First They Came for the Ceos

Lisa Carver is the creator of

Rollerderby

, which, according to a poll we just conducted of the

Vice

editorial staff, remains to this day the single greatest zine ever made. To anybody who’s ever wanted their own rabid cult following, we recommend getting a copy of the

Rollerderby

anthology Feral House put out a couple years ago and parsing its every utterance and phrasing until anybody who reads your words wants to fuck you, kill you, or some combination of the two. If you’ve got any money left over you should also check out Lisa’s autobiography

Drugs Are Nice

and whatever personal possessions she’s auctioning off this week over on her MySpace page.

Story read by: Dame Darcy, a Victorian-obsessed fairy witch who loves dolls, reads palms, and plays a mean singing saw, but is most famous for her hilarious and really fucking weird fantasy occult storybook comics. She just released her third graphic novel, an apocalyptic fairytale called Gasoline.

He put a ten and a five on the bar for six dollars of drinks. “They don’t like that kind of tipping here,” I said. “It’s weird.”

“Three dollars a drink, though?” he said, as if that justified it. “Do you know how much drinks cost where we went last night? What were there, four glasses to a bottle? At a thousand dollars a bottle, that makes it two-fifty a glass. Almost one-thousand percent more than here.”

One of the reasons I loved him was the same reason I have ever loved anything: He was suddenly, frenziedly being hated—by people in general, and by my friends in particular.

Michael was a CEO—a very secretive one. I’d taken him to Jimmy’s on purpose, to disorient him in order to get information out of him. Broken by my playing “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” three times in a row on the jukebox, Michael finally confessed to at least some of the things the government was accusing him of, even if he wouldn’t tell me which parts if any were true. An agent had called Michael’s attorney, Jack Fatello, on a fishing expedition about check kiting, money laundering, fraud, and artificially inflating credit.

“What’s artificially inflating credit?” I asked.

“Money would be tight at work mid-month. I would put, say, forty-thousand on my personal credit card. They’d pay me back eventually. I’m guessing that’s what the agent was referring to.”

“Hm,” I said.

“Don’t look at me that way! Yes, there is more to it than that. But you wouldn’t approve.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’ve barely approved of anything about you, but that hasn’t stopped you. Now your ex-wife is getting calls from the Secret Service, the storage unit lady gets called by the FBI, you’re getting certified letters from the IRS, your ex-girlfriend is trying to blackmail you but she won’t tell you why. I need to know if a police unit is going to break down my door in the middle of the night. And suddenly you choose now to worry about my ‘approval’?”

“They’re bluffing.”

But he was slumped over the electric Solitaire machine, looking trapped and squirmy in his brand new P. Diddy (a surprisingly good designer!) slicky suit. Where was his handsomeness going to get him now? He has these ICQ glasses he wears whenever he has to go to court or to auditors. His vision is perfect; he has them because being able to afford $600 frames is supposed to convey that one is a reliable man. Or perhaps the glass is a sheer curtain for the devil in his eyes to hide behind. He was the one who was bluffing, who had been bluffing all these years, to so many people. But nothing was working anymore. The whole country was closing in on him, on guys like him.

“At least tell me how many years you’re looking at,” I said.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what they know!”

On the drive home, a guy on the radio was talking about how he spends more time with his kid now. He was “reassessing his values.” Trading in his Porsche for a hybrid. He said his wife didn’t want any diamonds for Christmas, and they weren’t traveling.

Piles of money flutter out of the way, and suddenly they notice they have a kid? There’s a trend to have values, and that’s when they get values? They’re just buying values like they’ve bought everything—because it’s popular! How much could he have genuinely loved the engine of that Porsche if all it takes is frowns from former admirers to get him to trade it in? How much could he genuinely love spending time with his kid if he goes from not seeing him to seeing him, just because the other hot couples are trading in their diamonds and trips for family time at home?

I can respect anyone who is what they are, all the way. It really doesn’t matter to me what that thing is they’re being. I couldn’t care less about Michael’s watches and the cloying enclave of doormen and valets—but I love how he loves them. That guy loves being rich! And he wasn’t about to give it up just to keep the villagers from lynching him or the government from locking him up. He would keep running—and flashing it all—all the way to the end.

At home, he left the Mercedes running. “You go in,” he said. “I’m going to check on my storage units in New Durham.”

“Do you have to tonight? They’ll still be there tomorrow.”

“Ha! That’s not sure! I need to move some things around.”

“Isn’t that how you got in trouble to begin with? Moving things around? Why not just let them take everything?”

But he went and all night long I listened, but all night long no key turned in the lock.

In the morning I went to the gynecologist. A man in the waiting room didn’t seem to have any reason to be there except to stare at me while holding his breath, like he was about to say something. He looked like the cop in

The Terminator

—lean, craggy, penetrating ice-eyes. Another man, rather nerdy in a white shirt and tie, stood by the bulletin board, very interested in WIC program flyers and in-home childcare. They both followed me out to my car.

The icy one said, “Secret Service,” and handed me his card. I still didn’t know if it was the real Secret Service. When his ex-wife told us they were asking her and her mother questions, we Alta Vista’ed it, and they’re not just there to protect the president. They’re all about fraud. They used to be under the Treasury Department; now they’re under Homeland Security, which gives them all kinds of extra snooping power. With the Patriot Act, they could have come to our house, or Michael’s office, or mine, read and photographed everything, keep it on permanent file, and we’d never be the wiser.

So we figured there was a 50/50 chance it was real, or else it was an elaborate blackmail scheme by that crazy, greedy ex and a couple of friends with some sort of private investigator experience. Or a protection policy by the president of the last company Michael worked for—get Michael running scared, so he didn’t get the idea to talk too much about procedures.

It was the card that convinced me: It had raised, blue lettering, and a seal. “Katie Eckel?” the Ice Man said. “We’d like to talk to you about Michael Barrett. Are you his wife?”

“No. Why?”

“He told the New Durham police department last night he was married. I’m glad to hear it’s not true, because that means I can call you to the grand jury. We saw your program.” This is how Michael and I met. I interviewed him on my cable access television show about sub-prime mortgages back when everyone still believed everything was going to be fine. At his request, I’d changed his name and put a black dot over his face. Well, I had him hold up a big black cardboard dot on a stick. We couldn’t afford the real face-scrambler. But these agents had found him anyway.

“What are the charges?” I asked.

“Against you? None. Yet.”

I stared at him, more irritated than scared. How heavy-handed, to imply I would burn just from standing too close to Michael. Like in the 50s with communists. Now it’s the 00s with capitalists.

“There are a lot of victims involved, Katie. We need you to not tell Michael about us approaching you like this. We are aware of several exit strategies he has in place.” I thought back over my interview with Michael. Had I used the phrase “exit strategies” in one of my interview questions? I think I said “escape routes.”

Then I remembered another show I’d done, years earlier—a comedic porno, culminating in two agents coming to my house and I had to have sex with them for some reason. These two agents looked exactly like the ones on my show. The Ice-Man and The Nerd. Had their boss somehow found a tape of the show and dressed up two agents to fit the bill to… what? Unsettle me sexually into blurting out everything I knew about Michael? This was so weird.

Well, perhaps not so weird. The Secret Service have an entire vault on Eminem lyrics. I guess they would have the time and the staff to comb through archives for phrases I’d used in my dumb porno: “Enron-like… C-level execs.”

“Why don’t you just talk to Michael?” I said. “Why me?”

“A lot of people have been hurt. Michael has several exit strategies in place. We need you to say nothing to Michael about our visit today. Call me when you’re alone.”

He had repeated everything. Now I knew he was real. The real guys do that—get redundant. Well, that’s what my friend in the CIA told me that was the method he was trained in for questioning people. The second and third time you hear something, it has a familiarity that makes it believable. That’s how the human brain works.

“Are you aware that your boyfriend has almost one million frequent flyer miles, Katie?” he called as I got into my car. “Ask yourself: Why would someone rack up that many? Call me.”

I wrote down their license plate number and drove off. They followed me for three turns and then I didn’t see them anymore. I guessed they were seeing if I immediately used my cell phone (to call M.), so I didn’t. But why not do something just because they’re expecting it? It’s like they created this game, and because it exists, because I landed in it, I feel like I have to play. Like I have to fight and trick and escape to be free, instead of just being free because I am already. Like I have to earn it.

Michael was there when I got home, his hair messed up, his suit and tie askew. He’d always kept everything perfect: the covers on the bed, what covers his body, his cover stories. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in a state of dishabille. “Three cop cars surrounded me,” he said, dazed. “They got me on four counts, including reckless driving… for pulling out of a Rite-Aid parking lot! Katie, they were waiting for me. They knew who I was. They knew everything, even about my dead brother. They asked to see my Breitling. They—”

“I know! That agent guy told me! He was following me. He must have had someone else following you. He set it up. How would he have known so fast what happened in New Durham, or at all, otherwise? I mean, does he have a whole staff reading the arrests night and day in every town you pass through? He said you told the police we’re married.”

“Yeah, I did. In my old job I’d call in favors with local PDs. At the very least we could always get someone locked up overnight by saying they were a danger to themselves, and that’s harder to make look credible when a guy is married than when he’s single. And now it’s happened to me.”

I thought, “Oh.” I realized then that, in all the excitement and fear, I’d tangled it up in my mind that maybe it was some sort of roundabout, third-party proposal for real. Michael’s dead-voiced, informative recount reminded me that this wasn’t a movie, that he wasn’t getting out of this: He’d spent the night in jail, and it could be that he was about to spend a lot more.

“That agent called Jack Fatello, too,” he was saying. “Woke him up at 1 AM to tell him about some traffic violations. Lawyers will sometimes discharge clients when they feel the clients are not being honest or are in too much trouble. I think that’s what the agent was hoping for. Jack is from South Boston though. He defends pedophiles, murderers, and me. He said to the agent, ‘So? What am I supposed to do with that information?’”

“I told him we weren’t married, and he said, ‘Good! As long as Michael’s not your husband, I can call you to the grand jury to testify against him.’ But that isn’t even true. Then he told me how many frequent flyer miles you have, like that’s supposed to make me all insecure. It’s like he’s trying to convince me to push for a quickie marriage, but why?”

“The equity you have in this house. The second we’re married, it’s half mine, and they could attach that along with everything else if I’m indicted.”

Michael and I received a wedding disinvitation two weeks before the event was to occur. We’d already bought them their stupid warming plates on their Bed Bath & Beyond registry! The bride was afraid the Secret Service would show up. This independent filmmakers group I belong to told me to quit talking about it; they didn’t want our group to come under government radar. Michael hasn’t even been charged with anything! And even if he were, one is still innocent until proven guilty. This group complains about censorship, stupidity, the government. Right up until trouble comes to their door.

And so, I lost friends and he lost a summer home, an airplane, his job, and those watches. I found it very attractive, like he was stripping off—or being stripped of—one article of life at a time instead of clothing. I was intrigued about what was underneath.

Me, I like the Secret Service. I like the police. I like the army. They are just doing their jobs, and they are all necessary jobs. Our job—the citizens’—is to question, to safeguard reality, to keep our neighbors’ freedom, and strangers’, and that of people we don’t like. That’s the balance: One side is supposed to pull at freedom, and we are supposed to push back. Instead, all around me I am seeing the open-minded half of society truly nervous for the first time in our lifetimes and, for the first time in our lifetimes, shutting our own mouths and others’.

The self-love, the bravery, the in-your-facery that made America great in the way it was great… Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, flappers, expatriates, talk shows—that all came from the boldness of being a nation on the ascent. This is the descent, and we don’t know how to do it; we don’t have the manners that helped the Brits retain grace while losing their empire (Americans never had any grace to begin with). Confused, we look for enemies… who did this to us? This is how the police state begins. From within.