CHAPTER ELEVEN
Maximus Bluff, his chief of security, was waiting at the back passenger door of the Mercedes and opened the door for William.
As William was getting in, Sloane got in on the front passenger seat.
Max hurried around and got in on the driver side behind the steering wheel.
After a long trip, he was usually the one to meet William’s plane.
Bobby Latham had arrived at the airfield with Max and was already seated on the backseat of the Benz. He looked over at William, but William was answering a phone call.
It was Felicity.
“I just got back,” he said as he got into his Mercedes.
He had to cancel their date five weeks ago when he was suddenly called away to England.
“Yes, I’ve been in Europe all this time.
That’s right.” She wanted to know where in Europe had he been and what situation could possibly take five weeks to resolve.
But she knew he wasn’t going to answer any of those questions.
“Let me call you back,” he said as Max began driving them away from the airfield. “Tonight?” He looked at his wristwatch. It was just past two pm. And he was horny as hell. “Late will work,” he ultimately said. “But very late. I still have some work to do at the office.”
Sloane wanted to turn around and look at him.
She knew that phone call wasn’t job-related.
She knew a woman had to be on the other end of that call.
But which woman? Her goal was to be the woman he turned to, not some random female, but she needed to know her competition.
But he was so private about his private life!
“I said tonight. Yes, I’ll be there. Why would I tell you to come if I don’t plan to be there?
If nothing comes up, as it did before, then yes, I’ll be there.
” She was beginning to irritate him. But then she apparently said something that made him chuckle.
“Okay. See you then.” And he ended the call.
“How did it go?” Bobby asked once his conversation ended.
“Not as I would have hoped.”
“So no resolution?”
“None.”
“We at least put a lid on it?”
“For now, yes.”
“But it’s not over?”
“Not by a long shot. The Foreign Secretary wants me back over there in a day or two, depending on how the media behaves, but we’re just putting out fires at this point. But if that story leaks, it’s going to be hell to pay over there.”
“Nobody’s printed any stories or even hinted about it that I could find.”
“We have them sufficiently paid off. At least the mainstream media. It’s the rogue actors I’m concerned about. We don’t know who they are or how to contact them. They’re the problem. I told the Foreign Secretary that very thing from day one.”
“Refresh my memory, sir,” Sloane said. “Their Foreign Secretary is equivalent to the USA’s Press Secretary?”
“Their Foreign Secretary is equivalent to our Secretary of State.”
“Oh my,” said Sloane. “That high up?”
“That high up, yes.”
“And he’s not the target?” Bobby asked, and Sloane and Max were all ears. They wanted to know the answer too.
But William wasn’t going there. “He’s not the target, no. He’s the wingman for our target. Which tells you how important the target is. The target will remain number 5 until further notice.”
Bobby exhaled. If their clients kept a number, then that meant top secret, for William’s eyes only. “But you said you’re going to release the name of number 46.”
“That’s right.”
“We’re dying to know the client behind that number we’ve been working on for months,” Bobby said.
“I’m sure you are,” said William.
“I’ll bet it’s a major motion picture star,” said Sloane.
“I say it’s a sports legend.”
William looked over at Bobby. He was always impressed with his reasoning superiority. “Why a sports legend?”
“Because if he doesn’t settle this case before the league finds out that there was a case at all, his entire lifelong legendary status will be tarnished forever. That’s why he’s still a number this late in the game. That’s why we still don’t know his name.”
“If it is a he,” said Sloane.
“It’s a he,” said William as he leaned back in his comfortable leather seat. “And Bobby’s right. It’s a sports legend.”
Bobby was always right in William’s eyes, as far as Sloane was concerned. And she didn’t like it. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Al Rawlings,” William said.
Sloane had never heard of him before. Bobby could hardly believe it. “Al Rawlings? He’s number forty-six? Why he doesn’t have a blemish to his name.”
“He will have quite a massive blemish if we can’t settle the case.”
“But settle it how?” asked Sloane. “He’s accused of rape. That’s a criminal offense.”
“But she hasn’t gone to the cops yet. And we don’t want her to go to the cops.
We don’t want any of this public. His lawyers are privately negotiating with her lawyers to avoid any criminal filing, but we are the public relations wing of the team.
We have to move as if there will be a trial.
That’s why we need to do everything in our power to keep Al’s name in the public eye.
We have to remind the public, and more specifically the jury pool, of what a good guy he is and all the good work he’s doing. ”
Bobby looked at Sloane. She pulled out her iPad. “What’s the plan?” Bobby asked William. “The airways?”
“Start there, yes. Get every major sports figure we have in our rolodex on the airways. I want them to trumpet Al’s virtues, not just as a sports hero, but as a father and husband and an all-around great guy. I also want him to suddenly receive a slew of great service awards.”
Sloane continued writing.
“If his accuser decides to go to the cops,” William said, “then the public will already be digesting a huge dose of no way he could have raped somebody bullshit. He will need all the goodwill we can manufacture.”
“Got it,” said Sloane.
William pulled out his phone. “I’ll shoot you the list of charities that are more than willing to accept a huge contribution from me in exchange for giving him an award.” He began looking up his charity list.
Bobby smiled. “Anything for the less fortunate,” he said, and they all laughed.
Then Bobby looked at his watch. “That it?”
“We just got one in.” William was still reviewing his charity list on his phone.
“Ah,” said Bobby. “I see why you wanted me to meet your plane.”
“That’s right.”
“Will this new client be a number instead of a name as well?” asked Sloane.
“Nope.”
“Who this time?” asked Bobby.
“Jennifer Greyson.”
“Jennifer Greyson?” Sloane was shocked. She turned around and looked at William. “She’s the number one streaming artist in the country. She’s charting three songs in the Billboard Top Ten right now, including the number one spot.”
“What’s her PR problem?” asked Bobby. He’d never heard of her.
“She’s got a sexual harassment complaint coming down the pike, and she doesn’t want to settle.”
“She doesn’t,” Bobby asked, “or you don’t want her to?”
“Who am I to tell a pop star what to do?” William smiled his best charming smile as he shook his shoulders.
But Bobby wasn’t buying it. “You’re the fixer to the A-listers, that’s who you are! They listen to you. What’s the plan?”
“Dirt,” said William. “Max, I want you and your team to start digging.”
As Max continued to drive, he glanced at William through the rearview mirror. “How deep, Boss?”
“Tell them to go to hell. And then dig deeper. I want so much smut on her accuser that he’ll beg her to stay silent.”
Bobby laughed. “That’s right up Max’s alley.”
“And his guys are following right in his footsteps too,” said Sloane. “They were the ones that broke up that commotion in the lobby. It was classic Max Men. That’s what I call his security teams: Max Men.”
“What commotion in the lobby are you referring to?” William continued to search his phone for various charities on his list that he felt could give an award to Rawlings that would be prestigious enough to get instant attention.
“The day we left for Europe, and Bobby was walking us to the car, there was a commotion in the lobby involving some crazed hood rat.”
Bobby looked at Sloane. He knew hood rat was code in her world for a person of color.
“She was trying to get to you,” Sloane added.
“What do you mean get to me?” William asked her.
“She tried to attack you, but Security stopped her.”
William didn’t look away from his phone, but he froze. Last year’s violent attack, and the aftermath, was still raw with him.
“When did this happen?” Bobby asked. “I don’t remember anything like that.”
“It was that same day we left for Europe. It was what? Five weeks ago?”
“Oh I do remember hearing some noise and maybe a scuffle that day, but I thought it was just two people arguing in the lobby. I didn’t even look back.”
“She was arguing with Security,” said Sloane. “I dropped my pen, that’s why I saw her. She looked like some pathetic waif calling the boss’s name. “William,” she cried. “It’s me. It’s Joy.’” And Sloane and Bobby laughed. Bobby found the very name humorous.
But when William heard that name, he didn’t freeze again, he looked at Sloane. “She said her name was Joy?”
“That’s what she said, yes sir. You should have seen her.”
William had thought about her several times since he met her in that restaurant in Indiana. “Describe her.”
Bobby was confused. So was Sloane. “Sir?” she asked him.
“Describe her.”
Sloane had to think about it. It was over a month ago! “She was African-American, I remember that,” she said.
“Why am I not surprised that it would be a black girl given your hood rat reference?” Bobby asked.
Sloane ignored him. “She was small, but she had curves too. She had hair below her neck. Dark hair. I don’t know, Boss. She looked like any other hood rat to me.”
“Stop using that term,” Bobby ordered her. He wasn’t playing now.
But William was inwardly mortified. He swiped out of his charity list on his phone and began pulling up the security cameras for his office building. “When did you say this happened?”
Even Bobby looked at him.
“It was the day we left for England,” said Sloane. “Why?”
“What happened to her?” William began searching his phone for that date, on his calendar, five weeks ago when he left town. He looked at Sloane. “I said what happened to her?”
“What should have happened to her. They arrested her.”
William frowned and looked at Sloane. “Arrested her for what?”
“For trying to attack you.”
“Attack me?” William couldn’t believe it.
On his phone’s calendar he found the date.
Then he went back to his monitor screen and plugged in that date and time and reviewed the footage.
He did a fast-forward to the point when he, Sloane and Bobby stepped off of the elevator to head out the back way.
And that was when he moved to a different monitor where he saw a young lady, just barely in the frame, calling his name.
It was obvious he didn’t hear her, that was why he kept walking.
But he remembered hearing that commotion.
He went to another camera angle. And that was when he got a full view of the young lady. And there was no doubt it was her. His heart dropped.
Then he saw Sloane drop her pen and look at Joynetta after she stopped to pick it up.
Then Sloane left the frame. But Joynetta was completely visible.
That was when he saw one of Max’s security guards slam her to the floor so hard that William winced just looking at it, and then the guard put his knee on her back as a cop handcuffed her. His heart dropped to his stomach.
“Where is she now?” William asked urgently. “Has she been released?”
“I have no idea,” Sloane asked and Bobby shook his head too. Neither one of them understood why he would care.
William looked anxiously at Max. But even Max had no idea either. “If it’s not a major situation,” he said, “it won’t cross my desk.”
William was beside himself as he quickly got his chief counsel for all of Skeffington’s affairs on the phone. “I need you to contact the DA and find out what happened to Joynetta Johnson’s case.”
Everybody in the car was surprised that William would know her name.
“Get on it immediately,” William said over the phone. “Not tomorrow. Tonight. I expect a call back within the next ten minutes.”
“Yes sir,” his attorney said over the phone, and William ended the call.
“You know her, sir?” Max asked him.
But William wasn’t trying to answer anybody’s questions. He had too many of his own.
“Pull up the day in question,” Wiliam said to Max. “Fire every asshole that touched Joynetta Johnson that day.”
Max was floored, but he kept his composure. “Yes, sir,” he said. Who is this girl? he wanted to say.
“And then contact that police department. Tell the commissioner to fire that cop that arrested her. He took a bribe from one of your guys.”
Max turned around. “He did?”
“It’s on camera,” William said. “You got a problem with that?”
All of them had problems with the entire situation. Specifically, they all wanted to know who was this girl. But nobody dared to ask.
“I have no problem with it whatsoever, sir,” Max said, and quickly turned back around.