Devil You Know

by Bagshawe, Louise

  “Thank you, sir. Have a good day,” the girl said.

  “Thanks,” Rothstein said, and hung up.

  He waited for Rose to call him back, but the call did not come in the next five minutes, as he had expected, nor even in the next two hours. So she was playing games, huh? Let her, Rothstein thought. He made calls to contractors, soliciting bids for the work he needed done. There was plenty of planning and work to take his mind off Fiorello. When she discovered what had happened, she’d call him soon enough.

  *

  Daisy didn’t understand at first, when Julia Fine called her, sounding hysterical.

  “Julia, just calm down, OK? Calm down.”

  “Daisy. I have your sister here. You have to come over to the office. Or should I send her to Mr. Soren’s?”

  “Magnus Soren?” asked Rose, sitting in Julia’s corner office. The Daisy woman was involved with Magnus, was she? He was a very rich man, Magnus Soren. She hoped her new sister wasn’t a gold-digger …

  Julia ignored her and continued to speak urgently into the receiver.

  “Daisy, you must come now. I am not joking, she looks so like you I thought she was you.”

  “Julia,” Daisy said patiently, “I don’t have a sister. I’m an only child. I was adopted as an only child. I know that much.”

  “But—”

  “Give me the phone,” Rose said. The Julia woman gave her a death stare, but Rose was unimpressed. She held out her hand and imperiously crooked her fingers. “I said give me the goddamn phone. That’s my sister, you know it and I know it.”

  “Daisy,” Julia Fine muttered, “she insists on talking to you…”

  Rose snatched the receiver from her.

  “Is this Daisy Markham?”

  “Who’s this?” Daisy asked angrily. “Whoever you are, I have no idea how you got to my editor, but this is not a joke to me.”

  “Nor to me. My name is Rose Fiorello. I own apartment buildings in New York. I was adopted also, and you are identical to me.”

  “Identical, how?”

  “Identical, as in twins. I saw your picture on the front page of the Financial Times this morning. You had my face. I bought your book, there’s no doubt.” Rose spoke so matter-of-factly that Daisy found herself listening to her. And … she sounded familiar. Very familiar. Under that New York accent …

  “Your publishers wouldn’t take my call, so I showed up here and said I was you.”

  “Very resourceful,” Daisy said faintly.

  “And your woman here, Ms. Fine, thought I was you. She called me ‘Daisy.’ She thought you were playing a joke on her.” Rose punched a button and put the call on speaker. “Tell her, Ms. Fine.”

  “It’s true, Daisy, it’s true,” said Julia Fine breathlessly. “I wouldn’t joke…”

  “Send her over here,” Daisy whispered. “I want to see her.”

  Fifty-Seven

  Poppy smiled fixedly at the cheering crowd. The band was playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” as Henry stepped up onto the podium, smiling and waving. If she had been his wife, Poppy would now be walking next to him. But as it was, she was only the fiancée, and a controversial one at that. Henry’s spin doctors had stuck her up here on the podium, standing behind his chief of staff, and blending into the background as she smiled and clapped.

  She looked at the man she loved and wondered what their future together was.

  As the cheering subsided, Poppy sat down on her uncomfortable folding chair with the others as Henry began to give his speech—the same one he gave on every stop of the campaign. Poppy could recite it the way she could recite one of Travis Jackson’s numbers. Just like Travis, though, Henry could make it sound fresh; he was the rebel Republican, the darling of the South who didn’t hide a womanizing past or a fairly radical social agenda. Even the unpopular parts of his platform he laid out there, daring folks not to vote for him. Poppy mouthed the words along with him—

  “My opponents have said I’m anti-choice.” Big cheer. “They’ve also told you that I’m soft on crime, because I oppose the death penalty, and I want gun control.” Tremendous booing, even from LeClerc supporters. This part she liked, because it always made Henry’s staff so uncomfortable. “Well, guess what, Lafayette, Louisiana? Here’s one politician who’s gonna tell you the truth. I want gun control, and I want an end to the death penalty, and I know those are two things almost none of y’all agree with—”

  Cue the standard roar of angry agreement, and Henry lifted his manicured hand in that practiced gesture, and said, “Yes, y’all, and if I could make those two things happen I’d do it in a second. But you want to know the truth? Those laws will never pass, not in my lifetime, not in Louisiana and not in America, whether I like it or not. So it shouldn’t stop you from voting for me. You have your pick of guys in suits who are gonna tell you everything you want to hear. I’m a conviction politician. I tell you my convictions and let you make your own minds up. Now, what do we agree on, Lafayette? Stuff that I can do something about. Tourism. Taxes. Jobs…”

  “… a strong defense,” Poppy mouthed, “reforming our welfare laws, educating our kids … stuff you can see my track record on…”

  Now he had them listening, rapt, eating from the palm of his hand. The rock star parallel was pretty close, Poppy thought. Henry played the crowd better than any lead singer.

  His strategy had worked, too. LeClerc had come from last to first in the Louisiana senate race with the revolutionary strategy of telling the truth about what he believed. The polls had shown him with a credible eight-point lead over his nearest rival.

  Of course, that was until last week.

  Poppy looked down at her outfit. It was very conservative, a concession of love for Henry. She was wearing a short-sleeved, full-length feminine sun dress with daisies all over it; an L.A. Jew’s stab at being the pretty li’l Southern Belle. She also wore white gloves and a delicate face-framing straw hat. Anything to make things a little better for him.

  Because last week, Poppy had become the problem.

  Henry’s skirt-chasing ways had been well publicized, but they had only endeared him to the Louisiana voting public. In fact, with Clinton’s charm and Bush’s integrity, he had seemed unstoppable. And yet something had put a spoke in the wheel.

  The press, failing to find anything damaging in LeClerc’s past, had started to investigate his girlfriend. And they had stumbled on a goldmine.

  The scandals were delicious, and they just kept on coming. First, the catty, anti-semitic little comments … Poppy was a JAP, a Jewish American Princess, that was enough to drop Henry a full point by itself down here. And they were not married, but it looked like they might be. (Thank God nobody knew they were engaged yet, Poppy thought.) Next, she wasn’t from Louisiana, wasn’t even from the South. No, she was the daughter of a slick L.A. lawyer. And more. Each day brought another screaming headline, another gossip column revelation. Poppy was way too young for their Congressman … the older women voters hated that. And finally, perfectly for the Democrats, there were Poppy’s unorthodox politics, and her job.

  Poppy was against whatever Henry was for. She was pro-choice, and she believed in the death penalty for murder, and she wanted to be able to carry guns; she was an environmental nut and she wanted to relax the rules on welfare …

  The Republicans hated it. Sometimes, as she walked onto a platform with Henry, she heard them mutter, “Commie Jew bitch.” The Democrats, her party, didn’t hesitate to use her against Henry. Their candidate paraded his white-bread wife and simpering golden-ringleted daughter everywhere.

  And then the Menace scandal had come out.

  It was the first main fight she’d had with Henry since he’d agreed to take her on campaign, and it had shocked Poppy. She’d been used to having Henry back her up against his staffers, but not this time.

  Her latest heavy metal act, Menace, were a hot-selling brand of rap/rock fusion, a sort of heavy-metal hip-hop that urban radio loved an
d Top 40 played to death, albeit with the swear words bleeped out. Sometimes that was half the song. Menace had a classic bad-boy reputation, trashing everything that wasn’t nailed down to a hotel floor, fucking everything that was female and moved within groping range. That was so normal in rock ’n’ roll that the group hadn’t made headlines outside of Spin and Rolling Stone until last week.

  Their latest release had gone straight in at number one on the Billboard charts. So far so good, except that this single was different. No station would play it, not even BET; it was called “Spit the Pigs,” and it was, well, it was an anti-cop song. It promised various different fates to any cop caught without backup in the vicinity of Menace (though Poppy knew the band was a bunch of cowards), and all of these fates were very graphic and very unpleasant.

  Menace accused the LAPD of being pimps, drug dealers, racists, thugs, and killers, and they had some suggestions for their fans as to what to do about it. The chorus of the song was the pièce de résistance, a speed-rapped one hundred ways to kill police officers.

  And some enterprising journalist in New Orleans had found out that Poppy managed this band, this enemy to law and order, and yet Congressman Henry LeClerc was still dating her—and might be going to marry her!

  Henry’s staffers had insisted that she terminate her relationship with Menace.

  “Absolutely not,” Poppy said. “It’s just macho posturing, and they’re a hot band.”

  “Hot? They’re burning away Henry’s chances,” Don Rickles snarled.

  Poppy turned to Henry. “Darling, this isn’t your problem. You just tell them you don’t control me or my bands. If you don’t approve, say so.”

  “The point is that you approve, Poppy,” Henry said softly.

  She’d colored. “I don’t approve or disapprove, my function isn’t to tell an act how to write songs. I believe in the First Amendment. Menace has freedom of speech.”

  “Sure they do, but they can’t demand that you be associated with it.”

  Poppy had blinked at him. “You want me to make this statement? Cut one of my bestselling bands loose?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, I won’t,” Poppy said mulishly. “No way in hell. Don’t bother asking me again.”

  Rickles said smoothly, “Let’s wait until after Lafayette to discuss this, OK?”

  And so Poppy found herself here, listening to Henry, smiling sweetly at the press who wanted to destroy him, and wondering if this would be the last time she would ever do this.

  No, stop it, she warned herself sternly, as the tears threatened to spring up. Ruining his comeback rally was not the way to go. She would talk it over with him when they got back to the hotel.

  There would be plenty of time for tears then.

  *

  The car pulled up at the airport curb. Poppy was in the front seat, because Henry was driving her himself. There was no way she wanted some chauffeur to take her; Poppy hated strangers to see her cry; and Henry had wanted to do it.

  The fight had lasted into the early hours of the morning. Poppy was exhausted now, as well as weepy, but more than her tiredness was the ache in her heart, and the nasty feeling that she might not see Henry again.

  “At least you have no ring to give back to me,” he said flatly, not wanting her to get out of the car and leave him, but also not prepared to buckle.

  Poppy wanted to say, “Because you kept the engagement quiet, because you didn’t get me a ring,” but instead just said, “Don’t be like that.”

  “What? After all we’ve meant to each other?” LeClerc said cynically.

  “Haven’t we?” Poppy asked, fresh tears coming despite herself.

  LeClerc looked at her and wanted to brush them away. But he knew if he weakened now he might start crying himself, and he was a man, and that was unacceptable. Maybe it was OK for therapy-boys from Los Angeles, but not for a guy from the Bayou.

  “I obviously don’t mean as much to you as your career does, Poppy.”

  “It’s a free-speech issue,” she half shouted.

  “Bullshit.” He shook his head. “It’s a spoiled brat issue. I have never tried to smother you, or make you the little woman, or stop you working. But you putting these scum before me…” He shrugged. “I’m not a caring, sharing New Man, sugar. If that’s what you want, you need to look elsewhere.”

  “You do want to ruin my career,” Poppy said furiously.

  “Well,” LeClerc said, reaching across her and opening the door, “you’ve done your damnedest to ruin mine. I’m not interested in being your house-husband. The offer was for you to be my wife.”

  “You’re a sexist pig, Henry LeClerc,” Poppy snarled, getting out and grabbing her carry-on case.

  He grinned for a second, and it tugged sharply at her heartstrings; that old, sexy, confident grin of his!

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Poppy snapped.

  He touched his forehead. “You have a good day, ma’am,” LeClerc said, closing the door and driving away from the curb in a screech of rubber.

  Arrogant, self-centered son of a bitch! Poppy thought, striding into the terminal with such fury on her face that the Skycap luggage handlers didn’t even bother approaching her. There’d be no tips there, that was for sure.

  Well, screw Henry LeClerc and his slow hands and fast Southern ways. It had been a crazy idea from the start, Poppy thought. She was far too young for him, and too urban, and she was a career girl and he just thought she should stay home and bake cookies.

  Time to get out of Louisiana. High time, Poppy told herself.

  She marched furiously up to the Continental ticket counter and flashed her platinum OnePass card.

  “What time is the next flight to New York?”

  “Twenty minutes, ma’am.”

  “Great. I just have carry-on,” Poppy said, “so get me on it.”

  *

  She seethed for the entire flight, and no glasses of champagne or soft first-class seats did anything to help her mood. Henry wasn’t worth obsessing over, Poppy told herself, but it didn’t stop her from doing just that.

  Well, she thought when the captain announced the descent and they started to bank and turn above Manhattan, never mind. She had things to do in town. Meetings with Sony, Menace’s record company, for one thing. Poppy would review the sales, see how her controversial First Amendment poster-boys were doing. Because that was what it was about, she told herself self-righteously. She was a champion of free speech and a warrior against censorship.

  And she would pamper herself. No more of the conservative, dull little outfits she’d been shoehorned into on the campaign trail. No, she was looking forward to wearing some cool-ass black leather pants and a tight little cashmere top, and spiky ankle-boots. It’d be freezing in New York in winter, but that wouldn’t stop Poppy from being stylish. That was what the record industry expected of her, and it was time to show everybody that she was more than some smiling and waving political girlfriend.

  Poppy Allen and Henry LeClerc. Oil and water. What the hell had she been thinking?

  *

  Poppy arrived in New York, checked into the Victrix, and went about her business. She called the recording studio where Menace was laying down its new tracks; she set up appointments at RCA, Sony, and Musica for some of her other acts; and she called Travis Jackson.

  “Hey, baby,” Travis said. But he had that whiny tone she’d come to dread lately whenever she called him up. “I’m not happy … did you see all the play that Shania Twain is getting … why can’t I have Mutt Lange produce my shit, Poppy…”

  “Shania is married to Mutt,” Poppy said patiently, “and he’s a little busy with her career right now. Your sales are amazing, Travis.”

  “I want Mutt,” he said, insisting on the famously reclusive super-producer, “or maybe Michael Kravis, can you get me Michael Kravis…?”

  When she was done with the litany of complaints from a guy that had jus
t gone sextuple-platinum, she called her hair bands. More whining. Poppy was soothing, but she felt sick of it, sick of them. A manager now was half a babysitter, which she’d never signed up to be. Her acts these days wanted Poppy to bail them out of jail, to find kennels for their pets, and to hear their incessant moaning that somebody else was doing better than they were … which was always management’s fault, never the band’s fault …

  As she prepared to catch a cab downtown to visit Menace in the studio—they were at a high-rent place in Soho, and it was a good job they were selling to pay these bills—Poppy thought that her client roster suddenly reminded her of Silver Bullet. Was there ever an act that blamed a drop in fortunes on themselves? No way. It was always the record label, the manager, the touring crew. Never that their songwriting skills had dropped off, or they needed to lose a few pounds or play some gigs more passionately.

  Poppy climbed into her cab, tipped the doorman five bucks, and gave the driver the address of the studio.

  I’m too young to be sick and tired of these guys, she thought. If I feel like this now, how will I react when I’m forty?

  Fifty-Eight

  “Well, look who it is,” said Tyrone, leering at her. “What’s up, sweetness?”

  “Hey, guys,” Poppy said easily, dropping her Prada purse and sliding into the producer’s booth beside Jake Ritter, who was working the controls.

  Menace raised hands to her. A few of the guys smiled, really just baring their teeth. Two of them didn’t even look up.

  “Got any blow?” Keith said.

  “Not on me,” Poppy replied, unfazed. “Sorry.”

  He looked at her as though she were less than useless. Poppy pressed on; she had always believed you didn’t have to be best buddies with your clients. Menace had hired her on their lawyer’s recommendation. They just expected her to make them money, and that was fine with Poppy.

  “What are ya here for, then?” Tyrone demanded.

  “Hmmm, let me see. What am I here for? Oh yeah, to hear the new shit. You boys are carving up the charts right now, programmers want some more.”

  That got their attention. They started high-fiving each other, grinning and whooping. Good sales were always welcome news, whether you were in hip-hop or country.