No one answered, so he punched in the keypad code. When the gate slid open, he drove onto the grounds, telling me, “Pea said I should check for him by the garage.” “What’s he doing, working on his car? He doesn’t strike me as the type.” As soon as we had pulled around to the side of the house, I had my answer. Though Pea’s Cadillac was visible inside the open garage, next to Stewart’s orphaned Rolls, neither car was the object of Pea’s attention. Rather, he was directing a crew of helpers, workers in tan jumpsuits who were sorting and packing some of the clutter that had accumulated in the garage. While Larry parked, I watched Pea strut about with a clipboard, nosing into cartons, pointing this way and that, hoisting a few things the workers had missed. He wore black nylon shorts, a pink tank top, and white tennis shoes with bulky gray socks. Though the day was barely warm, not hot, he’d worked up a sweat, which soaked his skimpy shirt with red splotches. It was clear at a glance that his time at the gym had been spent not lounging in a whirlpool, but engaged in obsessive physical training.
