My Friend Anna Read online

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  For my parents

  and

  in loving memory of my grandparents

  Ruth DeLoache Thompson and Fletcher D. Thompson

  Preface

  * * *

  You are here to read about Anna Delvey, and I don’t blame you. I, too, found her charming—while we were friends. The best villains are the ones you can’t help liking despite their malevolence. That was Anna’s power. I liked her so much that it took me six months to realize my dear friend was a con artist. The truth was right under my nose.

  From the outside looking in, people may think they comprehend the story of my friendship with Anna. It may seem easy to presume my motivations or assign blame based on stories in the news. But nothing about what I went through with Anna was simple. By telling my story here in all of its detail, I hope people will come to better understand what it was really like to live through this experience.

  Ultimately, I believe that it’s natural to want to trust people. I’m not sorry about that. Having this impulse doesn’t make a person stupid or naive; it makes her human. In my opinion it’s a mark of good fortune not to have developed the type of cynicism that comes with so-called street smarts. If you’d asked me before I met Anna, I wouldn’t have thought I lacked this type of common sense. I was skeptical of strangers, suspicious of new people. But I didn’t see Anna coming. She slipped through my filters. You read about those characters in books, you see them in movies, but you don’t expect to meet one in real life. You don’t think it’s going to happen to you.

  If you haven’t yet had the experience, I can tell you: it is deeply unsettling to learn that someone you care about, a person you think you know well, is an illusion. It messes with your head. You replay the scenes, the words, the implied understandings. You pick them apart. You hold each bit up to the light and ask what, if any, truth it contains.

  Regret is an unproductive emotion. What’s done is done. All any of us can do is choose how to react in each moment—informed by the past, we decide how to move forward. I don’t have regrets, but I can see how this happened. And there is something to be learned from that. I say something, which is vague, because what I learned seems to evolve and expand with time. I’ve processed this ordeal in waves, privately and publicly. Looking back on different parts, I feel a long way from myself—from the way I used to be.

  This is my story.

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Mayday

  * * *

  The three of us—Kacy, the fitness trainer; Jesse, the videographer; and me, the friend—had come to Marrakech at Anna’s invitation. She had offered to pay for our flights, a luxurious private riad at La Mamounia, complete with three bedrooms, a butler, and a pool, and all of our expenses. It sounded like a dream. But my last full day in Morocco—Thursday, May 18, 2017—got off to a rocky start.

  I had woken up to three new messages on my phone. The first was from Kacy, who had succumbed to a stomach bug and wanted to go home: Morning Rachel. I think I need to leave today, it read. The other two were from Jesse. He had gone to the tennis courts to film Anna during her private lesson, but when he arrived, she wasn’t there. She was asleep beside me, in the room we were sharing.

  “Anna,” I whispered. “Don’t you have tennis?”

  “Humph—no, I postponed it,” she said groggily, then turned away and fell back asleep.

  Anna said she postponed tennis, I texted Jesse. Evidently that was news to him, and he sounded annoyed: K. Yeah, I went to tennis and the trainer was there without Anna, he wrote back—and a hotel manager had come by looking for her, he added.

  Wanna go to breakfast with me? I asked.

  Yea, he replied. Give me 5. I’ll meet you in the living room.

  In the meantime, my focus returned to Kacy. She hadn’t had the energy to make any travel arrangements, she’d told me. I did a search on my cell phone and sent her a screenshot of a 12:40 p.m. flight that looked like it might work, although it was already a little past ten.

  If u could help me pack I can make it, Kacy wrote back.

  Before I could respond, I got a text from Jesse. Ready, he said.

  Start packing, I told Kacy. I’ll call the concierge [for a car]—have you booked [the flight]? I think you need to leave within about 15 minutes to make it! Calling the concierge to see if they think it’s possible.

  I used the landline next to my bed. Awakened by my voice, Anna sat up to reach for her cell phone. She blinked rapidly before using a fingernail to separate the long lashes on the outer corner of her right eye.

  “Kacy’s leaving,” I said, hanging up the phone. “I need to help her pack.”

  “Why?” asked Anna. “You’re not her maid. She shouldn’t be asking you to do that.”

  “Yeah, but she’s sick,” I reminded her.

  Anxious about Jesse, who was waiting for me, and Kacy, who needed to hurry, I swiftly changed out of my pajamas into a cotton dress. When I grabbed my cell phone from the bedside table, I saw that Anna had fallen back asleep.

  I met Jesse in the living room. “Hey, you should go ahead without me,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.” The breakfast buffet was next to the pool, about a five-minute walk from our riad. Jesse seemed aggravated by the morning’s disjointedness—first at the tennis courts, waiting for Anna, and now here, waiting for me. I was in too much of a hurry to pay him any mind.

  “Okay,” he said brusquely before leaving.

  When I entered Kacy’s bedroom, on the opposite side of the riad from mine, the air felt stale and smelled faintly of coconut. She was lying on the bed, where she had spent most of the last two days. I stood beside her and pulled up a travel website on my phone. Kacy got up slowly. After finding her wallet, she gave me her credit card and I used it to purchase her ticket. Noting that her car hadn’t arrived, I called the concierge for an update. “She really needs to leave,” I implored. I frantically helped her pack.

  Kacy was out of sorts, and her movements were labored as she ambled around her bedroom, picking up clothing and shoes. After helping for about ten minutes, I paused to see if her car was out front. But one step into the living room, I saw two men standing across from me. Their patterned silk jackets with mandarin collars told me they were hotel management.

  “Where is Miss Delvey?” the taller one asked, his tone stern. The men’s faces were familiar—they’d spoken with Anna the night before, too—but they didn’t look friendly.

  There had been an issue with the debit card Anna had given the hotel to pay for our stay, and after two days of polite but firm pressure from the management, she still hadn’t fixed the problem. Anna resented institutional authority and seemed to shirk rules and regulations as a matter of principle. The hotel made it very clear that they needed to have a functioning card on file, but Anna answered their entreaties with flares of condescension and flashes of anger. How dare they interrupt her vacation with such unpleasant badgering! Anna had always expected special treatment because of her wealth, but this time she had gone too far. I had seen touches of this before Morocco, and liked her despite it, but never before had it involved me so directly or to such a degree. Now that we were in Marrakech, an ocean away from Manhattan, where our friendship was born and based, I saw Ann
a’s aloofness in a new way—and it unnerved me.

  “She’s asleep,” I answered curtly. Our decadent vacation had taken a dark turn. I was frustrated but unsure whether to direct my anger toward Anna or the hotel’s staff. The men’s unannounced presence in our private lodging felt invasive, so for the moment I aimed it at them—not that they’d have noticed. I quickly shelved my emotions and snapped into action mode, the same thing I’d been doing all morning. Thanks to my job putting together complex photo shoots at Vanity Fair magazine, defusing stressful situations had become second nature—and, as exhausting as it was, I was good at it. I strode across the room and down the long hallway, determined to wake up our host.

  “Anna,” I prodded. “Anna, those guys from the hotel are here. Can you see what they need?”

  “Ugh,” she grunted.

  “They’re in the living room.”

  I skipped off to rejoin Kacy, assuring the managers that Anna was on her way. At this point, I realized that my panicked phone calls asking the concierge for an urgent car to the airport had set off alarm bells. They thought we were fleeing. My heart raced. Kacy’s illness, Anna’s nonpayment, our general disorganization—the troublesome winds that had gained force through the week were now whirling into a perfect storm.

  I picked up the telephone next to Kacy’s bedroom. “Hi, I’m checking on that car.” There was a pause. My next words came out in one breath: “Okay, he needs to please hurry! We’re not all leaving—the managers are here—we have one sick traveler who needs to get to the airport.”

  Now that Kacy was finally up and moving, she was ready to go, her attention focused only on going home. Wheeling her suitcase, I walked beside her past the managers. In her haste and malaise, I’m not sure Kacy even noticed them. But they eyed us watchfully. Anna had not yet appeared, but Kacy’s car finally had. I passed her suitcase to the driver, and while he loaded it into the trunk, Kacy and I exchanged a modest farewell.

  “You’ll tell Anna I said bye?” she asked.

  “For sure,” I answered. Kacy got into the back seat and closed the door. I was relieved that she was on her way to the airport and would make her flight, but when my thoughts returned to Anna, I felt a growing sense of dread. I went back inside.

  “I’ll go check on her,” I said to the men before they could ask.

  Why was she taking so long? I jogged along the dark corridor that led to the master bedroom and found Anna speaking on her phone in German, pacing around in her bathrobe and wearing a serious expression. Her gaze was cast downward, eyes shifting from side to side, as if she were processing information or waiting for an answer. She listened more than she spoke.

  “Anna,” I interrupted, “you gotta go.” She nodded without looking up and, after a moment, left the room. I stayed behind. I understood why Anna might have had trouble reaching her bankers the night before—it had been late when the manager had flagged her down in the lobby. Now that it was morning, I trusted she could contact whomever she needed to and that she would soon have the situation under control.

  Glad to have a moment to myself, I went online to find my travel itinerary. Unlike the rest of the group, I had booked my flight out of Morocco before we left New York. I would fly to France directly from Marrakech and spend a few days traveling alone before meeting colleagues in Arles for the opening of an Annie Leibovitz exhibition. My flight to Nice (with a connection in Casablanca) was at 10:05 a.m. the next day, less than twenty-four hours away, so I checked in online. Wanting to avoid an experience like Kacy’s, I called the concierge to schedule a 7:30 a.m. car to the airport. Once that was done, I considered our agenda for the day.

  We planned to visit Villa Oasis, the private home of Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, which bordered the couple’s beloved Jardin Majorelle, tourist-filled gardens that we’d seen on Tuesday. The villa itself was closed to the public and could be seen only by special request, with an obligatory $1,600 donation to the Jardin Majorelle Foundation. Ordinarily, that wasn’t something I’d have ever considered realistic, but because Anna was paying, she called the shots. We were scheduled to leave the hotel at 11:00 a.m., and since it was already a quarter till, I was worried. I rushed to gather what I’d bring with me for the day: my Fujifilm X-Pro1 camera and the beige leather pouch that contained my passport, credit card, and receipts.

  I’d have to skip breakfast, I assumed, but without caffeine I’d likely get a headache. So I sent a text to Jesse: Can you order me a coffee to go?

  Before he responded, I entered the living room through its dining area and saw Anna, still wearing only a bathrobe, sitting on a plush gold sofa across the room. Her arms were crossed at the wrists, resting lightly on her thighs. The two managers stood on the tile floor between us, in the same spot they’d been for almost an hour. No one was talking.

  Anna’s cell phone sat blankly on the coffee table in front of her. It struck me as odd, with the men still there, that she was done making calls—even odder that she’d stopped using her phone altogether. Desperate to understand, I looked to her face for a clue. She appeared neither worried nor particularly calm—if anything, she seemed strangely detached. This was the frightening part. It was clear that the men were waiting for her to do something. What was she waiting for?

  “What’s going on?” I asked her. “Were you able to sort things out?”

  She made a lazy gesture toward her phone. “I left messages,” she said. “They should be calling me back.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know—I’ve been promised to have this resolved already.”

  “Is there no one else you can call? Your banks should be open, right?”

  “I called them already. They shall be taking care of this.”

  Anna’s detachment was startling, and it made me angry. The tension in the room was unbearable—did she think this could wait? I considered briefly that she might be dragging her feet out of spite. I’d known her to be contemptuous toward hotel managers before. Back at the 11 Howard hotel, where Anna lived, for instance, she had been enraged when they insisted that she begin paying for her reservations in advance. But here and now, Anna didn’t seem mad at all.

  Another thought occurred to me: if Anna received monthly trust fund disbursements (as I had every reason to believe), maybe she’d already exceeded her allowance for May. The weekend before our trip to Morocco, at the start of the month, Anna had chartered a private jet to travel from New York to Omaha and back in order to attend the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting. I’d booked charter flights for photo shoots before—not many, but enough to be familiar with their expense. If Anna hadn’t made prior arrangements to access more funds for her travels, it might explain why she now seemed to be mired in red tape.

  Back in New York, occasional mishaps like this hadn’t seemed like a problem. Anna could afford to make mistakes—financial or otherwise. I remembered one night in late March when she and I had gone to a nautical-themed cocktail lounge in Manhattan called The Ship. It was less than a block away from 11 Howard. We’d never been to The Ship before, and we went with a few hotel employees after their shift.

  “I’d love to buy everyone a drink!” Anna proclaimed. The 11 Howard crew gleefully accepted her offer, cheering “Drinks on Anna D!” She reveled in other people’s delight, and it showed: her cheeks grew rosy, her eyes danced, and the corners of her mouth twisted up into dimples. The bartender took our orders and passed out the round before requesting a card for the $130 tab. As it turned out, Anna had her hotel key and nothing else. “Will you get it and I’ll pay you back?” she asked me discreetly. I did. And because she was always so generous, I never bothered to remind her.

  * * *

  The La Mamounia managers listened to our conversation with their patience visibly ebbing. Not only had they been in our riad all morning, they’d gone through the same ordeal with Anna the night before. They had stopped her as we passed through the lobby after dinner and followed her to the
riad to wait as she made calls. Thinking it best to give her privacy, I had excused myself and gone to bed. When I left the room, the men were standing just where they stood now: at the edge of the living room by the steps to the foyer, effectively blocking our path to the main door.

  “So, you’re gonna sit there and wait?” I asked Anna.

  “There’s nothing else I can be doing. I told them, but they don’t want to leave, so . . .”

  I glanced at the managers. No shit, Anna, I thought. The men were firmly planted with their hands clasped: one man’s behind his back, and the other’s in front. They weren’t going anywhere.

  The taller one turned to me, exasperated. I saw the train coming before it hit me, but I couldn’t see a way off the tracks.

  “Do you have a credit card?” he asked.

  I looked at Anna and suppressed an urge to vomit. Jump, she seemed to say. I’ll catch you. In an instant, her bearing went from obstinate to conciliatory, and her expression softened, particularly around her eyes. “Can we use it for now?” she coaxed.

  Adrenaline surged through my body. Irresolute, I looked at the managers, hoping for latitude. “It’s just for a temporary hold,” the tall one said. “The final bill will be settled later.”

  “And I shall be hearing back,” Anna added, picking up her phone.

  Seeing no alternative, I buckled under the pressure, unzipping my beige travel pouch and removing my personal credit card. A manager stepped forward to take it. “The block will only be temporary,” he again assured me.

  The episode couldn’t have lasted more than fifteen minutes, but it felt like eons. When the men were gone (along with my credit card), I turned to Anna in disbelief.

  “Did you tell your parents you were going to Morocco?” I asked.

  She shook her head no.