Much too quickly, I am led past priceless treasures. It’s like being hauled through a museum after closing. A flawless junonia, probably six inches long. An array of ivory wentletraps, sitting out in the open. There’s an entire wall of scallops and pectin raveneli with water trickling down them; a great fountain separating two adjoining rooms. I assume all are real. Otherwise, why have them on display?
“The competition,” Ness says, waving at a wall of pictures. It’s dozens of magazine covers, mostly gossip rags and weeklies, a lot of shots I recognize from my research and from years of riding the subway to work. Many of the cover shots feature Ness holding up some rare or impossible shell between his fingertips. He means the magazines, I realize, when he says “the competition.” The competition we face at the paper. As if any of us are healthy enough to worry about the others.
Or maybe he means the reporters. I think back to the stacks of articles I’ve read over the years while writing my piece. How many were written by men? These Ness Wilde clones smile at me as I walk past, almost as if they know what I’m thinking. I’m thinking of how many of those reporters probably trailed dutifully down this hall, just like I am. I think of how many stayed the night. I know of a few, have spoken to them, but that story isn’t set to run for another few weeks. This collection of framed trophies will have to feature in that story, I realize, and I make edits in my head. When I’m done with my own story, I have a strong suspicion that Ness will not frame what I write. Hell, there’s a chance he’ll be reading it behind bars.
“My publicist warned me that the newspaper wouldn’t be as nice as the magazines,” Ness says, almost like he can read my mind. We descend one last level to a bar and enclosed patio. Cantilevered out beyond the sloping dunes, three walls of glass reveal a sweep of white sand and azure waters limned by a shoreline of foamy, crashing waves.
It’s a legendary beach, privately owned and inaccessible, as so many of Wilde’s properties are. The priceless shells decorating the house become background noise, a glittery hiss of pinks and purples that merely add to the aura of the vista before me. Here is the coup de grace of the perfectly arranged meeting. Here is the ploy to win a sheller’s soul. I find myself fantasizing about sleeping over. Who wouldn’t? Who could stroll across a carpet of crushed shells, through a hallway of amassed treasures, see that pristine sand picked over by no more than a few human beings in the last twenty years, and not dream, pine, hope for a morning spent here, a sunrise stroll, searching the low tide for the rare treasures dredged up by a recent storm—
Wilde clears his throat. It underscores the duration of my stunned gawking. A glass of red wine is being held out to me. I nod and accept it, then look for a place to set my bag. The shells inside are burning to get out, to expose him. But I have too many questions first.
“Do you always answer the door yourself?” I ask, fishing out my phone and my notepad.
Wilde pours himself a glass of wine and picks up a piece of cheese from a wooden cutting board in the shape of a whelk. “I live here by myself,” he says. He bites into the cheese and takes a sip of wine. “The staff comes through and tidies up while I’m out.”
“You mean out collecting?”
He smiles mischievously. “What else would I be doing?”
I taste the wine. It’s excellent. Reaching for the bottle, I check the label and see that it’s a local vineyard. I don’t recognize the name. The year tells me why. The wine is older than I am.
“It was a beautiful place,” Wilde tells me, watching me study the bottle. He stacks cheese and sliced meat on thin crackers, then tops each stack with half an olive.
“Was?” I ask. “They’re no longer around?”
“Nothing grows on those hills anymore.” He wipes his hands and studies his little creations. There’s a white apron in a wrinkled hump on the granite countertop, as if he hurriedly removed it to answer the door. Everything feels like a prop, and I realize that I’m going into this interview jaded and tense. The jaded comes from years of pent-up animosity toward Ness Wilde. The tension comes from knowing the FBI will hear every word between us. Wilde watches me while I tap on my phone.
“You don’t mind if I record this, do you?” I ask. And I have to suppress a laugh. I have to fight the urge not to look down my blouse to make sure the wire isn’t showing.
Ness waves the knife he’s using to slice the olives. “Of course not. I thought the interview had already begun, asking me about my help.” He slides the plate of appetizers across the counter at me. “Unless you were just making sure we were alone.”
I laugh and wave off the food. “Oh, I’d rather we weren’t. I’d love to ask your staff a few questions.”
And your ex, I add silently to myself. And your daughter. And whoever else in your employ knows about these shells. But those questions can come later. Starting there would spook him. Though he must know from my piece that this isn’t another adoring housewife profile, another glossy bit of PR.
As the app begins to record, I take in my surroundings so I can describe them for the revised piece. Every shell in this room has been photographed from multiple angles. Every shell, especially Mr. Wilde’s. My job is to crawl inside and shine a light on the shrinking torus deep within that pretty exterior. That’s the story I aim to tell.
“Okay, fire away,” Wilde says. He smiles and raises his glass in salute before taking another sip. And then, almost as if reading my mind, he adds: “Do your worst.”
6
“I’d like to start with your great-grandfather, if I may.” I arrange myself on a sofa that probably cost as much as my car. Ness gets comfortable in an old leather reading chair, his bare feet propped up on a matching ottoman. “You must’ve read the piece I wrote on him—”
“I did.”
“I presume you asked me here to set the record straight. So tell me what I got wrong. I’d love to hear your version of events.”
Wilde swirls his wine glass, and I hold my notepad and pen patiently. The pen and pad are more than just props to remind him of our roles; they’re for jotting down setting and non-verbal cues. It’s often not what people say or how they say it, but how they visibly react to questions. The nervous tics and wide eyes that recorders miss.
“I didn’t know my great-grandfather very well,” Wilde says. “I’ve read books about him. I can tell you what his biographers thought.”
“So what makes you think I was unfair with my piece?”
“I don’t think you were unfair. But you were about to be.”
“With my next piece?” I take a sip of my wine, partly because I want to hide my face. The way Wilde is staring at me, it’s as though my thoughts are written across my cheeks.
“I suspect your next piece was going to be about my grandfather, judging by the little cliffhanger at the end—”
“That was a teaser,” I say, setting down the wine. “A cliffhanger would’ve meant leaving the story about your great-grandfather in suspense.”
“I see. Well, if you’re going to write about my grandfather next, I’d rather you didn’t.”
I laugh. I didn’t expect him to come straight out and grovel, but that seems to be his plan. “Is that so?”
“That’s so. You’d only get everything wrong. Like everyone else has.”
“And you’d like to set me straight? Okay. Tell me about your grandfather. What does everyone get wrong?”
He takes another sip of his wine—closes his eyes while he does so. I can’t tell if he’s composing his thoughts or savoring the vintage.