by Alan Glynn
‘On your own?’
‘If this is the route you want to go down . . . yeah, sure, on my own. Teddy was becoming a liability. I felt he needed to be controlled or even contained. And this seemed like a possible way to do it.’
I can feel my insides churning. ‘How?’
‘I didn’t think it through, Danny. There was no big plan.’ Shaw looks over his shoulder at the man behind him for a moment, then turns to face me again. ‘As I said before, I didn’t think you were really suitable, so I had this biometrics company we own run data on it, to see if we couldn’t find another match, maybe someone . . . easier to handle, let’s say . . . but no one came anywhere near your numbers. So . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘So we kept an eye on you.’
Kept an eye on me? Jesus Christ. I exhale loudly. Is there anyone who isn’t keeping an eye on me?
Shaw ignores my reaction. ‘How it would all proceed from there,’ he goes on, ‘was anyone’s guess. There was no real strategy, and we were more or less improvising. Anyway, you pretty much took over the reins, Danny. Once you saw Teddy for yourself, you did all the heavy lifting, up to and including – and we couldn’t have foreseen this – signing those papers.’ He makes a whistling sound. ‘But why did you run off like that? Why did you sneak out? Why didn’t you stick around the way I told you to?’
I look at him and shrug.
‘Of course we should have factored in how unhinged Teddy himself was, that he’d inevitably want to track you down again, and stroke you like a pet monkey.’ He pauses. ‘Right, Karl?’
The man standing behind him nods slightly, but doesn’t speak. After a moment, Shaw waves a hand vaguely to his side. ‘By the way, Danny, this is Dr Karl Lessing.’
Now it’s my turn to nod and not speak.
‘Anyway, the point is,’ Shaw continues, ‘we may have been a bit behind the curve in all of this, but you went ahead and made your decision regardless, am I right? You moved Teddy’s body. You got in behind the wheel of his car. You knew what you were doing. So let’s be honest with one another here . . . you totally want this.’
My stomach is still churning. I have about a dozen very specific questions I could ask right now, knotty procedural points in the main – timing, sequence of events, when people got to the scene, stuff that isn’t clear to me or that doesn’t quite add up – but it seems like there’s really only one direction this conversation is going in.
‘Want what, Doug?’
‘I think you know what, Danny. But just so we’re on the same page.’ He clears his throat again. ‘You get to be Teddy Trager. You get to wear his clothes and drink his liquor. You get to bang his girlfriend, drive his car, spend his money, whatever. You get to live here – I mean, look at this place – and, in return, you close the book on your old life, no contact, no crossover. You keep a low profile and let me take care of company business. And every now and again, as the necessity arises, you make a public appearance and endorse . . . whatever needs to be endorsed, whatever’s going on with the company at the time.’
‘And if I refuse?’
Shaw laughs. ‘Why would you do that? This is your ticket out of the shit, Danny.’
‘But if I did? For argument’s sake?’
He exhales loudly. ‘I don’t know. We’d think of something. We’ve got deep pockets. You’ve got nothing. Besides, you’re into some murky stuff here already. Forgery, personation. None of that would play too well in court.’
He’s right. But I still need to understand something.
‘If it’s about control of the company,’ I say, ‘what do you need me for? Why didn’t you kill Teddy off long ago, when he became a liability? Wouldn’t that have been easier and less complicated?’
‘Jesus Christ, Danny. Kill Teddy? What kind of people do you think we are? Teddy was my friend. He died in an accident.’
I hold his gaze, and a long, tense silence follows. I don’t play poker, but I imagine it’s something like this. ‘I’m not your friend,’ I say eventually. ‘Why not get rid of me?’
Shaw leans back a little on the couch. ‘You’re a trip, you know that?’ He half turns around to look at Lessing. ‘I told you, Karl. This guy is fucking nuts.’
Lessing takes a couple of steps forward and puts his hands on the edge of the couch. ‘No,’ he says quietly, ‘I don’t think so.’
There’s definitely an accent here, German maybe.
Squinting slightly, Lessing studies me for a few seconds, then says, ‘He’s puzzled, that’s all. He’s trying to understand why we would be doing this. He’s goading you.’
Not German, though maybe South African?
Shaw nods impatiently. ‘Okay, okay, I get it.’ He turns to face me again. ‘Look . . . like I said, there was no big plan here, no big design. Teddy dies in a car crash, it’s tragic, but now we have this . . . opportunity. With you. Because the way I see it, Paradime as a brand, without the oxygen of Teddy Trager, even the illusion of it, is seriously diminished. Now, Teddy had his issues, stuff you don’t need to know about, believe me, but at the same time he was unique, he had charisma, he had his very own, what do they call it’ – he clicks his fingers – ‘reality distortion field. And here’s the thing: the man brought a loyalty to the Paradime brand that no amount of money could buy. But now he’s gone.’ He leans forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘Except that he isn’t, is he?’
I swallow, totally out of my depth now.
‘Or at least he doesn’t have to be,’ Shaw goes on, ‘because we have someone who can step into his shoes. We have you. Which means we have a shot at keeping this thing alive, this confidence that Paradime inspires, that keeps investors and fund managers coming back for more. Call it the Teddy Trager effect.’
This is moving too fast. I shake my head. ‘But . . .’
Shaw tenses. ‘Yeah?’
‘You said it yourself. You think I’m too . . . what was it you called me? Unstable?’
‘Yeah . . .’ He smiles. ‘But come on, what do I know? My esteemed colleague, the doctor here, took a good, long look at you as well, then drew up a detailed psychological profile, and he assures me that you have a steely resilience and a,’ – he looks around briefly – ‘what was it, Karl, a rare capacity for adaptability? In fact, it was Dr Lessing’s idea to wait before having this conversation. He wanted to see how long you’d hold out before the pressure got to you. I think he was impressed.’
I glance up at Lessing. We make eye contact this time, but his face remains impassive.
‘So, Danny,’ Shaw says, leaning forward, ‘what’s it going to be?’
I wonder what else is in this psychological profile they have of me. My attitude to Kate, for example. Do they expect me to just forget about her? I’m hesitant to say her name, to bring her into it, but surely a red flag will go up if I don’t mention her? Equally, they might perceive it as an area of potential weakness if I do. So I’m left with how I mention her.
‘Okay, Doug,’ I say, hands held up in mock surrender, ‘I guess I’ll have to go for it.’
‘Great.’ Shaw starts moving off the couch. ‘So let’s—’
‘But—’
He stops, and looks over at me. ‘But?’
In spite of how unstable he thinks I might be, Shaw clearly feels I’m locked into this on two fronts already – the first being fear (of the law) and the second, desire (for Trager’s lifestyle).
But I’m about to give him a third.
*
There is resistance at first, mainly from Shaw, and then there’s a bit of horse-trading. Whoever this Dr Karl Lessing is, he has serious clout because Shaw defers to him on almost every point. Not openly, he does his best to conceal it, but the body language is clear.
What I tell them is that I am more than willing to go along with this, but as chaotic as my life may well have been, even up to a few days ago, I can’t just walk away from it . . . and specifically I can’t – and don’t want to – abandon my
girlfriend to all the fallout. So I tell them to arrange it somehow for Kate’s student loans, including all accumulated interest and fines, to be paid off.
Expunged, erased, whatever.
‘And then I’m yours.’
Locked in, triple down.
I know I’m running the risk here of confirming Shaw’s worst fears about me, but it’s the only move I’ve got. When they agree to it, I have to work hard not to seem too relieved.
‘We’ll figure out a way to do it,’ Shaw says. ‘It can’t be that hard. Then we’ll run the details by you. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
The quid pro quo comes pretty fast.
Shaw says there’s a thing in the next couple of weeks he needs me to do, a TV interview – the two of us, only five, ten minutes, but it’s important.
‘PromTech?’
‘Yeah. Teddy had a couple of the guys over there pretty spooked about this deal, so we need to shore that up, we need to show a united front.’
‘Doug, I may have signed those papers, but I have no idea—’
‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll coach you through it. Right, Karl?’
‘Of course,’ Dr Lessing says, with a thin smile. ‘A little fine tuning.’
Shaw then gets up from the couch. ‘Okay,’ he says, straightening his jacket, ‘we’ll get started on this tomorrow.’ Then he turns to me. ‘So, Teddy, we good?’
‘Yeah,’ I nod, and glance out across the river, ‘we’re good.’
*
Good, that is, apart from the idea of appearing on TV. After Shaw and Dr Lessing have gone, this looms large in my mind because it seems insane – the real-life equivalent of that dream where you find yourself naked in public. Why would you actively choose to do it? And in this scenario the whole thing gets pushed a little further into the thickets of dream logic by the fact that I’d be appearing as someone else but would still very much look like me.
I also wonder what they meant by ‘a little fine tuning’, but that becomes fairly clear the next morning when Shaw arrives, not with Dr Lessing but with a guy about my own age, maybe a bit older, who turns out to be a voice coach. Tall and good-looking, Matt Becker has a booming, actorly voice, and it later transpires that he is an actor, as well as an occasional stand-up comic.
Anyway, Shaw sets us up, and we get straight into it. I do my Teddy Trager voice for Matt, and he pretty quickly tears it to shreds. At first, he says it’s okay, but then basically has a note for every third or fourth word I say. He uses recordings and YouTube clips of Trager, and it’s not long before I realise how much there is to this – cadence, timbre, register, rhythm, a whole bunch of shit you wouldn’t normally think about. We spend hours at it, doing drills and breathing exercises, and Matt is very professional, very circumspect, making no reference to the fact that with no effort whatsoever I already look so much like the person he’s helping me to sound like.
I’m assuming, therefore, that he’s being paid really well, and not just for his skills but also for his silence.
From the next day, he divides his time with a colleague, a movement coach named Arturo, who works with me on posture and coordination, on gestures and hand movements. It’s an intense few days that also includes regular visits from a doctor, a nurse and a physiotherapist. Shaw stays away, and I don’t leave the apartment at all, confining myself to just a couple of rooms. I have no access to TV or the Internet, nor do I engage with the domestic staff on any issues other than those relating to either food or laundry. This makes the whole thing feel sort of bootcampish, as well as a bit claustrophobic, but I accept it all because I guess I’m looking on this as a sort of trial period.
Anyway, by the fifth day I’m pretty satisfied with my new, deluxe Trager 2.0, but I’m also mentally and physically exhausted, so I decide to go for a swim. The experience of floating alone in a blue pool high above the streets of Manhattan turns out to be weird and relaxing in about equal measure. On my way back to the main living room, one of the staff members, a severe Korean woman in her fifties, appears and informs me that I have a visitor. My immediate reaction is irritation. Who is it? Some friend of Trager’s? Some person I’m going to get tangled up in knots with as we try to hold a conversation? I can just see it . . . they think they know me, I have no idea who they are. It’ll be a nightmare.
I step into the vast living room with its wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows. There is a woman sitting over on one of the couches. She has her back to me and seems to be gazing out at the deepening, red-flecked evening sky. As I get nearer, I realise that she’s not so much a woman, actually, as a girl. She turns and smiles at me. ‘Hi.’
Who is she? Trager’s niece or something, the daughter of a friend? She’s probably about sixteen or seventeen, possibly younger. She’s wearing a small black satin sheath dress. She has pixie-ish blonde hair, pale skin, red lipstick and really striking blue eyes – eyes that have locked onto mine now and show no signs of letting go. ‘I’m Sabrina,’ she says, her voice a little husky. She then leans back on the couch, simultaneously crossing her legs and biting her lower lip.
Something catches in my throat, and I have to look away. I hold up a hand. ‘Sabrina, just . . . just a moment.’
I turn quickly and walk out of the room. At the far end of the corridor I see the Korean woman, the . . . what is she? The housekeeper? I don’t even know her name and can’t call out to her. But I do get her attention, and, when she approaches, I tell her that I’m going out for a while and that when I get back I expect the young lady in the main living room to be gone. ‘Is that understood?’
The woman nods, with a slight look of panic on her face. ‘You go out?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘out . . . outside,’ as it hits me for the first time that this might not be as easy as I think. But then I resolve not to think, to just go, and that’s what I do, head straight for the vestibule, press the elevator button, and wait – aware all the while of a slight commotion somewhere, movement, voices, maybe from the kitchen, the Korean woman explaining, then another voice responding . . .
The elevator opens, and I get in, but as I descend to the lobby, I find it hard to contain my anger. Because what was that meant to be back there, a honey trap? A little insurance policy Shaw set up for himself?
When I get down to the lobby, I make straight for the exit, ignoring what seems to be a ripple of activity over by the desk involving the concierge and maybe one of the security staff. Outside, I hit the sidewalk, and, with traffic roaring past, I get about three blocks south before calming down enough to realise I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have any ID on me, or any money. I can’t even go for a fucking drink. So what do I do? Go to 10th Street? Walk all the way there? But again, that option seems closed off to me. I can turn around here on Twelfth Avenue all right and retrace my steps to the Mercury, but that’s not the same thing. It’s as though there are two realms in this city, parallel and coexisting, and if you pass from one to the other, as I appear to have done, then that’s it, you’re stuck, there’s no route home.
I turn around now and look up at this glistening tower of luxury condos dominating the night sky in front of me, and I have to say I find it ironic, even faintly ridiculous, that I have no choice but to go back in there, that I literally have nowhere else to go.
When I re-enter the lobby a few minutes later, I can’t help feeling that I’m being watched – and not just from inside the building, by the guys over at the desk, but from outside too, from across the street maybe, from the back of a van, or – who knows – from an orbiting satellite two hundred miles up in the sky.
Then I get to the eighty-second floor and step into the apartment again. The Korean housekeeper seems relieved to have me back. Whoever is in the kitchen (the cook, I’m guessing) is talking loudly on a phone but in a language I don’t understand and can’t even identify.
I go into the living room and look around. Sabrina is nowhere to be seen, but all of a sudden I regret sending her away – no
t because I could have had her but because I could have helped her. Surely, in the circumstances, it was within my power to do something – slip her a ceramic bowl or even send her off with the goddamn Picasso. Because what kind of world does a girl like that come from, a girl conjured up out of nothing with a credit card?
‘You want dinner, Mister Teddy?’
I turn around. The housekeeper has trailed along in my wake.
‘Yes,’ I say, weary now. Then I look at her. ‘Sorry, excuse me . . . what’s your name?’
Turns out it’s Mrs Jeong. She’s been in this country for over twenty-five years and has two grown-up kids who are doing really well. She likes ballroom dancing and collects antique perfume bottles. And she works really hard. Which I can see is true. All of a sudden. I can also see that she is very patient, and probably very kind, and I have to wonder what she makes of Mister Teddy and how he treats his guests.
Do I tell her I have a headache now, that I’d like her to fetch me some Excedrin?
No, but . . . a thought strikes me. I walk past her and go to the kitchen, a huge affair that could easily service a modest-sized restaurant. There’s a guy on a stool behind the breakfast bar. He’s on his phone and looks startled when he sees me. He puts his phone away and gets off the stool. ‘Sir, is there something—’
‘No,’ I say, ‘you’re fine.’
His name, it turns out, is Pavel, and he maintains the smart HVAC system for the whole apartment.
He and Mrs Jeong are both temps, agency people. A couple of weeks ago they were working somewhere else. In a couple of weeks, who knows?
Like Sabrina.
I go over to the refrigerator, a stainless-steel, touch-screen PalomaRex 3000, open it and start scanning for potential ingredients. I see anchovies, olives, capers, red peppers. I feel a little rush of adrenalin, like I should already have a knife in my hand, like someone should be calling me shithead and telling me to hurry up with the fucking soffritto.
‘Mr Trager . . . sir?’
I turn around. Mrs Jeong and Pavel are both just standing there, staring at me.