by John Niven
‘God knows,’ Terry says. ‘Must be in disguise.’
Terry is a total fucking pro. ‘Terry? I owe you one.’
‘Not a problem. Nice to get paid for actually doing something once in a while. On that note, I have to say, if you want my professional opinion, Dr Ali, Schitzbaul, the Murphys … the old loose ends are fairly stacking up on this one …’
He’s not wrong. I think about all this for a moment, through my screeching hangover. ‘OK. Bring Trellick up to speed and tell him we’ll need the jet to go to New York. I’m going back to bed for a bit. Anything else?’
‘Bunch of messages from that Chrissy. Want me to get back to her for you?’
Get back to her. I think of all the things that could mean in the formidable context of Terry Rawlings. Where there is a man there is a problem. No man, no problem. ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Leave it just now.’
The following morning Terry and I are sitting in a limo idling on West 59th Street, Central Park South, just across from the Plaza. We drove the short walk here from my apartment on Fifth Avenue, where I dropped my bag off. My hangover has moved from ‘critical’ into simply ‘unpleasant’, further soothed by a Xanax and a Bloody Mary on the flight from LA. On the jet, in the bedroom with the door closed, I finally spoke to Chrissy. ‘Well,’ she said after a bit, ‘what do you want to do, Steven?’
What did I want to do? Normally of course she’d have been flat on her back with her feet in stirrups faster than you could say ‘Roe v. Wade’. But, for some reason, some unholy unfathomable reason, I couldn’t pull the trigger. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s crazy at the moment, with the takeover? There’s problems with some other stuff that I can’t even begin to go into right now. I should be back from New York tomorrow. We’ll sit down. Talk. Figure it out.’ (Talk? Figure it out? What’s wrong with me? I’m riddled with goodness.)
‘OK,’ Chrissy said. ‘But, you know. There’s kind of a ticking-clock element to this …’
‘I understand. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I hung up and watched the billion-dollar battlements of Manhattan glittering in the sunshine on our left as the G5 banked over the East River, turning towards La Guardia.
Terry’s phone chirrups into life and he picks it up. ‘Righto. Got you. Thanks.’ He hangs up. ‘We’re up. 1411.’
And we’re out of the limo, across the lanes of busy traffic, through the lobby and into the elevator, Terry pressing the button for the fourteenth floor. Terry’s boy on the inside said the only thing that brings Mr McCann in 1411 to the door of his suite is the clatter of the room-service trolley. We sat in the limo and waited until we got the call that Mr McCann was expecting delivery of an order. (Three pizzas and, apparently, the entire dessert menu. Who the fuck is the mad bastard entertaining in there?)
Terry knocks on the door. A muffled ‘Who is it?’
‘Room service,’ Terry says in his best New York accent.
A muffled ‘Just a minute’, the door swings open and –
Some fat cunt in a robe is standing there, the robe barely managing to tether around his waist. He has a Post-it note stuck to his forehead with the word ‘JESU’ written on it. Terry’s hand goes instantly towards the swelling under his left shoulder, but I grab him, stopping him, recognising something, something about the eyes set in that jowelled mass of a face.
‘Lucius?’ I say, scarcely able to believe I’m saying it.
He squints and asks, ‘Are you Jesu? PTOWW!’
It … it’s unbelievable. How come no one recognised Lucius Du Pre fruiting around airports and hotels? Around the streets of New York? Because they weren’t looking for fucking three of him. He has to weigh sixteen stone. He has toilet paper stuffed in his ears and little bits of Plaza note-paper stuck all over himself, with something written on them in pencil. The single word ‘JESU’. We hear the ping of the elevator from down the hall and Terry pushes past him into the suite – ignoring his squeaked ‘HEY’ – and I follow, closing the door behind me. The suite is quite the scene – plates, glasses, dishes, endless Coke cans. I turn to Du Pre as he sits down heavily in a low armchair. His robe falls open and I inadvertently catch sight of his penis. It is small and mottled, like much of the rest of his skin. (However, at least it looks to be intact. Considering all the surgery he’s had done to the rest of himself it wouldn’t have surprised me to see he’d got up to something truly crazy down there, like an extension job, or having it removed and replaced with something more mental. A fanny. An anteater’s proboscis, the liquorice strip of the tongue darting out, flicking away at his balls.)
‘What … what the fuck happened to you?’ I manage, sitting down opposite him while he rearranges the folds of the robe. I take the toilet paper out of the cunt’s ears as he stares at me blankly. ‘It’s Steven, Lucius. From Unigram. Steven Stelfox?’
‘Oh, Mr Fox. Oh good. You can help me. We can do a different kind of show. BRROOGHHH!’ he says.
‘What? What fucking show?’
There’s a knock at the door. Terry goes down the hallway and I hear voices and then the door closes and Terry is wheeling a trolley laden with food into the room. Lucius’s eyes brighten and he goes to stand up. I hold his wrist. His wrist is like a kneecap. His arms are like legs. His legs are like torsos and so on. ‘Just start,’ I say, ‘… start at the beginning.’
‘I will be onstage, with a thousand children. And we will all be in white. And they will come unto me and be healed,’ he begins.
Half an hour later I’m just staring at him. I have never really understood the meaning of the phrase ‘off your meds’ until this moment. Clearly the heart-stopping amount of pharmaceutical uppers and downers Lucius has been on for years had been performing the function of some kind of restraining bolt, some inhibitor circuit. Unleashed from them, free and unfettered, the cunt has gone crazier than a tower block of shithouse rats. I steal the odd glance at Terry while I listen to Lucius outline his plans for renewed world domination. It goes on for a very long time …
‘You see, Mr Stalefix, I have had my forty days and my forty nights. I have wandered in the wilderness of the barren desert. MNNNGG! Praise Jesus. Frrt. And now I am ready to come back to my people and to bring forth the word of what I have learned. And there will be no shame. No shame for what I have done. No, sir. For it was a beautiful thing and together we can tell the world that.’
‘Tell them what, exactly, Lucius?’
‘That what I did was an act of love. Listen, I have my new single. “I LOVE JESU! HE LOVES ME! ME AND JESU ARE SO HAPPY!”’
From what I can gather the cunt is proposing that he not only confesses to buggering kids but that we present it as some sort of holy act. That the world simply hasn’t caught up with his level of enlightenment yet. Like he’s a fucking iron in 1966 or something, just waiting for it all to become legal. From the sounds of it he’s proposing to launch some new religion that sounds like a cross between Scientology and NAMBLA, while looking like Jocky Wilson who fell asleep on a sunbed for three weeks. And then, to cap it all off, he’s proposing a stage show where he touches up thousands of kids.
I mean, I’ve heard some crazed balls in my time, I’ve worked with fucking Rage, but this, this is something of a different order. More than anything else, it’s myself I’m angry at. How could I have thought we could possibly work with this cunt? Control him?
‘… and I will come out onto the stage, the stage covered in white rose petals, and I will kiss the boy, an act of love, yes, Mr Stalfax, and the world will see that there is no shame. BNNOOOO! No shame at all, sir. And … I LOVE JESU! HE LOVES ME! ME AND JESU ARE –’
I nod to Terry. Terry reaches into his jacket and comes silently up behind Du Pre.
‘SO HAPP—OW!’ He turns and looks at Terry, who has withdrawn the needle as quickly as it went in. ‘What did –’
‘Lucius?’ I say. ‘You need to get some rest.’
‘Oh, but my time of rest is over. He says in Corinthians, verse sev—’ Luciu
s keels forward onto the floor mid-sentence, out cold.
‘Thank you, Terry,’ I say.
‘Pleasure.’
With great effort, Terry drags Du Pre off across the carpet and into the bedroom. He returns to find me looking out the window, into the New York night. ‘So what now?’ Terry asks. ‘He’ll be out for a while.’
‘Get yourself a room,’ I say. ‘I need to think.’
FORTY-FOUR
I remember the first time I made more than a hundred grand in a year. That was kind of a milestone, twenty years ago, way back in 1997. Back then that kind of income would get you a mortgage for half a million quid. You could buy a house in Notting Hill for that kind of money in 1997. So I did. Then another. And another. By the time I turned thirty, I was a millionaire. And that’s another milestone, a million quid. You briefly feel like a player. Until you start hanging out with people with real money. Then your sights logically shift onto making ten million. I hit that in 2007, after five years and five seasons of American Pop Star, when the show was firmly established in the number-one slot and the network offered me five million a year for another five years plus a ten-million-dollar signing bonus. And then you start to do some fun stuff – buying a proper house. Indulging yourself in a few bits of Warhol and Damien Hirsts and the Aston Martins and flying first class on your own dime and all that shit. The problem is, once you’re worth ten million, you’re hanging out with some genuine made men. The guys who own the networks, who own the multinationals who advertise on your show, the bankers who advise these guys. True. Fucking. Players. You’re standing there with fuck all to say while they compare interior finishes on their new 727s. You might as well have the fucking Big Issue in your hand. So you think, right. A hundred million. A hundred million fucking dollars. Then every cunt can fuck off. You get there and you start doing all the stuff you’ve been reading about – the private jets and the yachts and the rest of it. And then what? At the point where you have enough money never to have to think about money again, you have to deal with something pretty interesting. It’s called you. Astonishingly, and contrary to what I believed when I was younger, all the pumping and sucking and grinding and larging it in the world does not seem to fill this thing called ‘you’. You start looking at the very top of the mountain – eyeing up that tiny plinth crammed with Zuckerbergs and Murdochs and Geffens and mad fucking oligarchs. Billionaires. And I am close. I am so close. There’s a ticking clock on this. You’re fucking right there is. Go big or go home.
My attention drifts back to the TV playing softly in the corner of Du Pre’s suite, a reporter, talking to camera. He’s standing next to what looks like the Thames. Then I notice the headline – ‘TERROR ATTACK IN LONDON’. I thumb the sound up and watch for a few minutes. The guys jumping out of their van and going crackers with machetes. It’s about as low rent as you get – basically the aftermath of a Millwall game in the seventies. They’re still speculating as to the racial identity of the attackers – all shot dead of course – but we know. Everyone watching knows …
As night falls over Central Park I gather my thoughts and make a few notes. I call room service and order coffee. I drink two cups and then I call Terry and run him through my thinking. He sits back and then does that low whistle through gritted teeth thing.
‘Impossible?’ I ask.
‘Difficult,’ he says. ‘Not impossible.’
‘How long would prep take?’
‘I’ll need to get my hands on a few bits and pieces and we’ll need to take care of a few backstory elements. Two days minimum, going flat out. Gonna cost you too, I’m afraid.’
‘Ballpark.’
Terry names an amount in the mid seven figures. I think for a moment. ‘OK then,’ I say. ‘Let’s rock.’
‘Gonna be a fair amount of collateral on this, boss …’
‘Yeah, well. Omelette and eggs and all that, Terry.’
He nods and stands up. ‘I’ll need the jet.’
‘I’ll tell Trellick. I’ll stay here with laughing boy.’ I nod towards the bedroom next door. I pat my pocket, locating the brown tub of Demerol Terry brought, about enough to keep the crazed molester docile for a couple of days. ‘Right, get to it.’ Terry heads for the door. I start making a to-do list …
Trellick
Dr Ali
Schitzbaul and Fred
Art Hinckley
Glen, Bridget & Connor Murphy
Ruth Blane, Les and Jenny
The Sultan and family
Brandon Krell
Chrissy?
FORTY-FIVE
‘For the last time, Brandon, just tell them that as far as I know everyone’s jobs are secure and the new management team have no plans for redundancies.’ James Trellick slammed the phone down. Jesus Christ. The last few days had been brutal. When the news had broken there were dozens of phone calls like the one he had just hung up on: an entire company freaking out about the rumours that they were about to be out on their arse. Then, on top of all of this, there was the small matter of their golden goose going AWOL. He looked at the drinks cabinet in the corner of his office. Then at the clock – just after eleven. Fuck it. Sun’s over the yardarm. It’s five o’clock somewhere and all that. He was in the process of pouring himself a stiff belt of Grey Goose when the phone started ringing again. He hit the speaker. ‘Yes, Sam?’
‘Steven from New York on two.’
Hitting the button. ‘What the fuck’s going on up there?’
‘I’ve got him.’
‘Oh, thank fuck.’
‘Listen, plan A is out of the window.’
‘What? What the fuck? Listen, we –’
‘No time to go into it right now. We’re going another way.’
‘What other way?’
‘James, you really don’t want to know.’
‘But Lucius, what’s happening with Lucius?’
‘Lucius is gone.’
‘How do you mean “gone”?’
‘He answered the door covered in Post-it notes saying “JESUS” with bog roll stuffed in his ears. He’s literally howling at the moon. He wants to do a fucking stage show where he touches up a bunch of kids and sings about Jesus.’
‘Oh fuck me.’
‘Listen, I need you to get someone in A&R to book some time at a decent studio here in New York – for tonight and tomorrow – and get me a good engineer.’
‘What? What the fuck am I? A&R coordinator?’
‘Just get it done. Then courier all the Du Pre out-takes from LA to the NewYork studio. Especially the reel marked “acappella stuff”. OK? Then – are you getting all this?’ Trellick scribbled something down – ‘then get your marked-up copies of the Hinckley/Murphy contracts in order and bring them with you to New York.’
‘I’m coming to New York?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘Is there any point in asking what the fuck the plan is?’
‘Not really. Later.’ The line went dead.
‘SAM!’ Trellick shouted through the open door.
He had that drink.
FORTY-SIX
Dr Ali Hussain hadn’t been to the golf course so much in the last week. He was drinking far too much for that, as well as taking frequent hits from his own supply of goodies. He’d fucked up. His one responsibility – keep him happy and keep him here – and he’d fucked it up. Relations with the Sultan and his heartbroken son had been frosty at best.
Where on earth had Lucius gone? All day, every day, he kept watching the news expecting to see the breaking story: found dead. All he wanted now was to go home. Back to his beach house in Malibu. Would he even get paid now? He almost had enough money not to need to work any more. He should have had more put away. All those wives. Fucking bitches. ‘Stay put,’ that guy Terry had told him. Who the fuck was he anyway? Ali worked for Lucius and, to a certain extent, Lance. This Stelfox guy who was calling the shots, who the fuck was he? Ali looked forlornly into his closet, at the bag he’d packed days
ago, expecting to be summoned home. But no, here he languished, in limbo. In exile. His supply of girls had been cut off by the Sultan too. Without the golf and the fucking what was there here? MMFD. Maybe he could … just get on a plane. Go anywhere. Start over. But there had been something in that guy Terry’s voice. An edge. Something you didn’t want to fuck with. It took him a moment to realise that the buzz cutting through CNN (the London terror attack – his ‘brothers’, ones who claimed to worship the same God as him. How could they …) was his cellphone, marooned somewhere in the middle of the enormous bed. He found it. An overseas number. ‘Hello?’ Ali said.
‘Ali?’ the voice said, calm, gentle.
‘Yes?’
‘Steven Stelfox.’
‘Mr Stelfox, Steven, I … I’m so sorry about what happened. He, Lucius, he deceived me. I had no idea he was planning to do wh—’
‘Hey, enough of that. Pack your bags, old friend, and get yourself on a plane. You’re needed in New York, right away. There’s a room reserved for you at the Plaza. Ask for Mr McCann after you’ve checked in.’
‘But … Lucius, do you know –’
‘We found him. No harm done. See you in a couple of days.’
Click. And that was it. No censure. No abuse.
Ali did a little dance.
He was going home.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lance Schitzbaul was coping with the current situation better than most. Given the pressure of the last few months he’d developed a stress-busting routine: he began drinking a double bourbon on the hour, every hour, from the moment he woke up. Somewhere around lunchtime he stepped this up to one every half-hour. By the early evening he was just necking the Wild Turkey or Four Roses straight from the bottle. Combining this with regular handfuls of Xanax, he found he could contrive to pass out somewhere around 10 p.m. every night. When the phone rang it was late afternoon in Pacific Palisades and Lance was just the right side of total oblivion.
‘Herrro?’ he said.
