Spygirl (24 page)

When I got off the phone, I screamed in triumph.

“Try to keep it under control, Gray,” George warned.

“Okay boss,” I said, and I screamed again for good measure.

At eleven, I went out for a ciggie break. The fire escape had been dead-bolted, and now the alarm really worked. (We tried it.) Renora was walking out of the office at the same time, an American Spirit squished between her two small yellowed fingers.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Shitty,” she replied. Renora was doing the Atkins diet. Although she was already the embodiment of the waiflike heroin-chic Manhattan ethos, she was hoping to be emancipated from the tofu-and-kale diet she'd been maintaining since adolescence.

“I just want some bloody, bloody steak and some fucking
fatty milk,” she asserted wistfully. I, who hadn't discovered wheat bread or 1 percent milk until I'd moved to New York, still sympathized with her need to break free from her shackled existence in a city where thinness is tantamount to godliness.

I told her she seemed more relaxed than her usual phobic, twitchy self. I asked her how she was feeling.

“Terrible. I'm exhausted. I have no energy.”

“Well, maybe that's a good thing. For you.”

“This is like the
Through the Looking-Glass
diet. I'm eating things I haven't eaten since I was, like, twelve. Some of them I've never eaten before, like whipped cream, and I'm not allowed to have any fruit. I'm craving a peach, or a banana.”

“Can't you eat cheese?”

“Cheese, eggs, meat. I'm eating everything I've fantasized about eating for my entire adult life, and all I want is a goddamn banana. Plus I think I might actually be getting
fatter.”
She was a week into the two-week “induction” period in the diet, and the restrictions during this period were the most rigorous. She explained that further along into the process she could have berries and certain kinds of fruit again.

“But no banana.”

“No. I can never have another banana.” As we both sat there, contemplating life without bananas, two restless souls alone in the world but for their desperate clinging to New York mores of beauty, a guy walked over to the two of us and looked like he was about to say something.

Renora rolled her eyes and continued to talk to me, while the guy, youngish, with brown hair and not particularly attractive, just stood there blankly. Finally she turned to him.

“Can we help you?”

“Sorry.” He seemed nervous. “I work across the street from you guys and we've always wondered what you do for a living.”

“Really?” she bit back, totally uninterested. “Why is that?”

“Because you're always out here having cigarettes.” Renora and I traded amused glances. The guy who finally told us his name, said that they had taken bets on what we do.

This interested Renora, who would never kick easy money out of bed. She asked him if he had a ten, and she took it and held it between her thumb and forefinger, flicking it, saying, “Okay, guess. Tell us what you guessed.”

“I said it was a dating service.”

We laughed. “And the other people?” Renora asked.

“One guy thought you were running a chatline. Or a travel agency.”

“Wrong, wrong, and wrong,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette under her weatherbeaten men's shoes and turning around.

“Tell me what you do, though. Guys, wait!” He called after us. When we got to the fourth floor, we burst into hysterics.

“I can't believe they've been watching us out the window!” I cried.

“I know, we've got to tell everyone about this!” She was laughing, her banana-withdrawal seemingly quelled by the distraction. We gathered a group of interested parties in the window right behind Sol's desk. He was unamused when he came out of the conference room to find his desk encircled by idle investigators.

“Outta here,” he said.

“Look, look over there!” Evan yelled, pointing excitedly across the street at the building to our right.

There, in the window, were about fifteen guys, standing around a hand-lettered sign written on computer paper. It said,
CALL
US 212-555-8888. Below it, they had written
AMY
and
WENORA
(sic) in smaller letters. Shrieks rose from the ranks. Even supercilious Morgan was amused despite himself, muttering, “This is not my life. This is
not
my life.”

“Did they ask Vinny how to spell her name?
Wenora? Wenora?”
Sol wondered aloud.

“They're right,” George chuckled. “We
are
running a fucking dating service
here.”

Dan and I e-mailed all week. They were all charming, inconsequential little missives. We made plans to see a Japanese movie he suggested on Wednesday. I was happy to be realizing two top priorities in my life's to-do list: something culturally ambitious that makes good dinner-party conversation
and
dating with the potential for a little action.

I met him at the East Village Cinema on Twelfth Street, a hole-in-the-wall art-film theater that I'd never been to before. He had shaved his dark hair since Monday, and his chin looked a little less defined without the dark scruff. But still cute.

“I brought you a present,” he told me. His sincerity was a little embarrassing. He fished something out of his backpack and put both his hands behind his back. “Pick a hand.” It was a mixed tape, and along the spine he'd written “From Yer Friend Dan.”

“Awww. That's so sweet.” Maybe too sweet. I shrugged off my any-club-that-will-have-me-isn't-worth-belonging-to pangs. He seemed pleased with himself. While we were waiting in line, he leaned over to me and said, “Look, it's Ad-Rock, from the Beastie Boys.” There he was, two people in front of us, in line with his hot Asian girlfriend, looking well ripened since his
Paul's Boutique
days.

The movie was awful. When we stepped out of the darkened theater, I heard Ad-Rock in front of us tell his girlfriend that the movie “rocked.”

“Wha'd you think?” Dan asked me.

“It rocked,” I said, hoping Adam Horovitz wouldn't lead me down the path of ill-repute.

“Really? I thought it was pretty shitty.”

“Me, too,” I recovered. “I said it wasn't pretty.”

“Right.”

We took the subway back to Brooklyn, and the ride home seemed to soothe my prickliness. When we got off the subway and he took my hand, I didn't pull away.

We got to my apartment, and I led him out the back door to the garden. Everything was shaded in smoky indigo and black. We spread an old sheet on the ground and lay down. Flashes of green-yellow light shone unsteadily across the lawn. Fireflies were our secret indulgence in Brooklyn. Could anyone imagine how, on summer nights, beneath its austere skyline the city was ablaze with a different kind of light from the artificial glare of Times Square? Out of the starkness of the city, a fragile ecosystem blossoms. Delicate nettle, wisteria, and morning glories wound through labyrinthine concrete gardens.

We sat on the grass. I put my hand out and let a firefly wander on to my palm. I cupped my other hand around it and held it up to my eyes, opening a small space between my thumbs to peek in and see the lines of my hands effervesce, and then fade again.

“Look, violets,” he said, plucking a tiny petal amid the climbing ivy and brush covering the brickface along the length of the garden. He crushed the flower between his thumb and forefinger and held it to my nose, letting me smell the perfume, and then, in one motion, brushing my cheek and pulling my face closer to his. I was too busy enjoying the smell of the flower and the feeling of his smooth skin to notice the garden humming around me.

NINETEEN             

On my way to my interview with Mr. Wallinghurst, I copped a latte at Lexington and Eighty-seventh. His building was a grand town house, the kind that runs from eleven to twenty-five million green ones. Nice work if you can get it. The door was answered by an Indian manservant who introduced himself as Mr. Singh.

“I will get Meester Wallinghurst for you, Meese Amy,” he said, winking, and strutted away. He wore traditional Indian dress, a colorful turban and a sherwani of green silk with matching shoes that curled at the toe.

When Mr. Wallinghurst came out and introduced himself, I was surprised by how frail he seemed. He looked like he was
probably in his early eighties, and it was hard to connect this elderly man with the effete voice I'd spoken to.

“It's a pleasure,” I said, grasping his hand, which shook as I held it. I took a seat at his desk, which was framed by a bay window. The walls around us were covered with dark oak bookshelves, housing, among others,
The New York Law Journal
from the last forty years. I realized I wasn't sure what Mr. Wallinghurst did, although it seemed fairly clear at this point that he was retired.

“I must say, when you contacted me, I wasn't sure if I should talk to you.” He, like George, tended to talk to a me just over my left shoulder and fifty yards behind me. He also rubbed his eyes a lot, keeping his hands in loose fists near his face should he need them. “My son-in-law has a glitzy life and there are a lot of hangers-ons and paparazzi that come sniffing around.” I nodded sympathetically.

“I suppose when you said you want to protect someone else, I understood that. I think enough people have been swindled by Nars.” Wallinghurst handed me a folder from his desk. The first document inside it was a copy of a promissory note Nars had written him, signed in 1993. Wallinghurst had lent him $400,000 over three years for various KNUT-related schemes. He showed me canceled checks, more promissory notes, and letters from Nars, some apologizing for “trying” Wallinghurst's “goodwill,” and others angrily demanding more money.

This presentation took more than twenty minutes. The documents, which he had Xeroxed and given to me, were methodically organized and listed.

“Mr. Wallinghurst, I hope you don't mind my asking, but why did Nars ask you for so much money when his own father was one of the wealthiest men in Europe?”

“Niels cut him off years ago. Nars desperately wanted to prove to him that he could start and run profitable businesses, so
Niels slowly let Nars take over some small KNUT offshoots that tickled his fancy.”

“From what I've read, Nars has become very active in the KNUT publishing arm, which is the division our client's deal concerns.”

“That's true.” He paused and brought a shaky, liver-spotted hand up to wipe his glistening brow. “He's done nothing but hurt it in the long run, though.”

“How do you mean?”

“KNUT has experienced serious losses over the last few years due to natural attrition in the publishing business and with the success of Internet publishing. Nars basically siphoned the money off his other businesses to stop the hemorrhaging at KNUT Publishing and the other showcase businesses in the KNUT Group, and his father let him do it.”

“Do you have any evidence that he embezzled money from KNUT pension funds?”

“No,” he conceded. “I can tell you, it's out there. The SFA in London is shaking them down. That's why these pension managers at KNUT companies are being investigated for mishandling the funds. Nars is on the board at every one of those companies, and he was using pensions at his other companies to pump up the numbers at KNUT Publishing.”

“He was defrauding his own employees to keep the numbers looking good at KNUT?”

“That's correct,” Mr. Wallinghurst said. “My daughter and he were married for seven years; they have two children. I don't want to press charges against him, but the Swedish authorities are going after him now, and so is the Financial Action Task Force.”

“They are?”

“All of these pension indictments are going to be used to assist in ultimately arresting and charging Nars.”

“Really?” I felt ill at this point. KNUT was a major player in international business, although a lot of the tech companies in the U.S. seemed to be run by European expatriates. The repercussions of KNUT's demise could be another kick in the groin to the “technology economy.” We had all noticed a lot of our clients’ technology companies faltering in the last six months. The high life of dot-com-sponsored open bars and the stampede of buying property in the Hamptons had gone from a downpour to a slow drip. I couldn't count on ten hands how many businesses we'd seen go under since I'd been at the Agency and it added to the general sense of unease.

“Have they contacted you?” I asked him.

“They have, and if I'm asked to testify at the trial, I will. This will all be coming out soon.”

“Do you know what the schedule is for bringing charges?”

“I don't, but with the pension indictments over the last several weeks, I think they're moving quickly.”

“Do you think Nars knows they're coming after him?”

“I believe he does.” I looked down at the yellow legal pad where I'd been taking my notes. The paper was warped from sweat, and ink stains dotted my palms. I looked at Wallinghurst's hands, clutching each other, shaking, and then at mine, poised for more work, also shaking violently. We spoke some more. I thanked him, then he called Mr. Singh to come and see me out. “I had always hoped Anne would meet a wonderful man.” He seemed to be fighting tears. “I feel betrayed, Miss Gray. I hope you can protect your client from that feeling. It is truly awful.”