Grifters Inc.

--Hineni he’ani mima’as. Here I am, impoverished in deeds and merit. But nevertheless, I have come.

I’m no good. I’ve done wicked, wretched shit. I know what I have done. But it is easy to forget. On Rosh Hashanah I was at the mall and Rabbi Eli was with some schoolboys, teaching them the practice of Tashlikh. They were throwing coins in a fountain. Imagine that. Joyfully throwing money. The lot of them should have been locked up. But it was symbolic of throwing away sins.

It got me thinking. That Yom Kippur, I decided to tally all my sins. I would never be rid of these things unless I took account. For ten hours I wrote down everything I could think of. It went back farther than I thought. Even at six I was running marks. By the time I lost steam, I’d filled up two steno notebooks, from the first page to the last. That wasn’t even the half of it. These were just the bad things I could remember doing. Flashbulb memories. Epic grifts. The grand thefts. The people I had driven insane and whose lives I’d destroyed. Family members, friends, business partners—anyone I’d ever come in contact with. It didn’t even include the daily mischief—toying with doormen and waiters and Uber drivers and the like.

I’m a terrible human being by conventional standards. But no one blames a lion for hunting a gazelle. I’ve never held anyone at gunpoint. I outsmart people, and they surrender what they have voluntarily. No one hates Magnus Carlsen for seeing four moves farther than the man across the board. He’s just better.

So am I.

I could have been a good man. I know that for an absolute fact. I could have been a real mensch—the kind of man who leaves a room and makes people remark, “What a good guy, that one. He’s got a heart of gold.” In fact, much of my profession depended upon appearing to be exactly that man. I played him so convincingly that I could have become him. The problem is that I never wanted to. Didn’t when I was young. Don’t now.

I just don’t give a shit about right and wrong. It’s a competition that only one side knows is being played. I don’t feel bad about any of it. I sleep like a baby. Of course, the idea of being loved tickles my ego. But I love being bad more. Taking what isn’t mine. Doing as I please. The thrill of getting away with it.

At the time, Helen and I were living on Fifth Avenue. Not owning on Fifth Avenue. Living. Ownership is an unimaginative use of capital. We preferred a furnished rental with marble bathrooms, a uniformed doorman, and someone else responsible for the property taxes.

Our marriage was real, incidentally. In the sense that we were a team.

The bell rang. Helen looked through the camera beside the door.

“Victor’s daughter.”

“Does she have cookies?”

“She has a file.”

Files are never as good as cookies.

Victor had spent eighteen months helping us build Parallax, a crypto platform that was always three months from launch. He had brought in his brother, his dentist, two former partners, and a retired couple who had refinanced their home. The software was beautiful if you did not look beneath the interface, which is true of most things in life. All Parallax needed was one final infusion. This was the third final infusion. Victor had personally guaranteed a million-dollar line of credit. The money was scheduled to arrive Friday.

Helen opened the door.

Victor’s daughter, Nina, appeared to be in her early thirties. Sensible shoes. No makeup. Hair pulled tight. She held a thick accordion folder against her chest as though she intended to prosecute us personally.

“Mr. Mercer?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” I said.

She did not smile. That was unfortunate. It was a good line.

“My father won’t listen to me. He says you’re his friend.”

“I am.”

“He says you’re going to make everyone rich.”

“That is the plan.”

“I know who you are.”

She walked past Helen without being invited and spread the contents of her folder across our dining table. There were corporate records, court complaints, immigration papers, photographs, judgments, and one exceptionally unflattering copy of a driver’s license. She had color-coded the tabs. I admired that.

“Three Social Security numbers,” she said. “Two dates of birth. Canadian immigration papers under Daniel Merrick. A marriage certificate naming you as David Levine. Lawsuits in four states. Unpaid judgments. Companies dissolved after investors lost everything. And these—” She placed three photographs side by side. “Daniel Mercer, David Levine, and Robert Kay. All you.”

The photographs were me. Two of the names were mine. None of the birth dates were.

“The Internet is a marvelous thing,” I said. “It allows anyone to create documents as easy as opening a Canva file.”

Helen slapped her palm against the table.

“Get out of our home.”

Nina did not move. “This isn’t your home. It’s an Airbnb.”

“I will call the police.”

“Go ahead.”

“And our attorney. Do you understand what defamation is? Do you have any idea what we can do to you?”

Helen’s face reddened. Her voice climbed. She was magnificent when offended. The trick was never merely to deny an accusation. Innocent people become indignant. Therefore, indignation is evidence of innocence. Helen could produce it on demand.

“Honey,” I said softly. “Let her speak.”

That was my function. Helen was fire. I was the reasonable man embarrassed by his wife’s entirely understandable distress.

Nina looked at me. “My father is about to ruin himself for you.”

“Your father is about to become a very wealthy man.”

“Parallax doesn’t exist.”

“You’ve seen the platform.”

“I’ve seen a website.”

I sighed and gathered the papers into a neat pile.

“Did Boris give you these?”

She hesitated. It was slight, but it was there.

“Who is Boris?”

“Oh, God.” Helen covered her mouth.

I gave her a look meant to say not now. It actually meant excellent.

“Boris Antonov was an early investor,” I said. “He tried to take control of Parallax. When Victor and I stopped him, he began manufacturing allegations. He stole personnel records, altered documents, contacted our families. We thought it had ended.”

“These lawsuits go back fifteen years.”

“The lawsuits are real. Failed businesses attract litigation. The allegations are not findings, and most of the judgments were entered after papers went to old addresses. Boris collected all of it because truth was never his objective. Noise was.”

Nina glanced at the photographs again.

A good lie does not answer every piece of evidence. It gives all the evidence one explanation.

“Why haven’t you told my father?” she asked.

“Because Boris is dangerous.”

“Convenient.”

“He drinks. He has a terrible temper. He carries guns everywhere—strapped from his ankles to his shoulders, according to the last person who saw him. When he feels betrayed, he becomes unpredictable.” I leaned toward her. “Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”

For the first time, Nina looked behind her.

Helen lowered herself into a chair. The anger drained from her face and left something much more useful behind: fear.

“We moved here because of him,” she said. “We haven’t slept properly in months.”

That part was true. The mattress was terrible.

“My investigator found these,” Nina said, but less firmly.

“And where did your investigator find them?” I asked. “Public databases? Anonymous tips? Documents that arrived without provenance? Boris doesn’t need to fool your investigator. He only needs to supply what the investigator already hopes to find.”

She began returning the papers to their sections. Not because she believed us. Not entirely. But certainty had become confusion, and confusion is the little crack through which hope crawls back in.

At the door, she turned.

“If you take my father’s money, I will find you.”

“I hope the next time we meet,” I said, “you’ll allow me to prove how wrong you were.”

Helen closed the door behind her and locked it.

“Guns from ankles to shoulders?” she said.

“I may have over-accessorized him.”

“She didn’t believe us.”

“She didn’t have to. Victor does.”

But daughters possess a distressing ability to remain in their fathers’ heads. We could not wait until Friday.

Three days later, I had a stroke.

Not a severe one. I am not an actor. I lost my balance in the lobby of Victor’s building, let my coffee fall, and became confused about the day of the week. An ambulance supplied the lights and authority. The emergency room supplied a gown, a bed, and machines that beeped with great conviction. By evening, I was exhausted, frightened, and determined to finish what we had started before my health made that impossible.

Victor sat beside my bed with both hands around mine.

“Nina came to see us,” I said.

His face tightened. “She had no right.”

“She loves you.”

“She thinks I’m a fool.”

“Children confuse caution with wisdom. We did, too, at their age.”

Victor looked older than he had that morning. He had defended us against his own daughter. That made the next step easier. People will sacrifice almost anything to avoid admitting they were wrong. They will do almost anything to prove avoid telling their loved ones they were right.

“The bank can release the line tomorrow,” he said. “But perhaps we should wait until you recover.”

I looked toward the darkened window.

“If we wait, Parallax misses the launch. Everyone you brought in loses the advantage you promised them. Boris wins. Nina is proven right, and the rest of us spend our lives wondering what might have happened if we had shown a little courage.”

“Your health—”

“Is precisely why we must finish. While we still have time… to take on the world.”

Helen stood at the foot of the bed with her coat clutched around her. She said nothing. She did not need to. She looked like a woman preparing to lose her husband and their shared dream in the same week.

Victor wiped his eyes.

The wire arrived at 10:14 the next morning.

By noon, I had made a miraculous recovery. By evening, Parallax had encountered an irreversible security breach. Helen issued a devastated message to the investors. I was too ill to comment.

On Saturday we moved out of our Fifth Avenue residence and into another furnished apartment across the street. Flight attracts attention. Crossing the street is merely relocation.

Starting over is less glamorous than people imagine. You retire names that still have good years left in them. You abandon comfortable biographies. Photographs disappear, explanations proliferate, and the Internet must be encouraged to remember the wrong things. Helen enjoyed the work. I found it tedious. I had spent six years teaching Daniel Mercer how to order wine and another four making people trust his handshake.

“Burn those,” Helen said when she saw the steno notebooks in my suitcase.

“Absolutely not.”

“Nina knows they exist?”

“No one knows they exist.”

“Then why keep them?”

I considered the question. The notebooks contained every name I had worn and every person who had paid for the privilege of knowing me. They were evidence, certainly. But they were also the only honest thing I had ever written.

“Sentimental value,” I said.

Three weeks later, my name was Andrew Sloane. I sat in a coffee shop on Madison Avenue with a man named Peter whose company sold research-grade pharmaceutical products. Peter had silver hair, expensive glasses, and the restless dissatisfaction of a man who had earned money without becoming rich.

I explained that healthcare was changing. Regenerative therapies. Peptides. An aging population prepared to spend almost anything for one more decade of youth. There was tremendous upside for someone with the right experience and the courage to move early.

“I’ve wanted to enter the field for years,” I told him. “I just never found the right partner.”

Peter leaned closer. “We already have the formulas and the supply relationships.”

“For research-grade products.”

“At present.”

“You could never sell those products for human use.” I let disappointment enter my voice. “The obstacles would be too great.”

Peter looked offended.

“Not impossible,” he said.

There it was—the little correction on which fortunes turn.

I smiled. “Tell me.”

As Peter began describing the empire he had not yet realized he wanted, I reached into my coat and touched the first steno notebook. Helen had been right. Keeping it was reckless. So was everything worth doing.

Later, I would have some writing to do.