Shadowfires

the car and followed Rachael down a
dark Mexican-tile walkway, across an unlighted veranda where yellow-
flowering succulents and bloom-laden white azaleas glowed palely in
enormous clay pots, to the front door of the house, Ben was impressed
by the place. It was massive-certainly ten thousand square feet of
living space-set on expansive, elaborately landscaped grounds. From
the property, there was a view of most of Orange County to the west,
a vast carpet of light stretching fifteen miles to the pitch-black
ocean; in daylight, in clear weather, one could probably see all the
way to Catalina. In spite of the spareness of the architecture, the
Leben house reeked of wealth. To Ben, the crickets singing in the
bushes even sounded different from those that chirruped in more
modest neighborhoods, less shrill and more melodious, as if their
minuscule brains encompassed awareness of-and respect for-their
surroundings.
    Ben had known that Eric Leben was a very rich man, but somehow
that knowledge had had no impact until now. Suddenly he sensed what
it meant to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Leben's wealth pressed on Ben, like a very real weight.
    Until he was nineteen, Ben Shadway had never given much thought to
money. His parents were neither rich enough to be preoccupied with
investments nor poor enough to worry about paying next month's bills, nor had they much ambition, so wealth-or lack of it-had not been a topic of conversation in the Shadway household. However, by the time Ben completed two years of military service, his primary interest was money: making it, investing it, accumulating ever-larger piles.
    He did not love money for its own sake. He did not even care all
that much for the finer things that money could buy; imported sports
cars, pleasure boats, Rolex watches, and two-thousand-dollar suits
held no great appeal for him. He was happier with his meticulously
restored 1956 Thunderbird than Rachael was with her new Mercedes, and
he bought his suits off the rack at Harris & Frank. Some men
loved money for the power it gave them, but Ben was no more
interested in exercising power over others than he was in learning
Swahili.
    To him, money was primarily a time machine that would eventually
allow him to do a lot of traveling back through the years to a more
appealing age-the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, which held so much
interest for him. Thus far, he had worked long hours with a few days
off. But he intended to build the company into one of the top real-
estate powerhouses in Orange County within the next five years, then
sell out and take a capital gain large enough to support him
comfortably for most-if not the rest-of his life. Thereafter, he
could devote himself almost entirely to swing music, old movies, the
hard-boiled detective fiction he loved, and his miniature trains.
    Although the Great Depression extended through more than a third
of the period to which Ben was attracted, it seemed to him like a far
better time than the present. During the twenties, thirties, and
forties, there had been no terrorists, no end-of-the-world atomic
threat, no street crime to speak of, no frustrating fifty-five-mile-
per-hour speed limit, no polyester or lite beer. Television, the
moron box that is the curse of modern life, was not a major social
force by the end of the forties. Currently, the world seemed a
cesspool of easy sex, pornography, illiterate fiction, witless and
graceless music. The second, third, and fourth decades of the century
were so fresh and innocent by comparison with the present that Ben's nostalgia sometimes deepened into a melancholy longing, into a profound desire to have been born before his own time.
    Now, as the respectful crickets offered trilling songs to the
otherwise peaceful silence of the Leben estate, as a warm wind
scented with star jasmine blew across the sea-facing hills and
through the long veranda, Ben could almost believe that he had, in
fact, been transported back in time to a more genteel, less hectic
age. Only the architecture spoiled the halcyon illusion.
    And Rachael's pistol.
    That spoiled things, too.
    She was an extraordinarily easygoing woman, quick to laugh and
slow to anger, too self-confident to be easily frightened. Only a
very real and very serious threat could compel her to arm herself.
    Before getting out of the car, she had withdrawn the gun from her
purse and had clicked off the safeties. She warned Ben to be