by Maxine Storm
I stepped out of the shower, naked, and looked in the mirror.
I saw the marks the man had left on me, my hips reddened and a few hickies on my neck. I’m somewhat bigger than your average thin girl but I felt OK today looking in the mirror and remembering how turned on he was when he took me.
I got into bed but had trouble sleeping, and I’d awake to the sounds of the gunshots at the club in my mind and imagining Britney falling, and I’d tried to imagine the man coming in to somehow stop the bullets, to stop time.
Chapter 6
I woke up and looked at the clock.
It was the afternoon and I was way late.
It was Saturday but I remembered Philip told me he had wanted me to come in to discuss something about Britney’s work.
I changed and headed out.
Chapter 7
I got in the building and the company office. Once I turned the corner at my department’s section though, I saw Philip standing right in front of my desk.
I slowly walked up to him.
“Philip, you wanted to talk about something to do with Britney?” I said, timidly.
“Janet, you’re late. You’re late as hell and you’ve been wasting my time. You know I told you this was important,” Philip said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
What the hell was his problem? He *knew* Britney was killed last night.
He didn’t seem to care at all.
He didn’t seem to care whether I had any chance, any time at all to get over it.
But I was here and I decided I might as well let it go for now.
I’d give him a piece of my mind another time. Maybe when I quit this place.
“OK. I know you and Britney were friends,” he said. “But we have work to do. Come with me.”
He led me to his office and offered me a seat and closed the door.
“We don’t have time to be sad here,” Philip said.
“The news cycle doesn’t stop,” Philip said. “It doesn’t stop whether you’re happy or sad, or whether something good or bad happened to you. So if you’re going to be a journalist, you need to act like one, and get back in the game. This isn’t the college paper, Janet. This is business.”
I didn’t think he was right.
Your emotions are important.
I knew it, I always believed it.
If you don’t listen to what your emotions tell you, you’ll always be led astray.
But I guessed that it wasn’t the time for a debate over abstract stuff like that.
“Yes, Philip,” I said. “I understand.”
“Good,” he said. “Now for as to why I asked you to come in.”
He stood up and looked out the window. The city skyline was beautiful and expansive. It reminded me of how small and slower-paced the town I group in was in comparison.
New York was full of people like Philip. Neurotics, obsessed with work, about to snap at any second. That was the darker side that came out, the tension you could feel in the streets.
“As you might have known, Britney was working on a new story for the paper. But do you know what it was about, exactly?”
I shook my head.
“Not really. Just that it involved a high-profile person,” I said.
“It’s a big story,” he said. “Maybe one of the biggest Global Eye has ever worked on. We have some other people working on other parts of it, but Britney was working on a core aspect.”
The biggest story in Global Eye history and I wasn’t part of it at all, until now?
And only because Britney passed away.
I had thought there was some kind of team, here.
Some sense of being part of something, together.
Yeah, it was ultra-competitive, but to exclude me like this?
I wanted to walk out right now, to say, screw your stupid story and your emotionally-unhinged personality, Philip.
But I knew I had to stay on, at least for this.
If it was big as he was suggesting, then it’d be huge for my career.
Some journalists had career defining stories. Real stories that made their reputation, that made them overnight sensations.
I had to keep myself in control.
“The story is on Armand Silver. It’s going to take him and his media empire down for good,” Philip said, taking a picture out of a dossier.
He handed it over to me.
My hand immediately started trembling.
It couldn’t be.
It was the same man I had sex with at the club last night.
I suddenly felt his presence around me, my imagination was out of control. I felt his strong and thick arms around my waist as he grinded into me like he did last night.
I snapped out of it and remembered where I was, and the picture I was holding. I steadied my hand and put the picture down on the desk.
“Are you OK?” asked Philip.
“Yeah, fine. Just some strong coffee jitters.”
Philip nodded.
The guy was practically a coffee addict that would be shaking during team meetings, so I figured he bought it.
“Anyway,” he said, “we have an insider source at one of his companies. It isn’t much, but we’ve been getting some leads from it that we’ve been investigating ourselves after.”
Philip took a deep breath and continued. I could tell there was something bugging him. He was starting to fidget.
“That’s where Britney was to come in. Britney was supposed to get close to Armand. Make him feel good. Get some info out of him. That we could use to verify for our investigative reports.”
“Do you mean she was to seduce him?” I said. “Like a spy?”
Philip started fidgeting more rapidly.
“She was to do her job – as a journalist – and get the information we needed. If she needed to show some T&A, well, that’s just what the job called for.”
I was taken aback my his ‘admission’. This wasn’t what I was thinking the assignment was going to be about at all.
“As I was saying, she was to get the information directly, by talking to him…or through other means, as she saw fit.”
“Are you saying…to steal it?” I asked.
Philip fidgeted again.
“Janet, don’t make me tell you how to do your job. You do what needs to be done. Or I will find someone else who will do it.”
Is this really what Britney was doing?
Acting like a spy?
Like one of the girls in those James Bond movies?
Is this what got her killed?
And by Armand?
And why wasn’t he warning me about this, about the possible connection between Britney’s death and her assignment?
“Philip,” I said. “Do you think Britney’s death had something to do with the work she was doing for us?”
He paused for some time before he answered.
“Things happen during work. Britney was just unlucky. We all know clubs can be homes to some seedy people. Maybe she just got with the wrong guy,” he paced around a moment before stopping.
“Janet, I’m going to ask you once, and only once more,” he said impatiently. “Can I make you responsible for this assignment, or not?”
I thought back to the club.
The gunshots.
The chaos.
The man who gave me an unforgettable night.
Britney’s death.
I had to do this.
To show I wasn’t afraid.
I’d have to be smart.
I’d have to be smarter than Britney, sharper, stronger.
I didn’t have a choice.
It was either this, or back to my small hometown.
Make it at Global Eye – make it in New York – and I’d make it anywhere.
I nodded. I nodded and held my head up.
“Yes, Philip. You can count on me. I’ll deliver what’s required.”
Philip breathed a huge sigh of rel
ief.
“Thank God,” he said. “The big boss was has been on my case like crazy. We’ll finally be able to take Armand down.”
He got up from the desk and opened the door.
“Follow me, I’ll show you what Britney had worked on so far.”
Chapter 8
Philip put a key in the elevator and then led me to a secluded area on another floor in the building.
There were just a few desks with two computers.
Britney’s stuff was still on one of the desks.
“We’re collecting her things for her family still,” said Philip, as he directed me to the other nearby desk.
He handed me some folders and binders Britney had been working on.
“Start with these,” he said. “Britney was trying to get an interview with Armand. Pretend to be one of those foolish young girls who look up to him and flatter his ego. Charm him there and then get him out again for drinks. And then…well, that’s for your imagination.”
I couldn’t help but imagine Armand again, being forced against the wall from his powerful frame. But then I remembered Britney again and I was brought back down to reality.
“Armand is notoriously hard to get close to. I don’t just mean that emotionally, since he’s kind of a mess,” said Philip.
I fumed inside.
He shouldn’t say that about Armand, but I held my tongue.
“I mean, at a basic level. He avoids the media, despite being a media king himself. He’s very secretive and stays away from most people. He says they’re generally a ‘waste of his time.’ The prick.”
I recalled Armand in the club, the way he blew off those other girls that any other guy would be bending over backwards to talk to. But he did talk to me.
“Maybe the same route Britney was trying could work for you,” continued Philip. “I mean, you’d have to somehow get around the fact that she isn’t here anymore. But use your brains. And whatever else, if you know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes.
What a sleaze.
I wonder what else Britney had to put up with when dealing with Philip.
“Yeah,” I said, not looking at him. “I got it.”
“OK,” he said. “Good luck.”
He walked out and I heard the elevator chime before he got in.
Chapter 9
I started going through the file Britney left.
Armand certainly had a long a rap sheet.
Rumors of fraud, attacks on his enemies, hostile takeovers of other companies that would also have his sights on him.
Would murder be so far out of the picture? I wondered.
Regardless of what happened, any story involving him was sure to draw an audience.
But Philip was right about one thing.
He definitely limited his profile in the media as far as he could control. Although, in our time, full of smartphones and instant photo sharing, is pretty difficult.
But there were few clear pictures of him.
It’s like he knew how to outsmart the media at their own game.
He’d send the journalists and photographers one way, and go the other.
Rumor had it even was even able to coordinate a network of body doubles to ‘throw off his scent.’
That might have just been tabloid gossip.
But it seemed to be working, didn’t it?
The mere fact people were talking about that, meant less attention on him as a person, and more on his image, legacy, and company.
It was almost the perfect PR when I thought about it.
His mastery of this domain all made sense though.
He started his first company right after he dropped out of high school, according to one of the rare interviews he had given. Britney must have copied the article from the news archives. He looked really young in the photo, but I could still see that same restless ambition in his eyes that I glimpsed that day in the club.
He sold that company to a large software company that specialized in online news for early computers and hand-held devices.
Then, using that cash, he started up one of the largest online tabloids. It became controversial for all the crazy stories it broke about celebrities. People wracked their brains trying to figure out how they got their scoops.
I wondered if some of the information about Armand came out of that paper. It’d be the perfect smokescreen. Create the different threads that make up the supposed story of your life.
But then there were details that even he couldn’t make up. He got into a huge lawsuit with another giant news company over the rights to a company he had sold to them and then tried to buy back. He won, but ever since then, the rest of the media world had been gunning for him. He had challenged one of the kingpins and took them down.
His main company, Zeitgeist, a German word meaning the defining spirit of a time, seemed to be weathering attacks from all directions.
Global Eye, where I worked, had run a number of hit pieces on him. But they had to be minor in scope compared to what Philip was suggesting ‘we’ were working on.
And that’s when I put it together.
Britney was trying to interview Armand.
Maybe she had already gotten to him.
I remembered in the club, she said to me, “that’s him”, when he rescued us from the dumb-bros.
Could it have been that she found out something about him?
Something he didn’t want anyone to know.
Something that finally slipped past the intricate castle of smoke and mirrors he had constructed with his media mastery?
But Britney never told me anything about what she was working on.
Maybe she was too possessive of him and didn’t want to share anything.
Maybe she was –
“Hey! I see you found the file,” said the cheery voice that startled me.
I turned around and saw her.
I couldn’t believe it.
It was that same girl I saw at the club last night – the one I first saw talking to Armand. The same blonde in the red dress that was trying to seduce him and the guy at his table.
What was she doing here?
The blonde must have read the confusion on my face so she extended her hand out for a handshake.
“Philip must not have told you about me,” she said. “He’s such a scatterbrain. I’m Alex.”
I shook Alex’s hand and introduced myself.
“Armand’s quite the character,” she said. “Hot, too. Too bad we don’t have more pics of him.”
I bristled at her language. It betrayed a certain familiarity with Armand that made me uncomfortable.
“How did you end up on the assignment?” I asked.
Admittedly, Global Eye was a huge company. It was common not to know the person you were basically working beside, despite being together in the same building all the time. That’s not to mention the fast turnover of staff, which was another reason I didn’t just want to drop out of this assignment.
But still, a woman like Alex – the kind of woman guys would go crazy for…how could I have not seen her? She’s the kind of woman every guy would have been gossiping about and trying to be her ‘friend’. I know how guys are here in this industry, with their ‘favors’.
“Philip put me on the assignment,” said Alex. “He noticed Britney was having a hard time putting all the information together and trying to get Armand to come out for drinks or an interview. So he figured she could use some extra help.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s cool. Armand seems hard to pin down.”
But in my heart I knew something wasn’t right with her story.
As I said, this was the first time I ever saw or heard of this girl, and a weirdo like Philip would have probably printed out Instagram photos of her and hung them in his office. But since I didn’t have any concrete proof, I knew it was better to wait it out before calling her bluff.
“Yeah,” Alex said, “Armand is definitely playing hard to get. Do
you think I could take a look at that folder again, I had an idea to get him out.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I’m still getting to speed with all the info, so I’ll be holding on to it right now.”
“Really?” she said, tilting her head to the side. “Because I had a really good idea to lure him – to get him out, I mean.”
“I have some good ideas, too,” I said, “From what I’ve been reading it’d be easy to try and – “
“That’s great,” she said, cutting me off. “But there’s this exclusive club downtown I have access to, so I was thinking if I wore the right dress, you know, and kind of flirted with him, he’d fall for it and come down. So you could help me preparing a backstory for that scenario.”
She was really starting to annoy me. Journalism is about wearing the right kind of dress?
“I don’t know if that’d work,” I said. “He seems too clever for something like that. I think I heard of someone trying something like that actually, at a club, and failing.” She shot me a look as if she was wondering whether somehow I had seen her at the club trying to hit on Armand.
“Yeah, but with the right kind of woman,” she said, “any man can be seduced like that.”
I didn’t respond at first.
I could tell she didn’t think I was the “right kind of woman” for a job like that.
The problem for her was that she wasn’t the right kind of woman for a job like this.
One that required you to see beyond the surface.
“If you’d like,” I said, “you could write down your strategy for me to look over and we could discuss it later, once I have had more time to think about the assignment.”
Philip didn’t tell me I had to report to anyone, so I might as well act like I’m the boss.
She look startled and confused, as if this was the first time she didn’t get her way.
“Well, OK,” she said, her voice flat. “We’ll talk about it later then. Good luck with the file.”
She turned around and walked back to the same elevator Philip took without waiting for me to reply.
“Thanks,” I said, barely audible.
Chapter 10
Once she left, I could finally relax for a moment.