Smoke

by Meili Cady

  I used to think this car was embarrassing, but as my dad drove us through the run-down neighborhood where the rental property was, I felt ashamed for having ever stuck up my nose at what my parents offered me when I was teenager. One thing I knew for sure was that I would rather be in this car with my father right now than riding shotgun in one of Lisette’s Bentleys.

  The Tercel came to a slow stop in front of a tiny, broken-looking house with foot-tall weeds and growth consuming every inch of the yard. It looked like something I would see in an episode of Extreme Home Makeover, before Ty Pennington would come with an army of workers to assist in making it livable. It dawned on me that had I not casually offered to tag along with my dad today he would have had to do everything by himself, and that he usually did because I didn’t live here now and he didn’t have a team of workers at his disposal. My mouth gaped as I stepped out of the car and stared at the property. I hadn’t expected it to look so dilapidated. I would have believed the house was condemned if I’d passed by it without knowing it belonged to my family. It had been years since I’d been to any of our rentals. My dad got out of the car and grabbed a Weedwacker and a metal rake from the trailer, along with a box of black plastic trash bags. He handed me the rake. “All right,” he said with a smile, “we want to get most of it out of the backyard.”

  My dad put on goggles and held the Weedwacker steady as it chomped through tall growth in the back of the property. I swung the rake down as fast and hard as I could to collect everything that was left behind him as he worked. When there was enough to fill a trash bag, I pulled one out, filled it, and tied it off as quickly as I could. Something was driving me today that I didn’t recognize. I immediately went back to swinging the rake. As I hurled it down onto the freshly cut weeds, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worked this hard. I was wearing old drawstring pants, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt I hadn’t worn since high school. In less than an hour, I pulled off the sweatshirt because I was too hot. Beads of sweat were pouring from my hairline. It felt good. It felt raw. It felt like real, honest work, and it was something I hadn’t felt in a long time. As much as I’d thought that I’d been doing my best in Los Angeles and trying to make ends meet, I was reminded now of what real work was. It was what my father had been doing since before I was born. He had provided for our family and put food on our table and a roof over our heads by work that included this kind of physical labor.

  I didn’t want to be someone who shied away from the kind of work that gets your blood pumping. It makes a person feel alive and embrace a sense of self-worth, something I hadn’t always had. It was different from the self-serving satisfaction that I’d felt after a hot yoga or spin class at a trendy L.A. hotspot.

  After hours of raking overgrown weeds into a now mounting pile of trash bags, I stopped to take a breath. I had finally caught up and raked and bagged all the weeds my father had chopped down with the Weedwacker. As I leaned out of breath on the rake, my father walked up to me. He lifted his now grass-splattered goggles and gave a wide grin. “I think we’ll be done in about an hour,” he said. He looked at the trash bags that were piled against the side of the house. “You’re doin’ a good job,” he said. He patted my back with his garden-gloved hand. “I’m proud of you.” Hearing those words from my father meant more to me than I could tell him right now. I sucked in a whirlwind of emotions. It was Father’s Day, and it wasn’t about me. I went back to raking.

  By the time we finished work on the rental and loaded the bags of weeds into the trailer behind the Toyota, the sun was beginning to set. This was the last night I’d spend with my parents before I would plead guilty to a felony in federal court.

  MY FATHER DROVE ME TO the airport in the morning. I tried to appear in good spirits when he hugged me good-bye in the car outside of my airline, but we both knew that the next time we’d see each other would likely be many months from now, when I would be sentenced to prison in Ohio.

  19

  QUEEN FOR A DAY

  Mike Proctor called me in to his office to discuss my case. We sat on cushioned swivel chairs inside his glass-walled conference room overlooking David Garrett’s former building. He told me that the best chance I’d have at getting any lenience from the prosecution was for me to agree to something called a “proffer session,” also known as “Queen for a Day.”

  “I have to tell you it’s not a hundred percent safe,” Mike said. “It’s a type of plea agreement where we’ll sit down in a formal, in-person interview with Agent Heufelder and the prosecutor in Ohio. They’ll probably have a second DEA agent there too. And you’ll tell them everything they want to know. Any new and incriminating information that you bring into the meeting will not necessarily be held against you.”

  “Not necessarily? What does that mean?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound very safe.”

  “Well, it’s not,” he said. “For example, say they don’t already know about your wire transfers, and you talk about it in the meeting. Then, after the meeting, based on the terms of the proffer session, they can’t hold what you’ve said against you. However, what they could do instead is subpoena your bank records and use those against you in court.”

  “Oh,” I said, “great . . .”

  “The most important thing you need to do in the meeting is tell the truth,” he said. “Even knowingly omitting information can be seen as dishonesty. Any Queen for a Day agreement is contingent upon absolute honesty, and if the prosecution or DEA agents feel that you’ve lied to them about even the smallest detail, you’ll be discredited and they won’t recommend any lenience to the judge. But if you’re honest, they’re likely to help you.” Mike made arrangements for a proffer session to happen the next month in Ohio.

  The news coverage of our case became increasingly difficult to watch. To my own personal horror, my mug shot was released to the media, and it was being splashed across the Internet alongside Lisette’s. Her heavy eye makeup and large hoop earrings made her mug shot look like it might belong to a prostitute, and in mine I was completely without makeup and savagely hungover, looking like an exhausted butch mule after a long day of plowing fields. A short patch of hair was visible just above my bangs where Lisette cut gum out on the morning of our arrest. On a scale of one to Nick Nolte, it was tough to say which of our mug shots was worse.

  Four weeks after being arrested, I flew back to Ohio with Mike to meet with the prosecution. We arrived late in the evening and checked into our respective hotel rooms in downtown Columbus. We met early the next morning in the hotel lobby. We’d be going straight to the airport after the proffer session, so we brought our suitcases with us to the meeting.

  Mike and I waited at the ground level of a secure government building. The prosecutor was on his way downstairs to give us access to the elevator. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Pritchard appeared from behind a locked stark-white door to greet us. He was younger than I’d expected, in his forties, just like Mike Proctor and the lead investigator for my case, Agent Heufelder. I didn’t know why I’d expected everyone to be old. Pritchard gave Mike and me a stern greeting as he shook our hands. This man had the power to send me to prison for years, so I was extremely nervous as we rode the elevator up with Tim. Mike was friendly and asked Tim how long he’d worked at these offices. Tim opened up in conversation but kept his tone fairly dry and impersonal, for the most part. He was still sizing us up.

  Tim led us to a small, windowless conference room. We followed him inside and saw Agent Heufelder seated at a conference table beside a face I instantly recognized. “Steve!” I yelled out enthusiastically, feeling suddenly less scared. Officer Steve, the agent I’d met during my arrest at the opposite end of an MP5 submachine gun, was sitting in as the “other DEA agent” who Mike had said might be present during the proffer session. “I didn’t know you were going to be here!” I exclaimed with a big smile. I resisted an urge to walk up and give him a hug. The relief of seeing a familiar face of someone I remembered as having b
een kind to me wasn’t something I’d expected today. I couldn’t keep a lid on it when I walked into the conference room. I was worried that the second DEA agent at the meeting might be the gruff bastard who’d interrogated me, and seeing Steve here instead felt like the opposite of that scenario. Tim Pritchard seemed baffled by my friendly reaction to Steve. Agent Heufelder was tapping a pen on the table and keeping a tight mouth as he watched my informal exchange with his colleague. He met Tim’s gaze and explained, “Steve was Meili’s arresting officer.” Tim nodded politely with widened eyes, though it might have raised more questions than answers.

  “Okay,” Mike said, clearing his throat. “Why don’t we take a seat?” Mike and I sat side by side directly across the conference table from Tim, Agent Heufelder, and Steve.

  After four weeks of coaching from Mike, I was prepared to give a full confession. If the prosecution suspected me of dishonesty I’d be given no lenience, and the promise of a lengthy prison sentence seemed imminent. I had to lay my cards down at the beginning of the meeting and admit to knowing it was weed in the suitcases. It was the only way they’d believe the rest of my story, to admit my guilt right away. Once my confession hit the table, Tim and the DEA agents turned down the heat and started asking questions. The proffer session lasted more than five hours. During a break, Tim told Mike that he thought I was the most honest witness he’d ever interviewed, and that he’d never taken more notes in his career.

  IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING THE proffer session, more than twenty of my friends and family members wrote letters to the prosecution on my behalf, defending my character and asking for mercy. In court documents, Tim Pritchard described Lisette’s influence over me as being “svengali-like.”

  I took nearly everything Lisette had ever bought me to a well-regarded consignment store on Melrose Avenue. Her gifts had once served as reminders of our bond, and now they only reminded me of how wrong I’d been about her. The only items not included in my consignment store hefty bag were a pair of Chanel sunglasses that were lost in Ohio during our arrest and a wool-and-cashmere Marc Jacobs sweater that I wore too often to part with. Incidentally, these two items were the only gifts that she’d given me with the tags still on. When I brought four Chanel purses into the upscale consignment store, the manager there examined them. Within a few minutes, she told me she was certain that at least three of the purses were knockoffs, albeit very convincing ones to an untrained eye. She said that only one of them was likely genuine, but that it was too worn to be consigned regardless. Feeling deflated, I handed her a Ziploc bag of Louis Vuitton and Chanel jewelry bearing the designers’ signature emblems. The manager examined each piece briefly, and then handed them back to me, shaking her head. She slid off her fashionable tortoiseshell glasses and assured me that none of the jewelry was genuine.

  I left with the hefty bag and dropped everything off at the closest Goodwill donation center.

  I remembered the tangent Lisette went on about how offensive it was if someone gives a gift that’s a fake. One of the few things I’d never taken her word on was when she insisted that the Gucci wallet, which Ben had presented to me with a gift receipt from the store, was a knockoff. It was almost laughable to me now to think about how I’d believed almost everything Lisette had ever said, just as I was sure it was laughable to her while she was saying it. Throughout our friendship, I’d watched her delight in people believing her lies. Ironically, as her lies were becoming exposed through court and media outlets, other people were getting a chance to laugh at them too.

  When I first met Lisette, she told me she was one year older than me. Later on, she said she was two years younger than I was, and in reality she was four years my senior. Even her sommelier ex-boyfriend, who lived with her for four years, never knew her real age until it was revealed in court.

  Buckley, the private Beverly Hills prep school Lisette boasted about attending with Paris Hilton, had no record of her ever being a student there. Some of her famous alleged former classmates were interviewed by the press, and no one could recall meeting her. Lisette’s private school pedigree was an illusion. In reality, she attended public school in Los Angeles until eighth grade, when she enrolled in a homeschooling program.

  Though Lisette spoke at length about studying criminal law at Harvard when she was sixteen, there was no record of her being there, let alone at such a young age. If it were true that she’d studied criminal law at an Ivy League school, she might have had more foresight into what she was headed for when she started Team LL, and she might have thought up a better cover story than moving supplies to a nonexistent horse farm.

  Her list of mistruths seemed endless, and I became desensitized to hearing new revelations as they surfaced. Everything about her background came under scrutiny, but nothing more so than her claim of connection to Samsung.

  Lisette wasn’t born in London, as she’d told me. She was born in Seoul, Korea, under the name Ji Yeun Lee. “Lisette” was a name she chose for herself as a teenager, after trying on at least three other temporary identities. While Samsung denied any relation to her in two public statements, in court a far more complicated story emerged through testimonies by her aunt and godparents.

  Based on those testimonies, Lisette was born out of wedlock to a Japanese casino mogul father and a Korean mother. Her mother was the daughter of Lee Byung-chul, the late founder of Samsung. Their union was frowned upon by the Korean side of her family, and Lisette was informally adopted by a respected martial arts instructor and his wife in Los Angeles, close friends of Lisette’s biological family. The godfather who raised her testified that Lisette was sent around fifty thousand dollars a year by her father to support her. Lisette told the prosecution that he gave her up to one hundred thousand dollars a month. It was unclear what was true. Lisette’s aunt was asked under oath what Lisette’s father did for a living. With the help of a translator, she replied that he was a “gangster.” The prosecution asked her to elaborate on what she meant by “gangster.” The translator explained that meant he ran casinos in Japan.

  This new, though muddied, information helped me understand more why Lisette never had more than just a few professional-looking photos of her parents, and no pictures of her with them. She’d spoken so often of them, and with such love and admiration. I wondered how often she had really seen them. Though I was upset that she’d lied to me about so many things, I couldn’t help but feel sad at the thought that she wasn’t raised by her parents, as I knew she would have wanted to be.

  While I awaited my court date, I was required to report to the Pretrial Service Office in downtown Los Angeles once a month to meet with a probation officer who never failed to address me in a way that made me feel like she was anxiously awaiting my inevitable failure to comply with the system, when she would finally get to send off an e-mail to the judge, confirming my depravity and recommending that I be locked up with no delay. The women at the recovery center were always nice to me, but the officers in Pretrial didn’t make a habit of hiding the fact that they were incessantly judging everyone who walked through their doors.

  On one particularly muggy summer afternoon, I drove downtown for my monthly meeting with a probation officer. I parked in a lot a few blocks away and trudged up to the government building. When I exited the elevator, I walked to a door that opened into the bland, dreary atmosphere of Pretrial Service.

  As I stepped into a waiting room that looked like it belonged in a free clinic, my knees locked. Henry was standing in the middle of the otherwise empty room. He looked up and saw me. I hadn’t seen him since his last trip with Team LL. The moment he looked at me, I ran into his arms. He held me as I burst into uncontrollable tears in the middle of the probation office. He patted my hair. “It’s okay,” he said. His voice was kind, one the kindest I’d ever known. After I took a moment to breathe, I asked him what his lawyer was saying. Henry told me that his lawyer said he would be lucky to be sentenced to less than three years in prison. I cried harder. “I’m so sor
ry for what Lisette did to you,” I sobbed, throwing my arms around him again. “I watched her do it and I never stopped her. I’m so sorry.” He pulled back and looked at me.

  “Meili, it’s okay,” he said. It was clear that he was staying stronger than I was through all of this. I wiped away tears that were cascading down my face.

  “She lied to us,” I said.

  “I know, she fucked us up,” he said. “I kind of knew she was lying about a lot of things the whole time. Like when she said she was a pop star in Korea.”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling a little at how silly that sounded now. Henry smiled back.

  “I mean, those blurry videos she showed us of her performing in awards shows and music videos? I knew that wasn’t her,” he said. “I figured there was no point in saying anything about it though. She wanted us to believe her so I played along with it.”

  “Yeah . . . I guess I kind of fell for all of it,” I said.

  “I think they’re looking at us,” Henry said suddenly, indicating a woman behind the bullet-resistant glass of the Pretrial reception desk who was giving us eyes. “They’re probably about to call me in . . . Hey, I feel like I should tell you something. You remember that ring Lisette gave you?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Well, that morning in Ohio—I think it was Valentine’s Day. You know, when you lost it and we all looked for it?” I nodded. Henry went on. “You didn’t lose it. Lisette flushed your ring down the toilet. Frankie and I watched her do it when you were still in bed. I think she was mad about your boyfriend or something. She told us we better not tell you that she did it.”

  I stood in front of Henry with my mouth agape, speechless. Memories of that horrible day and the devastation I felt for losing the ring that was given as a symbol of our friendship swirled through my head and heart.