Like We Care (35 page)

Pistone flung him toward the overstuffed sofa on the other side of the room. Scroat hit it and curled up in a ball to protect himself against further assault. When none came, he peeked out from behind the hands he had brought protectively to his face.

“You had a good idea,” Pistone said solemnly. “About the kid.”

“About kicking his ass?”

“Yeah, but not that. You’re gonna go see him. And you’re gonna make nice.”

The singer scoffed bitterly. “Fuck dat shit.”

“Tok$ic,” Pistone’s assistant announced. He turned and hit the speaker phone.

“Albert,” Pistone began forcefully. “We got us a plan. We’re gonna go to this piss-ant town, this Berline, and we’re gonna mend fences. Scroat’s gonna perform a free show, right there in Mayberry. We’ll see how long this boycott lasts when the real deal is right there in front of them for the only live concert that fucking armpit of a town has probably ever seen.”

ScroatM listened, knowing that just about anything had to be considered to ride this one out.

“Artie. . .” the guy from Tok$ic begged off. “We got caught with our pants down on this one. We just gotta eat shit and move on. We can’t—”

“Listen, you fuck,” Artie shot back. “And I know you got Jimmy and Molto standing right there with you, so you two geniuses listen, too. We gotta fix this. You get a bunch of kids thinking they can sink an album, sink a career, just ’cause they
can
, and we are fucking dead. All of us. And you cheapjack, talent-jobbing record labels are gonna be the first to go. Mark my fucking words.” Pistone eased up slightly. “We gotta get those kids buyin’ again. We gotta put their heads right.”

Silence, then muted mumbles were heard from Tok$ic headquarters. You could feel the fear-laden surrender coming through the line.

Finally: “When?”

“I got product on the shelf
now
,” Pistone said. “I need this taken care of
now
. We’ll go this Saturday night.”

“It’s Tuesday!” the record company protested.

“What, he’s gotta bring in the fucking Philharmonic? He’s a fucking rap singer. His whole fucking act fits in a shoebox! You give him a microphone and a playback, and he screams ‘Mary Had A Little Fucking Lamb’ for forty-five minutes!”

ScroatM flinched as a long silence filled the room.

“All right,” DeNunzio sighed. “Let’s do it.”

“
Then
you’re gonna call Posner or whoever you gotta call at R
²
Rev, and you’re gonna make sure they’re there to cover it. Ain’t no fucking point in doing this if the whole world don’t see that these kids are puttin’ out for ScroatM again. You follow? They fucked us on this in the first place,” Pistone said, referring to R
²
Rev. “Ain’t no label in town gonna do business with them if they don’t put this right.”

Annie had been fired—as far as she knew—that day in Viceroy’s office, the day Todd had teased the ScroatM boycott and then cut all ties to the network. She slunk from the room under the hateful glares of furious, powerful men, retrieved her coat and a photo of her cat from her office, and went home. No one actually told her to not come back. No one had to. The absoluteness of her screw-up didn’t require the official confirmation of an actual termination. She just had to go away.

She had a computer, though, so she holed up in her airless apartment and watched Todd pull the trigger on his kill shot. He had been right—he did set loose the troubles upon Annie, and how—but he was now also truly, breathtakingly dangerous. Amidst the hype he had generated, he had kept his head. He had sifted through the treacherousness of the marketplace, the detachment of his peers, and the mind-boggling technology available to him, and rather than let his initial brainstorm dissipate in the face of the vastness of it all, he had brought it to one fine, sharp point.

If this new campaign against ScroatM didn’t work, Annie knew, the next one would. Todd had hacked his way into the guts of a system ill-equipped to deal with such a determined insurrectionist.

She was proud of him, but fearful for his safety.

And she would be seeing him soon.

“Would it work?” Viceroy asked her intently. “Would they go?”

The ringing of the phone had startled her, because absolutely no one had called her since she left work. Those above her were through with her. Those on her level could not afford to associate with her. And there was no one lower than her. Her family still didn’t know what had happened, and there was no reason to have any further dealings with the boys in Berline. She was utterly alone, so she had jumped when the phone rang.

When she heard Hutch’s voice on the other end, sounding gentle and concerned, she assumed he would be trying merely to weasel his way into a consolation lay. Instead, he told her that he had been given the awkward chore—with no option for failure—of bringing Annie back in to the office to help put out, once and for all, the fire that Todd and Joel had started.

“They’ve got no hold on you, Annie. They fired you before they even called you into Viceroy’s office,” said Hutch, sounding genuinely sincere— which put Annie on full alert. “You’d have every reason to tell them to go fuck themselves. But this industry has a short memory, you know? Help make this one thing go away, and you could find yourself back on the inside. You’re too talented to not get a second chance. I really believe that.”

“Hutch?” she asked, stretching out his name playfully. “If I don’t come in, what happens to you?”

“Dunno,” he said, really not knowing. “There’s always
The Nipple Room
.”

She laughed, so he laughed. Had they ever really laughed to-gether before?

Sure, she’d come in. What the hell?

“You are the only one who knows those kids,” Viceroy said to Annie, the moment she entered his office. “If ScroatM goes to Berline, this weekend, and does a free concert, would they show up?”

She turned to Hutch. This was their plan?

“I don’t know!” she laughed derisively, now entirely free of any supplication she may have once thought was due Viceroy.

“You have to know!” he replied desperately. “If we cover this and it’s a disaster, then tape of
that
will end up on the internet. It’ll be the proof they need to show they’re having an effect. Who will they decide to fuck with next?”

“Tok$ic won’t go in unless they can be sure of a turnout,” Hutch added. “They can’t afford the embarrassment. They’ve made it very clear that they need this to work, and they’re looking to us to make it work. We’ve got quite a mess to clean up, thanks to you.”

She stared at them, astonished by their arrogance. “You can’t
make
kids do something they don’t want to do. I know you think you can, but it’s not that simple.”

“Listen to what I’m saying,” Viceroy said firmly, deliberately, like he was talking to a slow child. The condescension was galling. “All we’re asking of you is your best read of the situation. Given the lack of sophistication in that market, given the transient nature of their commitment, would this boycott fall apart if a genuine rap star turned up to perform, for free, just for them?”

She felt the heat pouring off these two men, these shapers of culture who were horrified at the thought of losing control. She sized up the situation and committed.

“Poll it,” she said with confidence. “You’ve got phone crews running ’round the clock, polling kids all over the country to find out what they’re interested in. Put this one in the mix, limit the sample to Berline and adjacent towns, and fold the question in with a bunch of innocuous ones so they don’t get wise. Put it on fast turnaround and you could have the results by tomorrow afternoon.”

Viceroy and Hutch listened intently. Why hadn’t
they
thought of this? (If it worked, it’d turn out that they had.)

“Say you get a thousand Definites or Very Favorables, which I don’t think would be unreasonable,” Annie continued. “So you book him into a venue that only holds five hundred—you’re coming in at the last minute, so you’ll be limited in where he could play anyway. You’ll practically be guaranteed a full house, with a pack of disappointed turnaways out front, for us to put on camera, swearing their devotion to ScroatM. Edit the piece properly and the little shit will come out looking like Elvis. Problem solved.”

Both men stroked their chins pensively. It was never easy to admit that someone lesser than you had the answer.

“We could poll tonight?” Hutch asked urgently. Viceroy looked at his watch, realizing it would be close. He grabbed his phone.

“Get me Research, tell them I’ve got a priority project,” he barked, then turned to Annie. “If it’s a go, I want you there.”

“I don’t work here anymore.”

“Don’t be cute.”

Viceroy waited for his call to be put through while Annie winked at Hutch with a smart smile. She rolled up onto her toes for a second, then sank back to the floor, scarcely able to contain her pride.

Then she ran to get ready. She was going to make this happen.

T
hey found a 1,200-seat theatre in Waterville, just across the line from Berline. An AIDS hospice was holding a fundraiser Saturday night, with performances by local bands and minor celebrities, and Tok$ic simply wrote them a check for twice what they could’ve hoped to earn and told them to go away. The polling, which was extended to a second day just to make sure, had been remarkably strong. Almost 1,000 kids left no doubt that they’d be there, and almost that many insisted they’d try. Even with the expected drop-off, the turnout would be great. Artie Pistone listened in on some of the calls and smiled contentedly. Some of these kids sounded ready to piss their pants, they were so happy at the thought of ScroatM coming to their town.

As soon as the site was nailed down, Tok$ic’s field reps hit up local hip-hop radio stations to alert them to the last-minute booking, calling in all favors to get them to announce the free concert as often and as insistently as possible. They papered the malls, clubs, skate parks, and movie theatres with fliers, and handed them out as close as they could to Dickinson and other schools without violating the law.

Anyone polled who had expressed an interest in the then-hypothetical concert would receive a call back, providing the specifics. R
²
Rev ran alerts hourly. Despite the franticly spontaneous origins of the gig, awareness was going to be high.

The plan was for Scroat to fly into the local airport with a drastically scaled-back entourage, partly because it was decided he needed to cool the millionaire stuff, and partly because the record company had no interest in spending any more than they had to on this potentially lost cause. Scroat would hit the town well after dinner, lay low until the eleven o’clock show— during which he would perform a truncated, hour-long set—then be back to the airport before bar time. The quality of the performance, the lack of technical aesthetics, would have to be good enough. A lot was being banked on the spectacle of ScroatM’s visit wowing the locals so thoroughly that they wouldn’t dare be so ungracious as to complain about any shortcomings.

R
²
Rev—in the form of Hutch, Annie, and a small crew—would arrive separately, making at least an effort to separate their interests from Tok$ic’s.

When they were in the air, Hutch showed Annie a piece of paper as he gave her her assignment for when they hit ground. He saw the disappointment on her face as she read the transcript.

“This doesn’t sound like him,” she said sadly.

“It is,” Hutch chortled. “They actually polled Joel Kasten! And listen to him, the little shit can’t wait to see a ScroatM concert!”

Annie fought this off. “He says he
might
go. He’s a sweet kid. He probably thought he’d hurt the interviewer’s feelings if he said no.”

“He scored a Definite Maybe. The kid who started this whole damned mess is tempted to bag all this boycott shit and come out to party. If we get him, it’s over.”

“He won’t come,” Annie shook her head confidently.

“You’d better hope he does,” Hutch said ominously. “You’d better make sure he does.”

The message was clear. She turned and stared out the window.