First, Decker had to get past the doorman whose uniform resembled that of a bandleader. Then he had to get past a desk clerk in a three-piece suit. Then an elevator operator—uniformed as well as white-gloved—took him up to the twelfth floor. The doors parted, and Decker stepped into a hallway that snaked right, then left. He walked about fifty feet until he came to a set of brass doors. He rang the bell and a tuxedoed butler answered the chimes. Once the man had been tall, but age had stooped his shoulders. He was hollow-cheeked with milky gray eyes and a complexion the color of a dull penny. His head was bald except for the curly pewter hair that neatly ringed his scalp in back—from one ear to the other.

Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony could be heard in the background. Decker held out his badge. “Lieutenant Decker from the LAPD. I believe Mr. Holt is expecting me.”

The butler moved aside. “Yes, sir. Come in.”

Upon entering, Decker was immediately hit with a sense of flying, then falling, because he faced a wall entirely constructed from glass. With no framework around the panes, it appeared as if he were stepping directly into the ethers of city lights. The great room’s ceiling was high—at least twelve feet—with coffers and carved beams. The floor was polished black granite, covered with Persian rugs that had enough wear on them to look valuable. The furnishings, upholstered in lamé fabrics of bronze and silver, were sinuous shapes, oversized enough to fill the space, but not bulky enough to overpower it. A floor-to-ceiling granite fireplace took up a second wall, and a third was hung with enormous oil canvases—de Kooning’s squiggles, Motherwell’s abstracts, Bacon’s distorted bodies, and a single Jackson Pollock number that dripped red.

Inside, the music had become louder…loud, actually. The symphony was still on the first movement, and Decker could picture little satyr centaurs chasing nubile female centaurs. As a young man, he had taken Cindy to see Fantasia at least twice.

“This way, this way.” The butler beckoned.

Down a foyer, passing another room that was almost identical to the first one. Same ceiling and floor, the same suspended wall of glass. But this spacious region held a smaller fireplace that shared the wall with a space-age entertainment unit. A built-in wet bar serviced the thirsty on the opposite side of the territory. In the center stood a grand piano, hood up and gleaming black.