Chapter 142

Brea threw a monkey wrench into my plans for a teleconference the moment she walked in the door.

“Good,” she said when she saw I was dressed. “What time are we leaving?”

“Leaving?” I asked.

“Doctor’s appointment,” she said.

I covered my eyes. A day that I had been looking forward to for weeks had somehow slipped from my mind.

“I don’t have time for that today!” I groaned.

“Time for what?” Liz asked.

“Travis has a doctor’s appointment,” Brea answered.

“Is it Friday already?” Liz asked, looking at me for confirmation of the day of the week.

“It’s Friday already,” Brea replied for me. “Dr. Davis is expecting him at nine-thirty.”

“It’s on both of your calendars,” Skye noted. She had arrived shortly after Brea.

“I’m sure it is,” Liz replied, smiling at her assistant.

“We’ll have to cancel,” I said.

“No!” Liz said firmly.

“I can’t do a teleconference from the fucking SUV or the doctor’s office!” I said.

“Somebody else can do the teleconference or the media can wait,” Liz said.

“Is this about the ENT thing?” Skye wondered.

I nodded my head in frustration and rubbed my eyes.

As if I needed something else to think about, my phone buzzed with a call. It was Adele calling me back.

“I have to take this,” I said.

Liz nodded her agreement and I tried to slip away. It proved unsuccessful. They just followed me.

“What have we found?” I asked.

“Not a lot,” Adele admitted. “Apparently, she has the entire group of documents we sent out. She’s only going with the memos right now. Her source has confirmed they are legitimate and she has a second copy directly from MusicMayhem. She’s sitting on the rest of the stuff for now.”

“To keep the story going until next week,” I said.

“Probably,” Adele admitted.

“Adele, we’ll need you to handle the teleconference in a few minutes,” Liz said.

“Me?” Adele asked. “I ... why not Travis?”

“Travis has a doctor’s appointment this morning,” Brea said. “He won’t be available until after noon.”

“OK,” Adele said. “I’m up to speed on a lot of things but not everything. Is there anything I absolutely need to stay away from?”

I was preparing a list in my head but I didn’t get the chance to offer it.

“Just stick to the basics,” Liz answered.

“One question,” Adele asked. “Have you ever worked with anybody from Caliphate?”

“Not that I know of,” Liz answered. “I can’t say for certain because I don’t know who they represent.”

“I’m going to send a list of their artists to your email,” Adele replied, cutting me out of the conversation completely. “Let me know before the call if you know any of them ... professionally or socially.”

Liz gave me a questioning look.

“The first thing we need to do is to distance you from Caliphate,” I told her. “We can’t come out and say that you have no connection whatsoever to the label and then have somebody else point out that one of their acts started as your backup singer or that you used to date one of their top-level executives. So we need to know if you know anybody there – performers or salary-level employees. If you know anybody, we’ll change our message to reflect that.”

“I’ll look at the list on the way,” Liz promised.

“I’ll need you to do it before we go,” I countered. “The call is in... 20 minutes. We’ll need to know for certain in 10.”

Liz frowned.

“I have things I need to do, too,” she reminded me.

“None as important as this,” Skye cut in. “The only thing more important today than what’s going on with this story is what’s going on with Travis’s arm. Anything else can wait.”

Liz grudgingly nodded her agreement. I didn’t know if her reluctance stemmed from not wanting to reveal to me how she knew some people at the label or from not wanting to be told what she had to.

“Travis?” I heard from the phone. I had almost forgotten that Adele was still there.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“I’d like to go over our strategy with you just to make sure I’m on the right page,” the woman in San Diego said.

“Distance ourselves from Caliphate and MusicMayhem,” I stated. “Liz pulled her catalog from them ... four years ago.”

“Three of my discs are still available,” Liz pointed out.

I tilted my head at her. It was my understanding that the only two streaming music sites with access to her songs were the ones affiliated with the major cellular providers.

“My first three discs,” Liz continued. “They’re still available for sale almost everywhere. I managed to block single downloads but RFN still controls the sale of the entire unit for another few months. I’ll regain the rights at the first of the year.”

“OK,” I said. “That’s helpful to learn – even if we’re learning it late in the game. Use that. Liz’s association with MusicMayhem is through her first three releases – all controlled by the label until next year. After that, she’ll pull them, too.”

I looked at Liz to make sure she agreed. I got a vague nod.

“You’ll need to follow through,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I planned to pull them as soon as I could.”

“OK,” I said. “So, that’s our goal now. Put distance between us and those two. What else do you need help with?”

Adele was silent for a moment.

“They’re going to ask if we’re responsible,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“And?” Adele pressed.

I let out a long breath and glanced around the room.

“Brea, this doesn’t concern you,” I told the nurse. “I’d like for you to step outside, please.”

The young nurse looked a bit surprised but headed out the door – just as Jill was coming in the door.

“You can’t hide from me!” she informed us with a smile. “Bobbi and Dayton are looking for you, though.”

“In a minute,” I said before focusing on the phone. “We go vague. We don’t know how ENT got access to the information.”

“That’s not going to be enough,” Adele pointed out. I heard Skye filling Jill in on the relevant portions of what had been discussed thus far.

“No,” I said. “It isn’t. Let me think for a minute.”

I ran the possible responses through my head. We couldn’t flat out lie. It’s a last-gasp measure and sure to come back to bite you. We needed to frame the truth in a way that didn’t make us sound culpable for the documents.

“Do you really think they’re going to ask us directly?” Liz’s voice cut into my thought process.

Adele saved me from answering – and it was probably a good thing. She was a lot kinder than I probably would have been.

“The labels will have a couple of the newsies in their pocket,” the PR professional explained while I shifted away to continue my musings. “The easiest way ... the quickest way ... to take the focus off the information is to put it on the source of the information. Data breaches are pretty common these days but the public is still wary of them. It’s the old ‘shoot the messenger’ routine. You have to remember, the labels and the streaming services are just playing for time. If they can keep a lid on things until four o’clock your time, they’ll be happy as hell.”

“The weekend cycle Travis keeps telling me about,” Liz said.

“Exactly,” Adele continued. “The viewing public has other things to occupy their interest on the weekends. That’s why the federal government always issues bad news at 4 p.m. on a Friday. If unemployment drops, it comes out Tuesday so they get the whole week to crow about it. If it increases, it comes out Friday so nobody notices. They handle interest rate hikes and dismissals of key personnel the same way. If the rates are lowering or if the person is leaving to become a dean at a law school, it’s early. If the rates are going up or the guy got caught with a hooker, it’s Friday afternoon.”

I found myself nodding.

“OK, let’s do this,” I said. “Do you have a list of everybody participating in the call?”

“Yes,” Adele said. “I kept it limited to 10 people.”

“Send me the names and I’ll send you some ammo if I have it,” I said. “Don’t let them turn it around. Don’t let them paint MusicMayhem or Caliphate as victims of a hacker. Bury the poor fuckers if you need to. Don’t wear the kid gloves on this one but don’t use anything that hasn’t been obtained legally to discredit a journalist. OK?”

“Got it,” Adele said. “I sent both lists to your phone.”

I pulled up the email and forwarded it to Liz and Skye.

“You two need to get started on that,” I said. “We don’t need details about anything but we need to know if you know them or have dealt with them in the past. Good?”

“OK,” Liz said.

I turned my attention back to the first problem.

“OK,” I echoed with a sigh. “When they ask ... and somebody will ask directly or indirectly ... we don’t lie.”

I paused and considered the words I wanted used. Liz had stopped what she was doing and had taken to looking at me while I thought.

“LLE, to the best of our knowledge, has nobody on staff with the skills necessary to breach the computer of anyone, let alone major corporations,” I said. “We have been compiling our own data on the disparity in revenue from the streaming services but that information, to the best of our knowledge, has been obtained through legal means. It is possible that some of our research has been included but we cannot say for certain until we are given the chance to inspect the information or Entertainment Network Television reveals the source of the information.”

“Got it,” Adele said.

“You can credit that to me if you need to,” I said.

“I might,” Adele admitted.

“We know ENT isn’t going to give up its source,” I said. “So, that’s our answer. Adele, we absolutely need to keep the focus on the information and off of its source. Keep reiterating that we have very limited ties to Caliphate and Mayhem.”

“No ties to Caliphate,” Liz announced. “I don’t know any of them except in passing. I’ve never collaborated with anybody on their roster; I’ve never socialized on a personal level with anybody on that list. I might have been in the same room with them and I might have spoken to them but nothing more.”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks, Liz. That’s a big help.”

She gave me a little smile.

“Are you good with the answers I provided?” I asked her.

“I can’t come up with anything better,” she admitted.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I noted. “If you want something different, we’ll come up with something different.”

“It’s the gaps in the answer that worry me,” Liz said. “You said that we don’t have anybody on our staff. That’s true but it leaves open the possibility that we went outside our organization. Anybody with any sense would hire out for something like this.”

“We can’t deny,” Adele said. “There is too much chance that it could come back to us.”

“I thought that chance was minimal,” Liz noted with a pointed glance at me.

“It is,” Adele answered. “But any chance of being caught in a lie is too big a chance. Yeah, it will take a lot of people digging through a lot of layers to link Travis to this. That doesn’t mean somebody won’t devote the time and money to doing just that. So we have to be general.”

“What if they ask if we ... hired a contractor?” Liz asked.

“LLE has hundreds of outside contractors,” I answered. “Adele can’t say with any certainty what they do or how they do it. We leave open the possibility that it came from us but we make that possibility as small as possible.”

Liz nodded but still looked troubled.

“Is there a chance somebody would give you up?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think if it comes right down to it, he’ll either tell them to fuck themselves or blame it on Alyssa Grace. Then he’ll tell people about the tell-all book he’s planning and the whole thing will disappear pretty quickly.”

Liz chuckled but smiled.

“Is now the time to call for a federal investigation?” Skye wondered.

I pointed at her.

“Yes,” I said with a firm nod. “Collusion and unfair business practices are just the start. The documents are pretty damning. We call for the SEC to look into things. You’ll need to make sure that Caliphate is publicly traded. I think it is but I don’t know for sure.”

“OK,” Adele said. “So, we distance; we hedge; we keep the narrative focused and we call for intervention.”

“That’s it,” I said.

“One last thing,” Adele said. “They’re going to want to know why it’s me and not you. We don’t want them to draw the wrong inference.”

“What inference could they draw?” Liz wondered. I think it was just a general knowledge question and not meant to spur a discussion.

“Two come up immediately,” Adele replied. “The first is that the information is incidental and not important so you sent an underling.”

I frowned at the word choice but Liz just nodded her agreement with the statement as a whole.

“The second is that we’re planning to lie and we know we might get caught,” Adele continued. “That’s another standard tactic. You use somebody not directly involved to deliver untruths so it’s easier to distance yourself from fallout if the truth comes out.”