlboro ads?”

“Even better, greener, and it goes on forever, not like here.”

“Why don’t
you
buy one of those ranches, Rosemont?”

“An amusing idea, Mr. Kilkullen, but we’re both busy men. I’m interested in your ranch because it has possibilities that I can’t find inland. Obviously I want to develop your land for residential use.”

“Rows of identical houses, Rosemont, without even a backyard for the kids to play in? Maximum land use?” Mike’s voice was still lazy.

“Nothing like that,” Jimmy Rosemont said hastily. “I’m interested only in fine properties. It’s ten percent more expensive to build an expensive home than to build a moderately expensive home, but the profit is vastly different.”

“I’m aware of that. You have the same infrastructure expenses either way, but the trimmings are where you make your dough. The marble baths, the granite countertops in the kitchens, the two-story entrance halls, the family media room, the ma-and-pa baths, and all that relatively cheap icing on the cake.”

“I didn’t know you followed real estate, Mr. Kilkullen.”

“I don’t. My Cow Boss put me in the picture.”

“Well, then, you realize that it would be unprofitable for me to use the land for low- or even moderate-income use. The Kilkullen Ranch would always be the ultimate residential property in Orange County … if you sold it to me.”

“I’m not going to sell, Rosemont. Not to you, not to anyone, not one acre or ten thousand. This ranch is the only place between L.A. and San Diego that has remained as nature made it. Everything else is new and
it is shit.”
Mike Kilkullen rose to his feet.

“The only option I want for the rest of my life, Rosemont, however long I live, is to keep riding my range, to keep breeding my cows, to run my roundup every year, to be able to gallop along my beach at sunset, to repair my fences, to worry about rain, to sail my boat from my own boathouse, to doctor my cows, and, at the end of the day, to sit in front of my own fire in my family’s place and know that all around me lies the land that my great-grandfather bought from my great-great-grandfather, and that I’ve preserved for my children.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jimmy Rosemont said, rising in turn. “I don’t think I’ll take up any more of your time, Mr. Kilkullen. I’ll skip lunch, if you don’t mind—that way I’ll get back to New York and still be in time for dinner.”

“Certainly not, Rosemont. I understand. Let me walk you to your car. And don’t forget to give my love to Fernanda and Valerie when you see them.”

“Without fail.”

“Oh, yes, one more thing—that was your helicopter I noticed inspecting my ranch this morning, wasn’t it?”

“Ah, that … yes, as a matter of fact, it was.”

“I imagined so. Well, have a safe trip back, Rosemont. I hope you enjoyed the view.”

Casey Nelson had insisted on taking her to Spago for dinner, Jazz thought, as she began to get dressed, in spite of the fact that she knew he wouldn’t get a good table there. Only regular customers, almost always customers who were in show business, could expect a decent table in the famous, trend-setting restaurant that gained and gained in popularity as each hot new place in L.A. opened and closed to make way for another.

Wolfgang Puck’s first restaurant, Spago was the “21” of California, the one absolute establishment place, the place you had to go to in order to retain your membership in the hierarchy of L.A. glamour. It was not meant for the new Cow Boss of the Kilkullen Ranch, even if his father did own a mess of tugboats in New York.

She had been tempted to call Bernard, the maitre d’hôtel, or pretty, dark-haired Jannis who worked with him, and tell them that she was Casey’s guest. That would have ensured a well-placed table, but Jazz had decided that since Casey had been so pigheaded about the restaurant, she wouldn’t make things easier for him. Let him be aware, when they were led all the way back to the far right end of the front room, instead of to the left near the bar, or even worse, back to one of the rooms she’d never set foot in except for a private party, of his presumption. Any man who dumped her out of his lap deserved severe humiliation.

She felt pretty, Jazz decided, oh
so
pretty, with Sam Butler panting after her and Casey Nelson so
smitten that he was insisting on showing off with dinner at Spago. A girl should always have two beaux to her string. Or three.

What do you wear to indicate such a furiously pretty mood, given that getting seriously dressed up for Spago wasn’t done except on Oscar night? Casey could hardly appear in public in that Cow Boss garb that had been acceptable at the El Adobe, so he’d probably wear the same dark suit in which he’d ruined her Gres gown and her Spanish shawl.

A problem indeed. An overdressed escort for the most conspicuous restaurant in town, where casual elegance was the norm. First, Jazz decided, you start with black pantyhose, black wool trousers and flat black velvet shoes. That takes away immediately from the relative formality conferred by any skirt. Then you look through your closet and muse, ponder, ruminate, speculate, meditate, and go into a trance until you find the right top. Nobody sees anything but your top once you’re seated at the table anyway.

Jazz’s fingers flipped through dozens of hangers on which hung an amazing number of wrong blouses and wrong jackets. She searched through the piles of sweaters which lay folded on her shelves, wrong sweater after wrong sweater, sweaters which had once been perfect for Spago but which weren’t tonight.

Nothing! She had nothing to wear! Oh, God, wasn’t that always the way? She’d been so busy for a year that she’d hardly had time to shop. There was only one thing to do, Jazz realized, as she stripped off her trousers and shoes. She had to dive immediately into total Chanel. When you had nothing to wear, that meant that only Chanel was possible, old, new, old and new mixed, it didn’t matter. Chanel was for all seasons, all trials and tribulations. It wasn’t imaginative, it didn’t show any vision of personal style, it didn’t match her emotional state, but everyone from the editor-in-chief of
Vogue
to the rich Japanese wives on the Ginza still wore undiluted Chanel.

Casey’s female relatives, if he had any, probably wore Chanel from dawn till dusk, Jazz thought grimly,
pulling on a red and black suit from the new ready-to-wear collection. She rummaged in her accessory drawers for five or six Chanel pearl necklaces in different lengths, a pair of earrings and a black satin camellia that had cost her $250. She threw it all on and looked in the mirror. She squirmed out of the suit as quickly as possible. It looked totally pulled together, not casual, not easy, not Spago. You could wear it to a power lunch.
Phoebe
would wear it.

She had ten minutes till Casey arrived. She could decide how to dress five models in ten minutes, Jazz reassured herself, trying to calm down. The important thing was not to lose your head. When Chanel didn’t work, the Hanes T-shirt ploy was the way to start. She pulled a boy’s white T-shirt over her head, added purple suede trousers, and threw a Chanel jacket over the whole thing, the off-white jacket trimmed with pearls instead of braid, which Lagerfeld had shown last year on thirty different models simultaneously, wearing everything from bathing suits to evening gowns, the famous jacket that you couldn’t go wrong in. Nothing really dumb about the outfit, Jazz decided, except that there would be at least two other women at Spago in the same jacket, and she looked like a version of Murphy Brown on one of her more frazzled days.

Naked except for her pantyhose, in a frenzy of inspiration, Jazz grabbed a miniskirt made entirely of forest-green sequins, tucked in a sheer organza shirt in the same color, plucked an ancient dark green velvet blazer from the pile of clothes she’d been planning to give away for two years, found some very high-heeled black pumps and a pair of huge, chunky glass earrings from Yves Saint Laurent that had cost her a thousand bucks three years ago and had been well worth it. Perfect! It had everything, the throwaway cool of the old jacket, the tease of the shirt, the audacity of the skirt, and the deliberate mismatch of the much-too-glitzy earrings.

She pranced to the door when she heard it ring.
Casey Nelson stood outside, in cord slacks, an Armani jacket and a thin brown wool turtleneck.

“Hi,” she murmured. “You’re right on time.” How, she wondered, did he know exactly what to wear for Spago?

“You look like … a tree … a gorgeous Christmas tree,” he said admiringly, twirling her around.

“I felt sort of seasonal,” Jazz said lightly. How could she have forgotten that Christmas was less than a month away? She made it a point never to dress to fit the season. Now she looked as if she were in costume for a Christmas play in kindergarten. Tacky, tacky, tacky, but too late to change.