Daniel Price - Slick

Harmony watched me the whole time, nodding, listening, and most likely wondering when the hell I’d get to the part that involved her. My fault for trying to impress her.

“So once in a while,” I continued, “a public drama comes along that causes everyone to stop and look. It fixates us, for whatever reasons. O.J. Simpson. Jon Benet Ramsey. Elián González. Columbine. The networks didn’t engineer these events. They just happened. And when they do, holy shit, are they lucrative. I mean for everyone. Viewer and subscription ratings go up, which means ad sales go up. Experts and pundits get to speak their minds and plug their books. Even the nonprofits profit. Every time a relevant activist group puts their two cents in, they get thousands back in donations. It’s all part of the fun and games of a modern free market. Are you still with me?”

She nodded.

“All right. So here we are again with Melrose. It’s a lot like Columbine, except this time the shooter was cuter.”

“And white,” Harmony groused.

“Actually, the Columbine shooters were white. And Annabelle Shane wasn’t. But the important thing is that the Melrose tragedy is a gold mine of human interest. Mostly because it’s rap-related.”

“They haven’t proved that for sure.”

“They will. Very soon. Trust me. This one is going to progress to a full-fledged indictment of the music and entertainment industry. As far as the media folks are concerned, it’s the perfect storm. Black versus white. Parents versus kids. Washington versus Hollywood. Nobody’s going to let this one go. And everyone with an agenda, noble or otherwise, is going to throw their hat in the ring. In fact, there’s only one guy who doesn’t want be a part of this mess, and he’s trapped right in the middle of it.”

“Hunta.”

“That’s right. That’s why they hired me. My job is to get him out of that ring alive. Now I can’t kill this story. Nobody can. But what I can try to do is steer it in a different direction, toward a much more favorable outcome. It’s kind of like one of those old Looney Tunes, where the Road Runner paints a fake curve in the road and leads the Coyote into a brick wall.”

At last I got her to chuckle. Too bad she wouldn’t be doing much of that for the cameras. She had a gorgeous laugh.

“There’s only one way for me to accomplish my goal,” I said. “I have to give the people something even more exotic than what’s been going on already. If they’ve got a horse, I’ve got to give them a zebra. If they’ve got a twelve-car pileup, I’ve got to give them a plane crash. Now I think I’ve got the story to top all stories, but what I don’t have is a compelling lead.”

Finally I connected the big picture to her. She stopped smiling.

“Wait. Me?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re perfect for the part.”

“That’s crazy. I ain’t…I don’t do that acting stuff.”

“That’ll only help your credibility.”

“But I don’t get it. What am I supposed to do?”

All at once, a series of glaring doubts caught up to me with a vengeance. This was too much to spring on her, too soon. I’d assumed my enthusiasm for the plan would be infectious. I’d assumed Harmony would jump at any opportunity to escape her current hapless existence. Even worse, I’d assumed she’d take my crash course in media literacy as a sign of good faith instead of the mark of a soulless prick. But what if I was wrong on all counts? Suddenly I felt like a student who crammed for the wrong test.

“Do me a favor,” I said, with considerably less aplomb. “Open the glove compartment.”

She did, and immediately gawked at the standout item: a fat stack of bills.

“That’s your thousand,” I told her. “Your listening fee.”

“Why you giving it to me now?”

I took an extended breath. “Because this is the part where you earn it.”

________________

Sometime during the next twenty minutes, the sound chip in my recorder became a dangerous and valuable item. It was both a weapon and a shield. There were a good two minutes of dialogue that, when properly isolated, would provide us with one hell of a net should Harmony ever betray us.

Getting that was the easy part. Getting Harmony in tune with my grand design was the more difficult and pressing concern.

She rested against the passenger side of my car, smoking a cigarette under the pitch black sky. The car itself rested in a parking lot off Lincoln Boulevard, right in front of a sleeping strip mall. Hunta’s brother, Ray, had died somewhere in this vicinity. For all I knew, it was right where we were standing.

It was my idea to pull over. I wanted to give Harmony time to regroup and weigh the issues. She pulled a generic pill bottle from her purse and poured herself three chalky-white tablets. This was the second time I watched her dry-gulp a trio of painkillers.

I leaned against the car, inches away from her. We gazed at the dark Thai eatery in front of us.

“Look on the bright side,” I offered. “At least now you know I’m not just some guy trying to fuck you.”

She coughed out a quick laugh, then covered her mouth. At the very least, my bombshell had cracked away her timid exterior. I was starting to get a nice glimpse of Inner Harmony.

“This the craziest shit I ever heard in my life.”

“Tell me which part worries you and I’ll see if I can clarify.”

“Which part? All of it! You want me to yell ‘rape’ against a man who never even touched me…”

“We don’t really want to call it rape.”

“With no evidence…”

“You won’t need evidence.”

“And then fry his ass for no good reason…”

“You’ll have a very good reason.”

“…just so I can save him.”

“Right.”

She blew smoke at the pavement. “Right. Meanwhile I spend the rest of my life in jail.”

“You won’t go to jail. You won’t even be arrested.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know your background. I know you’ve been put through the wringer more times than anyone deserves. Run over by cops. Screwed over by bureaucrats. And all that family trauma. Jesus, honey, life owes you. You know it. I know it. And once everyone knows it, it’ll be political suicide for anyone to do anything short of hugging you.”

That didn’t help her state of mind. “Who… who told you all that stuff about me?”

“It’s all on record. It’s all out there for anyone willing to dig. Harmony, look, I am truly sorry for all the crap you’ve been through. But if you go along with my plan, that crap is exactly what’s going to save you. When you retract your story, everyone will understand what motivated you to lie. They’ll forgive you for it. And most important, they’ll admire you for eventually coming clean and undoing it. This is the stuff TV was made for.”

“This is my life!”

“Right. And?”

“And I don’t want it out there like that! I don’t want people talking about me, feeling sorry for me and shit.”

“Sure you do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Jay McMahon and Sheila Yorn. Remember them?”

From her stunned gape, you’d think I was levitating. “Goddamn. Do you know everything about me?”

“I know you spent over a hundred hours in front of the camera for them, sharing your life. Not to be cynical but I don’t think you did it just to advance their careers. You did it in the hopes that it would get you on the air, make you a cause célèbre, and open up some bright new doors. It was a solid plan. Really. It’s a shame it didn’t work out.”

She aimed a sour glare at her feet. “Yeah, well, what makes you think you’ll do any better?”

“Because I have better skills, better resources, and better circumstances to work with. I’m not just going for PBS here. I’m putting you everywhere. I can’t guarantee complete happiness. Everyone knows that fame is a mixed bag. But I’ll get you there. And I promise you this: you’ll never have to spend an other day as background booty in some rap video or hostess club.”