The Assistants(67)

“That’s what I’m talking about.” Ginger flared her manicure at Wendi. “She needs to do something. Make a statement or something.”

“This she you speak of is me, I assume?” I took a seat next to Wendi.

“No she shouldn’t,” Wendi said. They seemed to be continuing an argument that had begun on their way over.

Wendi took control of my laptop and opened up the Assistance page. “Have you looked at how much donation money’s come in?”

It was a shitload of money, actually. Twenty thousand more than last time I’d checked only a few hours ago.

“Wow.” Lily’s eyes got big behind her glasses. “Where did all those donations come from?”

“There is no such thing as bad publicity,” Wendi said as an explanation.

Ginger leaned forward, offering the table a beguiling view of her cleavage. “But there are rumors flying around that Tina and Emily stole from Titan. People are calling them thieves.”

Wendi pulled back in her chair to offset Ginger’s onslaught. “And for every person calling them thieves, someone else is calling them heroes.”

This got me thinking.

Wendi was right. It didn’t matter so much what people were saying as long as they were saying something. Wasn’t this the golden rule of the new millennium? Had we been taught nothing by Her Imperial Majesty Miley Cyrus, Emperor of the World Wide Web?

What was happening now wasn’t really so different from when I got fired and Wendi used the Internet rumor mill in our favor. This was worse, but all that meant was that we had to go bigger.

“Shouldn’t Tina at least defend herself?” Ginger said. “And what about Emily? Has the girl even gotten a phone call yet? For all we know, she might have a face tattoo by now.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not going on the defensive.”

They all turned to me like it had just now occurred to them that I was sitting there at all.

“What?” Ginger said.

“I know what we need to do,” I said.

My voice hardly sounded like my own. It came out sounding deeper than usual, more sure of itself. “I want to put a call out to the network. Everyone who owes us a favor, all those assistants, the ones with the too-big glasses, and the Zara girls, and Accent Accessory. Everyone.”

I sounded calm and confident.

“I want them to float a news piece for us. A fluff piece. It doesn’t need to be based in any fact . . .”

It occurred to me that I sounded a lot like Robert. A helluva lot like him.

“And this news piece needs to state that some say Robert’s a tax evader. That he has a long history of hiding a bunch of his money in illegal offshore accounts. That’s it. We’re not saying it, per se, but some people are.”

Ginger, Wendi, and Lily were all staring at me like I’d just spoken in tongues or that snake-speak Harry Potter came out with on occasion.

I should explain where this idea came from: Basically, it was Robert’s idea. Or at least he popularized it.

Titan’s twenty-four-hour news channel was known for many things, but thanks to a documentary some liberal folks made a few years back—whose mission was to criticize Titan’s not-so-objective methods of reporting the news—this little tactical nugget was brought to the attention of a discerning public: Some say. Some people say. Some would say.

These were magic words that, when uttered before anything—anything—served as an automatic disclaimer, a get-out-of-jail-free card. Hopefully, in this instance, literally.

“Huh.” Wendi was the first to respond. “That’s so Titan.”

For a split second I thought Wendi might tip my kitchen table onto its side and screech out some sort of “the beast is us” statement, or claim that she could no longer distinguish which of us card players were pigs and which were human beings—but that was all in my literature-heavy mind.

In fact, Wendi smiled at the idea, I think.

“I love it,” she said.

“I don’t get it,” Ginger said.

By the looks of Lily’s suspicious scowl, she didn’t get it either.

“We just need to put the words out there,” I said. “Get people asking questions about what Robert’s done instead of what we’ve done. He’s smart enough to catch on that we’re willing to play dirty, and then he’ll back off.”

“Oh aah well, are you sure this is wise?” Lily’s suspicion had evolved to full-face incredulity. “Making public accusations like this, especially ones that are false?”

She uttered the word false in such a way that made me wonder if she knew exactly how not false these accusations were. She was Margie Fischer’s assistant after all. It was possible Margie had hinted at the existence of her stockpiled documents. But with Lily, who could tell? You’d have better luck getting an emotional read on Siri.

Either way, I wasn’t ready to make those incriminating documents public. Which meant first and foremost keeping them a secret from Wendi and Ginger.

“I’m only trying to scare Robert into doing the right thing,” I said. “We’re not accusing him of anything new. It is true that some people say Robert’s a tax evader. People have been saying that for years. No one’s ever been able to prove anything, and no new evidence has come to light, but we’re not claiming it has. We’re only bringing the subject back up.”