“The eighth,” Mitchell replied.
Curtis’s head canted slightly. “The eighth? Isn’t that the building with the green roof downtown?”
The detectives nodded.
“If you guys ever need any help maintaining that roof, just give my assistant Teri a call. We can make anything grow.”
Sandovan turned to Mitchell with an amused expression on his face. “We’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Montclair.”
Exactly seven minutes later Curtis, J.A. and Otis were teleconferencing about the nature of Curtis’s meeting with the detectives.
“They were just fishing, Big O,” Curtis said. “I gave them nothing. When they showed me the Seraphim package I was stone-faced as Doyle Brunson.”
“That’s good, Curtis,” Otis said. “You don’t think that your friend the graphic designer told anyone of the package’s significance?”
“No, he’s not on their radar at all. Kid’s never had any kind of legal conflict.”
“I need to see you and J.A. tonight. We’ve got to establish policy for our house sentries. If the crew knocking off our operations can trick Cain Stevens into coming out of the house, we need to make a ‘closed door’ policy mandatory.”
“Can’t blame the dude for running. I wonder how they knew he was allergic?” Curtis said.
“I doubt they did,” J.A. chimed in. “Wouldn’t you run if the place got overrun with that many wasps?”
“Suppose so,” Curtis said.
“Cain Stevens I’ll forgive,” Otis interrupted. “The man would be too hard to kill anyway. But the fool who opened the front door to let the fake TV delivery guys in is already at the bottom of the harbor. There’s no excuse for that. The bottom line is we’ve got to take down this rival gang.”
“What do we do about the police detectives?” J.A. said.
“Nothing,” Otis replied. “I will eradicate my competitors with ruthless efficiency, but I don’t mess with the law. It’s the only way my city councilors, judges, and assistant district attorneys will look the other way. The moment we take on the police force, they will desert us like the rats down at the docks.”
38
Mya, Arlo and the rest of the team running the alternate reality game had been huddled for eighteen straight hours. The conference room they’d appropriated for the duration of the game was now so cluttered that even a compulsive hoarder would think twice about setting foot in it. But somehow they were holding everything together.
The penultimate stage of the game had been a huge hit. The writer who had created the “Locker 21” graffiti was an internationally renowned artist whose works had sold for north of two hundred thousand dollars. He was allegedly a contributor to the New York City “Underbelly Project”—a massive exhibit of street art hidden in a forgotten Transit Authority subway station.
Despite the obscure nature of many of the clues that were dropped within the morass of pop culture, eleven of the fourteen finalist spots had been filled by gamers who had deduced that they should go to the airport locker twenty-one in their nearest major metropolitan area.
The number of people watching the game play out on the website Zealot Jeans had commissioned for the purpose was just over six hundred thousand—a huge following for a niche, premium fashion brand without any traditional media advertising to support it.
Ad industry and pop culture bloggers were in love with the approach that had been taken for the marketing of the brand. Zealot Jeans were a daily trending topic among online denizens and it seemed that the fashion world held its breath every time another clue was due to break.
Mya and Arlo were waiting for Peter Dunn to bring them the next artifact—the term they used to describe the envelopes that directed each stage of the game. Nobody knew the contents of all the artifacts except for Dunn and Jean Zélat. They had sealed them with a special wax impression and then placed them in Dunn’s office safe, to be drawn out at pre-set times.
Each envelope held six possible directions. When Mya and Arlo opened the envelopes they rolled a die and chose whichever direction came up on the die. Some thought the paranoia about secrecy was over the top. But there was just too much on the line for there to be even a hint of insider knowledge or favoritism. The slightest whiff of scandal in the online community would be disastrous for the game and for the brand. As many large corporations had discovered, there was no fury like that of bloggers scorned.
Dunn poked his head into the room. Everyone on the team turned expectantly. “You guys got enough junk food to last through the night?” he joked.
He produced the envelope and passed it to Arlo. Mya grabbed it out of his hand. “You opened the last one; I’m opening this one. But you can roll the die.”
“Fine,” Arlo said.
He rolled a five. Mya tore open the envelope and scanned the page for the fifth directive.
“Oh my God,” she said.
39
Mitchell and Sandovan weren’t sure what to make of the interview with Curtis Montclair. Unlike Jak Mosely, he was a tough nut to crack. When they’d sprung the Seraphim package on Jak, he had collapsed like a house of cards. The same tactic failed miserably with Curtis. They’d both been watching his face and Montclair didn’t even show a glimmer of recognition.
They arrived back at the precinct and immediately went to the rooftop. It was a sunny late afternoon, without a wisp of cloud. Mitchell surveyed their home turf.
“You think we should take the guy up on his offer to help us with the grass up here?”
Sandovan shrugged and picked up a pitching wedge. “Dunno. Guess we could ask him to have a look at it, then threaten to throw him off the roof if he didn’t come clean.”
He put the club across his shoulders and behind his neck, then turned his trunk from side to side to stretch his back muscles.
Mitchell watched his partner trying to limber up. “That’s not doing you any good you know. You have to hold a stretch for a full thirty seconds for it to work.”
“Thank you, Richard Simmons,” Sandovan responded.
Mitchell got down closer to the grass and ran his hands over it, lost in thought. “Wonder if we could rig up a sprinkler system. We had a couple of instances this summer where it didn’t rain at all for what, nine-ten days in a row?”
“Nah, I think instead of a sprinkler system it’d be better to overseed with a hardier variety of grass.”
“You mean like some of that White Widow the SWAT boys confiscated from the raid on the auto body shop? Man, that’d be a helluva media feeding frenzy if we were to start growing some up here.”
“Too hard to hit a golf ball outta that stuff,” Sandovan said.
“Hey Sandman, gimme an honest answer…”
“Uh oh,” Sandovan said, momentarily stopping his stretches.
“When’s the last time you smoked pot?”
“Shit. I dunno. Probably seventh grade.”
“Did you like it?”
“I suppose so. Me and Claire smoked a bit together. It ended up being the first time we made out. Maybe that’s why I say I enjoyed it. What about you? When’s the last time you smoked?”
“Similar to you, I think. Junior high school maybe? To be honest, I’m not even sure I got high since I had six or seven beers along with it.”
Sandovan smiled. “Yeah, one thing’s for sure. The stuff people are smoking these days is way more potent than anything we could get our hands on back then. You seen some of the narco files? The stuff they take off people in a pinch is alien looking! It’s all purple and spiky. Or crystalline and white. I think anyone like us who hasn’t smoked in a couple decades would probably get their heads blown off by the dope that’s on the market today.”
Mitchell nodded in agreement. “Yeah, and that’s the one thing that keeps me from saying what the hell, legalize it like booze. You can have a social drink and then get in your car and drive home. Nobody can do a social joint and then get behind the wheel. I think legalization would increase the amount of impaired drivers
.”
Sandovan swung the pitching wedge a few times. “Who knows, maybe it’s more obvious to pot smokers that they’re impaired, and they wouldn’t drive. Shit, half the DUIs in this town are people who had no idea they were over. Some are even busted the next morning when they still blow over point-zero-eight. Besides, if you legalize pot, you can tax it. Might help get rid of the drug dealers and the underground economy and the drug-related violence.”
Mitchell considered it. “I suppose. You think Mya smokes at work? I mean, the ad business is pretty fucked up. Some of the characters she works with make Tewks and Hernandez and the rest of our crew look sane in comparison.”
“I dunno, Mitch. You’ll have to ask her. But don’t ask unless you really wanna know. Tell you one thing, the next drug I test positive for is probably going to be Viagra.”
Mitchell gave him a double-take. Sandovan laughed. “Not yet. I wouldn’t test positive for it yet! I just mean I don’t do recreational drugs, and probably wouldn’t take anything unless it was for something important like that.”
“I hear ya. Hey, you ever hear of someone having a hard-on for ‘more than four hours’ like the commercials say?”
Sandovan thought for a second. “Nope. Funny thing about that is they always say to call your doctor. I think I’d call six ex-girlfriends and the Guinness Book of Records.”
They laughed at the thought, then sat in silence on the grass rooftop. “I guess Tewks got his way with the vintage convertible limo, hey?” Sandovan said.
“Yep. Oh well. I’m on record as saying he’s got shit for brains. Maybe he’s right though. This Russian billionaire really seems to be the man of the moment. Saved some of our guys. You see his picture on the cover of GQ? It said he’s the new breed of man. The metrosexual is dead. He’s a jetrosexual. Dude not only has the good looks, he’s got his own fleet of aircraft.”
“Whatever. Let’s see him spin a pitching wedge back to the pin after hitting it out of a fairway bunker!”
“You wanna hit a few? Closest to the duck wins a bottle of Crown Royal?”
“You’re on,” Sandovan said.
Even after the two flights of stairs and the short elevator ride back down to the squad room, Mitchell was still gloating. “Oh man, I was dialed in today.”
“Yeah, put a sock in it,” Sandovan said.
Ryerson looked up briefly from his monitor as they walked in. After a moment he called them over. “You guys see this report? Couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses took a shotgun blast through a window outside a front door over in Hawksworth Heights. They said they rang the doorbell a few times and nobody answered. Then just as they were going to leave the front window exploded. One guy took a load in his shoulder, the other in his left side.”
Nelson shook his head. “I just don’t think religion is something people like to have peddled door to door.”
Ryerson agreed, but he read further into the report and shared the details with the rest of the detectives. “Ah. Turns out the shooter had a house full of pot plants. Tried to say it was medical marijuana for his wife’s glaucoma, but there were six hundred and fifty plants. When the first black and white caught up with him he said he was convinced that the two guys in suits weren’t really Jehovah’s. Thought they were going to knock off his crop, so he let ‘em have a taste of his twelve-gauge instead.”
“Guess the guy doesn’t read the paper or watch TV,” Hernandez said. “Must’ve missed that our SWAT team busted the hemp-heisters.”
“Yeah. Or maybe he knows something we don’t know,” Ryerson mused.
Otis was having cocktails with Curtis and J.A. in the city’s newest hot restaurant, an Argentinian steak house. A bottle of Uco Valley Malbec was breathing in the center of the table.
“Please tell me,” he began, “that it wasn’t one of our guys who tried to turn the Jehovah’s into actual witnesses to their God.”
Curtis almost choked on his martini, then laughed it off as he answered Otis’s question. “No, it was an independent. Some old dude who was doing too much of his own crop. The narcs I know said it wasn’t a good operation—the guy didn’t have a handle on the budding cycle and had way too many male plants.”
“Well he may not have been a good grower, but I like his attitude when it comes to defending his turf.” Otis took another sip of his vodka-tonic. “From this point onward, our policy for grow house sentries is you don’t open the door to anyone without telephone authorization from one of us. No pizza delivery guys, no meter-readers, no strip-o-grams—even if she’s the Playmate of the Year.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” J.A. agreed. “We also need to get proactive when it comes to finding the guys raiding our ops. Vince Lombardi got it right: the best defense is a good offense.”
“Wasn’t Vince Lombardi who said that,” Curtis replied. “It was Jack Dempsey.”
“You’re both wrong,” Otis said, waving his hand for the waiter to bring another round. “It was General Carl Von Clausewitz. And he stole it from Sun Tzu.”
They debated the source until their cocktails arrived. At the same time J.A. read from an email on his mobile. “Even with the hits to our crop, we’re still looking at a good quarter. And the testing panel’s impressions of the Seraphim came back. Thumbs up across the board.”
Otis looked up from checking his own email. “That’s about the only good news I’ve had in the last four weeks. Let’s get it into the running for the Cannabis Cup.”
Their waiter returned and asked if they were ready to order. Curtis ordered an heirloom tomato salad. When Otis cast a scornful look his way he tried to defend his choice by saying he was going to the gym later. J.A. ordered sea bass, which merited only a slightly less malevolent gaze from Otis.
When it was his turn to order, Otis folded the menu and handed it to the waiter. “A friend of mine tells me you have a fine filet mignon that up until thirty days ago was grazing on the steppe grasses of the Pampas. I’ll have that. And please instruct the chef to make sure it’s bloody.”
40
Arlo grabbed the piece of paper from Mya’s hand. He found the fifth directive and read it. “What’s so crazy about it?” he said.
“Don’t you see?” Mya said. “It’s going to open the game up to all kinds of outrageous behavior. And that exposes our client to potential litigation and bad publicity.”
Arlo shook his head. “No way. Everyone who signed on for the game signed a waiver. And we need to have faith in our target audience, that they’ll do this in the spirit of the brand. Besides, even if we do get one loose cannon in the bunch, isn’t it true that any publicity is good publicity?”
The team was divided on the fifth directive. The fourteen finalists, who would all be flown to Salento, were being instructed to use their favorite personal pair of Zealot Jeans to somehow garner the most attention they could. Whoever accomplished that objective with the greatest degree of style befitting the Zealot brand would win the luxurious week-long getaway on Jean Zélat’s private island with eleven friends.
Getting on network television would put any of the finalists out in front. But the networks were wary of publicity stunts. There was always the possibility of a nut job doing something illegal to attract attention. That kind of publicity, combined with the fact that the company had put their consumers up to it, might tarnish the brand. There had even been an incident in Boston where a marketing company’s stunt ran afoul of the Department of Homeland Security.
The home run would be if one of the finalists conceived some kind of artistic, counterculture statement that fit with the brand imagery of Zealot and won over a massive audience either online, in mainstream media, or in person.
Mya was torn. “We’d better meet with Peter and Jean. I think we should provide them with full disclosure about the risks. It’s quite possible they might want us to roll the die again and go with another scenario.”
Arlo agreed. “Okay. Fair enough. They’re the only two guys with skin in the game. But I’
m still in favor of going ahead with this stage as we rolled it. We set this game up with total integrity. If it ever got out that we changed our process at the last minute, any one of the finalists could sue us. But if we have the discussion, at least then Peter and Jean are going into the final stage with their eyes open. I’m confident that the Zealot brand aficionado is not a violent or crass type of individual who will do something sophomoric. On the other hand, if this were a beer account I’d be squarely in your corner.”
Mya respected Arlo. She may have hopped over him on the corporate ladder, but she knew he was the type of talent who could help the agency leave its competitors in the dust. And unlike Jak Mosely, he wasn’t a prima donna.
“Okay, Arlo,” she agreed. “I’ll set it up. You and I can both present our cases to Peter and Jean. Whoever they side with, we go full-bore in that direction, with no regrets. Deal?”
“Deal,” Arlo said with a smile. He knew Mya was passionate but fair when it came to the agency’s business. She wasn’t preoccupied with getting her way like most of the egos that populated the ad industry. He sensed it would be a fair debate, and despite being up for nineteen straight hours, he felt his adrenaline kick in.
“In the meantime,” Leah Jacobs suggested, “how about we figure out the details of how we welcome our finalists to Salento and what we do once they’re here?”
“Good idea,” Arlo said. “Anyone have a flash of brilliance?
Sisha Wong hesitated, but then cleared her throat to speak. “You know in the movies, how when a VIP shows up at an airport they always have some driver there holding a sign? Why don’t we do that, but with some kind of twist.”
“Like what?” Mya probed.
“Maybe we have a name of a famous zealot from history on the card, and see if they clue in,” Sisha said.
“Not bad Sisha,” said Arlo. “Okay, let’s see how many fanatics from history we can think of. Leah, why don’t you jot the names down on the whiteboard. I’ve got one. There’s a person in the New Testament whose name was ‘Simon the Zealot.’ How about we put ‘Simon’ on the card?”
Sisha’s face tensed. “I think we need names that are more unique. I’m sure there might be a guy or girl named Simon in the airport who would think we’re waiting for them.”
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