by Amy Gray
Sol put me through the interview wringer, too. “I'm choosing between you and two other people,” he professed, unapologeti-cally “Why should I choose you instead of them?”
I thought about it. “I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't.” He laughed and invited me out with the people who would become my new colleagues for beers at the dingy Blue and Gold Bar. I wasn't sure what the invitation meant until, on our fifth beer he told me, “Well, Gray, you sold us,” and bought a celebratory round.
That night I took the subway home from the Second Avenue stop on the F train to the Bergen Street stop in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and I felt vigorous and brisk with the anticipation of my new job and five Hoegardens. This was going to be as far away as I could possibly hope to be from the belly of the big German corporate publishing beast in which I'd been toiling for so long. Sitting across from a couple of teenagers keenly involved in face-sucking, I joined with the winos and psychotic delinquents bantering to imaginary oppressors, proudly braving the New York City subway system, muttering under my breath, I want to know everything. Everything. Everything….
THREE
I want to know everything, everything. Everything in the world, everything. I will be a spy and know everything.
—HARRIET THE SPY
Piss and Vinegar
After my stairwell encounter with the scarlet-faced bandit, Sol and George debriefed us. They explained that they tended to be rigid about only taking cases that were “corporate” in nature, meaning that they involved the executives of one company investigating another company and its executives to protect their assets, sometimes an investment, an initial public offering, a merger, or something like that. Or, sometimes, they simply wanted to know if, for example, Mr. A was keeping company with Mr. C, and if so, how much, or whether Mr. B had offshore accounts or shell companies that weren't reported on his books. But not all the cases were strictly corporate. George would make exceptions when he thought he could be effective and enjoy some ball-busting, and he often agreed to take cases for friends of his and any of the investigators that came to him. Bill Mossvelt was one of those exceptions. Gone very very wrong.
Sol had actually been handling the investigation into the 900-number empire that had earned Mossvelt a gleaming Tudor-style mansion in New Jersey and a garage full of Aston Martins. Our client wasn't the typical stuffy venture capital paper-pusher but a neighbor of George's. He was considering putting a chunk of his savings into the CALL-900-HOT-CHICKS and other classy upmarket operations Mossvelt was running. George advised against it.
The paint hadn't even dried on the newly touched-up 1980 Corvette Mossvelt had bought when George found dozens of liens on the cars and his newly marble-tiled McManor. The client freaked out. He called a meeting with Mossvelt and told him he had George on his side. He was on to him. He knew what was going on.
Mossvelt was angry. He threatened legal action. He showed up at the office and hung out outside, smoking, leering at the investigators. An anonymous letter sent to George at the office telling him to “rot in hell, asshole” was traced back to Mossvelt (he used his own return address). George was prepared to “cut off [Mossy's] hand and shove it down his blowhole” when he received a menacing talisman from Mossvelt, a platter of rotting hot wings on the front steps. While Evan insisted that the fried chicken still looked okay, Wendy dissuaded him from eating the evidence while George finally called the police. “I usually like to take care of these things myself, if I can,” he said, visibly irked.
On the morning that was supposed to be my first, Mossvelt walked into our office, offered to blow George's fucking brains out, and squirted him with a fluorescent-green water gun. George felt the wetness trickle down his face and had no idea if it was spit or anthrax spores, and it didn't matter. Either way it was chemical warfare as far as George was concerned. He grabbed his Wiffle bat and swung, hitting all the pictures of his wife and kids off the desk and giving Mossvelt a chance to head out the door. He broke Mossvelt's nose on a second swing near the doorway and eventually tackled him a few storefronts down the block, in front of Justin's, Puff Daddy's southern-style eatery. The next morning there was a small piece in the “Weird but True” section of the Post titled, MAN ATTACKS PI WITH WATER GUN.
You Think You're Special? I'll Show You from Special!
My first day on the job after the assault, Evan did not greet me with the same energy I'd noticed in the interview. I returned to a scene that looked more like a combat zone than a workplace. In this case, it was both.
Evan looked bloodshot and hungover. He had a John Player Special gummed to the side of his mouth. I didn't realize we could smoke in the office. Score. “You look tired,” I said.
“I think I'm gonna boot,” he allowed. “Hey, Gray, let me show you your desk,” he said. He led me to a slab of wood across a cheap metal frame and dropped a big orange file with KEENEY on it in black capitals. I could feel fifteen sets of eyes peering sideways from grimy laptops.
My desk had little brown dots all over it. They looked a little like spilled jimmies. I examined this bequest and gave Evan a look.
“Rat turds.” He said this more declaratively than by way of explanation. Taking aim with one arm, Evan swiped the surface, pushing the nuggets clean off, save for a few stragglers stuck to his sweater. “We're working on that,” he said, with air quotes over “working,” as if to say, “Don't bet your precious little publishing ass it's gonna get better.”
My new desk in the front of the office faced George and Sol. I had inherited the most conspicuous spot in the whole place, and evidently the shittiest piece of real estate. “I don't have anything for you right now, so just keep busy.” An hour of solitaire on my new computer later, Evan brought me into the conference room, where two ill-at-ease boys were reposing awkwardly in their seats.
“Gray, this is Noah. Noah, this is Gray. Morgan, this is Gray. Blah. Blah. Blah.” Evan sighed and did a half-swivel. “You know the routine.” As he lorded over us that day and for a long time to come, Noah, Morgan, and I were the new recruits and were Evan's to abuse “until the next bunch of girls gets here.” Morgan blanched. Noah seemed either immune or oblivious to the insult.
Noah was a scrawny, pale-faced kid who had a master's degree in British Renaissance politics. He was also a former child actor on the Nickelodeon classic, Hey Dude! (You might remember him as the landlord's son, the one who got his ass kicked in every episode; I didn't.) Later Evan sent around an e-mail with a picture of Noah on the set in britches and another photo of him hobnobbing with the stars of You Can't Do That on Television.
Morgan, the other new guy, had taken this job because the online biotech trade magazine he had worked for had filed for chapter eleven, and he needed money fast. He also let drop within three minutes of talking to him that he was a Republican, could trace his family to the Mayflower, and that he was “perpetually appalled” by New York, the other investigators, Democrats, and modern culture in general. I felt dirty just talking to him. “We're going to love each other, Morgan,” I purred. He shuddered.
My first two days were spent in training. Sol spoke completely in negatives, vigorously displaying his fatalism, saying things like “If you don't want to get fired, don't neglect anything in your cases” or “This is how not to interview a subject” or “If you can't get the interviews, for whatever reason, because the guy's in Hawaii on vacation or dead—I don't care—it's not gonna make us want to keep you on here.” When he left the room for a minute to take a leak, I asked Noah and Morgan, “What's up with this guy?” They shrugged and looked panicky.
On the second day, Sol departed and Evan started to teach us how to search for liens, court cases, and real estate records. The job, he explained, was a combination of sophisticated computer research techniques and skillful interviewing. He used phrases like “second-level search retrieval” and “transunions.” Information in some states, we learned, was streamlined and computerized. In other places, it required hiring a research team
to dig through dusty files in the basements of court buildings and libraries. New York State seals divorce filings. Alabama has no database for marriage licenses. In Florida, the sale price of homes reported in the public record is rounded up to the nearest hundred thousand. We learned how and where to look, and how to save money doing it. Evan went over office rules with us. We signed dozens of confidentiality agreements, and Evan told us the office policies.
“So the rules are, you have to call me ‘Mr. Pringlemather.’ No, just kidding. Just don't use any of the databases or other resources here for personal stuff. Or if you do, don't get caught.” He laughed a little at himself. So did we.
I was swiftly schooled in the seedy mythology of my new workplace, including the story of the legendary investigator Berskow (or Berks, as they called him). He was an investigative phenom and golden boy who, Evan noted for anyone who cared, should be played by Adam Goldberg in the TV movie. Holding court with the recruits, Evan told us that Berks was the best investigator they'd ever had. “He could get anybody to say anything,” he said, looking rueful.
“Pray tell,” Morgan broke in, “why don't we have the pleasure of working with this extraordinary individual?”
“Actually, he had a misunderstanding with management.” Evan glanced out the French doors leading to the rest of the office, where the wax paper had been ripped by ornery feet and fists. The coast was clear. “Okay, he got shitcanned,” he admitted.
Berks had been moonlighting for another investigative agency, something Evan warned us never to get caught doing. It not only violated his noncompete clause and his confidentiality agreement, but it was an irreparable betrayal. He got paid independently for a case the firm should have handled, even though, at the time, George and Sol had no policy for rewarding investigators who'd brought in business. They'd since instituted a loose practice of giving between 5 and 15 percent of the total billing on the case to whoever recruited a new client, but management had fired Berks for going behind their backs.
Nevertheless, Berskow was still the standard-bearer as far as investigating went. Office policy, I learned, was an ad hoc game, based in part on politics and in part on the hangovers the powers that be had at any one time.
On the day he sacked Berks, Sol had opened a major can of whoopass on the other investigators telling them, among other things, that they were “examples of how to not be effective workers,” and, “None of you guys are even one tenth of the investigator Berskow was.” “That was a shitty day,” Evan observed, looking pained. After the evisceration was over, though, Evan said, George handed everyone copies of The Art of War and took them drinking.
“Okay, asswipes, time to get fingerprinted.” Evan took us a couple blocks over to the Fourteenth Precinct, where we got inked. “Hope none of you guys are felons, “cause we cross-reference this stuff,” Evan warned.
Noah looked visibly agitated. “I was arrested for public drunkenness and lewd behavior in high school,” he whispered to me, almost as a question.
“That's the kind of stuff we hire you for,” Evan said, overhearing him.
You Know Where to Stick It
A week into the job, I was sitting at my desk and finally ready to start a case. And my phone was ringing. It was hard to tell, actually. One of the lights on the elaborate matrix was flashing, but the ringers on the phones sounded like they were all coming from the same source. I envisioned George and Sol devising a money-saving scheme that included having only one operable phone ringer.
“Boo?”
“Mu?” It was my ex-boyfriend Ben. We had been broken up for a year at the time, but carried on a vestigial friendship.
While we were dating we spoke in a secret language, a patois of baby talk, infantile gibberish, and a variation of pig Latin words spoken with a lisp and a “b” added to the front. As in “Bamy bhere bar boo? ” He always seemed to trick me back into our old ways, his voice triggering my trancelike response.
“I'm at work,” I responded in a barely audible whisper.
“Oh, okay, then,” he said, annoyed. I was certain that we would never date again, but when I saw him sometimes we hugged for tens of minutes, and I didn't want to let him go. Even at an imposing six foot four, he seemed fragile. He was a magnet for muggers and bullies. Several times during our first year in the city, I came home from writing rejection letters and fetching lattes at my publishing job to find Ben holding an ice pack to a bloodied black eye and a split lip, in a tight, crimson-streaked T-shirt. His wallet had been stolen at knifepoint. He got into an argument with some Jets fans at a sports bar. (He was wearing a Patriots jersey.) He was pistol-whipped trying to cross Washington Square Park at night. We said if we never fell in love with anyone else, we could always just marry each other someday. Even though I didn't mean it, it gave me comfort.
At the time I started at the Agency, Ben wasn't dating anybody and I didn't want to tell him about Elliott because he knew him from college, and that would have made him jealous and pissed-off. But obviously, among our discreet group of friends, word travels fast.
“Sooooo,” he whistled, “how's your booyfrieeeend?”
“Ben, I don't want to talk about this.”
“Is he giving you the hot beef?” Yes, this was copped from The Breakfast Club.
“Fuck off. How's your girlfriieeend?” I teased back.
“She's goood,” he said.
“What do you mean? You don't have a girlfriend.” He didn't have a fucking girlfriend.
“Yes, I do. I have a new girlfriend. And she's pretty and she's rich and you know her.” I felt sick. Why was I jealous of my ex-boyfriend who I broke up with's new girlfriend?
“It's Lisa Saaaks.” He said the “a” in “Saks” with the same provocative sing-song he used to talk about Elliott, and for good reason. I did know her. She went to college with us, and her father, Jeffrey Saks, was the owner of the department-store chain. This was a girl who came back from spring break freshman year with a new $20,000 nose and $30,000 breast implants, the teardrop ones before they were all the rage. She had tried to remake herself as a trendy rock “n’ roll chick by not dry-cleaning her sweater sets as often and wearing her hair in ridiculous faux dreadlocks she got at Frédéric Fekkai. She used $100,000 of her daddy's money to do her first ten-minute short film at USC, something everyone else managed with $50 and a Super Eight from the Salvation Army.
“You must be kidding. I hope she gives great head, because that's all she'll do for you.”
“Somebody's jealoousss,” Ben hissed.
“I am not jealous, you're jealous, and I am not continuing this conversation anymore. Good-bye.” I hung up. It was 4:55. I was jealous, which was exactly his intent, and that made it all the more annoying. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of work and see Elliott, and make myself feel better.
At lunch that day I had munched on Cheetos and a salami sandwich and watched the other investigators shout over their lunches. One of the favorite office parlor games was figuring out who would play who in the TV movie of us. Vinny Gamba, the litigation retrieval manager, was always played by “that short Italian actor with the lisp”—by which everyone always meant Joe Pesci. I didn't ask who would play me, and no one made any suggestions. Then Sol slammed into the room and told us to stop stuffing our faces and get back to work.
The office had the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of a dot-com mixed with the dinginess usually associated with sweatshops and boiler rooms. Sol and George had both grown up in New York working-class families, Sol of Russian and Polish Jews, his father a door-to-door insurance broker, and George the son of an Irish-Catholic cop. They met at a now-defunct New York investigative firm, and, as George delicately put it, they figured, “We can do this crap better than they're doing it, and make more money!”
On the train home, I made the face I always make on the subway. It says, “Don't look at me, don't talk to me, don't even think about me.” Everybody who rides the subway has this defensive camouflage. It's not that we're
mean or cold or indifferent. It's just that if you stop to look at everything, you'll miss your stop. Or worse.
Occasionally this shield is penetrated, usually by cute babies, superior panhandlers, or, when I'm premenstrual, pretty much anything. On the way home, on the illuminated overhead across from me was an advertisement for a dermatologist named Dr. Ziz-mor. It looked like a fifth-generation copy of an ad from the early seventies, a jumble of weird quotes from patients and lists of procedures and really bad clip art. “Dr. Z,” it told me, does “laser, varicose veins, spot removal, acne …” It also had a before-and-after picture of a zitty girl and a reproduction of a letter from her in pink bubbly print that said, “Dr. Z, you totally changed my life, Luv, Liza.” A rainbow stretched from the end of his name to the beginning of the “Z” in Zizmor. I imagined myself at the end of Dr. Ziz-mor's rainbow. Not that there was anything wrong with my skin, but I liked the idea that Liza's transformation could be so absolute. Here's before. Here's after.
FOUR
I'm a spy in the house of love … I know the word that you long to hear. I know your deepest secret fear.
—THE DOORS, “THE SPY”
We All Have Our Dirty Little Secrets
Elliott and I were the kind of friends who had spent dozens of nights together in college, smoking pot and otherwise misbehaving. Still, we didn't have much to say to each other. We shared friends and rolling papers, but I didn't know him. Junior year in college I got an indication that there was more to him. My boyfriend then was Ben, and he was away from school, hiking in Arizona with some of our friends. The problem was, I lost my only copy of the already-pirated key to the dorm where I was living with him illegally. Student security could send me for disciplinary action if they knew, and adding to the insult, would charge me $75 to let me into a room I wasn't living in. I, in turn, was renting out the dorm room where I was supposed to be living on a weekly basis to other people. Like freshman boys who wanted some privacy with their girlfriends. Wandering around campus that day I was hoping to entertain myself until I found someone I knew and found a place to sleep or a key. When I saw Elliott, I was overjoyed. “Elliott!” I exclaimed, as I locked my arm in his. “Thank God I found you.” I squeezed my temples and moaned with the force of six hours of futile aggravation. “Arrrrgggh!”
