by Daniel Price
“You’re goddamn right I’m upset! You ruined her life and she thinks I did it!”
I’d famously yelled at the Judge before, but none of them had ever seen me like this. I was sliding down toward something ugly, and it was clear for everyone to see. I clenched my teeth and dug my fingers into the cushion. I would not break down. Not here. With these people, I’d stay mature and professional to my last spiteful breath.
In this case, it was a last spiteful sneeze.
“Bless you,” said Maxina.
“Thank you.”
I took a tissue out of my pocket and wiped my nose. “Don’t worry. I won’t be a problem. I know how the game’s played. If I leaked my own recordings, the press would just take it out on Jeremy, and I have absolutely no interest in seeing that happen. I’ve already pissed enough in his bed.”
I couldn’t help but draw a bead of solace from their wide-eyed looks of astonishment. It wasn’t often in life that I got to seize the moral high ground.
“So what are you going to do?” the Judge asked again.
The network continued to milk the last few minutes before the grand premiere of the audiotape. They were merely pumping up their numbers, hogging our precious eyeballs for as long they could. They showed us Harmony’s momentous first walk down the media gauntlet. For the thousandth time, Alonso escorted her from her front door to his shiny black Audi. Even in replay, her frightened face had a paralyzing effect. Her big doe eyes screamed their distress at me. They screamed my name.
“Scott?”
What could I do? I was plummeting into the depths right alongside Harmony. The fact that she hated me, the fact that she was falling, these were all things I couldn’t quite handle. By this point in the game, I needed more than forgiveness and she needed more than words. She needed rescue.
By this point, I was in a unique position to provide it.
“I’m going home,” I matter-of-factly announced. “I’m going to take a long, hot shower, until the steam clears me up and I sound like myself again. Then I’ll break out my handy voice recorder and make a confession.”
The Judge and Doug reacted in typical knee-jerk fashion. Maxina shushed them with a hand.
“It’ll be pure fiction,” I assured them. “I’ll confess that I was hired by unnamed parties to frame Hunta. Our sole objective was to keep rap in the headlines until the U.S. Senate called for a new round of obscenity hearings. So I enlisted Harmony Prince. I met her at the Flower Club and promised her fame, fortune, the whole nine yards. Once I had her on board...Shit, we’re going to have to find a way to explain that restraining-order request. And we’ll have to exonerate Alonso. If not, he might—”
“We’ll work out the details,” said Maxina, her brow raised high in marvel. “Just go on.”
Unlike the others, she could see where I was going with this. I climbed to my feet and paced the room. I had to keep moving or I’d lose my nerve.
“Shortly after her debut, Harmony had second thoughts about the whole operation. She couldn’t deal with the fact that she was ruining the life of an innocent man. Obviously I couldn’t let her quit. Using the bodyguards, I kept her a virtual prisoner of the hotel. She screamed at me every day, begging me to let her go, threatening to go public with the truth.”
I stopped moving. I closed my eyes.
“So, to my own deep regret, I had no choice but to threaten her back. I let her know just how powerful my clients were, and just how short and difficult they could make her life. And the lives of her roommates.”
“Whoa, man,” said Hunta.
“That’s crazy,” said Big Bank.
“That’s why she broke down on Larry King,” I continued. “That’s why she didn’t confess when Simba implored her to. She wanted to desperately, but she knew there’d be consequences.”
“Scott, do you know what you’re doing?”
I turned to the Judge. “Yes. I’m sending the tape to Miranda Cameron-Donnell. She’s a reporter at AP who’s been sniffing after me. This won’t answer all her questions, but she’ll have no choice. She’ll have to run with what I give her.”
“But if you admit all this, you’re going to jail.”
I sat on the wing of the love seat, glancing out the sunny east window. “I’m not going to jail, Doug. I’ll just disappear and leave everything behind. My apartment. My car.” My gin. My medicine. “If I go off the grid, they’ll never find me. They won’t even spend that much time looking. I mean, crime-wise, I’m just a hoaxster with a guilty conscience. I’ll be fine.”
I let out a brief chuckle. “I’ll be Scott Free.”
The room was silent until Doug’s watch beeped in the new hour. It was nine o’clock. My voice was seconds away from hitting the nation. At best, I had six hours before my name and face followed. Six hours to tie up all the loose ends in my life and become a permanent specter. Jesus Christ. I was really doing this.
“There are other ways to help her,” Maxina told me. “Ways that are less extreme.”
“And less effective,” I replied. “You know how it works.”
“Still,” the Judge said, “you’re sacrificing your whole future for this woman. And not even to save her life, just to save her public standing. Why?”
I took a deep wet sniff, then shrugged again. “I’m the one who found her. I’m the one who got her into this. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t get her out?”
For a wonderful moment, I felt as brave and noble as I sounded. Then, as usual, I ruined it all by thinking. I ran myself through my own debunking devices. Thanks to whoever leaked the tape, my future was already sacrificed. All I was doing was dodging the scariest consequences. The long arm of the law. The long nails of the Bitch. The betrayal of Madison. The inevitable flameout with Jean. Better to run. Better to fly east, into the sunrise, and reincarnate myself on the opposite shore.
All things considered, I didn’t seem very brave at all. But for once, it must have looked great on the outside. For once, I’d play well in the theaters.
Maxina emitted a heavy sigh. “What can we do to help?”
The Judge’s watch beeped. So did Big Bank’s.
“Just make sure Harmony knows what I’m doing. She’s not dumb. She’ll know her best option now is to go along with the lie. But she’ll need a dedicated publicist to help her with the backlash. Maybe Kathy Oh. Or Jeff Hawn. He’s good. Oh, and make sure she gets the other half of my fee, please.”
“What can we do to help you?”
It was Maxina’s question again, but I found myself looking to Hunta. It occurred to me that if I gave him Madison’s phone number, he could tell her the whole story himself. She could hear straight from the horse’s mouth that he was never really betrayed by me. It was just a trick, a stunt, a media scam that blew up toward the end. But ultimately, Slick took the heat of the blast. He did right by everyone.
“Uh...”
While everyone watched me, I watched the television. At long last, it was showtime. The sound was off, but a transcript of the dialogue began to scroll onto the screen, word by word, right between a still shot of Harmony and that sinister graphic of Question-Mark Man.
HARMONY: This the craziest s*** I ever heard in my life.
MAN: I don’t blame you for being skeptical. Tell me which part worries you the most and I’ll see if I can clarify.
I was running short on time. I had to get out of here and get started on my task list. But I couldn’t leave without asking Hunta this one favor.
But something on the TV...
HARMONY: Which part? How about all of it? You want me to yell “rape” against a man who never even touched me...
MAN: We don’t really want to call it rape.
Something wasn’t right.
HARMONY: But I won’t have any evidence!
MAN: You won’t need evidence.
“This isn’t right,” I said. Everyone followed my gaze.
“What isn’t right?” asked Doug.
HARMONY: But what if people don’t believe me?
MAN: What, that Hunta sexually abused you?
HARMONY: Yeah.
MAN: [laughs] That’s not an issue. Trust me.
“That’s not what we said,” I told them.
Hunta eyed me tensely. “What the hell you talking about?”
“The dialogue. It’s all wrong. It’s not what was on the tape.”
HARMONY: How you gonna prove he had the opportunity?
MAN: Well, first there’s your paycheck, which shows you were at the Christmas party. Then there’s a hotel slip, which proves he got a room that night.
Maxina draped a taut hand over her mouth. “Oh dear God.”
She reached for the remote and turned up the volume. The voices were crackly, tinny, and almost submerged in the background hum of an engine. The conversation was obviously recorded in a moving car. But it wasn’t my car. It wasn’t my voice.
HARMONY: Damn. You really thought this whole thing out.
And that wasn’t Harmony.
Hunta chucked out his palms. “Can someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”
No one was prepared to answer. Once Maxina switched off the television, the six of us sat in pure silence, staring absently at various points in the room. I zoned in on Hunta’s bare feet. Although he didn’t know it yet, the tables had just turned back. Suddenly I was saved and he was screwed.
“It’s a fake,” I said, still gazing at his feet. “The tape’s a complete fake.”
Doug was stumped. “It’s weird. I mean the man sounded nothing like you, but are you sure that woman wasn’t Harmony?”
“It wasn’t. Someone just did a very good impression of her.”
“But that don’t make sense,” said Hunta. “Who would do that?”
Apparently I was the only one who figured it out. Even Maxina was left flailing in the dark, but she was just a minute away from piecing it together. I didn’t want to be here when that happened.
The Judge chimed in. “It could be any jokester. There are always people messing with the news.”
“Or it could be the news itself,” Big Bank added. “Maybe they did it for the ratings.”
“Yeah, but why this? Who would play a trick on Harmony?”
“It wasn’t a trick on her,” I explained to Hunta. “It was a trick on you.”
Yet again, all heads turned my way. My mind was still reeling from the implications. If I didn’t stay focused on Hunta, I’d probably start laughing. If I started, I probably wouldn’t stop.
“Over the next few hours, a whole bunch of audio experts will compare the voice on that recording to Harmony’s voice on Larry King Live. They’re all come to the same conclusion: it’s not her.”
Doug went agape. “Holy shit.”
“And if that’s not Harmony,” I continued, “then the press will conclude that someone set her up. Somebody made a cheap attempt to destroy her credibility.”
“They’re going to blame us,” said Doug. “We’re the only ones with a motive. They’re going to think…”
The Judge lowered his head into his hands. “Oh Jesus Christ...”
“Wait. This shit ain’t over?” Hunta asked. “You saying this shit ain’t over?”
Doug shook his head. “No. They’ll think you’re guiltier than ever now. They’ll think we’re all guilty now.”
“We got framed,” said Big Bank, astounded. “We got framed for framing her.”
For framing Hunta. Scheme-wise, it was a marvelous structure, a hoax within a hoax within a hoax. It was so artful in its simplicity and yet so devastating in its effectiveness.
“But can’t we stop this?” the Judge asked me. “Can’t we just release the real tape and end this once and for all?”
I shook my head. “No. That was the point. She didn’t do this to frame us. She did it to jam us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Who are you talking about?”
Finally, I looked to Maxina. Her face was a stone mask, as always, but behind it I could hear the pieces snapping together. Snap. Snap. Snap.
“It was Harmony,” I told them with splendorous awe. “She got us.”
The expressions on the men’s faces varied from skeptical to distrustful to downright incredulous.
“You can’t be serious,” said Big Bank.
“How can you be sure?” asked Doug.
“The voices may not have been ours, but the dialogue was. That whole script was a medley of things that Harmony and I actually said to each other, in private, unrecorded anywhere except her memory and mine. She wrote that scene herself.”
The Judge shook his head fast enough to ripple his jowls. “No. No. You’re telling me this girl—this squeaky little mouse—just orchestrated a huge and elaborate media stunt on her own, in less than twenty-four hours?”
“It’s not that elaborate,” I said. “It probably took her one hour to write it, two hours to produce it, and three hours for a trusted pal to leak it to Fox. In fact, I bet that female voice on that tape is her best friend Tracy. As to who played me...I don’t know. I guess whichever one of her roommates does the best white-man impression.”
“But why would she do a thing like that?” Big Bank asked me. “That’s a crazy risk.”
“It’s not so crazy. She knew all about our audiotape. I told her. She knew that if she didn’t cooperate with us, the tape would be released and the voice experts would nail her. So what does she do? She beats us to the press with her very own decoy, knowing damn well it’ll be exposed as a fake, knowing damn well it’ll block us from releasing our own.”
“That’s bullshit.” The Judge threw his desperate gaze onto Maxina. “That’s bullshit. Ours is the real thing. We’ve got her! If we play it for the media...”
Maxina had no intention of responding. She simply kept her cold gaze on me. Snap. Snap. Snap.
“It won’t matter,” I told the Judge. “Once Harmony’s cleared, there’s no force on earth that’ll get the media to consider a second recording. It’s like double jeopardy. They won’t try someone twice for the exact same crime, especially when the first trial blew up in their faces like a gag cigar.”
Doug’s wonder wasn’t as glowing as mine. “God. That’s why she insisted on having a whole night to write her confession speech. She was stalling us.”
“But how did she get this plan?” asked Big Bank. “Where’d she come up with it?”
“We gave it to her!” I told them. “The idea was right there all along! She framed herself, then exonerated herself. She used our very own trick against us!”
“Our trick?” the Judge inquired accusingly.
“My trick,” I admitted. “Yes. I taught her everything she knew. I just didn’t expect her to be such a quick learner.”
“You unbelievable bastard,” said Maxina at long last.
Once again, the room fell silent. In my frazzled state of mind, my practical engine finally stopped running. It was clogged on irony to the point of malfunction. With my mind shut down, there was nothing left for me to do but coast on involuntary reactions.
I lowered my head and laughed.
“Oh yes,” I said. “Yes, of course it would be me. Of course it only makes sense if I’m the mastermind behind this.”
“Scott, are you familiar with Occam’s razor?”
I kept chortling. “Why, yes, Maxina. Yes I am.”
“Good,” she said without a trace of levity. “So what do you see as the simplest explanation? That we were all outsmarted by a nineteen-year old hostess dancer with partial brain damage? Or that she once again took her cue from an extremely devious and talented publicist who just happens to be infatuated with her?”
“It wasn’t my idea!” I said. “It could have been Alonso!”
Even as I said it, I didn’t buy it. Alonso’s version of a clever idea was cybersex with Jesus. Face it, Slick. This was Harmony’s brainchild. She just adopted it from you.
But even t
hat wasn’t the simplest explanation. Immediately, the men in the room glommed on to Maxina’s theory. Big Bank gaped at me in horror.
“You motherfucker...”
“You planned this from the beginning,” said the Judge. “You were scheming with Harmony all along.”
“That’s why you made us give her half your money,” Doug added. “You knew we’d never pay you if this thing happened, so you tricked us into paying her.”
I couldn’t stop chuckling. It was too ironic. Too surreal.
“You put on this whole show,” said Maxina, motioning around. “Right here. Just now. You played this whole ‘noble sacrifice’ bit when you knew all along what was happening...”
Big Bank shot to his feet. “You motherfucker!”
I threw my hands up. “Wait! Wait! Everybody...just stop.”
Amazingly, they did. I took several deep breaths to regain myself, and yet I didn’t have the faintest idea how to defend myself. I couldn’t even find a reason to. I gave Harmony everything she needed to steal the last laugh. And yet still I didn’t see it coming. All this effort, and it turned out I only saved her by accident.
The strangest part was that she’d accidentally saved me, too. I didn’t have to worry about media exposure anymore, or Miranda. As long as Harmony didn’t say my name, Miranda didn’t have a smoking gun. And Harmony had every reason now to keep me a secret. We were locked in a covenant of silence. Together, we were airtight, unsinkable. It would take nothing less than a full double confession to bring us down, and that would never happen.
With fresh sobriety, I wiped my eyes, then looked around the room.
“Uh...”
The only one who didn’t meet my gaze was Jeremy, the ultimate victim of all this. He stared down at his feet, shaking his head, rocking back and forth. He knew now that he’d never get the deliverance I promised him. I gambled his future, I lost, and now I was about to walk away from the table. What could I possibly tell him in this instance? What could I possibly say?
“Jeremy...”
“Get him out of here,” he said. “Get him the fuck out of here.”