Corrupted Read online

  I hope he doesn’t hate me for this, she pleaded to herself as she made the call.

  Vincent watched her dash up the stairs in her heels and shook his head. “How do I keep getting myself involved with this shit?” he grumbled under his breath.

  I should have just told her NO and kept it moving. Now I’ll have to deal with the guilty pleasure of turning her out tonight, he mused.

  Then he shrugged. “So be it.”

  Sitting on a bar stool at T.G.I Fridays in the heart of Times Square on Seventh Avenue, Antonio Martinez eagerly answered his cell phone.

  “Hello.”

  It was nearly eight o’clock and he had been waiting for the call for close to an hour.

  “Hey Tony, I have some good news and some bad news.”

  He could hear her loud and clear over his cell phone, but her mixed bag of news made him want more privacy and quiet. So he jumped off his bar stool in his blue jeans and button-up stripped shirt to head for a quieter section of the restaurant.

  “What’s the bad news?” he asked her first.

  Darlene let out a noticeable sigh. “Well, I had a great dinner meeting with Vincent Biddle, and then he invited me out to a book industry party downtown.”

  Good-looking with thick, black curly hair and a thin mustache with no beard, Antonio frowned while taking in the information. He was just under six feet tall and in his late twenties like she was.

  “Don’t tell me. The party is an invite only?” he correctly assumed.

  Darlene unleashed another dejected sigh before she confirmed it. “I wish that it wasn’t.”

  Antonio exhaled and accepted the news in good spirits. “Well, I’m glad you’ve been invited. I know there’s a lot of authors and publishers around this week because of the BEA, so they can’t let everyone in.”

  “Yeah, I know right. But at least I asked him if you could meet up with us there.”

  Unperturbed, Antonio thought fast and came up with a quick solution. “You know what, why don’t you text me where it is when you get there, and then I’ll come and try to figure out how to get in.”

  Darlene chuckled and asked, “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, I am. I did that with my sisters all the time. I’ve been on like, twenty dates with them without the guys ever knowing. I would just sit around in the background by myself and spy on them. It was our way of keeping our family safe, you know.

  “It was our mom’s idea actually,” he added. “So just imagine how many great story ideas I came up with while doing that.”

  Darlene continued to laugh. She said, “Are you kidding me? That’s crazy. But I like it.” Then she whispered to him, “Okay, but . . . you can’t say that you’re looking for us or anything to get in.”

  “Of course not. Why would I do that? Come on, man, I’m a professional at snooping. And I’ve never seen you before in my life. But you look damned good on Facebook,” he joked.

  Darlene giggled until her ribs hurt. She couldn’t wait to be with him. They had talked and laughed like that for months. Now it was time for them to meet up in person. His party ploy excited her even more. She wondered if he could actually get away with it.

  “Okay, but if you get caught –”

  He cut her off and said, “Chica, are you loco? I don’t know you . . . Dar-lee-na Krause,” he emphasized with a laugh of his own.

  She had to rush him off the phone before they joked and laughed for another hour.

  “Okay, I have to go now, but I’ll text you when I get there.”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  When Antonio hung up with her, he felt much better. He figured if he made it into the party, and Darlene looked as good in real life as she did in all of the pictures she had sent him, he would have another story to write about a Puerto Rican sleuth from New Jersey, spying in on the girl of his dreams. All he had to do now was get in. So he began to plot and come up with pseudonym names.

  He retook his seat at the bar, grabbed his drink and muttered, “I’m Felipe Alvarez. I write a Latin werewolf series, called Noches Loco (Crazy Nights).”

  He laughed at himself and took a sip of his drink. “Nah, that’s crazy.”

  I can’t wait to get down there to the BEA myself tomorrow, he mused. Maybe I should use my real name tonight just in case I see some of the same people from this party at BEA . . . But that’s after I find a way in.

  Williams & Klein Publishing Group boss, Arnold Dutch, and his vice president, Thomas Richberg, huddled in the far corner of a crowded and festive room. They were both drinking glasses of red wine in their business suits and ties.

  Arnold, a tall, lean, gray-haired man in his mid sixties, looked on without expression as the publishing industry workforce and talent enjoyed themselves at the party. But he looked more concerned with his black and gold Rolex watch, as he peeked down at his wrist to check it for the ninth time. It was twenty-five minutes after eight.

  “Is he always late?” he grumbled at Tom.

  Shorter, rounder, younger and livelier in a brighter suit and a more colorful tie, Thomas smiled it off, while rocking his wide hips to the soft pop music in the background.

  “It’s a party; it’s not an office meeting. He’ll pop up soon enough. We weren’t even sure if you were coming out tonight.”

  Tom reached over to the nearby table of food and stuck a Swedish meatball with a toothpick. He raised it to his mouth and quickly devoured it. He was enjoying himself, as an all-night party man, where Arnold looked ready to jump ship in a matter of minutes.

  “Vincent needs to understand the difference between the brass and the talent. And the brass should make an attempt to arrive early and not fashionably late. He can leave that up to the talent,” Arnold stated.

  Thomas swallowed down his food and said, “Well, technically, he’s both. You can’t spot talent if you don’t have talent. That’s why his authors love him. He feels the way they feel. He’s altruistic.”

  Arnold frowned and took a sip of his wine to stop himself from commenting.

  I have a few other names for him I care not to express, he thought to himself. Vincent Biddle’s a loose, dark cannon, ready to explode. And I just don’t trust him!

  Wearing a black leather blazer, a clean white t-shirt, crisp blue jeans, and all white Adidas, Jackson Smith, an Italian-American writer with a pseudonym name, approached the publishing brass after spotting them in their two-man huddle.

  “There’s my two favorite check signers,” he joked with a drink in hand. But it wasn’t a sip wine, like the brass. Jackson had a taste for Rum and Coke.

  Finally, Arnold cracked a sheepish grin. He said, “You can write your own checks. You just keep cranking them out, son.”

  “Oh, I plan to. I like the money,” Jackson admitted, “and the attention, and the women.”

  With long and dark, rock-star hair, the mid-thirties author was already tipsy from drinks before and during the party. But he always managed to charm an awaiting audience.

  “Live it up while you’re young, young man,” Arnold patronized him.

  “Oh, you know it.”

  Thomas kept his comments to himself for the moment. He realized the boss was very partial to their number one book-seller. But Tom considered Jackson to be their loose cannon. What would happen when he no longer sold, or when his Hollywood films and television deals dried up? His daredevil behavior would surely have repercussions. But for now, it was all expensive gravy. So he held his tongue. Arnold could do the talking for both of them.

  Thomas felt that each author had a limited time to be a superstar. It was more stable to be a balanced, humble and consistent performer. Everyone couldn’t be a Stephen King, Danielle Steele or Norma Roberts. And as a publishing veteran for thirty years, Thomas had been around the careers of hot young authors who had crashed and burned before. He had seen it all now. So he was pleasantly relieved when someone came and snatched the cocky young author away from them in the form of his
exotic publicist.

  “Ahh, excuse me, guys, but could I borrow him for a second.”

  In her primetime thirties, Lauren Grandeis, a super New York publicist in her own right, with soft cinnamon brown skin and the silky dark hair of her East Indian heritage, sashayed in a multi-colored, wrap-around dress, with curves that were a blessing from heaven, and grabbed Jackson by his arm. She didn’t even represent authors before Jackson. Lauren was a television and Broadway hound. But the Italian man with the pseudonym name was now her pet project.

  “Be our guest and take him,” Thomas quipped with opened palms.

  “As long as you help him to keep selling books,” Arnold hinted.

  Lauren grinned and said, “Thank you. I will.”

  She then proceeded to whisk her star client through the room of bodies toward an awaiting Esquire magazine editor. It was all about the next big feature story. Good publicity never stopped.

  Thomas looked on, standing there next to Arnold, and began to smile with secured confidence, knowing what he knew.

  He said, “Without Vincent Biddle, we wouldn’t have a Jackson Smith. He’d still be a young and lost Italian man, writing nowhere short stories, while trying to pay his rent each month. But Vincent created him single-handedly.”

  Arnold exhaled, tired of hearing the same old story about it.

  “Yes, I know, I know. You don’t need to remind me a thousand times. I get it every time I clear a check with his real name on it.”

  Tom continued to grin. “I’m just making sure you still understand what my guy’s value is.”

  Arnold took another look at his watch. “Yeah, well, your guy needs to get here soon or I’m leaving.”

  Thomas nodded and looked toward the front door of the room, praying for Vincent to arrive soon.

  Man, you picked a terrible time to walk in late, he mused of his top editor. I’m trying my best here to get you that extra money you wanted, but I can only do so much.

  As Lauren pulled Jackson across the crowded room of gawking and excited publishing insiders, not everyone there was thrilled with the man’s success.

  DeWayne “Double D” McDonald was one of Jackson’s strongest skeptics. A self-named king of urban street literature in his late twenties, with dark, satin brown skin and facial scars from a hardened life in the Brooklyn streets and an early stint in prison, Double D was all over him.

  “That motherfucker is so phony, man. I mean, how you gon’ take Samuel Jackson and Will Smith’s name, put that shit together, and then throw on a Run-DMC jacket with a pair of Adidas and try’da claim that your shit is authentic? Do you believe that shit? Only white boys can get away with shit like that.”

  Wearing a dark blue “Brooklyn’s Finest” t-shit printed in white with red trim, and a New York Yankees gold chain logo to represent his home city, Double D formed a small huddle inside the room of his own. Three of Vincent’s African-American authors had congregated into a familiar and protective circle, including, DeWayne, Chelsea Christmas, an early thirties writer of erotic fantasies, and Natalie Cumberland, a mid-forties writer of Christian fiction.

  Dressed in all black to minimize her obvious weight gain, Natalie cringed at D’s constant use of harsh language. The young and angry man continued to drop F-bombs, S-bombs, and MFs all over the place. She was surprised that the room could still stand with so much of it. She was also distracted by her husband, Michael, who remained posted near the bar area. If he couldn’t flirt with a single young woman, then he chose to drink. And since there were few, young black women there in the room, her husband was drinking up a storm.

  Chelsea Christmas responded a little late to D’s comments concerning Jackson. “I know, right?” Sporting a silk, orange tease of a dress that stopped just below her inner thighs, she was forever daydreaming new plots, twists and turns for her erotic tales, and the room was full of interesting sexual energies to keep her mind busy.

  Petite, with a firm body and a pretty enough face to model her own book covers, Chelsea’s sexcapades were the rave of black women readers, young and old, from New York to California and down to the Caribbean. Her sexual exuberance was not just contained in her books either. The tiny woman oozed with sex appeal. In fact, Chelsea’s unquestionable attractiveness was why Natalie’s husband had walked away to drink. He just couldn’t take standing next to her.

  “Man, if we were white, you know how much fucking more money we could all make?” DeWayne continued to rant. “His writing ain’t even all that good. He just got white heroes in his books. But if I try to write a book with a white hero, I would have to change my name too.”

  “Why don’t you do it then?” Chelsea challenged him. “That’s what he did, right?” Everything was doable to her. She was as open as the ocean. Don’t just sit around and complain about it, do something.

  Double D snapped, “Because the shit won’t work for a black man. I still have to market the motherfucker, right? So, how will they act when they find out I’m black.”

  Natalie cringed at his words again. “The language. How do you expect anyone to read your books with all of that? People have to like you first. And Jackson is obviously more likeable than you are. Being black or white has nothing to do with it.”

  With that, Natalie took off and headed for her husband. She didn’t like DeWayne or Chelsea that much anyway. She was only being cordial to them. They didn’t represent the honorable, God-fearing African-American community that she wrote about or lived in. She was actually embarrassed by them. She felt black people needed to reach for higher goals in their literature. It wasn’t just about making money.

  Knowing as much, D spited Natalie as soon as she walked away from them.

  “Yeah, she needs to jump off that high fucking horse she’s riding and join the real world. That what she needs to do,” he spat to Chelsea. “And go get that drunk-ass husband of hers.”

  Chelsea laughed and tried to hide it behind her hands. “I know, right? Church people are fake too. I always get into arguments with them. I mean, they try to act like they don’t fuck. And when I wrote my book, Church Girl, they were all up in my grill, knowing that they got freaks in the church. That’s why it’s still a best-seller now. There’s always a new church girl to turn out.”

  “Amen,” D agreed with a chuckle. Speaking of turn-outs, he toned down when he spotted Susan Randolph heading in their direction. She was the long-legged, twenty-something, Polish assistant who worked in Vincent’s office. DeWayne had to speak to her every time he called for something, and he had dreamt about turning Susan out for a year now.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he addressed her.

  Susan smiled in a lime green two-piece. “Hi, DeWayne; Chelsea. Are you guys enjoying yourselves?”

  She was the consummate, cheery professional. Susan didn’t have a bad day in her life. Everything she ever said was rosy and positive.

  I’d be enjoying myself more if I could get you in one of these bathrooms and bend you over, DeWayne thought to himself, seductively. Susan was three inches taller than he was with her heels on. His fantasies were all about her length, her model legs, long elegant arms, piano-length fingers and her flowing light brown hair. He had studied every part of her. He even chuckled at his obsession before he responded to her.

  “Always, man. These publishing events are like another world for me.”

  “Same here,” Chelsea added with her right hand raised to testify.

  Susan smiled. “Glad to hear it.” Then she looked around the room. “So, you guys haven’t seen Vincent around yet?”