Slick

by Daniel Price

  I was hot tonight. That yanked Hunta, Simba, and the Judge well onto my side. Four little, five little, six little Indians.

  And then there was one. Maxina crossed her arms, locked in dissent. “Scott, if there’s one thing I learned in my many years in the field, it’s that the press always finds a way to make the black man the bad guy. It’s what they do.”

  “What they do,” I countered, “is sell our eyeballs to their advertisers. Black. White. It’s all green to them. As soon as our stand-in spills the beans, the media’s one burning question will be ‘Who framed Hunta?’ It’s a fresh new angle. A hip-hop political thriller. Believe me, they’ll ride that wave as far as they can take it.”

  “Uh-huh. And what if it takes them right to you?”

  Touché. I didn’t have time to finish that part of the equation. I knew I’d be the one playing the cigarette-smoking man, the guy with the trenchcoat and the briefcase full of cash. And once our ringer let the cat out of the bag, there would certainly be an investigation. To make matters worse, there had to be a second voice on that insurance tape. Also yours truly.

  “I won’t lie,” I said. “It’s a huge risk. But the risk is all on my part. Even if I told the truth under heat lamps, nobody would buy it. It’s just too crazy to think that Hunta hired someone to frame himself.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” he muttered.

  “So what would you do?” asked Big Bank.

  “Get a good lawyer. Implicate the government. I don’t know. There’ll be plenty of time to work out the contingencies. The important thing is that this will work.”

  Simba scratched her chin. “I don’t know, Scott. This still sounds risky. For all of us.”

  Doug stood up. “Listen, I think it’s definitely worth considering. But I’d like to talk to the Judge and Maxina alone for a few minutes, if that’s all right.”

  “Hold on,” snapped Hunta. “This is my life we’re messing with. When do I get my say?”

  The Judge switched to paternal mode. “The final decision’s yours, Jeremy. We just need to decide if we want to recommend it to you.”

  “Just hang tight,” Maxina told him. “We’ll be back.”

  Maxina returned Latisha to her mother. In grim silence, she, Doug, and the Judge marched into the master bedroom and closed the door. I got the silly mental image of the three of them sharing the bathtub. There’d be room for about a cup of water.

  For now it was just me and the obscenely chiseled half of the party. I sat down on a couch.

  “So,” I quipped, “I think they went for it.”

  Hunta toweled off and dropped down next to me. Big Bank threw him a hand-rolled cigarette and a lighter. As soon as he lit up, my nose confirmed that the tabacci was a little wacky.

  “They didn’t want me in on this meeting in the first place,” he said, taking a drag. “I said fuck that. It’s my life. I got a right to hear this for myself.”

  “And now that you have?”

  “Now that I have, I’m glad you ain’t working for the other side,” he said with a laugh. “You one slick motherfucker.”

  I grinned. “I don’t do this every day.”

  “So how do you know it’ll work?” asked Simba.

  “I can’t guarantee that everything will be perfect again, but I know that if we get to the cameras first, Lisa will be stopped dead in her tracks.”

  Hunta nodded, impressed. “It’s a crazy plan, but I’m starting to like it.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to mislead you. It won’t be a walk in the park. There’d be at least a week, maybe two, in between our woman’s accusation and her confession. During that time, you won’t like being you.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Because you’ve still got that Melrose cloud over you. If we play this right, our actress won’t just draw all the bad air away from Lisa, but from Annabelle too. That’ll take some time.”

  “Yeah but—”

  “Trust me, the more they fry you, the more crow they’ll eat when we pull the rug out from under them. It’s to your benefit.”

  “Yeah but the Grammys are coming up. I don’t want this shit hanging over me at the Grammys.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know you were up for one.”

  “He’s not,” said Simba. “But he’s scheduled to perform a number with L-Ron. At least for now.”

  He squeezed my arm, blowing thick smoke through his nostrils. “Look, man, I’ve been dreaming about doing the Grammys since I was a kid. I got family. I got friends watching. This is everything I worked for. If you can clear all this shit before then—”

  “When are the Grammys again?”

  “February twenty-first,” said Big Bank.

  I waved my hand. “That’s three weeks from now. By then the whole country will be kissing your ass, apologizing for ever doubting you.”

  Hunta patted my back, grinning. “You just became my hero.”

  “Let’s see what the others say. But I’ll tell you this, guys: if we move forward with my idea, we can’t just keep it under our hats. We have to keep it under our scalps. That means nobody else hears about this. Not even your family. For every Michael Jackson, there’s a LaToya.”

  Big Bank nodded. “We know how to keep a secret.”

  “That’s all I need to hear.”

  Hunta grinned thoughtfully. “You know, ‘Pac would’ve been into your shit.”

  I laughed. “Me? Why?”

  “When he was doing his time, he got into Machiavelli. I mean, really got into him. He must’ve read The Prince like a thousand times. He loved all that scheming and plotting business. He cut his last album under the name Makaveli.”

  “Really,” I said. “You know, a lot of historians believe that Machiavelli faked his own death.”

  “Yeah,” said Hunta, intrigued. “I know. That’s where ‘Pac got the idea.”

  “Wow. I thought that was just an urban legend.”

  Hunta got solemn. “Oh, he didn’t do it. He just talked about it. The only reason he was out of jail was ’cause Suge bailed him out while the lawyers appealed the rape verdict and all that. If they lost, he would’ve had to go back. ’Pac didn’t want that. No way. If that happened, he probably would’ve done it. Faked a murder. Got a new face and shit. Ain’t no way he was going back.”

  He took another long drag off his joint. “But he didn’t do it. I know that for sure. I was there when he got hit. I seen him in the coma. And I seen him dead.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, so am I. But he lived the last year of his life like he knew it was the last year of his life, you know what I’m sayin’? When it came to livin’ large, he was King Kong, man. It ain’t the amount of time, it’s what you do with it.”

  “But they never caught his killers.”

  “The police? No.”

  Big Bank got wary. “Jer...”

  “What? I don’t know shit about it. I’m just speculating, is all. Ain’t no way Suge would’ve let them killers keep walking around, all notorious and big.”

  Simba rolled her eyes. “Baby, shut up and keep smoking.”

  Hunta shrugged at me. Suddenly, I got hit with that “second day of school” feeling. Maybe it was all the conspiracy thinking, or the marijuana smoke I was reluctantly inhaling. Either way, I knew I still had a lot to learn, way too much for me to be acting this confident.

  Doug opened the bedroom door. “Scott?”

  ________________

  Just like yesterday, Maxina leaned back on the emperor-size bed. The Judge sat on the other side. Doug closed the door behind me and motioned to the chair. From Maxina’s face, it was obvious which way the troika split.

  “Against my advice,” she began, “the Judge and Doug have agreed that your plan is the best course of action. I, however, am not a big fan of human sacrifice.”

  “You just haven’t tried it, then.”

  Maxina wasn’t amused. “Scott, I need to get back to my part of the project, so I’m simply g
oing to say my piece and leave. I think that some cures are worse than the disease. Apparently, I’m in the minority, but it’s not my dime. If your scheme achieves everything you say it will, you’ll be our secret savior. And I’ll be right there with the best of them, whispering your praises. But if you destroy an innocent woman in the process, I will be your bane. Your karma. Your comeuppance. You understand me? Whoever this girl is, I’m not going to let you use her and throw her away like Kleenex. I want you to do everything in your power to protect her.”

  “That was my plan from the beginning.” And may I remind you that I’m doing all this to avoid destroying Lisa Glassman? Give me some credit, woman.

  I had to hand it to Maxina, though. She was one of the few people who could see past my granite expression, straight on through to my surface thoughts. In very clear images, I told her she had me all wrong. With equal silent precision, she told me to prove it.

  “All right,” she said. “Looks like we all have a lot of work to do. Someone help me up, please.”

  Once again, Doug assisted her, all the way to the door.

  “The minute the news breaks about the ‘Bitch Fiend’ tape,” she informed me, “the race is on. You’ll need to have your show ready to launch by Wednesday at the very latest.”

  “We’ll be ready by Tuesday.”

  “Good man,” she replied with cautionary emphasis. She said her goodbyes and left.

  Doug closed the door behind her and settled down in her sunken place. “Despite what she thinks, the Judge and I agree that your plan is brilliant.”

  “If it works,” the Judge added.

  “If it works,” Doug echoed. “What do you need from us?”

  “The lowdown on every woman who attended that Christmas party. Strike the ones who’ve worked with you anytime since then. Strike the ones who are married or close to married. Strike the ones who are known or rumored to be super-promiscuous. And definitely strike the ones who are known or rumored to have had sex with Hunta. Hopefully, that leaves a few.”

  “More than a few,” said Doug. “If they worked for us even once, we’ve got a whole file on them.”

  “Perfect. I’d like to see those files as soon as possible.”

  “Fine. We can fax you what we—”

  “No faxes. Just keep the papers at your place and we’ll review them tomorrow. The earlier the better. I want enough time to pick three good candidates and run a background check on each of them.”

  The two men traded satisfied grins, as if they were working with the legendary Jackal.

  “Anything else, Scott?”

  “Yes,” I added, wishing I had a cigarette to pad their false impression. “It’s time we talked about money.”

  ________________

  Between all the plotting, scheming, and fee-wrangling, I had very little time to process the personal ramifications of my proposal. I knew whatever solution I came up with would be deceptive, even underhanded. That was just the nature of the business. But it had finally hit me that my frame-within-a-frame, my secondhand smoke screen, went way beyond the definition of “publicity stunt.” I was orchestrating massive fraud. Before Hunta, my worst-case scenario always stopped at a civil suit. Now it kept right on going, all the way to jail time. That was a lot of risk for $160,000 and a rapper I’d never even heard of before Thursday.

  Ira felt compelled to offer his blind advice: “Walk away. It’s not worth it.”

  We sat on the deck of the Ishtar, eating take-out Chinese food and watching the calm black waters of the Pacific. It looked so peaceful out there in the open sea. I wanted to hoist the anchor and ride off into the night, just to enjoy some real quiet for a change. Of course, I’d have to get rid of Ira.

  “Seriously. It’s futile. Whenever a white kid goes on a killing spree, someone has to take the blame. Remember Columbine? The politicians went after Marilyn Manson, despite the fact that the killers didn’t even like his music. The only thing that saved him in the end was obsolescence. I mean, who cares about an androgynous Goth freak when you’ve got all these bad-ass gangstas running around, singing about their bitches and AKs? So unless something even scarier than rap comes along, I’d say your man is hosed.”

  I didn’t tell Ira anything about Lisa Glassman or my cure for her. I wasn’t sure why I kept my mouth shut. After all, I trusted him fifty times more than the people already in on the joke. Out of all of them, I was worried the most about Hunta himself. I got the nervous sense that once the heat got high—or he did—he was liable to spill everything.

  “Annabelle Shane wasn’t white,” I corrected.

  “What?”

  “She was half-black, half-Thai. There wasn’t a drop of white in her.”

  Ira took another forkful of lo mein. “Well, she looked white. And she was middle class. That’s all that matters. You’re pissing in a hurricane.”

  I checked my watch. After thirty-two minutes with Ira, I was already starting to appreciate places like “elsewhere.” Really, he wasn’t a bad guy if you took him in fun-sized doses.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “It’s not worth the grief. Besides, it’s not like you’re hard up for money.”

  “How do you know? “

  “Because you don’t exactly live the wild life.”

  “No, but I do have a mess of dwindling tech stocks.”

  He nearly spit out his food. “Still? I warned you to get your money out!”

  It’s true. He did. Three years ago. This was the same guy who treated Y2K like an Extinction-Level Event. He took all his cash out of the banks, loaded up the boat with Ensure, and made damn certain he was at least a hundred miles off the mainland when the computers hit the big double zero. He even asked me if I wanted to join him on his safe getaway. No thanks. Even if society did crumble, I saw being stuck at sea with Ira as one of those post-apocalyptic futures where the living envied the dead. He ended up riding his ark alone, until he got bored enough to come back.

  But he was right. I wasn’t hard up for money. In truth, only a minuscule portion of my nest egg was wrapped up in investments, and not because of Ira’s portent. I still remembered the painful lessons of October 19, 1987, the day the Dow tripped and fell a mile. On that awful Black Monday, I lost $7,200 of my hard-earned savings, everything I’d squirreled away since college. I didn’t exactly bawl over my bad fortune, but I did hurl some pissy words up God’s way. In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have taken it so personally. That was a bad day for a lot of people.

  One notable exception was Jean Spelling, then known as Jean McKnight. That was the day her own investment finally paid off. It had taken nine long months of hard work and mood swings, but it was worth it. While everyone else cried over their losses, she ended the day with a six-pound, nine-ounce gain. She named it Madison.

  ________________

  Madison told me the story herself, thirteen and a half years later, from my very own couch.

  “I think it cursed me somehow,” she professed, with a rising inflection that made her statements sound like questions. “Being born on Black Monday. All my life, I’ve been like a business jinx. When my mom and dad were married, they put all their money into this sign language school that folded within a year. Then my mom and my stepfather started this company that sold special movie theater seats that let deaf people see captions. That went bust. Now he does captions for live TV events and even that’s not going well. And don’t get me started on my mom’s so-called web design business. Sometimes I really think it’s me. I’ve got this black-cat thing going on.”

  I sat across the room from her, listening, nodding, and covertly e-mailing her mother from my laptop.

  Your daughter is here. I’ll try to stall her as long as I can. Please come soon.

  I had returned from the Ishtar at 9:30 only to find Madison waiting outside my apartment door. In brighter light, I could see that she had inherited her mother’s sharp blue eyes, her perfect bone structure, and her tendency to drop by unannounced. It was
also clear from her rumpled clothes and unwashed golden hair that she had yet to make her way home.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me how I found you?”

  That was the first thing she said to me in the hallway. I already knew the answer. My instant reaction was to play dumb. If Madison knew her mother was one step ahead of her, she might flee for an even less obvious hiding place. I decided my good deed for the year would be to capture this stray cat myself.

  “Actually, I was going to ask why you found me.”

  “I used a reverse directory,” she bragged. “It used to be that only the cops and phone companies had them. Now they’re all over the Web.”

  “That’s pretty clever. How did you get here?”

  “SuperShuttle. I also did some research on you. I found a lot of your old press releases. They’re really good. You write them just like articles.”

  “Journalists are busy people,” I said. “They can use all the help they can get.”

  “Yeah, but I love how you bury the things you’re selling into the story itself. I mean you’re really subtle. I want to learn how to do that.”

  I leaned against the wall. “Madison—”

  “You remembered my name.”

  “I’m good with names.”

  “I’m not. I’m only good with faces.”

  “Madison, what’s going on?”

  She lost her smile. Now she looked as frazzled and desperate as Jean. “Can I come in?”

  “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  No. That’s why she’s here. “No. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Look, Madison, I don’t want to get involved in some domestic thing.”

  “It’s nothing tragic,” she insisted. “It’s not like she beats me or anything. It’s just...Look, can I just come in? I promise I won’t stay long.”

  After a quality pause, I let her in. Obviously, I didn’t want to seem too eager, lest she get suspicious. But it was all a Method act. The real Scott wasn’t in the mood for live family drama. He just wanted to watch HBO until he fell asleep.