Although Ben Shadway delighted in authenflc Spanish buildings with their
multiplicity of arches and angles and deep-set leaded windows, he was no
fan of Spanish modern. The stark lines, smooth surfaces, big
plate-glass windows, and total lack of ornamentation might seem stylish
and satisfyingly clean to some, but he found such architecture boring,
without character, and perilously close to the cheap-looking stucco
boxes of so many southern California neighborhoods.
Nevertheless, as he got out of the car and followed Rachael down a dark
Mexican-tile walkway, across an unlighted veranda where yellowflowering
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 massiveertainly 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 wealthr 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 192Os, 193Os, and l94Os, 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
restf 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