The Devil You Know (53 page)

‘I’m here to -‘

‘Yes, Julia’s coming right out,’ said the receptionist, smiling. ‘It’s a surprise to see you here after yesterday … But great, obviously, I mean it’s great …’

She was stumbling over her words and seemed anxious, Rose noted; this Daisy woman must be a big cheese in this place. Best not to say anything at all, so her voice didn’t give her away. Rose just beamed at the woman, gestured to the couch and sat down on it.

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Just a minute later, a tall brunette in something very chic and very black, with a mop of styled white hair, came bursting out of the frosted glass doors that led into the publisher’s offices. She held out her hands to Rose.

‘Daisy! Darling, what a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t expected you back so soon. And so glamorous too, all dressed up, you look like Princess Diana today …’

Rose stood up and let Julia Fine get close, real close; close enough to hug her and air-kiss both sides of her cheeks.

‘So come on, let me take you inside. What’s the reason for dropping by? Not that we don’t always love to see you …’

Rose took a step back and looked Julia Fine right in the face. ‘I’m not Daisy Markham.’

Julia blinked. ‘What are you talking about, and what is that accent?’

lose pulled out her purse, extracted her driver’s licence, and handed it over. ‘As I’ve been trying to tell your staff all morning on the phone, I am Daisy Markham’s sister. I must be. We’re identical. I know she’s looking for her family; well, you just call her up and tell her you found it.’ ” •

‘Oh my God,’ Julia Fine said, looking from the plastic licenceto Rose and back again. ‘Oh my God.’ :

By 3 p.m., Jacob 1Kothstein was a million and thirty thousand dollars poorer, and the owner of a burnt-out shell of a building in Alphabet City. He signed the papers, and the seller’s attorney told him it was the fastest closing he’d ever been involved in.

‘Good luck, sir,’ he said, shaking his hand. Jacob smiled. He knew that a man who could just write a cheque for a million bucks was the kind of man lawyers liked to get to know.

‘If there’s anything else I can help you with, Mr 1Kothstein, anything at all,’ oozed John Robinson with an oily grin. Jacob

suppressed his distaste.

‘There is, actually.’

‘Name it,’ Robinson begged.

‘You can give me Rose Fiorello’s number.’

‘I’m afraid she’s not in,’ her assistant said. ‘She’s taking the day off.’ ‘Is she indeed? That’s not the Rose I know,’ Jacob said. ‘Any message, sir?’ the assistant asked, pleasantly enough.

Yes. Tell her Jacob Rothstein called. My number is 555-o92.

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The slight pause at the end of the line told him the assistant recognised the name.

‘Certainly, sir,’ she said, still pleasant-sounding. He admired lkose’s choice in employees; this woman was staying out of it. ‘Will she know what it’s regarding, or should I tell her?’

‘I can confidently guarantee she will have no idea what it’s regarding,’ Jacob said, ‘but she will want to know about it, nonetheless.’

‘Thank you, sir. Have a good day,’ the girl said.

‘Thanks,’ Rothstein said, and hung up.

He xvaited for Rose to call him back, but the call did not come in the next five minutes, as he had expected, nor even in the next two hours. So she was playing games, huh? Let her, Rothstein thought. He made calls to contractors, soliciting bids for the work he needed done. There was plenty of planning and work to take his mind off Fiorello. When she discovered what had happened, she’d call him soon enough.

Daisy didn’t understand at first, when Julia Fine called her, sounding hysterical.

‘Julia, just calm down, OK? Calm down.’

‘Daisy. I have your sister hre. You have to come over to the office. Or should I send her to Mr Soren’s?’

‘Magnus Soren?’ asked Rose, sitting in Julia’s corner office. The Daisy woman was involved with Magnus, was she? He was a very rich man, Magnus Soren. She hoped her new sister wasn’t a gold digger …

Julia ignored her and continued to speak urgently into the receiver. ‘Daisy, you must come now. I am not joking, she looks so like you I thought she was you.’

‘Julia,’ Daisy said patiently, ‘I don’t have a sister. I’m an only child.

I was adopted as an only child. I know that much.’

‘But -‘

‘Give me the phone,’ Rose said. The Julia woman gave her a death stare, but Rose was unimpressed. She held out her hand and imperiously crooked her fingers. ‘I saidgive me the goddam phone. That’s nay sister, you know it and I know it.’

“Daisy,’ Julia Fine muttered, ‘she insists on talking to you …’ Rose snatched the receiver from her. ‘Is this Daisy arKnam,

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‘Who’s this?’ Daisy asked angrily. ‘Whoever you are, I have no idea how you got to my editor, but this is not a joke to me.’

‘Nor to me. My name is P,.ose Fiorello. I own apartment buildings

in New York. I was adopted also, and you are identical to me.’ ‘Identical, how?’

‘Identical, as in twins. I saw your picture on the front page of the Financial Times this morning. You had my face. I bought your book, there’s no doubt.’ Rose spoke so matter-of-factly that Daisy found herself listening to her. And … she sounded familiar. Very familiar. Under that New York accent …

‘Your publishers wouldn’t take my call, so I showed up here and said I was you.’

‘Very resourceful,’ Daisy said faintly.

‘And your woman here, Ms Fine, thought I was you. She called me “Daisy”. She thought, you were playing a joke on her.’ Rose punched a button and put the call on speaker. ‘Tell her, Ms Fine.’

‘It’s true, Daisy, it’s true,’ said Julia Fine breathlessly. ‘I wouldn’t joke …’

‘Send her over here,’ Daisy whispered. ‘I want to see her.’

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Poppy smiled fixedly at the cheering crowd. The band was playing ‘Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean’ as Henry stepped up on to the podium, smiling and waving. If she had been his wife, Poppy would now be walking next to him. But as it was, she was only the fianc4e, and a controversial one at that. Henry’s spin doctors had stuck her up here on the podium, standing behind his chief of staff, and blending into the background as she smiled and clapped.

She looked at the man she loved and wondered what their future together was.

As the cheering subsided, Poppy sat down on her uncomfortable folding chair with the others as Henry began to give his speech - the same one he gave on every slop of the campaign. Poppy could recite it the way she could recite one of Travis Jackson’s numbers. Just like Travis, though, Henry could make it sound fresh; he was the rebel lKepublican, the darling of the South who didn’t hide a womanising past or a fairly radical social agenda. Even the unpopular parts of his platform he laid out there, daring folks not to vote for him. Poppy mouthed the words along with him ‘My opponents have said I’m anti-choice.’ Big cheer. ‘They’ve also told you that I’m soft on crime, because I oppose the death penalty, and I want gun control.’ Tremendous booing, even from LeClerc supporters. This part she liked, because it always made Henry’s staff so uncomfortable. ‘Well, guess what, Lafayette, Louisiana? Here’s one politician who’s gonna tell you the truth. I want gun control, and I want an end to the death penalty, and I know those are two things almost none of y’all agree with ‘

Cue the standard roar of angry agreement, and Henry lifted his manicured hand in that practised gesture, and said, ‘Yes, y’all, and if I could make those two things happen I’d do it in a second. But you want to know the truth? Those laws will never pass, not in my lifetime, not in Louisiana and not in America, whether I like it or

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not. So it shouldn’t stop you from voting for ne. You have your pick of guys in suits who are gonna tell you everything you want to hear. I’m a conviction politician. I tell you my convictions and let you make your own minds up. Now, what do we agree on, Lafayette? Stuff that I can do something about. Tourism. Taxes. Jobs …’

‘… a strong defence,’ Poppy mouthed, ‘reforming our welfare laws, educating our kids … stuff you can see my track record

on…

Now he had them listening, rapt, eating from the palm of his hand. The rock star parallel was pretty close, Poppy thought. Henry played the crowd better than any lead singer.

His strategy had worked, too. LeClerc had come from last to first in the Louisiana Senate race with the revolutionary strategy of telling the truth about what he believed. The polls had shown him with a

credible eight-point lead over his nearest rival.

Of course, that was until last week.

Poppy looked down at her outfit. It was very conservative, a concession of love for Henry. She was wearing a short-sleeved, full length feminine sun dress with daisies all over it; an LA Jew’s stal at being the pretty l’il Southern Belle. She also wore white gloves and a delicate face-framing straw hat. Anything to make things a lithe better for him.

Because last week, Poppy had become the problem.

Henry’s skirt-chasing ways had been well publicised, but they had only endeared him to the Louisiana voting public. In fact, with Clinton’s charm and Bush’s integrity, he had seemed unstoppable. And yet something had put a spoke in the wheel.

The press, failing to find anything damaging in LeClerc’s past, had started to investigate his girlfriend. And they had stumbled on a goldmine.

The scandals were delicious, and they just kept on coming. First, the catty, anti-semitic little comments… Poppy was a JAP, a Jewish American princess, that was enough to drop Henry a full point by itself down. here. And they were not married, but it looked like they might be. (Thank God nobody knew they were engaged yet, Poppy thought.) Next, she wasn’t from Louisiana, wasn’t even from the South. No, she was the daughter of a slick LA lawyer. And more. Each day brought another screaming headline, another gossip column revelation. Poppy was way too young for their Congressman

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. . the older women voters hated that. And finally, perfectly for the Democrats, there were Poppy’s unorthodox politics, and her job.

Poppy was against whatever Henry was for. She was pro-choice, and she believed in the death penalty for murder, and she wanted to be able to carry guns; she was an environmental nut and she wanted to relax the roles on welfare …

The P,.epublicans hated it. Sometimes, as she walked on to a platform with Henry, she heard them mutter, ‘Commie Jew bitch.’ The Democrats, her party, didn’t hesitate to use her against Henry. Their candidate paraded his white-bread wife and simpering golden ringleted daughter everywhere.

And then the Menace scandal had come out.

It was the first main fight she’d had with Henry since he’d agreed to take her on campaign, and it had shocked Poppy. She’d been used to having Henry back her up against his staffers, but not this time.

Her latest heavy metal act, Menace, were a hot-selling brand of rap/rock fusion, a sort of heavy-metal hip-hop that urban radio loved and Top 40 played to death, albeit with the swear words bleeped out. Sometimes that was half the song. Menace had a classic bad-boy reputation, trashing everything that wasn’t nailed down to a hotel floor, fucking everything that was female and moved within groping range. That was so’normal in rock ‘n’ roll that the group hadn’t made headlines outside of Spin and Rolling Stone until last week.

Their latest release had gone straight in at number one on the Billboard charts. So far so good, except that this single was different. No station would play it, not even BET; it was called ‘Spit the Pigs’, and it was, well, it was an anti-cop song. It promised various different fates to any cop caught without back-up in the vicinity of Menace (though Poppy knew the band was a bunch of cowards), and all of these fates were very graphic and very unpleasant.

Menace accused the LAPD of being pimps, drag dealers, racists, thugs and killers, and they had some suggestions for their fans as to what to do about it. The chorus of the song was the pi&ce de r&istance, a speed-rapped one hundred ways to kill police officers.

And some enterprising journalist in New Orleans had found out that Poppy managed this band, this enemy to law and order, and yet Congressman Henry LeClerc was still dating her - and might be going to marry her!

Henry’s staffers had insisted that she terminate her relationship with Menace.

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‘Absolutely not,’ Poppy said. ‘It’s just macho posturing, and they’re a hot band.’

‘Hot? They’re burning away Henry’s chances,’ Don lickles snarled.

Poppy turned to Henry. ‘Darling, this isn’t your problem. You just tell them you don’t control me or my bands. If you don’t approve, say so.’

‘The point is that you approve, Poppy,’ Henry said softly. She’d coloured. ‘I don’t approve or disapprove, my function isn’t to tell an act how to write songs. I believe in the First Amendment. Menace has freedom of speech.’

‘Sure they do, but they can’t demand that you be associated with

Poppy had blinked at him. ‘You want me to make this statement?

Cut one of my bestselling bands loose?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well, I won’t,’ Poppy said mulishly. ‘No way in hell. Don’t bother asking me again.’

IKickles said smoothly, ‘Let’s wait until after Lafayette to discuss this, OK?’ “;

And so Poppy found herself here, listening to Henry, smilirl, g sweetly at the press who wanted to destroy him, and wondering if this would be the last time she would ever do this.

No, stop it, she warned herself sternly, as the tears threatened to spring up. Ruining his comeback rally was not the way to go. She would talk it over with him when they got back to the hotel.

There would be plenty of time for tears then.

The car pulled up at the airport kerb. Poppy was in the front seat, because Henry was driving her himself. There was no way she wanted some chauffeur to take her; Poppy hated strangers to see her cry; and Henry had wanted to do it.