Madison's Avenue

by Mike Brogan

  “Yes, please.”

  Smiling, he placed her luggage in the trunk.

  “And where would you be stayin’, ma’am?” he asked with a lilting Caribbean accent as he drove off.

  “Ottley’s Inn.”

  “‘tis a lovely place.”

  “So is St. Kitts,” she said, as his headlights illuminated brilliant crimson flowers, and a row of majestic palm trees swaying in the breeze.

  “Mighty nice of you to say, ma’am.”

  Soon she saw pedestrians in various hues of black, brown, tan and white, strolling beside tin-roofed homes tucked into the lush hills. A giant mountain loomed to the north, the last rays of the sun painting its summit orange-red.

  “What’s that mountain?”

  “Mount Liamuiga.”

  “It’s huge!”

  “A volcano too,” he said, looking back at her with a grin.

  “Really? When did it last erupt?”

  “Way back when I was just a kid.”

  “Which year?”

  “1843.” He giggled and slapped his thigh.

  His giggle made her laugh, and the laughing felt good.

  “Liamuiga’s about 4,000 feet high. Crater’s a mile wide. Nelly, that’s my niece, she takes tours up there. Beautiful orchids in the rain forest. Green monkeys, too. More monkeys than people on St. Kitts.”

  “I’d love a tour if I can find some time.”

  He handed her his card over the seat. “Just call me. Name’s Fletcher.”

  “Okay, Fletcher.”

  Minutes later, he pulled into a driveway that curved into Ottley’s Inn, a magnificent old estate with a sprawling yellow main house and several cottages. She’d read that back in the 1700s it had been a major sugar plantation. Today, it was a luxurious resort nestled among thirty-five acres of manicured lawns, rolling hills and lush tropical gardens. It looked peaceful, romantic.

  In the bright, attractive lobby, she signed in quickly. As she headed toward her room, she noticed a tall man in a dark business suit step from a taxi and stroll toward the lobby. He looked familiar.

  Was he on my flight? she wondered. She seemed to recall him sitting in first class.

  “This way, ma’am,” the bellhop said, leading her down a hallway. Her room was charming: carved mahogany and wicker furniture, a queen-sized bed, lovely paintings, colorful plants and the tart scent of tiger lilies thanks to the slow-rotating ceiling fan. Out her window, the Atlantic rolled gently toward the shore.

  She tipped the bellhop, hung up her clothes, then took out her new RangeRoamer international phone, which she’d been assured worked in over eighty countries. She searched its “phonebook” feature and found Linda Langstrom’s number. Linda, her best friend, had been her roommate at Wellesley College for four years, and over that time became the sister Madison always wanted.

  After graduation, Linda joined National Media and was promoted rapidly. Today, she and her team negotiated the advertising rates for prime time cable programs. National Media purchased billions of dollars of television and radio commercial time for ad agencies’ clients over the years.

  Madison dialed Linda’s cell phone and Linda picked up on the first ring.

  “Hey, Maddy. How’s it going today?”

  “A little better, Lin.”

  “I’ll come stay with you.”

  “No, I’m OK.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. But thanks for offering. Actually, I called you on behalf of one of our Executive Vice Presidents. She wondered whether our MedPharms client is paying you greedy guys at National Media too much for television time?”

  “You can never pay us too much,” Linda said with a chuckle. “But let me look into it. I’ll compare MedPharms rates to other companies with similar spending levels on the same programming. By the way, which EVP is asking?”

  “Karla Rasmussen.”

  “Ah, yes ... Karla the Cannibal.”

  Madison smiled.

  “The woman chews up our young planners and spits ‘em out.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “She chews up our time, too, Maddy. Extra reports. Media research. Comparisons. Analysis. If you don’t mind my saying it, she’s a piece of work. On the other hand, I shouldn’t complain.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The woman sends us a ton of advertising money.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Where can I reach you, Madison?”

  “This cell phone is best for the next few days.”

  “I’ll have something for you by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Thanks, Lin.”

  They hung up.

  As Madison turned she nudged her purse and Kevin Jordan’s business card fell out. She picked it up and smiled.

  Kevin ... the best thing that happened to her since she’d come to New York. Before New York, too. He was considerate without faking it, smart without flaunting it, and passionate about work without being obsessive about it.

  But how does he feel about me? she wondered. He was obviously concerned because she’d lost her father, and because she’d been attacked. But it was probably just concern.

  She walked to the window and looked out at the stars hovering over the black moonlit sea. In the distance, a cruise ship lit up like a floating Christmas tree, inching its way south. She felt like she was watching the Travel Channel....

  She also felt tired. She yawned, took a hot bath, and minutes later was sound asleep in bed.

  * * *

  Two rooms away, Eugene P. Smith was wide awake. He poured Bowmore single malt scotch into a large glass tumbler, marveling at how the 25-year-old amber liquid danced over and around the ice cubes. He sipped the velvet liquid onto his tongue, savoring the cultivated taste.

  He leaned back in his chair and scrolled the television channels to a rerun of Fawlty Towers, a BBC comedy he got hooked on when the CIA posted him in London. Without taking his eyes off the television, he began to assemble the pieces of his plastic Glock handgun. He’d packed each piece in a separate location, and once again each piece had sailed through airport security undetected.

  Sipping more scotch, he flipped open his cell phone and dialed Harry Burkett’s home phone. Burkett picked up on the first ring.

  “Jennifer...?” Burkett said in a high, zippy voice.

  Sounding young for your underage girls, Harry? Smith thought.

  “It’s Eugene.”

  “Oh....” An octave lower. “You there already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s gonna tell the banker she’s Mark McKean’s daughter and demand the account information!” Burkett, as usual, sounded on the verge of panic.

  “Harry...?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The bank has written instructions not to reveal any information on the account to anyone, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even to family members, right?”

  “Right, but–”

  “Relax, Harry!”

  “Gimme one good reason why I should relax?”

  Smith paused. “Her room is fifty feet away from mine.”

  Two hours later, Smith left his room and walked toward Madison’s. As he turned the corner, he was surprised to see a large, uniformed guard sitting behind a desk at the end of the hall, about thirty feet from Madison’s room. A walkie-talkie sat on the desk. The security guard, who obviously lifted weights, looked settled in for the night.

  Time for Plan B, Smith thought. He walked down to the reception area, went outside and strolled around to the back of the resort. He looked up at her window. Too high and too well illuminated. And the roof was too far above it.

  Time for Plan C. Tomorrow. Smith returned to his room.

  His CIA training had taught him that there was always another way. Like with Barzin Tura, an Iranian attaché stationed in London years ago.

  CIA Intelligence in Langley had told Smith
that Tura possessed highly classified information about Iran’s nuclear reactors in Bushehr and the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz. The information was vital to Middle East security, and therefore America’s. Smith arranged through a Belgian diplomat to be casually introduced to Tura at a cocktail party. At the party, Smith posed as an automotive parts supplier. He chatted with Tura, a chubby, bald man, about the former General Motors-Iran operation in Teheran. Tura bragged that his uncle’s eleven-year-old, Iran-built GM-Opel still was climbing the steep mountains north of Teheran. Smith smiled appropriately and suggested they meet for coffee and discuss setting up a lucrative spare parts distributorship for Tura in Teheran. Barzin Tura quickly agreed, obviously envisioning juicy revenues filling his coffers.

  They met at a Starbucks near Marble Arch. After a few minutes of car talk, Smith cut to the chase. He offered Tura $200,000 for information about the Bushehr and Natanz plants’ radar and anti-aircraft gun security capabilities. Tura refused. Smith bumped the offer to $300,000. Again, Tura refused.

  But Smith knew that every contact has a vulnerable spot. Smith found Tura’s two days later.

  His daughter, Alish.

  Alish was dying from Batten disease, a very rare neurodegenerative disorder that was slowly stealing the young girl’s ability to see, move and think. There was no treatment. Tura and his wife could look forward to watching their daughter wither away and die, probably in her teens. Smith asked the CIA medical staff in D.C. to check for any experimental treatments for the disease. A week later they told him that University of Rochester researchers recently had discovered a new drug therapy that offered some hope for Batten sufferers.

  Smith told Tura, and promised to bring Alish to the USA for the potentially life-saving new treatment - if Tura gave him the secret information.

  Barzin hesitated, but four days later he e-mailed Smith an encrypted document detailing the security installations surrounding the Bushehr plant, plus an Iranian research site and a new uranium enrichment facility.

  Alish was immediately flown to the U.S. and began treatment. Within weeks she began responding well, feeling a little better each day.

  Nine months later Smith met Tura at a coffee shop near Teheran’s Hotel Naderi.

  “My daughter is doing much better thanks to you.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  Tura leaned forward and whispered, “And if you asked me today for the secret information I e-mailed you, I would give it to you for free!”

  Smith was shocked. “Why?”

  “Because our diminutive, loudmouth president is leading my country into a devastating war with Israel and the United States, a war we will surely lose.”

  Barzin Tura would never know if war broke out. The next day, Iranian State Security arrested him and threw him into notorious Evin Prison. A fellow diplomat had discovered his secret e-mail to Smith. That same night, Tura was beheaded.

  With Tura’s death, the CIA stopped paying Alish’s medical bills. Angered by their decision, Smith continued paying her bills out of a clandestine operations budget only he had access to. And he still visited Alish when he could.

  A year later, Smith visited the Iranian diplomat who ratted Tura out. The next day the diplomat was found dead from a broken neck on a ski slope north of Teheran.

  Exciting times, Smith thought. He missed them.

  Twenty Four

  Dana Williams lie nude and physically spent beside Lamar Brownlee on the luxurious black silk sheets of the massive bed in his company’s executive apartment on Park Avenue.

  “You remind me of my favorite country song,” he whispered.

  “Which is...?”

  “‘If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?’”

  Laughing, she held it against him. Her mind drifted back to four months ago when she set her sights on Lamar Brownlee. She read in Ad Age that Brownlee, the CEO of Griffen-Girard Advertising, had left Kentucky twenty-seven years ago with a fast brain, good looks, and an easy Southern charm that swooped up clients like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. And he’d grown Griffen-Girard into a large, highly profitable agency ... but an agency that lacked clients in two major product categories.

  It just so happened that Turner Advertising had clients in those two categories. And Dana Williams managed them.

  That presented her with a lucrative business opportunity – to move them over to Griffen-Girard.

  So she asked a friend to introduce her to Lamar Brownlee at a Time Inc. media party. At the party, Dana gave Brownlee her undivided attention, laughed at his jokes, gushed over his successes, shamelessly brushed her new breast implants against him a few times.

  And, bingo – like most men, Brownlee fell for her charms.

  After the Time party, the handsome, sandy-haired, fifty-year-old took her back to the Park Avenue apartment. He phoned his trophy wife in Greenwich and told her that his workload forced him to stay overnight in the apartment. Then Lamar spent the night making love to Dana like a prison escapee.

  Now, weeks later, as she ran her fingers through his curly blond chest hair, she was pleased that her plan was right on track.

  She was also pleased he thought she had a beautiful body. And frankly, she did. After all, she’d been a top model, and still worked out five times a week at her exclusive Trump Tower spa. People said she looked twenty-five, not thirty-nine, thanks to some judicious tucks by Hollywood’s world famous cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Robert Kotler, MD.

  But one man had not succumbed to her beauty: Mark McKean. After his wife died, she politely waited a full year, then tried to start a relationship with him. He clearly wasn’t ready. So she waited another year. Again, he gently put her off. Then just a few months ago, she gave him one more chance, and once again, unbelievably, he refused her. She was furious.

  She hated rejection by men, in part, she knew, because of her father’s abandonment when she was five. But the lesson was clear: reject before you’re rejected.

  And above all, always control the relationship with a man.

  That is why she took control of Lamar by telling him she could bring two big Turner clients over to his agency. Two clients who billed a total of one-hundred-eighty million dollars annually. Lamar’s eyes lit up like halogen bulbs.

  “These clients will absolutely follow you to Griffen-Girard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “They trust me.” And, she thought, because one client enjoys my sexual favors, while the other knows his account will be resigned by Turner due to a ComGlobe merger business conflict.

  “If you bring me the clients, Dana, I’ll deposit a million dollars in a Belize numbered account. Sound good?”

  “Sounds most generous.”

  “When can you bring them into my agency?”

  “Right after the ComGlobe merger.”

  “Why not now?”

  “My Turner stock. After the ComGlobe-Turner IPO stock deal, I’ll walk out with millions.”

  He nodded and smiled at her. “I prefer well-heeled lovers.”

  Don’t we all...?

  “So, how’s Madison McKean working out?”

  “Badly.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s lost our Nat-Care client. The next day she resigned our FACE UP cosmetics business, and I hear Mason Funds is shaky. And ... frankly, it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Madison won’t be around much longer.”

  Twenty Five

  It’s just too damn beautiful!” Kevin said, signaling his producer to replay the roughcut version of a TV commercial they were editing for their client, Sea & Sand CruiseLines.

  “It’s supposed to be beautiful!” the producer, Kirk Beauregard, said.

  “But that’s the problem. It’s beautiful like every other cruise line commercial is beautiful.”

  “Huh?”

  Beauregard frowned and ran his fingers through his long blond hair. “Are you saying the viewer can
’t tell one beautiful cruise line commercial from another, and therefore won’t remember our beautiful cruise line commercial?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Kevin stood and paced in front of the large AVID editing console, knowing that the first job of any commercial was to grab the viewer’s attention. Research said you had five seconds to hook ‘em or lose ‘em.

  “So we do an opening so different, original, or even outrageous, they have to watch.”

  “But how? Cruise ship commercials have to show yummy food, romantic dancing, sexy singers, silver-haired captains, exotic destinations, stuff like-”

  “That’s it!” Kevin said.

  “What’s it?”

  “Exotic destinations.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Remember that strange island that only Sea & Sand docks at?”

  Beauregard closed his eyes and grinned. “Maria Elena....”

  “Right!”

  “That’s a different planet!”

  “Yeah. The waterfall spills into the lagoon with the green mist?”

  “And those bug-eating plants.”

  “And the little yellow birds that walk funny?” Kevin said.

  “Like they got hemorrhoids!”

  Kevin laughed. “And only Sea & Sand can show them to you because...?”

  “... only Sea & Sand sails to Maria Elena!”

  Beauregard took a bow, then spun around to search the film archives for the Maria Elena footage. He tapped in a few time-code commands on the AVID and sixty seconds later they were looking at the breathtaking footage of the island.

  “Let’s plug in the hemorrhoid birds at the beginning,” Kevin said, “the waterfall in the middle, and those blue herons soaring over the forest at the end.”

  “You got it.”

  “Can you make the music soar when the herons do?”

  “Soar can!”

  Kevin rolled his eyes.

  As Beauregard began editing in the scenes of the exotic Caribbean island, Kevin thought of another Caribbean island – St. Kitts, where Madison was now. He hoped she’d arrived safely. Tomorrow, he’d call her to see if she learned anything about the $8.7 million deposit at the bank.