by John Niven
A couple of rings on the doorbell. It opens on the guy standing there, a slice of pizza already in his hand.
‘Tim Montgomerie?’ Terry asks.
‘Yeah?’ the guy says, trying to place Terry. A salesman?
Terry brings up the silenced Ruger .22 and shoots him three times in the forehead, the only sound the metallic click of the slide of the automatic, ratcheting softly back and forward. Terry steps over the dead engineer and into the apartment, closing the door behind him, stepping around the spreading pool of blood on the hardwood floor, cocked and alert as he scans the small apartment for any other occupants. Satisfied there are none, he leaves, closing the door behind him.
Terry walks away from the building, back towards his car, the dark street still empty, that dangerous window opposite empty too. The key goes in the ignition and the car moves off. The gun and his gloves go into the East River, down near Hunters Point. Then Terry takes the tunnel back to Manhattan, coming out on FDR Drive, near the UN building, heading north and then west through the night-time neon of Midtown, towards the Plaza.
Now you’d think this meeting would be awkward, wouldn’t you? All these people in one room? The blackmailers and the blackmailees. People with competing agendas. Sworn enemies. But no. This is show business, baby. Geffen would sit down with Azoff. Cowell with Fuller. The lion will regularly lie down with the other lion and they’ll agree not to eat each other for a bit. For where there is a mountain of cash to be made, there is always the possibility of rapprochement. Granted it was a bit awkward at first, what with the paedo and his victim and the victim’s parents and whatnot. But now, after a few hours, with a deal tantalisingly close, I look around and see only harmony – Glen and Bridget Murphy, coked off their nuts, pretending they understand what is going on. Dr Ali, over by the windows, smashing the buffet, having given Lucius a small but calming shot of his milk. Lucius and Connor, reconciled, playing video games on the TV over in the corner. Ruth, Les and Jenny, as ever hunched over their laptops, fingers trilling on the keyboards. Lance Schitzbaul, drunk and belligerent while he huddles with Trellick and Hinckley at the dining table, where our good friend Art is working hard on his 360-degree deal.
Have you heard about such deals? It’s a good one. Way back in the day, in my day, in the nineties, record sales were so massive that we record companies were happy to just have that piece of the pie – the same huge piece we’d been taking since recorded sound was invented, since the first field hand crawled out of a Delta swamp and croaked his miserable blues onto a shellac disc. Then, shortly after the year 2000, after Sean Parker said to us ‘Hey, cunts, check this out’, as CD sales started to decline sharply year after year, we said, ‘Hang on a fucking minute. Our piece of the pie appears to be getting tiny.’ So we came up with the idea of the 360-degree deal. Another term for it might be ‘give us the fucking lot, you tools’. We’d continue to do what record companies have always done – bung you a huge advance and interfere – but now, in return, we get a piece of everything. Recording, publishing, touring revenue, merchandise, sync fees, sponsorship and advertising deals. Our piece of the pie was no longer doing it for us so we helped ourselves to a whole bunch of smaller pieces.
‘But, Art,’ Trellick is saying, patiently trying to explain the distinction between what a label and what a manager does to Mr Pasadena-Have-You-Had-an-Accident-at-Work-I’m-New-to-the-Music-Business, ‘that’s not our decision. You’ll have to broker a separate agreement with Lance to cover that …’
‘Over my dead fucken body …’ Schitzbaul says.
‘Lance …’ Trellick says. ‘We’ve already given a lot here.’
‘Five fucken per cent of touring and merchandise and Christ knows what else?’ Schitzbaul says. ‘This pischer …’
Hinckley clicks his pen, smiles, and says, ‘At this point I have to make the assumption that your client might never tour again.’ He nods towards the bloated form of Du Pre, playing Tetris in the corner, oblivious to his financial fate being carved up.
‘Look, we’ll get the weight off,’ I say. ‘Right, Ruth?’
‘Oh, for sure,’ Ruth shouts over from the sofas, not looking up from her laptop. ‘I know the guy. He does Hanks, DiCaprio.’
‘Two per cent,’ Lance says.
‘Five.’ Art.
‘Hey, are we out of bagels?’ Dr Ali, wandering in the background, useless.
‘Guys, come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s make a deal. Art, be a mensch. Take three per cent.’
‘How about,’ Art says, leaning in, ‘Lance gives us three points on all the ancillary stuff – that’s a point each for me, Glen and Bridget – and you guys –’ meaning me and Trellick, Unigram – ‘up our end of the recording revenue from five per cent to six? That’s two per cent for each us.’ He indicates himself and the Murphys.
Now it is Trellick’s turn to colour and splutter. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ he says. ‘We are cut to the absolute bone on this bloody deal as it is. I mean –’
‘James,’ I say, laying a calming hand on his arm.
‘Six points for doing fuck all?’ Trellick continues.
Art leans back in his chair. ‘Yes, but it’s not “fuck all”, is it, James? It’s us not sending this –’ he strokes his briefcase, the one containing the hard drives, the memory sticks, everything – ‘to every major news outlet in the USA. I mean, it’s great we’re all getting along and everything, but let’s not forget why we’re here …’
‘You lowlife, blackmailing, cocksu—’ Trellick begins. I look at him, negotiating as though his life depends on it, and am filled with an unexpected tenderness for him. Something approaching genuine affection. It helps me to finally make a decision I have, frankly, been struggling with.
‘OK!’ I say, clapping my hands sharply together. ‘Listen, everyone, it’s late. We’re all tired. But no one is leaving this room until we have a deal. So here’s what’s going to happen. Help yourselves to coffee and Danish and whatnot. Me and James are going to go out and have a huddle and come back in and give you our absolute best position on what Unigram can offer. OK? James? Trellick? Come on. Calm down. Let’s take a walk around the block. We’ll be back in ten, fifteen minutes.’
Trellick rants and raves about how we are getting fucked on this all the way down in the elevator.
Outside it is a warm, early-June night, just after 2 a.m. by the clock in the lobby, as we cross 59th Street and stroll slowly into Central Park, towards the boating lake. I am dialling a number on my phone while Trellick continues to talk his hardman lawyer stuff to/at me. ‘I mean, we’re giving the fucking shop away here! What’s the point in going through all of this if we’re not going to make any fucking cash, Steven? What’s the matter with you? I’ve never seen you this … this fucking soft on a deal before! I mean, you’re the fucking owner now! Don’t you want to –’
I bring my finger to my lips, shushing him, as my call is answered. ‘Terry?’ I say. ‘Allahu Akbar.’
I hang up and throw my phone into the lake. Trellick looks at me, thoroughly confused now.
‘What the fuck are you –’ is as far as he gets.
There is a flash of light. And then the gigantic explosion, bigger than I was anticipating, the shock wave from the blast knocking us both back on our heels, even from here, Trellick actually falling over onto the grass. He looks up, to the fourteenth floor of the Plaza, to the brick dust and mortar spraying into the night sky, great chunks of it crashing to the street, hitting cars, setting off alarms, flames rushing upwards from the windows, glass smashing and tinkling down. There is screaming and crying, people running away from the grand hotel. Trellick is going into shock, ‘Oh Jesus, Jesus Christ, what … what …?’
‘It was all getting too fucking complicated …’ I say.
Trellick is staring up at me, his pupils massive, still not comprehending, as a shape comes towards us out of the darkness of the park. ‘James.’ I lean down, putting my hand on his shoulder. He’s shaking. ‘Pull you
rself together. There’s a car over there to take you to La Guardia. The jet’s ready. Get back to LA. We’ve got work to do.’ He looks over my shoulder, into the face of Terry, who I know is standing behind me now. This could go either way, I think. But Trellick starts to laugh.
‘Holy. Fucking. Shit,’ he says.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Fittingly, given his Christianity, his frequent ponderings on the Bible, God smiled upon Lucius Du Pre. Inside the suite, he was the last person left alive.
Old habits die hard and Lucius had taken advantage of the heated arguments raging between the grown-ups to take Connor into the bathroom, to show him some of the new toys he’d had delivered from FAO Schwarz across the street. They’d done a couple of minutes of foreplay, racing the little electronic fish and ducks up and down the huge tub, and had just been getting going properly when the room came apart, disintegrating around them as the sixty pounds of C4 went off in the hall closet.
Connor Murphy, there on his knees, had died instantly as a heavy marble sink exploded out of the wall behind him, smashing into the back of his skull with all the force of an automobile collision. This impact had the unfortunate effect of forcing young Connor’s jaws to shut viciously …
Lucius had instinctively gone to clutch his groin with both hands, but had found he was unable to do so as his left arm had been sheared off at the shoulder by a piece of flying masonry – blood gouting in a thick stream from the ragged hole at the socket. So it was that Lucius had stumbled screaming (screams Lucius himself could no longer hear of course, his eardrums gone, shredded) from the ruined bathroom and into the hellscape of the lounge, clutching his groin with his one remaining hand, blood spurting from the stump where his penis had formerly been (his penis, the cause of so much torment), as he took in the vista that awaited him through streaming eyes: the walls smeared with gore, the wind in his face, cool night air blowing in along the entire north wall of the suite, all gone now, just a jagged hole and the blackness of Central Park clearly visible beyond. Something had passed Lucius – a ball of flames he did not recognise as his former doctor, who had been at the bar when the wall of spirits was instantly transformed into an inferno. Lucius’s feet had knocked into something else and he’d looked down and seen the head of Glen Murphy. Another shape, Glen’s wife, Bridget, had been feebly trying to crawl towards her husband’s head, but she’d stopped moving, a chunk of brickwork the size of an encyclopedia sticking out of her back. There were people Lucius would not see – Arthur Hinckley, attorney-at-law, Lance Schitzbaul, Freddy, industry legend Ruth Blane, PR extraordinaire, and her team. They were the lucky ones – the ones who had been sitting nearest the closet where the device went off, the ones who had simply become blood and viscera at the speed of light. Lucius collapsed onto the floor and looked up at the blackened ceiling, gratefully losing consciousness as the last of his life ebbed away between the fingers clamped around his groin, from the great wound where his arm had been. God’s last favour to Lucius – this oblivion came just before the fireball engulfed the suite, the primary explosion now triggering the secondary devices, the incendiaries hidden around the room, flames consuming everything within it, reducing every corpse to ash, the ash sucked out into the night sky.
About a quarter of a mile away, just a five-minute walk, Chrissy Price was jolted from a deep sleep by the huge explosion that shook the thick windows of Stelfox’s apartment. She hurried to the window and saw it to the north – orange flames, torching up into the darkness above the Plaza. Steven, she just had time to think as her phone started ringing. Shaking, she slid the bar across. ‘It’s me.’
‘What … what’s happening?’
‘I’m OK. Take it easy. I’ll be home in five.’
FIFTY-NINE
We spend the next week at my apartment, the TV in the living room tuned to CNN, the one in the bedroom to Fox. Having anticipated the insane security lockdown that would be taking place in the city – especially in my building – and knowing that the housekeeper or any delivery services would not be allowed access for a while, I took the precaution of making sure the fridges and freezers were heavily stocked with food and drink. There are boxes and boxes of stuff from Dean & Deluca: quiches, chilli, lasagnes, sandwiches, cold cuts.
On the rolling news channels the story of the worst terror attack on New York City since 9/11 gradually unfolds. Thirty-two people killed. Two floors of the hotel destroyed. The huge device, placed in a closet in a suite on the fourteenth floor, the suite being rented by one Mr McCann, who has no backstory anyone can track down. Then the CCTV footage emerges of the man in the Plaza lobby …
The mysterious Dr Ali, his grainy, pixelated, Arabic face appearing constantly on all the news channels, the time-sequenced shots of him walking across the foyer, carrying a heavy backpack, his form slowly becoming as familiar as the smirking features of Mohamed Atta, slinking through Logan in his dark blue shirt.
He checked into the hotel the day before the attack.
He had just returned from an unexplained trip to Quatain: a known terrorist proving ground.
He had a history of drinking and failed marriages. He was once physician to celebrities including the late Lucius Du Pre.
He was a sand negro. A dune coon. A fucking Muzzer.
The raid on his coastal home in Malibu turns up the inevitable materials: casings, timers and the like. The film of C4 explosive in his bathtub. His hard drive is a treasure trove of jihad, of crash courses in bombmaking, of extremist thinking: the well-worn copy of the Quran in his bedside drawer, some of the fierier, juicier, kill-all-unbelievers passages heavily underlined. (Internet rumours immediately begin that this Dr Ali was innocent. That he was a patsy for a darker conspiracy. People on message boards and chat rooms point out that Lucius Du Pre’s ex-manager and a high-profile Hollywood PR woman died in the attack. These accusations are treated like the left-wing conspiracy theories they are. Like the accusations of Russian involvement in the election they are shouted down, drowned out in the nationwide roar of fuck all Muslims.)
The president, of course, goes fucking bananas.
He is most obviously outraged that a ‘beautiful’ building – a building that he routinely points out he once owned, that, contrary to the fake news media, he made a ‘tremendous profit’ on – has been destroyed. But more than this he is gleeful, gloating. Saying how he could have prevented all of this if only the weak, liberal courts had respected his travel ban, a ban which is now back, new and improved, with Quatain added to the list. It is not a good time to worship Allah in America. Attacks on his people skyrocket in the days after the attack. Mosques are smashed. Hijabs are ripped off faces in the street. Last night an angry mob, head to toe in chinos, polo shirts and red MAGA caps and waving flaming torches, marched from Central Park up into Harlem, provoking a full-scale riot in which four people were shot and killed, the violence swelling, engulfing the country, Chrissy weeping in the blue light of the TV while we lie wrapped in Frette sheets, drinking whiskey. The whole country is placed on Defcon 2, cocked like a pistol. Ready for war. I do my bit to help all of this of course, posting like mad on the old sock puppet accounts: ‘MUSLIMS GO HOME.’ ‘MAGA’. I post Pepe the Frogs all over the show. Trump is never off the TV – his yard-long necktie swinging, his face red, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth, both of his hands constantly wanking tiny invisible men as he talks about what is going to be done to the worshippers of the ideology that fostered this egregious attack on America, about the warm work that will be done at Guantánamo and in other, secret, locations. From the way Trump is talking it seems like the treatment suspected Islamic terrorists were getting prior to the Plaza Hotel bombing was on a par with a spa weekend at one of his hotels. I mean, fuck waterboarding, he’s talking car batteries and hacksaws. Racks, Judas cradles and iron maidens. He’s talking about nuking Quatain. (Less reported in the Western media, understandably, they’ve had their hands full, has been the attack – suspected to be the work of Israeli extremi
sts, in actual fact a crack squad of mercenaries subcontracted by Terry – on the home of the Sultan of Quatain. An attack that left the Sultan, his son and all of his staff dead. Also on the news, but far less reported, has been the murder of a Mr Brandon Krell, CFO of Unigram, who was shot and killed on the doorstep of his home in Santa Monica, California, the night before the Plaza bombing. Oh, another thing. Not in the news at all, reported nowhere, is the fact that Norwegian Dance Crew quietly signed to Unigram for 90,000 dollars.)
And there has been warm work for me too.
The day after the attack, via an intermediary, we slip the track to a junior producer at Fox and they use it on the evening news the following night, the ghostly voice of Lucius Du Pre soundtracking the heartbreaking footage from New York City – the ruined facade of the hotel, the body bags being brought out, the grieving wives, husbands and children – as he sings, ‘Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?’ The slow, hypnotic backbeat unfurling at 60-odd bpm, the perfect tempo for soothing, for healing. The track goes nuclear. Within a few days you are hearing it everywhere you go. In diners. In taxis. In shops. At football games. It is streamed over a billion times on Spotify alone within a single week, pissing all over the Sheerans, the Biebers and the Drakes. Needless to say The Resurrection – the ‘new’ Du Pre album I have cobbled together from out-takes and odds and sods – will be ready to go by the end of the month. We are expecting record business.
Unigram’s share price rockets.
