Another Thing To Fall Read online

  "Did she arrange the abduction of Johnny Tampa?"

  "We set that up with some friends of Derek. After the smoke bomb Friday — not one that we planned, by the way, and Alicia said it wasn't her — and the fight at the funeral, we thought it could tip the balance. Who could blame Johnny if he didn't want to come back to Baltimore for season two? He'd be traumatized."

  "Selene," Tess said, still using the slow, patient voice that she had always used with the girl, although she realized now it was far from necessary. "The things you've done — they're not practical jokes. You're in felony territory. Arson, making a false report."

  "I didn't report anything," she pointed out. "Johnny's driver did, and he was utterly sincere. He saw two guys grab Johnny. It's not our fault if he inferred something was going on."

  Tess sighed, even as part of her mind registered Selene's correct usage of inferred. "Look, you're a smart girl, smarter than any of us knew. Maybe I can make this go away, but only if everything ends now. Where's Johnny?"

  Selene gave Flip one last through-the-lashes look, one last trembling pout, but he wouldn't even meet her gaze. "He's up in Philadelphia, playing cards and hanging out," she said. "The plan is for him to take the train home tonight and be found wandering in East Baltimore."

  "You were right," Tess said to Flip, who looked absolutely stricken. "It was Selene and Johnny all along, with the help of one disgruntled employee."

  "Who cares?" Flip said. "It was one thing for Selene to be such a bitch—"

  "Hey!" Selene objected. She probably wasn't used to being called that, at least not to her face.

  Flip didn't care. "But Johnny fucking Tampa. No one wanted to hire him when we picked him up. He only has heat because of this project. That guy is a fuckin' backstabber." He looked as if he wanted to shake Selene. "Do you two morons realize this wasn't just about you? That Ben and Lottie and I have careers, too? Not to mention the crew, which worked sixteen-, eighteen-hour days? Or the money — Jesus fuckin' Christ, the money. We're spending twenty-five million dollars, just to make eight episodes. Didn't any of that matter?"

  Selene shrugged, lifting her tiny shoulders ever so slightly, making her shoulder blades stand out like bony, immature wings — not that anyone in this room would mistake her for an angel.

  "You know what?" Whitney said. "I liked you better when I thought you were stupid."

  It took much of the afternoon and pretty much all Tess's accumulated credits with various local law enforcement agencies to clean up Selene and Johnny's mess. The U.S. attorney's office, mindful of the fact that one of its own had once ruthlessly hounded Tess not so long ago, decided to ignore the whole thing. After all, the FBI hadn't been brought into it officially. The police and firefighters also calmed down, especially after Flip promised generous donations to their fraternal organizations. Tull got on the phone, too, largely to be assured that Selene and Johnny's reign of terror hadn't extended to Greer's murder.

  "No," Tess told him. "One thing that they were clear on was that they had nothing to do with the incidents at the production office, not even Friday's smoke bomb. Didn't fit their strategy, which was to make the production look like a public nuisance. Hey — did you find Greer's engagement ring?"

  "No," Tull said.

  "Have you closed the case?"

  "Getting there."

  She wanted to argue, although today's events made it more likely that JJ Meyerhoff had killed Greer. Selene had been genuinely mystified when Tess asked if Greer might have information that could harm Mann of Steel. "By the way, there was a local girl tangled up in this mess, but I'd like to give her a bye. You see a problem there?"

  "No, but then — none of this is my problem, thank God. Look, if there's no charges, there's no story. The problems go away, the production finishes up, and everyone goes back to fuckin' California. Looks like you actually managed to do what they wanted all along, protect them from the local media — and themselves."

  Tess hung up the phone. It was going on 3 P.M. and she hadn't found time to talk to Flip about his broken Emmy. It seemed almost too much. Maybe she should track down Ben, arrange to meet with him, confront him with the information she had about Zervitz.

  Only — where was Ben? He had never shown up at the office, and no one had heard from him.

  "He doesn't always come in or call," Lloyd said when Tess asked if he knew where Ben was. "He likes to write at Starbucks. But we have a deal — he always answers my messages, because I call only if it's important, shit-hit-the-fan time."

  "Call him now."

  "But, Tess—"

  "Lloyd, the shit has hit."

  He did as he was told, sighing and shrugging. Somehow, it was more appealing on Lloyd than it had been on Selene. But then, Selene had been playing a part. Lloyd really was a peevish adolescent, sure that all the adults around him were idiots.

  "He ain't answering," he said, puzzled. "But the phone's not off. If it was off, it wouldn't ring at all, just send me straight to voice mail. Let me try a text."

  The text, too, went unanswered.

  "He should be calling back," Lloyd said. "He knows I only call if he's in trouble."

  "Work was called off," Tess said.

  "Ben might not know," Lloyd pointed out. "He don't check e-mail either."

  But maybe Ben did know the secret of the Emmy and what it held. Maybe Ben had the mystery letter all along. Tess was suddenly very tired of Hollywood people and their machinations. She decided to call Alicia Farmer, tell her that the jig was up, that Tess had protected her out of homegirl loyalty, misplaced as it might have been. Johnny and Selene reminded her of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, although she would never have described them as careless. They had been meticulous in the way they had tried to smash up things. True, local girl Alicia might have been a little money hungry, but she hadn't stood a chance with those slicksters.

  Tess tried the video store first, only to be told that Alicia hadn't come in today.

  "Didn't come in, or wasn't scheduled to come in?"

  "Didn't show for her shift, which started at noon. Boss is pissed."

  "Is this typical? Alicia not showing up?"

  Impossible to know over the phone, but Tess sensed she had just been shunted off with a shrug for the third time that day.

  "Not my problem. Although, I guess it is, because now I have to work to close and—"

  Tess was not unsympathetic to the Charm City Video employee's plight, but she didn't have time for the rest of the story. She hung up, grabbed her keys and her purse, and raced out.

  When she reached Alicia's house twenty-five long minutes later, she was relieved to hear footsteps heading to the door promptly upon her knock.

  And surprised to be greeted by a very pale, drawn-looking man, circles under his eyes and a tremor in his limbs.

  "Hey," Ben Marcus said, his voice thin and flat. "There's a guy just behind me, with a gun in my back, and he would like you to come inside, too, or he's going to kill me."

  Ben must have seen in Tess's face that she was quickly running through the possible options, wondering what would happen if she simply ran or began to scream. Or produced the gun from her own purse.

  "He's already killed Alicia," Ben said. "He really doesn't have a lot to lose."

  Chapter 33

  Alicia's body was on the floor of her den, facedown. Tess didn't know from forensics — she had never even seen an episode of CSI — but she was reliably sure that Alicia had been there for several hours, possibly overnight. She had been shot from behind, in the base of the head, presumably after turning her back on the man who now sat in one of the club chairs, a gun pointed at Ben.

  Thoughts zinged through Tess's head like so many errant pinballs, and she managed to keep one ball in play longer than usual, banging it against various pockets of memory: whap, whap, whap. Who, who, who.

  "You can't be Wilbur R. Grace," she said at last to the man. "But I think you must be connected to him."

  "He was my bro
ther-in-law for thirty years and my best friend since I could remember," said the man. How old? Fifties was the best Tess could do. Thin brown hair. Two eyes, yes, although you'd be hard-pressed to put a color to them. It was a face made to be forgotten. A local man, judging by his accent, the kind of man her Uncle Donald knew from his work in various state bureaucracies.

  "And he killed himself, and you blame…?"

  Ben, who usually thrummed with excess energy, looked catatonic. How long had he been here? Since last morning? Since last night? Lloyd said he had been at the office with him until eleven. The older man, by contrast, looked fresh, composed.

  "He hung himself in despair," the man said, "after Greer Sadowski reversed herself and claimed she had no memory of finding his treatment for our movie, The Duchess of Windsor Hills."

  "Ah," Tess said, smiling more broadly than this weak bit of local wordplay deserved. Windsor Hills was a neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore; the woman who had persuaded the Prince of Wales to forsake the British crown was a Baltimore girl, Wallis Warfield Simpson. "Very clever."

  "We thought so," the man said defensively, unsure if he was being mocked. Perhaps he had been ridiculed a lot, or felt that way. "You see, the Duke of Windsor was something of a Nazi sympathizer. If he hadn't married Simpson, he would have become king, and who knows what kind of world we would be living in now?"

  "You have something there," Tess said, falling back on one of her generically truthful phrases. You have something there. That's an idea.

  "It was my concept, although Bob was the one who fleshed it out. He was the writer. Also the cinematographer. But the ideas often started with me, some offhand observation I might make. That's how we worked."

  "Sure," said Tess, trying not to look at the body on the floor. One shot, two shots, three shots, a dollar. Once you're in for capital murder, stand up and holler. "I bet."

  "Don't patronize me," the man said, now pointing his gun at Tess. It was a small thing, not at all formidable, but at this range, it didn't have to be.

  "I'm not," Tess said. "I'm piecing together what I know. You had an idea, one similar to Mann of Steel, and you believe that someone from the production saw that idea—"

  "I know," the man said. "I did it. I walked right up to this gentleman on the set of The Last Pagoda and handed him our idea, in a sealed envelope. I have a photo in my scrapbook, of me on set, and you can see this Ben Marcus right there in the background. That's a much more definitive link than anything that Zervitz put up, and he won a million dollars."

  He slapped a fabric-covered album on the coffee table with his left hand, holding fast to his gun with the right. So that was the scrapbook, the repository of his dreams.

  "Over the years, we forgot about it, figured out no one ever saw it. But then this Mann of Steel show comes to town, and once Bob reads the pilot script, he's sure it's our story. Our idea was stolen and passed on to the son, but it's still ours."

  "Phil Tumulty doesn't send Flip birthday cards, much less give him ideas," Ben put in, wan but defiant. "If Phil Tumulty had a great idea — and he hasn't had one for years — he'd keep it for himself."

  "Shut up," the man said, swinging the gun back to Ben. "Shut up. You're the one who took our idea, you're the one who gave it to Flip. Phil Tumulty never saw it because you took it. Say it. Admit it."

  Ben straightened up, although it took him some effort. "I would — if I did. But I honestly don't remember. If I ever read your scenario, it was, what? Fifteen years ago? Do you think I sat on it all this time, while developing other shows, thinking, Boy, this Duchess of Windsor Hills is my golden ticket? I don't remember it. Maybe I read it, maybe I didn't. But… I… didn't… remember… it, so how could I steal it?"

  The man stood up, shaking all over, and Tess believed that he would have pistol-whipped Ben if it hadn't required stepping over Alicia's body to get to him. He was enough of an amateur to be squeamish. Good to know.

  "There's time travel, same as ours," he said, holding up the index finger of his left hand. "A regular guy — factory worker in ours — involved with a royal woman." Middle finger out, followed quickly by his ring finger, which had a slender gold band. "And, finally, there was the concept of the alterna-history, how things change if you disrupt even one tiny thing. You had Napoleon, we had Nazis, but it was basically the same."

  "Maybe," Ben said. "Possibly. If I ever saw it — only I didn't."

  That was enough to goad the man into standing up, crab-walking past Alicia's body, and smacking Ben with the pistol. Ben's nose started to gush blood, and he whimpered. Tess tried to get her hand inside her bag where her Beretta waited, safe and serene, but she wasn't quick enough.

  "Is that what everyone has been looking for, this letter written years ago? Is that the proof you needed to bring your claim against the production?"

  "It's not proof—" an unrepentant Ben began nasally, hands clapped over his bloody nose, and while Tess was impressed by how ballsy he was, she tried to cram a world of meaning into one stern look. Shut UP.

  "We didn't keep a copy. Bob didn't even have a computer then. People didn't, in 1992, and we didn't think to photocopy it. We thought we were dealing with an honorable man. He kept calling the office, asking for a meeting with Flip Tumulty, sure he would do the right thing if he knew. The girls kept putting him off, although this one" — he gestured at Alicia's body — "didn't mind selling him the pilot script, so he could start working on the comparison chart that our lawyer recommended. But after that, she stopped taking his calls, made the other girl deal with him."

  Alicia had sold Wilbur "Bob" Grace the scripts, then taken Selene's and Johnny's money to wreak havoc on the set. Whatever one thought of her ethics, she was certainly entrepreneurial.

  "So who found the letter, after all?" Tess asked.

  "Ms. Sadowski. She called Bob, all excited, said she had found what he wanted. Then, two days later — she denied it all, said she was mistaken. I knew she was lying. But Bob gave up, and Alicia got fired, so she didn't have access to Flip anymore. I had to get to the other one, don't you see? I knew she had it, that she couldn't destroy it. And once I got into her apartment, I was more sure than ever it was at the office, but I couldn't go back there…."

  Back there. Tess's mind registered that. He had been to the office and Greer's apartment. But it had all been for naught.

  "Alicia found it, Friday night," Ben said. "She was the one who planted the smoke bomb, then hid in the building until the firefighters left. Then she went into the office and found it. The only thing I can't figure out is where, because I've been looking for it since Greer died."

  "The base of Flip's Emmy." Tess gave him a sad look, aware of the irony. "Lloyd dropped it just last night, and the band popped off, and I remembered how you said—"

  "That Greer was always buffing Flip's Emmy, that she had just brought it back from being shined up. Damn. I can't believe Alicia figured that out and I didn't."

  The man with the gun had grown impatient, or perhaps he felt frustrated that even a firearm couldn't guarantee him center stage. "It was my property, with Bob gone. She had no right to sell it. But I came here this morning, and she said she was going to meet with Ben next, see what he was willing to pay, and that she would get back to me." He was waving his hands as he spoke, getting more and more worked up. Tess didn't think that was to anyone's benefit. "Get back to me. Do you know how many times I've heard that? Do you know how many times I said that, back when I had a job? I'll get back to you. It always means they won't, that you'll have to call and call, and ask to speak to their supervisors."

  Tess gave him a chance to catch his breath, then asked: "Can I see it?"

  "What?"

  "The letter, the one you say you gave to Ben."

  "It's not a matter of saying. I have photographic proof." He gestured again to the scrapbook lying on the coffee table in front of Ben, then opened it with his left hand. He was being very disciplined about maintaining his grasp on his gun, muc
h to her disappointment.

  Tess looked. There indeed was a young Ben, in the background of a photo, which had been carefully labeled. GEORGE ON THE SET OF THE LAST PAGODA, SUMMER 1992.

  "You're George?" she asked. Fifteen years had worn much differently on this man than they had on Ben. Harder. Was it just that the trip from twenty to thirty-five was less fraught than the journey from early forty-something to late fifty-whatever? Or had this man weathered a much tougher fifteen years than Ben?

  "I'd prefer to be called Mr. Sybert. I deserve that courtesy."

  "Okay, Mr. Sybert."

  Ben looked stricken, as if knowing the man's name put them at greater risk. It's not Reservoir Dogs and he's not Mr. Brown, Tess yearned to tell him. For one thing, you're not tied to that old sofa. For another, you still have both your ears. There was a dead body at their feet and the man had already revealed his relationship to Wilbur Grace. His name was small potatoes.

  "So you came here this morning, thinking you were going to be given this letter?"

  "Yes."

  "And you just happened to have a gun with you?"

  Mr. Sybert hesitated, working through the implications of Tess's question.

  "None of this matters, Mr. Sybert," she assured him. "I'm not a police officer, and this isn't a confession. I'm merely curious. I want to know your side of things. Did you come here, knowing you would use violence if Alicia didn't give you what you wanted? Or was it more like the night at the production office, where you lost control and killed Greer when she refused to listen to you?"

  "I didn't kill that girl," he said tentatively, as if testing a story out. "She was dead when I got there. I started to search for things, but I got scared and left."

  "Here, though…" Tess was making a considerable effort not to throw up when she looked at the body between them. Judging by Ben's face and the sickly dairy smell that lingered in the room, he had lost that battle sometime earlier.