by Lolita Files
Jameson was noting it all on his pad.
“She shrieks like a hyena when they have sex.”
Jameson looked up. He put his pen and small pad back in his shirt pocket.
“Thank you, Mister…”
“Chapman. Brad Chapman.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chapman.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“The girl is missing.”
“Ha!” grunted the guy. “I’m not surprised. He’s a troublemaker. He’s got no respect for other human beings. I thought that was why I hadn’t seen her around lately, that maybe she caught on to what a loser he is and dumped him. So what, he’s famous. An asshole is an asshole.”
Jameson gave him his card.
“Please give me a call if you think of anything else.”
“Sure thing,” said the guy. “I hope you nab him. He’s probably involved somehow. Fucking jerk with all his stupid opera music. He’s probably secretly gay!”
Penn was singing, practically screaming, hanging note for note with Jessye Norman.
He’d been drinking Defibs and listening to his iPod. He didn’t hear the banging at the door. The only reason he became aware of it was because he turned around and noticed it vibrating from the impact of the knocks.
He opened it. He’d been expecting this guy.
“Penn Hamilton?”
“Yes.”
“Jameson Rex, NYPD. May I come in?”
Jameson was on the couch, drinking something called a Defibrillator. The young man had two cups of the stuff sitting on the counter and had offered him one. It was skinning his throat on the way down, but it was just the jolt he needed to really examine the man.
He had seen the Calvin Klein billboard in Times Square a million times or more, but was impressed to find the guy was naturally handsome, not airbrushed.
Not that he was attracted to Penn. It was just a detail he noted that might factor into Beryl’s case. Jameson was straight. Very straight. Lonely, but not that lonely.
“I understand Ms. Unger wasn’t just your editor.”
“What do you mean?”
Penn was standing, leaning against the counter. Jameson noted how towering and golden he appeared. The blue eyes were trained on him with laser intensity.
“I understand the two of you were dating.”
“Dating?” Penn repeated.
“Yes.”
“Beryl is a good friend and a great editor. She worked tirelessly on my book. I’ve never seen anyone with such an incredible work ethic.”
Jameson took a tiny sip of the scalding blackness.
“So you’re saying the two of you weren’t dating?”
“Beryl’s so work-focused. Her mind was always on how to make the book better, how to publicize it, stuff like that.”
“So you weren’t dating her?”
Penn was drinking his Defibrillator. Jameson waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. Jameson jotted in his pad.
“Are you sure you can’t tell me anything more than that?” he asked, looking up.
“I’m certain. I don’t know what more to tell you. I hope she decides to come back. I feel like I lost a really good friend, not to mention the best editor I’m sure I’ll ever have.”
“Right,” Jameson said, standing, putting his pad and pen away. He was just about to reach into his pocket for a card when Penn spoke.
“I could take a lie detector test if you want,” he said. “If that’ll clear me. I don’t like this kind of thing hanging over my head.”
Penn failed the lie detector test.
He wanted to.
He felt the need to push his luck a little further, see how far he could go. He’d been journaling, putting together more ideas for his next book. He needed the material. Wagner would have done the same. It was artistic research.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Beryl Unger,” Jameson said, unable to disguise what Penn realized was a smile of victory. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”
Penn wasn’t listening. He was picturing his mug shot on the Smoking Gun website. They’d be talking about him even more on The Today Show (“he was just here!”), The View, Regis, O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper 360, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. All the usual suspects would be hauled out, the cast of motley characters who earned their wages sitting in cable roundtables whining about the ruin of American civilization at the hands of people like him.
This was perfect. It was the next phase of the plan. Earlier than expected, but here nonetheless. This was the best part of his Gesamtkunstwerk theory. The yin of the yang that ensured his absolute media domination.
He was trying not to smile.
“You get a phone call once we’ve booked you,” Jameson said.
It would be to Sharlyn.
Natch.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her skin flushed with panic as she clutched the phone to her ear. “Why were you arrested?”
“They think I have something to do with Beryl being missing.”
“What!”
“I need an attorney. There’s a guy I used for the contracts with—”
“No,” Shar said. “You need a real attorney. Somebody who knows how to handle this kind of thing. This is a criminal allegation we’re talking about.” She was shaking as she said the words. Criminal. Penn was no…criminal. He was all sweetness and love and passion and beauty and…and…and he was in jail!
“Shar…”
“Yes.” The bones of her knees clacked as she sat on the edge of the bed.
“Relax. It’s going to be okay. I’m not panicking—”
“You should be!”
“No I shouldn’t. I’m innocent. Now is the time for calm, rational behavior. So who’s this attorney you’re talking about?”
She heard someone mumbling in the background.
“I’ve gotta go, baby,” Penn said. “Can I trust you to handle this?”
“Yes! Of course! Don’t worry, baby, we’ll get this all straightened—”
Her ear was flooded with dial tone.
Shar dropped the phone. Her face exploded into tears.
The Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ) was established in 1994 with a federal grant of some one hundred million dollars. One of nine such zones, its purpose was to revivify the district encompassing all parts of Harlem (Central, East, and West), Inwood, and Washington Heights. So inspired was the state of New York by this grand effort to breathe life and industry into the once-regal, long-suffering area, the governor kicked in another hundred million. So did the mayor. And, just like that, the UMEZ had three hundred meeeeeeeeeeeelyun dollars. A king’s ransom.
Then a king moved in. The Pride of Hope, Arkansas, that human vortex of infinite charisma, William Jefferson Clinton, himself.
His arrival put the E in the Empowerment Zone. It was the real deal, nots to be fucked with. Harlem was on the rise again, big-time, and had, arguably, the most beloved leader in living history holding court within its midst.
The map was unofficially redrawn. If Manhattan was the Center of the Universe, the Center now had a Center.
Its address was 55 West 125th Street, and the throne occupied some eight thousand square feet on the twelfth floor.
In the same building as the Center of the Center of the Universe, there was a smaller, less formidable presence, although, on its own, it could never be considered small or anything less than formidable.
It was about six and a half feet and stocky, with a receding wavy hair-line, brown skin, a curious splotchiness raging across its back, and impeccably clad—a miasmic block of concentrated atoms with the power to purify the corrupt and disinfect those with implied taint. A messiah-for-hire who could wash sins away in the court of public opinion and state and federal jurisdiction, thereby saving careers and fortunes, and making a mountainous career and fortune for himself in the process.
He was the root rot of righteousness, the ruination of good. But he was the Man, and those with the capital to conjure the Devil called upon him posthaste, the moment the scent of a possible debacle hit the air.
Joshua Champineau Cougar.
A man who loved himself a vortex. Vortices. He wasn’t against two or three of them going at a time. Any kind of situation with enough centrifugal force to create chaos was good enough for him. High-profile, of course. He worked best in high-profile chaos.
As long as he was in the center.
As long as he emerged as the calmer of the storm.
Joshua Champineau Cougar—J.C. to his friends, J.C. “Set ’em Free” Cougar to the world at large: master litigator, wordsmith, phrase-turner, law-tweaker, judge-baffler, jury-breaker, prosecution-scorcher, mind-boggling-settlement-getter, shaman, showman, Lord of the Legal Dance.
Expert at Criminal and Civil Law.
Family man.
Mistress-taker.
Moneymaker.
Don King of the Docket.
Provider of infinite second chances.
Professional sin-eater.
Wrangler of riches.
Mind-fucker.
Media whore.
Devil.
J.C. Cougar loved himself a vortex.
As fate would have it, a new one was just starting to form, with the promise of swirling into something massive and magnificent.
Murder!
Celebrated author/rapper/Calvin Klein model/Starbucks-shill Penn Hamilton was arrested on suspicion of murder in the case of his Kittell Press power editrix Beryl Unger, who’s been missing for nearly eight weeks. Police have nothing to go on other than general suspicion and a failed lie detector test, which is inadmissible in court.
“I admit, we have no physical evidence,” said Detective Jameson Rex of Manhattan’s 20th precinct, “but he voluntarily took the lie detector test and he failed it. We have witnesses who’ve made sworn affidavits saying they’ve seen him and Ms. Unger together as a couple, which was something no one knew about. It was enough for us to bring him in on probable cause.”
“This matter will be cleared up very quickly,” said the author’s attorney, celebrity legal eagle J.C. “Set ’em Free” Cougar. “They need to pin this on somebody, and my client’s all they can come up with. You want to know what I think? I think Beryl Unger is somewhere in Ibiza, shaking her butt in the club or lying on the beach. People burn out in publishing all the time. She sent an e-mail saying she was taking leave. Folks walk away from their jobs. I imagine that’s what’s happened here.”
Hamilton has been released on a one-million-dollar bond. Bestselling author Sharlyn Tate, whose editor was also Ms. Unger, posted his bail.
Ripkin was eating his morning crumpet when he saw the paper. The Post was more a guilty pleasure for him, not a regular read. The maid had left it on the tray this morning when she’d brought in his breakfast.
He perused the article, his pulse quickening. Beryl was missing.
No!
This was the very thing he had feared. She’d terminated her therapy too soon. She was in no way ready to have a functioning romantic relationship. He tried to tell her that, but she didn’t want to listen.
This wasn’t why he’d gone into practice. He hadn’t spent all those years trying to save her life, only for her to lose it once she was no longer under his care.
He had to do something. He’d practically raised this girl. He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hi, this is Joan, what city and state please?”
“Manhattan. May I have the phone number of the…”—he reached for the paper, bringing it closer to his fading eyes—“yes, the Twentieth Precinct of the New York City Police Department.”
“Please hold for that number.”
“Of course.”
He would do something about this. He would speak to this Mister…he looked at the paper again…this Detective Rex.
He would tell him what he knew about Beryl and Penn.
“So how long was she your patient?” Jameson asked.
“Sixteen years and counting,” Ripkin said, sitting across from the detective. He had made the trip to the precinct, so determined was he to help.
Jameson was jotting on a pad.
“What kinds of things did she talk about? What was wrong with her?”
“Well, sir, uh, I’m not at liberty to say. That’s doctor-patient privilege.”
“Then why did you come here?”
Ripkin bristled.
“I came here to help. That girl is almost like a daughter to me. I know for a fact that she was dating that young man, she was so excited about it.”
“Did she talk about their relationship a lot? Did she tell you the things they did day-to-day? I just need to get some kind of a profile here. Something to help us build a solid case.”
Ripkin suddenly felt silly. He didn’t even know how to answer the man.
“Well? I know you can’t divulge much, but did she at least give you updates about the status of their relationship?”
“She terminated her therapy two days after she met him.”
There. He’d said it. He felt such the fool.
“What do you mean? She stopped treatment? She didn’t come back anymore?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“Well, did she give you a reason? Did she say he told her she couldn’t see you anymore?”
Ripkin was piddling around with the mahogany handle on his plaid umbrella. This was awkward now. He was ready to go.
“No, she didn’t say he told her to stop.”
Jameson Rex’s fingers were tapping the desk. Ripkin was furious. Stupid arrogant American cop.
“So the reason was…”
“She said that she’d found the love of her life, she didn’t need me anymore.”
Jameson was staring at him. Why on earth was he staring at him?
Jameson stood and held out his hand.
“Thank you, Dr. Ripkin, for coming in with this information. I’m not so sure it can help us, seeing as you haven’t told me any more than I already know, but I appreciate your valiant efforts.”
Ripkin stood. He stared at Jameson’s outstretched hand. He wasn’t going to take it.
Jameson traded the hand for a card.
“Give me a call if you remember any information you feel you can give me without violating doctor-patient privilege.”
Ripkin snatched the card.
“Good day, sir!” he huffed, and turned on his heel and walked out of the precinct.
He stopped to catch his breath once he was outside. His eyes were stinging. Something wet was streaking down his face. He reached up and wiped it. Tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shed them. Probably more than thirty years.
That was it.
He was retiring.
Effective today.
“So now what?” Penn asked.
“It was on the cover of the New York Post,” Spanky said. “This is bad, Penn. Career-ending. I’ll be honest with you…we need to brace ourselves for the crashing sound of terminated contracts. Sex tapes are one thing. Murder is another.”
Apparently murder wasn’t.
The crashing contracts never happened.
Within twenty-four hours of the Post cover, sales of iPods, Calvin Klein products, Defibrillators, Wonder Boy, and Book had skyrocketed. Overnight. Nationally, not just in New York. The article in the Post had stormed the Internet and everyone became more fascinated with Penn Hamilton than ever.
“They want you on Hannity and Colmes,” J.C. said. “I think you should do it.”
They were at Cougar’s office in Harlem, sipping Defibs.
“But I thought you wanted me to do O’Reilly first.” Penn had his feet up on the coffee table in J.C. Cougar’s overaccessorized work chamber. Cougar was behind his desk, contemplating the ceiling as he rubbed his very pointed goatee.
“We’ll do O’Reilly
next, after Howard Stern. Howard’s loving this. He’s stirred up the people in your favor more than anybody.”
“Then why Hannity and Colmes? I don’t get it.”
“I think we can really work this.”
“How? Hannity’ll be all over me.”
“Does that bother you?” Cougar said, his left brow raised.
Penn smiled.
“Of course not. I relish it.”
“Good,” said Cougar, looking at Penn, his mouth curled up at both ends. “Then you’re going to relish it even more.”
“Why’s that?”
“Ann Coulter’s going to be on.”
Penn was sitting between Sean Hannity, the ultra right-wing conservative cohost of Hannity and Colmes, and Ann Coulter, ultra right-wing conservative-at-large. Left-leaning host Alan Colmes, who, theoretically, was Penn’s designated ally, was tucked off to the side, way at the other end of the desk, far enough away to not be of much use to Penn. J.C. Cougar was sitting to Alan Colmes’s left.
Hannity and Coulter had made a wicked right-wing sandwich of Penn. Their daggers were out. The stabbing had commenced.
“So what kind of message do you think it is you’re sending to the kids?” Hannity asked. “How can you look at yourself in the mirror every day with your, your, your hip-hop music and your naked billboards and negative messages and feel like you’re contributing anything worthwhile to society?”
Penn smiled.
“You’re not going to answer him?” asked Coulter. “You’re just going to sit there with a big grin on your face? This is your chance to explain yourself—”
“Yes,” said Hannity, “explain yourself. You’re accountable to the American public. Aside from all the other deplorable activities you’re involved in, you’re now being accused of murder—”
“My client has not been officially charged with that crime,” Cougar interrupted.
“That’s right, Sean,” Colmes said. “Let’s keep things in perspective here.”