That woke him up. “Whoa. Wait. What do you mean?”
“I read the reports. You overdid it. Now what are you not telling me?”
“Everything you need to know is in that file.”
“I need to know the whole story. You gave me the airplane version.”
“Look, unless you’re writing her biography, that’s more than enough to—”
“Doug, we don’t have time to wrestle. What are you not telling me?”
Short pause, then a sigh. “You know, I really wish you’d signed those nondisclosure agreements.”
Lawyers. “I understand your concern, but I’ve never screwed over a client in my life. If you don’t want to believe that, fine. At least believe Maxina when she said she could cut the legs off my career. And believe that I believe it. Okay?”
“I believe it.” He laughed, then followed it with a yawn. “Look, you know the expression: if you repeat a lie enough, it becomes the truth. I just made people write it out because I wanted them to get familiar with the slightly altered version. Just in case.”
“It’s a smart plan. So what changed from the original?”
“There’s only one significant difference.” Pause. Sigh. “She left upset. Really upset. But it’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me.”
He carefully measured his words. “She was into Jer. Heavily. It started out as a good working relationship. Not to belittle Kevin but Lisa was the real force behind the album. She’s got serious talent as a producer. Creatively, she and Jer fed off each other. The tracks they cut together are incredible. Really deep, innovative stuff. Nothing like his first album, forgive me for saying. The problem is that, look, when you spend that much time together, when you connect on such a creative level… it affects you. It affected her. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, it was clear to everyone else that she wanted to be the next Mrs. Sharpe.”
“Did she notice the first one was still around?”
“Yes. It was hard to miss her. But Jer and Simba have the kind of relationship that always seems like it’s circling the drain, you know what I mean? They fight all the time. He threatens divorce. She threatens child custody. Then after they’ve screamed themselves blue, they cry, hug, and have sex in the nearest bed. It’s a never-ending drama with them. They’ll never leave each other.”
“I guess Lisa didn’t see it that way.”
“No. And Jer didn’t help. That’s his other problem. He’s a sweet talker. When he’s high and when he’s mad at Simba, he becomes Barry White to whoever smiles at him first. That night at the party, Lisa made her move at just the right time. Whatever words of romance she threw at him, he gave right back with interest. It’s just the way he operates. Now do you see where this is going?”
“Upstairs,” I said.
“Right. Room 1215. They got it on. When it was over, he thanked her for the sex and then called Simba for his nightly apology. Naturally, Lisa didn’t take it well.”
“I’d imagine.”
“Hey, I felt bad for her. We all did. It was cruel for him to use her like that. But everything that happened was entirely consensual. This doesn’t come anywhere near the realm of sexual abuse. You agree?”
“Wholeheartedly.”
“Okay then. The problem is that it’s her word against his. You know, the irony is that if Jeremy really was a Bitch Fiend, he would’ve filmed the whole thing and we’d have hard evidence against her.”
“Wouldn’t that have been nice?” I flipped through the file. “I also notice she has no history of crying wolf.”
“At the moment, no.”
I chuckled darkly. “Sorry. That old trick doesn’t work anymore, my friend. It’ll only backfire.”
He didn’t chuckle back. “Then I can only hope, my friend, that you come up with something better. Any more questions?”
“One. Where’s Hunta’s statement?”
“You just heard it.”
“Okay. But I have to ask. What you just gave me, is it the original version or a slightly altered one?”
Doug frosted over. “Scott, if you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. But you seem like a smart man, so just follow your logic. There were over three dozen fine-looking women at that party who would have fucked Jeremy for the price of a smile. If Lisa had said no, he would have gone straight to one of them. Or two of them. Or three of them. It’s just that easy. That’s the world he lives in. The downside is that he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt, even from the people on his own team.”
“Doug, I’m not forming any opinions. I just need to know what’s going on in Lisa’s head.”
Now he chuckled. “Thoughts of revenge and a whole lot of dollar signs. That’s all that matters. I’ll see you at six.”
He hung up. I couldn’t blame him for getting testy. He was right. As far as presumed guilt went, young black rappers had it worse than anyone. They were like flypaper to even the most frivolous charges. As the label’s head lawyer, Doug had to deal with that crap eight days a week.
At the same time, he wasn’t giving Lisa enough credit. If this had just been about greed, she would have simply raised her asking price instead of stopping the negotiations. And if this was just revenge, well, I think Annabelle Shane conveniently took care of that for her.
This was something more. This was a woman who lived, loved, and breathed a style of music that wasn’t exactly known for loving women back. She spent her life forgiving it. Defending it. Even improving it. And in the end it dissed her and dismissed her like she was just another bitch.
Lisa Glassman wanted respect.
Now I knew. And now I had less than eight hours to figure out how to keep her from getting it.
________________
The thinking wasn’t going well, so I made stops for errands. I went back to my favorite West L.A. spy shop and bought an untraceable mobile phone. The device itself was nothing fancy. The seller, however, was quite unique in that he took cash and asked for no ID. I now had four thousand minutes of anonymous call time. For a few hundred dollars more, I could have gotten the Drug Dealer Special. It had a microchip inside that made it virtually impossible for the feds to monitor or track by location. I politely declined. Nothing like a little perspective to make me feel better about my own line of work.
I kept driving, but I wasn’t getting any ideas. Stacking the deck against Lisa was impossible if she was holding all the cards. Even the dreaded smear campaign wasn’t a viable option. You couldn’t just pull dirt out of thin air. You had to take an actual smudge from the person’s past and turn it into an oil spill. Lisa was spotless, and there was nothing the news loved more than a spotless victim.
That was the other problem. As far as the press was concerned, it was always more interesting to favor the accuser over the accused, especially when the accused is a celebrity, and especially when he’s a celebrity in the middle of another hot controversy. The slightest allegation from an other woman, any woman, would make Lisa’s case ten times stronger. There would be no shortage of former bedroom buddies willing to hang Hunta out to dry in exchange for a few minutes in the spotlight.
Shit.
I made my next errand a comic-book run. Since I was near Culver City, I stopped at Comics Ink, a small but friendly store that was short on back issues but always well stocked in recent releases. I was a sucker for the Marvel mutant titles. When I started collecting back in the early 1980s, there was only one monthly X-Men comic: The Uncanny X-Men. In 1985 it spun off into The New Mutants, a team of junior X-Men, and then X- Factor, a team of senior X-Men. Seeing substantial profits thanks to fools like me, Marvel Comics exploded the franchise to a ridiculous extent. Currently gracing the stands were Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, X-Men Forever, X-Men Unlimited, X-Men: The Hidden Years, X-Force, X-Man, Mutant X, Generation X, and plain old adjectiveless X-Men, which would soon be rechristened as New X- Men and then joined by X-Treme X-Men. The fact that I could keep track of this made me wonder how I ever got laid at all.