Daniel Price - Slick

This was no bitch.

As a smart and skillful young woman, Lisa must have had a hard time breathing in all that secondhand smut. Lord only knew what rationale she used to fuel her polite smile. Boys will be boys? All’s fair in rap and war? Ain’t nothing but a gangsta party?

I didn’t know. I didn’t pretend to know. All I had was the testimony of others. The witnesses all seemed to agree that Lisa was having a bad time to begin with. All throughout the night she threw loaded glances at Hunta, enough to trigger a loud spat between him and Simba. No one was particularly alarmed by the squabble. It wasn’t a big deal , one source quipped. They only fight when they’re married.

At 9:50, Simba took Latisha and left. Hunta didn’t go after them. Instead he smoked some blunts (pot-filled cigars, for the uninitiated) and got obnoxious. He felt up Felisha, the label’s very own platinum-selling R&B sex kitten, which ignited a heated argument between Hunta and Felisha’s husband, fellow rapper X/S. The fight was broken up by the Judge.

Hunta eventually settled down…with Lisa. They retreated to a remote couch and had, as witnesses describe it, a quiet but serious looking conversation, complete with lots of touching. At 10:30, the pair set off for quieter pastures. Everybody saw them leave together.

An hour later, Lisa came back. Alone.

Everyone agreed in no uncertain terms that she seemed perfectly fine. Her hair. Her clothes. Her demeanor. All was jake. She spent another ten minutes talking to her immediate boss, producer Kevin Haggerty. All work-related stuff, according to him, although he admitted in his statement that he was too stoned to do anything but nod. At a quarter to midnight, she gave Kevin a kiss on the cheek, wished him a great holiday, and left. Ipso facto.

Wrongo. It occurred to me during my aimless drive that these accounts were a little too consistent and time-accurate, especially for a bunch of people baked out of their muffins. I had gone through my own marijuana phase in college. After two joints I became chronologically challenged. Every time I opened my mouth to say something, I got the nervous sense that I’d been droning on forever. “You know, the other day I — JESUS! How long have I been talking? I’m so sorry! I don’t usually ramble like — JESUS! I’m doing it again!”

Maybe the folks at Mean World held their ganja better than I did. Maybe Lisa wore a huge clock on her back. Or maybe Doug had embellished the stories, which meant there were facts worth hiding.

At 10 a.m., I parked the car in front of a mattress store on Santa Monica Boulevard and called Doug. In L.A. the pay phones were merely decorative nostalgia. Nobody actually used them. From the way passing drivers looked at me, I might as well have been wearing a porkpie hat and riding a penny-farthing bicycle. Like everyone else, of course, I owned a cell phone. I just didn’t want to show up on any of Mean World’s phone logs, should the very worst happen.

Doug sounded half asleep. “Hello?”

“Doug, it’s Scott. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“A little. Are you using a pay phone?”

“Yeah. Listen, I’ve been reading these statements. I’ve got a bit of a problem.”

“What’s up?”

“Well, I don’t mean to sound like a TV lawyer, but I can’t help you if you’re going to lie to me.”

That woke him up. “Whoa. Wait. What do you mean?”

“I read the reports. You overdid it. Now what are you not telling me?”

“Everything you need to know is in that file.”

“I need to know the whole story. You gave me the airplane version.”

“Look, unless you’re writing her biography, that’s more than enough to—”

“Doug, we don’t have time to wrestle. What are you not telling me?”

Short pause, then a sigh. “You know, I really wish you’d signed those nondisclosure agreements.”

Lawyers. “I understand your concern, but I’ve never screwed over a client in my life. If you don’t want to believe that, fine. At least believe Maxina when she said she could cut the legs off my career. And believe that I believe it. Okay?”

“I believe it.” He laughed, then followed it with a yawn. “Look, you know the expression: if you repeat a lie enough, it becomes the truth. I just made people write it out because I wanted them to get familiar with the slightly altered version. Just in case.”

“It’s a smart plan. So what changed from the original?”

“There’s only one significant difference.” Pause. Sigh. “She left upset. Really upset. But it’s not what you think.”

“Then tell me.”

He carefully measured his words. “She was into Jer. Heavily. It started out as a good working relationship. Not to belittle Kevin but Lisa was the real force behind the album. She’s got serious talent as a producer. Creatively, she and Jer fed off each other. The tracks they cut together are incredible. Really deep, innovative stuff. Nothing like his first album, forgive me for saying. The problem is that, look, when you spend that much time together, when you connect on such a creative level… it affects you. It affected her. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, it was clear to everyone else that she wanted to be the next Mrs. Sharpe.”

“Did she notice the first one was still around?”

“Yes. It was hard to miss her. But Jer and Simba have the kind of relationship that always seems like it’s circling the drain, you know what I mean? They fight all the time. He threatens divorce. She threatens child custody. Then after they’ve screamed themselves blue, they cry, hug, and have sex in the nearest bed. It’s a never-ending drama with them. They’ll never leave each other.”

“I guess Lisa didn’t see it that way.”

“No. And Jer didn’t help. That’s his other problem. He’s a sweet talker. When he’s high and when he’s mad at Simba, he becomes Barry White to whoever smiles at him first. That night at the party, Lisa made her move at just the right time. Whatever words of romance she threw at him, he gave right back with interest. It’s just the way he operates. Now do you see where this is going?”

“Upstairs,” I said.

“Right. Room 1215. They got it on. When it was over, he thanked her for the sex and then called Simba for his nightly apology. Naturally, Lisa didn’t take it well.”

“I’d imagine.”

“Hey, I felt bad for her. We all did. It was cruel for him to use her like that. But everything that happened was entirely consensual. This doesn’t come anywhere near the realm of sexual abuse. You agree?”

“Wholeheartedly.”

“Okay then. The problem is that it’s her word against his. You know, the irony is that if Jeremy really was a Bitch Fiend, he would’ve filmed the whole thing and we’d have hard evidence against her.”

“Wouldn’t that have been nice?” I flipped through the file. “I also notice she has no history of crying wolf.”

“At the moment, no.”

I chuckled darkly. “Sorry. That old trick doesn’t work anymore, my friend. It’ll only backfire.”

He didn’t chuckle back. “Then I can only hope, my friend, that you come up with something better. Any more questions?”

“One. Where’s Hunta’s statement?”

“You just heard it.”

“Okay. But I have to ask. What you just gave me, is it the original version or a slightly altered one?”

Doug frosted over. “Scott, if you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. But you seem like a smart man, so just follow your logic. There were over three dozen fine-looking women at that party who would have fucked Jeremy for the price of a smile. If Lisa had said no, he would have gone straight to one of them. Or two of them. Or three of them. It’s just that easy. That’s the world he lives in. The downside is that he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt, even from the people on his own team.”