by Daniel Price
“Get her out of there,” I demanded. “I don’t care how. Get her out of there and get her back to the hotel.”
“Scott, she’s not listening to me! She thinks I was part of the ambush! She thinks we all set her up!”
“Keep your voice down! Be careful!”
“I’m in the senior producer’s office. Don’t worry. I’m alone.”
“You’re still in the CNN building, for Christ’s sake! Use your head!”
He snorted scornfully. “Ah yes. Ever the vigilant one. No wonder things are progressing so smoothly.”
I clenched my teeth. “You know I had nothing to do with that.”
He lowered his voice to a hiss. “We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t started that pissing match with Maxina.”
“She had nothing to do with that. It was all Simba.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Maxina wouldn’t be so stupid.”
Alonso exhaled. “This is bad, Scott.”
Stop. Using. My. Goddamn. Name. “We can still salvage this.”
He spoke in a harsh whisper. “How? If she confesses now, after that emotional scene, everyone will think she’s demented. She’ll freak people out. To be honest, she freaked me out a little.”
“Alonso, were you ever raped?”
“Of course not.”
“Me neither. But Harmony was, many times, by her stepfather. We have no idea how that... Look, we’ll get some experts to explain that she was channeling an earlier trauma. She never mentioned Hunta by name.”
He thought about it. “I don’t know. That might satisfy some people—”
“We’ll make it satisfy everyone. The bigger issue right now is that the anti-Hunta sentiment is about to reach critical mass.”
“So what are we supposed to do about it?”
I rested my back against the wall, running my hand through my hair. Damn it.
“We have to end it,” I said. “We need to end this thing fast.”
Alonso wasn’t happy about it either. “She doesn’t seem ready to come clean now, does she?”
“We’ll get her ready.”
“Frankly, I don’t think it’s in her best interest anymore.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” I replied. “There’s no alternative.”
“Actually, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On whatever measures you and Maxina have established to prevent there from being an alternative,” he said pointedly.
I fell quiet, quiet enough for me to hear the footsteps coming up my stairs. That wasn’t a pressing concern. Madison was too deferential to step within earshot of a private conversation and Jean didn’t have an earshot at all.
“In other words, you’d like to know what’s stopping the three of us, or maybe even the two of you, from going all the way. Past the second star on the right and straight on till morning.”
“I’m talking about the death of quid pro quo,” Alonso replied. “Deny it if you like but we are rapidly approaching a situation where someone’s going to win and someone’s going to lose.”
“I don’t want to hear this shit.”
“I’m just giving you the reality of the situation. If you truly cared about Harmony—”
“Hold on a second.”
I opened the door, startling Jean. She was writing me a sticky note, but now she simply held up her hands. I come in peace!
I held up a finger, then turned away from her. I didn’t want her reading my face or lips for this one.
“Sorry. You there? “
“Yes. I’m here,” he said. “All I’m asking—”
“I know exactly what you’re asking. And here’s my answer. You want to know what’s stopping us? I am. You want to know how averse I am to the idea of screwing over Jeremy? Very averse. So averse, in fact, that if I catch you planting alternative ideas in Harmony’s head, I will dedicate my life to killing your novel. And by ‘life,’ I mean ‘afternoon.’ You’d be amazed how easy it is to keep a bad book down.”
Say what you will about Alonso, the man had skin of iron. From the way he laughed, I might as well have thumped him with a wiffle bat.
“Self-righteousness does not become a man of your résumé, my friend. And save your threats. There’s nothing you or Maxina can do to me now that Harmony can’t do with a single well-placed quote. She’s the one with the power. So while I won’t actively steer her toward one outcome or another, I’m telling you now that I will go where she goes. Take that as you will. And call me when you’re feeling more constructive.”
He hung up. I lowered the phone, counted to five, and then turned around with a chirpy grin. “Hi.”
With a cautious wince, Jean flashed me a pair of neatly scribbled stickies, one in each palm.
I was just going to tell you we’re leaving. / May I borrow your friend’s weird book?
He wasn’t a friend anymore. “That’s fine.”
She wrote a new note. Are you OK?
“I’m okay. Better than my client, anyway.”
Do you need Madison to stay?
“No. I’ll be all right. Thank you, though.”
She wasn’t buying the brave act at all. She amended her message. Do you want Madison to stay?
“I want you both to stay.”
The words didn’t hit her well, but her bad reaction was like sunlight to me. She rolled her neck, she grimaced, she chafed and whined through a What are you doing to me? look, as if she were on a diet and I just offered her a big block of chocolate.
And what a dense block I was. This whole time I was analyzing her like an alien dispatch. She was so damn strong to me, so damn clever, that I just assumed she was pulling me along some Byzantine path toward... something. It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t figure it out, but at long last it occurred to me that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Worse, she might have thought she was following me. No wonder she was so frustrated.
With a lovely sigh, she thumped her forehead against my chest. Once, twice, three times. I gently rubbed her back. Yeah. I know, Jean. You never set out to infect me, but you did. I never set out to escalate, but here we are on the second floor. I would have loved to address this, but given events, I didn’t even have time to ask “What now?”
She pulled away. After fixing her hair, she wrote a quick blurb on an other sticky note, then pressed it on my upper back. I was about to reach behind and grab it, but she stopped me, shaking her head. Not yet, she told me. Wait.
It would have to wait anyway. The phone in my hand rang. I groaned, then answered it.
“This is Scott.”
“Scott, you know I had nothing to do with that.”
I’d never heard Maxina this stressed before. From her quick and heavy footsteps, she was clearly going somewhere fast.
“I know,” I said. “It’s not me you need to worry about.”
Jean backed away, throwing me a heavy look and a wave before disappearing down the stairs. God only knew what Madison was thinking.
“This is a nightmare.” Maxina wheezed. “All we need is one smart journalist to really analyze Simba’s comments.”
“We might get some crackpot conspiracies, but nothing in the mainstream. They wouldn’t dare accuse Harmony of anything. Especially not now.”
“I hope you’re right. How is she?”
“Not good. She’s furious at everyone. How’s Simba?”
“She’s a mess. She just left the hotel. We think she just left Jeremy.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“No it’s not. I just got off the phone with Doug. She took Latisha and a suitcase.”
“Jesus Christ! She ended the call fifteen minutes ago!”
“Things are falling apart fast, Scott. Now, I don’t have time for bullshit. I need to know if you’re going to be a help to me or a hindrance.”
“What do you want?”
“I want this over! I want Harmony to recant no later than t
omorrow morning.”
“You got it.”
Maxina’s footsteps came to a sudden stop. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. This show isn’t good for anyone anymore. I figure if you and I present a united front, we can talk her into cooperating.”
Maxina let out a shaky laugh. “Wow. I’m afraid to ask what your catch is.”
“My catch is that you stick to your word. Once I help you save Jeremy, you do everything in your power to help me save Harmony. That’s all I ever wanted.”
She started up again. “You got it. You got it. Oh, bless your heart, Scott. I knew you’d come around.”
“No you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t. But you are now officially a man I love.”
I looked through the window and watched Madison and Jean cross the street. Without looking back at me, or even at each other, they both entered the SUV. I pulled the small yellow slip off my back.
We moved out.
“Scott? Are you there?”
“Yeah.” I met Jean’s glance through two windows and fifty feet of dark air. “Yeah. I’m here. What now?”
________________
By eight o’clock I was in Beverly Hills. I parked my rented Buick on Doheny Drive, in front of a small Spanish-style house. I had dropped Simba off at this very place a little over a week ago, on that fateful day we (I) selected Harmony to be our media snare. Before leaving my car, Simba had reached over, squeezed my leg, and asked me to promise her, promise her that I’d do what’s right for her and Jeremy. I promised. Obviously she stopped believing me.
The door was answered by a striking woman in her late twenties. She was dark-skinned and nearly six feet tall. She was surprised to be looking up at me.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes. I’m Scott. I’m one of the smart, slick people your cousin’s been complaining about.”
She leered with grim humor. “She mentioned there was a white one in the bunch.”
“Can I please see her?”
“What makes you think she’s here?”
Hunta had an inkling, which was passed from Doug to Maxina to me. Also passed along was Hunta’s strong desire to see Harmony go under the wheels of a cargo truck. He reportedly had similar sentiments for me.
“I’m only working a few hours ahead of the reporters,” I stressed. “It’s in her best interest that I get to her before they do. Please.”
I didn’t ask to be here. I really wanted to minister to Harmony, but Maxina opted to handle that herself. She’s too close to you, Scott. You’re only going to set her off. I didn’t necessarily agree, but I liked the idea of Maxina taking the brunt of Harmony’s ill will for a change.
In the meantime, Maxina had another way for me to be useful.
Warily, the cousin let me into her living room and left me waiting for ten minutes. I spent most of the time studying the black-and-white photos on the walls, all artistic nudes of the cousin herself. I was impressed, not just with her lithe form but with the healthy amount of nerve it took to decorate her home with naked pictures of herself. In every shot, she sported a white plaster cast on her left forearm. There was a statement in there somewhere, but damned if I knew what it was.
Soon enough, she came back, cradling a sleepy Latisha. “She’s ready to see you. She’s on the back porch.”
“Thanks.” I gestured to a photo. “Was your arm really broken?”
“No.”
As I passed her, she kept a cool eye on me. “You enjoy playing with other people’s lives the way you do?”
I stopped and made a half-turn. “No.”
________________
There were only two chairs on the porch, each in the shape of a giant cupped hand. I sat down on one, leaning back against four tight fingers. I didn’t like the idea of a big palm holding up my ass, nor did I like the assemblage of vertical penis sculptures that adorned the patio like a cactus patch. All in all, I preferred the nude-cousin motif of the living room.
On the other hand, there was Simba. She was a vision, as always, even with strained red eyes. She had just showered. Her hair was slicked back. She wore an Asian silk robe, one so short that she had to cross her legs to keep our talk from becoming more awkward. At her feet were a pack of cigarettes and a box of tissues. Currently, she was working her way through the cigarettes.
“You here to tell me I fucked up?”
“Only if you think it went well,” I quipped.
She let out a smoky chuckle. “No. I’m pretty unhappy with how it turned out.”
I kept quiet as she tapped her ashes into a tray on the thumb of her chair.
“He told me I fucked up. Those were the first words that came out of Jeremy’s mouth the minute I walked back into the room. ‘You fucked up.’”
“Did he know what you were doing?”
“It was his idea. He wanted to call in himself but I said ‘No. Let me do it. It’ll sound better coming from me.’”
She shook her head at me, incredulous. “I mean, shit. You guys did such a good job with her. She was so damn good, the way she claimed how rap never hurt her. Don’t blame rap. Blame the rapper. That was some quality stuff. I’m sure it was a big relief for the Judge, for Maxina, for everyone at that whole stupid meeting.”
Right. Now get to the part where you chide me.
“See, you were different to us, Scott. Everyone else was focused on saving the label or saving the music business, but you were all about Jeremy. Until suddenly you became all about Harmony. Harmony, Harmony, Harmony. Even Maxina was worried about you.”
“It was gossip,” I insisted, as calmly as possible. “Childish, cynical, paranoid gossip. If you chose to believe it, fine. But what you did—”
“I did what I thought was necessary!”
“I told you both to have patience and to have faith in me, and you didn’t. Now you made it ten times worse for everyone.”
She closed her eyes, choking back tears. “You’ve never been on our side of the crisis, Scott. We can’t turn on the TV, we can’t open a newspaper without seeing some former friend telling lies about us. How do you expect us to be patient, Scott? How do you expect us to have faith in you when you’re the one who made it ten times worse?”
We sat in taut silence, facing each other from opposite hands.
“Do you know how much the Enquirer offered me to speak out against my husband? Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A quarter of a million dollars. Nobody’s offering me money to defend him. Just to attack him. Can you believe that?”
“Yes,” I said meaningfully.
She scrutinized me. “Ah. So that’s why you’re here. You heard I left Jeremy, and you’re wondering if I’m going to become an even bigger problem.”
I matched her harsh expression. She extinguished one cigarette and immediately lit up another.
“When he was eighteen, he won this freestyling competition at a local club. He just blew everyone away. That’s when he met Yak Fula, another up-and-comer. He’s dead now, but at the time he was part of Tupac’s backup group, the Immortal Outlaws. He and Jeremy got to talking, and they became friends. Then Yak introduced Jeremy to Tupac and they became friends. ‘Pac was a good role model for Jeremy. Artistically, that is. Personally...Well, this was his Death Row phase. He was getting into the whole gang shit. When you’re with Suge Knight, you’re with the Bloods. You are red from head to toe.
“So soon enough, one of the Outlaws got kicked out of the group because he smashed up ‘Pac’s car. Suddenly Yak was saying things to Jeremy like ‘Hey man. We’re gonna make you one of us. You’re gonna be an Outlaw.’ Jeremy was blown away but he also knew what that meant. When you’re part of ‘Pac’s group, you were branded with a big tattoo that said THUG LIFE, right here.” She motioned across her abdomen. “That was a problem. I mean, would Jeremy disappoint his father by getting into the gang scene? Or would he risk falling out with ‘Pac?”
She looked out at the night sky, shooting
smoke up at the stars.
“Turns out it didn’t matter. In September they all went up to Vegas to see Mike Tyson fight. Everyone from Death Row was there. All sorts of celebrities. This was Jeremy’s first real taste of the big life. Everyone was drunk and high and out of control. Right after the fight, right in the lobby of the MGM Grand, ‘Pac started whaling on this guy who supposedly stole something from somebody. Before long, everybody in the group was kicking this guy on the floor. Even Suge Knight was getting in on it. Jeremy didn’t know what to do. Yak’s like ‘Come on, man. You down with us or ain’t you?’
“What else could he do? He started kicking the guy. It was the only time he ever did anything like that. And he still feels bad about it. See, that’s the thing about Jeremy. He’s always looking at himself through his father’s eyes, making up for the mistakes of his brothers. And he still feels bad about that thing he did four and a half years ago. For kicking a man he didn’t even know. Can you imagine what he’d be like if he ever hurt a woman he did know?”
She didn’t have to tell me who she was really talking about.
“Anyway, it only got worse that night. The gang was running around town in a caravan. They went from the MGM Grand to Suge’s house off the Strip, and then from Suge’s house, they were all fixing to go to some club. Nobody stopped for a minute and Jeremy was caught up in the action. It wasn’t so fun anymore. He said it felt a lot like drowning.”
Simba took another deep hit off her cigarette.
“And then it happened. Right at a stoplight, a white Cadillac pulls up next to the car Tupac was in. Four guys with guns get out and BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Jeremy was only one car behind, right next to Yak. They saw the whole thing go down.”
“Jesus...”
“Yeah. It was a mess. Everyone’s trying to chase each other. The cops are all around and Death Row people are telling Jeremy ‘Don’t say nothing to the police! Don’t say nothing to the police!’ Meanwhile, Tupac’s all shot up. He couldn’t even breathe. They got him to the hospital, but he was already gone. It took six more days for his body to die, but he was already gone.”
Her eyes welled up. Her mouth began to quiver. “Jeremy told me the story not long after I met him. He told me how he had finally gotten in to see ‘Pac at the hospital, the day after the shooting. The doctors had to take out half his guts just to keep him alive. But what Jeremy remembered the most was the THUG LIFE tattoo on ‘Pac’s stomach. There was a huge incision cutting right through it. It was like a big slash between the THUG and the LIFE, and...”