Slick (10 page)

 

 

It took considerable effort to make myself late for the meeting. I ended up circling the Beverly Center for twenty minutes before making the final turn into L’Ermitage. There weren’t any quote-hungry reporters waiting outside the hotel, which meant someone had done a good job misleading the press. No doubt a gaggle of newsfolk were holding a camera-light vigil outside the gates of Casa de Hunta, in Silverlake. I pitied his mailman.

I took a deep breath in the elevator, gathering my wits and senses. Confronted by the clear scope of the project, not to mention my inexperience with the rap world, I couldn’t shake that “first day of school” feeling. That was fine as long as I didn’t show it. Being a celebrity’s crisis manager is like being the emperor’s new tailor. You have to earn his absolute confidence if you want him to wear the air you crafted. Still, I wished I had come into the situation knowing more. I’d spent the whole afternoon researching Hunta. Most of what I’d read was spoon-fed crap created by people like me: puff pieces full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I knocked on the door to Suite 511, which opened to a square-headed, bear-size bodyguard. I could have used his stretched black T-shirt as a hammock.

“You Scott Singer?”

“Only if you’re happy to see him.”

He smirked politely, as if he’d never heard that joke before. “ID?”

I showed him my driver’s license.

“Lift your arms, please.”

He patted me down, just in case I was a pistol-packing publicist.

“Since we’re getting to know each other better,” I said, “what’s your name?”

“Just call me Big Bank.”

Too many bon mots entered my caffeinated mind, all of them in danger of being poorly received. I felt the primal need to prove to this excessively large man that he didn’t scare me, which pretty much proved that he did.

“What’s that in your shirt pocket?”

“Just my Palm Pilot, “ I said, showing him. “Can’t leave home without it.”

The best bodyguards made upward of five hundred dollars a day. Those were the ones who knew how to protect their clients from extortion as well as physical threats. For all Big Bank knew, I was carrying a digital recording device disguised as a Palm Pilot. I turned it on for him.

He nodded. “All right. You’re cool. Come in.”

Another satisfied customer. There was a neat little spy shop on Olympic Boulevard that an associate of mine turned me on to. Some of their gadgets were so fancy that you’d half expect Q to come out of the back room and demonstrate them. My handy toy—$850 after tax—was a digital recording device disguised as a Palm Pilot. It captured seventy minutes of audio on a removable chip the size of an airmail stamp ($92 each). Even better, it had a “Boss” button that displayed a snapshot of a Palm OS desktop, allowing me to trick the sharper tools in the shed, like Big Bank. As soon as I demonstrated it for him, it began recording.

Extortion was not the game. It was merely self-protection. So far I’d never been forced to use a recording, or even threaten to use it. But you never knew.

With a polite smile, I followed Big Bank into the $1,200-a-night suite. Immediately I was hit with the competing smells of marijuana and Thai food, both of which were laid out on the huge glass coffee table in the main room. Over a dozen people, some of them not even old enough to buy the liquor in their hands, filled the couches and watched MSNBC on mute while thunderous rap music blared in the background.

Everyone was partying it up until I stepped out from behind the great wall of Big Bank. They simmered down and eyed me, this white corporate flack straight outta Brentwood. My inner Dale Carnegie, 2001 edition, told me to avoid the instinctual “I’m down with your people/some of my best friends are black” type of smile. With a curt nod, I simply advertised my utter lack of concern over their opinion of me. A few of them dutifully nodded back. Likewise.

The oldest-looking man in the group (my age, actually) put down his chicken satay and rose to greet me. He was tall, husky, and extremely dapper. With his four-hundred-dollar slacks, fancy silk bow tie, and designer black suspenders, he struck me more as a lawyer than a record executive. Turns out he was both.

He shook my hand. “Mr. Singer. Hi. I’m Doug Modine, executive vice president and attorney for Mean World Records. Glad you could come.”

For a man built like James Earl Jones, he talked like Don Cheadle.

“Thanks. Call me Scott.”

“Sure. Just give me a few seconds to check on Maxina and the others.”

“Wait. Maxina Howard?”

“Yeah,” he answered, surprised. “You know her?”

“I know of her. I didn’t know she was here.”

“God, yes. She’s our guardian angel. Hang out for a minute, okay?”

Doug disappeared into a bedroom, leaving me, Big Bank, and a very quiet entourage.

“So,” I said, with forced flippancy, “anything good in the news?”

Most of them indulged me with a smirk. I scanned the men in the posse twice just to confirm that none of them was actually Hunta himself. I still wasn’t entirely positive. All I’d seen of him so far were low-res, highly stylized photos on fan-created websites.

“So you a big-shot PR man,” said a particularly fetching young woman in a micro-thin halter top.

“Not as big as Maxina Howard.”

“What kinda shit you do?” asked another.

“Oh, all kinds of shit.”

“Like?”

“Well, did you hear about the affair Tom Hanks had with that teenage prostitute?”

“No.”

“Damn right,” I replied immodestly.

Their mouths dropped in perfect synch. “You messing with us?”

“Well, it wasn’t Tom Hanks. If I told you who it was, I’d be breaking client privilege. But it’s someone just as big.”

They all dived after my tasty nugget, shouting theories over each other. In truth, it was a C-list sitcom actor who had reached his zenith in the early eighties. He was afraid the scandal would destroy his chances for a comeback. It probably would have helped.

“So where were you when Jesse Jackson needed you?” asked one of the guys, to laughter.

“That one was a lost cause, I’m afraid. The Republicans knew about his mistress for years. They were just saving it up for the right time.”

“What was that?”

“January nineteenth. The day before he was supposed to lead the Shadow Inauguration against George W. Bush. Took the wind right out of the whole protest.”

They stopped laughing. Even Big Bank got disturbed. “Man, that’s fucked up.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? Bullets don’t work anymore. Now they kill with information.”

Doug peeked out of the master bedroom. “Scott? Come on in.”

“Okay. Great.”

I got up and looked around at the entourage, who all shared a moment of silence for the buzz I killed.

“Don’t worry,” I assured them. “They’re not getting your boy the same way. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

That lit them back up. One of them held a fist to me as I approached the bedroom.
You go, man
. Never leave them depressed, always impressed. I was pretty sure now that none of them was Hunta.

 

 

For those of us who worked backstage in the great American drama, it was impossible not to have heard of Maxina Howard. Her Atlanta firm, Dandridge Associates, was the emergency PR resource for almost every major African American organization in the country. When the NAACP needed some extra power in their bullhorn, they called her. When the Nation of Islam got stuck in yet another foot-in-mouth media jam, they called her. When Bill Cosby got hit up by his alleged secret daughter, ditto. In the court of public opinion, she was an invisible defense attorney, sometimes a prosecutor. People who wish she’d never been born include Marge Schott, Mark Fuhrman, John Ashcroft, the executive board of Texaco, and every publicist for Denny’s.

Only once was I set against her. Four years ago, a young filmmaker shot a feature-length documentary about Nigerian playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, who, on behalf of the persecuted Ogoni people, became a vocal critic of the country’s military dictatorship and was hanged for it in 1995. That was all well and good, except the film made a very incriminating case against Shell Corporation, whose close involvement with the oppressive junta allowed them to keep pumping out three hundred million dollars a year in Nigerian crude. The documentary included interviews with former security-force members who claimed that Shell executives specifically urged them to silence anti-drilling upstarts as quickly and efficiently as possible. As you can imagine, Shell did not want this film igniting a boycott frenzy.

At the time I worked for Tate & Associates, which worked for Shell. I spent two weeks quietly erasing Maxina’s pencil lines. This took pathetically little effort. Killing the story in the mainstream press was like convincing Burger King not to add steamed beets to their menu. I was impressed that Maxina got as far as she did. The documentary received a fair amount of play on PBS and the issue crossed the armrests of a few Sunday morning talk shows. Otherwise, it got buried until the usual rigmarole. I wasn’t sure if Maxina knew of my small role in the situation. I certainly wouldn’t bring it up if she didn’t.

Doug led me into the lavish main bedroom, where Maxina waited. She kicked her short legs up onto the emperor-sized bed and waved to us as she continued her cell-phone conversation.

“You’re not listening to me. Listen. I don’t want you to come across as some kind of conspirator. Try to appeal to his sense of... I know. I understand that. But nobody likes to think of themselves as an opportunist. Take the high ground. If he has any self-respect, he’ll try to find a compromise. It doesn’t matter as long as you get him to release that footage, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

She was a heavy woman, at least two hundred and fifty pounds. I’d never seen her picture before. I was expecting someone much more upscale. With her close-cropped hair, discount blouse, and owl-rimmed glasses, she looked more like a PTA mom than an A-list socialite. Still, there was no denying it when you saw her razor-sharp eyes: she was a player. She shaped this culture as much as any top-notch celebrity or politician.

Maxina casually sized me up. She probably already knew what cereal I ate. “I understand that,” she said into the phone. “Just do your best and do it now. I’ll call you later.”

She disconnected. “Scott Singer,” she chimed musically. “Née Scott Schulherr. Why did you change your name?”

“The focus group liked it better.”

She smiled along. “See that, Doug? First rule of PR. Always lie entertainingly. Help me up.”

Doug took her wrist and helped her out of bed. She grunted in pain, then glanced at me. “It’s not because I’m fat, Scott. I’ve had a bad back since I was a size six, and it’s only gotten worse. That’s why I don’t travel anymore. As you can see, I made an exception for this.”

“Understandably,” I said, stifling a yawn.

“Nothing understandable about it. I made it clear to Jeremy from the start. I don’t like his music. As a self-respecting woman who grew up on love and Motown, I’m
offended
by his music. But I also made it clear to C. DeLores Tucker and every other moral watchdog who dangled a check in front of me that I will not help their scapegoat crusade. I have two sons of my own and I take full responsibility for their upbringing. They know that if I ever hear them calling a woman a bitch, I will cloud up and rain all over them.”

Doug and I smiled. Maxina took my arm. She was at least sixteen inches shorter than me, but her potent stare made me want to shrink down to her vantage.

She gestured to the bathroom door. “I know you’ve been kept in the dark, Scott, so let me start illuminating. My client is in that bathroom. Your client is standing right here in front of you. Now you and I are going to be working on two very different projects, but you still report to me. Are we clear?”

“As seltzer.”

“Good. Now before you think I’m an egomaniac, I’ll also make it clear that you can say whatever you want to me. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me I’m stupid. But when we’re around Jeremy and Simba, we speak in one voice. Mine. Clear?”

“Got it.” Simba?

She shot me a penetrating smirk. “Oh, you’re one of the sharp ones. You’re a raptor. Hayley Jane was right about you.”

“She’s a good woman.”

“Hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Now let’s get you up to speed.”

“Hold it,” said Doug. He grabbed his briefcase from the bed. “Before we go in there, I’d like you to sign some nondisclosure agreements.”

“Forget it,” Maxina told him. “You know damn well we can’t sue him over a secret operation. Just like he knows damn well that I have the power to cut the legs off his career if he ever double-crosses us. Why don’t we just all accept that and avoid a paper trail?”

My stomach sank. I had much to learn from Maxina, and much to fear. She was right. She had enough contacts and credibility in the media industry to make me persona non grata. On the plus side, she made a careful distinction between messing up and double-crossing them. She’d tolerate a little of the former and none of the latter.

“Come on,” she said. “While they’re still in hot water.”

 

 

As soon as I stepped into the Roman-style bathroom, I was hit by ninety degrees of moist air, the heavy scent of bath oil, and the sight of a gorgeous young family in the giant tub. The three of them—man, woman, and infant—were almost surreal in their unblemished perfection, as if they were chiseled from onyx. Ordinarily, I would feel intrusive walking into such an intimate scene, but somehow seeing them naked was no less awkward than looking at art.