Compact with the Devil: A Novel (33 page)

“Brandt,” said Kit uncomfortably, “please don’t talk to my friends that way.”

“Your friends? Come on, Kit! No offense, love,” he said, sparing a glance at Nikki, “but she isn’t your friend. She’s your employee. I’m your friend. Besides”—he checked his enormous watch—“we have a limited amount of time for practice here. We don’t have time to mess around.”

Kit frowned but said nothing as Brandt flopped into a chair and pulled a small black case from his pocket and took out a cigar. He efficiently snipped the end off with the little cigar guillotine that was too close to finger size to make Nikki comfortable.

“Brandt, I have to sing tonight,” said Kit cajolingly, but Nikki heard the underlying seriousness in his voice.

“I just said that,” said Brandt, the cigar between his teeth as he fumbled for a lighter.

“Well, I have to sing, so do you mind not smoking that thing?”

“Oh, come off it, Kit, you smoke like a chimney. Have done for years.”

“And it messes up my voice. I’ve decided to cut back.”

“You’ve cut back?” said Brandt incredulously.

Kit looked a little embarrassed. “No smoking the day of a concert.”

For a moment Nikki thought Brandt was going to tell Kit where to get off, but he abruptly tucked the cigar away and stood up.

“Whatever you say, Kit; you’re the star.”

And there it was. Someone had finally said what had been bothering Nikki. Kit was the Star. Everyone’s behavior was dictated by his. Their attitudes, their jobs, everything, changed at his whim. Even Brandt, who seemed the most likely to tell Kit no, still set his course by Kit’s star. It wasn’t a matter of Kit thinking their worlds revolved around him; they actually did. Nikki wondered how power-hungry Brandt felt about that. Not good, she was betting.

“They’re ready for you now. The rest of the band is waiting onstage,” said Angela, walking into the room.

“The band,” repeated Kit with dissatisfaction. “We really do have to find them a name.”

“I think Richie’s still pulling for the Purple Weasels,” said Nikki.

“I don’t know about
that
name,” said Kit, getting up and leading the way out of the room. “But we do need something.”

“What’s wrong with using ‘the band’?” groused Brandt grumpily, following Kit.

“That one’s taken,” answered Kit, winking at Nikki as he left.

Angela was on the phone again, walking around the room, picking up and discarding objects, unstraightening everything Nikki had so recently straightened.

Nikki checked her watch; the girls would be arriving in a bit. She could hear the distant thump of Burg on the drums. She quickly recognized the backbeat of “Devil May Care”; Kit’s songs were like musical crack. She watched Angela in the mirror. The blonde was standing near the airbrush and fiddling with it in an absentminded way while nodding to her phone.

“You know,” said Angela hanging up the phone and picking up the airbrush, “I always wondered how these things worked.” Nikki leaned against the counter and watched her without response. Angela was being suspiciously friendly. “Do I just push this button right here?”

Angela turned the airbrush on Nikki and held down the trigger. Nikki reached out on instinct and caught the other woman’s hand in a firm grip, but not before a gust of red paint had covered Nikki from waist to face.

“Oops,” said Angela, sounding far from apologetic. Nikki applied extra pressure to the woman’s wrist, bending the wrist
down and the hand up until the other woman buckled at the knees, then she wrenched the airbrush away. “Ow!” shrieked Angela. “What’d you do that for? It was an accident!” She jumped back and glared at Nikki, nursing her injured hand.

“Sure it was,” said Nikki, shaking droplets of red paint from her hand. “Why was your phone off the day of the bus accident?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered stiffly, trying to step around Nikki. Nikki stopped her, placing one red hand on the woman’s chest, right below the collarbone, knowing it would leave a mark.

“Your phone is never off. And yet, when Kit tried to call you, you didn’t answer. It was, in fact, off.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Angela, nervously licking her lips, still holding her hand. “It must have been bad reception. Why would I turn my phone off?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” said Nikki calmly, scooping red paint out of her eye and wiping it on Angela’s blouse. Angela recoiled as if Nikki were wiping burning coals on her. “That’s a Ralph Lauren jacket, isn’t it?” asked Nikki, fingering the lapel and leaving red streaks. Angela flinched again. “Tell me about the bus accident, Angela.”

Angela was breathing hard.

“This is complete nonsense,” she said, her voice rising. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have to stay here!” Pushing Nikki away with panicked force, Angela ran out the door, and Nikki stared after her.

With a sigh, she turned back to the mirror and saw that she was covered in red paint from eyebrows to belt. She used the makeup remover to scrub at her face, but the paint was everywhere, seeping through her shirt and caking in her ears. This was going to take
more to fix than a sponging off in the bathroom sink. Dejected, she went to find Kit and Duncan.

“Bloody hell,” said Duncan when he saw her. Out onstage, Kit was being charmingly stubborn with the show’s director. “What happened to you?”

“I had a run-in with Angela. I can’t prove it, but she’s in this somehow.”

“Angela? Why would she do that? Besides, she’s not that …” Duncan trailed off.

“Bright?” said Nikki, and Duncan nodded. “Someone’s telling her what to do.”

“But who?”

“Brandt springs to mind,” she said, but Duncan shook his head.

“He and Kit have been friends for over ten years. Not to mention the fact that Kit is his top-selling artist; he wouldn’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t leave Kit alone with either of them, just in case.”

“Easy enough. Brandt left a while ago and Angela stormed out just now. Looked plenty pissed, too. What’d you say to her?”

“We just talked about fashion,” said Nikki with a shrug.

Kit came offstage, started to speak, and then caught sight of Nikki.

“What happened to you?” he asked, laughing.

“There was a slight incident with the airbrush,” Nikki said, trying to wipe the surliness out of her voice but not entirely succeeding.

“You’d better go change,” he commented.

“All my stuff is back at the hotel,” said Nikki, grumpiness taking over even further.

“Even better,” he said persistently, refusing to give in to Nikki’s
attitude. “I need my stage outfit for tonight anyway. So you can go back and get a shower”—he dug into his pocket and handed her his hotel room key-card—“and be back by teatime.”

Nikki glanced doubtfully at Duncan.

“You said you needed to pick up your friends at the airport anyway,” said Kit, and Nikki reluctantly nodded. “If you stay here, you’ll be sitting around watching me sit around. The director wants me to sing an @last song, and I’m not doing it, so he went to call Brandt and complain. Go get changed; Duncan and I can watch TV in the dressing room with the rest of the band. Besides, you look like some sort of mad footballer. I do have an image to protect, you know?” Nikki looked to Duncan, who shrugged and twitched his head toward the door.

“You’re not going to go anywhere, right?” she asked, eyeing the proffered hotel key. “You’re going to stay here?”

“I can’t go anywhere without my tour guide.”

“Well, all right,” she said conceding with a smile. “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone and don’t listen to Burg.”

“Oh please. I can keep myself out of trouble.”

“Just be alive when I get back and I’ll be happy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, throwing her a mock salute, and Nikki grinned.

“Yeah, well, I’m counting on you,” she said to Kit, but made eye contact with Duncan, who nodded his understanding.

Nikki entered her hotel room and saw that Holly’s natural-disaster mode had spread to the bathroom. There was stuff everywhere. It shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did. She needed an orderly space for some orderly thoughts. Speculatively, she eyed Kit’s key-card to the penthouse suite. Penthouse usually meant a giant bathroom. With giant showerheads and fluffy towels. Ignoring the twinge of guilt, she scooped up her luggage and headed for the elevator.

Once in the penthouse, Nikki dropped her purse and jacket by the door and pulled out Kit’s clothes, laying them out next to her luggage in the bedroom. She was planning on taking the specialty items and ditching most of the rest. She stripped as she made her way to the shower. She was really looking forward to the multiple showerheads. She had to admit that rock star living had its perks.

As Nikki exited the shower, tucking one of the coveted velvety towels into place and running a comb through her hair, she opened the door to the living room, intending to get a glass of water.

“Well, this is a surprise,” said Brandt. “You are most definitely not Kit. Angela really is incompetent. You wouldn’t think an instruction like ‘send Kit back to the hotel’ would be hard to follow, now, would you?”

Nikki smothered a startled reaction and leaned against the door frame, staring at Brandt. Brandt tossed aside a magazine and showed all his teeth in an Angela-type smile. His .38 rested on the coffee table in front of him.

“She was a little distracted,” said Nikki. “I think she got some paint on her jacket.”

“Not the new one from Ralph Lauren? Tsk. She’ll be devastated. You know, I can see now why he likes you. You are pretty.”

“Smart too,” said Nikki, wishing she were clothed. “You’re the one who gave that groupie the drugs. You set up the semitruck accident. And you were the one who met with Cano in Stuttgart.”

“You can’t prove any of that,” replied Brandt, but his smile was a little too wide, and the glint in his eye sparkled with acknowledgment.

“Why do you want to kill him?” asked Nikki, hoping to keep him talking.

“I don’t,” said Brandt, stretching out one arm along the back of the couch. “Well, I didn’t at first, anyway. All I wanted was to get him back in the studio. Faustus needed a hit record, and since he can’t seem to make music sober, I had to do something. But he’s been remarkably resistant to my little temptations. Who knew Kit would actually stick with it this time?” Brandt was aggrieved, as if Kit’s sobriety were a matter of personal insult. “He doesn’t really have a backbone, you know. The only thing he’s ever stuck with was music, and if the girls didn’t scream for him, how long do you think that would last? Frankly, I thought between writer’s block and the damn drugs I’ve been throwing at
him, he’d break in a minute. But Duncan proved to be a bit too good at his job.”

“So what changed?” asked Nikki. Brandt seemed eager to explain himself, or at least tell her how smart he was; Nikki decided to let him. “Why the gunmen?”

“The economy crashed. The banks are calling in their loans and suddenly a hit record wasn’t enough. I needed to get creative.”

“The letters,” said Nikki, taking a guess, and Brandt narrowed his eyes. “The threat letters to Kit.”

“It’s funny what we’ll do when the pressure’s on, isn’t it?” he asked. “I spent all that time trying to get a record out of him when I should have remembered about the contract. I wrote it after all. Kit was my invention, so why should his ‘heirs’ get the money? All those royalties and rights? Mine. I’d nearly forgotten it myself, but the ol’ gray matter kicked in eventually.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “One day Angela walked into my office with the latest batch of crazy letters and I figured, one of them has got to be serious. So I reached out to a few of the top contenders, and I got Antonio Cano. This guy has such a hard-on for killing Kit that he actually broke out of prison when I said I would help. Can you believe it?” Brandt laughed as if Cano were the sucker.

“Money?” asked Nikki, returning to the bathroom and brushing her hair in the mirror, trying to look calm. She scanned the bathroom, searching for a weapon. All her clothes and gadgets were in the bedroom. “That’s seriously it? You’re killing your best friend for money?”

“You don’t get it,” said Brandt disgustedly. “This is about business. I’m trying to save Faustus. And I told you … I need something bigger than a hit record. I need a sensation. If Kit dies, I retain ownership of his entire back catalog and unproduced songs,
all future royalties, everything. I can put out greatest-hits albums from now till the end of time. I was planning on having him die here in a mysterious shooting; that would have really kept things selling. But since he’s not here, I suppose we’ll have to improvise. Terrorist incident maybe; we’ll see what Cano says. By the time I’m done, Kit will be bigger than Selena. I probably can’t really hope he’ll be as big as Tupac, but I can dream.” Brandt took out a cigar and snipped off the end with his little cigar cutter.

“You think it’s callous, I suppose. But do you know how much I spent, of my own money, to buy Kit out of that ridiculous @last contract? Not to mention all the drugs and the stint in rehab. I didn’t regret it because I knew my horse was a winner. And Kit, he was right there with me. Faustus Records was our dream. We were going to conquer the world—the two of us together.” Brandt laughed at his own youthful pretensions. “Now at the last furlong my horse has come up lame. Faustus is hemorrhaging and Kit’s not lifting a finger to help.”

“Does he even know?” asked Nikki, unwilling to believe that Kit wouldn’t help his friend.

“I shouldn’t have to tell him!” shouted Brandt. “Used to be, he would have known. Now, what? He gets sober and suddenly he’s too good for us? Won’t come around to hang with the old friends. Won’t get back in the studio. Won’t release old tracks. Walks out of concerts. Oh no, Kit won’t help. Kit just wants to play with makeup artists.” Brandt ended on a nasty note, his eyes sliding over Nikki’s body. “Not that I blame him, of course,” he said, sitting back and becoming the big-time record exec again. “Like I said, you’re cute. But fun time’s over.”