Spygirl (19 page)

There was a message from Cassie, wondering if she could get herpes subcutaneously and there was also a message from Jeremy. “Hey Amy it's Jeremy calling. I'm heading to a show tonight from that band Clinic that performs all their shows with surgical masks on. The opener is this chick electroclash band called Ladytron who had glitter guns onstage at their last show and took all their tops off. I'm sure you're already going, but if not, call me. Miss you. Bye.” Jeremy was always inviting me to events with naked women so he could feel less perverted about going alone. This time, Jeremy was going to have to endure surgery without me. (It was hard to imagine Edward, or me, for that matter, suffering the arty Williams-burg performance art/electronica scene of bad music and hardcore hipster pageantry.)

Jeremy was one of my closest and most loyal friends from college. We'd met on my third day of freshman year. Our meeting was chance and providential, although, because of the other people we knew at school, our eventual introduction was not a matter of if but when. The inevitable came to pass in September 1992, when an old girlfriend of his came to surprise him, and she asked me and my roommate if we knew a Jeremy Blumstein. “Jeremy—isn't he on our floor?” I asked Sarah. Sarah was much better with names, faces, and social climbing generally than I was. “Yeah, I think he's the one that sold Sammy a dimebag of buds yesterday.

“Yeah,” Sarah asserted, “he's the guy.” We had sort of ripped him off, but, nonetheless, we took his chickie, Kit, to Jeremy's room and knocked on the door.

A curl of smoke rushed out of the room as he opened the door. He exhaled a sweaty blast of hot smoky bong breath. We pushed our way in. One bed was strewn with CDs, presumably
Jeremy's, and on the other, lying back with his arms folded over his head and his eyes narrowed into little almonds in his doughy face, was Elliott, wearing his usual look of self-satisfaction, the first time I had ever laid eyes on him. “Hey,” he said, with obvious contempt. “Jeremy!” Kit squealed, throwing her arms around his neck and wrapping her legs around his waist. Sarah and I sat on Jeremy's bed and giggled and smoked until it was clear Kit and Jeremy were way too excited to see each other. We excused ourselves just as Kit had taken off her tube top and was holding her generous bosom up to Jeremy's face, cooing, “Boo-hoo, Kitty missed you!”

During junior year at college we spent a weekend at Jeremy's family home in Riverdale. The entire house was covered in mirrors: the floors, the countertops, the cabinet cover on the kitchen, the headboards on the beds. Ben and my other friends took the opportunity to do coke off every surface in the house. I remember sitting on the toilet, my feet grazing the mirrored eternity below, looking at a million reflections of myself to infinity in every direction. Extended in every direction was just more of the same, an infinity of humdrum sameness. In my reflection six levels deep in the walls, my eyes turned beady and black. Each generation of reflections was a poorer copy of the first, until I wasted into a fuzzy collection of light and dark with no particular form. Under the P.S.1 hot sun, with Edward's square hand glued to my thigh, I dreamed of myself in the mirrored room, refracted in all directions. I was desperately trying to find the real me. Just when I thought I had found the source, the authentic being at the center of the glassy vortex, I touched the image, only to feel shock and another cold, unforgiving mirrored pane, another bad copy.

“Maybe I could be a celebrity cardiologist, with a book series, too. The first one could be called
My Heart Belongs to Maya.”
Edward's voice shocked me out of my daydreaming. His Doberman's name, Maya, was short for Amaya. Her namesake was the “hot but
sort of chunky girl on Hawaii
Real World.”
Maya—the dog, not the person—had been auditioning for commercials.

“Sweetie,” I said, aghast, “let's make out.” So we spent the rest of our time on the asphalt upper level of the imitation beach, watching everyone else watching us.

When I got home, Jeremy had left me a message saying that he was sorry I couldn't make it out, and that, true to Williamsburg hipster form, the show was “full of punk girls wearing clothes that looked like they used to be other clothes.” This is just what Jeremy likes, by the way, and I should call him for details.

There weren't any other Edward incidents that weekend. That conversation and the nagging echoes of his voice saying, “I thought Puck was cool,” aside, things went well. I submerged my queasiness, and when we held hands, the whole time I was thinking how perfect we must have looked together. Something felt wrong with that, but something about it felt right, too. But why was I thinking about how we looked while I was living my life— instead of just living it? There was something about being with someone so exquisite—they became entirely surface. I wasn't sure if I was emptying Edward or it really
was
him, if he was really that blank. Or if it mattered. Like Joe Smythe, like Jeremy's bathroom: surface, surface everywhere.

FIFTEEN             

Edward hadn't called me yet since our blissful weekend. I picked up the receiver when I got home from work, hoping to hear the familiar stuttering dial tone of the voicemail. No luck. My stomach twisted. I stretched out on the bed. Call him. Don't call him. Call him. Don't. Do. Don't.

A few minutes later, the phone rang.

It was him. “Hey, baby,” he cooed.

“Hi,” I said, thawing at once. “Wow. It's so good to hear from you.”

“I know. I miss you.” He had finished a thirty-four-hour rotation and called me before he went to bed. We talked about seeing
the Sex Pistols documentary
The Filth and the Fury
together, and the whole time I wondered what I'd made all the fuss about. He was so funny. So laid-back. My second-guessing was ancient history. I had all but forgotten my unease.

By the end of the week, our shell-shocked clients on the Swindling Spin Doctor case were hysterical. George wanted to wrap it up. The clients had engaged a law firm, hoping to file civil charges, and were also working on getting the district attorney in New York to reconsider criminal charges. I had to send a copy of our report to our clients’ civil lawyers as well as their bankruptcy lawyers (their misjudgments had put them in some financial trouble), the top executives of the client company, and its board members. George said their chances of getting money back were about equal to Hillary Clinton's chances of getting elected to Congress. To him, that meant a probability of little to none. Lou DeSanto had also made some calls at George's request, and he reported back that New York wasn't interested in going after Smythe again. He was already in jail, they said. They'd worry about it when he was eligible for parole—in six years. They did, however, seize some of the implements of his trade from his cell: a typewriter, paper, pens, a toothbrush, some chalk, some lipstick. I suspected he could figure out a way to run an international con ring with a pair of nail clippers and cinder blocks.

“Mr. John Nguyen Smythe was born on June 18, 1961. For a comprehensive list of his aliases, please see Exhibit E of this report.” As I wrote up my memo to the client, I ran a few of Smythe's more unusual aliases in some Internet search engines. Unlike our database research, unless you're in law enforcement or the FBI, we don't have specialized search engines for locating material on the web. But trial and error had led us to a number of sites and search
engines that were intermittently helpful. Finally, up popped a Flash site on my screen and text started running across it, along with a voice-over accompaniment in bombastic radio-announcer style.

“This is not just another day. This is a day in the life of John N. Smith.” The text faded out and a picture appeared on the screen of a stout, dark-skinned man in a suit surrounded by surgically endowed women in small bathing suits, all grabbing the leis falling across his leisure suit. Another photo faded in on Mr. Smythe standing next to a 1965 Rolls-Royce, his hands on his hips. It looked yellowed, like it was taken in the seventies. Then came a picture of him in an empty boardroom, wearing a suit and silk ascot, then on the beach with two curvy escorts. “Enter the world of John N. Smith, international financial expert, and international socialite.” I must have been laughing out loud, because Vinny and Evan came running over. “Nice cans,” Vinny commented.

“So is this your boyfriend, Dr. Best?” Evan asked me.

“No, this is the guy your mom was with last night.”

At the end of the Flash presentation, there was a short paragraph about the Swindling Spin Doctor, how he has “lived in Paraguay, Thailand, France, and the United States, where he was a financial advisor to important international investors.” Right. “Mr. Smith's book
Buyer Beware
, a guide for stockholders to avoid poor investment strategists and unethical brokers, is forthcoming.” Uh-huh. Forthcoming.

I felt like Alice having fallen down the virtual rabbit hole into his demented world. I forwarded the URL to George with the subject line “Mr. Smith's shrine to the self he's always wanted.” He wrote me back saying, “A. Gray: Did you see the links on that website? I think you might have missed something.”

I was so embarrassed. George wouldn't look at me, which
wasn't anything new. But I was worried I'd fucked up big-time and missed something critical.

Pulling up the site again, I noticed that there was a page at the end with links to “Smith” “s favorite websites. “John N. Smith, Entrepreneur, Inventor, Consultant, World Traveler.” Demented sociopath. Narcissist. Liar. The links were mostly travel and shopping portals. But here was one, “
CopsforCops.com
,” that looked interesting. It was roughly designed, with flashing Vegas-style lettering that enticed police officers with any number of opportunities: “Employment Help!” “Get Tips on Exams!” “Great Online Investments & Banks Tips!” “Free Online Law Library!” “Get Connected to Police Fraternal Organizations!” “Stress Management and Counseling!” “Order Your Calendar Now: Sexy Ladies of Law Enforcement!” There was even a message board offering “Stress Relief!” and a chance to “consort” with fellow officers. “Consorting” sounded like cop-speak for “sure.”

I clicked on the message board, but an error message came up, saying, “This site cannot be found.” The online library said the same thing. None of the features advertised actually functioned. There was one thing, however: a link to a “domain manager.” The e-mail address was the same one listed on Smythe's personal website. My self-promoting Sociopathic Spin Doctor was spinning an online web support site for cops from prison.

On Wednesday I sucked up my pride and called Edward. The first thing he said was, “Thank God it's you.” When we rang off, two and a half hours later, my cheeks hurt from laughing. “I miss you,” he said at the end. “I know,” I echoed. We made a plan that he would meet me at the Dunkin’ Donuts in South Station in Boston on Friday night. It was a hint of things to come.

I stuffed the last piece of hot blueberry-filled dough into my mouth when Edward appeared in front of me at the train station. “Umm, dough-nutty” he said when we kissed. Later, in the car, he pulled a package out of the glove compartment. “I have a present for you,” he said.