Judith Krantz (57 page)

She had pulled herself together after her last phone call of the morning, determined to get through this unwelcome meeting as quickly as possible. She’d glanced in the mirror and suddenly viewed herself through her half sisters’ critical eyes. Without makeup, her hair flapping every which way, like a flag attacked by the wind through which she rode all day, Jazz saw that she seemed almost waiflike, a rustic, sun-touched, unkempt, female Huckleberry Finn, in the worn jeans, the faded blue chambray shirt and the favorite sweater from her school days that had become her uniform during the past days on horseback.

Almost everything she owned was still back in her closets in her Santa Monica apartment, but Jazz hunted around until she found the Yves Saint Laurent pant suit in which she’d traveled back from New York
on the day of her final showdown with Phoebe at Dazzle. She’d driven straight out to the ranch after that Christmas party, only a little more than three weeks ago, and hadn’t returned to her apartment since.

The pant suit was one of Yves Saint Laurent’s daytime tuxedos, a “smoking,” as he called it, stricter, more severe, more commanding than anything a man can put on short of a military uniform, a classic design that Saint Laurent repeated in a dozen versions every year, his signature, as much as the Chanel suit was her signature. Smokings, made in black fabrics from satin to hard-surfaced wool, play directly to a woman’s need to possess at least one garment that can act as an impenetrable carapace to cover and protect any inner insecurities she may feel.

Jazz took out the perfectly cut authority symbol with displeasure. She resented having to slant anything about herself with an eye to how she would appear to Valerie and Fernanda, but she knew that it was necessary in dealing with them.

She brushed her hair and forced it to lie flat on her head with mousse, binding the dark golden strands into a smooth, tight chignon, and fastened it securely with a black velvet ribbon. Then, putting on a terry robe, she started to work on her face. She used a light foundation on her apricot-hued skin and pressed white powder onto it, so that her face became a pale matte mask on which anything could be painted. She darkened to the limit the straight punctuation marks of her eyebrows; applied layers of mascara to her golden lashes until they were black; used a red lipstick she had bought but never worn because it was too dark a red to be flattering. By the time she finished, Jazz had added a decade to the face she had seen in the mirror a half hour ago, and a hundred years of hardness.

After she had put on the Saint Laurent and low-heeled, highly polished black boots, she inspected herself again. This elegant lady bouncer with the toughest shoulders in couture had never heard of Huckleberry Finn, she decided, as she finished off her outfit with a
pair of massive jet-and-gold earrings and two wide, plain gold cuff bracelets, which would have to substitute for the brass knuckles she would have liked to wear but didn’t possess.

The elevator stopped on the top floor of the hotel, where the most expensive accommodatipns were located. A young woman came forward from behind a small desk and introduced herself as the concierge. When Jazz gave Valerie’s name, the concierge immediately escorted Jazz to a pair of double doors that, except for their newness, would not have looked out of place in the Petit Trianon. At the touch of a bell the doors swung open on the largest sitting room Jazz had seen in any hotel in the world. At the far end of the room, four arched windows looked out at the panorama of the sky and the sea in the distance, but Jazz focused on the group of people who sat around a table in the middle of the room: Valerie, Fernanda and two men she had never seen before.

She paused, frowning, as the strange men rose. Valerie had said nothing about them, and Jazz was immediately glad she had taken the trouble to get herself up in an image that betrayed none of the desperate hurting in her heart, or the feeling of intense vulnerability she could not shake off. She stood just inside the room, stubbornly immovable, aware that if she did not advance toward them, they would be forced to come to her.

After a tiny pause, Valerie stood up and led the two men to Jazz to make the introductions.

“Hello, Jazz,” she said, in as friendly a manner as she ever felt obliged to display to anyone. “You’re looking wonderfully well.”

“Thank you,” Jazz said coldly. To her astonishment, Valerie leaned over and kissed her on the cheek in a breezy, casual way, as if she had totally forgotten their last encounter.

“This is Jimmy Rosemont,” Valerie said, “and this is Sir John Maddox. My sister, Jazz Kilkullen.”

“How do you do,” Jazz said, offering her hand
to the men as briefly as was consistent with a minimum of politeness.

“Come on in, Jazz,” Valerie said, taking her arm and leading her over to where Fernanda was sitting with a welcoming smile in her brilliant turquoise eyes. Everything about her looked, Jazz thought, as if a fairy godmother had been overly generous.

“No, thank you,” Jazz said, waving away the offer of coffee and greeting Fernanda in the same economical gesture. She sat down on the only chair that wasn’t deep and puffy, placing herself on the seat as precisely as any Victorian lady come to pay a ten-minute courtesy call, sitting stiffly upright, her back not touching the chair.

A mahogany cart laden with trays of tea sandwiches, small pastries and pots of tea and coffee stood next to Fernanda’s chair.

“Something to eat, Jazz? These little éclairs are awfully good,” Fernanda asked, with one of her most fetching looks.

“Nothing, thank you.” Did her smoking make her look so masculine that Fernanda thought she’d had a sex change, Jazz wondered. That was the look she reserved for anything in pants, all right, but not a dame.

“How is everything at the ranch?” Valerie asked.

“No different from the way it was when Mr. Rosemont flew over it in a helicopter on an inspection tour a few months ago,” Jazz said evenly.

“So you heard about that, did you?” Jimmy Rosemont didn’t sound surprised, but faintly amused. Jazz didn’t like his devilish, jovial, too-well-groomed looks any more than Mike Kilkullen had.

As for Sir John Maddox, he had the perfect relaxation of surface that only the British seem able to achieve. He was a man in his late sixties whose thinning gray hair was just exactly the trifle too long that indicated that he didn’t worry about his haircut; his double-breasted, rather formal gray suit was immaculate, yet old enough to seem as if it were a member of his family; his handsome head had a dignity of prominent
bone structure that was more than sufficient to show that he was accustomed to the exercise of power.

“I thought the best way to get an overview of the ranch was by air,” Jimmy Rosemont added, unabashed. “Have you ever done that? Amazing experience, shows you things you could never dream of from the ground.”

Jimmy Rosemont’s voice and manner could undoubtedly be considered charming, Jazz thought, if you were in the market for a sharp, foxy, tricky charm, which she was not. She didn’t bother to answer him, but waited silently, her chin lifted, one trousered knee over the other, her arms folded across her breasts, staring into the neutral middle distance. Her body language was calculated. She might be outnumbered, but she knew that she looked as if she were reviewing her troops. Eventually, one of them would get around to explaining the point of this meeting.

“Jazz,” Valerie said, “as you’re aware, when Jimmy first came out here and saw Father, he was interested in buying the ranch. Since Jimmy and his wife, Lady Georgina, are both good friends of Fernanda’s and mine, after Mr. White explained to us that the ranch had to be sold, we both thought of him first, before any stranger.”

“I can understand that, Valerie. What I don’t understand is the reason for this rush. According to Mr. White, nothing at all can be sold until the court appoints a permanent administrator, and that may take months. It’s only been a few weeks since Father died.”

“What you say is quite true, Miss Kilkullen.” Sir John Maddox entered the conversation smoothly, with an inclination of his head, a pause and a glance that managed simultaneously to convey a wordless homage to Mike Kilkullen, an acknowledgment of Jazz’s loss, and the need to pass on to matters of business.

“However,” Sir John continued, “there is an important advantage to be gained if the three of you
should be able to come to an agreement about the future of the ranch without any waste of time.”

“Is there?”

What was it about a certain kind of British voice that inspired confidence, Jazz asked herself. This distinguished man had the kind of aristocratic benignity radiated by Sir John Gielgud or Sir Ralph Richardson. Two consummate actors.

“You see, Miss Kilkullen, during the period of the special administrator, you still control the destiny of the ranch.” Sir John leaned slightly forward and addressed himself entirely to Jazz.

“You three sisters, acting together, can petition the court to set aside the special administrator. You can then decide to sell the ranch to a buyer whom you have personally chosen, someone in whom you all have confidence. However, once a permanent administrator is appointed, none of you will be able to rid yourselves of him except, as the law puts it, ‘for cause,’ and that would be excessively difficult and highly unlikely. In other words, no matter what the permanent administrator chooses to do, or how long it takes him to do it, you will be entirely in his hands, at his mercy as it were.”

“Are you a lawyer, Sir John?” Jazz asked.

“Yes indeed, a barrister, but I no longer appear in court.” He smiled a graceful, self-effacing smile.

“Sir John was the governor of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong for many years,” Jimmy Rosemont said. “During that time he presided over the Executive Council of the colony and was president of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Since he resigned those responsibilities, he has become an internationally recognized expert on land use and development.”

“Is that why you’re here, Sir John? To advise us all on land use?” Jazz asked. An actor killed Lincoln, she reminded herself.

“Not entirely, Miss Kilkullen, but in part, yes. I am also here on behalf of a group of men I have known for well over fifteen years. They form a consortium of the owners of the largest banks in Hong Kong.”

“You’re acting for a bunch of Hong Kong Chinese bankers?”

“Precisely, Miss Kilkullen.”

“And these … clients … of yours want to buy the ranch?”

“Indeed they do, Miss Kilkullen. In fact, one could say without fear of contradiction that they want it more than any other buyers in the world. You see, my banker friends
must
get their money out of Hong Kong before it is returned to Communist China. Six years from this coming June, the agreement by which Hong Kong was leased by Britain will expire. My friends live in fear that the Communists may not be willing to wait till 1997. They’re running out of time, as you can understand, and that’s why they’ll pay
more
than the market value.”

“Forgive me if I seem confused, Sir John,” Jazz said, “but as I understand it, only months ago Mr. Rosemont tried to buy the ranch himself. Now here you are, with Mr. Rosemont, only you’re representing Hong Kong bankers who want the same piece of land. Exactly what’s going on?”

“Oh, come on, Jazz,” Valerie said, “don’t get your fur ruffled over nothing. Jimmy’s been advising the Chinese from the beginning. Sir John is another one of their most trusted advisers. Jimmy never told Father about the gentlemen from Hong Kong because he couldn’t manage to get that far before the conversation was terminated. You know how abrupt Father could be when he didn’t want to listen.”

And she knew what an excruciating pain Jazz was going to be, Valerie thought. She’d warned them all about her, but nobody except her mother had been ready to believe that such an absolutely wonderful opportunity could be held up temporarily by one pigheaded girl. Every time their mother had telephoned to discuss the situation, she’d reminded them that Jazz had spent years worming her way into their father’s heart, and had told them not to discount the nuisance she would make of herself. God knew, she and Fernie had to admit that they owed their position in their
father’s will to their mother’s insistence that they put in their duty time at the ranch. When their mother had told them that selling to the Chinese was the best thing they could do, and that they should put their trust in Jimmy, she was unquestionably right, as she had been for the last thirty years.

Valerie lifted her chin and presented her celebrated profile to Jazz as if it were a guarantee of her right to mediate between Jazz and Jimmy. Fernie wouldn’t be of any help.

“Mrs. Malvern is right,” Sir John said. “When a sophisticated group of bankers attempt to move their money from one country to another, they are forced to depend on a number of different specialists. I daresay Jimmy has been doing business with them almost as long as I have. We’re both working with our Hong Kong friends, trying to find a solution to their problem that will benefit you and your sisters as well.”

“John,” Jimmy Rosemont spoke hastily, as he watched Jazz’s face close up and reject the Englishman’s words, “before we start talking details, why don’t you let me give Miss Kilkullen an idea of the way in which the ranch would be developed? Obviously she’d want to know that before she began to make any sort of judgment about the buyers.”

“Of course, Jimmy.”

“You see, Miss Kilkullen, your ranch isn’t just another piece of real estate, and it would never be treated as if it were ordinary, garden-variety, undeveloped land. The concept is to turn it into the most spectacular, splendid residential and recreational complex anywhere in the world. The name would never be changed, it would always be the Kilkullen Ranch, or Rancho Kilkullen, or whatever name you and your sisters liked best, but the idea—well, the idea is nothing short of magnificent.”

“Is it?” How long could she endure the sulfurous smell of snake oil, Jazz wondered. Long enough to find out exactly what this salesman had in mind, she decided grimly, no matter how noncommittal or even enthusiastic she had to seem to get it out of him.