There’s a catch in my throat. “I’m sorry for your loss. Was it recent?”
The man looks at his wristwatch. “It’s been a few years.” He rises from his chair. Sporting wire-rimmed glasses and a short-sleeve button-down plaid shirt, he holds out his hand. His face is long and freshly shaved, red with razor burn and the discomfort of having been reminded about the loss of a loved one. “I’m Larry Simpkins. I’ve inherited what’s left of my grandfather’s practice. Can I help you?”
“You told me it was gender studies, when all along it was women’s studies,” I say, sliding a printout of the report he emailed me onto his desk. Simpkins puts down his cell phone. Another phone rings atop a sheet-metal filing cabinet. He turns to answer it but, taking note of my displeasure, lets the call go into voice mail. “So what do you have to say for yourself? I’m paying good money, don’t you forget, and I want accurate information. How can I trust you if you can’t get a simple thing like women’s studies right?”
Simpkins stares at me for what seems like an obscenely long time. Though we’ve never met, I get the impression he’s searching his memory and trying to place me. He grabs the report I’ve flung onto his desk, his bushy eyebrows rising and falling as he reads it. It’s a mere seven pages, but he stops on page three where I highlighted “gender studies,” circling it twice with a fluorescent blue felt-tip and amending the page’s margin with a big “NO!”
“How do you think I felt confronting her yesterday? I wanted to rattle her cage. I wanted to convey the impression of menacing omnipotence. Instead, I came off looking like a fool, insisting she had a certificate in gender studies when she had none. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Simpkins gives a little laugh that lasts only as long as it takes me to glare at him, compelling him to wipe the smirk from his face.
“I want reliable information. Good information. Troubling information. That’s what I want.” Meeting Laurel yesterday, I sensed immediately an unseemly past lay in her background. James is malleable, easily subject to suggestion. I must convince him that Laurel is unfit to take an active role in Anne Elise’s upbringing. Better yet, if I can demonstrate a history of criminality, drug use, or lewd or otherwise morally objectionable behavior, I can persuade social service agencies to take the child from her, which would save our marriage. If you pay a good lawyer enough money, you can accomplish anything you want. We could raise Anne Elise ourselves, James and I, and legally adopt her.
“I’m sorry,” Simpkins says. “What can I say? I never knew there was a difference between gender studies and women’s studies. I thought they were synonymous. Were there other things wrong with my findings?”
I think long and hard about everything he’s sent so far. “As far as I know, there were no other inaccuracies. But listen: I need you to dig deeper. I need to ruin this woman’s life, Mr. Simpkins. I need the skeletons in her closet, her juiciest secrets, information so toxic it’ll curl the toes of the bleeding hearts I’m likely to encounter in family court and the city’s social services offices when it comes time to petition someone to declare her an unfit mother.”
Simpkins raises an eyebrow. “Did she already have her child?”
“She gave birth yesterday. At Sibley Hospital.”
Simpkins’s face is blank.
“You didn’t know, did you?”
“You never requested day-to-day surveillance from me. And besides, hacking into medical records is illegal.”
Two photographs on Simpkins’s filing cabinet catch my attention. In both, Simpkins stands shoulder to shoulder with Mark Zuckerberg, the freckled boy billionaire Facebook founder. Both grin at the camera, as if sharing a joke. Simpkins follows my gaze to the pictures and blushes. Instantly, I sense he’s that rare Washingtonian who doesn’t like the attention earned by his accomplishments.
“How do you know Mark Zuckerberg?” I ask.
“I did an internship at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters last year. I worked with him one on one, putting together a special project for him.”
My initial impulse is to chalk this up as a tall tale, for I can’t imagine someone of Zuckerberg’s stature relying on someone as young as Simpkins, but then I remind myself that, supposedly, in the technology fields, young slackers like Simpkins find great success.
“What’s he like?”
“Mark? He’s cool.” Simpkins clicks his fingers together and, flashing a bashful smile, comes alive for the first time since I entered the office. “Mark gave me the best advice anyone’s ever given me.”
“What’s that?”
“He urged me to drop out of Harvard just like he did and follow my bliss.”
I let this sink in. Though I’m less than twenty years older than him, I’m constantly astounded by how people of his generation have such different life priorities than my own. In the proper hands, a Harvard degree is the ticket to a good life and abundant social connections, something no right-minded person ought to reject.
“So what’s your bliss?”
“This,” Simpkins says, gesturing with his hands to his beat-up desk, dented filing cabinet, his paltry laptop, and the entire office around him. “I wanted to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps. Congressmen, senators, and even a president relied on his services. It’s been hard for me, though. The cost of doing business in this town is sky-high.” He sucks in a breath, looks at me in dramatic fashion, his eyes stretching out big and needy like those of a puppy begging for a scrap of food. “I’m not going to lie to you. Right now, I’m two months’ in arrears on rent.”
Is Simpkins looking for sympathy? Or more money? As far as he knows, I’m the cash-strapped middle-aged woman I professed to be when I first inquired via email about his services. So far, though, he’s provided good information at a good value. If I’m to succeed in getting James to dump Laurel, I need to keep Simpkins happy. I reach into my brown leather Prada tote for the packet of cash I withdrew earlier from the bank. Seeing the crisp hundred-dollar bills, Simpkins sucks in a breath. Everyone dreams the devil will come round tempting him or her with a million dollars to commit one minor indiscretion, but my father taught me most people will gladly sell their souls for significantly less. “Never be afraid to lowball,” my father used to say, puffing on one of his robust full-flavored Arturo Fuente cigars. “The devil’s no sucker. Why blow a million dollars on some poor sap when a few hundred dollars will do the trick?”
Like the devil, I’m no sucker. A good private investigator would charge ten thousand dollars to get the information I need, but Simpkins locks his eyes on the money. He’s already told me he’s behind in his rent. I peel out twenty of the hundred-dollar bills and lay them on his desk. His hands tremble.
“It’s a take-it-or-leave-it offer, Mr. Simpkins,” I say, confident that a man with so much need in his gaze will do just about anything I ask of him. “I need whatever dirt you can dish out on Laurel Bloom, but I can’t afford to give you any more money.”
Simpkins reaches across the desk and holds one of the bills to the overhead light, inspecting it. “It’s genuine.”
“Of course it’s genuine.”
Simpkins’s tongue glides across his chapped lips, moistening them until they glisten in the overhead fluorescent light. He looks at me and then eyes the cash again.
“I’m going to need you to work fast,” I say.
“How fast?”
“Do you have serious hacking skills?”
“This is America. You can believe what you want to believe, but I do seriously good work,” Simpkins says, and in the pride that glows on his cheeks, I sense my trust in him isn’t misplaced. He isn’t a stupid man. He’s worked for Mark Zuckerberg, a certified tech genius, so technical skills must be in his arsenal.
“Everyone’s got secrets,” I say. “Find hers however you can. I don’t care how you find them, but I need them. The more debauched and scandalous, the better.”
Chapter Nine