Elimination Night

28

Chaz Chipford’s Greatest Hits



May

“BILL, MEET DICK.”

This was at Greenlit Studios, a few days before the season finale.

Len had just led me into his backstage office, where a tall, heavyset man with a look of barely suppressed rage in his eyes was sitting neatly at a circular table.

“Uh… hi, Dick,” I said.

Dick blinked twice. Cheap tie, I noticed. Collar too tight. A bull on a leash.

“Dick here is a licensed private investigator,” Len revealed. “And yes, before you point out the obvious—that literally makes him a private dick.” Len laughed at this for—oh—a full minute. Then, turning to Dick: “That is your real name, right?”

“Correct,” said Dick, unpleasantly.

“Please, Bill—make yourself comfortable,” Len resumed, pulling out chairs for both of us. (A worrying sign: Len never wanted me to be comfortable.) “Dick is now going to tell you exactly what kind of dicking he’s been doing for us over the past few weeks.”

Dick stood up.

I’d already guessed the reason for his presence, of course: To investigate the source of all those “Project Icon exclusives” that had been appearing on the ShowBiz website recently. It had started with the news about Joey’s admission to Mount Cypress—resulting in the spectacle of a nude grandfather parading on live TV at ten o’clock in the morning (for which the news channel had been fined for both invasion of privacy and indecency)—and had just gotten worse from there. A new scandal was breaking every day, it seemed. Sometimes twice a day. It was a wonder Chaz Chipford’s tubby little fingers could type fast enough to keep up.

None of which had harmed us in the ratings, of course. Precisely the opposite. After the first two weeks of revelations, we were back in the top spot across all networks. The week after that, the numbers from the Jefferson Metrics Organization came in at over twenty million for the first time since the season twelve finale. The following week: Twenty-five million. And now, well, it was hard not to laugh: We were closing in on the big three-zero. People had even started to vote for the contestants again. I mean, okay, so the landline volume was still down. But if you counted text messages, Facebook “likes,” and the Rabbit website survey, more Americans had participated in season thirteen of Project Icon than in the last two presidential elections combined. It was incredible.

As for Sir Harold: still very much in Germany. Things weren’t looking too good over there. Big Corp had practically moved its entire HQ over to Berlin in an effort to get the bingo crisis under control. Meanwhile, all non-bingo-related issues were being left to the divisional chiefs to handle, which in our case meant David Gent and Ed Rossitto—who seemed delighted with the way things were going. They’d even stopped mentioning Nigel Crowther’s name every other sentence.

There was no doubt about it: Those “bingo betrügers” over at Rabbit Deutschland—each now facing twenty years in federal prison for their epic scam—had bought Project Icon enough time to save the franchise. This wasn’t of much comfort to Sir Harold, however. Having caught the fraudsters, the German prosecutors were now going after Big Corp—relentlessly and with overwhelming popular support, thanks largely to the cheerleading of rival news organizations. It was beginning to look as though they wouldn’t stop until they’d driven the company out of business, or at least inflicted a lot more damage.

Thankfully, the scandals appearing in ShowBiz every day weren’t criminal in nature. They were mostly to do with the contestants’ personal lives—and, of course, Joey, who never did admit to that overdose. The official explanation was he’d been “overcome by tiredness and emotion” following his mother’s death, and therefore—as a precautionary measure—had checked himself into Mount Cypress to spend the night under observation. This spectacular untruth was made a lot easier to maintain when Joey’s pee test came back clean. I thought he must have just gotten lucky, or that he’d somehow managed to drown himself in enough Kangen water to fool the lab. It was only when he also sailed through the next test—in spite of having ingested a year’s supply of maximum-strength aspirin—that I started to get suspicious. And then of course came Chaz Chipford’s story (on which more later), which blew everything apart. By that point it was too late for Joey to get fired, however. Besides, he claimed that it had all been a practical joke, a publicity stunt in the spirit of Honeyload’s early days on the road.

“Let’s get straight to the point,” said Dick, prodding at a remote control barely wider than his thumb. The lights dimmed as a motorized projection screen lowered itself from the ceiling at the far end of the room. To the sound of a tiny fan blowing cool air over hot circuitry, an image wobbled onto the white rectangle in front of us: a stock photograph of a burst pipe, spraying water everywhere.

“As you’ve probably noticed, Miss King, we have a leak here at Project Icon,” announced Dick, nodding with almost fatherly pride at the visual metaphor now being displayed for my benefit. “Someone in this building—someone with the most intimate of access to our talent—has been passing along highly sensitive information to members of the press, and by that I mean a certain trumped-up jackass at ShowBiz magazine, who writes under the name of Chaz Chipford.”

Dick clicked his remote again, and a photograph of Chipford—taken from afar, seemingly without his knowledge—appeared on the screen. He was emerging from a Russian dry cleaner’s somewhere, with a curious expression on his face.

“Now, we can only assume that whoever has been providing Mr. Chipford with his information has being doing so in return for monetary compensation,” Dick went on. “And this of course would be a gross violation of any Icon employee’s contract. Make no mistake: Zero Management and the Rabbit network cannot and will not tolerate such breaches of confidentiality. That’s why they’ve retained my services to locate this mole. And when I do, Miss King, he—or she—will be held accountable, to the maximum-possible extent under the law.”

Before I could object to the implicit accusation, Dick had activated the projector again, causing Chipford’s face to dissolve into a montage of his recent ShowBiz front pages.

I had to admit—it was an impressive body of work:

THIS LITTLE PIGGIE WENT PEE-PEE-PEE!—HOW WILDMAN LOVECRAFT BEAT PROJECT ICON DRUG TEST

(A CHAZ CHIPFORD EXCLUSIVE)

SORRY GIRLS, HE’S YODEL-GAY-HEE-HOO: LI’L NUGG GETS SNUG WITH BIBI’S MYSTERY HUNK DRIVER

(A CHAZ CHIPFORD EXCLUSIVE)

#METHHEADMIA: BAZOOKA-BOOBED DIVA STOLE TV FROM DYING GRANDMA TO BUY “ONE LAST FIX”

(A CHAZ CHIPFORD EXCLUSIVE)

“COMRADE CASSIE” EXPOSED: SHE LIVES ON FOOD STAMPS WHILE DADDY MAKES $200BN A YEAR

(A CHAZ CHIPFORD EXCLUSIVE)

When Dick was sure I’d fully digested Chaz Chipford’s greatest hits, he sat back down with a grunt.

“Thank you, Dick, for that insightful presentation,” said Len, yawning. “Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here, Bill. No one suspects you of anything. You’re far too tediously honest for that kind of behavior. Nevertheless, I can’t ignore what my dick’s telling me—so to speak—and he’s observed some lifestyle changes that need to be explained, so you can be ruled out of our investigation. You took a cab to work today, for example. Highly unusual, as I’m sure you’ll agree. After all, we pay you as close to nothing as makes no practical difference. And then there’s this issue of your attire. I found myself looking at you this morning and not feeling slightly depressed, Bill. That’s unusual. Then it came to me: You’re wearing a dress—which is frankly nothing short of extraordinary. It’s not even one of those hideous tie-dye things you sometimes drag from the swamp of your wardrobe on the hottest days of the year.”

“It’s a Diane von Furstenberg,” I volunteered.

“It’s a bloody miracle, that’s what it is,” said Len. “With some heels and a bit of makeup, there’d be a serious danger of someone finding you attractive.”

“You’re such an a*shole, Len.”

Len feigned shock. “Finally!” he cried. “She fights back. I’ve been wondering how long that would take. You can’t deny it now, Bill: Something’s up with you. What it is?”

“I’m not your leak.”

“But you know something, don’t you? Yes, you do. Tell us everything, Bill. Tell us what happened.”

Silence.

Honestly, I didn’t even know where to begin.

When it came to my new wardrobe: Boris was what had happened. Remember that time he’d invited me over for dinner, to taste his grandfather’s… meatball recipes? Well, when I finally calmed down enough to call him back, I accepted. And guess what? Boris can really cook. Oh, and he can really kiss, too. We did that. We did that… a lot.

The point being: Boris made me feel so good about myself, I was inspired to go clothes shopping for the first time since moving to LA. Hence the Diane von Furstenberg and a number of other not-usually-my-type-of-thing outfits—all of which had given me enough confidence to stroll right into Nico DeLuca’s backstage coffee bar the next morning, and not even be questioned by the two ex–Secret Service guys at the door. They just assumed I belonged there.

Of course, my upgraded look wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t also been moonlighting for Joey as a scriptwriter. This meant I had some money to spend on things other than the rent. Mitch had even fronted my first paycheck as an advance.

I felt rich, almost. Plus, it wasn’t like I had to save up for a year in Hawaii any more.

Yeah… about that. So I called Brock from Mount Cypress, just like Joey had told me to. To make things more difficult, it was a crappy line—or maybe it was the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now in the background, provided by the circling newscopters, I don’t know—but I pushed on with the conversation anyway. I knew I was essentially breaking up with him. But the ways things had been going, “breaking up” was a technicality. I didn’t even expect him to be surprised.

Oh, I had no idea.

“Look, Brock,” I opened, pacing the hospital lobby, hand over one ear so I wouldn’t have to keep asking him to speak louder. “I’m gonna stay out here until the end of the season. I might even stay longer, actually, if we get picked up for another season.”

“What the hell, Sash? You said—”

“I got a writing job. This is real, Brock. It’s not just me sitting on a beach, composing some novel that no one will ever read. It’s a paying gig. It could lead to something.”

“I thought you hated LA,” Brock protested, without actually sounding too upset about it. He seemed to be taking this very well. A delayed-shock thing, maybe.

“Sometimes it’s tough here, yeah,” I replied, earnestly. “But life isn’t perfect, y’know? You can’t just complain all the time. You’ve gotta do what you love—but you’ve also gotta find a way to love what you do.” (For some reason, this didn’t sound as good when I said it.) “If you never commit to anything because you think you’re too good for it, because it isn’t exactly right, then you’ll miss out on all kinds of opportunities, and this is one of those opportunities, Brock. Joey Lovecraft wants me to write scripts for him. He’s paying me. Why don’t you come out here to LA for a weekend—see what it’s like? Maybe we could do our plan in reverse?”

“Uh-huh.”

A long pause.

“What do you mean… ‘Uh-huh?’” I said, testily. “That could mean yes or no.”

“I mean, uh, yeah… right on. Look, Sash, I’ve gotta—”

“Are you even listening?”

“Of course, Sash. Of course.”

“Then what do you think about coming to LA?”

“Me—go to LA? No can do. I’ve got stuff going on. And Pete is living on the couch.”

“Pete? What is he, three years old?” I was beginning to remember how much Brock could irritate me.

“He needs my help, man. He’s broke. Look, why don’t you come out here, like we said, like we had planned, and we can talk? All that hanging around with celebrities—it’s like you’re not thinking straight, Sash. I’m getting worried about—”

A muffled scrunching noise, like someone had just pulled the phone away from him.

Chaos on the line.

“… give it to me…”

“Tell her.”

“… just gimme the phone…”

“F*cking tell her, Brock.”

“… will you stop…”

“If you’re not going to do it yourself, I’ll do it for you, dammit. Jesus, you’re pathetic.”

A female voice—older—addressed me. “Sasha? This is Nadia. I’m Brock’s manager at the Hua-Kuwali. Brock’s been meaning to tell you: We’re f*cking. We’ve been f*cking since he arrived in Hawaii, actually, but on a more regular basis recently. We’re lying naked in my bedroom at this very moment. Brock is living here with me, Sasha. His bong-brained friend Pete is subletting his apartment. That time he didn’t call you back for two days when you were in San Diego? We were on Maui together. We were f*cking, Sasha. We’re pretty much always f*cking, because as you know, Brock here is quite the piece of ass. He’s been leading you on, honey. He wants you to come all the way out here, just so he can break up with you in person, which in my opinion is a lot worse than just telling you like this over the phone. But I guess I’ve just ruined the surprise. Stay in LA, Sasha.”

For some reason, I was sure everyone in that hospital lobby knew the line had just gone dead on me. So I stood there for a while longer, hand still over one ear.

“Okay, love you, bye,” I said, a few seconds later.

Then I walked very calmly to the bathroom, where I bawled my way through half a toilet roll.

I felt much better afterwards. Much, much better.

At least Joey had been wrong about one thing: Nadia wasn’t “some hula-skirted surf princess.” I’d seen pictures of her on Brock’s Facebook page: She was midforties, with a smoker’s complexion, and showing evidence of the kind of cosmetic surgery that’s intended to repair the damage caused by previous cosmetic surgery. All right, so maybe not that bad. But bad enough for me to suspect that Brock had a nonromantic motive, no doubt related to Nadia’s salary as the manager of a five-star beachfront hotel. He always liked the good life, Brock. Or more accurately, he liked to be supported, usually via frequent and generous wire transfers from his dad. I wondered how much longer he could get away with living like that.

Then again: Who gave a f*ck?

Not me.

Boris was sympathetic, as always.

“Dude was a gutless loser, Sash, but I know you wanted to finish your Novel of, uh—Huge Significance?—over there in hula-land. So I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Immense Profundity, actually. And ‘finish’ isn’t exactly the right word. It’s still one sentence long.”

“Yeah, but like you said the other day, at least you figured out where to set it.”

“Hmm. Guess.”

“Have you ever been to a fifteenth-century Norwegian monastery before, by the way?”

“No. But here’s the funny thing, Boris: I think I might have already written another book. A totally different kind of book. Without even knowing it.”

“What—you’ve been sleep-writing or something?”

“I’m serious. Since I moved to LA, I’ve been keeping a diary. Just notes on stuff that’s been happing at work. Conversations with Joey. Rants about Len. That kind of thing. You’re in it, too. Not much. But I wrote a few pages about our first date—before I found out about Mrs. Zglagovvcini being your great aunt and everything.”

“Look, Sash, she insisted I didn’t—”

“Let’s not get into that again.”

“She didn’t think you’d agree to—”

“Mrs. Zglagovvcini is insane, Boris. No offence to your family or anything. Insane. But anyway. As I was saying: My novel’s been right there, the whole time, staring me in the face—literally—on my laptop. I didn’t even realize how much I’d been writing: I’ve got more than three hundred pages! And I was reading some of it back last night, and it’s just… the craziest stuff. All I’ve got to do is change the names and take out that one bit about Wayne—I mean, the whole puppy thing is bad enough—and it’s done. My first novel, finished. I even have a title.”

“What is it?”

“A Babylonian Named Bill,” I said, proudly.

“Ah.”

“You like it?”

“Lemme sleep on it. In the meantime, you’d better keep that laptop of yours locked up at night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jesus, Sash—are you kidding me? After everything that’s happened this season? If Len or Teddy or any of those guys find out you’ve written a book about them, they’ll go nuts. It’ll be like the Watergate breakins all over again. Back that thing up, man. Print out the file. E-mail it to yourself. And for God’s sake, don’t take it to work.”

I didn’t tell Len any of this, of course. Then again, if Dick had been following me—which wouldn’t have come as much of a surprise—he would have known about Boris already. I’d been practically living at his house up on Mulholland Drive. Hence the cabs.

“Look, I don’t get it,” I said to Len, as the three of us sat there in his office, projector still humming. “Why do you care about the leaks? I mean, okay, it sucked to be Joey when Rabbit found out he’d been using pig pee in his drug tests. And I felt bad for Big Nugg when all that stuff about Jimmy, uh, came out. Mia? well… she deserved it, to be honest. And Cassie should have known better. But that’s not the point. The point is, shouldn’t we be thanking Chaz Chipford? Aren’t all these headlines the reason why our ratings have been going up every week?”

Len raised his palms as if in surrender.

“As much as I enjoy having a three-hundred-pound dick at my beck and call—no offence, Dick—this wasn’t my idea,” he said. “I got my orders from up on high. The way Big Corp sees it, all this tittle-tattle in ShowBiz might be doing us a favor for now, but what’s the next story going to be? The Germans have put a greased fist up Sir Harold Killoch’s arsehole, Bill. He can’t afford another scandal. Besides, he invested a hundred million dollars in The Talent Machine. He doesn’t want us stealing its glory, which would make it look like the giant f*cking pile of ego wank that it is. They’re happy to see our numbers improve, yes—but not too much. And certainly not if it means giving ShowBiz magazine any leverage over us.”

“So it’s all politics.”

“All I care about is catching the mole, getting through the finale next Thursday, then getting on a plane to the farthest point away from Greenlit Studios on Earth, so I can live to see another season—if Sir Legs Eleven gives us that pleasure,” said Len. “Now think, Bill. How come you’re suddenly acting like you’re working at Vogue magazine, with all these cabs and designer dresses.”

There was no point in hiding it any longer. I was amazed Len hadn’t figured it out for himself already, in fact. “Okay,” I sighed. “So I meant to tell you this a few weeks ago.”

“Tell me what?” Len looked urgently at Dick, who reached for his notebook.

“It’s Joey,” I said. “I’m… writing scripts for him. Same thing Tad’s been doing for Bibi all season, basically. Only I’m doing it at nights and at weekends. Moonlighting.”

It was the first time I’d ever seen Len look genuinely surprised. “You mean… you’re the one who… ?” He couldn’t even get his words out. I noticed something else in Len’s face, too. Another first: He was impressed. There was no hiding it.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“So… the joke about the banjo and the cheese stick that got picked up by Letterman the other—”

“Mine. Well, now it’s Joey’s, technically. Mitch had me assign the copyright.”

“Wow, Billy the Kiddo, I had no idea. A scriptwriter. You. Well, who would have guessed it? I wanted to be a writer myself, y’know. Always thought I had a novel in me. Mind you, I suppose you could write a hundred novels about this bloody place.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked, expecting the worst, which Len was usually only too happy to deliver.

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. Dick looked uncomfortable with the informality and straightened himself, as if to compensate.

“I’ve given you a hard time on this show,” Len declared, with a frankness in his tone that made me nervous. “I remember calling up Bibi not long after you got Bill’s job, and telling her to invite you over for lunch when you’d been out drinking until three a.m., just so I could hear how you’d suffered through it. The celery was the best part. Oh, I almost died. That was Bibi’s idea, by the way. And the fact she kept it going for seven hours before you asked to go home. Priceless! They brought out the cheeseburgers and fries the second you were out the front door.”

“You mean…” A ripple of heat rose up through my chest and into my face. “That was—”

“What I’m saying is,” Len went on, “I wanted you to quit or commit. There was something about you, Bill: You were good at your job, but you always seemed above it, like you didn’t care, like you had some bigger plan.” He was looking right at me now, leaving me with no choice but to meet his gaze, when all I really wanted to do was get up and tug at his hair, to see if the Merm could actually be real.

“Let me tell you something, Bill,” he continued, changing course. “I was bullied at school. Mercilessly. Head flushed down the toilet twice a day, at ten o’clock and three o’clock, without fail. You could set your f*cking watch to the sound of me going under. But it made me a better man, Bill. It made me want to make a living out of what everyone had mocked me for—my love of pantomime—and go on to make so much money, f*ck so many beautiful women, and buy such an enormous car, that I could come back to Chiswick and laugh in the faces of all those meat-brained arseholes with their shitty houses and ugly wives.”

“That’s a touching story, Len,” I said, squirming. “A modern-day fairy tale.”

“I haven’t finished yet.”

“I think I already know where you’re headed.”

He pressed on. “So if I’ve been hard on you, Bill—it was for your own good,” he said. “And look at you now: Writing scripts for Joey Lovecraft! I’m glad you found a way to make this job work for you, Bill, and to answer your question, no, you’re not in trouble. You have my blessing, as long as this stays off-the-clock. Just don’t tell Ed Rossitto, whatever you do. And if I ever find you sitting around in a beret, looking at the flowers for inspiration, you’re fired.”

“Thank you, Len,” I said—and I guess I meant it. For an a*shole, he hadn’t been as much of an a*shole as I’d expected. Maybe he wasn’t even that bad. Maybe he was just misguided. “For the record,” I said, refusing to let his theory of management go unchallenged. “I don’t think bullying made you any stronger. I think you would have done well anyway. I think bullying just makes people who are bullied do the same thing to others. It’s miserable, Len. A miserable, pointless cycle.”

“Agreed,” said Dick, unexpectedly.

“Jesus Christ,” coughed Len, taking his feet down from the table and glaring at us in turn, disgust in his eyes. “You two should go take a f*cking cuddle break.”

“I’ve got a much better idea,” Dick suggested, impatiently. “Why don’t we get back to business?”

“Yes,” agreed Len. “Where were we?”

“Suspicious activity,” prompted Dick. He seemed eager to get me out of the room, move on to the next interrogation. Presumably they were working their way through the entire Project Icon payroll, in which case, it was going to be a long day.

“Right, yes,” said Len, fingers on his temples to focus himself. “So before you go, Bill: I need you to tell us anything you’ve seen or heard at Project Icon that’s given you cause for concern. Anything. I know you think all this press has been good for the ratings—and it has, yes—but Sir Harold has made his feelings very clear: He wants this leak plugged and the person responsible for it punished. This bingo business has pushed him right to the edge, Bill. Plus, the man’s eighty-two years old. He’s unpredictable. Any excuse, and bam! He’ll shut us down. And I don’t even need to tell you how much pressure Nigel Crowther is putting on the old bugger to give The Talent Machine a clear field in September. We’re not home free yet, Bill. Not by a very long shot. So think: Who could be doing this?”