Mal Miller and Jerry Whitely have been at the bar on Ludlow for a few hours now. Aside from a couple of guys playing pool and the bartender, they have the whole place to themselves.
“What I’m — what I’m trying to say is that people will always try and find an issue where there isn’t one. That’s the way it is with anything new. And do you know why that is?” Whitely asks.
Miller makes no indication that he knows or doesn’t know why that is as Whitely continues.
“It’s because people are scared, in general. Every time we make a leap forward as a species, you get people who are frightened by that. You ever read the stuff people were saying when radio first came out? I mean, when it was first invented? No? Well, you should see this stuff, because it’s instructive. People nowadays look at a radio as, you know, they see a radio as quaint. You see a radio playing now in a store or whatever — like, I don’t mean a streaming app or whatever, I mean a radio with an announcer and commercials and giveaways and everything — you hear that in a store, and you stop and go ‘Huh’. You know — you think, ‘that’s quaint’, if you think about it at all.”
Miller nods.
“Well, when radio is first invented — and this is back in, you know, this is back in maybe the early 20th century. That’s not so long ago. We’re not talking about powdered wigs and the plague here. But you read what they said when the radio came out — it’s crazy stuff,” Whitely says.
“How so?” Miller asks.
“They’re convinced it’s going to usher in the end of goddamned society, is ‘how so’. The ability to beam a voice, a speech, an idea, or what have you directly into the homes of any person on earth? It sends these people insane. They think it’s going to completely upend everything. They — you really have to read it, because like I say, it’s instructive. People were out there losing their damned minds over the radio.”
“Well, maybe it did,” Miller says. “Upend everything, I mean.”
“In what way?” Whitely asks.
“I don’t know in what way, but you look at now compared to the early 20th century — I’d say that things have been plenty upended.”
Whitely takes an annoyed breath. “That’s not my point at all.”
“No?”
“No. My point is that — these guys weren’t just saying that things would be different, they were saying that it would be the end of everything.”
“Alright. And that’s what you think people who don’t like Proxies are being like?” Miller asks, leaning his bulk forward.
“Well, no, not necessarily,” Whitely says, “I’m just saying that, as a student of history —“
“Is that what you are?” Miller asks.
“I’m not — I don’t claim to be an expert, Mal, I’m just saying that as someone who takes an active interest in the goings on of the past, as a way of understanding the present and the future, that whenever there’s a new technology — of which Proxies is one, yes — you have people saying that it’s going to cause the proverbial sky to fall in. You understand what I’m saying?”
Mal Miller drains his beer and motions for another.
“Did I ever tell you about the Theo Spinakis case?” Miller asks.
The smaller man takes a moment to think. He hasn’t heard of the Theo Spinakis case, but he’s also not sure what that has to do with anything they’re talking about.
“No, I don’t think so. That must have been before my time.”
“Yeah,” Miller says, “I think it probably was.”
“So what’s — what got to do with what we’re —“
“We caught this body, me and Foley —“
“George Foley?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“No reason, I just wanted to know I had the right name.”
“What’s it matter if you have the right name or not?” Miller says.
“It doesn’t, I guess. I just wanted to see if I had the right guy in mind.”
“Well, you do.”
“Okay.”
“So — and I’m trying to tell you something, so if you want any other clarifications, can you save them until the end of what I’m trying to tell you?”
“Sure, I’m sorry.”
“Okay, so, me and Foley, we catch this body, it’s in — you know that little park on Norfolk and Houston?” Miller asks.
“I think so.”
“It’s called — I forget the name — it’s got a cobblestone path all around the perimeter.”
“Okay.”
“Well, anyway, we get called out there, because someone’s been on their early morning jog and found, right in the middle of that cobblestone path, the body of Theo Spinakis.”
“Greek?”
“Are you asking me if a man going by the name of Theo Spinakis was Greek, Jerry? Is that what you’re interrupting what it is that I’m trying to tell you to get clarity on?”
“I wasn’t really asking,” Whitely says to his beer.
“Yes, Jerry. Theo Spinakis was Greek.”
“Okay.”
“So we’re called out, me and Foley, and — do you remember that case in the fall of last year? Where that guy had his head beat in with the handle of a shopping cart?” Miller asks.
“Yeah,” Whitely says.
“Well, it was like that, but it was worse. Just pulp, you know. Whoever did this to this guy was angry. Just fuelled by rage. You know, those ones,” Miller says.
“Yeah, I know those ones. Just a frenzy, right?” Whitely says.
“Exactly. It was a frenzy. And nothing taken. In fact, his wallet — he’s holding his wallet in his hand. It’s still got about thirty bucks in there,” Miller says.
“Right, so, the thought there is that it’s personal?” Whitely asks.
“Yeah, that’s the thought. One thing I should mention, this guy is huge. I mean, he is massive. Big guy. You ever see those old movies with Andre the Giant? Well, he’s not as big as that guy. I think that guy had — he had some medical problem with his body, but Theo Spinakis is huge all the same. And he’s just been destroyed. I can see that he’s got defensive wounds on his forearms. He’s tried to shield his face while the guy just went to town on him with a pipe or whatever — later we’d find that it was a length of pipe — but there are no signs that I can see that he’s fought back. Nothing on his knuckles or whatever,” Miller says.
“Okay,” Whitely says.
“Are you listening to me?” Miller says, casting a glance at the two young men playing pool.
“Course I’m listening, I’m just trying to work out what this has to do with what we’re talking about,” Whitely says.
“I’m getting to that,” Miller says, “So, we start talking to Spinakis’s friends, family, that kind of thing, trying to work out who hated this guy enough to do something like this, and nothing is showing up. Nothing at all. A neighbour says that they thought they heard him arguing with someone, but they can’t be sure it was him, and besides, that was a month ago. He lives alone, just him and his dog. We figure that’s why he was out in the park after dark, walking that dog. Must have run away before we got there. Anyway, the picture we’re getting from every single person we talk to is of this gentle, nice guy who liked his dog and comic books and going to conventions dressed up in different costumes.”
“Is that, like, are we talking about a sex thing there? With the costumes?”
“What? No. Why are you asking a thing like that?” Miller says, his head snapping up.
“I was only asking if the — if the costume stuff was a sexual thing. That might —“
“No, it was just — people like to do that. You’ve never seen that? People dressed up like the Incredible Hulk or whatever? They go to, you know, these big conventions and get their photographs taken. All painted up in green with the shorts,” Miller says.
“Everyone’s green and wearing shorts?”
“No, I’m describing the Incredible Hulk. Not everyone is dressed like that. I’m just asking if you’ve seen that kind of thing.”
“Sure, I’ve seen it, I always just assumed it was a sex thing,” Whitely says.
“Well, it isn’t. It wasn’t for Theo Spinakis at least. He used to get dressed up and visit sick kids in hospital. Now, do you think that’s a sex thing, you damn pervert?”
“Well, I dunno, Mal,” Whitely says.
“I swear to — do you want to hear this about Theo Spinakis or not? Or are you just going to keep talking about things that you don’t know anything about?” Miller asks.
“I want to hear, sure, Mal” Whitely says as he gestures to the bartender for another drink.
“Alright, well, don’t cut in with any of your questions about sicko stuff and I can keep telling you. What I was trying to demonstrate with all the comic book stuff and the costume stuff was that Theo Spinakis just wasn’t the kind of guy that you tend to find in a state like that. We couldn’t find anyone who’d want to do this guy harm. No debts, no infidelities, no enemies to speak of at all.“
“Okay,” Whitely says.
“But then we get a call from Suarez, she’s the lab tech — you ever work with Suarez?” Miller says.
“No,” Whitely says.
“Well, she’s the lab tech we had on this one, and she’s pretty good — and she calls me and Foley and says she’s just taken a Proxy implant out of Theo Spinakis’s neck. Now, you have to remember that this was maybe five or six years ago and Proxies aren’t — they’re not everywhere yet. You can’t just open up the app on your phone if you want to go to Disneyland and attach the — what are they, nodes? Attach the nodes to your head or however it —“
“Have you never used a Proxy?” Whitely asks.
“No,” Miller says.
“Well, yeah, there are nodes that you put on. Little sticky things on their side of your head. Here and here,” Whitely says, pointing to his temples. “There’s guys I’ve seen — guys who use Proxy a lot for work or whatever, who have them built into a hat. Just looks like a baseball cap, all wireless. Can you believe that? You see a guy napping on the subway in a baseball cap, and he’s actually piloting some guy like Theo Spinakis around town,” Whitely says, trailing off toward the end because he can tell that Miller is growing impatient.
“Sure. Well, like I was saying,” Miller says, “It wasn’t like it is now. I mean, it was available at that point, but it was still real expensive. So, this was the first time that we’d worked a homicide where Proxy came into it at all. Nowadays, you work something that even gets close to someone with one of those implants, you get a call from their ‘Police Liaison Division’ practically before you arrive on the scene yourself. Not then, though. Then we were more or less flying blind.
“So, we called them up, and we said we’ve got this guy with a Proxy chip in him, and that he’s dead, what can you tell us about, you know, the people who were using him and what not. And do you know what they tell us? They say that it contravenes their privacy policy. What they can tell us — and this is after a lot of stuff about how the algorithm prevents their Hosts from coming to any kind of harm, blah blah — is Theo Spinakis had not been booked for three whole days prior to his death.
“All the same, we say we’d like to know who was booking him. They tell us, again, that while they want to cooperate, they’ve never handed out that information. So, we go to a judge.
“And this is the first time this has been tested, this sort of thing, and this judge, she initially has no idea about precedent or anything like that. Eventually, the DA cites a recent case where a hire car company was ordered to hand over the GPS data from one of their vehicles to the NYPD, and we get all that sorted out. Now how’s that for a kick? We manage to get this information because the judge is willing to treat Theo Spinakis, this kid no older than 20 with his brains coating the corner of Norfolk and Houston, as a hire car,” Miller says.
“Wow, okay,” Whitely says.
“‘Wow’ is right. So, we take the warrant back to the people at Proxy, and they get their guys, a whole room full of their lawyers, I mean, to look it over, and eventually they come out and hand Foley and me a thick wad of papers, containing every booking made for Theo Spinakis as a Proxy in his time as a contractor with the company. They are clearly unhappy about it, but what can they do other than ask to be ‘Kept abreast of any and all developments’?” Miller says.
“Christ, so how many bookings were there?” Whitely asks.
“A lot. Thousands. Theo Spinakis was working as a Proxy more or less full time. The data we’ve got is the time of the booking, who made it, where they made it from, and where they went when they were using Theo Spinakis’s considerable frame to amble around New York. Now, I should remind you at this point that we don’t even know if there’s anything in this Proxy angle, and we don’t even know what we’re looking for, but in the absence of any other options, we get to work.” Miller runs his hand through his hair.
“Obviously,” he says, “we start with the most recent bookings, but they’re a dead end. A businessman in Indianapolis who had a job interview in Dumbo and an old guy from Italy who’d always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. Nothing there,” Miller says.
Outside, it starts to rain.
“We’re just combing through these bookings, looking at times and locations — you know, the places people went on their bookings, trying to see if anything jumps out at us, and we’re at this for probably a whole two days before we spot something interesting,” Miller says.
“What’s that?” Whitely asks.
“Again, you have to remember that Proxies are expensive back then, so people aren’t just getting them to, you know, to go across town. All the names of the Guests — that’s the people doing the booking — they’re from all over the place. All around the country, and all around the world. Most of them, I think, are tourists — based on the locations they’re taking Theo Spinakis. They’re going, you know, they’re going to Ellis Island, and The Met, they’re going to the museums, things like that,” Miller says.
“Are they going to the Museum of Natural History?” Whitely asks.
“Yeah, I guess they’re going there,” Miller says.
“That’s a good museum. Have you seen — they have a whole space section there now,” Whitely says.
“No, I haven’t been there — are you listening to what I’m saying to you?” Miller asks.
“Of course I am, I’m just remarking about the museum,” Whitely says.
“Alright, well, fine. The point I’m making is that there are people from basically every place you can think of on earth booking Theo Spinakis, except one obvious place. New York City,” Miller says.
“Right — because they’re already there,” Whitely says.
“That’s right, and what’s the point of booking an expensive Proxy to visit a city you’re already in? Well, we find one guy, buried in the bookings, who’s doing exactly that. A guy by the name of Russ Lambert has booked Theo Spinakis in the East Village from a location in Nolita,” Miller says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Nolita is what, a 15-minute walk to the village?” Whitely asks, “Why’s he doing that?”
“I’m trying to tell you, that’s what we were interested in understanding. So, we look at the information they’ve given us — they have these maps with lines on them, not a lot to go on, but you can kind of see the path — and we see that this guy Lambert has booked Theo Spinakis for two trips in the past month, three days apart.
Now, the first time he takes Theo Spinakis around the the East Village, just walks him around, really. Then the second time, he gets on the subway to Queens and hangs around there for a while,” Miller says.
“That’s strange,” Whitely says.
“It is strange. So, we go talk to Russ Lambert,” Miller says, and he orders another round of drinks.
“Now, Russ Lambert is an actor,” Miller says. “He’s got this little studio apartment in Nolita with all these posters on the wall for Broadway shows. Some of them I can see he’s been in, because he’s got his name there on the bottom.”
“You remember which shows?” Whitely asks.
Miller thinks a moment, scratching at his coaster with his fingernail, “You know, I don’t believe I do. I think — I remember one of them was called The City of Buildings,” he says, “Anyway, once we start talking to him —“
“There wasn’t a poster for a play called The City of Buildings, I can tell you that much,” Whitely says.
“I think there was,” Miller says.
“The City of Buildings? Nothing that’s ever been on Broadway has been called that,” Whitely says.
“And you’ve seen every play that’s ever been on Broadway, I suppose,” Miller says.
“I’m not claiming that, but I’m telling you, there wasn’t a poster for a play called The City of Buildings, you simply wouldn’t call a play that. Who in their right mind would go and see a play called The City of Buildings? Every damn city has buildings. There’s no — there’s no metaphor there. It’s like calling a play A Forest of Trees,” Whitely says.
“Well, I’m not saying there was a poster there for a play called A Forest of Trees,” Miller says, “I’m just saying that this guy was an actor.”
They sit in a sullen silence a moment.
“So, what happens? What does he say about the bookings?” Whitely asks. Miller grumbles a little but continues.
“Well, Lambert, he’s this weedy, pale, pretty little guy. Looks like a handsome little bird. All nose and hair. And he is very confused as to why two homicide detectives are there, until I mention the name Theo Spinakis. That’s when I know we’re onto something, because, you know, to look at this guy, you wouldn’t think he could turn any paler, but the second the name Theo Spinakis is out of Foley’s moth, he turns almost translucent. He’s tells us he can explain everything about the bookings, but can’t tell us why Theo Spinakis ended up dead.
“And so Russ Lambert tells us about his grandfather’s watch,” Miller says, “and as he’s talking, Foley and I start to realise exactly why this damn stupid thing happened.”
“When Russ Lambert’s grandfather died — would have been maybe a decade before all this — he left his watch to Lambert. Before you ask, I don’t know what kind of watch it is. I can see you want to ask that,” Miller says.
“I didn’t ask anything,” Whitely says, putting both of his hands up.
“I know you didn’t, but you were about to,” Miller says.
“Well, I didn’t,” Whitely says.
“In any case, it’s got sentimental value, but mostly what interests Lambert about it is its monetary value — which he’s put at around four grand. It’s not a fortune, but for, you know, for an actor who’s doing work here and there, sometimes going long stretches without employment, he’s come to see it as his savings fund, in a way,” Miller says. The rain gets heavier outside, someone walks into the bar shaking out an umbrella.
“So, one day, around three months before Theo Spinakis ends up dead — he hasn’t worked in a while, I guess — Lambert goes online to sell it. ‘Why not take it to a jeweller?’ I ask Lambert.
“He looks at me with this sort of withering look and says that he thought this way would be easier. Well, it wasn’t. Anyway, he puts it up on one of the websites, and some guy going by the name Jesse Boyd immediately offers him six grand for it. Says he’s a collector, and he’s been looking for this exact watch for years. Well, Lambert doesn’t blink. He tells Boyd to wire him the money, and he can post the watch that day. So, Boyds sends him a photo of the transfer confirmation and gives him an address — not a residential address, a PO box in Queens,”
“Jesus,” Whitely says.
“Yeah, so you see where this is going, but Lambert — who, I don’t know, maybe was raised to believe the best in people — doesn’t. He puts the watch in the post and waits for the transfer to come through, and, of course, it doesn’t. The photo of the transfer was fake, he’s been scammed. He tries to contact Boyd, but all communication has been terminated. Well, a lot of people would call the cops at this point but not Lambert. He’s got this pride, I can tell that by the way he’s telling the story. He decides that he’ll get the watch back himself. So, after a week of stewing on it, he finally gets on the subway and goes to Queens, finds the PO box and stakes it out. He figures, maybe, that Boyd might be doing this to other people, and so he sets up in a diner across the street from the post office and waits.
“He waits three days, which I think, you know, is impressive in terms of determination, but then again, I also get the sense that Russ Lambert doesn’t have a whole lot else going on in his life. Anyway, for three days he sits in that diner watching that post office until this guy comes along and takes a parcel right out of the box he’s staking out. He gets an okay look at the guy — mid 30s, medium build, nothing special. If he had any doubt that it was Boyd, though, that goes away when he sees his grandfather’s watch dangling from this guy’s wrist.
“Now, he doesn’t say this when he’s telling the story, but reading between the lines, I don’t think he’d really considered what he’d do if the guy showed up, but he makes the snap decision to follow him. He keeps his distance and manages to follow Boyd home. And then he just sits outside the guys house in Queens trying to work out what his next move is. He sits there for hours and after a while, it starts to get dark, and so he goes home.
“I think, and again, Lambert doesn’t actually say this to me direct, but I think the fact that he saw Boyd, saw the watch, basically had the jump on him, but still didn’t do anything — it really eats at him. Just eats away at his pride. He’s a little guy, Lambert is, he knows deep down that there’s nothing he could have done, even if he had the stones. Boyd isn’t huge, but he’s not little, either. He’s got some muscle, and there’s no way he’s just going to hand over the watch because Lambert asks him,” Miller says.
“Ah, Christ, I see where this is going,” Whitely says.
“Well, maybe you do. But maybe you don’t,” Miller says, draining his glass. The bartender, without consultation, begins to pour another. “The thing that Lambert has going for him in all this, at least according to Lambert, is that he is an actor. He understands how to be imposing — I think ‘presence’ was the word he used. He just doesn’t have the frame to match it.”
“So, he goes on Proxy and finds the biggest, scariest looking guy he can find. Am I right about that?” Whitely asks.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Miller says with a nod.
“But didn’t he — the algorithm — you can’t assault someone in a Proxy. It kicks you out if you try anything like that,” Whitely says.
“It does, but that doesn’t bother Lambert because he’s not planning on getting physical. He figures that he can just put the fear of God into this guy, won’t need to lay a finger on him. And this is — you know, I have to say, if Jesse Boyd were a different kind of person, it might’ve worked out fine,” Miller says.
There’s a pause as he sips at his beer and listens to the music coming from the jukebox, noticing it for the first time since they’ve been here. It’s someone who sounds like Steve Earle. Might actually be Steve Earle, now that he thinks on it. He lets out a breath.
“So, he books Theo Spinakis for an afternoon. The first time he books him, it’s a — I don’t know what you’d call it — a rehearsal, I guess. Lambert calls it getting into character. He walks around town, getting used to the feel of the guy. He also practices what he’s going to say. Comes at it a few ways. The ‘argument’ Theo Spinakis’s neighbours heard — that’s probably what that was. We’re not positive about that, but the days line up, at least.
“And then he waits three days, books him again, takes the subway to Queens, and knocks on Boyd’s door, only Boyd doesn’t open it. A kid does. This catches Lambert off guard, but he decides to go ahead with it.
“‘Your dad home?’ Lambert asks.
“Now, the kid seems to be used to this kind of question because his eyes narrow, and he asks, you know, he asks who’s asking. Lambert hasn’t planned for any of this, but he’s already $200 in the hole for the booking, and he doesn’t think he can come back another time.
“‘I work with your daddy,’ he says, ‘is he home?’
“The kid isn’t buying it and is about to close the door, and, you know, if that kid had just closed it a second earlier, Theo Spinakis would still be alive.” Miller lets out some more air. “But he doesn’t, and into the hall steps Jesse Boyd.”
The song that might be by Steve Earle ends and the bar goes quiet for a moment. Miller leans forward on his elbows.
“And so, Lambert, in Theo Spinakis, begins his spiel.
“’My name is Russ Lambert’, he says, ‘and that on your fucking wrist is my grandfather’s watch.’
“He’s overdoing it, by his own admission. That’s what he tells me. He says, that he thinks he might have opened too strong, but there’s nothing he can do about that now. The kid looks to his dad, and Boyd glares at Lambert, but Lambert has never felt stronger. He feels invincible. You ever talk to an ice addict? About how that all feels?” Miller asks.
“Nope,” Whitely says.
“Well, okay. But I’m telling you, that’s what he sounds like. He says he feels bullet-proof. And so, he starts getting into it.
“‘Now,’ he says, stepping through the door and past the kid, ‘are you going to take that off or am I going to have to break your arm? Your call, pal.’
“And what Lambert is doing here is dicey because he knows that the algorithm is on a hair trigger for the threat of danger. He doesn’t know if he’s stay in Spinakis if Boyd even raises his voice at him, so he’s walking a very fine line here. He needs to keep things dangerous in a way that an algorithm won’t pick up on. So, he’s trying to control the situation.
“Boyd tells his son to go to his room, and here’s where I think Lambert makes a fatal mistake. Not fatal to him, but fatal.
“Lambert says, ‘No, the kid should stay. Let him see that when you take something that’s not yours, you should give it back.’
“The kid looks to his dad confused Boyd looks Lambert and down for a while, and Lambert holds his gaze the whole time. Eventually, he takes the watch off and hands it to Lambert and the whole time this is happening, the kid is saying that he doesn’t understand, why’s this happening, things like that. Lambert can see that Boyd is incandescent with rage, that this is happening in front of his son, that it’s time that he left before Boyd explodes. And so, he does. He doesn’t take the subway, he gets in a cab, his grandfather’s watch back on his wrist, and bursting with adrenaline,” Miller says.
“Jesus Christ,” Whitely says, “he got lucky here.”
“Yeah, he did,” Miller says. “So, the booking ends, Theo Spinakis is back in his apartment in the East Village, and Lambert has his watch back. That’s all that Lambert knows. He hasn’t heard anything about the body we’ve found. But with what he’s told us, we have a pretty good idea of what’s happened,” Miller says.
“Yeah,” Whitely says.
“See, what Lambert didn’t account for in all of this was — he didn’t realise that Jesse Boyd was a goddamned fucking psychopath. Because one month later, Boyd happens to be in the East Village and who does he spot on the sidewalk having a coffee but Theo Spinakis, sitting there with his dog. And this is actually Theo Spinakis this time. Now. For the past month, Boyd has just been fuming on what happened. Really, fuming. He’s had to tell all these lies to his son who thinks the world of him about why the big bad man came by, if he’s going to come back, that kind of thing. And seeing Theo Spinakis there just sets it all off again, and he sees red.
“But not so much red that he attacks him there and then. He decides to wait. He sits in the park, waits for Theo Spinakis to leave, then follows him home. So now he knows where he lives, and he knows he has a dog, so all he needs to do is wait till later when he takes his dog out to do his nighttime business. While he’s waiting, he goes to a hardware store and buys a length of pipe.
“And so, that night, sure enough, Theo Spinakis takes his dog for a walk, Boyd follows him and when he gets to that park on the corner of Norfolk and Houston, he jumps him with the pipe,” Miller says. He takes a moment, looks into his drink. “I can’t imagine how scared that kid would have been. Scared and confused. He didn’t fight back, he just put his arms up, trying to keep the pipe from his face. He probably didn’t know how to fight back. And all this time, he thinks he’s being mugged. That’s why we found the wallet in his hand. The whole time he’s being beaten, he’s trying to give Jesse Boyd his wallet.” Miller lets out a breath.
“We know all this because after we talk to Lambert, we manage to track Boyd down pretty fast. There’s security footage of him buying the pipe a few blocks from Theo Spinakis’s apartment, and he caves pretty quick. He’s serving life,” Miller says.
“What about Lambert?” Whitely asks.
“Oh, you’ll like this,” Miller says. “The best we could get Lambert on was ‘using a carriage service to threaten or intimidate’.”
Both sit in silence while the young men behind them finish up their game of pool.
“So, you tell me,” Miller says, standing up and taking his coat from the back of the chair. His car is here. “Is that the sort of thing that people were worried about when the radio came along?”
Whitely doesn’t say anything, just gives a short, quick shrug and a tilt of his head. Outside, the rain is clearing.
Note: There are two other stories I’ve written about Proxies, and you can find them here and here.