This Is How It Really Sounds (30 page)

But they'd never had a professional relationship, not after the last one. Now they were going to see if anything had changed.

Her office was pale and expensive, with two big white couches facing each other that reminded him of the kind of fat clouds that you'd see out an airplane window. There was a small conference table and a flat screen on the wall and some kind of thick shaggy carpet that looked like it was the final resting place of about a dozen goats. The potted plants were the kind that had one beautiful bloom on an elegant stem. Beth was wearing a white blouse and jeans and an unbuttoned cashmere sweater the color of lipstick. She was finishing up a phone call, pointed him toward one of the white sofas as she said her last good-byes, then came from behind her desk and planted a light kiss on his cheek. It was good to see her. He hoped she could make some sense out of this shit, because, though he didn't want to mention it to Bobby, the whole thing was a little bit creepy, especially watching the other Peter Harrington say “I really like your music” over and over again before getting punched in the face. What did that mean? After the first dozen times the line had started to crackle with some sinister irony aimed right at him. “I really like your music!”
Wham!
That would freak anybody out. Beth motioned him to the cloud couch, then sat down across from him as he slumped into it. Another assistant came in with a bowl of expensive chocolates and set them in front of him. Nice-looking number, a little extra smile with that smile. Maybe on the way out … When he glanced back at Beth, she was frowning at him.

“Keep it in your pants when you're here.”

“Wow! Is that the first thing you say to all your clients?”

“You're not my client, and I know you too well. She's my rabbi's niece.”

“You know, at this phase of life, I'm thinking more about spiritual stuff. Maybe—”

Beth put her hand up: “Don't even!” Then she laughed, and he laughed with her. “You will never grow up.”

“No, I will never grow
old
! How are the kids?”

She grimaced. “Sarah's doing great. Dylan…” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “His therapist says he's in a nihilistic phase.”

Pete smiled as he imagined the boy. “What do you expect? He's … what? Thirteen?”

“Fifteen. But he's tiny. He's got the body of a twelve-year-old. We don't want to give him hormones, but it's hard when you're the class shrimp.”

Pete had known Dylan since he was a baby and felt himself smiling as he imagined the face of a toddler changing into that of a ten-year-old and then the Dylan he'd seen two weeks ago. “It'll happen. He's a great kid.”

She asked about China, and he gave her the whole story of how they'd found the guy, stalked him, put him exactly where they needed him, and then how eighty-six-year-old Charlie had taken out the bodyguard. “He folded that dude up like a fucking origami!”

“I'm impressed. You really did it. Tell me something, though: was it satisfying to clobber him?”

He didn't have a simple answer. “Let me say this: no man ever deserved to get hammered more than that guy. I still stand by that. From another angle, I trained for two months, and every day of those two months I thought about decking that asshole. Multiple times per day. But when I finally walked up to him, I wasn't really mad anymore. I was over it. It wasn't really even about what he did to everyone else, or the money. It was more because Charlie was there. He went all the way to Shanghai and did all his spy stuff to set it up, and at that point I just couldn't fail on him. Have you heard anything from him?”

“He's back in Los Angeles. He wants to avoid contact with you, me, and Bobby, in case our friend in Shanghai decides to investigate it. He said he'll get in touch with you when things settle down.”

It was disappointing, but Charlie knew his shit. If he wanted to lay low, so be it.

Beth went on. “So now you've got twenty thousand downloads and about ninety thousand views just on TMZ. My assistant found fifty-eight sites with that video on it.”

“I also got six hundred e-mails. As of about an hour ago.”

“That's the most interest you've had in a long time. How's it feel?”

“Kinda weird. It reminds me of when the
Wreckage
album first hit. That noise. I'm guessing it will be fun soon, but right now it's kind of confusing.”

“You've been down for a while. Maybe it's hard to see yourself as successful again.”

“Maybe. But I didn't go over there to be successful. I went over to do something.”

“Wait a minute. You told me you were going to kick this guy's ass, and write an anthem and the whole world was going to cheer. You used pretty much those words.”

“Okay. I did.”

“Well, Pete … they're cheering.”

“Yeah!” he said. “I guess they are.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“I guess … I just need some help sorting this all out. I mean, Bobby's like,
Internet strategy
and
social networking campaign
. I don't know anything about that stuff. I've got my Web site, shit like that, but all these people are writing me and asking me for interviews … What am I supposed to say?”

“Pete, listen to me very carefully.” She took on that tone again—the Beth-in-charge tone. “I know you didn't go to China as some sort of career move. You went to right a wrong. That stands on its own. But you do want to get your career moving again, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, this is your shot. If you blow it, it's going to be very hard to get another one. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, if you want me to, I will handle it. I can take on your media strategy, your Internet and social networking strategy—everything. But you cannot fuck me over like last time.”

Knew that one was still kicking around. “I won't.”

“And fucking me over means running off with some groupie you fall in love with, or showing up drunk at events, or being insulting to an interviewer, or being late to meetings, or getting naked with the rabbi's niece. That, and everything like that. Got it?”

“That's humbling.” Her expression didn't change. “Got it!”

“And once I start on this, you can't back out. You have to go all the way, or I'm not going to waste my time.”

“All the way to where?”

“Let's turn that question around. Where do you want to go? Where does Pete Harrington end up?”

He never thought about ending up anywhere. “I thought ending up somewhere is what dead people do.”

“No, Pete. It's what grown-ups do. Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

And strangely, maybe because he was working on the song about that house, he saw himself impossibly, so very impossibly, sitting by a fire with a son and a wife and outside all around just snow, and snow, and snow. Some life he'd never get a chance to live, that didn't make sense when you're sitting in an office on Wilshire Boulevard that has an Oompa Loompa costume in the reception. She was waiting for a real answer. “I don't know.”

“For example, here's a scenario I could see for you. You record a new song, and people buy it. You go on tour, and people show up. You make enough money to live by who you are. And when it starts to subside—and someday it will—you have enough saved up to live decently and do what you want, and still make some money playing music.”

“Not to be an ingrate, but it's kind of depressing when you put it like that.”

Beth smiled back at him. “Pete, I can get you publicity. I can't get you eternal youth.” She paused, as if they'd finished that subject. “So”—she put her hands together and asked with exaggerated naïveté—“how's that tour shaping up?”

“Okay, stop! You already talked to Bobby, didn't you?”

She gave a little shrug using only her eyebrows. “It's up to you, Pete. I don't need another client. I've got plenty of clients. I'm doing this because I want to help you. We're old friends; my kids love you. I want to see you be well.”

It was amazing how good this woman was, so much better than he'd realized. He felt a fresh wave of regret at how he'd treated her all those years ago. It took him a few seconds to be able to respond. “Thanks, Beth.”

“I'm glad to help. I'll have a memorandum of agreement drawn up, and you can sign it on the way out. I'll get you a contract later.” She made a quick call to her assistant, then continued. “Let's deal with the most immediate things. First of all, do not answer any e-mails. Second, do not respond to requests for interviews. We do not confirm, deny, or explain. We let the video do the talking. Whatever you want to say, that video says it better.”

“Okay.”

“The idea now is to keep absolutely silent, because the more it builds on its own, the more people are going to want to talk to Pete Harrington, and there's nothing the media responds to more than inaccessibility.” She shrugged. “Except maybe free food and booze. But right now, the less you say, the more valuable you get. When it's time to talk, we'll choose the venue and the message. Why talk to the
Los Angeles Times
when you can get paid thirty thousand dollars for appearing on
Good Morning America
?”

Nice! “Go on.”

“If someone calls you or you get cornered somehow, tell them your legal counsel has asked you not to talk about it. That lets people know it wasn't faked, which is the main thing right now.”

“Nothing fake about it, Beth. You know that. But I don't have legal counsel, except some bankruptcy guy.”

“Fine. I'll have my attorney call you and tell you not to talk about it. Then you won't be lying.”

“What if Peter Harrington really does sue me? He's probably got, like, a hundred lawyers on his payroll.”

“You mean, what if you get sued for decking a guy who caused a hundred-billion-dollar meltdown? Pete!” She leaned forward and spoke with her eyes wide. “
Pray
he sues you!”

He hadn't seen Beth at work since she was a twenty-four-year-old girl from New Jersey. And, frankly, it was a little scary. She cared about him, though. He knew that, and he was glad to sign the agreement she wrote up. It looked like this was going to be an interesting ride.

*   *   *

Beth hit it like a freight train. Some tech guy from her office called him ten minutes after he got back home, and by noon all his e-mails were automatically forwarded to her office. The appropriate ones were being answered by those kids at her agency, expressing his thanks for their support, boilerplate shit like that. All speaking on his behalf, like he was too big a star to answer them himself. A little later they e-mailed him a PR questionnaire asking him all about his past career, and then about his new songs and what inspired them. Didn't everybody already know that stuff? They already knew he'd worked with Duffy, and they played up the DreamKrushers reunion angle a little bit. On the follow-up call, his new guy, James, laid it all out with a reedy, college-kid voice, talking about the new product.

“We need to rebrand Pete Harrington. We still want him to have that spontaneous energy that he's known for, but we want to mature him a little bit, so he's not just a kid who trashes hotel rooms.”

“You mean he's worked his way up to trashing Wall Street dirtbags.”

“Exactly! He's been around, he knows the score, he still loves good-looking women, but he's more than that. He's somebody who saw a wrong and righted it. He's an American hero.”

American hero. He'd been talking to Beth, all right. Whatever, James.

A half hour later, he got a phone call. “Pete Harrington?” Some serious-sounding man with a faint southern accent. “This is Burke Ellis, of Norton, Ellis, and Weintraub. Beth Blackman asked me to call you…”

It was her lawyer, just like she'd promised. Beth was running this show now.

 

3

Red Dragon

It wasn't until
the meeting with Shenzhen Red Dragon that Peter Harrington realized that the little episode on the Bund wasn't going to stay secret. Until then, he had tried to pretend that as long as no one else knew about it, it hadn't really happened. For the first two days after the attack, he'd hidden out in his lair, concocting a detailed story of how his racquetball partner had hit him in the face on his backswing and doing his best to get out of the meeting that they'd been carefully orchestrating for nearly two months.

“I'm really not up to it, Kell.”

“Get back in the saddle, my man! We've been going back and forth with these guys forever. They flew in from Hong Kong to meet you!”

“Come on! I'm just window dressing for this venture.”

“Drop the fake modesty. These guys all know how to use the Internet and they all know you and your original investors walked away from Crossroads with an eight-hundred-percent return on investment. You're the rock star. I'm just another lawyer to them.”

The phrase “rock star” struck him in an unpleasant way. “Kell—”

“Get down here! Come into the office a little early. I've got to tell you about the other night. Then we'll go meet them.”

Harrington was looking in the mirror as he talked, examining his face. He had other business at the office: he wanted to check the Crossroads database and see if Pete Harrington was in it. “I'll see you at eleven.” He took a painkiller and then held an ice pack against his nose and eyes. It brought the swelling down, and, with the purple fading, he could almost believe that he looked merely tired, rather than battered. He put on his suit and tie, and Ma drove him over to the office.

*   *   *

As he'd expected, Kell was highly interested in his “accident.” Peter had prepped him by telling him the story over the phone the day before, but when he came in, his partner was still shocked at his face.