Spygirl (10 page)

“Don't mix business with pleasure.” George told me that. In the case of the Three-Ring Wedding Bandit, the two were impossible to separate.

George was doing some preliminary research for a wedding planner, the friend of a friend of a former employee. He was heard cackling across the office, “Ha! If this guy's who he says he is, I'll eat my own asshole.” I'm certain none of us wanted to see that happen.

As George explained when he called me over to give me the case, he'd been doing this stuff for twelve years and he knew when he was dealing with a criminal, and this guy the wedding planner
had called him about was the real thing. But even though he could tell me that and even impart his suspicions to the client, what we acted on had to be entirely based on what we
knew
in evidence, not just on what we suspected.

George had been approached by Goldie Gabriel, a grande dame in the cutthroat New York wedding industry. An hour after George debriefed me, we paid a call to Goldie. “Oh my gawd!” she exclaimed when George and I came into her office, which was upholstered in a potpourri of throw pillows, each in a different pattern and color scheme from the sofa's side cushions, as well as from the balloon curtains, with their separately upholstered valences. “Yoor adoorable! I love this—don't you love this? I love this!” She wrung her hands together with excrescent energy and kissed George and me hello, saying, “I can't believe there are real private investigators here—This is so
wild,”
pointing us out to her barefoot, long-haired assistant, Paul, as if to say, “Who woulda thunkit?” Paul scratched his disarrayed, curly black tresses and shuffled around his desk, smiling at her familiar histrionics.

Goldie took us into her office, which looked like a war zone of competing English floral patterns. At the center of this cacophony of climbing roses and ranunculus on balloon curtains, envelopes, and wallpapering, Goldie held court. She explained that she'd been approached by a couple a few days before to “do an event,” which she'd been doing for fifteen years, by the way, and she'd never had doubts like this before. It became clear that Goldie possessed a highly attuned cultural barometer in which the combination of a no-carat ring and a six-figure flower budget was “lunacy,” forgoing the use of a private caterer in a loft space was “borderline,” and a stipulation that “money is no object”—no matter how rich the client—is cause for calling the local investigator, which is just what she did.

“There is nobody,
nobody
so rich that money is no object. I don't care if you're the Sultan of Brunei; even he has a budget, and let me tell you, the richer they are, the
cheaper
they are.” Goldie imparted this with the hushed tone of someone divulging a grave but certain truth. The groom-to-be and object of Goldie's misgivings was older. He looked forty-five, she said, even though he said he was only thirty-eight. The bride-to-be said she was twenty-seven, and probably was. There was no ring, and he'd said they were in such a rush that he'd given her one of those gold-plate cubic zirconium artificial Tiffany settings that you could get at any good pawnshop for $200. “That was naawt normal,” Goldie declared. “I don't care how rushed you are; when I see a rich older guy like that and a young woman like that I expect a
rock
on her finger and nothing less. I'm not saying rich people won't skimp on some fronts, because they definitely will. But …” She threw her hands out as if to indicate all of the above was just
so
obvious, “Nawt the ring.”

“Listen, I like to cut through the bull,” Goldie said defiantly, “and I think I know what this guy is doing. I think they might be reporters, and they might be undercover to do an exposé about the wedding business, for, say,
Vanity Fair
I want to know if they're going to write about
me
!” I imagined a subterranean war room of journalists and infiltrators meeting around a strategy board at the center of which was a cutout of Goldie's head, and around her an elaborate system of arrows, snapshots, stratagems, and frilly fabric swathes. Graydon Carter would sit at the head of the table in camouflage, this season's black, and imposing Lagerfeld-style sunglasses, barking, “Find her secrets out at any cost!” No, I didn't think there was a cloak-and-dagger story in the works. George looked intent, his blue eyes converged, his upper lip protruded earnestly in what seemed to be a sign that he had checked all sarcasm at the door. I
tried to look serious, too, even though Goldie's
Vanity Fair
fantasy made me want to giggle. But I didn't crack a smile.

George asked lots of questions, and I wrote down things I thought might be relevant on the pad I'd brought with me. What did this guy do for a living? Goldie wasn't sure—he had a startup, or maybe it was an older company that he'd taken over—and then some foundation that he was starting for his future wife. Or maybe the foundation
was
the startup, but he also implied that he had the security of a vast family fortune. He mentioned the Willkommen family, the founder and owners of a small but profitable Austrian airline called Rheintalflug Air. They had assembled a net worth of more than $400 million doing it. Goldie thought he had also mentioned something about a family marinara-sauce business, which “raised some red flayags” in her mind. “It was very Gawdfawther.”

George took a very cautious position, saying, “Listen, I'll tell you right now that I think this guy's a crook, but until we have evidence, you should be doing nothing and saying nothing to him. Just don't accept any checks from him.”

“Oh,” Goldie said, “Well, I guess that's another thing.” The groom said they were in such a rush to book the whirlwind wedding, he'd asked her to start booking vendors immediately. But the check he'd written her for the $100,000 to cover the just-getting-started charges had bounced and she'd written checks to the vendors that were supposed to draw on this check, including a $10,000 deposit at the Waldorf and another $6,500 for the Carolina Herrera dress. The guy had apologized for the bounced check, saying it was a miscommunication with his bank. Supposedly he was wiring her the money now, although nothing had come through yet.

George and I left the meeting with about fifteen pages of notes and a Xerox of the guy's card, which read:

It reminded me of a card I'd gotten from a guy who followed me all the way from the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn to my gym. He followed me for two blocks, calling, “Excuuuse me, miss!” before he said he couldn't help but notice my “beautiful spirit” and “nice booty.” Saying he wanted to “portray me in paint,” he handed me his card, which read: “Tyrell G. Artist, Portraits, Dancing, Business Consultant.” After spending the next forty minutes hiding in the ladies’ changing room of the New York Sports Club, I ran home.

Back at the office I put Wilbur's card in the file and booted up my computer. I wanted to impress the hell out of my bosses with this case. I would eat and breathe it until I had cracked Wilbur open like a nut.

I looked up. Linus was diving across my desk. He came to rest in a classical pose and flashed me a crooked smile. “Let me ask you something.”

“Okay.”

His eyes flickered behind trifocal lenses. “Do you think you could outwrestle Noah?” Noah was one of the new guys who started with me, and our desks were blocked side-by-side. We barely spoke. I probably outweighed him by about fifty pounds, even though he subsisted on Ding-Dongs, Egg McMuffins, and sopping-wet pressed Cuban sandwiches from the Twenty-One deli around the corner. He was a caloric black hole.

“What kind of wrestling? Arm-wrestling or regular?”

He thought about it. “Arm.”

“I think so.”

Linus turned to the rest of the room triumphantly. “Okay, she's in! I'm taking bets here. Three-to-one odds for Amy!” Sol and George were laughing as Sol threw a twenty at Linus and said, “Just take it. For making this happen.”

“Listen, I don't know if I want to do this.” It became clear that they wanted to see Noah getting beaten by a girl. I felt embarrassed for him if I beat him, and even more embarrassed for me. What would that make me—a she-man? I wanted to be a girl whose wit allowed her to muscle out of situations and kick ass, but I didn't
actually
want to be seen as manly or otherwise mannish. But things had escalated beyond my control. Big Gus, Wendy, Evan, Otis, Morgan, Sol, George, and even Assman and Nestor were crowded around my desk. My protests of “I don't know about this, guys” were met with thumping chants of “Fight, fight! and “Let's go!” “Let's do it!” and “Kick her ass, Noah!” In an etherlike suspension between humiliation and punchiness, I rolled up my sleeves and leaned over the desk. Noah seemed shell-shocked.

I beat him in five seconds. I'm not sure he was even trying, but the roar of the crowd and the cries of “You go, Gray!” and “Aww, beaten by a girl!” told me I'd won. Noah stumbled away, dazed, and I sat down to catch my breath. We were like the two kids sent into the closet in junior high to make out, emerging from the darkness with their shared trauma having done nothing to pierce the rift between them. The whole scene harked back to a time of Benetton sweatshirts, Wham!, and constant indiscriminate humiliations.

When things settled down later, I got an instant message from Evan asking if I wanted to drink at the office that night. (This in spite of the fact that it was an even day.) He postscripted me that he had a bottle of Wild Turkey in his desk to get us started. At five-thirty Sol was the second boss to cut out, and when the steel door
slammed shut behind him, Evan lit a Camel Light and poured us all whiskey shots.

“To A. Gray, the arm-wrestling champion of the world, and to Noah, for taking getting beaten by a girl like a man!” We all drank to that. Everyone was gathered in the conference room except for Assman and Nestor. “Do you guys want to drink with us? ” I asked tentatively. Nestor grunted something about how he had somewhere to be and Assman said he had to do laundry. Then he said, “But you run along and hang out with the cool kids,” and then turned away from me. I flushed. I was hurt by their closedness, but said nothing.

There were some rumors circulating among the investigators about the Wilbur case. Everyone wanted to know what was going on and how I got assigned to it. “What's up, Dingleboy?” Gus said. “What's Gray doing for you that I'm not? I thought I was your ‘go to’ guy for this stuff.”

“You were, but now I'm using your mom,” Evan said.

The next day at work, George and I made a list of things for me to do. I plopped a sixteen-ounce Gatorade on my desk and a bottle of Alleve. We had in our notes an exhaustive catalog of every contact Goldie had ever had with the couple, when it was had, what information was shared by which individual, physical descriptions of both, and a list of all the other vendors that were allegedly and verifiably in contact with them. At the top of my agenda was getting in touch with the people in the eight penthouse apartments of the Sixty-second Street and Central Park West address where he claimed to be building a luxury duplex for himself and his new bride to be, Alexis Dominique Whitcomb. I called a bunch of their neighbors, saying my client was considering doing
business with a man who claims to live in that building, and that I was trying to get some independent references about him.

Although nobody had heard of him, his rich alleged neighbors seemed loath to cast any doubt on him, and seemed to have a fraternal rich person's alliance with their notional neighbor. They said things like, “Well, I don't know him, but perhaps he's been leasing the place to Mrs. Haverman,” or “My apartment is very well soundproofed, so I might not hear the workmen doing the renovations.” I got the feeling that people in this building took pride in their collective claim to agoraphobia, a birthright to keep to themselves and protect their right to ignore one another. I imagined bony women living there for decades and walking their Lhasa apsos in hand-crocheted doggie coats past faces they saw daily and to which they never cared to attach names.

It turned out a few not-too-minor celebrities, including Ru-tanya Alda, who you might remember from
The Deer Hunter
, as well as the guy who played Doogie Howser, M.D., were living in the building, the Worcester. I looked up the property records for the building and got the name of the broker at Sotheby's real estate division who handled the sales on six out of the eight penthouse flats in the building. She was a chirpy Australian who seemed enthralled by the possibility of an imposter claiming to live in the building. “This is vaary serious, of course,” she commiserated. “It puts all the residents there in jeopaady This maan could be gaaining unloorful access to the propaaty” She couldn't remember if Mr. Wilbur was a client of one of her agents. I had spoken to the residents of the two units she hadn't sold, as well as four of the six owners of the other flats she transacted, and ruled them out as having any association with Mr. Wilbur. The property records for the other two listed a Mrs. Alix Von Albrecht Halle and a Ludmilla Melnikov as the owners, respectively. Mrs. Peacock, the realtor, said she'd “git baaack to me on this as soon as possible.” In the
meantime, I took the liberty of calling Mrs. Von Albrecht Halle, who was listed as living in Vancouver.

It turned out Mrs. Halle had passed away, but her middle-aged son Claude, in his words, “knew nothing of this Wilbur character!” I left a message for Mrs. Melnikov, and in the meantime was planning to visit the building to talk to the building manager, when I got a call back from another neighbor I'd called, who lived in the apartment directly below one of the penthouses that I thought might belong to Wilbur. The apartment was actually listed as belonging to Lani Guinier, the Clinton nominee for U.S. assistant attorney general of civil rights, but John Speakbrooks, the guy who called back, explained that he was her nephew-in-law and that she had leased the apartment to him. After he confirmed that he didn't know Mr. Wilbur, I had an inspiration. “You know, I was thinking that talking to the building manager, superintendent, or doorman might be helpful to clear this up, since I haven't had much luck with the residents.”