Badge of Evil by Bill Stanton Page B

other people about him, people from the old days and from the music business. Try to get some sense of what kind of guy he is, how other people see him.”
    â€œOooooh, yeeesssss,” Lucy squealed. “A. J., you’re the best.”
    â€œHey, no biggie, girl, you’ve earned it. Did you set up anything else with him?”
    â€œHe invited me to some, I don’t know, I guess it’s like a promo party for one of his new rappers. It’s at a club in Brooklyn. I think it’s actually like under the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s later in the week.”
    â€œOf course he did. You don’t have to go if you’re not comfortable, or if—”
    â€œA. J.,” she cut him off. “I know that’s coming from the right place but it’s still patronizing. I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine.”
    â€œOkay,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how you’re doing.”

6
    ON SUNDAY MORNING, Frank Bishop was his usual high-energy, hyperactive self. He’d had a really quiet Saturday night—no women, no booze, no carrying on—partly because he was tired but mostly because he simply couldn’t deal. He’d once heard somebody say, “I hate everything and everybody and I hate everything about everybody,” and that pretty much summed up how he was feeling by Saturday afternoon. It didn’t happen often, but every once in a while, he just needed to totally retreat, to be by himself.
    After he’d interviewed Andrea Jafaari at Bellevue, he’d gone to the press conference with her and Victoria Cannel. Essentially, he just stood there for almost forty-five minutes while Victoria strutted, preened, and served up witty, sometimes biting responses to the reporters’ questions. Victoria was in fine form. She did righteous indignation with about as much over-the-top, almost campy, passion as Pacino in Scarface . She looked great too, Bishop thought, with her thick, lustrous hair swept back away from her face and her blue suit outlining the contours of her soft, fleshy curves. Though she was in her midforties and, as Bishop liked to say, way past warranty, she was clearly garage-kept. He passed the time imagining himself slowly undoing her skirt and watching it slide down to her ankles. Then he’d peel back her panties and bend her over one of the cheap brown folding chairs right there in that room with its toxic fluorescent lighting. He got so into it that at one point he started to close his eyes and breathe a little heavily, forgetting he was in front of a phalanx of reporters and cameras. By the time the press conference was over, he was drained instead of horny and he decided to simply head home.
    Bishop lived in a stunning town house on East Seventy-Ninth Street off Madison, just a few blocks uptown from Supreme. Like much of the rest of his life, it was a cleverly negotiated arrangement. The house was owned by J.D. and Kiki Hiller of Power XXL, the largest independent oil company in America. Bishop had been their go-to guy for years, the “fixer” who, in return, got a two-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, accessible by the old servants’ entrance, rent-free. The “real” front door opened into a black and white marble foyer with a small elevator and a grand winding staircase. The Hillers spent most of their time at their 55,000-acre Texas ranch, which meant that Bishop had the run of the place just about all the time.
    When he walked into his apartment, his king shepherds, Gus and Woody, came running to greet him. Gus was named for Augustus McCrae and Woody for Woodrow F. Call, the two stalwart, irresistible cowboys at the heart of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove . It was the best book Bishop had ever listened to. Bishop played with the dogs for a bit, went through the mail, checked his messages, and took a long, hot shower.
    Then it was time to decompress. He ordered some