“That’s hot to death,” Power enthused over the studio speakers. “Ain’t nobody heard Bridgette Haze blow that! Let’s try the second verse one more time, all right?”
“No problem,” Bridgette replied. New York, she thought as the beat dropped, is gonna be fun.
Chapter Eight
“So you really know how to ride?”
“Son, I told you I could. I can’t do that trick shit but I’ma learn, no doubt.”
D had gotten to the office early to prepare for the big meeting with the D Security crew. He was to unveil the deal he’d cut with Ivy and how that would expand the company’s services, their duties, and, happily, their paychecks. When he’d gotten off the elevator, he found Ray Ray sitting outside the D Security door nodding his head to the DJ Clue mixtape in his CD player. The young man was looking for work.
“I’ll follow a nigga. Collect money. Take a head out if I have to, but it’s gonna be a legal gig,” Ray Ray said earnestly, oblivious to the illegal nature of the activities he’d just volunteered himself for. “I’m not trying to go to jail, son. Fuck that.”
D wanted to help the kid out but had no ideas for his would-be protégé until he glanced at the copy of Motorcycle magazine lying on his desk. Ever since the ransom drop, D had been boning up on motorcycling, trying to identify the bikes that had taken him on his wild ride through the city. He had asked Ray Ray if he could ride, beginning the conversation.
“Okay, Ray Ray, let me get back to you. I think I have a job for you, but if you can’t really handle a motorcycle, you’re ass-out.” He watched Ray Ray exit, his large frame both hulking and goofy, a child in a man’s body, and smiled, remembering himself and the long, awkward journey a big man has to grace.
By the time the first of the D Security staff began arriving, the conference room was ready—the Chinese food had been delivered and he had Sade’s Love Deluxe filling the space with good vibe. Unlike the company’s last, tense meeting, he had great news to announce, and it was received as such.
“As long as the bitch don’t try to dress like me, we’ll be cool,” was Mercedez’s reaction to having to spend time with Bridgette Haze.
“Night’s cool with me. Maybe I can knock off a couple of his groupies, son,” were Jeff Fuchs’s thoughts on being on Night’s watch.
The only negative feedback, and even that was measured, came from Danny Wallace, who wondered, “Do we have enough qualified people to stretch ourselves like this? We’ll be covering our regular gigs, plus working in this bodyguard thing. Staffing is one of our problems now.”
“At most,” D assured him, “it’ll only be for a month. I can’t see Bridgette Haze here much longer than that. By the time the Source Awards come around, we’ll be back to normal.”
After high ratings and security misadventures in Los Angeles and Miami, the Source Awards were coming back to New York for the first time in years. D had negotiated a deal to handle much of the backstage security duty. The staff at the Theater at Madison Square Garden would control the crowd, but in the backstage area, which had proven at previous Source Awards shows to be the real trouble spot, D Security would be working the hallways, to try to squash beef before it spilled onstage. D had outbid the Nation of Islam for the contract, a matter of considerable pride.
As the staff was discussing the deployment of forces for the bodyguard and club gigs, an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway of the conference room. He was a sour-faced Latino in a Phat Farm denim outfit and a red, white, and blue Clippers cap. He had a doughy face that testified to his love of black beans and pork. “I’m looking for D Hunter,” he announced. Eyes darted around the table.
“And who are you, dog?” Jeff asked.
“I’m a man doing his job,” the guy replied roughly. He surveyed the several large black men in the room. He didn’t want to tip his hand, but clearly, no one was going to identify D for him. If he’d known he was walking into a staff meeting, the matter would have been handled very differently. So he made a choice. He walked over to Danny, who had the oldest-looking face, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a white envelope. “D Hunter,” he said, “you have been served with an official notice,” and then took out a camera, held up the watch on his wrist, and made sure Danny, the envelope, and the watch were in the frame.
“I’m D Hunter,” the real D Hunter said from the other side of the table, “and you have not served me officially. Sorry to cost you a check, but that’s life.”
Defeated and embarrassed, the process server backed out of the conference room with all eyes save D’s on him.
“Should I open it?” Danny asked D.
“No, give it here. Since it hasn’t been officially served yet, I can read it—no harm, no foul.” D opened the white envelope, which was filled with several legal pages. Reading the first two paragraphs made his face sag. Leafing through the following eight pages didn’t brighten his day either. He set down the paper on the table before him and then put his face in his hands. No one reached over to touch the papers.
* * *
D sat anxiously in the lobby of A.S.S., awaiting an emergency sitdown with Dante Calabrese. Next to him sat Emily, who used her right hand to rub D’s muscular neck. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, head down. His right hand clutched the letter that had sent his life into a tailspin. Emily spoke to D soothingly, as if he were a little boy with a skinned knee. “It’ll be all right, my lovely. I’m sure Dante will help. He knows how loyal you’ve been to Bovine.”
D just sat there silently, staring balefully at the floor and squeezing the papers in his huge hands. It was a $10 million civil suit against Dervin Hunter, D Security, Emily’s Tea Party, and Emily Anekwe, filed on behalf of Tom Brookins, the Washington Wizard who’d just gone on the disabled list for a damaged wrist. On ESPN it had been reported that he hurt it falling during a game. In the lawsuit D, and D alone, was to blame. Moreover, the suit suggested that D had injured Brookins at the behest of his old friend Bovine Winslow, a ploy to weaken the Wizards for the playoffs.
This was a classic nuisance suit, but D couldn’t laugh it off. Neither he nor D Security had the time or money for this. Legal fees could be a nightmare and would cut into whatever profit they’d receive for the Ivy Greenwich gigs. It was Emily who suggested Dante Calabrese could help. He was about the last man in New York D wanted to ask for a favor. Still, D had only moved on Brookins to squash Bovine’s beef. Once again he’d had Bovine’s back—even Dante would understand how that obligated him.
“I can’t help you,” Dante said firmly after he’d read the papers, plopped them on his desk, and gazed at the sad faces of D and Emily.
“D has been such a good friend to Bovine,” Emily said. “You know that.”
“Are you saying you can’t make a call to Brookins or his lawyer or the league office for us?”
“It’s difficult, D,” Dante replied.
“Listen,” D said back, “I was damn near the boy’s maytag when he got to New York. I showed him where to go, who to talk to, and what not to say.”
“The Knicks provided that service, D, as did my office.”
“Please. Half your clients are getting high in their cars before practice and the other half have babies by chicken-heads coast to coast. You don’t help these kids do anything but cash a check. I protected Bovine from all that. Not because I wanted anything but because I like helping people.”
“That may have been true once, D. But you know you owe Bovine Winslow several thousand dollars for investing in your business.”
“You know I’ll pay it back.”
“Oh, you will, I’m sure. Someday. And that is one of my problems. Technically speaking, Bovine Winslow has a piece of D Security, which means Tom Brookins is, technically speaking, suing another NBA player for an off-court altercation. That’s some Allen Iverson–like behavior that would hurt Bovine deeply in the endorsement market.”
Emily raised her voice, saying, “We’re the only reason that
incident didn’t make Page Six or Rush and Malloy. It was my contacts who kept that quiet.”
“Look,” Dante countered, “I’d love to help you but this suit isn’t Bovine’s problem—unless you go to the press and make it our problem.”
D stood up, fuming but still under control. “You know I would do nothing to embarrass or hurt Bovine. But this lawsuit is designed to put Emily and me out of business. I can’t let that happen.”
“So you’re gonna call Bovine?” Dante asked.
“If I have to.”
Dante hit a button on his phone. Through its speaker came the sound of a cell phone ringing.
“Hey, Dante, what’s up?” said Bovine.
“Sorry to bother you before a game, Bovine. Where are you? Phoenix?”
“That’s right. Hey, why am I on speaker?”
“Well, I’m sitting here with D Hunter and his lovely girlfriend, Emily. As you know, they are being sued by Tom Brookins for injuries sustained at their club.”
“You know about this suit?” D’s question was aimed at Bovine.
“The NBA is where we make our living, D,” Dante answered. “It’s my job to know shit like this. Bovine, tell D what your lawyer advised.”
Haltingly, Bovine spoke: “Well, D, it’s like this. My attorney feels I need to stay away from this situation. He’s affirmed it might be construed that you injured Brookins not simply to cool down that situation at Emily’s Tea Party but to hurt him in a malicious act against Tom Brookins that I ordered.”
“Bovine, that was like listening to you do a fucking commercial!” D shouted. “What are you doing? Reading off cue cards? Just call Tom Brookins and get him to squash this thing and then call the league to tell them Emily’s Tea Party is a safe place. You got that?”
The sound of Bovine breathing into his cell phone came out of the speaker like bad breath. “I wish I could, D. The timing’s bad for me right now. You know Brookins don’t like me anyway. So a call might be the worst thing I could do. As for the league, Dante will cool that shit out for Emily.”
“Sure,” Dante agreed, “when the time is right.”
D closed his eyes and opened them again. His chest heaved. He didn’t speak.
“D?” Bovine said through the phone. “Talk to me, D.”
After a long pause D spoke slowly and softly: “I treated you like my brother. But I guess that was a mistake.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the room with Emily in his wake.
“D?” Bovine said again. “Come on, man. You are like my brother.”
“He’s gone, Bovine,” Dante said. “So how’s the knee?”
Chapter Nine
Music videos are mostly the province of nerdy young men who know more about telecine focal lenses and camera equipment than women, love, or emotion. Reared on endorphin-pumping edits, video-game storytelling, and a disrespect for cinematic depth, music-video directors are shapers of perception with very little perspective. Often, instead of aspiring to cinematic mastery, they live to emulate the lives of the “cool” stars they photograph. Mostly that’s a lost cause, since video directors will always be the guys upstaged by musicians at the MTV Awards.
Fortunately, that bittersweet fate wasn’t suited to the temperament of Bee Cole, music-video diva director and entertainment-industry sex symbol. She was as beautiful as a pop star and as commanding as a mogul. Moreover, in a medium in which sexuality is defined by a girl/woman gyrating in a bikini, Bee’s work had an adventurous sensuality that reflected her personal predilections. Night, for example, had been a personal muse even before he began recording. In numerous videos, Bee had cast Night as a male object of desire, the camera lingering over his dark, taut skin, festishizing him as if he were her personal fertility symbol. Bee knew Night had been a black American gigolo and often picked his brain, using his twisted tales of sex for profit to inspire music-video scenarios and MTV iconography.
She generally preferred doing videos of male singers; she was reluctant to share her visions with other women, especially white ones. But Ivy had been wooing Bee for months. “If you can transform Bridgette Haze by remaking her appeal with a video, you’d absolutely be making history,” Ivy told her. “It’ll be your crowning achievement.” It was a good rap, but what finally convinced Bee was Ivy’s commitment to back her film debut, a sexual thriller called Show & Tell, about the consequences of lying about sex.
Finally seduced, Bee was hooking up with Bridgette for a night of erotic club crawling “to crack open her head and see what demons pop out.” Per Bee’s request, only D and a driver would accompany them on this nocturnal quest. They knew each other through Night—she had been the singer’s sponsor/concubine and he’d been the singer’s friend/protector—but weren’t close. Each knew the other was discreet, a quality they both respected greatly.
“So,” Bridgette asked Bee as she slid into the backseat of Tony’s SUV, “where are we going tonight?”
“Oh, just down the rabbit hole,” Bee replied with a naughty smile. When D settled into the passenger seat, she reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “We’re going a few places you probably know well, D.”
“I don’t know,” D said in response. “You may have been all the places I’ve been but I’m pretty sure I haven’t been all the places you have.”
Bee flashed the icy smile that was her trademark and told Tony, “We’ll start downtown and work our way up. Let’s hit Tenth Avenue.”
As soon as the car pulled off, Bridgette asked Bee, “So, how long have you known D Hunter?”
“You’re curious about D, huh?”
“My sister has a crush on him. She likes that strong silent type.”
“Silent? D isn’t really silent. I find he often has quite a bit to say.”
“No, I’m joking. From what I’ve seen, D definitely speaks his mind.”
“Well,” Bee said, “I mostly know D through Night, who’s a good friend. Night loves D. Says he’s a person you can rely on, which in New York is a very big compliment.”
“Yeah, D’s a good man,” Tony chimed in. “I’ve seen him save the ass of a lot of people.”
Now D couldn’t take it anymore. “There’s no need for all of you to exaggerate,” he said. “I just try and do my job. That’s all.”
“Are you embarrassed by all this attention, D?” Bridgette said teasingly. “I’m sorry, big, scary black man.”
Bee loved this and started cackling. Tony laughed too, and even D’s angry gaze didn’t stop him. Feeling for D, the director redirected the conversation by asking to hear some of the tracks Bridgette had been cutting in New York. The singer pulled a CD out of her purse and had Tony play it. The track she’d recorded that first night with DJ Power filled the car and then, unprompted, Bridgette began singing along. Hearing a familiar voice up close and unencumbered by technology can be either quite exhilarating or completely deflating. That familiarity, born of repeated radio and TV exposure, makes no allowances for a sore throat, congestion, or plain old poor pitch. In comparison to the official version, a singer’s real voice can seem puny, almost inauthentic in its imperfections.
To D’s surprise this wasn’t the case with Bridgette Haze. Her voice was strong—he could feel the back of his seat vibrate from the force of her vocal cords. He’d thought she’d be reedy and nasal like so many of the chick singers out there. Instead there was an engaging thickness to her tone that he hadn’t anticipated. He wasn’t quite ready to say Ms. Haze had “soul”—that would be like pimp-slapping Aretha Franklin—but this little white girl had chops.
About the backing track, D was considerably more dubious. All Power’s shit sounded alike to him, but then most things on the radio these days could be described that way. Bee and Tony were raving that this was another hit for Bridgette, when D’s eyes rested on the passenger-side rear mirror. About two blocks back was a Yamaha. D smiled slightly to find that his motorcycle study was bearing fruit. If this was one of the kidnapping crew, at least he’d have some war
ning.
“Ignoring me, huh?”
“Excuse me,” D said, startled.
“I was asking what you thought of my song.”
“Oh, yeah. You can sing.”
“Thanks for that revelation,” Bridgette said. “What about the song?”
“Should I be honest or just do my job?”
Bridgette got a little flutter inside. Was her bodyguard going to dis her? Everybody around her usually bit their lip when it came to her music. This was going to be interesting. “Oh, go ahead and do your job, why don’t you?”
“It’s a number-one hit with a bullet.”
“And what do you really think?”
“It’s a number-one hit with a bullet.”
“Fuck you, Mr. Strong Silent Type.”
D deadpanned, “Did I say something to offend you?” even as he kept an eye on the progress of the bike in the rearview mirror.
Their destination was in the Meatpacking District, not far from Pastis, but a world away from the faux-Parisian glitz of that bistro. Penny’s was a vestige of the neighborhood’s older character, when the air stank of carcasses, the bars weren’t filled with yuppies, and transvestites ruled the streets. Penny’s still had that raw, tawdry flavor, which was why Bee adored it.
It was an old-fashioned S&M bar for people who loved being led around by chains attached to studded dog collars, and the height of style was still reflector shades and heavy, thick-soled black boots. But even in this uninhibited crowd, the presence of Bridgette Haze caused a stir. Her eyes roamed Penny’s, taking it all in but saying little. Walking through the black rooms, illuminated solely by crimson lightbulbs, the pop diva from Virginia kept her own counsel. While she’d worn her share of faux-dominatrix gear over the years onstage, being confronted with people who meant it overwhelmed Bridgette. No smile and wink here. These folks took all of the rituals of bondage very seriously, and she felt very much like a sex tourist, which, actually, she was. After a half hour of whips, studs, and associated gear, Bridgette turned to Bee and said, “Let’s go.”
The Accidental Hunter Page 8