A Hispanic man in blue city-issue coveralls pushed an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner along the sidewalk. A few white-haired figures walked around him. Otherwise the streets were bare.

The haut monde approach to exurbia. Picture-perfect. Except for the sky, soot-streaked and dingy, clouding the foothills. Because money and connections couldn’t buck geography: Ocean winds blew the smog here and, trapped by the hills, it settled in for the long run. San Labrador air was poisonous 120 days a year.

Following Melissa’s directions, I drove six blocks past the commercial area, took the first left-turn break in the median, and got onto Cotswold Drive, a pine-canopied straightaway that began snaking and climbing a half-mile in. Cool shade and post-nuclear silence followed: L.A.’s usual dearth of humanity, but here it seemed more pronounced.

Because of the cars- the lack of them. Not a single vehicle at the curb. The NO PARKING AT ANY TIME enforced with Denver boots and predatory fines. Rising above the empty streets were big tile-roofed houses behind sloping lawns. They got bigger as the grade climbed.

The road split at the top of the hill: Essex Ridge to the west, Sussex Knoll to the east. No homes visible here, just two-story walls of green- eugenia and juniper and red-berried toyon backed by forests of oak, ginkgo, and liquidambar.

I lowered my speed and cruised until I finally saw it. Hand-carved pine gates on thick doweled posts capped with verdigrised iron- the kind of hard, waxed pine you see on Buddhist temples and the counters of sushi bars. The posts sided by iron fencing and twelve-foot hedge. The numeral “1” on the left arm of the gate, “0” on the right. To the left of the “1,” an electric eye and talk box.

I pulled up, reached out the driver’s window, and punched the button on the box.

Melissa’s voice came out of the speaker. “Dr. Delaware?”

“Hi, Melissa.”

“One second.”

A rumble and groan and the gates angled inward. I drove up a steep stone path that had been hosed down so recently the air was misty. Past regimentally planted fifty-foot incense cedars and a vacant guardhouse that could have housed a couple of middle-class families. Then another regiment of trees- a sky-blotting grove of Monterey pines that stretched for several moments before condescending to smaller cousins: gnarled, bonsailike cypress and mountain dogwood ringed with free-form clumps of purple rhododendron, white and pink camellia japonica.

A dark drive. The silence seemed heavier. I thought of Gina Dickinson making her way down here, alone. Gained a new appreciation for her affliction. And her progress.

The trees finally cleared and a stadium-sized lawn came into view- ryegrass so healthy-looking it could have been fresh sod, edged with circular beds of begonia and star jasmine. I saw flashes of light at the far west end, among the cypress. Movement, glints of metal. Two- no, three- khaki-clad men, too distant to be clearly discernible. Hernandez’s sons? I could see why he needed five.

The gardeners worked on the vegetation with hand clippers, barely breaking the silence with dull clicks. No air guns or power tools here. Another covenant? Or house rules?

The path ended in a perfectly semicircular drive backed by a pair of date palms. Between the knobby palm trunks, two flights of double-width Bouquet-Canyon stone steps flanked by wisteria-laced stone balustrades led to the house: peach-colored, three-storied, wide as a neighborhood.

What could have been simply monolithic grossness was merely monumental. And surprisingly pleasing to the eye, the visual flight piloted by fanciful turns of the architect’s pencil. Subtly shifting angles and elevations, a richness of detail. High, arched, leaded windows grilled with teal-green, neo-Moorish wrought-iron work. Balconies, verandas, dripstones, running molds, and mullions carved from mocha-colored limestone. A limestone colonnade on the east end. Spanish roof-tiles honeycombed with mosaic precision. Stained-glass cinquefoil insets placed with a contempt for synchrony but an unerring eye for balance.

Still, the very size of the place- and the solitude- was oppressive and sad. Like an empty museum. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to be phobic here.

I parked and got out. The gardener’s clicks were augmented by bird-squawks and breeze-rustle. I climbed the stairs, unable to imagine what it would have been like to grow up here, an only child.

The entry was big enough to accommodate a delivery truck: double doors of lacquered oak, trimmed with more verdigrised iron, each side divided into half a dozen raised panels. Carved into the panels were peasant scenes that evoked high-school Chaucer. They held my interest as I pressed the doorbell.

Two baritone chimes sounded; then the right door opened and Melissa stood there, wearing a white button-down shirt, pressed blue jeans, and white tennies: she looked tinier than ever. A doll in a dollhouse built to too large a scale.

She shrugged and said, “Some place, huh?”

“Very beautiful.”

She smiled, relieved. “My father designed it. He was an architect.”

The most she’d said about him in nine years. I wondered what else would emerge now that I’d made a house call.

She touched my elbow briefly, then drew it away.

“Come in,” she said. “Let me show you around.”

Around was a vast space crammed with treasures- an entry hall big enough for croquet, and at its rear a sinuous green marble staircase. Beyond the stairs, cavernous room after cavernous room- galleries built for display, vast and silent, indistinguishable from one another in terms of function. Cathedral and coffered ceilings, mirror-sheen paneling, tapestries, stained-glass skylights, kaleidoscopic Oriental and Aubusson rugs over floors of inlaid marble and hand-painted tile and French walnut parquet. So much sheen and opulence that my senses overloaded and I felt myself losing equilibrium.

I remembered feeling that way once before. Over twenty years ago. A college sophomore, backpacking solo across Europe on a second-class rail pass and $4 a day. Visiting the Vatican. Staring bug-eyed at gold-encrusted walls, the treasure-trove assembled in the name of God. Gradually pulling away from it and watching other tourists and Italian peasants visiting from the southern villages, gawking, too. The peasants never leaving a room before dropping coins in the alms boxes that stood near each door…

Melissa was talking and pointing, a docent in her own home. We were in a book-lined, five-sided, windowless room. She indicated a spotlit painting over a mantel. “And this one’s a Goya. “The Duke of Montero on His Steed.’ Father bought it in Spain when art was much more reasonable. He wasn’t concerned with what was fashionable- this was considered a very minor Goya until just a few years ago; too decorative. Portraiture was dÉclassÉ. Now auction houses write us letters all the time. Father had the foresight to travel to England and brought back cartons of Pre-Raphaelites when everyone else thought they were just kitsch. Tiffany glass pieces, too, during the fifties, when the experts brushed those off as frivolous.”

“You know your stuff,” I said.

She blushed. “I was taught.”

“By Jacob?”

She nodded and looked away. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ve seen enough for one day.”

Turning heel, she began walking out of the room.

“Are you interested in art yourself?” I said.

“I don’t know much about it- not the way Father or Jacob did. I do like things that are beautiful. If nobody gets hurt by it.”

“What do you mean?”

She frowned. We left the book-filled room, passed by the open door of another huge space, this one ceilinged with hand-painted walnut beams and backed with tall French doors. Beyond the glass was more lawn and forest and flowers, stone pathways, statuary, an amethyst-colored swimming pool, a sunken area, vine-topped and walled with dark-green tennis tarp under chain link. From the distance came the hollow thump of a ball bouncing.