Pull Focus, page 11
“I was an intern a year ago. I just showed up every day and made sure I was the last person to leave the set at night.”
“With that kind of attitude, you’ll do just fine in this business,” I said, smiling. He must have inherited his humility from his mother. I asked him a couple more questions about his career path and gave him my card, offering to help in any way. “I just want to have a quiet word of congratulations with Nicholas about his film before dessert is served,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I’d never met Nicholas Bruele before, but knew of him by reputation. A master of technical virtuosity in his craft, a complete mess in his personal life. A man who spoke in interviews about his desire to live happily ever after and yet who saw one relationship after another disintegrate because of his predilection for emotionally needy women.
His artistic vision, though, rarely suffered a misstep, and that’s what I told him as we stood quietly talking. I felt the hand on my elbow before I sensed the presence of someone beside me. Failing radar; that was disconcerting. There was no chance of survival without it. “I’m very sorry,” Samantha said, pulling me away. “I must have a word with Jane.”
We walked a few feet to the left. “Let’s stand here for a half minute talking,” she said, her sedate tone fitting the decorum in the room. “Then you go to Darren and quietly tell him that there’s an emergency that you must attend to. I’ll meet you at the elevator.”
There was little doubt in my mind that Darren understood the score. He slipped his card into my jacket pocket, a transgression so fast and slight it could have been missed. But I got the signal. “Very few people on this planet have my private mobile. I’ll be waiting for your call,” he said.
And then we were gone. A ground swell of noise sucker punched me the moment the elevator doors reopened onto the rooftop crowd, which had swelled to at least five hundred people. Large steel lamps shot flames out the top of their eight-foot cylinders into the night sky. A DJ rocked the dance floor from a platform high above the crowd. I hoped he didn’t have vertigo. I hoped the event organizers had an adequate insurance rider.
There was no way of being heard so I mimed a drink to Samantha. She nodded, and we started to make our way very slowly toward the bar. It took twenty minutes to get there, and another ten to get the featured cocktail. “Fuck ISIS punch,” the sign said. I declined the bacon stick offered as a garnish. The party planner’s choices were about as tasteful as the movie.
The rum and bitters packed quite a punch, and the warmth of the alcohol wound its way through me. I’d been drinking more than normal in the past few months — a socially acceptable decompression tool — and my liver’s displeasure at the increased alcohol and caffeine intake was making itself known. A shake of my arm interrupted my thoughts and I saw Samantha point to her watch and mouth words at me. I shook my head, uncomprehendingly. She leaned over and yelled in my ear, “We’ve met our obligation. We can go anytime.”
A world of problems waited for me beyond the confines of this rooftop. I shook my head and turned back to the bar. I was having a second before I had to go back in the ring.
I’d barely been handed it from the bartender when arms grabbed me from behind, the compression at my solar plexus depleting the oxygen in my lungs. My breath became shallow; the room faded in and out of sight. I was swung around away from the bar and then dropped, hitting the floor. I scurried out of the way of stampeding feet, until my back was against a hard surface, and I could inch my way up. My head knocked against a railing, the same spot where I’d hit the bathroom sink. I was finally able to pull myself to standing, and then climbed onto the bar to survey the room, sending rows of drinks flying as I did.
Half the crowd still moved to the beat, oblivious that anything more sinister was going on. The rest were just beginning to cotton to the strangers in their midst, dressed all in black, balaclavas covering their faces, guns in hand.
Hands went up to take photos while others scrambled, screaming, for cover. Plates of food were transported into flying saucers when the tall cruiser tables put out by the caterers went horizontal in the crush. The rhythmic whoosh of helicopter blades, at first faint but then growing in volume, competed with sirens.
David appeared suddenly in front of me, corralling three of the black-clad commandos. The crowd, sensing the change in power dynamics, butted forward another five commandos using seized guns which, upon closer inspection, looked to be cheap and flimsy.
This was the moment, as I tried to explain later to the anti-terrorism squad, when I understood that the plot had gone off the rails. The DJ, earphones on and head down, ignored all signals to shut off the music, concentrated as he was on his oeuvre. Snoop Dogg continued to rail against the police as the sirens reached top pitch from the front of the hotel. The sense of crisis gave way to a sinking feeling of parody, and I stood there, just shaking my head, imagining how this cockup would play in the media. Play into Jacob’s hands.
Suddenly, the music ceased. The DJ took off his earphones and yelled, “Who the fuck is fucking with my fucking electricity?” The night sky lit up with flashes from cell phone cameras. The paper the following day would track that #invasion had trended to the top ten within the first minute of the most ill-advised publicity stunt of all time. More than a thousand photos were uploaded to Instagram in less than five minutes.
Every entrance to the rooftop opened, and dozens of men in uniform spilled onto the rooftop. It was instantly recognizable that these men in black were not like the others. Even the best trained actors in the world, and that was not who the party planner had hired, couldn’t replicate the sheer violence and intimidation by which the police officers moved through the crowd. No remorse shown as people were pushed aside. They spread like a tornado across the crowd, seizing control, until they arrived at the unlikely grouping of eight men in Halloween costumes and David. All were on the ground in a blink of an eye.
I scrambled down from the bar and worked my way toward the knot of control, holding on to passing objects with one hand. It was slow going, and more than once I had to duck the confiscatory arm of an officer. Elsewhere, the police rounded up groups of people and removed them wholesale from the room. As the crowds thinned, I limped closer to the half circle of officers and prisoners.
“Step back, ma’am. I won’t ask twice,” one of the them said to me.
“I’m Jane Browning. I run the film festival.”
“Are you in charge of this event?”
“No. That would be the film’s producer. Do you understand the men in black are actors?”
The police officer shook his head violently from side to side. “You can’t be serious.” David was nearby on the ground; the officer kicked him in the leg. “Are you the asshole responsible for this?”
Given his face had been pushed into the ground, and his hands tied behind his back, it was difficult for David to make himself understood, but with a series of grunts and head shaking he managed to communicate no.
“He works for me,” I said. “He had nothing to do with this.”
Two police officers pulled him up roughly from the ground, bumping him against any surface they could. He grimaced in obvious pain but said nothing. Other officers dragged the black-clad actors to their feet.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Panov and another man were right behind you at the bar, did you see them?”
“What?” I said, as I noticed Franny in the middle of a group that included the producer of Operation Bin Laden. A freelance publicist, Franny worked for whoever paid, and I suspected her presence at the party wasn’t coincidental.
By this time, Samantha had made it over. “Who is he, Jane?”
The officer detaining David took a step toward me, pulling him along. “He works for you, or he doesn’t work for you?”
“He works for me personally, not the festival. His name is David Levy.”
“In what capacity?”
I calculated the percentages of my various responses and landed on the abridged truth as my only option. “He’s my bodyguard.”
Franny stepped forward, batting away the hand of the police officer who tried to stop her. “Jane, you’re going to need get out in front of the messaging on this one. I’ll start tonight, and we’ll sort out the money thing in the morning.”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage here tonight, Franny?” I said.
Heads swirled toward her direction. “This wasn’t my responsibility. I just executed according to the plan. I don’t set strategy.”
“What do you need a bodyguard for?” Samantha was working hard to regain form. “Are you receiving threats? Have you alerted security?”
“Yes,” I said, my eyes holding David’s. “They recommended him to me.”
The police began hustling David and the actors toward the elevator. The main officer pointed his finger at me and then at the elevator. “You’re coming, too.”
“Jane goes nowhere without me,” Samantha said.
“Get out of the way, or we’ll put you out of the way.”
“It’s okay, Samantha, thank you,” I said. “Please stay here and be in charge of whatever containment is possible.”
“At least tell me where you’re taking her,” she said, not willing to address me directly.
“Fourteen Division.” He started pulling me, David, and the actors to the elevator.
“Monique,” Samantha yelled toward the back of the crowd, where the producer of the film was backing off as nonchalantly as she could manage. “You’re staying with me to deal with the hotel people and then we’re going together to the police station.”
Monique started to protest but Samantha was finally in control and she wasn’t about to give it up. “Throwing the talent under the bus is never a good idea for a producer. You’ll bail out the actors as necessary. And you’ll face the media scrum. Or I’ll be naming and shaming, have no doubt about that.”
Fanny’s strident voice trying to downplay the event was the last thing I heard as the doors to the elevator closed. “Just breathe deeply. We’ll be out of here in twelve seconds.” David’s brown eyes were inscrutable. “Count backward with me. Twelve, eleven, ten . . .”
I mouthed the words with him, but my mind had wandered elsewhere. Twelve seconds. Life begins and ends in less time. Actions taken and regretted. David got to zero and the doors opened, as if exactly on queue.
Chapter Nine
Day 5: Our Brand Is Crisis
The food Franny rounded up for us at the station was pretty tasty, I had to give her that. But after spending seven hours listening to her name drop every person who’d ever hired her in the film industry, and all the just fabulous things she’d done for them, I was ready to shove the leftovers in her mouth.
It was now Monday morning, one business day after the visit by the securities regulator. The threatening presence of Anna Basmanova and Alexei Panov attacked my central nervous system from the left, while the OSC and the RCMP approached from the right. I stared at the walls of the police station waiting room, trying to think.
A strange assortment of people had filled the room through the wee hours. Sixteen of Monique’s production company staked ground in one corner. They’d commandeered whatever small tables they could find to set up a makeshift office. Laptops, iPads, phones, and notebooks were scattered everywhere, alongside bottled water, kale chips, and bags of fruit sourced from the all-night Korean grocery store a few blocks away. Someone even brought in a portable espresso maker and set up a barista bar in the corner. They did a brisk trade, providing alms in the way of free coffee to the families of the street youth, drug dealers, and mentally ill who’d been arrested that evening.
Who said Hollywood didn’t give back?
Thoroughly fed up with our traveling show, the police frequently told us to pipe down but their communications team had immediately sussed the challenge in evicting a group of social media influencers, and so they reluctantly let it continue. Samantha did her best to control the situation, but they were ground cover that would not be pruned back for long. The entourage grew as the sun rose and agents, managers, families, and lawyers for the detained actors filtered in.
My tailbone ached from the previous night’s encounter with the floor and hours spent slouched in a hard, plastic chair, although I was grateful to not be in a holding cell. I’d done what I could to get out ahead of the story by emailing every politician or influential person Bob or I knew in the city. I sent a note informing the board what had happened and stressed that we had had nothing to do with the organization of the event and it had not taken place on WTFF property. I copied the marketing staff, Victoria, and our corporate lawyers, putting blame squarely where it was due: on the event planners.
But there was no doubt the fallout would further tip the scales of power against me.
The police were vigilant about keeping out reporters, but Franny and Monica’s team monitored the online news coverage and read out salient bits, including the fact the hotel was next to the children’s hospital, and the helicopter was not the SWAT team descending but rather a six-year-old being airlifted in from a car accident in a remote community. There had been seven hundred people at the party, four hundred beyond fire code, so the hotel faced major fines from the city. Dozens of photographers and journalists camped out on the sidewalk across from the police station, with an equal number estimated at the mayor’s office, waiting for the official reaction from the city once council opened up for business.
“I’ll have a double espresso, and plenty of sugar.”
The sheer authority of Harrison’s booming voice parted the room like the red sea, as the lumbering figure made his way to the espresso bar. I slipped my phone back into its hiding place down my shirt and got up. Samantha had already beelined in front of him.
“Can I help you?” she said. “Are you here for the free coffee or —?”
“I’m Harrison Wex,” he said, twirling his large hand over and over again to indicate the makeshift barista should get a move on with his coffee.
“Everyone with a television in this city knows who you are,” she said. “On the steps of the courthouse, always outraged when one of your clients has been charged with a crime they couldn’t possibly have committed.”
“She comes with teeth, this one,” Harrison said, shaking my hand.
“Harrison is my lawyer, Samantha.”
“Since when?” she said.
“He’s just stepping in to help with this situation.”
She shook her head. “Why do you think you need purchased indignation?”
Harrison drank down his double espresso in one long gulp. “We need to talk in private, Jane.”
The police officer who’d stared me down hours earlier appeared at the door. I walked toward him, Samantha following, but Harrison dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
The officer didn’t speak until we were in the hall. “Of course, you’d be part of this gong show,” he said, cocking his head at Harrison. “Nothing you people do surprises me now.”
“Ms. Browning has every right —”
“I don’t want to hear it,” the police officer said, fixing Harrison with a hard stare. “I accept you weren’t legally responsible for last night,” he continued, speaking directly to me. “But every one of my officers put their lives on the line to save yours and it turns out you film people were playing dress-up. You get all jacked up about whether my officer stepped on the toes of some ex-Mossad agent in a suit, meanwhile that same officer ran up forty-two flights of stairs in full gear worried that a bomb was about to explode.”
Harrison raised his eyebrows at the ex-Mossad comment, but I kept my expression firmly in check. “We fully appreciate the difficulties your officers face,” I said.
“I doubt it,” he said. “On one hand, a strong deterrent is necessary. Any kind of emergency tonight in the city and people would have died. The calls to 911 claimed this was a terrorist attack; we had no choice but to go code three. Every regular and special forces officer that could be pulled to the scene was. The rest of the city had skeletal coverage. Nothing happened, so we look like overreacting assholes in all that video footage. But had someone died tonight, you’d be answering tough questions in the media and city hall. If it were up to me, you still would.”
I nodded. He was right, of course, and I didn’t have an adequate answer.
“The chief is meeting with the mayor right now. We’re unhappy with the monolith the festival is turning into, and we’ll be making our sentiments known.”
I’d love to be a fly on that wall. With any luck, the mayor would attack the festival, motivating the chief to defend it, given the intense dislike between the two. The irony must have crossed all our minds, as we were silent for a moment.
“For the record, I want to say that while our organization has no fiduciary or legal responsibility for a private party we did not plan or produce, we deeply regret the mayhem the party organizers caused for the city and for your officers,” I said. “It was bullshit and I’m sorry they got caught up in it.”
The officer nodded, curtly. “On the other hand, this has turned into a PR debacle for us. Lawyers like this one grind down the court system wasting millions of dollars.”
“Not —” Harrison didn’t get to the second word, before the officer put up a hand to stop him.
“Everyone is free to go in this matter. The actors and the hired muscle are being processed out now. Clear the circus in the waiting room immediately. And I mean now. Morning rush hour is already slowed to a halt with the media trucks parked out there. No gabfest between you and the journalists when you leave, understand? Take it elsewhere or we’ll remove you.”
