Nobody's Hero

by Melanie Harvey

  Walter started to shake his head, but he stopped. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. And I’ll tell you something else — I bought these months ago when I heard all this,” Ashley said, tapping the liner notes. “No way his recording budgets cover this kind of production.”

  Kijana raised his eyebrows. “Too low?”

  “Oh, yeah. Somebody’s subsidizing them. And Zeus is a multi-millionaire.”

  “Fine.” Walter pushed back from the table and stood up. “But he’s a millionaire because I got him started.”

  “I’m just telling you what I know, Walter.”

  He seemed to take that into consideration. Finally he nodded.

  Za-cha-ri-ah Raw-lins. That’s Zeus. With the lightning bolts? She closed her eyes for a moment. If Ashley could hear the difference between the recording budgets and the finished product, then she was certain Rick could. She heard his slip last night, over earning his money through Guillotine. His tone when he said because of you this morning.

  He would hate it. Hate all of it. She didn’t know what made him like that, in a world where everybody grabbed for whatever they could get. She’d know one day, but she was already sure she loved it.

  Carolyn was hardly aware the room had grown silent until an unfamiliar voice said:

  “Blackmail.”

  Every eye in the room went to the strawberry-haired assistant who’d been so quiet that Carolyn had forgotten she was there.

  The woman shifted in her seat. “I was just thinking about what Carolyn said earlier. About blackmail.”

  Carolyn managed to suppress her groan.

  Walter sighed. “I’m sorry, Leann, but I think Ashley effectively road blocked that avenue.” His voice was surprisingly gentle. He did shoot a look at Ashley.

  “But isn’t blackmail paying someone off?” Leann said, directing her question to Simmons.

  Carolyn wanted to talk to him herself. Any plan Walter was cooking up would certainly exclude Rick. She wasn’t going along with it, so somebody would sue her for something. She’d call Simmons later. After she went back to the hotel, climbed into bed with Rick and waited for Britney Spears to check into rehab or get married or have a baby. Maybe Paris Hilton would get a new dog, and they wouldn’t matter anymore.

  “I mean … ” Leann lifted a hand. “It’s to keep someone quiet about something, right?”

  “Essentially,” Simmons said. “You pay so they won’t reveal something that could damage you. So you’re going to send pictures of the congressman and his girlfriend to the press — and his wife — unless he sends you half a million dollars.”

  “That’s right,” Leann said.

  “Blackmail is illegal,” Simmons said.

  She shook her head and turned to Walter. “But you’re talking about damaging him when he’s the one with the damaging information. Ricky Rain, I mean. You’re thinking backwards.”

  Walter seemed to take this very well. He merely nodded at her to go on.

  “You should be thinking as though he were blackmailing you and how you can pay him off. Not how you can take him down.”

  “Well, let’s cut him a check.” He patted his breast pocket as he turned to Carolyn. “Shoot. Do you have half a million dollars?”

  His lazy sarcasm propelled Carolyn to her feet. “You couldn’t buy him off, Walter! And just because you can’t respect that — ”

  “Sweetheart, we’re talking about someone who curses for a living — ”

  “And if you knew what the fuck you were talking about — ”

  Natalie gasped. “Carolyn!”

  Carolyn spun around. “Are you talking to me again?”

  Liz grasped Carolyn’s hand. “We all need to calm down. Natalie, I appreciate your help, but I think at this point … ”

  Liz shook her head when Natalie started to open her mouth. She gathered her things with a grim face, turning back from the door to shoot Carolyn a fleeting look of apology.

  Denied. Bitch. Her hand went to her mouth, even though she hadn’t said it out loud. Across the table, Ashley’s eyebrows shot up.

  Carolyn took a deep breath and returned to her seat. She faced Walter, who was still unruffled. “I don’t want anybody taking him down. I’ll tell you what I do want — ”

  “Carolyn, hush.” Liz frowned at her.

  “Liz — ”

  “You wouldn’t pay him,” Leann said to Walter, as if their conversation had never been interrupted. “You’d just get him what he wants.” When Walter raised his eyebrows, Leann shrugged. “You have other connections.”

  Carolyn felt a new stillness in the room. Leann and Kijana exchanged looks. For the first time, Walter looked unhappy with his soft-spoken assistant. “Surely you’re not suggesting … ”

  “He owes you one, too.”

  “Exactly one,” Walter said. “I’m not using it up on this … ”

  Whatever he was going to say, he replaced it with a gesture toward the pile of Rick’s liner notes on the table, a look of total disdain on his face.

  “Carolyn is your client,” Ashley said.

  Walter shot her a look, which Carolyn interpreted to mean that, once again, she’d reminded him of what he knew and didn’t want to hear. Ashley, once again, failed to wither under his gaze.

  “It wouldn’t be a big favor,” Leann said. “Not to him.”

  Carolyn couldn’t stand it anymore. “Not to who?”

  Walter gritted his teeth. Kijana answered for him. “To Jimmy Iovine.”

  Suddenly it wasn’t just her career on the table. “Oh, my God.” She looked at Walter. “Would you?”

  Walter folded his arms across his chest.

  “It’s what blackmail really is,” Leann said in her gentle voice.

  He sighed and looked at Carolyn. “Have you left me any choice?”

  She knew the bubble rising from her stomach was painted all over her face. “Walter, I don’t know what to say.”

  He frowned. “Say you’ll cooperate. That’s what I need to hear.”

  The only words she could think of was Interscope Records.

  Simmons frowned. “Who’s Jimmy Iovine?”

  Ashley laughed as she stood and turned to Walter. “You doing it?”

  His jaw clenched, but he looked at Carolyn and nodded. He raised his eyebrows at Ashley. “Are you?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah.” She lifted her chin in Carolyn’s direction. “Let’s get to work. Well, first, we’ll change your clothes. Don’t you know you can’t wear stripes on TV?”

  “I wasn’t going to be on … What?”

  Ashley was already halfway out the door. “Come on. The car’s waiting.”

  43: iTunes and Marching Orders

  Rick plugged in his earphones and went back to work, because no matter what was happening in the world, he was still recording in three days. After all this time, the writer’s block turned out to be nothing more serious than a painted-shut window. Pried open now, and like cool air pouring into a stuffy room, the songs felt like they’d been hovering outside, just waiting. He paced the empty rooms, starting with the beat that sounded haunted.

  His phone drifted a few inches down the wood surface of the coffee table when he stopped to jot down a fix to the flow on a final line. He checked the missed calls, expecting …

  Shit. Every last call came from the same number; his hand jerked when the phone buzzed again. Shit. He thumbed the button to answer this time.

  “You know, back in the day,” Zeus said slowly, “that ‘B’ in ‘B-E-T’ stood for Black.”

  Still in a good mood. Rick exhaled. “Did that mean who was watching or who was on? Because if it was watching, I done fucked that up a long time ago.”

  Zeus’s baritone laughter floated through the airwaves from Miami. “I just got done fighting with Louis.”

  “Over what?”

  “Who got to call you. I said I knew you longer, so if there’s bad news to break, I figure I should be the one.”

  Ri
ck didn’t realize he’d been pacing the living room until he stopped. “What bad news?”

  “My second argument to Louis — he didn’t think it was bad. You got fifty and seventy-five.”

  “Fifty and seventy-five what?”

  “On iTunes. As in the fiftieth most downloaded album and the seventy-fifth most downloaded song in hip-hop and rap.”

  Rick stared at Carolyn’s laptop. “Are you shitting me?”

  “I ever lied to you?”

  Not that he knew of. “On what planet is this bad news?”

  “A planet that seems to get a lot of rain,” Zeus said. “The album is Deluged. But the song is ‘Payback.’”

  Louis wouldn’t know he hated that song. Zeus didn’t know why.

  “That’s five years old, Zeus. It’s history.” And that was true; it was history. Finally. “But ‘Payback’ isn’t on Deluged, it’s on the first album, why would that song — ”

  “Don’t know, Louis is working on that. Tell me something, Rick. You plan this?”

  “Hell, no. I didn’t even — hell no.”

  “It’s a hell of a move.”

  “It wasn’t a move, Zeus. It was a goddamn accident.” Rick flinched and steadied his voice. “I don’t even know how. The kid who took the picture didn’t know who she was.”

  “Well, it’s good for us,” Zeus said. “Oh, my feed just updated — seventy-three. And Deluged went to forty-nine.”

  He was selling. Rick swallowed. “What does that mean?”

  “Means I got calls to make. I’ll see you Monday.”

  Rick started to protest the abrupt sign-off, but he was too late. He sank into the couch and stared at the laptop on the desk. Payback?

  * * *

  On the short drive back to Carolyn’s hotel, Ashley shot bullets disguised as questions, some across the backseat of the taxi, some into her Blackberry. Carolyn would have liked to listen in on that, but she was responsible to come up with equally rapid responses to Ashley’s bullets. “You never went to a concert?”

  “No.”

  “What about friends, shared any albums?”

  “No.” She’d been researching and writing for two years, then publishing, then chaos. Friendships faded to background noise, and when she did reconnect, the conversations weren’t about semi-obscure rappers from Cleveland, they always had more important things to discuss.

  Oh, shit. “Peter.”

  Ashley raised her eyebrows. “Who?”

  Carolyn slammed her fist into the upholstery. “Peter Shepard. Damn it. He did this — he was so — that bastard!”

  “Carolyn, calm down. Tell me what happened.”

  She did tell her, though she wasn’t very calm about it. Ashley listened without interruption until Carolyn finished.

  “It had to be him, no one else knew except my sister and my father and they would never … damn it!”

  Ashley spoke into her phone. “Did you catch all that? All right, get on him. See if he’s going to be a problem. Do you know where he lives?”

  “Upper West side. I have the address on my computer.”

  “Oh, Dwayne won’t need that, will you, Dwayne?” She grinned. “Did the messenger bring the clip from — good. Keep up with what Walter’s getting. As soon as I get — no, talk to Kijana. Because I like him better, that’s why. I want an update in thirty minutes.” She closed the phone, muttering about Kijana being less likely to screw her over.

  Carolyn wondered where the bad blood between Ashley and Walter had come from. “What about Peter?”

  “We’ll see. The hotel,” Ashley said without looking up from her BlackBerry. “Did you mention your hotel when you were speaking or on the radio?”

  “Of course not.” Carolyn still needed to work in the fact that Rick was still there, but Ashley had yet to give her a moment. “Listen, Ashley … ”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned. She’s not a complete idiot.”

  Carolyn strained to see what she was looking at. A graffiti tagged straight truck crept forward in the traffic, exposing a reporter, complete with microphone and photographer, loitering just south of the Sherry’s awning. She groaned. “How did she — ”

  “Never mind.” Ashley collected her receipt from the driver. “You smile, hear me? Think of something pleasant. And don’t forget, the camera is always on. Do you hear me?”

  Carolyn nodded.

  “Say it. The camera is always on.”

  “The camera is always on.”

  “Okay. I’m getting out first. Don’t look at the camera, look at me or at her. Are your happy thoughts ready?”

  She had many, too many, but the future overshadowed the past and cast every one into darkness. Carolyn closed her eyes and forced in a new image, faceless suits gathered around a table, stacks of papers passing among them. Her focus narrowed to one hand, ink etched into fingers that moved a pen across a signature line on a recording contract.

  “Okay,” Ashley said. “Whatever that is, it’s working.”

  Carolyn opened her eyes to see Ashley slide from the backseat.

  “Bella! What a pleasure to see you again!”

  Bella’s gaze flickered from Ashley to Carolyn. Tall, statuesque and camera beautiful, with eyes were too sharp for Carolyn’s comfort.

  “Oh, my God.” Bella’s red lips curved in delight. “It’s all true.”

  “If by ‘all’,” Ashley said, “you mean you can see a picture as well as I can, then of course it is. Hotbeds of iniquity, those Yankee games.” She gestured to the camera. “Can we shut that off for a minute?”

  Bella’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded. Carolyn took a deep breath when the photographer lowered the camera. Maybe it was on, but it was taping the sidewalk.

  Bella seemed overjoyed. “So you’re not playing the digitally-manipulated photo game?”

  Ashley snorted. “Did you see that picture? I told my husband that the guy from Prison Break lost his place at the top of my free-adultery list.”

  Carolyn’s jaw dropped. She checked the focal point of the camera — still down — and closed her mouth.

  Ashley shifted her black laptop bag and grinned. “And I know you did, too, Bella.”

  “So he’s just too hot to pass up? Are you really admitting — ”

  “That I’d fuck Ricky Rain? I think I just did.” Ashley’s eyes widened. “But I already told my husband, and he’s the only one who cares.”

  Carolyn almost smiled, in spite of the heaviness in her heart. Ashley was a foot shorter than Bella, but this face-off was starting to look lopsided in the opposite direction. She glanced to the doorman, who pretended not to watch with great interest.

  Bella flicked at a loose spike of cropped hair the breeze blew across her forehead. “What do you want, Ashley?”

  “Ninety minutes.”

  “Be serious.”

  “You give me an hour and a half, you get her first interview.”

  “Too long, I’ll be — ”

  “You’ll be the first reporter who has a sit-down with Carolyn Coffman is what you’ll be. Otherwise you’ll get a sound bite on the sidewalk, and I’ll call BET.”

  Bella pursed her lips. “Here?”

  “Please,” Ashley said. “How about a bookstore? There’s one on East Eighty-Seventh, cozy, warm. With a very large display of Carolyn’s book.”

  Carolyn could see Bella attempt to hide her pleasure over the image as Ashley rushed on.

  “It’s called A Reader’s Paradise. We’ll meet you there at one-thirty.”

  “Make it one, and we have a deal.”

  Ashley steered Carolyn toward the doorman. “One-thirty,” she called over her shoulder.

  They were inside without hearing Bella’s response, and Ashley immediately went back to her BlackBerry. “I want an iPhone, bad, but these bastards won’t let me out of my contract until — ”

  “What was that?”

  “That was me doing my job. Dwayne — we’re on. How’s the polling? Come on, babe —
okay, okay. Bella bit, so I need ten women, aged twenty to forty at the Reader’s Paradise bookstore beginning at one-thirty. Stagger them five to seven minutes, no more than two pairs, and I want a Benneton ad, and — ” She sighed heavily. “Jesus, you’re young, Dwayne. A Benneton ad is … never mind. No more than five of them white. Make that four.” She shook her head. “It’s right around the corner. Buy a book, for God’s sake, when you go over to prep.”

  She laughed and checked her watch as she spoke. “Here’s their bite: ‘I’m delighted. I feel like Carolyn can really sympathize with what I’m going through.’ You got it? It’s five seconds. I want ten variations, memorized. Make sure they know the cameras will be on.”

  She winked at Carolyn, who could only stare at her. Who was this woman?

  Ashley snorted again. “No, I want them buying the latest Grisham novel. Try to stay with me here. No, I said you call me in half an hour — I’ll call you whenever I damn well feel like it. I’m the boss.”

  She dropped the BlackBerry into her bag as she glanced around the lobby. “Nice digs.”

  Carolyn blinked. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a crisis manager. You’re having a crisis. I’ll be managing it.”

  “By planting women to buy my book? Bella can’t be that dumb.”

  “But the video will be so terrific, she won’t be able to resist. And she is so dumb I was afraid she’d ignore the tip and not show up.”

  “You called her?”

  “Not me, she knows my voice.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you have amazing self-control. I would have strangled Walter with his Armani tie back there. So I figured you could handle Bella and I needed you to look a little surprised.”

  Carolyn shook her head, but it didn’t clear up the past few whirling minutes. “I thought Walter brought you in because of — ”

  “Gage and the label? A happy coincidence. He would have called me anyway, no matter how much it made him choke. I was in PR for ten years. Ever heard of the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s just say I was giving the sludge a good name. PR’s nasty, all about manipulating the media. On the other hand, the media can be pretty nasty, too. To individuals. As you will very soon discover.”