There was definitely a poetry at work there, considering that he had lied to get what he wanted.
“So why didn’t you just give it to her?” I asked.
Hunta let out a belly laugh, one loud enough to stop the Judge and Doug on the patio.
“I didn’t want to. It’s just that simple. It was the title track of the album. The best track of the album. If she wanted to quit her job, call me names, call my wife, that was her business. But she didn’t deserve to take that song from me. Not because she let me fuck her.”
He let out a tired sigh. “Once that Melrose shit happened, though, I changed my mind real fast. I was ready to give her anything she wanted. But then Maxina came along and said it would look bad to be making that kind of deal. And then you came along and…Shit, you were the man.”
“I was the man,” I said weakly.
“You were the man with the plan that was gonna fix everything. And you wanna know what the real sad part is? She told me she would’ve never come forward.” He laughed again. “She was only fronting like she was gonna make noise. Just to sweat us out. This whole time we’re all racing to stop her, and it turns out it was for all nothing.”
Now Fox showed a clip of Harmony and Alonso exiting the CNN building, right after their tumultuous appearance on Larry King Live. Although Harmony tried to shield herself from the unrelenting cameras, it was easy to see the pitch-black look on her face. She was vengeful, hateful.
Hunta watched along. “All these lies. All this drama. All for what?”
“I don’t know.”
He lit another cigarette, then watched the hot end smolder. “We should’ve never listened to you, Slick.”
“No,” I responded. “I guess you shouldn’t have.”
________________
By eight-thirty, the Mean World men sat gathered in the living room. They spread ourselves out among the three leather sofas. Hunta sat between Big Bank and Doug. It would take eight Harmonys to match their combined weight, but the one on TV loomed large enough to balance them out.
The Judge and I faced each other from matching love seats, locked in our own strange counterpoise. He swore to me that he wasn’t the one who leaked the audiotape. I assured him I had no intention of taking anyone down with me. We didn’t believe each other, but who cared? We were too nervous, too clobbered, too weary to start another fight now. All we could do was wallow in the din and blather of Fox News until something pulled us out of our stasis.
As expected, that something was Maxina. At a quarter to nine, she joined our little powwow, shattering the casual equilibrium we had established. Her hair was unwashed. Her untucked blouse was misbuttoned by one. She took a wincing perch on an end table, then muted the TV.
“My copy of the audiotape has been sealed inside my suitcase,” she informed us. “Nobody else knew where it was. Not even my staff. Doug?”
“Like I told Scott, our copy was locked in the office safe. Only the Judge and I have the combination.”
The Judge sighed with forced patience. “I swear on the life of my children that I did not leak that tape.”
“We had no reason to,” Doug declared. “As soon as we learned that Harmony was confessing, we practically threw a party. Why would we screw that up?”
I flinched my shoulders in a listless shrug. “My guess? You got antsy. You didn’t think Harmony would actually go through with it and you didn’t want to waste another moment.”
Doug waved me off. The Judge simply glared. “Yeah? And what about your original? How secure was that?”
“Locked in my safe,” I said.
“You said you have an intern.”
“She’s thirteen, she doesn’t have the combination—”
“And she don’t know the whole story anyway,” Hunta griped.
That was pretty much what I was going to say. But I was idly flattered, on Madison’s behalf, that Hunta not only remembered her from their brief conversation but continued to give a crap about her opinion of him. In that respect, he had little to worry about. By the time Madison checked the news, she’d know for sure that he was innocent. She’d know for sure I wasn’t.
“I am completely stumped, then,” Maxina said. “But it doesn’t matter who leaked it. We have to deal with the fallout.”
Hunta scratched his cheek in bother. “What’s the problem? Why is this bad for us?”
“It’s bad for Harmony,” Doug replied. “And she can make it bad for us.”
Maxina cleaned her glasses with her shirt flap. “She was up all night working on her speech. I read the final draft. It was wonderful. Too bad we didn’t get a single word of it on camera. Once she found out about the Fox News story, she stopped cooperating with us.”
She threw me a quick, poignant glance. The message was clear enough: She blames you. Of course Harmony blamed me. Why wouldn’t she? I was the root of all evil.
“So what?” asked Big Bank. “What can she do? Deny it?”
Doug shook his head. “She can try, but the voice analysts will nail her. She’s essentially screwed. The problem is that there’s nothing stopping her from telling the press all about us.”
The Judge aimed his fury at me. “That’s because she knows all about us! I told you from the start it was a bad idea! Now she’s going to bury us!”
“She’s not going to bury you,” I said impatiently. “She’s going to bury me.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, he’s right,” said Maxina. “She’s going to bury Scott.”
Try as they might, the others couldn’t make the leap. I let Maxina explain it.
“All the tape proves is that there’s a plot to frame Jeremy, not a plot to save him. If Harmony tries to reveal the rest, the press won’t buy it. It’s too far-fetched. Too self-serving. And she won’t have any credibility left anyway. The story would flutter around the mainstream for a day or two, then fade away.”
Meanwhile, back on Fox News, a split-box graphic floated over the news anchor’s shoulder. One side had an unflattering shot of Harmony. The other side had a generic male silhouette with a question mark in it. My heart thundered at the sight of it.
Maxina gestured at me. “Unlike us, Scott is linked to the story through hard evidence. If Harmony wants to take him down with her, she can. And make no mistake: Harmony wants to take him down with her.”
Hunta gawked at me. “Wait a second. You saying I’m saved and you’re fucked?”
“Yeah,” I said, through the blackest of smirks. “Enjoy the twist.”
The man had every right to gloat at my downfall, but he was too gobsmacked to fit me into the equation. The Bitch had really worked him over these past two weeks, to the point where he couldn’t tell up from down, left from right, black from white. He was the world’s hostage. Whether he was rescued or merely exchanged for another prisoner, who the hell cared? It was an open door. Despite his earlier claims that it no longer mattered, it mattered.
“Don’t fuck me with now,” he said. “Don’t tell me this shit is over if it ain’t really over.”
“It ain’t really over,” Maxina dryly responded. “We’ve established that Harmony is Scott’s problem. What we don’t know is whether or not Scott’s going to be our problem.”
Naturally, everyone turned to me. I crossed my legs and rested my head against my fist, playing coy even as my gut wrenched.
“So that’s the sticky wicket, is it?”