And no charge against Sybert for the murder of Greer Sadowski. That one remained on JJ Meyerhoff ’s scorecard. Sybert could not be shaken in his story: He went to the office that night to confront Greer, and she was already dead. Yes, he was the one who had opened drawers, but he hadn’t taken her ring, didn’t even remember seeing a ring. Tess had been scouring pawnshops and less-than-meticulous antique dealers all fall and into the winter, looking for the simple pear-shaped diamond she remembered, but nothing had shown up. She had even asked Marie Sybert if she had received the gift of a ring last fall, but the poor woman had denied it, and Tess didn’t have the heart to press her. Marie Sybert had enough worries, with her brother dead and her husband in prison.
Tess understood the police indifference to breaking Sybert’s story down. There was no percentage in letting citizens know that they had killed the wrong suspect while the real killer had remained at large, only to kill again. She understood – the first rule of bureaucracy is “Cover your ass,” as her father might say – but she didn’t have to like it. The only consolation was that the decision had been made far above Tull’s head, and she believed that this particular closed case would remain forever open to the conscientious detective. If he got a chance to clear Meyerhoff, he would. Would a ring in a pawnshop prove anything? Only if someone at the store could swear that it was Sybert who had brought it in. Even then, that might not be enough. She was chasing her own MacGuffin, but it seemed more productive than trying to persuade Sybert to confess. Still, she kept visiting him, in hopes he might come clean.
“I wish you had killed me that night,” George Sybert said the last time that Tess saw him, a week before Christmas. “My life insurance would have been sufficient to take care of Marie.”
“Are you sure?” Tess asked.
“Oh yes, I know all the ins and outs of my policies.”
“No, I mean – are you sure that you’d like to be dead?”
“Marie would be better off.”
“Does Marie think so?”
His eyes moistened, and Tess had to remind herself that this disarmingly devoted husband had killed two women. The problem with George Sybert – the problem with most of humankind – was that the only pain that mattered to him was his own. He mourned his brother-in-law and best friend. He would go to any lengths to take care of his Marie. But what about Greer? What about Alicia? Neither one deserved to be dead.
Boy meets girl. Bob Grace gets to Alicia, then Greer gets to him, promising him the document he thinks will prove everything. Boy loses girl. Greer recants, and Bob Grace, despairing of seeing his dream realized, kills himself. His brother-in-law takes over his quest. Boy gets girl. George Sybert kills Greer, then Alicia.
“Popcorn?” Crow asked.
“Of course,” Tess said.
Tess, Crow, and Lloyd had been given reserved seats, far better than Lloyd’s status would normally confer, just two rows behind the producers. Ben motioned Tess to join him in the aisle.
“Can you keep a secret?” Ben asked.
“I would think that my track record speaks for itself.”
The old Ben might have had a comeback for that. The new one said:
“We’re getting a pickup, even before the first episode airs. It’s not exactly the vote of confidence it seems – they just don’t have enough in the production pipeline, so they’re using the pickup to create heat for the show. You know – a show so good we didn’t even wait for ratings. That kind of crap. But they were really excited by the reaction at T.C.A.”
“T.C.A.?”
“The television critics. They meet twice a year, preview stuff. We got great buzz.”
“Congratulations. So Mann of Steel returns to Baltimore. I’ll try to keep the glorious news to myself.”
Ben glanced over his shoulder to see who was nearby. “That’s the thing – we’re not coming back here. The network gave us an early pickup, in part, so we could figure out a way to work around everyone’s schedule. Johnny’s going to do his film this winter, while we’ve agreed to keep Selene light during the season so she can go make her vanity biopic. But the trade-off is we have to do it closer to home, probably Vancouver. It simplifies things, especially now that Johnny’s new wife has decided she wants to live in Hawaii part of the year. Besides, the Maryland Film Commission’s budget was slashed. No more givebacks.”
“So everyone gets what they want, and Baltimore is left empty-handed?”
“Most of Baltimore. How many people live here? Six hundred thousand or so? Well, five hundred ninety thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine get bupkes. But if Lloyd settles down, earns his GED? Flip and I are committed to paying his way through school. USC, NYU, community college, a technical school if that’s what he wants – he gets in, we pay. And we’ll do whatever we can to find him work when he gets out.”
Tess was stunned – happily, for once. “That could be a lot of money, four years of college.”
“Yeah, it’s about what I make a month, since we negotiated our new deal.” The man who had once called her an asshole waited, clearly expecting Tess to say something cutting or sarcastic, but she was at a loss.
“Well… thanks. That’s huge.”
Ben seemed a little disappointed that rudeness had failed her for once. “The movie’s starting. We should go back to our seats.”
“It’s a television show.”
“Well, we call it the movie sometimes.”
“And actresses are actors. Sorry, I’ve been out of the loop.”
Before the screening of the pilot, Flip took the stage and made a little speech, thanking the crew and the city, hitting all the right self-deprecatory notes. Tess remembered him at Greer’s memorial service, how well he had spoken there, too. Yes, Flip had the knack of saying the right words in the right way, but did he ever mean any of them? Here he was, praising his father’s hometown to the skies, knowing that he wouldn’t be returning. He had gotten what he needed out of the city and was moving on. The people who were laughing appreciatively at his jokes and witticisms would have to find new gigs, perhaps move to other cities for work.
Flip returned to his seat to enthusiastic applause, and Mann of Steel began with a bright, peppy credit sequence that made Baltimore look like the Disney version of a working-class town. Tess watched, absorbed in spite of herself. It was actually pretty good. But as the show wore on, she couldn’t help noticing that something had changed. She had changed. Aware now of what happened behind the camera, she couldn’t stop breaking down the effects required by each scene. There was Mann in the union office, but all Tess could focus on was pudgy, vain Johnny Tampa and the view through the window, which she now knew to be translights, computer digitized images lighted for daytime. She watched Selene float into the frame, and she thought about how the camera must have rolled along a track to create that giddy, gliding sensation. She listened to the sounds of a modern port, knowing much of it had been overlaid later, in a studio. She saw the moon rise and wondered if that had been easier or more difficult to capture than a sunrise, or if some stupid local girl had blundered into that shot as well.
And then, just like that, it was over.
With the crew present, the credits were one of the indisputable highlights, applause and shouts greeting each name. Even Tess found herself applauding one small line of type – based on a short story by Bob Grace. With eight episodes this season and a pickup for next, that credit was better than an annuity for Marie Sybert, Bob’s heir. That had been Flip’s idea, but it hadn’t been done out of kindness, or even a belief that George Sybert had a legitimate claim. It was simply the cheapest way to buy Sybert’s silence, to end any embarrassing talk of theft and plagiarism. More important to Flip, it kept his father out of things. For the thing that bugged Flip the most, Ben had told Tess, was not the possibility that someone would think his idea was stolen, but that it had been offered to his father first.