o n e
it was the beginning of the summer in the year 2000, and in New York City,
where the streets seemed to sparkle with the gold dust filtered down from a billion trades in a boomtown economy, it was business as usual. The world had passed into
the new millennium peacefully, the president had again avoided impeachment, and
Y2K had fizzled like an ancient bottle of French champagne. The city shone in all
its magnificent, vulgar, and ruthless glory.
At that particular moment, the talk of the town was Peter Cannon, an enter-
tainment lawyer who had bilked several celebrity clients out of an estimated $35
million. In the months and years that would follow, there would be more scandals,
billions of dollars lost, and the general ripping off of the American public. But in the meantime, “the Peter Cannon affair” had involved enough bold-faced names to
at least temporarily satisfy gossip-hungry New Yorkers. Everyone who was anyone
either knew Peter or knew someone he had thrillingly cheated—and after all, they
asked themselves, shouldn’t his clients have known better?
One of the victims was a thirty-one-year-old rock musician named Digger.
Digger was one of those one-name wonders who, like so many great artists, had
modest beginnings coupled with slightly freakish looks. He hailed from Des
Moines, Iowa, had dirty blond hair and frighteningly white translucent skin
through which one could see blue veins, and was given to wearing porkpie hats,
which were his trademark.
On the Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend, he was calmly sitting by the
pool at his $100,000 summer rental in Sagaponack in the Hamptons, smoking a fil-
terless cigarette and watching his wife, Patty, who was heatedly talking on the phone.
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Digger stubbed out his cigarette in a pot of chrysanthemums (there was a small
pile of cigarette butts in the pot that would later be removed by the gardener), and leaned back on a teak chaise longue. It was quite a beautiful day and he really
couldn’t understand what all the fuss over Peter Cannon was about. Being the sort
of person who considered his purpose in life to be that of a higher nature than the grubby pursuit of filthy lucre, Digger had no real concept of the value of money. His manager estimated he had lost close to a million dollars, but to Digger, a million dollars was a shadowy abstract concept that could only be understood in terms of
music. He figured he could earn back the million dollars by writing one hit song,
but on that pleasant afternoon, ensconced in the lazy luxury of a Hamptons day, he seemed to be alone in his laissez-faire attitude.
His beloved wife, Patty, was in a stew, and for the past half hour had been
blathering away on the phone to her sister, Janey Wilcox, a famous Victoria’s Secret model.
As he gazed across the gunite pool to the gazebo where Patty sat hunched over
the telephone, taking in her pleasing, slightly zaftig figure clad in a white one-piece bathing suit, she glanced up and their eyes met in mutual understanding. Patty
stood up and began walking toward him, and as usual he was struck by the simplic-
ity of her all-American beauty: the reddish blond hair that hung halfway down her
back, the cute snub nose smattered with freckles, and her round blue eyes. Her older sister, Janey, was considered “a great beauty,” but Digger had never seen it that way.
Although Janey and Patty shared the same snub nose, Janey’s face was too crafty
and feral to attract him—and besides, he thought that Janey, with her screwed-up
values about status and money, her flippant, arrogant airs, and her obsession with herself was, quite simply, a narcissistic asshole.
And now Patty stood before him, holding out the phone. “Janey wants to talk
to you,” she said. He pulled back his lips in a grimace, revealing small, unevenly spaced yellow teeth, and took the phone from Patty’s hand.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Oh Digger.” Janey’s musical, slightly accented voice that always put him on
edge came tinkling down the line. “I’m so sorry. I always knew Peter was going to
do something really, really stupid. I should have warned you.”
“How would you know?” Digger asked, picking a piece of tobacco out of his
teeth.
“Well I dated him a few years ago,” she said. “But only for a couple of weeks.
He called everyone a fucking Polack . . .”
Digger said nothing. His real last name was Wachanski, and he wondered if
Janey had intended the insult. “So . . . ?” he asked.
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“So I always knew he was a creep. Darling, I’m so upset. What are you going