Chapter 84
IT WAS EVENING in Aspen: birds calling out to one another, nice smell of evergreens and meadow grass in the air, no traffic on Ridge Road.
Christian Scott thought he was going to like his new assignment.
He was parked on the side of the road behind a clump of conifers, tracking Bryce and Barbie Cooper so he could warn Bryce if he saw he was about to get murdered. Jack felt he owed it to Hal Archer to get leverage that might knock some time off Archer’s inevitable life sentence, so he’d sent Scotty.
With the help of Private’s intelligence division, Scotty had gotten into the Coopers’ enormous house, planted bugs, cloned Barbie’s phone, and when their chauffeured Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud pulled onto Ridge Road heading south, Scotty knew where the couple was going.
In a little while, Robert Redford, superstar and environmentalist, would be showing his film Watershed at a benefit to save the Colorado River held at the summer home of publishing magnate Jean-Claude Dressler.
Scotty followed the Rolls as his laptop read out details about Dressler’s forty-million-dollar home, the forty thousand square feet of glass, mahogany, and limestone in the style of Tuscany circa the eighteenth century.
Scotty was wondering how all this luxury squared with preserving the environment when he saw the compound up ahead: several gabled stone buildings with tall windows giving views across the entire Owl Creek Valley.
Scotty followed the Rolls over a bridge spanning a stream and onto the cropped lawn serving as a parking area, and the valet waved him in. Scotty got out of his car, put on his shades, rolled up the sleeves of his good-to-go-anywhere Armani jacket, and texted Mo-bot. He told her not to worry. “No one plays boring white guy like me,” he said.
“As long as you don’t dance,” she quipped back.
Up ahead, Barbie Cooper gripped the crook of her husband’s arm as she wobbled toward the house, her heels poking holes in the lawn.
Barbie filled out her small silver dress in a wonderful way, and she looked up into Bryce’s face with adoration. When her wrinkly husband leaned down for a kiss, she made it good, pressing her supersize chest into his, putting her hand to his cheek, laying it on him for all she was worth. Which, according to the numbers they’d cranked out at Private, was half a billion dollars if he died, far less if they divorced.
That big, full-body smooch looked weird and gross and made Scotty pretty sure that Barbie Cooper wasn’t looking to get divorced. Scotty felt very bad for the old man.
He started walking, caught up to the Coopers at the entrance to the Dressler manse, stuck out his hand, and said, “Bryce, I’m Chris Scofield, Scofield Systems. Oakland.”
Bryce looked understandably perplexed.
“I uh, I don’t quite remember…”
“That’s okay. There were a lot of us there when we had lunch at Donald Ross last year. And you must be Barbie.”
Barbie gave Scotty an appreciative look, patted him down with her eyes. Then she said, “Scofield Systems. Is that computers, Chris?”
Still chatting with the Coopers, Scotty gave his fake name to security, and thanks to Mo-bot’s superior hacking skills, Chris Scofield was on the digital guest list with a star next to his name, meaning “big donor.” And as he was also engaged in conversation with Bryce and Barbie Cooper, well known in Aspen society, Scotty entered the private enclave without questions.
Now, all he had to do was stay close enough to Bryce Cooper to make sure that his cute little wife didn’t kill him.