“What are you doing?” Cooper asks, half-reaching for the box.
“If you want me to help, here’s what I’m thinking.” Cooper watches with a frown as the case disappears into my purse. “I’ll go talk to Mr. Wilde and get what I need for my story. And then we’ll hear what the great shell collector has to say when I show him these.”
5
This is how I find myself in Maine, driving down a dusty road in my electric car, with an FBI wire tucked in my bra. I agreed to wear the wire even though I explained to Cooper’s buddies that I plan on recording the entire interview with my cell phone. They said it made chain of custody easier on their end, and that often, what needs recording is said when the suspect doesn’t know they’re being recorded.
Whether or not I would take the assignment, of course, was never in question. I’m a reporter. Dropping these shells in my lap was like tossing a steak to a german shepherd. There was no way I wasn’t going. I want to see Ness Wilde’s face when I confront him with the shells.
What I did refuse was his offer to fly me up. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction or have him think I’m a pushover. A few hours in my car and two recharging stations later, I’m beginning to rethink that strategy. Just the guy’s driveway goes on for miles.
Eventually—with the second gate behind me—the road takes a sharp bend to the left, and some innate sense tells me that I had been approaching the sea and am now heading north up along the coast. If so, the ocean is hidden by the ridiculous trees. The palms bend toward one another like fingers about to interlock. Their dangling coconuts hang like a threat. But they form a tunnel that seems to hold the damaged world beyond at bay. They bore toward a place where people can be wealthy enough to ignore what’s happening around them.
That must be convenient for a man who played a large role in ushering our damaged world along. The irony is rich: Ness Wilde has made billions not just by drilling oil, but by collecting the shells made rare—and valuable—by the burning of fossil fuels. A double whammy.
Glancing down at my battery gauge, I imagine for a moment the horror of not having enough juice to get to my hotel tonight. When I look back up, a view of the house breaks through at the end of the road. As I get closer, I see that it looks a lot smaller than I imagined it would. On Google Maps, the house appeared audacious, a sprawl of additions and add-ons connected by breezeways and boardwalks.
But arriving from the front—because of the way the house is chopped up to stagger down the dunes toward the sea—the portion visible from the drive looks reasonable. Even adorable. Like a house rather than an estate. A small front porch with reproduction gaslight fixtures frames a pebble-bed walkway. The roof is pale pink tile. The siding is white clapboard with bright-blue trim. The house appears as though it belongs in the Caribbean, not on an isolated and prohibitively expensive patch of rocky Maine shoreline.
My car’s tires crunch to a stop on the gravel circle. The drive continues and disappears around a high sandstone wall studded with conch shells. A six- or seven-car garage full of boy toys is probably just around the corner. As I get out of the car, trying to reconcile the incongruous modesty of the front of the house with all I know of Ness Wilde, I see that the drive isn’t paved with gravel at all. It’s made of tiny shells. Millions of them. Billions. Most are ground up into tiny bits from years of traffic, but some are recognizable. Some are even miraculously intact. Periwinkles, ceriths, ravenelis, and cockles.
The sight of so many shells spread out for so base a purpose causes my heart to sink. It’s the sort of blow that stuns you so deep, the intelligent side of your brain can’t signal to the emotional side that this effect might be on purpose. Here, the front of the house seems to say, I am a normal person. And then: Here, you are parking on a fortune in shells. And while reconciling these two: Here, I’m opening the door so that you meet me in a weakened state—
“Maya? From the Times?”
I turn from the audacious and miles-long carpet of shells to the foremost collector of them in the world. Ness Wilde stands on his small front porch, the door behind him open, and I realize that I’m half in and half out of my car, my hand resting numbly on the handle. Composing myself, I grab my bag from the passenger seat and shut the door. I force myself not to look down at my feet, but I can hear the tiny shells crunch beneath my shoes, little screams from hapless victims.
“It’s Ms. Walsh,” I correct him, ignoring what’s going on beneath my feet. We shake hands, and Ness smiles as if he knows what I’m thinking, as if these are roles we are playing. It occurs to me that despite his recent seclusion, he’s done hundreds of interviews over the years. Probably more than I have—and it’s kinda what I do for a living. And then I wonder if he has the timing of coming to the door down to a science, watches on a video screen or peeks through the blinds, all to take the strength out of the knees of his guests as they see what they’ve been driving on for miles.
Suddenly, all the trash-talking I did in the newsroom yesterday afternoon comes back to haunt me. I assured Dawn that I wouldn’t get flustered, that I’d eaten men like this for lunch. Hell, I’ve sat in the White House pressroom and tossed firebombs at the President of the United States. I reminded her of that, and Dawn had laughed. She had interviewed Ness Wilde before.
“Welcome to my home,” Ness says. He half-bows and waves me inside. “Ladies first.”
Despite what I feel about Ness, despite the suspicious shells in my purse, despite the fact that I’ve seen his face on a hundred magazine covers, in all the newspapers, and all over the news, his handsomeness in person still comes as a shock. It’s his smile, however insincere it might be. It’s his golden-bleached locks from years spent shelling. It’s his physique from being wealthy enough to exercise just to pass the time.
I had guiltily hoped to find him broken and shattered, that this was why he was holed up. Forty pounds overweight, perhaps. Balding. Staggering drunk. Some obvious reason for his reclusiveness for the better part of the past four years. But he looks the same. Ness Wilde is one of those men who won’t push forty so much as he’ll shove Father Time aside. Only actors get away with remaining heartthrobs so late in life. Actors and master shell collectors.
“I’ve got a bottle of wine breathing and some snacks put together,” he tells me. “Come downstairs. I’ll show you the view.”
It’s like I didn’t publish a story two days ago accusing his great-grandfather of flooding the world. It’s like this is our third date. Considering how many times he’s done this in the past, I imagine it’s comfortable for him. Remembering what I’m there to do, I force myself to be even more comfortable. I strain to be comfortable.
Ness leads me inside and through a labyrinthine and multi-level layout that manages to chop up ten thousand square feet into small and cozy spaces. My heels clop-clop on sandstone tile. They sound ridiculously loud and formal with him walking ahead, barefoot. I wore one of my power suits: pinstripes and a lacy blouse that I thought went great with the FBI wire. Ness, meanwhile, has on white bottoms that look perfect either for sleeping in or practicing karate. For a top, he has on a pale blue button-up left untucked and only halfway fastened up in the front. Before he turned, I spotted a necklace dangling against his chest, a single shell or stone on a string. I wasn’t brave enough to study it closely to ascertain the species—because this is probably just what he wants people to do: study and stare.