by Alan Glynn
I might be expected to show curiosity here, even irritation, but I remain impassive.
‘Which is?’
‘He looked exactly like you.’ Kettner takes something out of his pocket and slides it across the table in front of me. ‘This is him.’
It’s a photo, naturally. But it’s of me, standing next to one of the grills at Mouzon. I remember the day it was taken. I assume he chose this one because it’s both very clear and very clearly not Teddy Trager.
‘Oh my God.’
‘Yeah.’
The waiter arrives with water and bread. I pick up the photo, as though to examine it closely. When the waiter leaves, I hand the photo back to Kettner. ‘I don’t know what to make of this, Pete.’
‘I understand,’ he says, putting the photo away again. ‘But the thing is, Mr Trager, after Danny died, Kate – that’s the woman I work with, Danny’s girlfriend – she was so cut up about it, naturally, that she couldn’t bring herself to go through his stuff, and didn’t for quite a while afterwards, a few weeks. But then she did.’ He takes a sip of water. ‘The night he died, Danny had been working on his laptop, and when Kate finally got around to checking his browsing history, it was all to do with you . . . your business partner, Paradime Capital, a Ms Schlossmeier. It was just Teddy Trager, Teddy Trager, Teddy Trager, columns and columns of searches going back days. Now fine, that wouldn’t be . . . it wouldn’t mean anything if Danny and you weren’t so physically alike, and it wouldn’t—’
‘But what does it mean anyway?’
I’m feeling very uneasy now.
‘I don’t know, that’s the thing. Danny was troubled, in certain respects, and he’d been behaving strangely, there’s no other way to put it, but . . .’ He looks around, as though searching for the right words. ‘Kate is trying to understand why he took his own life, if that’s actually what happened, and she can’t help wondering if Danny may have . . . approached you, if there wasn’t some form of contact, if—’
‘Why doesn’t she ask me this herself, why send—’
‘Oh, she’s tried. She’s called your office multiple times now, left messages, sent emails, but she’s never heard back. You see, as a blogger, as a journalist, I get to knock on a few more doors. I get to push a little harder.’ He smiles sheepishly, almost apologetically. Pete Kettner is doing this because he likes Kate. No other reason. He thinks he might get lucky.
‘What does Kate do at Pivot?’
‘Oh . . . she’s a production assistant.’
I nod. ‘What you said there, “if that’s actually what happened.” What does that mean?’
Kettner squirms a little. ‘Well, in the absence of any response from you, at least up to now, Kate hasn’t been able to keep herself from speculating.’ He looks me in the eye. ‘To put it bluntly, she wonders if you maybe had something to do with Danny showing up dead in the Hudson.’
I hold his gaze, but don’t speak for a few moments. My whole body is tense, my insides are churning. All I want to do is get up from the table and walk out of there, run out.
‘Okay, Pete,’ I say, ‘what you’re suggesting is ridiculous, you do know that, right?’
‘Probably, yeah, but I don’t know it for sure. Nature abhors a vacuum, Mr Trager.’
Teddy, it’s fucking Teddy.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Look, this isn’t about chasing a story. Because, believe me, there’s already enough of a story here . . . the physical likeness, the tech mogul, the body in the river, are you kidding me? If Pivot ran this thing it’d trade up the chain and go viral in minutes flat. But that’s not what Pivot is about. We don’t do unsubstantiated, we don’t do tabloid non-stories, that’s why we’re so small and why no one’s heard of us.’ He leans forward. ‘This is about someone trying to get answers, someone who wants to be listened to.’
‘But I don’t have any answers, Pete. I didn’t know this Danny Lynch, I never saw him, never heard from him, never had any contact with him. What you’re saying here? It’s all news to me.’
Kettner leans back in his chair. ‘Well, that is an answer. And that’s all Kate wanted to hear, or needed to hear. She’s grieving, you know.’ He looks away. ‘It’s . . . it’s a process.’
I nod, and then look away myself, feeling like a piece of shit.
The waiter arrives with our food.
A moment later, as Kettner is unflapping his napkin, he says, ‘Look, thanks for hearing me out on that, Mr Trager, I really appreciate it.’ He nods down at his food. ‘But hey, since we’re here, could I maybe ask you a couple of questions about your speech?’
*
On my way back to the office, I experience a horrible, gnawing sense of guilt, mainly for what I’ve put Kate through. I’d forgotten about the laptop, and it never occurred to me that she might end up raking over my recent search history. I suppose it was likely that sooner or later she’d come across Teddy Trager, but not that she’d ever suspect there was an actual connection between us, or that one of us could in any way be responsible for the death of the other.
Soon, though, guilt is replaced by paranoia.
Because . . . what was that Pete Kettner said? Kate contacted my office multiple times? Why did I never hear about that? Why was it filtered out? And Pete Kettner himself . . . he seemed reasonable enough, I even sort of liked him, but was he on the level? Was he just clearing up that one point – confirmation for Kate that I’d never had any contact with Danny Lynch – or was he initiating a campaign of some kind that would lead to, as he called it, ‘the legal route’? Meaning what? A perp walk at some point? An indictment, an eventual conviction? Or maybe it’s a different route he has in mind altogether, a shakedown, blackmail – something along those lines.
If guilt is followed by paranoia, what comes next?
I start by thinking that Pete Kettner and Kate need to be warned off the idea of pursuing, in any way at all, this suspicion they have – but how do I do that without it sounding like a threat? Back at my desk, I make a couple of calls, first to Paradime’s head of corporate security, Jerry Ellis. I ask him to recommend a private investigator and tell him I need someone discreet, that it’s not a corporate matter but that it’s fairly urgent all the same. He gets back to me in ten minutes with the name of an agency, McNicoll Associates, and a contact, Leonard Perl.
‘He’s very reliable, Mr Trager, I’ve known him for years. You want me to give him a call?’
‘No, that’s all right, Jerry, I’ll do it, thanks.’
I arrange a meeting with this Leonard Perl for the next morning, and, just after ten o’clock, Nicole ushers him into my office. He’s tall, slim, mid-forties. He’s wearing a dark-blue suit and could be a corporate executive. I invite him to sit down. I ask him about the kind of work he does.
‘Well, sir, we’re involved in a lot of areas, insurance-claim verification, credit-reference reporting, tracing of missing persons, personnel screening, company searches. We offer these, as well as a range of surveillance packages.’
I nod along and then tell him exactly what I need: eyes and ears on the offices of a website called Pivot and on two people who work there in particular. Put baldly like this, the whole thing sounds pretty creepy – and the irony of it isn’t lost on me either, but Perl reacts as if I’ve asked him to put a trace out on an antique piece of furniture I’m interested in acquiring. We discuss budget parameters and time frames, and he says he’ll get on it immediately.
He’s as good as his word, and pretty soon I’m receiving daily reports on what Kate is up to, her routine, who she meets with, what’s happening at the office. I get audio, video, emails, transcripts, more material than I know what to do with, most of it tedious, none of it revealing. There’s nothing about what Kate is thinking in relation to Teddy Trager, and there’s nothing about what Kate is just . . . thinking. Nor is there any evidence that she’s in any kind of a relationship with Pete Kettner, but apparently a breakdown of the data shows that she’
s spending more time, minute for minute, in his company than in anyone else’s. What does this mean? Nothing, necessarily. It’s just data. But not everything they say to each other is retrievable, so what if, in their more private, secluded moments, they’re talking about the very thing I’m paranoid about, the very thing I’m spending all this money trying to identify and inoculate against? It seems like a stretch, but if I let my imagination run with it, I can see the whole thing unfolding before me, and where it leads is to some kind of twisted nightmare: Teddy Trager being indicted for the murder of Danny Lynch.
Factor in DNA, of course, and it all pretty quickly gets reversed, but what you end up with then, as far as I’m concerned, is equally nightmarish: PTSD-addled Iraq vet indicted for the murder of visionary tech billionaire . . .
So I need to get way out ahead on this, and fast. The encrypted files I’m receiving on a daily basis from Leonard Perl are great, but they’re not enough – even though in a sense they’re too much. Plus, there’s a real danger here that I’ll get distracted, seduced by the streaming video feed from various surveillance points Perl has linked me to – one a plant in the Pivot offices, others random CCTV security cams in the immediate neighbourhood. Over the course of a week, a week and a half, being able to watch Kate in real time moving around rooms and streets like this takes its toll on me, and not just in terms of focus but emotionally too. I’ll replay a section multiple times just because I like how she moves in it. I’ll find myself watching clips at four in the morning, freeze-framing her at different moments.
But with all of this I’m no closer to finding out what’s going on in Kate’s head or even if she’s given the whole business another thought since Kettner reported back to her on our conversation.
That’s when I get an idea for a more efficient way of dealing with the problem.
I decide to buy Pivot.
*
With no Doug Shaw around to consult, I get Lester to call a meeting of the relevant personnel, and, when we’re all seated around the table, I ask them for ideas about how we should proceed. I tell them we can’t buy Pivot directly, or be openly associated with the acquisition, and that what I envisage instead is some mechanism whereby we do it at a few removes, through a series of dummy or shell companies, or by getting a company we’re already affiliated with to do it.
But at the meeting there is strong opposition to all of this. It starts out more as confusion, incomprehension even, than any coherent argument, but then the objections come thick and fast. Why Pivot? It’s small, it’s niche, there’s no business model to work with. A successful website is all about traffic, all about clicks, pageviews and ad revenue, all about manufactured urgency and polarising headlines – and Pivot is pretty much a textbook example of how not to do any of that stuff. So how would you value it? And where’s the growth potential? And just what would you do with it?
Most of this comes from Dick Stein, one of our senior investment analysts. The thing is, my idea, which I can’t advertise to him, or to anyone else here, is that by owning Pivot I’d not only be able to keep a close watch on what Kate and Pete Kettner are doing, I’d be able to exert a certain amount of influence over them as well. Pumping additional money into the operation would generate new activity, and that, in turn, would redirect their attention and, with any luck, distract them.
That’s the idea anyway.
The meeting gets testy. Most people agree with Stein, whether or not they say so out loud. I can see it. And Lester looks uncomfortable too.
I stare at the glass of water in front of me for a few moments and have a small epiphany. Of course these people all agree with the professional investment guy, because that’s what he is, a fucking professional investment guy. He knows what he’s talking about. I don’t. I’m being irrational. I’m being a jerk.
And I understand this.
Nevertheless, I end up shouting at them. I end up telling them to just do it anyway before storming out of the room.
*
The next day I’m at Jean-Georges having lunch with Oberon Capital Group CEO, Dessie Litchfield, when something extremely weird happens. I look up from my truffle salad and see, approaching us from across the room, the unmistakable figure of Bill Clinton. We have a table by the window, and I glance out for a second to gather my wits. I have no protective blanket of morphine this time, but I’m sure it’ll be okay. He’ll probably do all the talking anyway. As he gets to the table, I’m about to extend my hand and greet him warmly, but Clinton isn’t looking at me. Instead, and with a grin on his face, he gently slaps Litchfield on the back and says, ‘Dessie, my main man, what’s up?’ Litchfield turns and laughs, ‘Bill!’
The two men go at it for a minute, Clinton pointing over at his table and saying he’s here with some friends from Paris, Litchfield mentioning something about his wife. This is followed by a brief exchange about the weather, and then, turning to me, Litchfield says, ‘Bill, I’m sorry, have you met Teddy Trager?’
I’m about to extend my hand again and make some lame joke about this when Clinton shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, Teddy.’ Then he extends his hand.
We shake.
In disbelief, I look into his eyes. Familiar and searching as they are, I see no sign of recognition in them whatsoever.
‘Paradime,’ he says, ‘right? Paradime Capital?’
Unsure whether to call him Bill or Mr President I end up just nodding.
‘Great company,’ he says. ‘Doing some great things. Yes, sir.’
And that’s it.
He and Litchfield engage in another few moments of banter, during which I stare up at Clinton, at his florid complexion, at his silver hair, during which I listen, uncomprehending, to whatever words he’s saying in that whispered, husky, conspiratorial drawl I remember so clearly from the hospital.
Afterward, I try to make sense of what happened, but I can’t. As I cross the lobby of the Tyler Building and go up in the elevator I feel increasingly strange and a little nauseous. In reception, Nicole approaches with a note in her hand, but I wave her away. I sit at my desk and swivel for a bit. Then I turn to my computer and look up Bill Clinton. I hop around aimlessly, from his Wikipedia page to the Foundation website.
What’s going on? It’s not just that this man with legendary recall powers didn’t remember visiting me in the hospital two months ago, it’s that he claimed never to have met me at all.
Maybe it was the morphine.
But if so, what else did I hallucinate? Clooney too? You don’t really hallucinate on morphine though, do you? Not with the low dosages I was on. And not like that anyway.
Then something occurs to me.
I work out the dates that I was in the hospital and compare these to NYT search results for references to Clinton on those same dates.
It seems that on the very morning Bill Clinton spent ten or fifteen minutes sitting at my bedside in New York, he was attending a regional-aid conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
Fuck.
I slump forward on the desk and, for a few seconds, feel as if everything around me, every solid object – the chair I’m in, the desk in front of me, the office itself, the seventy floors of steel and concrete stacked beneath it – as if all these things are on the point of crumbling suddenly and falling in on themselves.
But the room remains solid. There’s no trillion-particle dust storm blowing up around me. No understanding of this either, though.
I’m about to look up Clooney when an anxious-seeming Nicole appears at the door. I raise my head.
‘What?’
She holds up the note she had in her hand earlier. ‘A message,’ she says, ‘it’s urgent, apparently . . . from Dr Lessing?’
He wants to meet and suggests a coffee shop four blocks away. This seems weird to me, but on my way down I realise something. I’ve only ever met Karl Lessing in the apartment, never here at the Tyler. I’ve never spoken to him directly on the phone. I could spend time wonder
ing why this might be and devise some workable theories, but I’m too consumed with the other matter to really think about it.
The coffee shop is very ordinary, even a little shabby. I spot Lessing at a table near the back, occupied with his phone.
When I get to the table, he looks up and nods at the chair on the other side. ‘Sit down.’
An impulse to upend the table and punch Lessing in the face ripples across my brain, but I have a question I want to put to him.
I sit down.
He has a question too, and manages to get it in before mine. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
I don’t answer at first. I look around. It’s as if I’m impatient for someone to come over and take my order. But I’m not. I’ve just had lunch. I do it because I’m confused. Every new thing that comes along now is confusing, and they’re all piling up confusingly inside my head. I look at Lessing again. ‘What do you mean?’
He makes a huffing sound. ‘What do you think I mean? This Pivot thing. You’re trying to buy it? And Leonard Perl, the surveillance? What’s that all about? We had an agreement.’ He leans across the table and locks eyes with me. ‘No contact with your old life, no crossover.’
Lessing is wearing a suit, but there’s something shabby about it, and about him too. Who is he?
That’s another question I want to ask him, but I’m afraid of what the answer will be. While we’re at it, here’s another. Does he know why I want to buy Pivot? And if he doesn’t, do I tell him?
He’s waiting for me to speak when a waitress comes over.
‘Two coffees,’ Lessing says without looking at her.
When she leaves, I say, ‘Karl, I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
He adjusts his glasses, then takes them off, fiddles with them, and puts them back on again. For the few seconds he doesn’t have them on, he looks strange, like an outsized fish. ‘No, you don’t,’ he says, ‘about most things, that’s true. It’s the way we want it, and it’s working out great. Look at ExpoCon.’ He throws his head back. ‘Fabulous. And before that, asteroid mining? Running for public office? It’s all very exciting.’ He lowers his voice. ‘But this? I don’t get it. Basically, we make one request of you, we have one simple condition. And that’s only because it makes sense. I mean, how is this thing going to work if you get entangled with your past again?’ He shakes his head. ‘If you get entangled with her?’