End of Secrets (20 page)

TWENTY-TWO

Every panel on the main wall of the Control Room flickered with images from news networks covering the crash. Workstations around the room glowed with blue-tinted light. The image on the big screen appeared to be a piece of metal floating in water. Kera spotted Gabby pacing by the pit, her phone clutched against an ear. She did not look calm.

“Wha
t’s
going on, Jess?” Kera said to the analyst manning the workstation closest to the door. She knew by name almost everyone who worked in the Control Room—after all, they spent more hours together in a single room than any of them spent with anyone in their personal lives. But the woman looked up from her screens only briefly to give Kera a you-know-better-than-that glance. An unspoken rule discouraged agents and analysts from inquiring about the top-secret cases their colleagues were working on. It was a courtesy Kera supported and respected. It was just that it had
n’t
occurred to her that what was unfolding on every major news network might be related to one of Haw
k’s
cases.

She made her way across the Control Room and came up behind Jones.

“Wha
t’s
all this?”

“Plane crash,” he said.

“Big plane or small plane?”

“Small plane. Corporate jet. Took off from Teterboro at 8:53 this morning carrying a pilot and three passengers. Air traffic contro
l’s
last contact with the plane was at 8:58. They were in the air for another fifteen minutes. The wreckage is a few miles off Montauk. This is all according to what I can see on the FAA system.”

“Botched terrorist attack?”

“It crossed my mind, sure. But it does
n’t
pan out. The tail number is clean. I checked with DHS, CIA, FAA, the works. No red flags.”

“Can I ask the obvious question? Planes crash sometimes. Why all the commotion around here?”

“I have
n’t
figured that out yet.”

“What do you mean you have
n’t
figured that out? What did Gabby tell you?”

“Gabby has
n’t
told me anything.”

“But you said you ran the tail number? Who asked you to do that?”

“No one. I got curious about all the excitement. You might be interested in what I found out.”

“Try me.”

“The tail number is registered to the ONE Corporation,” Jones said. “Guess who was on board?”

“On the plane? I would
n’t
begin to know.”

“Members of a band. Background Noise Pollution.”

That name meant something to her. She struggled to recall why. “Background Noise Pollution,” she said, sitting down at her workstation to Google it. “A band. Rough month for the music industry, huh?”

“Rough month for ONE,” Jones said. “The band was signed to the same label as Rowena Pete. I
t’s
owned—”

“Owned by ONE. I know. What is
n’t
?” Then Kera remembered where sh
e’d
heard of the band before. It was at the basement art show. The group of smokers on the stairs had been talking about Background Noise Pollution. She scanned through the search engine results on her monitor. She recognized some of their music, she realized. It was indie rock with a stripped-down sound anchored by the lead singe
r’s
sturdy, melodic voice.

“The whole band was on the plane?”

“Yes. I checked the surveillance tapes from Teterboro. All four were on the tarmac this morning.”

“One of them is a pilot?”

“Apparently.” There was an obvious joke about him not being a very good pilot, but neither of them made it. They were both distracted, their minds working to assemble this new data into information. Then suddenly, Jones turned back to HawkEye and began tapping and swiping at the touch screen without explanation.

Kera logged in to her own workstation and found a fan site where she learned that the band members lived—or had lived—in the East Village and occasionally played impromptu gigs in the neighborhood. The
y’d
stopped touring recently to record a new album, which by online accounts appeared to be highly anticipated.

“Bingo,” Jones said. Kera looked up. “At least two members of Background Noise Pollution visited the bar at the Empire Hotel in the past month. Guess who was there at the same time?”

Kera lifted her eyebrows. “Tha
t’s
no coincidence. So ONE has lost two of their top-selling musical acts in as many weeks.”

“And they each had contact with Canyon,” Jones said.

“It does
n’t
look like the band was traveling to a performance.” Kera nodded at her screen. “There are no scheduled tour dates listed on their website. Why were they up there?”

Jones shrugged. “Nice day for a plane ride, I guess.”

She nodded. They were both thinking the same thing. “And maybe a swim. Let me guess—no bodies have been recovered.”

“Coast Guar
d’s
looking.”

“You do
n’t
think the
y’l
l find anyone, do you?”

“Nope,” he said. “I think we have missing persons numbers five through eight. HawkEye has already started generating maps.”

Kera nodded. But something did
n’t
make sense. “Wait. Only a handful of people know about
A
TLANTIS
. Why is everyone else in here so interested in that plane—?”

Jones cut her off with a glance. She understood why a few moments later, when Gabby appeared behind him, her thumbs pounding away on her phone.

“Where are we with Rowena Pete?” she said, not looking up.

Kera and Jones glanced at each other. When neither of them answered, Gabby lifted her eyes. They went first to Kera.

“Still missing.” Kera braced for a dressing down.

“Tha
t’s
all we know?” Gabby said, but her attention was too divided to land the comment with any sting. Her eyes kept drifting between her phone and the footage of the plane crash on the big screen. For a long moment, she watched an overhead shot of the wreckage. Then she said, “Christ, what next?” and walked away.

Kera sat in front of her screens thinking. She pulled up the HawkEye dossier on Rafael Bolívar, careful not to let Jones see what she was doing. She had
n’t
told Jones about speaking with Canyon at the commercial shoot, and she did
n’t
know how to explain why her interest in Bolívar warranted full HawkEye surveillance. She was
n’t
sure there was a good explanation for that.

Bolívar had left his apartment building at 0815 hours and had gone directly to the headquarters of Alegría North America, the company of which he was chairman and CEO. She watched surveillance footage of him walking into the building. Then she watched it again. She resisted a temptation to watch it a third time and instead closed down his dossier and opened the profiles that HawkEye had started to assemble for each member of Background Noise Pollution.

Christ, what next?
Gabb
y’s
words played across her mind like an echo. There was something about the incident with Background Noise Pollution that was different from the other disappearances. Before there had been improbable suicide notes and bicycles left tethered near clichéd jumping points. This, though, was more audacious. Had this been a grand finale? Or did it mark the beginning of a new trend? She pondered this as Gabb
y’s
words ricocheted through her mind.

Kera felt suddenly restless, on the verge of a breakthrough but unable to pull it into focus. She should have been poring over the HawkEye data, looking for the first lead to follow. Or should she? The computer would spit out more data than she could ever read, but what would it tell her? What she really needed to see was what was going to happen next. If she was going to do more than tally up the growing number of missing people, she needed to alter her approach. She needed to find a way to connect the incalculable variables. Charlie Canyon. Rafael Bolívar. It. ONE. There are 7,375,248,777 people in the world. Soon they will all be connected. Christ, what next
?

What next?

She stood up quickly. There was a ONE artist, she realized suddenly, who was similar in quality to the missing artists, but who was still known to be perfectly alive and well. Now, with ON
E’s
purchase of AM + Toppe, Canyon would have direct access to him. Could he be next? How had she not considered this until now, when an image of the artis
t’s
billboard in Times Square flashed across her mind? She waited until sh
e’d
slipped out of the Control Room before she broke into a run, sprinting down the hallway and through the threshold of her office, where she stopped finally, standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Times Square. There it was. Below the domineering ONE ad, and above the place where the
America
ad had been—was a vast billboard hit by the full glare of the late-morning sun.

JW. New music from Jalen West
.

TWENTY-THREE

Jalen West, international pop star, rose through the center of the ONE Corporatio
n’s
Midtown Manhattan headquarters. He wore a white T-shirt, black vest, and black jeans, the cuffs rolled up and stuffed partially into the tops of silver high-top sneakers. At ground level, one of his managers had pressed the button for the forty-third floor and the elevator music changed to an R&B tune recorded by a ONE artist.

Jalen stood smiling, surrounded by the three managers and a bodyguard. He bobbed his body to the music the way most peopl
e’s
lungs processed air: a subtle, intimate dance that occurred without thought. The paparazzi cameras and screaming teenagers who had formed a channel between the limo and the buildin
g’s
glass revolving doors fell away as he savored the thrust of the elevator hoisting him further above Manhattan. His mother used to say his head was always in the clouds. It was just the way music made him feel.

The hallways and the corner executive suite on the forty-third floor were lined with photographs of musicians and recording artists and the industry executives who had profited off them throughout recent decades. The photos reminded him of home, of the hallway in his mothe
r’s
house in Detroit, which was much darker and narrower than this but was lined with photographs of four generations of relatives. They were all his family in a sense, he thought, these musicians and executives and blood relatives. They all were the people who came before him to lead him to where he was today.

Now a month before his twenty-sixth birthday, Jalen had recorded two megaselling pop albums and sold out stadiums on four continents. It was for these reasons that ONE Music had been interested in Jalen West. Jalen, for his part, had expressed no interest in deserting the only label he had known and the manager who had first invested in him. He had not wanted to relinquish control of his astronomical career to a conglomerate that possessed a much more crowded list of artists. His original label had given him the opportunity to make music his life; conglomerates had other concerns, like insatiable shareholders who demanded year-over-year growth. So Jalen, through his manager, had told ONE he was
n’t
interested in their offer.

ON
E’s
response was to simply acquire the entire label that controlled Jale
n’s
contracts and absorb them into the fold. ONE already had a deep stable of music talent. They did not need to absorb another record company. But if that was the only way to get Jalen West, well, there were worse problems for a multibillion-dollar media empire to have. This one cost them only $180 million, and they expected to earn that back within the next presidential term.

Jalen found it easy to detach himself from all the fuss during the transition. He buried himself in the process of writing new music, even as the gossip sites churned out alleged details of his private life and produced photos that hinted, just enough, at their possibility. The latest rumor was that he had started dating the action film star Scott Michaels. It was true that they had met months earlier at a party, at which photos of them were taken. But by the end of the night, the actor had made such a little impression on Jalen that Jalen had needed to see the photos online himself to be reminded of the supposed heartthrob he was supposedly sleeping with. The un-tabloid-worthy truth was that Jalen had found it impossible to hold down a boyfriend since the success of his first album. So h
e’d
focused on his music and had emerged only recently from his writing and recording frenzy to discover that he now had three managers, a major upcoming album release, and a tour planned under the care of ONE Musi
c’s
marketing division.

Flanked by this new entourage, Jalen West was escorted toward the plush corner office of the president of ONE Music.

A half-dozen people had gathered for the meeting. He shook hands with Ford Dillingham, the president of ONE Media and Entertainment, and Tom Barkley, a holdover from his previous label and the man who had discovered him, if any man can claim that about another. The other execs stepped forward one by one to greet him. It was a homogeneous, dull-looking troupe. There was one woman, not of his generation, nor even of an adjacent one. The rest were men. White men. Jalen was the only person of color in the room (the bodyguard waited outside). Not that that mattered. He was used to that now—ever since the video. After the video, life had changed for him overnight. Now, whenever his career or money—especially money—were being discussed, it was typical to be in company like this.

He shook more hands. He was pleasant and charismatic. These were not traits that had helped him on the streets of his neighborhood growing up, but they seemed to provide him with a limitless advantage now. He finished shaking hands. The only person whose face he would remember, whose name would leave an imprint in his mind, was the young marketing consultant who, during their introduction, was praised as the brains behind the rollout of his albu
m’s
promotional campaign.

“This is Charlie Canyon. H
e’s
just joined us, and we think h
e’l
l be the best person to oversee your campaign. We have some innovative ideas about the promotion of the
JW
album. W
e’r
e excited to get you out there.”

Jalen shook hands with Charlie Canyon, and their eyes met.

The first thing Jalen had noticed when he stepped into the room, even before the stunning view that looked south down the spine of Manhattan toward the tip of Battery Park and west over the Hudson to New Jersey, was the baby grand piano in the corner. He wanted to go to it now, to slide his fingers over the ridges between the keys. The feeling came to him like a phantom itch on a limb he did
n’t
have. With a piano, his ten fingers became eighty-eight keys, and those keys became an infinite combination of chords and notes—all of it an instant extension of himself, as accessible as the words of a first language rolling off a tongue.

“People love your story. They feel a part of you now.” The head music mogul was still talking. Jalen could
n’t
remember the ma
n’s
name. “People respond to your bravery, your courage, your faith.”

“I do
n’t
believe in God.” He did not say it as a confession but as a simple matter of fact, to correct a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding that most worried him was unrelated to his theological leanings. The real danger was that these people were trying to shape him. They were trying to create an image of him that would sell the music they wanted him to make. He intended to be clear that there were certain activities in which he would not take part.

The young marketing consultant looked up. The one named Charlie Canyon. Jalen was
n’t
sure why he noticed that. H
e’d
stopped noticing all of the other executives. They looked and acted and wanted the same. But the young marketing consultant had sharp eyes that pinged deep with curiosity. Curiosity was sexy. Or maybe it was just rare, and rare was sexy. He wanted to write lyrics suddenly. He wanted to sit at the keyboard and put lyrics to music. The boredom this meeting inspired was excruciating. When would it end?

Ford Dillingham had smiled sourly at the God comment. To Jalen, Dillingham was no different from everyone else who assumed he was Christian and assumed this was a virtue. They permitted themselves to assume this because of Jale
n’s
gospel music background and, of course, because of the video. And then they spoke of it in complimentary or adoring terms that he found bizarre and unbecoming. He did not believe in God. He believed in religion even less. He did
n’t
recognize the good in devoting oneself to contrived, abstract principles about the world when all around him there were things that were real and meaningful and true. Things like music.

The men and the woman started shaking hands again, and it appeared the meeting was winding down. Tom Barkley looked over at him and, as a courtesy, or perhaps even just as a figure of speech, asked if he had any questions.

“Are we gonna talk about the music? I already have a few songs for the next album. Want me to play one for you?”

“Yes—” said Charlie Canyon, who had said nothing through the duration of the meeting.

“No, tha
t’s
all right,” said Dillingham, looking at his watch. “Some other time. W
e’r
e about to release this album of yours. We need you to focus right now on promoting that.”

“He wants to play,” Canyon said. “I want to hear it.”

There was suddenly a great tension in the room, a white-hot buzz forty-three stories up in the air. Canyo
n’s
was not quite an insubordinate request, but certainly some very polished toes were being stepped on by the young gun with the sharp eyes. Jalen felt a rush of gratitude and respect for Canyon, his coconspirator in music. Music that urgently needed to be played, right here in this room, for these people who could
n’t
wait to make a killing off it but could
n’t
be troubled to sit through a song.

“If yo
u’d
like,” Dillingham conceded, gesturing toward the piano.

They stood around, the executives, and listened to his song. If there is any proof that certain human beings are put on this earth for a reason, it was a plain fact that Jalen West was born to sing. The first note, when he opened his mouth, was as sturdy and pitch-perfect as the last. As he played, he imagined the music reaching into their chests and massaging their souls. Tha
t’s
how it felt whenever he heard music that mattered to him. That was why he wrote music and why he could
n’t
stop himself from singing it. He just wanted to create that over and over for anyone who would listen.

When he finished and turned around on the bench, the only pair of eyes that were looking at him belonged to Charlie Canyon. The others had already turned for the door.