The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

  After a little while Chip reappeared, clutching a handful of prospectuses and two videotapes. 'Mr Lautner?' he breathed. 'It's time to find the dream.'

  I dutifully watched the tapes, taking care to make occasional grunts or moues of interest. Neither had anything that resembled what I was looking for. Then I leafed through the brochures, which featured faux wooden lodges interior-decorated by some cowboy on drugs, or gleaming white boxes of such Modernist sterility they looked like they'd been discovered on the moon. The only thing that varied, and that not by much, was the hilariousness of the prices. It had been this way with each of the previous realtors. I was on the verge of dutifully asking for Chip's card and leaving, maybe calling Bobby to check how he was getting on with his task, when hidden amongst the glossies I found a single piece of paper.

  'The Halls,' it said, in an attractive typeface. 'For people who want more than a home.'

  It went on, in three paragraphs of curious restraint, to describe a small development up in the Gallatin range. Ski-in, ski-out convenience, naturally. End-of-the-road seclusion, of course. A two-hundred-acre tract of highlands, fashioned into a community of such ineffable perfection that Zeus himself probably bought a town house off plan—and yet the copy wasn't trying very hard to sell. There weren't even any pictures, or a price, which piqued my interest further.

  I picked up one of the other brochures more or less at random, just making sure it was expensive.

  'Like to take a look at this one,' I said.

  Chip checked, nodded delightedly. 'It's a peach,' he said.

  'And while we're in the area,' I added, as if an afterthought, 'let's check this place out too.'

  I shoved the single piece of paper across the desk at him. He glanced at it, then folded his hands together and looked at me.

  'With The Halls, Mr Lautner,' he said, judiciously, 'exclusivity is very much the name of the game. We would be looking at very high-end, in monetary terms. Six million would no longer suffice. By quite some margin.'

  I gave him my best and richest smile.

  'Like I said. Show me something special.'

  •••

  An hour later I was listening to Chip talk about golf. Listening again. Still listening. Would, I was beginning to fear, always be listening. Early in the drive, before we were even out of Dyersburg, he'd quizzed me on my own commitment to the game. I'd rashly admitted I didn't play, though luckily stopped short of adding, 'Why on earth would I, for the love of God?' He stared at me for so long, with a look of such stunned incomprehension, that I said I was intending to take the sport up just as soon as I was settled—that this ambition was, in fact, foremost among my reasons for seeking a property of this type. He'd nodded slowly at this, and then taken it upon himself to give me a crash course on everything there was to know about the game. I reckoned I could bear about another fifteen minutes, and then I'd just have to kill him stone dead.

  I'd already endured being shown the house in Big Sky, with its Sub-Zero appliances and Honduran maple flooring and fireplace handcrafted by some moron out of big pebbles. In the end I simply shook my head. Chip clapped me encouragingly on the shoulder—we were well on the way to best buddies by now—and we trooped back to the car. We drove back down to the main road and followed it further into the mountains, Chip giving me the lowdown on what he perceived to be two tiny flaws in Tiger Woods's game—both of which he considered to be related to racial temperament. The sky, which had been clear in the early morning, was now the same colour as the road. The Gallatin River, cold and fast, ran along the left. On the other side was a narrow band of valley, filled with trees. The mountains rose steeply on either side, a notch up into the Rockies. You travel far enough down this way you come up out onto a high plain and then swing east into Yellowstone Park, the caldera of a dormant supervolcano that last erupted six hundred thousand years ago. Molten rock has been gathering in the hollows underneath it since then, and my father told me one time that local legend speaks of a faint buzzing noise on the shores of Yellowstone Lake—the sound of pressure slowly building deep in the rock. Apparently the whole lot could go off again any day, plunging us right back into the Stone Age, which would be a bummer. The way I felt after an hour with Chip, I believed I was capable of triggering it just with the crackling coming from my head.

  Twenty miles down the road, Chip pulled over to the right, apropos of nothing as far as I could tell. He hopped out of the car and hurried over to the fence, where I realized there was a small and unassuming gate. This surprised me. Big Sky, in common with most such places, had a huge great entrance, fashioned from trees that had already been sizeable when the Farlings were as yet unheard-of in the area. This gate looked like it led to nothing more than a service road. Chip leaned close to the right-hand side, and I saw his lips move. I realized that an intercom had been built into the post. He straightened and waited for a moment, peering into the sky. A few drops of rain had begun to fall. Then he turned back, listened to something, and walked back to the car.

  By the time he was strapped back in, the gate had opened. Chip drove through, and it shut again immediately behind us. He steered us along a track beyond, two patchy lines where the grass had been flattened. He drove carefully, but I was still bounced around. I winced. 'Kind of a rustic thing, is it?'

  He smiled. 'You'll see.'

  The track continued for maybe a quarter of a mile, cutting at an angle away from the main road and toward a dense stand of trees. As we rounded them, the surface abruptly changed. From two worn lines in the scrub it switched to narrow but immaculate blacktop. I turned quickly in my seat, and saw that the main road was now invisible, obscured behind the trees.

  'Cunning,' I said.

  'Nothing is left to chance at The Halls,' Chip intoned. 'Those who choose to make their homes there can count on the very highest standards of privacy.'

  The path turned back away from the river, winding behind an outcrop to follow a steep course up a gully, curving further and further around to remain obscured from the main road. Within a few minutes it was hard to believe that the highway had ever existed. Somebody had put genuine thought into The Halls. I was mildly impressed. 'How long has this place been here?'

  'Development started seven years ago,' Chip said, peering through the windshield against the rain. 'Just a shame you're not going to see it in better weather. You get a good snowfall up here, you're going to think you've died and gone to heaven.'

  'Have you sold many?'

  'Not a one. There's only ten home sites, and they're in no hurry to fill the last few. Be honest with you, their leaflet does them no favours. I've told them they should have some pictures on it.'

  We were approaching the top of a rise now, having climbed at least five hundred feet in a long series of zigzags.

  'None of the other realtors I talked to seemed to know about it.'

  Chip shook his head. 'It's our exclusive. Leastways, it is now.'

  He winked at me, and for just a second I got a glimpse of the man Mr Farling might be when he shut his door behind him at night. I turned away, suddenly sure that it had been a good decision not to introduce myself by my real name. I got the feeling that Chip might have recognized the name Hopkins sooner than he would that of a dead Los Angeles architect, however many movies the latter's buildings had been in.

  A gate now became visible, as we turned a final bend. It was made not of wood, but of very large pieces of mountain rock, and sat on the top of a small rise, so that what lay beyond was not visible. As we drew closer, I saw that the words 'The Halls' had been hand-carved into it, in the same typeface they'd used on their sales sheet.

  'This is it,' Chip chirped, superfluously.

  On the other side of the rise the road turned sharply left. I got an impression of a range of higher peaks half a mile away, but this was obscured by another bank of trees. Behind them was a fence that stretched off in both directions. The fence was very high, hiding everything that lay beyond. The rain was coming on ha
rder, and the sky looked black fit to burst.

  'The course is over the other side,' Chip said, switching seamlessly onto autopilot. 'Nine hole, Nicklaus pere et fils design, bien sur. As they say—who can beat a pair of Jacks? Naturally it's under cover at this time of year, and who needs it—with the Thunder Fall and Lost Creek runs barely minutes away? Imagine the convenience of world-class outdoor facilities, only a short drive from homes to delight the most discerning and sophisticated buyer.'

  Indeed, I thought. And imagine me poking a finger up your nose.

  'This is the entrance compound right here,' Chip said. A clump of low wooden buildings became visible, looming out of the murk. 'Club room, non-smoking bar, and a fine restaurant.'

  'Have you eaten there?'

  'No. But I gather it's, uh, extremely fine.'

  He pulled the car over to park in a space to one side of the entrance to the building, alongside a row of very expensive cars. We got out, and he led me to the door. I tried to look around, to get a sense of the rest of the development, but the visibility was shot and we were moving quickly because of the rain now drumming down onto every horizontal surface.

  'Fucking rain,' Chip muttered quietly. He noticed my surprise and shrugged apologetically. 'Sorry. Realtor's worst enemy.'

  'What—worse than Hispanic neighbours?'

  He laughed uproariously, clapped me on the back, and shepherded me through the door.

  Inside, all was calm. To the left stretched a kind of club room, leather chairs around dark wood tables. It was empty. Down the end was a window, which on any other day would have afforded a doubtless stunning view. Today it was just a grey rectangle. To the right was a large fireplace, in which a well-behaved fire crackled. Very quietly in the background was the sound of Beethoven, one of the Sonatas for Violin and Piano. The reception desk was a smooth line of good wood, and on the wall behind it hung a piece of 'art'. As we stood, waiting for someone to respond to the buzzer Chip had rung, I reached inside my jacket and pressed a button on my cell phone. Assuming there was service out here, Bobby's phone would ring. We'd arranged that I'd do this if I'd found what I was looking for. I had.

  •••

  The induction process took half an hour. A slim and attractive woman of early middle age, augmented by many, many dollars' worth of hairstyling, sat us in the lounge and explained the glories The Halls had to offer. She was dressed in an immaculate grey suit and had bright little blue eyes and good skin, so I guess everything she said had to be true. She didn't give her name, which I thought was odd. In American commercial discourse we always give our designation: straight off, right at the top along with the handshake. A token of engagement. You know my name, so I can only want the best for you. There's no way I'm going to rip you off—what, me, your friend? At the heart of The Halls, Ms No-Name explained, was a desire to reproduce the traditional ideals of 'community'—only better. Staff were on hand at all times to assist in any matter, however arcane. The residents apparently thought of them as friends—presumably that special kind of friend who has to do whatever you tell them, no matter what time it is or how boring and arduous the task. The restaurant's chef had previously worked at a glamour trough in Los Angeles even I had heard of, and residents could have meals delivered to their homes between the hours of 9.00 a.m. and midnight. Their wine cellars, she assured me, beggared belief. All houses were automated up to the hilt, with cable Internet access as standard. In addition to the much-vaunted golf club, there was a health club and a dining club and several others I didn't bother to commit to memory. Membership of each of these was mandatory for residents and came in at around a half-million dollars. Per year. Each. Throughout all this I was aware of Chip nodding vigorously beside me, as if unable to believe what a good deal this all was. I sipped my hundredth cup of coffee of the day—at The Halls, at least it was good—and tried not to blanch.

  She concluded by observing that there were only three homes still available within the community, priced at between eleven point five and fourteen million dollars—barkingly expensive even by luxury real-estate standards. She rounded off with a heartwarming paean to the joys of residence that I could see Chip mentally taking notes from.

  'Cool,' I said, when this eventually drew to a measured close. I put my cup down. 'So let's go have a look.'

  The woman stared politely at me. 'Of course that's not possible.'

  'I've been wet before,' I reassured her. 'Many times. I even went swimming once.'

  'The weather is immaterial. We don't allow viewing of The Halls until a demonstration of appropriateness has taken place.' She glanced at Chip, who was looking carefully blank.

  'Appropriateness,' I said.

  'Financial and otherwise.'

  I raised my eyebrows, smiled pleasantly. 'What?'

  'What's being said, if I might intrude,' Chip said, 'is that, as we discussed on the way here, The Halls maintains a very…'

  'I heard,' I said. 'So I'm to understand, Ms…?' I left a gap, but she didn't fill in her name. This woman was in no hurry to be my friend. 'I'm to understand that I can't get further than this room until I've jumped through some hoops you've set up to determine whether I'm suitable.'

  'Correct.' She smiled brightly at me, as if at a child who had finally understood, after long and painful effort, how the relative positions of the big and little hands could be used to divine how long it was until bedtime. 'As Mr Farling should have made clear.'

  'And what form would these demonstrations take?'

  The woman reached into a folder and drew out a piece of paper. Placing it in front of me, she said:

  'The placing of the cost in full of your proposed purchase, along with sufficient funds to cover club memberships for five years, in an escrow account. No mortgage or other part-payment options are entertained. The granting of access to your accountant or other agreed-upon representative for the purpose of establishing a general financial impression. A meeting by yourself with the full board of the community, which consists of the managing agents and a representative from each of the occupied properties, with a subsequent follow-up in subcommittee should this be required. Your nomination of two significant individuals—and by 'significant' we mean that they should be so within our society at large—to whom the board may make reference with regard to your past and present situation. Assuming that all of the above proceeds smoothly, then you will be welcomed onto the property to be introduced to the finer points of the development, and to make your selection.'

  'You've got to be kidding.'

  'I assure you that I am not.'

  I tried for bluster. 'Do you have any idea who I am?'

  'No.' She smiled, turning her lips into a thin line resembling a recently healed scar. 'Which is precisely the point.'

  I was dimly aware that the receptionist, a young man who had spent a great deal of time in the gym, was watching us. I held the woman's gaze for a moment, and then smiled back.

  'Excellent,' I said.

  After a moment's hesitation, she frowned. 'Excuse me?'

  'This is exactly what I hoped for. Mr Farling has evidently divined my needs accurately.' My voice was now a little clipped, presumably to be in keeping with my shifted persona. 'Someone in my position requires certain assurances, and I'm pleased to say that you have afforded them.'

  Ms No-Name began to look friendly again. 'We are in understanding?'

  'Perfectly so. Might I be permitted to see plans of the available properties?'

  'Of course.' She went back to her folder and pulled out two bundles. She unfolded these across the table and I scanned them quickly. They were detailed and well-annotated. What I saw interested me more than I'd expected.

  'Intriguing,' I said. 'I'm sorry not to be able to examine them in the flesh on this occasion, but this is certainly enough to maintain my interest.' I started to refold the plans, then realized that a man as rich as I was supposed to be would let someone else handle such a menial task. Instead I stood up. The abruptness of thi
s caught both of them unawares, and they hurried to follow. I thrust my hand out to the woman, and shook hers firmly.

  'Thank you for your time,' I said, as if I was already thinking of other matters. 'I assume that any further questions I might have should be directed through Mr Farling?'

  'That is the usual way. Might I ask how you heard of The Halls?'

  I hesitated for a moment, as it occurred to me that admitting I'd just seen a piece of paper might sound weak.

  'Friends,' I said. She nodded, almost imperceptibly. Good answer.

  I bowed my head and walked out across the lobby, not waiting for Chip. Outside I stood under the awning for a moment, watching the rain come down. Even if I'd felt like braving it, I could now see that the buildings had been arranged in such a way that no glimpse of the community was possible from the outside. Chip hadn't been kidding about the privacy.

  He emerged soon afterward and walked me across to the car. As I climbed in I noticed that another vehicle had just come in the gate and was heading quickly down the drive. It was large and black, some kind of all-terrain monster. It sloshed in an arc around the small lot and pulled up twenty feet away.

  I took as long as I could to open the door, climb in, and get into my seat, even leaving one of my feet outside to prolong the operation. As I strapped myself in a man emerged from the building we had just left. He was about my height, with blond hair, and walked purposefully, head down. He didn't look at us at any point, and I got an impression of strong features but no more. As he walked toward the car, a man hopped out of the driver's seat and went round to open the back of the vehicle. With his back to us, the other man hefted a bag into it. The bag was large, and a kind of petrol blue colour. It had a paper customs strap around the handle, but I couldn't see the letters. Both men climbed into the car.