The Devil You Know (38 page)

enough to be her father.

‘Resign.’

‘Resign? But this is one of the biggest management firms around.

What am I gonna do, move to New York and work for Q-Prime?’ ‘Start your own firm.’

‘But I don’t have any acts,’ Poppy objected.

LeClerc shrugged. ‘Find some. You did before. Now you’re a proven quantity, to some extent. It seems to me that you’re always going to be wanting more thah a boss will give you. Only one thing for it: start your own firm.’

Poppy considered it. Starting up with Silver Bullet would have been perfect, but she would pretty much have nothing. And she was barely old enough for this champagne. But it wasn’t totally unheard of. Ron Lafitte managed Megadeth and he was, like, twenty-five.

The thought was terrifying. And somewhat exciting.

‘That takes a lot of work, lot of contacts …’

‘Lot of guts.’ LeClerc looked at her. ‘Course, y’all can make

excuses, take the bonus, manage Headway …’

‘Highway.’

‘Or you can make up your mind now to do what needs to be do ne. ‘

‘You’re very annoying,’ Poppy said mutinously.

‘So the Democrats are always telling me.’ LeClerc inclined his head slightly.

‘You’re a Republican,’ Poppy said, disapprovingly. ‘Yes. Low taxes, low spending. Strong defence.’ ‘Militaristic build-up, no education spending …’ ‘Interested in politics?’

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‘Not really,’ Poppy said. ‘But I’m a Democrat. I believe in a woman’s right to choose.’

‘I believe in a baby’s right to life,’ he answered, not in the least perturbed.

‘Doesn’t anything raze you?’ Poppy demanded.

LeClerc considered it a moment. ‘Losing,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t do it.’

She felt a small thrill of admiration and interest. Something she hadn’t had for a long time, at least it seemed like a long time. Since her last bastard musician. Crazy! LeClerc wasn’t her type. He was about fifteen years older than her. And a Southern gentleman. And his hair was a military cut. There was not a rock ‘n’ roll bone in this guy’s body

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ LeClerc said, softly. ‘Like what?’ Poppy blushed. ‘You know like what, miss.’ ‘My name’s Poppy.’

What the luck are you doing? LeClerc asked himself. She’s a child . . all right, with those tits and that body, not a child, but come on .. he was thirty-eight. And in politics. His staffwould not lik his at all. A leather-jacketed co-ed in a T-shirt with a skull on it.

‘So.’ He heard himself say it. He couldn’t help it. ‘Where are You staying in New York?’

What the blue hell am I doing? Henry LeClerc asked himself.

At that moment, he was sitting up in bed in a suite at the exclusive and, more importantly, very discreet Victrix hotel in midtown Manhattan. The reddened light of early dawn was spilling through the bay windows; his balcony, fringed in climbing roses, a fragrant spray of blossoming pink, beckoned invitingly; the immaculate Louis XlV-style furniture of the suite was covered in clothes, strewn where they had been ripped off last night; and, nestled in the white silk Pratesi sheets of his incredibly huge and comfortable bed, was a girl. A girl barely old enough to drink. A rock .chick, for God’s sakes.

And the most incredible lay he’d ever had in his life. LeClerc .found the situation disturbing. Very disturbing.

He hardly wanted to move, because then she’d wake up. The congressman from Louisiana shook his head. Why was this bothering him?

Henry LeClerc was used to women. Even the occasional woman

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as young as this one. All of them achingly beautiful, too; nothing remarkable about that. LeClerc had had women throw themselves at him since he was thirteen. The only son of an old Bayou family, he had lost his father when he was twelve, which had meant that Henry had grown up master of a crumbling mansion, supporter of his mother, and sole guardian, as his white-gloved, incredibly proper mamma never failed to remind him, of the LeClerc family tradition.

He’d been forced to grow up fast, and that had given him confidence.

White Gables, his family home, was Henry’s first love. It didn’t die on him like his daddy, and it didn’t have a never-to-be mentioned drinking problem like his mamma. Unfortunately, the house had its own problems. The ‘romantically’ crumbling faqade had plenty of ailments, including termites and rot from the wet, soupy Louisiana air; and while he laboured to fix them, he also had to find a way to pay off the government tax liens which threatened to take away the place his own granddaddy had been born in.

Henry LeClerc hadn’t cried about it, whined about it, or even talked about it. He’d just set himself to fixin’ it.

The years of struggle formed LeClerc into the most independent young man for miles, and the
girls loved it. Even the bureaucrats in Balieu, Louisiana, had to respect the serious, intense young man that turned up in the County Assessor’s office with a business plan. He called everybody ‘sir’, he wore a suit, and he argued persuasively that historic buildings should be cherished by the town of Balieu, not

forced into condemnation. He wanted a deal on the tax. ‘How old are you, son?’ the Assessor asked. ‘Fourteen, sir,’ LeClerc said.

The older man didn’t ask where Henry’s daddy was. It was a small town, everybody knew already. Instead, he thought of his own kid, getting high all the time and growing his hair long and listening to the Stones.

He signed the papers. LeClerc kept the house.

He also got interested in the law. He needed money, so he took a job as a paralegal in Balieu. Saving his wages, he invested in the stock market. LeClerc was quiet and savvy. He put himself through law school, graduated, and became the youngest-ever partner in Davies & Polk, New Orleans’s largest law firm.

Money had been his drive, his focus. And he’d made a ton of it. LeClerc drove an imported lolls loyce, wore tailored suits, tipped

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his hat to ladies in the street; he was a real Southern gentleman, a relic of a bygone age.

Everybody adored him. Men wanted to drink with him bourbon on the rocks; women wanted to marry him, or, at least, to bed him. But LeClerc had not been easy to catch. He remembered his parents’ unhappy marriage from his childhood, and the idea of having somebody else messing with White Gables - it was deeply distasteful. Plus, he wanted a lady. Not a modern, go-getting, money-hungry career chick. Not somebody who’d sleep with him at the drop of a hat.

LeClerc was a big figure in Louisiana. He did pro bono work for the Historical Society; he had personally saved sixteen of the state’s beautiful old mansions and estates from disrepair, graffiti, and the death tax, preserving the culture. It had been a very short hop from man-about-town to the Honorable Gentleman from Louisiana. The Republicans had recruited him, and they thought they had a star.

They were talking Senator now. An old, incumbent, yellow-dog Democrat was retiring. They had LeClerc all groomed for the slot.

He wanted it. Senator. Then Governor. Then, who knew how high Henry LeClerc could rise? “

But soon the Senator-to-be, they had told him, drawing him a)ide in various oak-panelled club rooms thick with pungent cigar smog, would need a wife …..

Somebody pretty, feminine, ladylike and inoffensive. Somebody with a manicure and white gloves, like his mamma. A lady who would not smoke, drink, swear, or, obviously, work …

Poppy stirred in his bed. Her glorious, heavy breasts, firm and dusky, sprinkled with a sexy dusting of freckles, moved with her silky caf4-au-lait skin. The tiny gold Star of David she wore round her slender neck glittered in the morning sunlight.

A twenty-something career girl. A .Jewish girl. And a Democrat.

What the hell had he been thinking? Well, no matter. He’d given

her a roll in the hay; that wasn’t exactly the same as proposing. So why did this feel different?

Poppy opened those spectacular, wolf-blue eyes and stared up at him, and Henry LeClerc caught his breath in his throat. Goddammit, she was beautiful.

‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it?’ Poppy replied.

Oh, shit, Henry, LeClerc thought. You’re in trouble now, boy.

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Poppy thought that maybe she had lost it.

Twenty-three was a little young to burn out and go crazy, but here she was, doing things that could have her certified. She had.just spent practically an entire weekend in bed with a man she hardly knew, a man way too old for her, too goyishe, too right-wing. And instead of being glad to be rid of him, Poppy felt as though someone had stabbed her through the heart with a knitting needle.

All she could do was think of when she was going to see him again.

Love at first sight? She didn’t believe in it. This had to be lust. She had a crush, like a teenager drooling over Axl 1Kose.

But Henry LeClerc had not called her. She had come home, waited. Expectantly. Then angrily. And finally, with a level of disappointment which shocked her, Poppy had stopped waiting for the call.

I’m getting over it, Poppy told herself firmly.

His rejection made her feel dirty, made her feel as if she had given up something precious, and been tricked for it; the way he’d made her body feel she’d taken for love. But it wasn’t. It was no different

than drunken sex in a motel with a guitarist. And that pissed her of E She was gonna make a real effort to forget the .jerk. But business first.

Poppy was at home, in the new house she’d bought for herself, just off West Third Street, near the Beverly Center. It was tiny, set on a little side-street, with a handkerchief-sized garden of manicured green lawn and a fragrant bougainvillea bush, but it was all hers. One good-sized bedroom with a walk-in closet, a bathroom with a sit down shower and long tub, a small, modern kitchen, and a large living room. The house was Mission-style, and she loved it. It was all hers.

She was standing in the little alcove off the living room which she

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had set up as a home office. She had a computer, a fax machine, a copier and a phone. The receiver was in her hand; the dial tone was buzzing.

‘If you’d like to make a call,’ a mechanised voice said, ‘please hang up and try again. If-‘

Poppy took the advice.

This was hard. Harder than she’d thought it would be. Much harder than the obvious solution it had seemed while she was draped over Congressman LeClerc’s hard, muscular body, drinking in the scent of fragrant cigar smoke and the musk of his skin. His advice in New York had sparked something in her. Heady excitement, a longing to get started.

Maybe he wasn’t interested in seeing her again. Poppy smarted at the insult. But she also knew that she was going to follow LeClerc’s advice. He might be a jerk, but he had at least left her with one thing: this plan.

Her own firm. Her own acts. Her own rules. Poppy didn’t want to be a number two woman, one of the myriad loyal female executives that littered Los Angeles, highly paid wage slaves without any real power. The back-up. The lieutenant.

Joel Stein had made it clear he wasn’t sharing the limelight th

Poppy or anybody. So why was this so hard? ….

Poppy knew the answer. Because Joel was right. People hadn’t taken her calls, they’d taken Dream’s calls. And she was twenty-three years old right now. The same age, or younger, as the people she wanted to represent. Joel had sworn she’d be nothing without him, and Poppy was afraid he might be right.

It didn’t matter. She didn’t have a choice.

Poppy picked up the phone again, and this time she dialled the number.

‘Dream Management.’

‘Yeah, it’s Poppy,’ she said. ‘Is Joel in?’

‘You have to understand ‘

‘I don’t have to understand shit,’ Stein said, nastily. At least he’d stopped screaming. ‘Your stuff is already in the garbage out back, Allen. Just like your career. You know how many goddam ungrateful brats come through the record industry every year, think they know better than the guys who find them, train them? One good year with one of my acts and you think you’re fucking Yoda.

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You’re just a kid. A stupid kid. Unless you find some mogul to screw, you’ll never get another job. Believe me.’

‘So, no use in coming to you for a reference then?’ Poppy joked, although she was feeling queasy.

‘Go luck yourself,’ Joel snarled, and hung up on her.

Poppy replaced the phone. Her hands were shaking. She had once thought how much she’d hate to be on the wrong side of the desk from Joel Stein.

Whatever. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

She called her bank and checked her balance over the phone. Twenty-five thousand, four hundred dollars. Not a whole bunch of money when you needed to start a new business. Plus, she had no college degree, no job she could use to get employed. There was her

parents’ money, of course, but Poppy wasn’t going to touch that. No, this had to be all her.

She refused to be cowed. Everything would be OK. She even had a name for the new business: Opium, Inc.

It was sinful and rebellious. Just like rock ‘n’ roll. Poppy loved it. She had gone to a cheap business-card place and picked out her own logo: a stock image of a red poppy, with ‘Opium Management’ underneath it in blood-red letters, and ‘Poppy Mien - President’ in black. ‘

She put a few business cards in her wallet and got ready to go to work.

Man, it was depressing!

Poppy went to club after club, gig after gig. The first thing she needed was an act to manage. But there was nothing out there.

She began to have the sick feeling that Silver Bullet had indeed been a fluke. What a parade of losers! Lipstick-wearing poison clones with thinning hair and thinner songs. Thrash-metal acts who obviously believed that speed and volume were all it took to make it; never mind about a tune. About a hundred Guns n’ Roses copy acts; one girl band who managed to get called back for an encore only by flashing their plastic tits at the crowd.

Not one band who had a song she could recall three seconds after they’d stopped playing it.