by Matt Richtel
I climb into the car, feeling an urge to quickly get away from the departing luncheon crowd and into a more comfortable setting, namely, asking subtle but intrusive questions; I’m headed to find out more about Sandy Vello.
I hit the gas and turn onto El Camino Real, a thoroughfare that stretches through Silicon Valley, when I see something that changes my immediate plans. A car length back, behind the wheel of a brown sedan, drives the man, he of the long, black leather coat. Hard to miss that long, square head. I move one lane to my right and he does the same.
I’m approaching a hotel and take a sharp right into its parking lot. He follows.
I pull into a parking spot near the green awning of the hotel entrance. It’s too public here for anything too bad to happen, I’d like to think.
My shadower pulls into a nearby spot and steps out, a picture of cardiovascular noncompliance. Five-feet-eight, round belly where all the weight goes, besides his cranium. He’s opened his black jacket to reveal a button-down white oxford tucked into shiny, stiff, dark jeans. No belt. A two-decade-old paisley tie and running shoes.
“Hello, Mr. Idle.” His weary, high-pitched voice seems inconsistent with his carriage. “Congratulations on your award. Seems like you did a good thing.”
I’ve seen this guy once before, prior to the luncheon. He was standing in the doorway of Green Love, one recent morning; I think I was whisking out of the office to get to an interview.
I’ve gotten out of the Audi, sprint-ready, though I’m too curious and tired to take off. He’s in his fifties, and no physical threat.
“Have you had it checked?” I ask.
“What?”
“You roll your right ankle when you walk. I guess you’ve gotten used to it but you’re stretching your ligament and sometime in the next decade you’re going to hate getting out of bed.”
“I got it tripping over a Labrador when I was chasing a deadbeat mom. Some banking exec.” He looks down and rolls his ankle in midair. “That woman could fly.”
Without taking his eyes from me, he reaches toward his back pocket with his right hand, deliberate. I flinch. He pulls out an elongated yellow envelope, official-looking. He extends it. I look at it but don’t reach for it.
“You’ve been served.”
He flips the envelope through my open car window.
“My work is done here.” He delivers the stock line, and wanders back to his car.
Inside the car, I open the envelope. It’s from the United States Treasury. I’m called into a hearing in four days. It says I’ve ignored repeated letters informing me that I owe “considerable” back taxes.
The letter offers few details beyond it telling me my hearing date is at 4 p.m. and, in all bold, that I may face criminal charges by failing to appear. Criminal charges.
It must be a mistake or joke. How does someone with my meager wages owe considerable taxes? And how could I not have seen the previous letters? Did I get them from the Treasury and ignore them? I am disorganized, I admit, but my chaos stops short of white-collar crime.
At the bottom of the letter is a phone number. I call it, reaching an automated phone menu that, when I follow it to its logical end-after inputting my tax ID number from the letter, and my birth date-I wind up getting an instruction to show up for a hearing with a revenue specialist on the date noted on the letter. Someday, some seventeen-year-old computer genius will destroy all the world’s automated phone menus and have a national holiday named after her.
I look at the spot where the square-headed delivery man had been parked and is no longer. I wished I’d probed him a bit, maybe asked him how he knew to find me at the awards luncheon. But I’m also struck by the obvious answer: if he’d done any research on me, he’d have seen the event publicized in various spots on the web.
I toss the envelope into the back, watch it find a final resting place on Isaac’s car seat, and I’m overcome with a wave of exhaustion.
I close my eyes for a catnap. I wake up with the sun still looming above one of the Valley’s three-story office parks, feeling decidedly refreshed, ready to attack a mystery.
I call Faith. It again goes directly to voice mail.
Next up: a former reality-TV contestant named Sandy Vello. This approach I’ll make in person.
7
Into my phone I punch PRISM, the name of the corporation Sandy worked for. It claims three campus headquarters. One each in South San Francisco, Berlin and Beijing. That’s no surprise and maybe not true. Increasingly, companies establish several headquarters so wherever customers live they can feel local ties. I use Google Earth to eyeball the nearby address and find it located in an office complex near the bay, just north of the airport.
An hour later, I drive by the campus, such that it is. It’s a single office building, six stories, glass and metal that feel as unwelcoming and lonely as the Holiday Inn across the way. The smattering of cars suggests the building is far from full, its engineers working typically odd hours or at home, or the company’s presence here is small. Or maybe this company, like many on the Peninsula, provides bus service from San Francisco, ostensibly an environmental play to reduce traffic and car emissions, but also so employees can get the first wave of emails knocked out during the commute.
At the front door, I peer into a small, spare lobby. I press a buzzer on the locked door below a brass placard emblazoned “PRISM-Floors 4 and 5,” with Chinese characters below it. Presumably, the receptionist is on the fourth floor. No answer. I try again, in vain. I wait for someone to come in or out, also in vain. On the wall beside the placard, there’s a phone number for reception. I call. I get an automated phone system. It allows me to dial by name, which I do. A voice mail answers: “It’s Sandy. Leave a message.” Sandy Vello, at least, does, or did, work at this place. I hang up. I wait some more. But no employees show up, and none exit. No one for me to make an inquiry with, no string to tug.
This is pointless, and probably not the best way to announce my attention or intentions. I start the car and head north.
A half hour later, I’m at the entrance to a place equally uninviting but somehow more approachable, the Twin Peaks Youth Guidance Center. I swallow hard. I came here not long after Isaac was born-losing myself in work so as not to think about how Polly and I went wrong-writing freelance fluff for the New York Times about the organic tomato farm tended by prepubescent prisoners and supplying several gourmet restaurants in the city. It’s the brainchild of a city supervisor who otherwise hates the free market.
As I pull into the visitor lot, I remember the layout. Three sections: a maximum security dormitory to the far left cordoned by a foreboding gate, a two-story administrative law building in the middle and, elevated on a hill just above the lot, a learning annex. It’s a single-story building that serves both inmates-the city calls them “residents”-who prove themselves sufficiently able to play with others, and a mix of lower-income kids from around the city who get bussed in to do after-school programs, learn tradecrafts, use computers, read, perform one-act plays they write. The annex itself actually has reasonably nice amenities, having been privatized a couple years ago to offload budget burden from a county starved of tax dollars. Still, nice touches notwithstanding, the buzzwords here are “basic life skills,” a far cry from the buzzwords “eventual Yale graduate,” spoken at private schools that are just blocks away and eons apart.
According to her obituary, Sandy Vello regularly volunteered here.
As I kill the ignition, the Audi’s fading dashboard tells me that it’s nearly 5, closing time. It’s a tight window for a long shot.
And something doesn’t feel quite right. Two cop cars, red lights flashing but unaccompanied by sirens, sit in front of the high metal gate that surrounds the dormitory section. Maybe trouble inside. If so, I’m the only passerby taking notice. Behind me, commuters crowd the adjacent artery, not a rubbernecker among them. They’re trying to get home before the light drizzle turns more menacing. Dusk threatens.
In the annex area, there’s not a soul in sight, I follow a sign for “volunteer access” and trudge narrow cement stairs to the entrance to a rounded building resembling a high-school basketball gym. I pull on the handle of the double-wide, thick green metal doors. Locked, of course. Craning my neck, I try to peer through musty glass with wire mesh between its triple panes. I push the buzzer. I hear the door click. I pull it open and take in the peculiar smell of sweat and antiseptic.
I’m standing at the entrance to an anteroom bisected by a wall-to-wall heavy wood reception counter. Behind it stand two women engaged in conversation, neither of whom looks up at me.
“Not taking deliveries today. It’s a lockdown.” The slender woman now glances up. Behind her on the wall, a poster with its right edge curled from age displays a man with welding glasses and a caption: “Skills Not Pills.” Beside it, cheap faux bronze framed, the portly head of the warden. He’s got a comb-over, a rotten makeup job and, in the corner of his lip covering what I know to be his ever-present cold sores. When the county privatized this lockup facility, he got nominal oversight. The move mollified chagrined lefties who had been accused on conservative radio of acknowledging through the privatization the inhering failure of public projects.
“Doc Jefferson around?” The warden, nice guy for an anti-intellectual political hack who prefers a nickname instead of a title, had given me a tour of the farm to the right of the annex. I got too brief a tour of the annex itself, a maze of classrooms separated by those temporary, movable walls.
The slender woman looks up, tilts her head. “Building Two, but you’ll have to catch him tomorrow.” Her eyes tilt to the round wall clock: 4:55. “It’s late and fighting broke out at the dorm.”
“I’m actually here about someone else.”
She’s got short-cropped blonde hair that started as brown and my first impression is she cuts and colors it herself. “Don’t forget to close the door behind you.”
“Will do.” Dead end. I turn around to go, then turn back with a flyer. “My condolences about Sandy Vello.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sandra. I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Is this a joke?”
“I just wanted to offer my condolences.” I’m standing in the door. “I was a fan.”
“I’m Sandy Vello. What do you want?”
8
At just this inopportune moment, I hear Polly’s voice in my head. She’s admonishing me for leaving in the sink a spatula, its tip gooey with cheese-omelet remains. I’ve done all the other dishes and walked away. Her admonition is playful but pointed: I overlook the finest details, she says, and kisses my ear. It’s four months before she leaves me out of the blue, Isaac still in utero. “You’ll teach our baking bean to finish the job,” she says.
It’s an instant flash to my failings. Is my head in the clouds? Am I an inexact romantic? Is this why everything went wrong? I feel my head pulse again and see Sandy Vello, a woman that I understood to be dead, glowering at me-short-cropped hair, long on attitude, very vertical given her alleged medical condition.
“You were on that survivor show,” I say. Is this really her?
“What?”
Her obituary, or what I thought was her obituary, said she had been on a reality-TV show. Clearly, the obit was wrong in its most essential facet-i.e., Sandy Vello is, um, not dead-but maybe this fallacious death notice had some other facts right. I can’t try to make sense of the overriding conundrum right now. My only goal: not alienate this person, who might yet provide answers. Avoid the direct approach. Not yet time to ask if she was trying to contact me. Let the conversation evolve.
“You were robbed,” I say. No net now. “I wanted to offer my condolences.”
“If you saw the show, then how come you didn’t recognize me?”
“I did. I thought I did. I was too embarrassed. I shouldn’t have said anything. I. .”
“I was robbed. That Rodent Nuts Donovan made it look like I lied to Clyde. I’d never lie to Clyde. I’d trust that Marine with my life and, besides, he knows I’m tough but totally true to my values.” She pauses. “What did your kid do?”
It takes a second to reorient. She thinks I’ve got offspring in lockup. I’m sizing her up too, and I instantly identify her pathology: IRC. Ideal reality-show contestant. Combative, self-assured, narcissistic, as desperate for attention as she is difficult to turn away from. Genetically tailored for TV. A doctor in Los Angeles actually came up with such a diagnosis, or so I read. This sufferer is leaning against the counter and I can see the veins in her heavily exercised forearms; she’s got a narrow, birdlike head but also a charismatic, toothy smile, which she now is showing.
“No. Not visiting any residents. I’ve visited before. I thought it was common knowledge you did volunteer work-help kids. I took a chance you’d be around. .”
She’s blinking, skeptical.
I clear my throat. “I’m Nat Idle.” I’m watching her face. She blinks, not with recognition, but boredom. The conversation just stopped being about her.
“Nathaniel Idle,” I expand.
“I told you: we’re in lockdown and closing.”
She’s got no clue who I am, which means she likely didn’t send me an email overture purporting to warn me about some impending “launch.” Launch of what? Would she know what that refers to? Is she as in the dark as me or, instead, one very good actress, far too good for reality TV?
I fight a rising temptation to tell her I’d heard a rumor that she’d been in an accident. Short of that, maybe I could ask her what she’s doing now. It’s a natural segue from her riff on someone named Donovan and someone named Clyde, and maybe an entree into her job at PRISM, or Lord knows if she actually works there. But the rhythm doesn’t feel right. I’m still in a mild state of shock.
“I’ve got a question.”
“You want to know if they rigged the show, right?”
“That too. May I have an autograph?”
She looks at the doorway that leads to the back of the building. It opens. The smaller woman reappears.
“You should wait outside.”
I’m not getting the impression that egocentric Sandy is someone who likes to volunteer with kids but maybe her work here conforms to her desire to be the most superior creature in the room.
“Perfect.” I mean it. I’ve got a few minutes to make sure I’m not living in a dream world.
I walk the few yards to my car feeling a distinct chill, this one borne of weather, not shock. This part of San Francisco’s microclimate makes the other foggy parts feel like sunshine. A few blocks later, I comfort myself, it’ll be 20 degrees warmer. Thanks to our hills, valleys, stretches of trees and lush park that suddenly give way to swaths of concrete jungle, I live in microclimate central. This city’s motto should be: Don’t like the weather? Step to your left.
I sit in the car to extricate myself from the wind and pull out my phone. I call up the Internet and search for Sandy Vello. Again, as I had the night before, I get hundreds of thousands of responses. But none of the first ones is an obituary.
I start the search over, this time specifying her name and “obituary.” Plenty of random search returns. None replicating what I’d found the night before. Same result when I put in her name and “bike accident.”
Then I try Sandy Vello and “San Mateo Daily News,” where I recall seeing the obit. There are a couple of hits. But both of them refer to Sandy as a “local woman” appearing on Last One Standing. I speed through one of the articles. It says the show took place in October 2008, filmed on an island off the coast of Washington in frigid conditions, and consisted of various outdoor survival feats. It ended for Sandy in an early episode and she accused one of the contestants of organizing the others to conspire to oust her. I guess that’s the arch-enemy Sandy referred to as Donovan. It says Sandy’s nickname was “the Perp,” on account of her having spent some time in juvenile hall a decade earlier for reasons “sealed by
the court.” She’s cast as a bad seed reformed.
There is nothing on the Internet suggesting this woman is dead and no evidence there ever was such a reference.
How is that possible? I know what I saw the night before. And the fact that the woman is right where I’d been led to believe I’d find her by the phantom obituary provides me some comfort that I didn’t imagine the obit entirely.
But now it’s gone.
I look up to see Sandy, standing at the window, casing the Audi.
I open the door but remain seated.
“Nice ride. After the show, Porsche put me in a Cayenne for a few weeks but it was too flashy for me.”
“I thought you were a big road biker.”
“On those shows, they blow your skills out of proportion so they can knock you down. But it’s true that I’ve won my share of races for my age group, and don’t you go asking what that is. So, yeah, I put in my time on the bike. It helps me feel centered.”
“Isn’t that dangerous? All that riding. Do you ever get in crashes?”
“Not a one. Knock on wood. How did you say you found me? Not that I mind having fans. It’s important for me to set a good example. I’m just curious.”
Textbook narcissist; like a meth addict whose drug is attention and who burns through it every few seconds, then resents the need and its provider.
She’s standing in the wind, arms crossed. I stand. “May I make a confession?”
“If this is some weird stalker thing, I’m going to call the guards.” She sort of laughs.
“I’m a journalist.”
She blinks a couple of times, discomfort. “Ha. I should’ve guessed.” She looks at the prison. “This part of my life is off the record. I’ve been where these kids are, and neither I nor they need to have our stories reduced to a bunch of clever sound bites.”
“I. .”
“I don’t want to be part of some humiliating ‘where are they now’ story. They warned us on the show we could be hounded the rest of our lives.”
