Revenant Rising (45 page)
“Very well, let’s get this over with. Go ahead, fill me in,” Laurel says, with Amanda barely settled in a chair.
“I’ll assume you’re referring to the latest media incident?”
“Yes, assume away. Knock yourself out, and while you’re at it, give me whatever you have concerning any other so-called incidents.”
“You sure? You’re not gonna like it.”
“My likes and dislikes no longer factor into this project.”
“You refer to this as a mere project . . . to
Colin Elliot
as a project?”
“What would you call it? What would you call him? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Just get on with the update . . . please.”
“I’ll have to get my notes and documentation.”
“There’s so much you had to take notes and assemble written accounts? Wait a minute . . . Why are you doing this in the first place? Why are
you
keeping track of Colin’s media mentions? David said you were doing the work of an unofficial publicist or something to that effect, but doesn’t documenting this crap go a bit beyond the usual fan interest?”
“For someone who’s spent the better part of a week on the Colin Elliot
project
, you sure don’t seem to know much about it—about him, I mean.”
Amanda sputters her way out of the inner office and returns shortly with an ominous-looking stack of publications and a thick loose-leaf binder. She dumps it all on Laurel’s desk and waits for a reaction Laurel is determined not to give her.
Starting with the binder, Laurel examines the first section of entries, those describing media response to Colin Elliot’s surprise appearance at the Institute Awards ceremony a week ago. Typical of Amanda’s organizational skills, each entry is charted for origin, accuracy, and verification. To Laurel’s gimlet eye, nothing stands out as actionable or even controversial.
The next section contains detailed references to the media-mythmaking generated by her public appearances with Colin Elliot. Although they’re larded with innuendo and assumption, she concludes, as she did the first time she saw her name romantically linked with his, that nothing but more notoriety would be gained by refuting any of the claims.
Then, grown impatient with old news, she skips forward a few sections, opens to one containing all new information and reacts the way she was determined not to.
“What
the
. . . .” Mortification stifles further reaction while she leafs through clippings referencing romantic interludes in such disparate settings as Jockey Hollow, the Circle Liner, and a long-term care facility in Wolcott, New Jersey, of all places.
A clear picture of her and Colin picnicking could have been taken by one of the birdwatchers they encountered in the park, and a grainy picture of Colin opening his coat to her could have been taken by one of the enterprising tourists on Saturday’s harbor cruise. But the long shot of them exiting the fire door at the nursing home yesterday is the most disturbing because no easy explanation comes to mind—not one she wants to contemplate. Instead, she recovers her voice to ask why on earth Amanda took on this job.
“Well, it’s not like I’ve been overwhelmed with other work—such as transcribing
your
notes—and it seemed obvious someone should be doing it, what with Nate Isaacs gone AWOL and the rest of the regular staff set adrift.”
“Adrift? I don’t understand.”
“Section three in the binder. According to informed sources at MTV and the radio stations I’ve listed there, when Colin Elliot dumped his record label, he let everyone else go as well. Everyone but Nate Isaacs and David, of course. Fact is, David broke the news here before it ever hit the airwaves and he was pretty gleeful about it.”
“David? Demonstrably gleeful?”
“Yeah, gleeful, that’s definitely the word for it, but anyhow, after his breakfast meeting with Colin and Nate Isaacs on Friday, David breezed through here as if he’d just signed the Stones and resurrected the Beatles and he wasn’t exactly keeping secret these latest developments regarding Colin and to be honest, I thought he was just whistling Dixie or doing his wishful thinking out loud and then I got verification on radio and TV that Colin was turning over a whole lotta new leaves, and it wasn’t a stretch to believe Nate Isaacs might be the next one sent packing—a belief David appears to share.”
“I see,” Laurel says even though she doesn’t. Not quite. Not unless she can tie Stan Mason’s ostensible slip-up to David’s alleged gleefulness to Nate Isaacs’s possibly paranoid behavior as hinted at to Amanda. And she can’t. At least not yet. Not while she’s still getting used to being a target for the popular press, the subject of conjecture run wild, and the potential sweetener for David’s ambitions.
In reality she doesn’t see much because her eyes are hot and dry from the near-unblinking appraisal of Amanda’s handiwork, which she now pushes aside. “Can we cut through some of this crap? Can you just hit me with stuff I might be able to do something about?”
“In a nutshell, I’d say it’s the dredging up of past allegations of substance abuse and child neglect. It first appeared in a wire service report about Anthony Elliot’s fake fax to the wish-granting outfit in order to lure his father home, and instead of seeing the humor in it and emphasizing the kid’s ingenuity, snide references were made to his notoriously neglectful mother and her madcap ways and his absentee father and his rock star ways—quote, unquote—implying that the boy has suffered a lifetime of abandonment and desperate measures were called for.”
“Am I hearing you correctly? Upgrading an innocent little hoax to desperate measure? A
lifetime
of abandonment. Good lord, what is this? Reviving his dead mother for no good purpose? Madcap ways . . . rock star ways . . . Do I dare guess what
that
implies?”
“You’re echoing my reaction and I’m sorry to say the crap doesn’t stop with that. There are several other reports in similar vein—gross exaggerations that cast the principals in the worst possible light, and partial information that skates right on the edge of defamatory and libelous.
“For what conceivable reason? What in hell for?”
“Money. Money in the pockets of the publishers and news directors and paparazzi. But to a man and woman I feel sure they’d all say their sensationalizing and distorting should not be taken personally, that it’s all part of the game you play when you decide to stand out from the crowd, and I’m afraid the crowd would agree because I think we Americans are just slightly behind the Brits when it comes to placing our icons on pedestals, only to delight in knocking them off.”
Amanda’s dip into righteous indignation recalls her own immersion—the lecture delivered in a Jockey Hollow parking lot the morning she first saw herself deliberately misrepresented in print. Snatches of that high-mindedness come back to her now, naïve and laughable in light of these disclosures.
“Go on,” she urges Amanda even though what she’s hearing doesn’t fit the stipulation that she be told only what she might be able to remedy.
Amanda takes a deep breath and begins with the account of a murder Colin only touched on during the drive back from Connecticut. “There wasn’t much media coverage even though it was a really nasty one, what with the victim’s head being cut clean off and all, but when the tabloid press realized the guy was one of their own—the notorious Cliff Grant who once made a whole career out of dogging Colin and Aurora Elliot’s every move—the story blew up into front-page news, in effect eulogizing Grant with the dredging up of a lot of the mud he used to sling, and much is being made of the fact Grant’s death occurred the same day Colin Elliot reentered the spotlight with his surprise appearance at the Icon gig—
way
too much is being made, just short of insinuating Colin had something to do with the murder.”
Laurel follows Amanda’s narrative without flinching and squarely confronts the tabloids Amanda proffers as corroborating evidence without handling them any more than necessary.
“To continue,” Amanda says, holding up this morning’s edition of the
Borough Outlook
, considered by some to be a conservative publication. From a feature story about Gibby Lester, the West Village novelty shop owner found dead on Friday she reads aloud:
“
Lester accumulated multiple arrests for drug-trafficking, but was never indicted. His clientele allegedly included some of the biggest names in show business. One of the better known was Aurora Elliot, late wife of currently resurgent rock superstar Colin Elliot, who once attracted headlines with his own drug-related issues. Unnamed sources maintain that Lester also trafficked in pornography, but no charges were ever brought and no links with nationwide distributors ever proven. His death was ruled a homicide. No witnesses have stepped forward, and no suspects have been named at this time
.”
Laurel holds up a hand to halt the outpouring—a hand close to trembling with outrage. “Thank you, I’ve heard enough.” Enough to know she shouldn’t depend on Amanda’s slanted opinions to gauge how much, if any, of the amassed reportage is based on truth.
“It all comes down to people believing what they wanna believe,” Amanda says as she gathers up the exhibits and prepares to leave. “Once they have it in their heads that rock stars are automatic enablers just because they happen to be rich and have easy access to drugs, it’s hard to convince ’em otherwise. And it’ll be even harder convincing ’em after what happened this morning.”
Laurel can’t disagree. How could she when Amanda’s closing statement borrows so heavily from the Jockey Hollow oration? “Thank you,” she says. “Superb job as usual.”
Superb job no matter whom Amanda happens to be doing it for. And if it’s David, he’ll do well to formally enlist Amanda to the cause, if he hasn’t already.
“You’re welcome.” Amanda pauses at the door. “But one last thing . . . I feel I should warn you this is only the beginning. The weeklies and national publications will be climbing on the bandwagon with their next issues, the broadcast media are already having a field day that looks unstoppable, and—”
“I’ve
got
it, Amanda. I get the picture.”
Laurel avoids further examination of the picture Amanda presented for perhaps as long as a minute and a half. Then it’s all she can see. Even when she resumes pacing the distance that returns her to the windows and other views of reality.
A plan forms against this backdrop. Enacting it takes her to the supply closet where she unearths the box of stationery samples that were part of David’s pitch of a week ago. She selects a letter-size sheet engraved with the revised letterhead listing her as full partner in the firm. On it she writes out a request, frames a reasoned argument for the request, and proofreads the result three times before signing it, sealing it in a matching envelope, and packaging this in a cardboard courier envelope marked urgent.
She slips into a ten-year-old ultrasuede coat hurriedly resurrected from a garment bag this morning and possibly still smelling of mothballs. She fills the neckline of the coat with a knockoff Hermes scarf, smoothes her hair into a sleeker arrangement, and stuffs the courier envelope into the oversized carryall she’s seldom without.
Amanda is away from her desk when Laurel passes through the reception area, but that doesn’t guarantee a clean getaway. At ground level, she enters the revolving door to the street and notices an unusual number of people filling the sidewalks beyond. There’s no way of being sure they’re all tourists, so she does a full turn in the door, reenters the lobby, and heads for a back corridor leading to a lesser-known exit on the west side of the building.
Wary now, she moves up Sixth Avenue at a fast clip, covering the five blocks to 58
th
Street in record time. At the turn toward Fifth Avenue, she belatedly realizes the Oyster Bar at The Plaza Hotel doesn’t open until 11:30, more than an hour from now, so the street entrance to the restaurant will be locked, thereby blocking the shortcut to the lobby.
“Shit,” she grumbles to the mild consternation of a passerby and stops where she is to retie the belt to her coat, rearrange her scarf, and reposition the shoulder strap of the carryall as though girding for actual combat.
As feared, paparazzi and at least one television crew are milling around opposite the main entrance to The Plaza. As demonstrated by their whistles, catcalls, and the shouting of her name when she comes into view, they’ve recognized her.
The most she can do in defense is plaster on an impassive expression and proceed as fast as she can, knowing her slightest sniff or stumble will be eagerly misreported.
