“I agree with Mr. Sybert,” she said quickly. “There’s a difference between conscious tribute and ripping off someone’s idea without acknowledgment. And it is awfully coincidental that you cited the same movie, Ben.”
“A person would have to be a moron not to see-” he began, then finally – finally – caught the look in Tess’s eye and seemed to realize exactly who, in this scenario, was being moronic. “Okay, I concede this round, too. I mean, I’m not admitting that I did anything, but I can see that a jury might find it suspect. But then I always knew that a jury might not believe me. That’s why I panicked when Greer showed me the letter, stuck in a bunch of school crap that Flip asked her to sort. My conscience is clear on this score, and I haven’t been able to say that very often in my life. I think the local jury was crazy to find for the plaintiff in that other case, but I could see that these guys had an even better case. I told Greer I would get her a paid job if she could make the letter disappear.”
“And that’s when she became Flip’s assistant,” Tess said, still trying to work out the timeline.
“No, that was a few weeks later, after Alicia was fired for letting go of the pilot script. Remember, Greer was an unpaid intern at first, going through boxes of crap, same as Lloyd is doing now. God knows what he’ll find on me, given enough time. When she came back for the second favor, I saw I was never going to be free of her.”
“So you killed her,” Mr. Sybert said.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I wasn’t even there that night.” Ben’s confusion was genuine, but Tess realized that Mr. Sybert was sophisticated enough to realize that a defense attorney could offer conflicting theories if he were tried in Greer’s death – the boyfriend did it, the blackmailed writer did it. But Mr. Sybert was still going to have to explain how Alicia had ended up dead at his feet.
“This is about money,” she said. “Plain and simple. Mr. Grace’s idea was used, and he was entitled to payment. Mr. Sybert, as his heir-”
“Well, my wife, Marie, is his heir, but she’s helpless about money matters,” he said. The warm, wry affection inspired by his wife was so normal, so endearing that Tess almost forgot the gun in his hand, the one, maybe two people he had killed.
“What if we paid you a half million and gave your brother-in-law a created-by credit?”
“No fucking way,” Ben fumed, but Tess could tell he was playing along now, that he realized he shouldn’t cave too easily. “I could have optioned the last three Pulitzer Prize winners for that kind of money. And I’ve got the created-by credit on this. You’re taking money out of my pocket.”
“Well,” Tess said, “that’s how damages work. Someone has been hurt. Someone has to make up for that. And I know from the background checks that I performed on the production that you have that much cash in your Fidelity account alone. You could probably run up to the local branch right now and get a cashier’s check in that amount. I’ll stay here, for insurance as they say.”
“It’s almost five now,” Mr. Sybert objected, “and he’d never make it in time, not in rush hour.”
“Not even if he took Northern Parkway to Perring, then took that back way over to Providence Road?”
“Oh, I know a better shortcut than that,” Mr. Sybert said.
“No way. How would you go?”
And that was all it took, the Achilles’ heel of the born, bread-and-buttered Baltimorean, his – or her – certainty of the city’s geography, the parochial pride in knowing the best shortcuts. Mr. Sybert put his gun down on the coffee table, ready to show Tess on the back of one of Alicia’s magazines how to drive to Towson in rush hour – and she head-butted him, threw herself into his soft, round stomach so hard that she tipped over the chair in which he was sitting.
There was much thrashing of limbs and grunting on both their parts, more than Tess had anticipated. He was stronger than he looked, but then – he would have to be. After all, she was now certain that he had beaten a woman to death, which required considerable stamina and commitment. All Tess could do was hope that Ben Marcus had seen enough goddamn movies to realize he should grab the gun left on the table.
In fact, Ben had the posture down – legs braced, if a little quivery, both hands holding the gun. Yes, he had the posture down, but not, thank God, the patter. In fact, Ben didn’t utter a single syllable in the endless two minutes it took for Tess to retrieve her own gun and call 911.
Not that Mr. Sybert was fighting anymore, either. He sat placidly on the floor, reading and rereading his brother-in-law’s letter. He wasn’t smiling – he wasn’t so crazy that he couldn’t realize how much trouble he was in – but the letter clearly brought him some comfort. He had proof, and someone had finally listened to him. On some level, he believed himself vindicated.
“He was really so very clever,” he said when the sirens began echoing down Walther Avenue. “My brother-in-law, I mean. Bob. He could have made a beautiful movie, as good as anything you’d see in Hollywood, if only someone had given him a chance.”
“I suppose,” Tess said, as kindly as she could to a man who had killed two women, “that it really does come down to who you know.”
Ben opened his mouth, as if to contradict her, then stopped. His instincts were good. If he had said something argumentative or tried a bit of snappy banter just now, Tess might have pistol-whipped him, too.
LAST LOOKS
JANUARY
Chapter 34
The Mann of Steel premiere – really, more a onetime showing for the Baltimore-based crew and their families, as the real premiere was to be in Los Angeles two days later – was held at the Senator Theater. The grand old movie house had screened many of Baltimore ’s homegrown projects and had its own Grauman-style sidewalk devoted to the various productions. The squares didn’t come cheap, and Tess knew that Lottie had wanted to forgo the tradition. But Flip was keen to have one, even if it did end up in what Ben called the “Tumulty ghetto,” just beyond the area devoted to his father’s work.
There was even a red carpet of sorts, although no real stars to walk it. Selene Waites was in Prague, working on an independent film, while Johnny Tampa refused to attend when the production – Lottie again – balked at sending him four first-class tickets – one for him, one for his mother, one for the newly minted Mrs. Tampa, and one for her mother. Lottie was willing to go as high as three but drew the line at Tampa ’s mother-in-law. The new Mrs. Tampa, a former Miss Hawaiian Tropic Tan, had been met and married in a whirlwind courtship over the Christmas holidays. But the courtship was not so heady, according to gossip, that Johnny had neglected a prenup.
Good old Johnny, Tess thought, studying one of the posters outside the theater, where Johnny had been given the benefit of a much tighter jawline than he had in real life. He thinks everything through.
A local television reporter tried to catch Tess’s eye when she stopped, but she managed to get inside before he could approach her. She and Ben had agreed not to talk publicly about what happened in Alicia Farmer’s house, and George Sybert was remaining silent as well. As far as the public knew, a city man had killed a city woman in some sort of personal dispute, then agreed to a plea bargain that the beleaguered state’s attorney’s office was happy to make. Some details couldn’t be kept back – George Sybert’s name, the fact that he had been fired from the school district a few months earlier and was increasingly desperate to provide for his invalid wife – but those facts only confused the situation more. A deal had been struck, and there would be no jailhouse interviews about stolen scenarios and The Duchess of Windsor Hills, no accusations of plagiarism.