THE CHAIRMAN
Part 2: An Uninvited Guest
The address led me deeper into Rancho Circle.
With every turn, the lots grew larger, the walls higher, and the streets quieter. It was not the absence of civilization I had expected. It was a different civilization entirely.
The estate appeared behind a high stone wall and black iron gates.
Calling it a house felt almost dishonest. It looked more like a small country with immaculate landscaping.
It was the address I had been looking for.
I parked across the street and sat behind the wheel for a long time.
Had he read my letter?
Had one of his assistants read it?
Maybe the FedEx package was still sitting unopened on someone’s desk. Maybe it had already passed through a shredder and into a wastebasket.
Or perhaps my friend had given me the wrong address.
He remained remarkably difficult to trust, even after I had followed his directions across Las Vegas.
Some innocent retired dentist with the same name might be standing in his living room, staring at six pages from a complete stranger in Hollywood, an eighty-page screenplay, and a notice announcing that the stranger would be arriving that evening without an invitation.
That would have been embarrassing.
It might also have involved the police.
I could have lived with both.
Finding the right man was what frightened me.
A normal executive would have called security.
The Chairman probably was security.
For all I knew, I was looking through my windshield at the gate to the terrible ending my imagination had been writing for me all week.
I stepped out of the car.
The desert air was dry enough to sandpaper my lungs. With every step toward the gate, my imagination found another way to ruin the evening.
What if he asked how I had found his address?
The truth was not reassuring. A lie might have been safer.
For the past several days, I had followed rumors through casino employees, hotel managers, a retired chauffeur, and one florist who knew far more than any florist reasonably should.
I had been trying to confirm the address my friend had given me.
The florist had finally done it.
At the time, I had called that persistence.
Standing outside the Chairman’s gate, it was beginning to look a lot like stalking.
I stopped in front of the intercom.
A small security camera tilted downward until the lens settled directly on my face.
I raised one finger toward the button.
Then stopped.
The film school I had attended in New York had taught me about budgets, lenses, and story structure.
Nobody had explained how to ring the doorbell of a man people only discussed in lowered voices.
Just then, a side gate in the neighboring wall opened.
A woman stepped out with a French bulldog. She had the effortless elegance that expensive neighborhoods seem to produce.
She looked at me once.
Not with curiosity.
With mild disapproval—as though I were tomorrow’s police report arriving a day early.
I offered what I hoped was a friendly smile.
She gave me nothing.
The bulldog waddled after her. Unlike the woman, however, it kept looking back at me.
A few steps down the street, it stopped. The woman tugged at the leash, but the dog planted its feet, turned its whole body, and stared directly at me.
There was something almost sympathetic in its expression.
Rough day?
Mine too.
For one brief and ridiculous moment, I felt understood.
Then all diplomatic relations collapsed.
The dog exploded into barking.
The little maniac lunged against the leash as though I had personally insulted every member of its family. Its entire body shook with outrage.
The woman calmly pulled it away without changing expression.
I abandoned what remained of my dignity and flattened myself against the stone wall.
The barking ricocheted between the silent estates.
So much for making a discreet first impression.
I stayed there until the woman and the dog disappeared around the corner.
Then, unexpectedly, I laughed.
That absurd animal had done me a favor.
Until then, I had been imagining men with guns, shallow graves, and all the ways a person might vanish into the desert beyond Las Vegas.
After a thirty-pound bulldog had stripped me of my pride, none of those possibilities seemed quite as powerful.
I walked back to the gate with more confidence than dignity.
I pressed the intercom button.
Nothing happened.
I pressed it again and held it a little longer than good manners required.
A bell rang somewhere inside.
Once.
Twice.
Then came the sound of a motor.
The iron gates began to slide open.
Through the bars, a circular driveway stretched toward a broad stone courtyard. And there, in the middle of it, sat a helicopter.
Even from a distance, I could make out the darkly tinted windows, reinforced panels, and several strange pieces of equipment mounted along its sides. Most of it had been loosely covered beneath a heavy tarp, but if you looked closely enough, the shapes underneath were still visible.
The helicopter’s nose pointed straight at me.
A faint, cold chemical odor drifted across the courtyard on the breeze from somewhere near the equipment mounted along its sides—the sterile smell of compressed gas.
Nitrogen, I guessed.
Whatever it was, I had the distinct feeling that walking into that house and asking too many questions would be a very bad way to begin the evening.
At last, the iron gates opened completely.
Then, from the entrance of the house in the distance, a man stepped outside and began walking slowly toward me.
Alone.
To be continued in The Chairman, Part 3.
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