Another Thing to Fall (14 page)

Even so, when he had come to work the day after he was discovered napping, the little sofa in his office was gone. Lottie had given him a supercilious smile, daring him to object. He hadn’t said a damn word, just gone online and ordered another sofa from Pottery Barn, a much more expensive one that actually had a foldout bed, then put the bill on his expense account, with the scrawled notation:
writing supplies
.

The irony, of course — one of the ironies; there were ironies upon ironies in his relationship with Flip — was that Ben was the real writer of the two, the one who took the
final
-final pass on all the scripts. Everyone thought that Flip was carrying him, but Flip would be lost without Ben. Oh, Flip pretended to go over Ben’s scripts, but it was acknowledged between them that this charade was for everyone else, because Lottie, the directors, and the various department heads were less likely to argue with Flip, whereas they would happily bust Ben’s balls over any detail. When they had the tone meeting for one of the early eps, Lottie had tried a little divide-and-conquer. “I’m not so sure about this beat,” she had said. “It’s a little glib, don’t you think? The kind of conventional sitcom scene that you’re trying to avoid.” The director, the has-been of the week, had nodded, although it wasn’t clear that the guy could read, much less form an opinion about the words in front of him. Flip said: “Well, it was my idea, but if you think it could change….” “No, no, no.” Lottie had backtracked so fast that she almost ended up leaving the room. “I guess I just didn’t get it. Now that I see — sure, of course. And the next scene is even better, really pulls it all together, pays off the conceit.” “Ben thought of that,” Flip said cheerfully. Yes, after that meeting, no one had tried to worm between them again. And when they were alone, Flip was generous in his praise for Ben. Plus, Ben finally had an executive producer’s title and a “story by” credit on every episode. What more could he want?

To do it by myself.

He glanced around the Starbucks, wondering if he had spoken this traitorous thought aloud. It had actually been hard finding a Starbucks in Baltimore. There was only one within walking distance of his hotel — well, two, if one took a more generous view of what was walking distance, but he was a California boy through and through — and almost nothing was near the production offices, stuck as they were on that godforsaken peninsula. Out there, they had to drink the coffee from a local purveyor, which tasted funny to Ben, although everyone swore it was better. Locally roasted, blah, blah, blah. As if local was necessarily a good thing here in Charm City, where the people, even the people in Starbucks, all looked weird to Ben. Pale, pasty. All right, downright doughy. Not to mention the teeth — God, the teeth. Living in California, where almost everyone had veneers and whiteners, one forgot what real teeth looked like. These relatively normal mouths were as shocking as a Shane McGowan convention. Worst of all, Baltimoreans also had this — how to describe it — bovine happiness. No one seemed rushed or impatient here, a fact that drove Ben mildly insane when he was trying to order his morning mocha and get to work. The people around him were too dumb to know how miserable they should be.

Whereas, I’m smart enough to know exactly how unhappy I am
.

His Treo, set to silent, vibrated on the table, and he glanced at the caller ID. Lottie.
No way, no how
. Flip was to have told her that Ben was off the reservation, trying to figure out how to beef up the Betsy part in episode 107, per the network’s notes. He may have stayed up until three, waiting for Selene to visit as she had promised, but he had been awake by nine and out the door by ten, at his table in Starbucks by ten-fifteen, a very good boy, and he had actually… gotten nothing done. But he was trying. He had parked his ass in the chair and he had his computer open and he wasn’t checking e-mail or voice mail or surfing the Internet. The phone chirped angrily, indicating he had a message, then began vibrating again. Lottie. And again. Lottie. About the fourth time, he decided to pick up, choosing to take the offensive before she could start haranguing him.

“I’m writing, Lottie. Don’t you remember? Flip’s orders. I’m trying to figure out how to add some scenes without losing some key beats, or else the final episode is going to be overstuffed with exposition. For every beat that goes in, one has to come out and—”

“Greer’s dead,” she said. “Killed at our offices, so we’re canceling the shoot today and I’m reworking the schedule accordingly. We’ll probably have to shoot Saturday to make up for it. I assumed you’d want to know.”

He thought, but couldn’t be sure, that he stammered out the appropriate questions —
what, how, when
? Lottie replied as if he had.

“She was beaten to death, last night or early this morning. The police want to interview anyone who had access to the office after hours, by the way, so they have your name.”

“I was in my room all night.”

“Jesus, Ben, no one’s suggesting you’re a suspect. Calm down. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that I gave this number to a Baltimore city homicide detective, Tull. If you see a three-nine-six prefix on your phone, take the call, okay?”

The last was laced with meaning, Lottie reminding Ben that she knew he didn’t take most of his calls.

“Sure, of course, whatever they need. Do they… know anything?”

“Not really. I know they’re going to be looking at her fiancé.”

“She was having problems with him.”
Shit, why had he said that? Why would Ben know the state of Greer’s love life?
What did it matter what Lottie thought? What mattered was what the police knew, or might find out.

“Really? I mean, I knew they were on and off, but she still had the ring.” There was a silence, as if Lottie might be mulling her words, wondering if things might be different if Greer had felt free to confide her problems to someone. “Well, that’s the kind of thing the police will want to know, I guess.”

“It’s so… awful.”

“You have no idea. I’ve been working in this business all my life, Ben, and I’ve probably seen every variety of murder there is in film. They all looked real to me, or real enough. But nothing I ever saw compares to…”

Her voice broke, and Ben was almost persuaded for a moment that Lottie was human, capable of normal emotion. But she quickly undercut that impression when she added: “So it’s a day off for crew but not for us. You, Flip, and I are having a working dinner tonight, and you should have the new beat sheet, so Flip can go over it.”

“So Flip can flip it, work his flippin’ magic?”

“Right.” She hung up without wasting time on pleasantries she didn’t mean. Lottie may have seen a dead body this morning, but the show must go on.

He stared at the computer screen in front of him, the few words that he had managed to peck out a jumble to him. Greer dead. Why?
Let it be the fiancé
, he found himself praying. Or a burglar, who didn’t expect to find someone in the office that late. Let it be something that leads them away from the set and the production. Not that it mattered. He had an alibi.

Alone in his room.

Waiting for Selene.

Who had told him to wait for her there, who had promised that she would slip away from her babysitter, somehow, some way.

He got back in line for another mocha, this one with two extra shots. It took so long for the guy in front of him to order that Ben almost began to shake.

“You must
really
like coffee,” the barista observed. She was young and well cushioned — fat by California’s standards, but normal for Baltimore, and the extra weight gave her face a sweet roundness, true apple cheeks. She reminded him of someone.

She reminded him of Greer, the way she had been when she first started working in the office, so sweet and helpful, happy to do anything she was asked.

“You can’t possibly believe that Selene has anything to do with Greer’s death,” Tess said.

“I agree,” Flip said in a loud clear voice, casting a nervous look at the waiter. “That plot point wouldn’t work at all in
Mann of Steel
. But I thought it might solve some things in the final episode, which is why I threw it out there. Could you bring us a bottle of the white Burgundy?”

“We have several. Did you want—”

“Just any decent white Burgundy. I leave it to you.”

The waiter gone, Flip dropped the plummy tone. “Let’s try to be a little discreet, okay?”

“It’s Baltimore, Flip. It’s not like the waiters have the
National Enquirer
on speed-dial. Read it, yes; tip it off, no. Waiters here are just… waiters. Not aspiring actors.”

Flip, unconvinced, studied their surroundings. The Wine Market on Fort Avenue was Baltimore hip, a mere five or six years behind the decorating curve — brick walls, exposed pipes threading the high ceilings, maple furniture. Tess forgave its derivative look because the food was good and the wine a bargain, sold at only 10 percent above retail.

“I was surprised that the police let me leave the scene without giving a statement,” he said. “Your doing?”

“Luck of the draw,” Tess said. “If anyone other than Tull had been the primary, we’d all be down on Fayette Street right now. Tull trusts me to bring you in later for a more detailed debriefing. Relatively sober,” she added, after watching Flip chug the Burgundy that the waiter had left in an ice bucket.

“Don’t worry, this is just going to restore my equilibrium. Did you—”

“See her? No, fortunately. It sounds as if it was particularly… unsettling.”

“I’ve never seen Lottie that upset about
anything,
” Flip said. “I didn’t know she could get upset. The joke on
Mann of Steel
is that she’s the Woman of Steel, an absolute ice queen. We’re all a little terrified of her.”

Lottie was not the woman who interested Tess just now. She broke off a piece of bread and swished it through the little dish of olive oil and peppers. “And Selene? What kind of emotions does she engender?”

Flip let loose a sigh so long that it was almost a whistle. “Satanic spawn. A total nightmare. God, I wish the network would let us write her out of the show after the first season, have Mann continue on without Betsy Patterson.”

“And lose the whole blue-blood-meets-blue-collar thing? I thought that was the concept that made this whole thing
go
.”

She didn’t quite achieve the sincere tone she was trying for.

“Are you this obnoxious to all the people who hire you, or do you sometimes manage to fake enthusiasm for their enterprises?”

“It’s the nature of my business to work for people with different tastes, values. Essential, even. I wouldn’t work at all if I had to be gung ho about all my clients’ professional lives.”

“Still, do you have to be such an asshole?”

A fair question, under the circumstances.

“I don’t mean to be a jerk. The broad outlines of this show you’re doing — I’ll admit, I just don’t get it. It’s history, it’s time travel, it’s comedy, all set in the context of the never-never land of a thriving steel company in the twenty-first century.”

“Girl’s house gets swept up by tornado and she’s transported to a magical land where she expends all her power trying to get home again.”

“Okay, yeah, but
The Wizard of Oz
is a fantasy.”

“Billionaire media mogul whispers a mysterious name on his deathbed, launching a journalist’s attempt to understand the private man behind the public figure. Yet the truth about Rosebud doesn’t really solve any of those mysteries.”

“Although it was rumored to be William Randolph Hearst’s pet name for Marion Davies’s nether regions,” said Tess, grateful to have one of Crow’s bits of trivia so readily at hand. “Okay, when you reduce anything to a thumbnail description, it sounds a little silly, but—”

“Woman will do anything for the love of her ungrateful daughter — including confessing to the murder that the daughter committed.”

“Mildred Pierce
and there’s no murder in the book, which is a thousand times better.”

“Man builds a baseball diamond in a cornfield behind his house and Shoeless Joe Jackson appears—”

But now Flip had gone too far. A bridge too far, a baseball diamond too far.

“I HATE THAT MOVIE!” Tess said, and the bare brick walls sent her voice bouncing into every corner of the restaurant. She regained her composure. “Sorry, but do not get me started on that cornball mush.”

“How can you hate
Field of Dreams
?”

“It’s a male weepie, as I think Pauline Kael or some other critic said. And, you know, I’m okay with the male weepie. We all deserve our weepies. My issue is that what makes men cry is elevated to profundity, while what makes women cry is denigrated as sentimental. When you take my corn seriously, I’ll grant yours equal respect.”

“What makes you cry?
Beaches
?”

“
Major League,
which is a better baseball movie than
Field of Dreams,
by the way.”

Even as Tess’s mouth provided that glib reply, her brain was thinking about what really did make her cry. There was a certain expression on her greyhound’s face, a wisp of a seeming smile. The Bromo-Seltzer Tower, glowing blue in the night. Old television footage of Brooks Robinson being inducted into the Hall of Fame. And there was the matter of a young woman, beaten to death just last night, but Tess wasn’t hypocrite enough to admit that she felt anything but shock and dismay over that. The only thing that resonated was the violence of the death. A fatal beating took time — and not a little passion.

Besides, Flip was talking about cinematic tears. Okay. Then — little Dominic dying in Noodles’s arms in
Once Upon a Time in America,
but also Noodles coming back through the bus station door, thirty years of time summed up in a single shot.
The Wild Bunch
. The memory of a carrot-haired man who had loved
The Wild Bunch,
living — and dying — by the codes distilled from his beloved westerns. Had it really been just a little over a year ago? She reached for her knee. Maybe one day the scar wouldn’t be there. Maybe one day, it would all be a dream. Just like in the movies.