Second cough from Mr. Cox, and it sounded just a bit nervous before he gave us a slight smile. “It’s fairly clear that neither one of you knows who Nick Madison is, and for that I’m actually a bit thankful.”
“Unless something is dangerous, which you assured me it was not,” Jared rumbled pointedly, staring holes through the younger man, “then I don’t like my people to see pictures of a potential client or be unfairly biased one way or another.”
“Which I find helpful,” Cox assured him as Katie slid a portfolio across the table to Jared. “But I need to explain who I am and what I do, and the investment of time and money that I have in Nick Madison.”
Sawyer Cox owned several record labels, was an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, invested in start-ups and, most importantly, was a talent manager. Nick Madison was young, just seventeen, when he signed on with Cox, and now at twenty-six, he was one of the top earners in his stable, coming in currently at an impressive two hundred million. The number was expected to increase with every new endorsement.
That was the good part.
The bad part was that, after years of cleaning up scandal after scandal, mess after mess, all of it—the bad boy image that happened through drugs, alcohol, and enough partying that he should have been dead—he was now on the cusp of being sued for breach of contract. He owed his new label a record.
“Nick used to be on my label,” Cox explained as his assistant Donna passed Jared what I first thought was some kind of bound book but that I quickly realized, when he slid it sideways to me, was a contract. Just one. It looked like Lord of the Rings or something, it was that big. “But he left mine, with my blessing, because the offer was bigger than anything I could give him, and because, as his manager, my first priority is to make him money.”
“Not to take care of him?” I asked before my brain caught up.
“I’m supposed to shape Nick’s career,” he clarified, his pale blue gaze on mine. “I’m supposed to make his dreams come true through smart business decisions and putting him in touch with people, like lawyers and accountants, who can help him make those.”
I shut up because this was way too high end for me.
“When Nick was on my label, if he was late on something, I could push it off, change the deadline, but since he’s not with me anymore, he has run afoul of his contract.”
“This investment portfolio looks sound,” Jared said, still flipping through the pages. “You’ve made great choices for him, and though I’m only giving this a cursory glance, it looks like he can stop doing anything at all. Living off the interest from the stocks alone will keep him in the lavish lifestyle he’s come to appreciate.”
“Not if he keeps doing what he’s doing,” Cox argued, taking a breath. “He won’t live to see thirty.”
“I hate to sound trite, Mr. Cox, but you can’t save people who don’t want help.”
“But even if they don’t, there are still last resorts before you walk away,” Mr. Cox said solemnly. “And honestly, I don’t think that’s where we are with Nick—at least not quite yet.”
“Why?” Jared asked him.
“Because he agreed to go to rehab, again. Just got out, actually, a couple days ago, so at the moment he’s clean. I oversaw the sale of his party house in Venice Beach when he was away and bought him a smaller, more isolated one in Santa Barbara. Now, I don’t know how long it’s going to take him to fill the new place with heroin and coke and oxy and all the people who like to do those things with him,” he said with a resigned sigh, “but my hope is that I can get one of your team there to keep him clean before he goes off the rails.”
“May I ask why you don’t just pay the advance on the record that he owes to the new label and let him start fresh?”
“Because the people at Halcyon Records anticipated his partying and drug use being an issue, and because they’re smart enough to know that any record from Nick Madison, even a bad one, is worth more than the advance, they put in language to preclude him paying them off.”
“You said he has bodyguards, currently?”
“That work for him, yes. They don’t monitor his drug or alcohol use; they’re there purely to make sure no one hurts him, takes incriminating pictures or video of him, and that no one tries to slip him anything.”
“That happens?” I blurted out.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he assured me. “His last boyfriend, when he caught Nick in bed with a couple of women, sent another guy to his place a few weeks later, who roofied him.”