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EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, it was pouring outside, and the water pounding against the windows seemed almost stinging to me. The weather was horrible—a gloomy mess that I hoped didn’t portend on some ethereal level what the day was about to offer us.
I joined Alex in the kitchen, where he was reading the Times.
“Have you heard from Janice yet?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“But she was supposed to have called you by now.”
“She may be having second thoughts. Or she may have woken late and is just now having her coffee. Or she’s still in bed. Who knows with that one—it’s still only seven o’clock. I don’t know that woman’s rituals, and noon is hours away. What I do know is that she knows what’s expected of her. If she doesn’t follow through, then she forfeits the twenty million, and we go with Plan B.”
“Will that be enough for the board?”
He hesitated before saying, “I’m not sure.”
“Call her,” I said.
“I’ve already called her twice.”
“She didn’t answer?”
“It went straight to voicemail.”
“She’s supposed to be here in an hour to show us the evidence. And to collect her first payment after we view it. Yesterday, we got the money in cash for her. It’s in a suitcase. It’s all set up—she knows that.”
“Let’s hope she does show,” Alex said. “Because without her, I may have set us up for failure, Jennifer. She gave us her word that she’d follow through, but what is her word worth? I sure as hell don’t know. If she doesn’t show, everything will be riding on how the board reacts to what she said to us in her suite. The audio and the video I have of her are powerful, especially because she admits to having an affair with Rowe even after I pointed the phone at her face. But without Janice in that boardroom with us? Rowe could argue that the voice I play and the woman on the video are just a hired actress because, according to him, Janice Jones doesn’t exist. I know that’s how he will think and react. So, there you have it. What I have on him is nothing compared to what Janice Jones says she has on Rowe. And to truly nail him in ways that will cast him out of our lives for good? We need her. We need her now. And if she doesn’t come through, I’m not sure what will happen.”
* * *
AS THE HOURS PASSED, it became increasingly clear that Janice Jones had no intention of showing. Alex had called her repeatedly and left her voicemails each time, though his calls were never returned.
In a last-ditch effort to reach out to her, he sent Tank over to her apartment, but the doormen turned him away—and warned him not to come back or they’d call the police and charge him with harassment.
“For whatever reason, she’s shut us out,” he said to Alex when he called. “Somehow, Rowe has wooed her back into his arms and shoved her out of ours.”
“And here I’ve gone ahead and called an emergency board meeting, betting that she’d take that money—which, by the way, she said that she would. So, great—I’m now certifiably fucked.”
“Maybe not. Let them listen to the audio. And then show them the video. Make sure you point out that you are indeed standing inside Rowe’s condominium in Vegas. We weren’t expecting to rely so heavily on what you captured on your phone, so what I need you to do now is to inspect the video and see if there are any photographs of Rowe, Meredith, and their children there. If there are—if there is something on that video that will directly implicate him as the owner of that condo, and Janice Jones is in it—then you’ve got something to work with.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Alex said.
“None of us thought you’d even need to. To turn down that kind of money, Stephen Rowe must have made her feel pretty rich.”
“Apparently so. I’ll see you here in fifteen. We need to get to Wenn at eleven so we can discuss the situation with Blackwell and see if she has any insights into how to handle the board.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
After Alex ended his conversation with Tank, he went to the video, and, with me watching over his shoulder, viewed it three times, but it all was for naught. We saw no personal photographs, nothing that would suggest that the condo in the video was in fact his. The only people who would know for sure were Stephen and Meredith Rowe. With Stephen out of the question, Meredith might be the answer.
“Do you think we should call her?” I asked him. “Show her the video? She’d know if it was theirs, and she’d wonder why that woman was in her home.”
“Meredith? We could call her, but here’s what you need to know about people like Meredith, Jennifer—she would go to the ends of the earth to cover up what her husband has done if only because she and her family are considered American royalty, not unlike the Kennedys.”
“Then threaten her with it. Tell her that if her husband doesn’t stand down from Wenn, you’ll leak the video to the press.”
“She’d just deny it,” he said. “I know people like her—that’s what they do, and with the public behind them, they’d believe her over me in a hot second.” He looked at his watch and stood. “We need to leave. Tank will be waiting for us in the lobby.” He kissed me. “So, let’s just do this. I have a lot of goodwill with the board. Let’s see how they react to the video, and also to my accusations.”
* * *
WHEN WE LEFT FOR WENN, the rain had stopped, and the sky was beginning to clear. Bits of sunlight were peaking through the swirl of dark clouds, illuminating the cars on the street along with the street itself. Drake drove us while Tank turned around in the front passenger seat to ask if we’d seen anything personal on the video.
“Nothing,” Alex said.
“You’re positive?”
“We watched the video three times. I’m positive. But in Blackwell’s office, I’ll hand it over to you so you can have another look.”
A tense silence stretched between us after that, and in that silence was a sense of disappointment that thrummed between all of us. It was so profound, I could feel it in ways that were as crushing as they were deflating.
I glanced over at Alex, who was sitting silently with his iPhone in his hand, clearly hoping that Jones might finally come through with a call and that she would indeed offer what she’d promised us in Vegas, and also on the flight to New York.
But for reasons I would never understand, she didn’t.
At the last minute, she’d inexplicably backed out of our deal, and left Alex in a lurch because of it. While I didn’t know what would occur in the boardroom when we entered it, I did know that what we had on Rowe was nowhere near as powerful as what Jones said she had on Rowe.
Why had she snowed us? What had been the point? She could have told us in Vegas that she had nothing on Rowe, and that would have been the end of it—which is why none of this made sense to me. Why the lie?
Or had it been a lie?
If it hadn’t been, the only thing I could wrap my head around that would explain her disappearance was that she’d spoken to Rowe after we left her apartment in New York. She’d told us that she was in love with him, and that she wanted to marry him. If she told Rowe what we were up to, he may have skillfully swayed her away from us with the sort of words she would have needed to hear to make her back away from a twenty-million-dollar payday. But what was worse for Alex was that, if she did speak to Rowe, he now knew exactly what was coming at the board meeting.
And if that was the case? He’d be prepared to shut Alex down completely.
As the limo pulled up alongside and stopped in front of Wenn, Tank stepped out and Alex turned to me with a grim look on his face.
“Let’s go to Blackwell’s office,” he said. “We’ll play her the audio and the video. She may catch something we might have missed. Maybe Tank will see something he hadn’t seen before. Right now, we need to use everything we’ve got.”
“Agreed,” I said.
When Tank opened Alex’s door, Alex stepped out and I followed him out of the car. We swiftly moved across the sidewalk, into Wenn’s lobby, and across it to the bank of elevators. It was ten past eleven. We had fifty minutes to come up with something before Alex greeted the board. And if we came up with nothing?
Today was about to go to hell.
* * *
WHEN BLACKWELL FINISHED listening to the audio and looking at the video, she handed the phone back to Alex, who in turn gave it to Tank.
“While you three talk, I’m going to step outside and study this in silence. I’ll be back in a second,” he said.
When he’d left the room, Blackwell was on fire.
“Where is that little harpy?” she said. “Twisting around some pole? How could she do this to you? How could she do it to herself? Turning down twenty million dollars makes no sense to me, unless Rowe somehow threatened her. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
“I hadn’t considered a threat,” I said.
“Neither had I,” Alex agreed.
“No whore worth her weight in pasties turns down twenty million dollars without one hell of a good reason. Not out of love. And certainly not out of dreams of a storybook future with a man who has only jerked her along for two years before banishing her to Vegas. When that woman finally broke down and came out with the truth on that video, you could hear the anger and hurt in her voice. You could see that she was seething at the idea that he’d even dare to send her away. Janice Jones might be in love with Stephen Rowe, but—given what I just saw—that love has clearly shifted into something darker. So, here’s my takeaway: She made the mistake of telling him everything in an effort to give him the middle finger, and then he threatened her when he found out what she had on him. For me, it’s the only thing that makes sense because I do believe, from what I just watched, that she had every intention of coming through for you. I’m telling you—Rowe threatened her, perhaps even with her life, and she believed every word of it.”
“Oh, my God,” I said.
“‘Oh, my God’ what?” Blackwell asked.
“I think you might be right.”
“Of course I’m right. You can take the stripper out of the spotlight and turn her into a woman who looks as if she has lived her whole life on Park Avenue, Jennifer, but at her core, Janice Jones is a hustler. And once a hustler, always a hustler.”
“Epifania said the same thing.”
“And she was right. Jones never would have turned down that money without having a damned good reason. As for how this helps you now—it doesn’t because it’s purely speculative. But I guarantee you that I’m very close to being correct on this—if not right on target.”
“So, you’ve heard the audio, seen the video. If you were a board member, how would you react to it?” I asked.
“Anyone’s first inclination after hearing and seeing something like that will only be to believe it. That’s just human nature. We believe the worst in people first and the best in people last, so for a moment, the board will believe that you’ve just nailed Stephen Rowe to the wall. Your problem is that Rowe is going to challenge you, and that’s when everything will shift. If he makes a solid case for himself—and knowing that man, he already has one at the ready—then you could lose this.”
Tank stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Even if I threaten to release it to the media?” Alex said.
“You’d be foolish if you did that. You’d look desperate and reckless. You wouldn’t be seen as the leader Wenn needs. Instead, you’d be seen as someone who wants his position back so badly, you’re willing to tarnish Wenn to do so. So, don’t do it. Your only chance of winning this is to bring your A-game into that room. Make Rowe squirm. Keep on point, but check your own frustration and anger, and remain calm. Let him be the one who becomes unhinged, because any kind of theatrics from that son of a bitch will only be viewed as coming from someone who has something to hide. Think about it, Alex. If he was innocent of everything—if he knew he’d done no wrong, that he had no mistress—then he’d just sit there like an ice chest, and be the coolest person in the room. He’d be unflappable. Your job is to turn him into a silo. Make him lose his temper while you keep yours on lockdown. And here’s what else you need to do,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She told him, and when she did, my eyes widened at the thought.
“If you do that,” Blackwell said. “If you threaten them with the very possibility of that happening, then everyone sitting around that table, including Rowe, will be on edge given the ramifications of what might come one day. At that point, the board might decide that the video is enough. They might decide that they can’t dismiss it, even if some have their doubts about it, because the downside is too real. If you can bring them to that point, they might just vote Rowe out so Wenn can distance itself from him forever before the stripper really hits the pole.”
I went over and hugged her.
“Why are you on top of me?” she said.
“Because you’re fantastic.”
“Why do I feel as if my personal space is being violated?”
“It’s not being violated.”
“Why do I feel as if you’re about to pull a Cosby on me and slip me a roofie?”
“Oh please,” I said. “Thank you.”
When she pulled away from me, she kissed me on each cheek. “Look, if I helped at all, it’s only because both of you are too close to this to see other options. If you’d had more time, you likely would have taken a similar direction.” She ran her fingers through her hair and looked up toward the ceiling. “Of course you didn’t, so thank God I’m here to pull you through the weeds.” She looked at my arm. “How are you healing?”
“I don’t think I need the sling anymore. I’ve been able to shower and get dressed by myself for the past two days. And today was the best day. I feel much better.”
“We’ll call your doctor later to see about removing it, but leave it on for the board meeting. You are going in as a sworn witness to what Alex saw and heard in Vegas. You were there in that room with him, and your testimony will be powerful for that reason. And also because people like you and trust you. Let that sling remind them of all that you two have been through. It sure as hell can’t hurt.”
“Tank, did you catch anything on the video?” Alex asked.
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I’m sorry, Alex.”
“It’s nearly noon,” Blackwell said as she walked over to Alex and took him by the hands. “You should probably go. And good luck, my dear boy. I’ll be sitting in here rooting for you. Just remember everything I told you. You’re no novice at this. Make Rowe writhe in his seat, and you just might walk away with that seat for yourself.”
