Reckless Disregard (4 page)

Later in the article:

There have been numerous rumors and theories about Poniard’s identity. Theories often suggested include a former Xerox PARC researcher, a teenager in Oslo, Norway
,
and a mysterious computer programmer named Vladimir Lazerev. There’s one alleged photograph of Lazerev, taken at a 2010 video game conference in London. His whereabouts are unknown. Another theory is that Poniard is actually a collective of game developers rather than a single person. A “poniard” is a long, lightweight thrusting knife with a continuously tapering, acutely pointed blade.

“So, he’s a mystery man,” I say.

“Yeah, like Banksy.”

“The English graffiti artist.”

“His stuff is incredible. But nobody knows who he is.”

“I saw his film
Exit Through the Gift Shop
. Good documentary, mediocre art.”

She narrows her eyes and leans forward as if to protest, but sits back. I wish she had protested. But I was trained in law school to believe that you get to the truth by arguing. I often forget that most normal people don’t believe that for a moment.

“The photo of Lazerev?”

She slides another sheet of paper over to me. “Sorry, I tried to blow it up, play with the printer but . . . no wonder they can’t identify the guy.”

The blurry, sepia-toned photo must’ve been taken from a balcony or an upper-floor window or a rooftop. A large crowd has gathered in a plaza, perhaps a party, perhaps a protest. There’s an arrow—part of the graphic, not anything that Brenda has drawn in—pointing toward the head of a man wearing a hoodie. Only the left side of his face is visible. He looks like a nerdy college student—beak nose, slightly receding chin, John Lennon eyeglasses. The only things that distinguish him are his height and a dark spot on his cheek, maybe a birthmark, maybe just a smudge in the photo.

She takes a deep breath, then another, wheezy, like an asthmatic. “So. This Poniard dude is real rich. He usually sells his video games for a premium, and people pay it. But he gave this
Abduction!
game away for free. The game’s gone viral. And you should know that . . .” She averts her eyes, as if she’s about to confess to a mortal sin. Her cheeks begin to flush.

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah, it’s just . . . Poniard posted Louis Frantz’s cease and desist letter on his blog. He wrote . . . he wrote that Bishop is ‘too big a pussy to sue.’ Sorry for the language.” Her cheeks and neck splotch red. She uncrosses and recrosses her legs and pulls at her skirt again. What makes a woman dress revealingly and then spend all day trying to cover up?

“What about the video game?” I ask.

“I’m sorry, I . . . I didn’t know that was part of the assignment. I’ll go look it up now.”

“You any good at video games?”

She squinches her nose as if smelling something putrid. “No, sir. I hate them. My last boyfriend was a gamer. Obsessed. Maybe if he would’ve spent as much time with me as he did playing
Call of Duty
. . .” She catches herself. “Sorry.”

“I’ll work on the video game angle.”

“Really, I can—”

“No, it’s OK. Again, great job.”

“Thanks, Mr. . . . Parker.” When she reaches the door, she turns back and smiles before leaving the office.

I go to the computer and find a wiki devoted specifically to
Abduction!
, which is described as a “survival horror” game—an adventure game that draws on horror fiction conventions. Survival horror games, I learn, involve a vulnerable player who must survive horrific forces through intelligence and evasion, not violence.

The article links to the online game. I’m not much of a player, but I launch it anyway and register using Brenda’s name. At first, there’s nothing to do but watch, because the game starts with a gory intro depicting Paula Felicity McGrath’s kidnapping, after which she invites the player to fill in the details of William the Conqueror’s crime. Poniard’s libel of Bishop’s good name couldn’t be clearer—unless, of course, Bishop actually committed murder.

In this opening scene, the Felicity character comes across as a wisecracking bimbo who flashes a lot of skin. And yet, Poniard conveys more than that. I remember Felicity McGrath’s work. In her films, she was a beautiful porcelain figurine—wonderful to look at, but cold and brittle. In the video game, Poniard has given her a pouting lower lip, large anime eyes, and fluttery hands. She bobs her head slightly when she speaks. These subtle touches make Video Game Felicity captivating in a way that Big Screen Felicity wasn’t. Despite its cartoon façade, the video game shows Poniard’s true artistry—that rare ability to invest the subject with more humanity than she seemed to have in life.

I launch Stage 1,
Felicity’s Appointment
, supposedly the easiest level. The screen shows Felicity inside her apartment. This level seems like a puzzle game—I can use the mouse and the arrow keys to change point of view, to walk around the room, to turn door handles, to move objects around. But to what end? There’s no sign of Natalie Owen, the roommate. Is she even a character in the game? There’s a telephone, an old-fashioned landline—Felicity disappeared in 1987—but though I can grasp the receiver and get a dial tone, I can’t press the buttons to dial out. I look for a
help
option but can’t find one. I pause the game and search the Internet for cheats but find only complaints from frustrated gamers accusing Poniard of playing a cruel practical joke. There’s an equal number of Poniard defenders who insist that the game is beatable simply because Poniard says it is.

I set the mouse aside and watch the screen. Felicity continues to move on her own volition. She puts on a slinky dress and flashy jewelry and sits down in front of her mirror and applies makeup. Her movements are precise, her mannerisms realistic. At this point, the game seems geared to little girls from nine to twelve. But when Felicity sits on the bed, rolls sheer fishnet nylons up her legs, and attaches them to a garter belt, the target demographic changes. The soundtrack begins to play a steamy trombone line, stripper music out of the nineteen fifties. I feel creepy, as if I’m peeping through a woman’s bedroom window. Is that the point, to make the player feel grungy and strange?

Something else confuses me. In the video games I’ve played, the player assumes an on-screen persona—a medieval warrior, a Vietnam vet, a bellicose bird, a hyperactive mouse. I’ve even read about a Japanese game where the protagonist is an unfaithful boyfriend. With Poniard’s game, I have no idea who I’m supposed to be. I’m not Felicity. Her actions seem beyond my power to control, independent of my manipulations with keyboard and mouse—oddly antagonistic to those manipulations, actually. So who am I? The chief police investigator? A hard-boiled private detective hired by the family à la Chandler’s
The Big Sleep
? William the Conqueror, looking to commit the crime? Parker Stern, attorney for the artist known as Poniard? Is that one of the objects of the game—to discover who you really are?

I should be preparing for a mediation, a mini-geopolitical war disguised as a rent dispute between a Pakistani slumlord and his Indian tenant, but instead I’m sitting in my office playing
Abduction!
In the three days since my online chat with Poniard, I haven’t advanced one level, can’t get out of Felicity’s room, can’t even manage to open up a dresser drawer. Frustrated, I exit the game and check the blogs. The online buzz over
Abduction!
has become feverish. Poniard’s critics call the game a cheesy pretext to smear Bishop. Some of the news sites—
Drudge
,
The Huffington Post
—have picked up the story, but even they tread lightly, careful to dismiss Poniard’s allegations as a lunatic’s rant. The largest media outlets don’t report the story at all. Of course, Bishop controls so many of them.

I’m talking to my assistant Brenda about a research assignment when the chat program launches, the synthesized alert jarring, because the speaker volume is turned up high.

Poniard:

>GAME ON!!

Brenda cranes her neck toward the screen and covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh my god, Mr. Stern, is that him?”

“Yeah, it’s . . . will you excuse me, Brenda? And please shut the door behind you.”

Her neck immediately mottles pink. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Stern, I didn’t mean to . . .”

“It’s just that this particular client values confidentiality.”

“Yeah, I get it, I shouldn’t have . . .” She turns and tiptoes out of the office, as though I were sleeping, gingerly closing the door. I turn to the computer screen.

PStern

>???

Poniard:

>Check your e-mail

I find a message from Poniard with no subject line, no body text, and a single image file attachment, which I launch immediately. The file contains three documents. The first is a complaint in the newly filed lawsuit titled
William Maxfield Bishop v. The Individual Known as Poniard.
So here it is—every lawsuit’s Fort Sumter, the opening salvo that triggers a supposedly bloodless civil action between the parties. Except that when you’re dealing with plaintiffs like William Bishop, the action is never civil and the battles aren’t always bloodless.

In the bombastic style typical of the Louis Frantz law offices, the complaint describes William Bishop as
a pillar of society, a successful entrepreneur, a devoted family man, a patron of the arts, a noted philanthropist, a man with a spotless reputation
. Lawyers revere clichés. Then the complaint attacks Poniard, calling him a hacker, a nihilist, a pornographer, a narcissist intent on garnering publicity at the expense of the truth. Not until page twenty-seven does the complaint charge that Poniard has falsely accused Bishop of kidnapping and murdering Paula Felicity McGrath.

The second document is a court order permitting Frantz to serve the complaint on Poniard by e-mail rather than by personal service. It’s not surprising—Poniard has no known address, so how can a process server use the old-fashioned method of catching him unaware and handing him the summons?

The third document is a surprise, though. Frantz is asking the court to force Poniard to attend a deposition within three days, claiming that my client has no respect for the law and might destroy evidence. It’s a ploy, an attempt to flush Poniard out into the open, or worse, to have him fail to show up at the deposition and default, effectively ending the case.

I switch back to the chat program.

PStern

>Have you read the docs?

Poniard:

>Skimmed it. LMAO!

PStern

>There’s nothing funny about it. They’ve demanded 25 million dollars.

Poniard:

>That’s exactly what makes me laugh

PStern

>You must understand. Bishop really can recover 25 million from you. He can get punitive damages on top of that. If he wins, he will own you. And I know Frantz. Settlement is off the table once he files.

Poniard:

>Just what I’d hoped for. You can’t beat the game if you don’t vanquish the boogeyman

PStern

>This is not a game. This is your future.

Poniard:

>We’re at Level 1 . . . everything is possible at Level 1

PStern

>They want to take your deposition this Friday. There’s a hearing tomorrow. They call it an ex parte—an emergency motion.

Poniard:

>I’ll be happy to answer all their questions in writing

PStern

>They want you in person at the courthouse. And they want to image all your computer hard drives for evidence.

Poniard:

>That violates my right of privacy

PStern

>You don’t have that right in civil litigation. You can’t withhold your identity from the other side.

Poniard:

>You WILL stop this, WILL get the judge to say I may answer in writing!

PStern

>Very unlikely

Poniard:

>You’re a great trial lawyer. You’ll defeat this

Harmon Cherry told us that every new client believes his lawyer capable of working magic—until the client receives the first invoice. But what worries me is that this client is glibly using video game jargon to describe a lawsuit that has the very real potential to destroy his life. I planned to find out what Poniard knows about Felicity McGrath’s disappearance and Bishop’s involvement in it, but the next words seem to spring not from any part of my brain but from my fingertips.

PStern

>How old are you?

Poniard:

>???

PStern

>I want to know if you’re a minor

Poniard:

>Ha!

PStern

>No, seriously. How old are you?

Poniard:

>You’ve seen ABDUCTION!—it’s not something a kid could do

It doesn’t seem so, until you consider the legion of adolescent savants, the pimply, pudgy-bellied introverts who can’t look you in the eye or say two words without stammering and yet who can power up their MacBook Pros and create fantastical worlds so fraught and engaging and complex that you can, for a while, escape from a life that’s anything but dreamlike. I suddenly fear that I’m dealing with a fourteen-year-old who’s pulled a prank that’s gotten out of control, who thrills at the attention without regard for the consequences. And if it turns out that Poniard is forty years old, so much the worse, because he’s behaving like a child. So I write back:

PStern

>EVERY video game looks like a kid designed it. Now, how old are you?

Poniard:

>That’s fucked up

PStern

>And that’s a childish response.

Poniard:

>Many believe that Poniard is ageless

PStern

>I can’t represent you under these circumstances. So stop playing games and tell me who you really are. I need a name, address, telephone number, driver’s license, Dun & Bradstreet credit check. And we need to talk real time so I can hear your voice.