The Claimant Read online

  I sneaked a look into McVie’s green book-bag one day and saw the title page of a term paper: ‘Piers Plowman, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and Liberation Theology’. That’s the sort of thing he was working on. I passed this information on.

  That should tell you all you need to know.

  Since McVie had part-time employment as an adjunct at Boston College that summer and fall, he must have had some Harvard post-graduate credits, but there are ways of faking that. The registrar’s records (which I naturally searched at the time) did not list a McVie, but when I searched again a few weeks later (in the wake of certain gnawing suspicions) I did find a Vanderbilt grad, spring ’68, who was admitted to a master’s program that summer.

  I’d always taken for granted that the three of us were playing the same game. I believed we all came to recognise our shared DNA. I do not mean by this that we are blood-related, but I do mean that I think there is a serendipitous intersection of an intensity-hungry gene and an advantage-taking gene and a genius gene. One gene is grafted on to the other, so to speak, and the ensuing hybrid is destined to leave a mark on history.

  Graft: now there’s an interesting word.

  As one of our more notorious predecessors wrote in his prison confession (which he later retracted) and which I now paraphrase from faulty memory: There are men with an abundance of money and no brains; and there are other men with an abundance of brains and no money. Surely the men with a surplus of money and no brains were made for men with a surplus of brains and no money.

  You probably do not recognise the writer – sic transit gloria – but the Tichborne Claimant was the most famous defendant in the most protracted case in the British courts in the late nineteenth century, a case still not settled by DNA, a case for whose ultimate posthumous verdict we are still waiting. This was one of numerous topics on which I wrote a scholarly paper, published under the pseudonym E.E. My scholarly self – I call him Erasmus Erratorum – pops up from time to time like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I can’t quite keep him locked in the cellarage. He is a bit of an embarrassment to me, given that I have two other reputations to maintain and E.E. – let us say – would not garner me any cachet in either of those other fields of combat. E.E. is compiling data for a history of dazzling con men and con women, to be embarked on after this memoir if I have not by then achieved parole. Tentative title: Masters of the Game. This is a sphere of genius too rarely explored.

  We three masters (McVie, the woman who drove us both crazy and myself) belong at the intersection I have described; that is, at the crossroads of intensity, genius and cunning. Lilith would probably swear that she and McVie were not after ill-gotten gains. I’ve never believed her, and I’m honest enough to admit that I was, not that I believe such gains are ill-gotten. It is a high and dangerous calling, to live by one’s wits, and every penny is well earned. But we are all pathological liars. It’s the sine qua non of survival in the shapeshifting trade.

  The thing is, we were drawn to each other from that first Harvard summer-school class, my enrolment in which was not as random as I might first have implied. Notwithstanding the ambiguous reasons for which I registered for the course, there was something instinctual and potent about the force that drew the three of us together.

  Well, let me be blunt for posterity: I do not know if they felt the same way about me, but I do know I experienced them as amphetamines. I am still trying to account for the attraction and for its intensity. One – Lilith – was sexual. The other? I think it was the fact that I sensed prey. It turned me on.

  I remember that I had a dream in which I reached across a bistro table in Harvard Square to touch McVie’s arm, merely to get his attention, and I saw, with some fascination, that my fingers had turned into ragged claws and that my mouth was a long hooked beak. I tore McVie apart and I ate him. This gave me the most incredible rush. Lilith, in the dream, screamed and slid under the table. When I bent and looked under, she’d turned into a dove. She crept towards me, low on her breast feathers, head down and tucked under her wing. I pulled her close and could feel the beat of her heart. I awoke from this dream very happy.

  But I also recognised the dream as wish fulfilment. I knew there were other ancestral reasons that linked us and bound us.

  There is this curious fact about identity-switchers: the ancestors of all of us, in the nineteenth century or the eighteenth, changed countries of residence, names, spouses, professions. It was a shapeshifting time. All our forebears, doubtless for good and urgent reasons, abandoned existing families and assorted locations in Europe for the New World: America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – any place where they had no past. They passed on their survivor gene and their self-reinvention gene.

  Speaking of self-reinvention …

  Call me Marlowe, which was my name at the time of the trial, if memory serves.

  Or call me Chameleon.

  2.

  I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth – or most of it as I knew it – and nothing but the truth … except for such small embellishments as are essential for good narrative structure and for filling in gaps that would otherwise exasperate the reader.

  In the matter of the Vanderbilt claimant, I, Marlowe, aka the Chameleon, know – or once knew – the principals intimately. I knew Gwynne Patrice Vanderbilt (aka Patrick McVie, the name by which I first knew him; aka le Vicomte Gwynne Patrice de la Vallière Vanderbilt thanks to aristocratic lineage on his mother’s side; aka Sir Gawain of the grad students, earnest and pure).

  I knew and know Lilith by several names. I know Lilith. I wish I could say that in the Biblical sense and I’m tempted to claim that I did, because there were intimations, there were directions we might have taken, there were certainly possible nights and there was that almost-weekend in New York. But what restrains me is her unnerving way of perching like a shadow on my shoulder, her habit of mocking me in an exquisitely courteous and exquisitely scathing way, of always speaking the cutting truth, which is a curious thing to say about a professional dissembler. In short, I fear shaming of the one kind that is unacceptable to any man. Above all, if I publish this posthumously, I fear (if she outlives me) that she will rebut my account acerbically and ruinously when I am beyond all possibility of spin control.

  The real truth, however – if I may indulge my conscience for one reckless moment – is that I am writing this for Lilith herself, because she has no idea what I did for her, no idea what it has cost me. My lawyer will have instructions and Lilith will receive this manuscript after I die (unless I change my mind before then). When she reads this, she will feel compunction. She may shed a tear. I dream of that. I fantasise about it: her face in close-up, regret leaving one luminous dewdrop on her cheek. Needless to say I am visualising that fifteenth-century Dutch Mater Dolorosa and certainly not Picasso’s Weeping Woman, whose angry Dora Maar tears are as menacing as the teeth of a pruning saw. My Lady of Sorrows is full of seductive regret. She is at prayer, fingertips to fingertips, as delicate as a virgin inciting full-blooded soldiers to rape. Forgive me, Lord, she murmurs through her sensual lapsed-Catholic lips, for I knew not what Marlowe did, nor to what lengths of expiatory self-sacrifice he would go.

  I meditate on this image.

  I masturbate to it.

  So then, here it is: the unadorned un-self-flattering gospel, the never-before-told story of our intricately intertwined lives. Reader, beware. In the eleventh-hour interest of full disclosure – though who can predict the eleventh hour? By the actual eleventh hour, or by what I deem to be a few minutes short of that penultimate hour, I may burn all this. Nevertheless. In this hypothetical eleventh-hour confession you should understand that I’m a master of tabloid headlines, that verbal spin has been part of both my professions, that I can boost a stock sky-high overnight and gut a reputation or a politician’s career in a week.

  Notwithstanding. Listen: I know things that no one else knows.

  Trust me.

  In bars in Harvard Squ
are in the sixties, late into the night, drinking beer, smoking pot, inhaling past and future selves, we three heard each other’s sob stories and confessions and redactions. We signed off on each other’s retractions. We allowed almost infinite leeway. We acknowledged that embellishment was acceptable, was not only acceptable but required by the laws of wit and narrative dexterity. We permitted variations on each theme. Everything was oral, evanescent as the smoke from our weed. That is part of our skill set: we are fabulists, we are storytellers, we create beautiful lies that will save our skins in the blink of an eye.

  As for this present account: consider something extraordinary. I am looking back from the year 2012. I am writing it down. Littera scripta manet. In here – which is to say, inside, officially sequestered – we have a lot of time to kill. We write confessions. We write autobiographies. Some of my neighbours – the ones along our corridor in Block B; the ones who constitute the gifted intellectual white-collar upper crust of our community – pen accounts of brilliant swindles, of artful dodges, of pure sorcery. We all add flourishes. Sometimes – depending on contacts or covert protection deals – one of my neighbours gets a publisher, gets Oprah, gets Larry King or Jon Stewart and movie rights. Some of them embroider so extravagantly that further penalties are incurred.

  Later they – we – retract our confessions.

  You will never be able to pin us down.

  When my own notoriety was more recently – and more massively – eclipsed by what I can only describe as a white-collar, silk-tie, diamond-cufflinks celebrity criminal (the cashmere blazers, the greying hair, the star-power client list, the Manhattan penthouse, the yacht, the family suicide), I had to ask myself: what kind of swindler hires his own publicity team – paying them in advance with virtual money – in order to be a Ponzi superstar?

  Answer: Someone hungrier for fame than for being an actual Master of the Game.

  We Masters of the Game have ways and means and we are, in a sort of a way, in a highly coded subliminal way, always aware of one another. We are a small group (though not as small as those of you who throw yourselves into our nets might hope). It will not surprise you that this very issue is a topic of conversation, a frequent one, between the celebrity criminal and me. It is a way to pass the time in here. Also, of course, I am assigned to keep tabs on the celebrity criminal. (I am not at liberty to disclose for whom I am keeping tabs.) But I can say this: If there were a straw poll of those of us sequestered here, a straw poll for Mr Collegiality, for most liked and most trusted, I’m confident that the celebrity criminal and I would tie for first place. It’s a genetic disposition we have: people cannot not like us. They have a love-hate relationship with people like us. They love us and they hate themselves for it.

  People are so desperate to trust saviours, the celebrity criminal says. It’s pathetic.

  So ravenous to believe in instant wealth, I sigh.

  And in magic. The celebrity criminal shakes his head in sorrow. You cannot overestimate gullibility, but they love to find someone to blame.

  They do. I have, in fact, written a paper on the subject of the psychological need of the duped to exonerate themselves. It was published in a scholarly journal under my E.E. pseudonym. There is that other side of myself, the academic side, the side that somewhat embarrasses me, the side that interested Langley for whom, as you may have surmised, I am gathering information in here. (You will understand why these words, even if published pseudonymously or posthumously, will have to be redacted by certain government agencies. There will be much use of black felt-tipped markers.)

  Nevertheless, a few of us, perhaps for reasons of vestigial religious superstition inculcated in childhood, perhaps owing to primal and universal moral instincts to which we do not consciously subscribe, a few of us feel the need to set down, at least once, the unadorned truth. We leave sealed instructions for our lawyers: Not to be published until after my demise.

  Littera scripta manet.

  The words, or my writing them down, do cause a brief spasm of panic. The more I pause to think about this, the more likely the possibility that I will burn these pages before my lawyer ever sets eyes … Pages? I deploy the term metaphorically. Naturally I have a laptop in here, courtesy of my lawyer. I can erase everything instantly and the betting odds are that I will do so; but then again, the idea of becoming the Samuel Pepys of a particular slice of late-twentieth-century life is appealing. Perhaps this account will await the deciphering of obsolete hard drives a hundred years from now.

  For the moment, and for my own peace of mind, there are things I wish to get off my chest. What is done with the manuscript, whether it is published or destroyed or privately preserved, will ultimately depend on Lilith (if not on the shredding of my hard drive).

  Listen to this:

  While the jury in the trial of the Vanderbilt claimant is sequestered, a man named Marlowe walks into the Oyster Bar in that underground murk of the terminal at Grand Central Station (a vast edifice that is the hub of the original Vanderbilt’s railroad empire).

  Something compelling draws Marlowe. He has been present each day at the trial, scanning the public gallery as closely as he has been keeping his eye on the witness stand, though the claimant himself has never been in court, at least not in the corporeal sense. Marlowe has been watching for someone. He has been reasonably certain she will appear and he thinks he may have caught a glimpse of her in the gallery. She was definitely there seven months back when the claimant made his spectacular proxy appearance, but by the time Marlowe reached the gallery she had left already, in the ambulance that rushed to Emergency with the Vanderbilt widow. He has not seen Lilith since then. He once met her – many years ago – in this very place, in the Oyster Bar, for an assignation that did not go as planned. He has an intense premonition that he might find her here again.

  The bar is crowded but he feels a beam of heat on the back of his neck. It has the force of a punch. He turns. On the far side of the room is a mirror and in the mirror he sees the woman he once spent time with day after day, week after week. Then they lost contact. They lost contact in the normal sense of that word, though he has usually been able to ascertain her whereabouts when he wanted to and has done so from time to time. He makes a signal, a small movement of his hand, beckoning her reflection. The woman in the mirror raises a champagne flute and smiles a half-smile and something cold and smooth touches Marlowe’s cheek.

  Holy shit! he murmurs, an involuntary expression of shock. He swivels on his bar stool and there she is beside him, the tube of glass in her hand, effervescent, resting lightly against his face. ‘Lilith!’

  ‘Lucifer himself,’ she says calmly. ‘Still in the business, I see.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘We both know what I mean, Lucifer.’

  ‘I discarded that name thirty years ago. Name’s Marlowe at present. I heard you were in Australia these days.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’

  ‘I did. I have contacts at Sotheby’s, you know. We’re talking observable traces. I keep my eye on you.’

  ‘Should I be flattered that I’m still on your radar?’

  ‘Sotheby’s assigned you to Sydney. And yet here you are, back in New York in the very week that the Vanderbilt trial is wrapping up.’

  ‘That’s Sotheby’s for you. More travel than I realised I’d signed up for.’

  ‘I saw you when the claimant – so to speak – appeared in court. You were in the gallery but you managed an emergency exit before I reached you. I thought the prospect of the jury verdict would bring you back. It’s making quite a splash in the Australian press, I see.’

  ‘Ah.’ Lilith raises her eyebrows. ‘So you keep up with the Australian press?’

  ‘I keep up with media all over the world. It’s part of my job.’

  ‘Which of your jobs would that be?’

  ‘Both of them, naturally,’ Marlowe says. ‘I trade in global currencies, after all. Financial and informational, ni
p and tuck.’

  ‘Or as others might put it,’ Lilith responds, ‘finagling, financial fraud, insider trading and the propagation of disinformation. Depends where the line is drawn.’

  ‘There’s the skill and the art. To know where to draw the line when it comes to risk, which is clearly something you don’t know, given your unofficial activities. Are you en route to somewhere else?’

  ‘Would I tell you?’

  ‘You don’t need to; I have access to airline reservations whenever I want them, remember. You keep traipsing all over the world. Ostensibly for Sotheby’s.’

  ‘You’re losing your touch, Lucifer. You really have no idea what I’ve been doing lately or where I’ve been.’ She tilts her chin upwards and regards him with exquisite disdain. ‘I’m flattered that you pretend you can keep track.’

  Marlowe is flustered but he covers well. He has, it is true, lost focus. Stung, he might have offered, by way of extenuation: I’m less involved with surveillance than I used to be. My financial affairs, these days, gobble up all my adrenaline, gobble up the lion’s share of my time. Risk is my thing and I manage it well, but for the moment, to be perfectly honest, I’m floundering in very choppy waters. My house of cards is coming down. It’s only a matter of time. Instead he says smoothly: ‘So, is this trip part of an assignment? Ostensibly for Sotheby’s, of course. On to the Middle East from here?’