Corrupted Chapter 13

  “Mi casa es tu casa,” he said in Spanish.

  After more small talk, Susan left the office and Vincent quickly returned his earlier phone call to Jason Pliers. “Tell him Vincent Biddle is returning his call,” he informed the assistant.

  Jason was on the phone in less than a minute. “Hey, Vincent, what’s on going on?”

  “I was calling to ask you that.”

  “Well, it’s books as usual for me. What’s it for you?”

  Vincent sat back and said, “Well, let me see; I’m in a new office, with a new position, a raise, a fun bidding war. Things are going well.”

  “Oh, I see. I wish they were going that well for me,” Jason responded with a chuckle. “It seems like the industry’s on lockdown right now. How do you start a bidding war in this economy?”

  “Well, with a lot less money. It’s a poor man’s war with sticks and stones instead of bullets,” Vincent joked.

  Jason laughed good and hard at that one. He said, “That sounds about right. But I was actually calling you because ah, I had a conversation today with a writer named Antonio Martinez, and I wondering if you ever heard of him.”

  Vincent smiled over the line and said, “Of course I have. I’ve heard about just about everything.”

  “Did you hear about what kind of books he writes?”

  “Yeah, he’s working on a werewolf series. We spoke all about it with him.”

  “You’re not actually interested in that now are you? Is seems like such a fad.”

  “I don’t read these books, Jason, the customers at the book stores do. So, as editors, we have to always keep that in mind. And sometimes we try to dictate what we feel the audience should like, and that just doesn’t work all the time, especially in this economy.”

  “I hear ya’. So, you do like it. Or you like it enough to publish it,” Jason hinted.

  “What, are you representing him now?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Well, he needs it. The kid is still raw.”

  “So, he is young then. I thought he sounded young. How young is he?”

  “Ah, in his twenties. But he seems pretty mature though, just a little green and desperate. But that could be a good thing; he wants it bad.”

  “What does he look like? He said that Lauren Brandeis was checking him out?” Jason fibbed.

  “Oh, now he definitely has the look. He reminds me of a young Esai Morales, only sexier.”

  “That good, huh?”

  “Oh yeah. You’ll be straining to keep your hands off of him,” he admitted. “But try to keep it business.”

  “Does he go that way?” Jason asked him.

  Vincent thought about Antonio’s fetish for Darlene and shook it off. “No, he doesn’t give me that vibe. He was stuck like glue to the young woman that we’re courting to publish now. And she’s a cutey too.”

  Jason chuckled and said, “So, you’re going all the way Hollywood now with the sweet candy authors?”

  “Hey, whatever works. You have to adapt to the times. And if we can get People, Star and Entertainment Weekly magazine to help us out every once and awhile with these books and authors, then so be it.”

  “Okay, so, this guy is actually legitimate then. I thought he was BS-ing me for a minute, but he was so smooth with it that I had to check his story out. But you say he’s still raw. Is he too raw to pick him up?”

  “Not after he gets some work on his refinements,” Vincent answered.

  “Okay, so I’ll go ahead and look at it then. But how much is his refinements worth?” Jason hinted. It was all about the advance money to get him started.

  “I don’t know. How much can you make them worth? But I’ll tell you this . . .” Vincent stated with a pause, “ . . . it’s not the same party that it used to be. We’re dealing with paper plates and plastic utensils now. And these new authors have to earn their food. That’s real talk. So don’t think so much about the advance, think more about the advancement of Antonio’s career and keep him on point.”

  Jason told him, “O-kay. I hear ya’ loud and clear. It looks like I have some reading to do.”

  “Yeah, get to reading, and call me when you got something.” Then I’ll throw you a bone, Vincent thought to himself. But when he hung up with Jason, he felt proud of Antonio’s hustle.

  “I guess this kid is learning fast,” he spoke out loud. “Drop the right names if you have to.”

  He’s starting to remind me of DeWayne when he first came into the majors, he reflected. That’s the hunger and drive that pushes a career. You have to get it with urgency . . before your time is up.

  And he went back to work, making a few more phone calls.

  Speaking about hustle, Jackson Smith was now thinking about hustling in a new arena himself. Over a late lunch with Lauren Brandeis at a dark, Indian restaurant near her home in the Soho area, he asked her thoughts about him writing a few new projects for film and television.

  Lauren smiled, decked out lavishly as usual in a cream-colored dress and a pair of exotic, multi-colored boots. She was pleasantly surprised that her celebrated author was even asking her such a question, and on his own.

  She said, “I was just telling Vincent a few weeks ago that a good novelist could write for Broadway and make some good money doing it, especially on a stageplay that has legs. You could remain popular and make money for years.

  “Jackson Smith’s The Street,” she suggested. Then she warned, “But you know that Vincent won’t like that idea.”

  “Yeah, I already know. I’m the meal ticket at the publisher, and no one wants to see me unfocused,” he commented. He sat across the Indian-design table eating pita bread with rice, chicken and black beans in his usual dark and moody clothes. Having eaten her lunch earlier, Lauren sat across from him finishing her simple salad.

  She responded, “Yes, but you have to learn how to be your own meal ticket sometimes and bet on yourself, like everyone else bets on you. The fact that you’re even asking me this question means that you’ve been thinking about challenging yourself in a different way.”

  Jackson listened to her, but he wasn’t exactly ready to make a move or anything. He was only investigating his options. He grinned and said, “That guy Davis Kahn was really peeved with me while we discussed the numbers on the set last week. I mean, they just don’t seem to add up in the film and television fields for a writer like you would like them to. We’re really not the focus over there. And I don’t really see how it would be that different in Broadway,” he commented.

  Lauren cringed and said, “Are you kidding me? Broadway is totally different. It’s not set up on the star system like it is in Hollywood. It’s all about the execution and performances from quality writing. There’s no action camera scenes or any of that to get in the way.”

  “What about that big Spiderman play I keep reading about?” Jackson quipped.

  “You’ve been reading what, that it keeps being postponed because of things breaking down on the set?” she asked him. “Stageplays are just not meant for that kind of thing. It’s different on a film, you get to control the elements of the set and do it over and over until you get it right. But with a stageplay, it’s live, and people are sitting there watching you every night. So when something crazy goes wrong, the entire audience is there to see it. So that Spiderman play has been a big mess, and I’m glad I’m not involved in it.”

  She said, “But with you, all you have to do is put your name at the front of the title, and write a great script. And I can make sure that it’s respected in the industry. I mean, just think about it, Bram Stroker’s Dracula; Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; Shakespeare’s Othello . . .”

  “John Carpenter’s The Thing, Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire, Stephen King’s The Shining,” Jackson added with a chuckle.

  Lauren raised her palms in surrender across the table. She said, “See, you already know how it’s done. It’s as simple as that. And then it’s all about the writing of a great story
.”

  Jackson went back to eating his food with a grin. His high-strung publicist was really pushing her professional opinion and making her point known.

  “So, how is your love life these days?” she forced herself to ask him. She had promised Vincent that she would.

  Jackson frowned and nearly choked on his chicken. Lauren had rarely asked about his personal life. So he threw the ball back in her court.

  “How is yours?”

  “I don’t have a personal life,” she told him with a grin of her own. “My availability keeps me interesting.”

  “Well, the same goes for me,” he countered.

  She said, “I think, hooking you up with a great looking girl could make you more interesting.”

  “And hooking you up with a great looking guy could do the same for you,” Jackson insisted.

  “I’m not a public figure, so who cares who I go out with? But you are a public figure.”

  “Like hell you aren’t a public figure,” he argued. “Everyone knows you in New York.”

  “Exactly; I’m known in New York. But you are none all across the country. So maybe we should link you up with a California girl.”

  “What, just to make the spreads on the magazines and newspapers? That’s crazy. And I don’t need it. That would only turn off some of my women readers who still fantasize about me,” he quipped.

  Lauren chuckled at it. “No one fantasized about you until I showed you how to dress,” she teased. “Now if you listen to me again, instead of dating weekend groupies, you can step up a notch and date real winners.”

  “Like who, singers and actresses?”

  “Yes.”

  Jackson immediately thought about the pretty young girls in the in-crowds of his high school days and shook it off. The popular girls were always a nervous headache to keep up with.

  “Nah, that’s not my speed,” he commented. “Those kind of women are more of a headache than anything.”

  Lauren shook her head, disagreeing with him. She said, “Do you realize that these celebrity women have just as much insecurity and maybe more than every other girl? They are just waiting for love and understanding from a man. All you have to do really is ask them who they are and allow them to tell you, just like you’re writing a new book on them.”

  Jackson grinned and continued to shake it off. “Nope, not interested. I can hear them now; ‘This isn’t gonna be in your next book, is it?’” he commented, using a woman’s voice. He had heard that line often from women.

  Lauren told him, “Women who say that want to be in the book. But these girls are already being talked about, so they don’t need that and don’t think about it.”

  “Like hell they don’t think about it,” Jackson argued. “These celebrity dames are always looking to make the news these days. Look at the Kardashian sisters.”

  “Oh please, they are not real artists. I’m talking about artistic women who really have a craft to speak about and to relate to. And in turn they can settle you down a bit,” she hinted.

  “Who said that I wanted to be settled down?” he snapped.

  Lauren shook her head at his stubbornness. Men! she told herself. They are so sexually greedy.

  She said, “I’m only trying to do what would be good for you.”

  Jackson went back to eating his food in silence. It was getting cold. And as much as he objected to the idea, he was indeed curious as to what beautiful starlets he may be able to match up with.

  I’m sure Lauren knows plenty of beautiful women around New York, he mused. She knows all of the fashion models, ballet dancers and everything. So . . . I wonder who she would try to introduce me to.

  Speaking of introductions, Darlene was forever being introduced to new guys out in Colorado, who were addictively interested in her exotic, mixed looks. Her natural, lightly toned skin and curvaceous frame seized their attention every time.

  “Who’s that?” a blonde-haired jock whispered to his co-working sister at the resort where she worked. They walked and stood near the entrance, less than ten feet away from Darlene’s desk.

  Her co-worker, a young blonde girl herself, with not nearly the curves or the natural sunshine glow of Darlene, looked in her direction at the desk and rolled her eyes. Guys were always asking about Darlene.

  “She’s not interested in you,” she huffed. “So get over it.”

  “How do you know?” her brother whispered again.

  “Because I work with her,” she whispered back. “She’s in her own little world. No one knows what she’s thinking about half the time. So I don’t bother with her much. And she’s actually older than what she looks.”

  Her younger brother had just turned twenty-two recently, and she was older than him by only a few years.

  As they walked out of the resort’s glass doors and onto the surrounding grounds, the jock asked his sister, “Well, how old is she? And what is she? She looks Spanish or Middle Eastern or something.”

  He didn’t have a clue as to what he was dealing with. He only knew that she looked different and good.

  “Yeah, well, you’re way off,” his sister told him as she lead him back toward his car in the temporary parking lot in front of their registration office, a silver Nissan Z. “She’s black and white,” she told him. “And she’s almost thirty now.”

  Her brother frowned. “Wow, that old. She looks like she’s fresh out of college.”

  “Well, she’s not,” his sister told him as they reached his car doors.

  “Does she have a boyfriend?” he asked before opening the car doors.

  His sister continued to be agitated by the interrogation. “I haven’t seen her with one since I’ve been here. But look, let’s go. She’s not your type.”

  That only stopped her brother at the car doors again. “What do you mean, she’s not my type?”

  His sister sighed and answered, “I don’t know. She’s always talking about . . . other ideas and stuff that no one else really bothers to think about. So you kind of get the feeling that she thinks she’s better than us. But I just can’t really explain it. Now let’s just go.”

  Her brother paused and said, “So she’s smart, with her own opinions. That is my type. I like smart girls.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” his sister blew him off. “You’re just out here wasting time.”

  Finally he popped open his car doors with his ring key. “Sounds like you’re just jealous that she’s hotter than you,” he teased his sister as they climbed into the car.

  “No she’s not. Whatever.”

  Back inside of the resort offices, Darlene was oblivious to it all, especially after her literary agent had told her that the bidding war had started in New York. She was only counting down the days now when her first big check would roll in for her to make her cross-country move to the Big Apple. She figured she would only miss her family and the mountain views of Colorado. There were no other sights like it.

  But there’s no other sight like the skylines of New York either, she reflected. She figured it would be an equal trade off.

  “Hey, Darlene, you’ve been mighty quiet this week. What’s going on with ya’?” her chipper supervisor asked. It was the same story, different day.