I stood next to the bench and looked around. A wide angle security camera poked incongruously from the venetian plaster, providing a view of the entire entry hall. There had to be motion sensors too. Probably a safe room. Maybe even radar reaching out into the street to detect people near the house. Of course, the best security is people, well-trained and professional. Judging from what I had seen so far, Jutting’s London abode would be nearly impenetrable.
Aside from the security, the interior of the house was opulent in a way I hadn’t expected. I had thought the place would be more masculine but the color palette was gold and white, blue and pink. Across an expanse of white marble floor and through a gilt archway, I could see into a drawing room rife with glittering chandeliers, intricate woodwork, low, wide regency armchairs covered with pale gold fabrics. The effect was dizzying. There was nowhere to rest your eye. Everything was shiny and overwrought.
I squinted and found oases of relative minimalism to look at while I waited. Five minutes later, Victoria Butler, who I recognized from the photos I had found online, finally strode into the entry hall from another arched doorway. She was tall and built like a rower, with big shoulders straining a gray silk blouse. It occurred to me as she approached that she might be the decorator, or the one who chose the decorator anyway. She held out a hand and I took it.
“Mr. Vincent. A pleasure. I’m Victoria. Please follow me. Mr. Jutting is waiting.”
“Likewise. Thank you. Please call me Justin.”
A grand stairway at the far end of the hall spiraled up to a gallery, leading to higher floors. Victoria led me around it and through a door into a wood paneled hallway.
“Mr. Jutting is up on the top floor,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “Easiest to take the elevator. A few cautions. Mr. Jutting does not shake hands. He becomes angry easily but it passes quickly. He may try to converse about unrelated matters. Interrupting him is one of the things that can trigger his anger.”
“I understand. I’m just here to ask a few questions.”
“Fine. However, if he asks you to stay for dinner please accept.”
“Stay for dinner?”
“Yes. He has been inviting people for dinner lately. His doctor suggested he socialize more. It helps keep his mind off other things.”
“You act like he’s a child.”
Victoria stopped and turned to face me. “Yes, I do a bit I suppose. We all do. He is a brilliant man but he has his quirks. The ultra-wealthy are not like regular people. They create their own reality in a way. Anyway, he’s my uncle. I’ve known him since I was a child. I know he’s not kind to everybody. He can be a very ruthless person when it comes to business. But he has always been very kind to me. So, I return the favor. He’s a great man. I’m sure you’ve heard rumors but please ignore whatever you’ve been told. He is at the top of his game.” Her eyes had an inward look as she said the last part and she seemed distant, like she was examining her own idealized vision of the great man towering over teeming multitudes of the cringing, common rank and file of humanity. It was a narrow hallway. Her fanatical energy was palpable.
I rocked back on my heels instinctively, putting a little bit of space between us. “Got it,” I said. “If he asks me to stay for dinner, I’ll say yes.”
“Excellent!” She smiled, snapping back to all business, and turned on her heel.
We rode an elevator up to the fourth floor and disembarked into a room set up as a kind of reception area. It looked like it was meant to be a parlor but now had an elegant desk facing the elevator and a grouping of Corbusier grand confort sofas and chairs where supplicants awaited their audience with the genius recluse I supposed. It seemed the regency style was only for downstairs. In this room the colors were subdued neutrals and the furniture was modern. I glimpsed leaves out the window, flashing light dark in the breeze, as Victoria led me over soft carpets to a door behind the desk, near the windows.
“Mr. Jutting is in the solarium. It will be a little warm in here. You might want to remove your jacket.” She stopped, pulled a set of keys from her pocket, and swiped an RFID card across a scanner. A solenoid bolt clacked deep in the innards of the lock and Victoria pushed the door open, revealing a hallway running along the side of the house, leading toward the back if I had correctly maintained my sense of direction. A wave of damp, warm air rolled out. We stepped inside and Victoria closed the door. I took her advice and removed my jacket. “This way please,” she said, starting down the hall. As we approached the rear of the house, I saw a bright glow. The humidity, together with a sweet, cloying smell of rotting vegetation grew oppressive. At the end we emerged into a brilliant greenhouse solarium built into and projecting out from the back of the house. It was designed to look Victorian but was decidedly new. The thin struts that made up the structure were metal glazed white and the glass between them was double paned and fogged with moisture so that a diffuse, hazy glow filled the space. A narrow, terracotta tiled pathway ran down the center, seemingly the full width of the house, and on either side orchids of every color and shape grew rampant, twisting out of pots on stepped shelves, hanging from suspended planters, dripping green, bulbous leaves. I followed Victoria down the pathway. Mixed in with the orchids were various carnivorous plants—gaping, whiskered maws and fluid filled tubes of fibrous green. Maybe they were orchids too? I didn’t know much about tropical vegetation. At the center point the pathway ran into a circular seating area with wicker furniture set out on an intricate tile compass rose, then continued on. A man was standing ten feet away on the farther side of the seating, bent over a flower. Victoria Butler cleared her throat and he looked up, something halfway between a scowl and a smile crossing his face for a moment. He looked just like he did in pictures but not as tall as I had thought—heavy brow, thick neck, and lines running down from the corners of his mouth that gave him a supercilious air as if he was in a constant state of disapproval. He wore a black T-shirt, loose black pants, and black loafers without socks.
“Mr. Vincent, you’ve arrived,” he said, "please, let’s sit and have our talk." He gestured to one of the chairs. “Victoria, please take notes. Oh and ask Karl to bring some refreshments. Soda for me. Would you like soda, Mister Vincent?
"Yes, thank you. Your orchid collection seems quite extensive."
"It is, yes. One moment." Jutting jumped up and made a wild gesture, closing his hand around something. He opened the hand slowly and, with thumb and forefinger of his other hand, carefully plucked something out. It was a fat little gnat or fly of some kind, still alive, little legs flexing, trying to find purchase in thin air. “Lunch for you,” Jutting said, dropping the insect into the waxy, pink orifice of a nearby plant. “I don’t know where these bugs are getting in.” He held out both hands to Victoria Butler and she squeezed a dollop of hand sanitizer into each palm from a small bottle on a carabiner clipped to her key ring. He rubbed his hands together vigorously for a moment, then took a phone from his back pocket and snapped a photo, pointing the camera down into the maw of the plant where he had just deposited the insect. “Proof,” he said, sitting back down. “Always get proof.” He directed a piercing stare at me, and waited several moments, as if he thought I was going to dispute his axiom. I met his gaze calmly for one second, two, three. Finally, he looked away. “I was just doing some research,” he said, waving a hand at an open laptop on the chair next to his. “Toxoplasmosis.”
“I’m not familiar with it,” I answered. “What is toxoplasmosis?”
“It’s a disease caused by the toxoplasma gondii parasite. Very interesting. Do you have a cat Mr. Vincent?”
I thought about Belka. He wasn’t my cat, just a fellow traveler, sharing my timeline for a little while. “No,” I replied.
“Good. Filthy creatures. They’re the definitive hosts for toxoplasma. The parasites go back and forth between cats and mice and sometimes humans. It’s a fascinating life cycle. They can only reproduce inside a cat. Their reproduction results in oocys
ts which are basically parasite zygotes. The cat shits them out. Mice or birds eat contaminated soil or plants growing in the soil or they drink contaminated water. After they’re ingested the little fuckers get into the mouse’s brain and change its behavior to make it more vulnerable to cats. They do it by a process called epigenetic remodeling. They actually alter the mouse’s neurons in order to make it less afraid of cats. So, cat eats mouse and gets infected. The parasites reproduce inside the cat. The cat poops them out and the cycle continues.” Jutting smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Humans can be infected too. There’s new research pointing to a link between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis. No cats in this house!”
“I guess not.”
“I’ve been tested of course. I did a full course of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine just to be sure.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. I could hear Victoria’s pen scratching away in a notebook. Was she writing down everything? “I guess that’s one thing I won’t have to worry about.”
“Not in my house anyway. But of course I didn’t bring this up just to make conversation. I was thinking of it more as a metaphor. My company is the mouse Mr. Vincent. We’ve been infected by something that has caused poor judgment. In the last week I have fired three of my top executives. They lost their instinct for survival.”
“I see.”
“All of this is to assure you that I am in full control of my company. We are ready to turn this project around. I would like you to report this back to Mr. Ortoli.”
“Of course. Signore Ortoli had several specific questions he would like me to ask.”
“Please,” Jutting held his arms out. “I’m an open book. Ask away.”
“Maybe we can start with a description of the debt structure?”
I spent the next forty-five minutes asking Ortoli’s questions and listening to Jutting explain various facets of the development on the Amalfi coast. It was a formality. His people had sent all the details to Ortoli’s people already. There was no need for me to retain the information. Finally, when I felt that I had spent enough time for the interview to be creditably complete and there was a lull in Jutting’s monologue, I broke in.
“Well, Mr. Jutting, I’d like to thank you for your time. I think I have all the information I need.”
“Very well. I trust you will give Mr. Ortoli a satisfactory report.”
“Yes, of course. It’s been a pleasure.” I stood.
Jutting stood too, looking uncomfortable. He seemed like he was going to let me go but at the last moment, just as I was turning, he cleared his throat. “Perhaps you would stay for dinner? I’m having a few people over tonight. And of course Baptiste St. Martin will join us. He’s doing some work for me and staying at the house. Do you know his work?”
I glanced at Victoria and she gave me a compressed smile. I turned back to Jutting. “No, I’m not familiar with Baptiste St. Martin. Is he someone I should know?”
“Oh, an academic type. Mathematician. Quite intelligent. French but not infected, with toxoplasmosis that is. You know France has the highest infection rate of any country? It’s the raw meat and unpasteurized cheese in my opinion. Anyway, will you stay?”
“Yes, I’d be glad to. Thanks for the invitation.”
“Good. Victoria will take you down. I have a few things to finish up but I will be down at six thirty promptly.”
“Thank you for staying,” Victoria said, giving me a forced smile. The elevator was silently lowering us back to ground level. It was a very smooth ride. Victoria yawned, covering her mouth with a well maintained hand. Her nail polish was an interesting pale blue. It was probably called something like Above the Clouds or Hazy Aster. “Sorry,” she said. “Up late last night.”
The elevator slowed, stopped, and the doors parted to reveal not the ground floor corridor where we had originally embarked, but instead a short, wide passage with an archway at the end opening on a dark, cavernous space. From what I could glimpse, it was like a small movie theater if you took out all the chairs, plush carpet, and sound absorbing wall panels. The interior was bare concrete, dimly lit by faux flame sconces. Three massive steps led down to a recessed platform where the screen would have been in a theater. In the center was a sort of altar formed from a flat block of stone supported by two more rectangles of stone. It looked like a small dolmen spirited away from Stonehenge. On the altar, though the light was dim, I thought I could make out a dagger and a bowl or maybe a chalice, both glinting in the flicking light with a polished bronze sheen.
“Oh!” Victoria gasped and punched at the buttons on the elevator control panel. “Sorry, I must have hit the wrong one.” The doors closed and we began to rise. “That was my uncle’s theater. He likes to watch movies. There’s a big screen that rolls down.”
“Not very comfortable looking.”
“Pillows! We just bring out big pillows. Everyone lounges around.”
“Sure. What kinds of movies does he like?”
“Oh, superhero movies mostly.”
I tried to imagine patrician Jutting, nervous Victoria, and a few close billionaire friends lounging with big pillows on those bare concrete steps, eating popcorn and watching Spiderman. It didn’t seem likely.
Victoria took me to the gilt and marble drawing room I had seen earlier off the hall, found a servant to fetch me a drink, and left me to fend for myself until dinner time. It was a big room with windows overlooking the street. I could have fit my entire studio space inside it twice. A few minutes later, a man entered—maybe six feet tall but somewhat stooped and severely thin, with gray hair like the fuzz on a dandelion gone to seed and a round, drooping face. He saw me and approached nervously.
“Mr. Vincent?” He asked.
I stood to shake hands. “Yes. Call me Justin please.”
“Baptiste. Pleased to meet you.”
“I was just in a meeting with Jutting. He insisted I stay for dinner and told me I would have an opportunity to meet a world-renowned mathematician?”
“Yes. I suppose that is me although I would hardly say world-renowned. Mathematics is very distant from the ordinary world. Very few people know anything about it or the people who do it. I specialize in Diophantine geometry, number theory, and cryptography.”
“I see. And you’re doing some work for Jutting? Something related to his business interests?”
“Oh no! Unrelated. But I can’t discuss it of course. Top secret. A fascinating problem though. I’m sure you will hear about it once we have a solution.”
“I can’t wait.”
“And what do you do Justin?”
“I’m a sculptor. And I do some consulting work. I was meeting with Jutting on behalf of a friend. Going over the details of a business agreement.”
“Would I have seen your work anywhere?”
“Probably not. It’s mostly held by private collectors. I’ve done a few public pieces but they’re nearly all in California. Bay area.”
“Ah, I’ve been to Stanford University of course but have never done much sightseeing around the area. When we mathematicians get together we just talk. Is that where you are from?”
“No, but I’ve lived there since I was…” A crashing sound from somewhere in the house interrupted me and I broke off, listening. “What was that?”
“I don’t know. It sounded almost like wood splintering and breaking.”
A shout came from the entry hall. I set my drink down and ran to the archway that opened onto the hall. I arrived just in time to see a huge figure dressed all in black run full speed into the guard at the door. There was an impressive whump of mass against mass as the two bodies collided. For a moment it looked like they would both go down but somehow the figure in black kept his feet. His hat fell off revealing curly, sandy-blond hair. I saw his face in profile and the memory clicked. It was Dworkin. The absurdity of the situation was, somehow, unsurprising. He continued running, clutching the shoulder strap of a backpack that swung behind him, and bashed the front
door open. I ran after him. The guard had regained his footing and, over his shoulder, I saw Dworkin dive clumsily into the back seat of a car waiting at the curb. It was, improbably, an eighties era Citroen. The engine roared and the car peeled away from the curb. The guard gave chase but the car was long gone by the time he was halfway down the block. Watching people jump into vehicles and make narrow escapes was getting to be a habit. At least it wasn’t a van this time. I had to give Dworkin some credit for creativity. And some credit for the smash and grab too. It wasn’t a strategy I would have considered but he seemed to have gotten away with it.
“What happened? Who was that?” Baptiste was standing behind me.
“I don’t know,” I said, turning to him.
“Mr. St. Martin,” Victoria strode across the marble entry hall toward us accompanied by another security guard. “Please come to the library. I believe the intruder has taken some things of yours.”
I tagged along. Baptiste had apparently been using a room at the back of the house as a work space. It was smaller than the drawing room but still impressive for its size and vast collection of vintage books lining the dark wood paneled walls. At the back of the room, the smashed and splintered remains of a pair of French doors hung precariously on their hinges revealing a terraced yard beyond. A patio chair, evidently used as a battering ram, lay overturned in the middle of the floor. Baptiste went to a desk near the broken doors. He crouched down and picked up the end of a charging cable. The other end was plugged into the wall.
“He took my laptop. And my notebook and papers.”
We all turned toward the door at the sound of heavy footsteps. “How the hell did he get onto the property?” Jutting, striding into the library, yelled at the guard from the front door who was following him. Jutting’s face was red with anger.
“Of course, I have backups,” Baptiste said. He opened a drawer and stopped, staring down into the empty rectangle of space. “He’s taken my hard drive too,” he exclaimed, turning back to face Victoria, crestfallen, visibly slumping. “All my work.”
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