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the name Google, they said, was invented out of the belief that men would focus on a word with two Os in it.) Not long after this trip, Epstein’s assistant called to invite me for tea at his house in New York, where Epstein, with what seemed to me little understanding of the subject, began to ask me about media—the upside, downside, and nature of media coverage. New York magazine was then soliciting him for a profile, as was Vanity Fair, who had assigned the British tabloid reporter, Vicki Ward, to the job. Both profiles—New York’s by Landon Thomas—pivot on the Clinton connection and detail the same quandary, how a man without clear institutional bona fides nevertheless achieves wealth and influence. Ward—who would more recently assert in the Daily Beast, that she was barred by Vanity Fair from writing about under-age sex evidence (a fact that could be read the other way: Vanity Fair, even looking to take down Epstein, did not find the evidence credible or supportable)—follows a rabbit hole of questionable contacts who might or might not have been the source or sources for Epstein’s wealth, but gets no closer to an answer, beyond confirming her own sense of dubiousness. Epstein, sensing that he might be exposing himself, tried to stop the process (Ward, often operatic about her journalistic exploits, says he threatened her), called Carter and said he was having second thoughts about being a public figure. “Then you should live in a two bedroom apartment in Queens,” responded Carter. And then the troubles began. Epstein, in man-who-can-have-everything fashion, and without the remotest sense of observance or propriety—as though a kind of cultural autism—has, for many years, ordered up a daily massage following his workout sessions. “Often these were massage massages,” says Epstein matter of factly, “but sometimes these were happy ending massages, especially in Palm Beach, where there are many massage parlors, and strip clubs —that do outcalls. There was no sex. An often there was no happy ending. Often I would be on the phone for the entire massage. There were however a lot of massages and a lot of girls, with one girl recommending others.” It is after Epstein’s round of publicity and widely touted association with Clinton, that the stepmother of one of the massage parlor girls, identified as “SG” in court documents, who went to Epstein’s house (most of the girls return to Epstein’s house many times) calls the police. The police interview the girl who then supplies names of other girls. Some of whom are younger than 18. In the end, the police track down 18 girls—nine who are under 18; the others in their 20s and 30s; one woman is in her 60s—a number of whom give statements describing scenarios not terribly different from Epstein’s description above, except HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022857