by Alan Glynn
I have to wonder . . . are we buds? Have I been to his place on Lake Como? Am I involved in some campaign of his? I don’t remember reading about this, but I may well have. It wouldn’t have seemed real to me at the time, so I wouldn’t have paid that much attention to it. Weird thing is, this doesn’t feel real either. So what have I got to lose?
‘When they’re making the biopic,’ I say, pointing at my bruises, ‘will your vanity be able to handle these?’
‘Oh, what, The Teddy Trager Story? Yeah, right.’ He does that thing, makes that face. ‘I’m a bit old to play you, Teddy, don’t you think? Even Matt’s too old for that role. Besides—’ He pauses here, weighing up his words. ‘Somehow, I don’t see . . . I don’t see a script getting out of the development process alive, frankly.’ He clears his throat. ‘Not if there’s any contractual obligation to, you know . . . take any of your notes seriously.’
‘Oh, fuck you, George.’
I’m not looking at him, but I can tell that Shaw’s face has probably drained of all colour by this stage.
Clooney reaches over and gives my arm a gentle squeeze. ‘I’m going to let you get some rest, Teddy.’
I wink at him and then watch as he turns and walks out of the room. I observe his shape and posture. Out in the hallway, there is something of a commotion, and I can feel it, reverb from the huddle of heat-seeking attention he must attract wherever he goes.
Fifteen minutes later, the next visitor comes in, and I don’t recognise him at all. He seems to be some kind of investment guy and is obviously someone I should know. I exaggerate my grogginess and let him do most of the talking.
Shaw seems surprised afterwards. ‘You didn’t know who that was?’
It’s a bold question and could easily open up an awkward conversation here, but I just shake my head.
‘That was Ray Dalio, Teddy.’ He pauses. ‘Bridgewater Investments?’
Trager would obviously know this name, he probably goes fucking skiing with Ray Dalio, but with me any name is a crapshoot – I might or might not have come across it in an article or on a website. What this brings home to me again is that being Teddy Trager is a tricky business, fine in small doses, when I can walk away and take off the suit but pretty much a minefield in any kind of extended situation.
And I’m certainly in one of those now.
I look at Shaw. If he isn’t going to blink, though, neither am I.
‘Sure, Doug. Bridgewater. Ray Dalio. I knew that. I’m just having a little . . . brainwave trouble is all.’
‘Well, you won’t have that problem with your next visitor.’ He glances at his watch. ‘I can guarantee you that.’
My twenty minutes with Bill Clinton has a dreamlike quality to it. He pulls a chair up beside the bed, leans in, locks eyes with me, and just talks – quietly, flowingly, non-stop. I barely listen, but I think he’s filling me in on some initiative we’ve been working on. The conversation, such as it is – the monologue, more like – is conspiratorial, dense with detail, and exhausting.
When he’s gone, though, I miss it, and while I have no idea what Shaw’s grand plan here is, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that my cooperation, my continuing compliance, is an essential part of it. And unless I’m imagining things, there’s now a sort of unspoken agreement between us: so long as I go on looking and sounding like Teddy Trager, Shaw will see to it that everyone else treats me as if I am Teddy Trager.
And I think it remains unspoken for a reason.
If Shaw acknowledges that I’m Danny Lynch, a line cook from North Carolina – or if I acknowledge it – that will break the spell. It will undermine his plan.
Which gives me a certain degree of leverage.
Because while I don’t know what’s in this for Shaw, it has to be a lot, and if I play my cards right, there might well be something in it for me too.
*
Later on, I slip the night nurse a second fifty from Trager’s wallet for a little more iPad time. That’s when I come to realise just how high the stakes are. Because it’s not the real Teddy Trager who’s out of the picture now, it’s the real me.
A full forty-eight hours after I left Trager’s body by a river in Westchester, there is no mention of the fact anywhere on the web. What there is mention of, however, and as reported in yesterday’s Post, is a corpse floating in the Hudson river off of West 42nd Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The NYPD responded after a witness called it in, and soon afterward the body was pulled to shore at Pier 81. The victim, a man in his early thirties, was fully clothed – in a suit, apparently – and had ID on him. There were some signs of trauma, but the police are still waiting for the Medical Examiner’s Office to determine an exact cause of death. They’re also not releasing the victim’s name until his family has been notified.
I stare at the screen. That could be anyone, though, right? The Harbor Unit probably have to do this a couple of times a week.
But if it is just anyone, why does it feel so wrong? Why does it feel like I’ve been sucker-punched here?
I go to Metro and scroll down through the stories for today. And there it is: ‘Man Found in River Named’.
My eyes burn as I try to focus and make sense of the words on the screen:
The identity of a man who cops fished out of the Hudson river early yesterday morning has now been officially confirmed by his girlfriend. A distraught Kate Rozman named the thirty-three-year-old Iraq veteran from North Carolina as Daniel Lynch. Previously employed as a line cook in a Manhattan restaurant, Lynch was heavily in debt and was said to have been struggling with unaddressed mental-health issues. No foul play is suspected, and police are not looking for anyone else in connection with their inquiry. Funeral arrangements have yet to be made.
Holy shit.
I read the piece again.
Holy shit.
If you ever need to get things in perspective, you know what’ll do the trick? Seeing a reference to your own fucking funeral arrangements. But that’s not the hardest part about this. For me, what’s even harder is reading about Kate and how distraught she was. Because it was never my intention to hurt her. Obviously. Much less to put her through anything like this.
But could I have anticipated it? Anticipated that someone – people, Shaw, I don’t know, whoever – would exert the influence required to have a dead body moved from one location to another and then have that body officially passed off as mine?
As me?
It’s insane.
One thing it does tell me, though, is that whoever’s behind this is deadly serious. And that what they’re serious about – I can only conclude – is me.
*
The next morning I have to undergo another round of tests and some physio, and by the end of it I’m exhausted. However, one of the doctors tells me that I’m in pretty good shape – no internal damage, nothing showing up in the PET scan, and that going forward, as the various fractures heal, it’ll just be a question of pain management.
Not bad, I’m tempted to point out, for a dead guy. But I resist, and instead put a simple question to him. ‘Okay, if that’s the case, when can I check out of here?’
The doctor hesitates, squinting at his chart, clearly unwilling to commit to an answer. It’s as if he thinks he’s said too much already. But I let this go, because the answer is pretty obvious. All things being equal, I could probably walk out of here right now.
When Doug Shaw appears a while later, I put this to him.
‘What?’ he says, phone in one hand, takeout coffee in the other. ‘You crashed your car into a fucking oak tree, Teddy. I don’t think you’re ready to hit the streets just yet.’
Maybe it was unconscious on my part, but this is exactly what I was hoping he’d come out with. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘that’s not what happened, Doug. Not to me anyway. And I think we both know that.’
Shaw stops, and his shoulders seem to slump in resignation. After a moment, he puts the coffee down, then glances in my direction, but without sa
ying a word or even making eye contact. For some reason, he doesn’t look well this morning. He’s pale, tired-seeming, as though he’s sick, or hungover maybe.
‘Doug?’
He holds his free hand up. ‘Just give me a minute, will you?’
Then he looks down at his phone, keys something in, and brings it up to his ear.
‘Yeah, Karl, please.’
As he says this he’s already walking out of the room.
I watch him go.
Why is he acting so weird? And who is this Karl person he suddenly needs to talk to?
I wait ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty, during which time my resolve evaporates. It was stupid to show my hand like that. Shaw has huge resources at his disposal – influence, money, a private-security apparatus. What do I have? My face? Shaw wants to ‘use’ me, to take advantage of my uncanny likeness to his business partner, fine, but if I prove to be a liability in some way, slipping out of character at inopportune moments, how long will I last? How long will Shaw’s patience last? How long before I end up following myself into the fucking Hudson river?
I pull the covers aside and am about to get out of the bed – about to try and make a break for it – when the door opens, and Shaw reappears.
Sighing, I close my eyes and slump back against the banked-up pillows. How far would I have managed to get? A few yards along the hallway? Down to reception? Even if I made it out of the hospital, where would I go in any case? The apartment? So I could give Kate a massive heart attack? Which, assuming she survived it, would swiftly be followed by all sorts of other trouble, financial, legal, emotional, every last bit of it my fault?
‘Okay,’ Shaw says, ‘listen carefully.’
I open my eyes. He’s standing next to the bed and looks distracted, sweaty, anxious, like this really isn’t how he imagined his day shaping up.
‘We need to have that conversation,’ he goes on, ‘the one we’ve been putting off . . . but we’re not going to have it here, we’re not going to have it in the hospital.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I spoke to’ – he waves a hand behind him – ‘some of the team, and, okay . . . yeah, we can . . . we can move.’
‘Move?’
‘To your apartment.’
‘Oh.’ I have a quick, disconcerting vision of Shaw standing in the living room of our cramped walk-up on 10th Street. ‘I see . . .’
But that can’t be what he has in mind.
‘So, Doug,’ I say after a moment, and as discreetly as possible, almost in a whisper, ‘remind me, where do I live again?’
10
The Mercury is a condominium skyscraper on the northern edges of what everyone is now calling Hudson Yards, a zone that’s shaping up to be Manhattan’s biggest makeover of an entire neighbourhood since Battery Park City. But the Mercury pre-dates this development by a good fifteen years. It was meant to spearhead the project, but zoning issues got in the way, followed by the financial crisis, then by more squabbles between developers and city planners. ‘You know, the usual story . . .’
I don’t actually, and why it’s something Shaw feels compelled to share with me as we move across town in the back of a limo I’m not really sure. Maybe it’s a form of displacement, a way of further delaying this conversation we’re supposed to be having.
Anyway, the apartment itself – which is on both the eighty-second and eighty-third floors – turns out, in every respect, to be nothing less than eye-popping. I’m accompanied up by Shaw and two assistants, and we’re then greeted in the vestibule by a small domestic staff. I move slowly, nodding at each person in turn.
Shaw tells me he has urgent business to attend to at the office, but that he’ll be back later. As he glances around the apartment, and then at me again, he seems more anxious than ever. I try to let him know he has nothing to worry about, not on my account. He seems to accept this, but he also can’t help leaving me with the impression that at no time will I actually be alone here. I take this to mean . . . what? I’m not sure. That I’ll be under constant surveillance? That some of the domestic staff report to him? Even if neither of these things is true, of course, the mere suggestion of them is enough to make me behave as though they are.
Nevertheless, when I am alone, or as good as, I take the opportunity to have a look around. Flooded with natural light, the apartment is very spacious, and everything in it – being made of either marble, steel or glass – seems to reflect this, and to amplify it. The whole place is oddly clinical and sort of forbidding, not unlike a spread in the Architectural Digest. It does have these amazing multi-angle views though, and from pretty much every room. But while the apartment is so high up that no one except maybe a helicopter pilot would have any chance of invading your privacy – of catching you in the middle of a lewd act, say, or even just parading around in your boxers – the uncomfortable feeling of exposure this generates (and I’m getting it after only ten, fifteen minutes) is relentless and inescapable.
Essentially, the place doesn’t have a lived-in feel to it, and there’s nothing I’m seeing that gives me any indication of what Trager was like as a person. There are no traces of Nina Schlossmeier, for instance, no what you might even call feminine touches. The closet off the main bedroom is certainly impressive, with its incredible array of suits and shirts and shoes, as is the bathroom, which is about twice the size of any regular person’s entire apartment. But I have to admit that it’s the billiards room, the swimming pool, and the walk-in humidor that really sell me on the place. Because with all of that going on why would you ever need to leave? I mean, holy shit, you want a lived-in feel? Give me a week here, give me a few days, and I’ll show you a lived-in feel.
An impediment to this little fantasy getting off the ground, however, is the domestic staff – I counted five of them earlier. Do they live here? The very idea of having servants, live-in or not, makes me uncomfortable, and that’s without considering the possibility that these people might already be spying on me.
So what am I saying? I want out? I can’t handle this? I don’t know. Maybe. I’m still in a lot of pain, still on medication, and that can interfere with your judgement. Is it dampening my perception of the threat level, for example, or merely ramping up my paranoia? Who knows? But as I go from room to room now, walking slowly, careful to avoid any sudden movement, my mind has time to wander, and it occurs to me that there’s plenty of what looks like valuable stuff here – ceramic bowls, glassware, pieces of sculpture, a series of small paintings that line the main hallway (one of which, I think, is an original Picasso), my point being that with the proceeds from a single item, discreetly lifted from the apartment, I could probably clean up financially and avoid a lot of unnecessary trouble . . .
But while this is a tempting plan all right – and several notches up from the one I had at the hospital of just lifting Trager’s wallet – really, on reflection, it’d be nowhere near as easy to execute as it sounds. And how do you go about disposing of stolen valuables anyway? Especially when you have no underworld connections? How do you say the word ‘Picasso’ without setting off alarm bells? And, what’s more, how do you operate in a world in which – officially, at least – you no longer even exist?
By the time Shaw returns, a few hours later, I’m at the point of wondering if staying in the hospital mightn’t have been a better option. I’m resting on a leather couch in the main, ballpark-sized living room, gazing out over the river at the Palisades, when he is shown in by one of the domestic staff.
And he isn’t alone. He’s accompanied by another man in a suit – late fifties, medium height, wearing rimless glasses.
As they approach, I sit up, but don’t stand.
Opposite the couch I’m on there is a corresponding one, and Shaw sits there, hunched forward. The guy with him remains standing at a discreet distance behind it. Shaw still looks tired and anxious, but he also seems a bit more focused.
‘Okay, Danny, I’m going to lay it all out for you, straight up, no bullshit.’
I flinch at this casual use of my real name, and, even though it finally confirms what I’ve suspected all along, it still comes as a shock.
‘The bottom line here is that you look and sound like Teddy, okay, but you’re nowhere near as batshit crazy as he was – for which you should be grateful, by the way – but that means it’s never going to be easy to pull off any extended encounters. This is why I’ve been trying to keep you more or less isolated. You need a little fine tuning, to say the least.’
In his quiet, gravelly voice, Shaw then goes on to explain that it was actually Teddy who brought the whole business to his attention, Teddy who told him about seeing this guy at Barcadero one night. For Teddy, it was exciting, a game, something he wanted to explore, to understand the meaning of. Shaw took a different view. He immediately saw an opportunity, the potential for a practical application of the thing.
The strategic use of a double.
‘Which is nothing new, to be honest, kings and presidents have used them down through the centuries, body doubles, decoys, whatever. FDR is supposed to have used one, and Churchill too. More recently, you have Saddam Hussein, Putin . . . and probably others we don’t know about.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But this is a little different, isn’t it? Because presumably when Putin is using one, he’s actually calling the shots.’ I glance at the man standing behind the couch, and then back at Shaw. ‘This isn’t a decoy. This is a replacement.’
Shaw emits a dry laugh. ‘It is now.’
‘Well, what was it before?’
‘To be honest, Danny, it was all a bit vague. When Teddy first told me about you, I was intrigued. I tracked you down and took a good, long look at you, but . . . I didn’t think it’d work. Frankly, I thought you were too unstable, and, for what it’s worth, I still do.’
Ignoring this last part, I say, ‘You didn’t think what would work exactly?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Danny. It was a tantalising idea, that’s all. It opened up some possibilities.’ He pauses. ‘And I explored them.’
