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“Yeah, I figured. Thanks for taking care of that for me.”
“Yeah. So. Can have my phone back please?”
I hold out my hand expectantly and she edges in front of it, blocking my path.
“Now, don't be mad,” she starts. She holds both her palms up in front of her as if pushing against an invisible wall like a mime.
I shake my head. That sick feeling in my stomach rises up a little bit higher. “Don't be mad at what, Bunny? What did you do?”
“I opened the door for you,” she explains simply, but her hands are up like a traffic cop or hostage negotiator. “The rest is going to be up to you. But I bought you some time, so you don't have to respond right away. Just think about it, okay? Answer him in the morning. Just think about it.”
“Seriously, Bunny, what did you do?!”
She shrugs uncomfortably. “Well, I had to think of my feet, you know? I mean, all of a sudden he was coming on to me or whatever. So… well, it might've gotten a little flirty. But you will get that meeting with Kirkman, I promise! All you have to do is pull the trigger. Tomorrow morning is probably best. Give him time to simmer.”
My hand trembles as I hold it out, waiting for my phone. I want to see what she said, but I'm also terrified to find out.
What did she just get me into?
Chapter 29
August
One of the main things that I need to do is race against Melanie and the marketing team to stay on top of social media. I wish that I could just work alongside them, but my agenda is different than marketing’s agenda. I have to identify the crazies and get them safely off to the side before marketing decides to comment on or share somebody's tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram story… or upvote somebody’s Reddit post… or whatever the hell else people are doing these days to make it seem like they rub shoulders with the temporarily famous.
More than once, marketing has beaten me to the punch and shared someone's post who was definitely not just looking to innocently express their admiration for Kirkman. Marketing just sees his name and assumes any mention is good press and adds to his brand. That's just not the case. Sometimes “press” is some crazy stalker or someone recently released from a rehab facility who wants to implicate Kirkman in their next freefall toward addiction.
Not that I blame them personally. Everybody has their problems in life. But my problem, currently, is keeping everybody else's problems away from Kirkman's.
So even though I despise every kind of child-infested social media outlet, I still have to spend quite a lot of time on them. I have searches set up automatically and apps that alert me to mentions of his name. And then I have to do a little digging on my own, trying to keep up with any kind of new hashtags.
But the most part, most of the work is done by a simple search on his name. When people tag him, I get a ping. I check them out, trying to see who their friends are, what kind of posts they've made. Is it just posts of their lunch and make up tutorials and maybe some emo shots of local weather systems? Or is it something more troubling — cries for help, mangled song lyrics, excessive use of eyeliner and duck face?
So people are dumb enough to just post an outright threat, but usually it's more subtle than that. I rely on my gut.
I understand the position that Kirkman and his marketing team are in, I really do. He's dependent on social media to keep his brand on everybody's mind. He needs to be able to have the public's support and interest at a basically constant level so when he releases a new single or album or goes on tour, people still remember who he is. The public has a notoriously short memory span, and new things are constantly happening. Everyone follows the new shiny object, whether it's the new release, or new scandal, or even a whiff of danger.
I didn't talk to them directly, but apparently Kirkman's former security detail didn't understand how to balance these problems. Eventually, it appears as though they relaxed their standards to the point that there were some bad characters installed in the entourage itself. That’s unacceptable. They should never have been able to get that close.
From time to time, celebrities understand that there's a risk that someone will target them anonymously, remotely. They'll send threatening messages, or even try to make it look as though they have a relationship with the artist that exists only in their imagination. That's just a part of the game.
But to actually have a threat get right up close, even into the entourage… That's a whole other kind of thing. That means that the security detail failed him on several levels. They didn't properly vet the personality. They didn't do a background check, perhaps. And while it's true that not everybody has a police record, any decent intelligence agent should be able to question an entourage applicant without them even knowing.
It can look like small talk, just pleasant conversation. It can be that subtle. Personally, I was able to ascertain three of the people that Kirkman wanted to bring here were potentially dangerous and have them removed immediately. It only took about ten minutes over breakfast to find out that two of them are mentally unstable, and the third had a jealous boyfriend with a rap sheet that included gun violence.
Of course, I'm excellent at my job. Not everybody is going to be able to spot every risk all the time.
The worst-case scenario is someone who doesn't even seem unstable will slip in and get close enough to actually cause my client harm. That's the real reason Kirkman is even here. That's how catastrophic a failure there was in Seattle.
The young lady in question had spent a good six months getting closer and closer to him. She started as a fan on Facebook, sharing his posts and enthusiastically promoting him. She caught the eye of Melanie and the marketing team, who thought that she was a excellent grassroots promoter. Her cheerleading for Kirkman had resulted in noticeable revenue at a couple of his performances, where she would bring twenty or thirty of her attractive friends to liven up the party in the front row. Cash money got her a favorable impression.
She's not a bad digital artist either, and she created several “fanart” pieces where Kirkman appeared as some kind of manga hero, which appealed to his vanity. Actually, he does kind of look like a Japanese cartoon character in real life. I can see why that was so attractive for him.
So little by little, she got around every obstacle. Melanie had see
n her face, had even pointed her out to Kirkman on Facebook. He knew who she was. So at some performance, he could see her in the front row. He smiled, she smiled back. She got invited backstage. They had a great time, or so I heard.
After that, everybody's defenses were down. She would show up to a gig and get invited backstage immediately. She would show up early, and get invited into the green room before the performance. She just started being an accepted part of the entourage, even though nobody got the bright idea to do any kind of background search on her at all.
