Page 6 of Headcase
“Closer to what?” Blake asked, exasperated.
“To Thomas Mulvaney.”
Getting to Thomas Mulvaney was the key to cracking this story, whatever it was. He needed clues. He needed a trail to follow. There was a difference between suspecting somebody was a criminal mastermind and proving it. To take down the Mulvaney clan, he’d need iron-clad evidence, and for that, Zane would need to get into Thomas Mulvaney’s inner circle.
If Zane could just meet him, convince him he was some altruistic bleeding heart, maybe it would give him just the tiniest peek behind the Mulvaney family’s curtains. But Zane had nothing in common with a one percenter like Mulvaney. Zane had been born middle-class and, through his father’s hard work and perseverance, he’d risen to upper-middle class. Mulvaney probably spent Zane’s rent payment on a tie clip.
“If you were to get to him, how would you do it?” Zane asked.
Nobody knew better than Blake how to get to people who didn’t want to be gotten. He’d seen the man hang upside down from a tree to get a shot of a celebrity.
Blake sighed, pulling out his phone. “You’ll never make it past the front door. Hell, you won’t make it through a backdoor. The best you can hope for is to slip through a basement window, metaphorically speaking.”
“What would Thomas Mulvaney’s basement window be?” Zane asked.
Blake shrugged. “Look at his social media. The man spends his life attending galas for shit like saving alpacas. He takes pictures with little bald-headed cancer kids. If you want to get to him, that’s how you do it.”
“Please, tell me you’re not saying I need to crash a fundraiser for cancer kids.” Zane had some principles.
Blake turned his phone towards Zane. “How about a press awards dinner? Seems he’s receiving some kind of award tonight.”
“How do you know that?” Zane asked.
Blake rolled his eyes. “It’s called the internet, Zane. We all have access to it now, you know?”
Zane huffed. “How do I sneak into a press awards dinner? I don’t think I can just stroll in.”
Blake shook his head. “All those major events are bar-coded now. You have to scan your phone at the door.” He hopped to his feet. “Thanks for lunch, but I gotta go. Oh, and Beach needs that copy in an hour.”
Beach. That was who he needed. She was their editor, and the definition of the word ballbuster had her picture beside it. He pulled out his phone and scrolled to her name, pressing send just as the door closed behind Blake.
She answered on the third ring. “Do you have my ad copy?”
He probably should have called after he finished writing that up. “Not yet. I need a favor.”
Beach scoffed. “No copy, no favor.”
“It’s a little favor. Just a teeny tiny one.”
Beach sighed. “What is it?”
“I just need to get into the press awards dinner tonight.”
“Are you nuts?”
“I can have the copy to you in literally twenty minutes,” Zane bartered. “Please? This could be a huge story.”
“Zane, I am a forty-year-old woman who spends my days playingLet’s Make a Dealwith every publicist in the city to keep their celebrity clients either in or out of the public eye, depending on what benefits us all most financially. The only stories I care about are trashy ones. So, unless you’re going to bring me a story where you find Barbara Walters giving a handjob to Matt Lauer under the table at that dinner, I’m not helping you.”
Zane’s lip curled at the all too vivid picture she painted. “Thomas Mulvaney can be plenty juicy if you’d just help me find something.”
Beach groaned. “Are you still on about this? Leave it alone. Nobody cares about corrupt billionaires.”
“Please, Beach. Please? You don’t even have to do anything, I’ll just swap a couple of name cards when I get there.”
Beach scoffed. “You’re not even invited. There is no card swapping when your card doesn’t exist.”
“It’s an awards show for the press. Nobody will give a shit if I crash their little party. Surely, somebody at the paper was invited. We are technically press, right? Just put me in as a sub. I’ll be whoever you want me to be. Please?”
