Paradime (15 page)

A bit later, Shaw reappears and announces that I’m going to have a few visitors this morning – it’ll be quick, five minutes each, no more, and all I have to do is attempt a brave smile, nod wearily, and listen. This is one of those weird moments when I feel like Shaw isn’t even pretending. He’s just
telling
me what to do. But how would that go down if I were the real Teddy Trager? Not too well, is my guess, and I’m on the point of calling Shaw out on this – because I
am
weary – when his cellphone goes off. He answers it, listens for a moment, then looks at me. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘we’re up.’

We?

He turns to face the door, and waits.

Both of us now waiting.

But for what? The Homicide Division? The Fraud Squad? A couple of psychiatric orderlies, one with a hypodermic syringe in his hand and the other with a straightjacket?

The man who walks through the door is familiar-looking, but it takes my brain more than a beat to pull up his name – which is a little worrying, given how famous he is.

George Clooney greets Shaw with a quick handshake and then approaches the bed. When he sees my facial bruising up close, he puts on a pained expression. ‘Oh man, that’s rough.’

I look at him. This is a tanned, suave Hollywood A-lister standing in front of me. If it weren’t for the morphine, I’d probably be a little flustered right now. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘you should see the tree.’

Clooney laughs.

I shoot a glance at Shaw, who’s over in the corner, smiling nervously.

‘So. Are they treating you okay?’

‘Take a look,’ I say, making a sweeping gesture with my arm, indicating the room, how nice it is, how spacious, but the sudden movement hurts, and I wince.

‘Whoa . . .’ Clooney winces too, in sympathy. ‘Take it easy there, Teddy.’

I roll my hooded, morphine eyes at him. ‘It . . .’s fine.’

Me and George.

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:

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 saying 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?’

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.’

‘On your own?’

‘If this is the route you want to go down . . . yeah, sure, on my own. Teddy was becoming a liability. I felt he needed to be controlled or even contained. And this seemed like a possible way to do it.’

I can feel my insides churning. ‘How?’

‘I didn’t think it through, Danny. There was no big plan.’ Shaw looks over his shoulder at the man behind him for a moment, then turns to face me again. ‘As I said before, I didn’t think you were really suitable, so I had this biometrics company we own run data on it, to see if we couldn’t find another match, maybe someone . . . easier to handle, let’s say . . . but no one came anywhere
near
your numbers. So . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘So we kept an eye on you.’

Kept an eye on me? Jesus Christ. I exhale loudly. Is there anyone who
isn’t
keeping an eye on me?

Shaw ignores my reaction. ‘How it would all proceed from there,’ he goes on, ‘was anyone’s guess. There was no real strategy, and we were more or less improvising. Anyway, you pretty much took over the reins, Danny. Once you saw Teddy for yourself, you did all the heavy lifting, up to and including – and we couldn’t have foreseen
this
– signing those papers.’ He makes a whistling sound. ‘But why did you run off like that? Why did you sneak out? Why didn’t you stick around the way I told you to?’

I look at him and shrug.

‘Of course we should have factored in how unhinged Teddy himself was, that he’d inevitably want to track you down again, and stroke you like a pet monkey.’ He pauses. ‘Right, Karl?’

The man standing behind him nods slightly, but doesn’t speak. After a moment, Shaw waves a hand vaguely to his side. ‘By the way, Danny, this is Dr Karl Lessing.’

Now it’s my turn to nod and not speak.

‘Anyway, the point is,’ Shaw continues, ‘
we
may have been a bit behind the curve in all of this, but
you
went ahead and made your decision regardless, am I right? You moved Teddy’s body. You got in behind the wheel of his car. You knew what you were doing. So let’s be honest with one another here . . . you totally want this.’

My stomach is still churning. I have about a dozen very specific questions I could ask right now, knotty procedural points in the main – timing, sequence of events, when people got to the scene, stuff that isn’t clear to me or that doesn’t quite add up – but it seems like there’s really only one direction this conversation is going in.

‘Want
what
, Doug?’

‘I think you know what, Danny. But just so we’re on the same page.’ He clears his throat again. ‘You get to
be
Teddy Trager. You get to wear his clothes and drink his liquor. You get to bang his girlfriend, drive his car, spend his money, whatever. You get to live
here
– I mean, look at this place – and, in return, you close the book on your old life, no contact, no crossover. You keep a low profile and let
me
take care of company business. And every now and again, as the necessity arises, you make a public appearance and endorse . . . whatever needs to be endorsed, whatever’s going on with the company at the time.’

‘And if I refuse?’

Shaw laughs. ‘Why would you do that? This is your ticket out of the shit, Danny.’

‘But if I did? For argument’s sake?’

He exhales loudly. ‘I don’t know. We’d think of something. We’ve got deep pockets. You’ve got nothing. Besides, you’re into some murky stuff here already. Forgery, personation. None of that would play too well in court.’

He’s right. But I still need to understand something.

‘If it’s about control of the company,’ I say, ‘what do you need
me
for? Why didn’t you kill Teddy off long ago, when he became a liability? Wouldn’t that have been easier and less complicated?’

‘Jesus Christ, Danny.
Kill
Teddy?
What kind of people do you think we
are
? Teddy was my friend. He died in an accident.’

I hold his gaze, and a long, tense silence follows. I don’t play poker, but I imagine it’s something like this. ‘
I’m
not your friend,’ I say eventually. ‘Why not get rid of
me
?’

Shaw leans back a little on the couch. ‘You’re a trip, you know that?’ He half turns around to look at Lessing. ‘I
told
you, Karl. This guy is fucking nuts.’

Lessing takes a couple of steps forward and puts his hands on the edge of the couch. ‘No,’ he says quietly, ‘I don’t think so.’

There’s definitely an accent here, German maybe.

Squinting slightly, Lessing studies me for a few seconds, then says, ‘He’s puzzled, that’s all. He’s trying to understand why we would be doing this. He’s goading you.’

Not German, though maybe South African?

Shaw nods impatiently. ‘Okay, okay, I get it.’ He turns to face me again. ‘Look . . . like I said, there was no big plan here, no big design. Teddy dies in a car crash, it’s tragic, but now we have this . . .
opportunity
. With you. Because the way I see it, Paradime as a brand, without the oxygen of Teddy Trager, even the illusion of it, is seriously diminished. Now, Teddy had his issues, stuff you don’t need to know about, believe me, but at the same time he was unique, he had charisma, he had his very own, what do they call it’ – he clicks his fingers – ‘reality distortion field. And here’s the thing: the man brought a loyalty to the Paradime brand that
no
amount of money could buy. But now he’s gone.’ He leans forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘Except that he
isn’t
, is he?’

I swallow, totally out of my depth now.

‘Or at least he doesn’t have to be,’ Shaw goes on, ‘because we have
someone who can step into his shoes. We have
you
. Which means we have a shot at keeping this thing alive, this confidence that Paradime inspires, that keeps investors and fund managers coming back for more. Call it the Teddy Trager effect.’

This is moving too fast. I shake my head. ‘But . . .’

Shaw tenses. ‘Yeah?’

‘You said it yourself. You think I’m too . . . what was it you called me? Unstable?’

‘Yeah . . .’ He smiles. ‘But come on, what do
I
know? My esteemed colleague, the doctor here, took a good, long look at you as well, then drew up a detailed psychological profile, and he assures me that you have a steely resilience and a,’ – he looks around briefly – ‘what was it, Karl, a rare capacity for adaptability? In fact, it was Dr Lessing’s idea to wait before having this conversation. He wanted to see how long you’d hold out before the pressure got to you. I
think
he was impressed.’