Slick (15 page)

“No,” I replied. “I want to save him from one slanderous charge by
missing
him with another. That’s the key difference.”

I paced around the room, high on caffeine and inspiration. The entourage was gone. My audience consisted of six people…six and a half if you included baby Latisha. Even she seemed incredulous.

“The name of the game is ‘full public exoneration,’” I told them. “Lisa herself isn’t the threat. Her impending civil suit isn’t the threat. It’s the media we need to worry about. This is sweeps month. They’ll cast Hunta in whatever light it takes to keep things interesting. On the upside, they won’t care where their story comes from. So I say we preempt Lisa’s drama with ours. At least that way we have control over how it develops and, more importantly, how it ends.”

“But why
that
?” asked Simba Shange. “Why swap one fake rape for another?”

“Because if we go with any other story, there’s nothing to stop the press from placing Lisa’s allegation on top, like a cherry on a sundae. They don’t cancel each other out.”

“Neither do two rapes.”

That was Maxina, on the third couch. She was clearly in a motherly mood, judging from the way she rocked Latisha in her beefy arms.

I smiled. “You’re right. Two different accusations only serve to strengthen each other. But two of the
same
accusation? Uh-uh. Then you’ve got a problem.”

Behind Simba’s couch, a shirtless and sweaty Hunta hung from a portable chin-up bar. When the meeting began, he’d been in the middle of an impressively long set of lifts. Now he was too stunned to do any thing but dangle.

“There were a lot of other women at that Christmas party,” I continued. “If we get just one of them to beat Lisa to the press with the exact same charge and the exact same story, down to the minute, then Lisa will be jammed forever. What’s she going to say? ‘No, Hunta didn’t sexually abuse that woman that night. He was too busy sexually abusing me’? Nobody would take her seriously. She’d be a copycat. A shameless opportunist. She’d barely get a mention.”

Big Bank, the last person in on the conspiracy, stood next to Hunta. He chewed on my idea. “But if we use our own woman, what’s to stop Lisa from joining in and saying Jer messed her up some other night?”

“Nothing. She could do it. So could fifty other women. But as far as the press is concerned, it’s not who’s right, it’s who’s first. If we get there first, our woman will be the tentpole. She’ll be the one the reporters rally around. And once she goes down, everyone goes down with her. It’s like fruit from a poisonous tree. That’s why it’s really important that we work fast and get our decoy out there first.”

Big Bank nodded in amazement. I also caught the sun rising on Doug’s face. Two down.

Simba remained firmly rooted in skepticism. She looked damn good in clothes, even though there was more cotton to be found in aspirin bottles than in her white baby T.

“I don’t understand, “ she said. “You’re going to have one of these dancing skanks come forward, frame Jeremy, and then what? Admit it was all a lie?”

“Yes, but not hers. That’s the best part. She’ll tell the world she was offered a lot of money by some unnamed source, some shadow conspirator with an anti-rap objective. The press will eat it up. They’ll do a total 180 and go after all the people who were going after Hunta. How’s that for payback?”

I turned to Hunta, still hanging. “Not only will this silence Lisa, not only will this turn you from monster to martyr, but it’ll weatherproof you against all future accusations. For the rest of your life, you’ll have the benefit of the doubt. You’ll have
precedent
.”

His expression morphed from disbelief to abject wonder. Dare he dream?

Maxina, naturally, wasn’t as easy to sway. “That’s very ambitious, Scott. A few problems, though. First off, if this woman—this patsy of yours—admits she made it up, that’s a straight guilty plea for fraud and extortion. She could get thirty years in prison. Are you planning on mentioning this when you hire your actress? Or are you just going to let her find out the hard way?”

I shot her a crooked grin. Uh-uh. Not tonight, toots. My shields were at full capacity.

“Nobody’s going up the river. Not if we pick our actress carefully. We need someone sympathetic and telegenic. Someone with a dramatic reason to need the money. Sick mother. Sick child. Brother in dutch with loan sharks. Anything, as long as the audience understands why she lied for cash. Plus, if she comes forward on her own, if she makes the moral choice and decides she won’t slander a fellow human being for any dollar amount, forget it. She’ll come out of this with a slap on the wrist and a book deal.”

Maxina still wouldn’t budge. “You can’t say that for sure. Manipulating the media is one thing. Manipulating the legal system is quite another. I’m not saying your plan isn’t clever. It is. But when it comes to gambling with the lives of innocent people, it has to be foolproof.”

Hunta finally dropped back to the ground. “Besides, what’s to stop this woman from giving us up if the police start putting the heat on her and shit?”

“She wouldn’t even have to know we were involved,” Doug replied, with gawking awe. “As far as she’ll be concerned, there
was
a white conspiracy behind it.”

“Well, that’s not exactly—”

The Judge cut me off. “But what if somebody else gets to her? Somebody who offers her more money not to absolve Jeremy? I mean we’re putting a lot of power in this woman’s hands.”

“That’s why I’ll record my initial conversations with her,” I stressed. “If she goes rogue on us, we’ll simply leak a tape that exposes the plot to frame Hunta, but not the plot to absolve him. Either way, she gets outed and we’ve got our asses covered.”

Speaking of covered asses, my so-called Palm Pilot was once again capturing the moment from the warmth of my shirt pocket. The sound chip was going into my safe the second I got home.

Maxina shook her head. “I don’t like it. There are too many things that could go wrong. Even if your girl comes forward and says she lied, what’s to stop people from thinking that Jeremy’s guilty anyway? That someone paid her off or threatened her into saying it never happened?”

Hunta nodded along. “Right. Yeah. I don’t wanna be the next O.J.”

I counted off fingers to him. “Okay, one: you won’t be fleeing in any Broncos. Two: there’s much more motive to frame you, a hot young rapper, than him, a washed-up football star. And three: if Nicole Brown Simpson suddenly showed up in front of the cameras and confessed that she faked her own death to screw the Juice, I think we’d all be changing our tune about him. You agree?”

I was hot tonight. That yanked Hunta, Simba, and the Judge well onto my side. Four little, five little, six little Indians.

And then there was one. Maxina crossed her arms, locked in dissent. “Scott, if there’s one thing I learned in my many years in the field, it’s that the press always finds a way to make the black man the bad guy. It’s what they do.”

“What they do,” I countered, “is sell our eyeballs to their advertisers. Black. White. It’s all green to them. As soon as our stand-in spills the beans, the media’s one burning question will be ‘Who framed Hunta?’ It’s a fresh new angle. A hip-hop political thriller. Believe me, they’ll ride that wave as far as they can take it.”

“Uh-huh. And what if it takes them right to you?”

Touché. I didn’t have time to finish that part of the equation. I knew I’d be the one playing the cigarette-smoking man, the guy with the trenchcoat and the briefcase full of cash. And once our ringer let the cat out of the bag, there would certainly be an investigation. To make matters worse, there had to be a second voice on that insurance tape. Also yours truly.

“I won’t lie,” I said. “It’s a huge risk. But the risk is all on my part. Even if I told the truth under heat lamps, nobody would buy it. It’s just too crazy to think that Hunta hired someone to frame himself.”

“There’s a reason for that,” he muttered.

“So what would you do?” asked Big Bank.

“Get a good lawyer. Implicate the government. I don’t know. There’ll be plenty of time to work out the contingencies. The important thing is that this will work.”

Simba scratched her chin. “I don’t know, Scott. This still sounds risky. For all of us.”

Doug stood up. “Listen, I think it’s definitely worth considering. But I’d like to talk to the Judge and Maxina alone for a few minutes, if that’s all right.”

“Hold on,” snapped Hunta. “This is my life we’re messing with. When do I get my say?”

The Judge switched to paternal mode. “The final decision’s yours, Jeremy. We just need to decide if we want to recommend it to you.”

“Just hang tight,” Maxina told him. “We’ll be back.”

Maxina returned Latisha to her mother. In grim silence, she, Doug, and the Judge marched into the master bedroom and closed the door. I got the silly mental image of the three of them sharing the bathtub. There’d be room for about a cup of water.

For now it was just me and the obscenely chiseled half of the party. I sat down on a couch.

“So,” I quipped, “I think they went for it.”

Hunta toweled off and dropped down next to me. Big Bank threw him a hand-rolled cigarette and a lighter. As soon as he lit up, my nose confirmed that the tabacci was a little wacky.

“They didn’t want me in on this meeting in the first place,” he said, taking a drag. “I said fuck that. It’s my life. I got a right to hear this for myself.”

“And now that you have?”

“Now that I have, I’m glad you ain’t working for the other side,” he said with a laugh. “You one slick motherfucker.”

I grinned. “I don’t do this every day.”

“So how do you know it’ll work?” asked Simba.

“I can’t guarantee that everything will be perfect again, but I know that if we get to the cameras first, Lisa will be stopped dead in her tracks.”

Hunta nodded, impressed. “It’s a crazy plan, but I’m starting to like it.”

“Listen, I don’t want to mislead you. It won’t be a walk in the park. There’d be at least a week, maybe two, in between our woman’s accusation and her confession. During that time, you won’t like being you.”

“Why so long?”

“Because you’ve still got that Melrose cloud over you. If we play this right, our actress won’t just draw all the bad air away from Lisa, but from Annabelle too. That’ll take some time.”

“Yeah but—”

“Trust me, the more they fry you, the more crow they’ll eat when we pull the rug out from under them. It’s to your benefit.”

“Yeah but the Grammys are coming up. I don’t want this shit hanging over me at the Grammys.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were up for one.”

“He’s not,” said Simba. “But he’s scheduled to perform a number with L-Ron. At least for now.”

He squeezed my arm, blowing thick smoke through his nostrils. “Look, man, I’ve been dreaming about doing the Grammys since I was a kid. I got family. I got friends watching. This is everything I worked for. If you can clear all this shit before then—”

“When are the Grammys again?”

“February twenty-first,” said Big Bank.

I waved my hand. “That’s three weeks from now. By then the whole country will be kissing your ass, apologizing for ever doubting you.”

Hunta patted my back, grinning. “You just became my hero.”

“Let’s see what the others say. But I’ll tell you this, guys: if we move forward with my idea, we can’t just keep it under our hats. We have to keep it under our scalps. That means nobody else hears about this. Not even your family. For every Michael Jackson, there’s a LaToya.”

Big Bank nodded. “We know how to keep a secret.”

“That’s all I need to hear.”

Hunta grinned thoughtfully. “You know, ‘Pac would’ve been into your shit.”

I laughed. “Me? Why?”

“When he was doing his time, he got into Machiavelli. I mean, really got into him. He must’ve read
The Prince
like a thousand times. He loved all that scheming and plotting business. He cut his last album under the name Makaveli.”

“Really,” I said. “You know, a lot of historians believe that Machiavelli faked his own death.”

“Yeah,” said Hunta, intrigued. “I know. That’s where ‘Pac got the idea.”

“Wow. I thought that was just an urban legend.”

Hunta got solemn. “Oh, he didn’t do it. He just talked about it. The only reason he was out of jail was ’cause Suge bailed him out while the lawyers appealed the rape verdict and all that. If they lost, he would’ve had to go back. ’Pac didn’t want that. No way. If that happened, he probably would’ve done it. Faked a murder. Got a new face and shit. Ain’t no way he was going back.”

He took another long drag off his joint. “But he didn’t do it. I know that for sure. I was there when he got hit. I seen him in the coma. And I seen him dead.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I. But he lived the last year of his life like he knew it was the last year of his life, you know what I’m sayin’? When it came to livin’ large, he was King Kong, man. It ain’t the amount of time, it’s what you do with it.”

“But they never caught his killers.”

“The police? No.”

Big Bank got wary. “Jer...”

“What? I don’t know shit about it. I’m just speculating, is all. Ain’t no way Suge would’ve let them killers keep walking around, all notorious and big.”

Simba rolled her eyes. “Baby, shut up and keep smoking.”

Hunta shrugged at me. Suddenly, I got hit with that “second day of school” feeling. Maybe it was all the conspiracy thinking, or the marijuana smoke I was reluctantly inhaling. Either way, I knew I still had a lot to learn, way too much for me to be acting this confident.

Doug opened the bedroom door. “Scott?”