Another Thing to Fall (29 page)

“Don’t haze him,” Lottie snapped. “Fetching your dinner is enough.”

“Okay, dinner from Nasu Blanca, but get me an espresso from Vaccaro’s, too. I’m going to be working late and need some legal stimulants.”

He watched them leave the parking lot from his office window, then went into the open area where the assistants worked. It was hard to believe that someone had been killed here, not even a week ago. But the police had finished what they needed to do, returning the scattered papers in cardboard boxes that Lloyd was supposed to sort and file, poor kid. No wonder he was excited to be working on the minipub, something actually of consequence to the movie.

Greer’s desk had been left unoccupied for the time being, although that bit of respect would probably disappear the moment Flip found a new assistant. Lottie had suggested — tentatively, deferentially, because it was Flip — that he make it through the final weeks without one, which would be good for the budget, but Flip had said he couldn’t possibly cope without a personal assistant, and Lottie had acquiesced, as she always did with Flip. Ben began opening Greer’s desk drawers, but they were all empty. Of course — Greer’s desk had been plundered the night she was killed, its contents scattered far and wide, along with papers from several filing cabinets. Those, too, were among the papers that Lloyd would have to sort. Hey, maybe Ben should give the kid a head start, begin working on those papers now. He could chalk it up to the procrastination of a blocked writer. And him being such an all-around good guy.

The first cardboard box was filled with the very archival stuff where all the trouble had begun — scripts and stories and correspondence from their early years. Ben had thought Flip was insanely egotistical to think that USC, where they had attended grad school, would want these papers, but he hadn’t seen any reason to object when Flip asked Greer, then just an intern, to start organizing them.

He moved on to the second box, but it seemed to be connected to the production itself — call sheets, beat sheets, Flip’s schedule, memos, phone logs…
phone logs
. As Lloyd had been instructed on his first day of work, Lottie’s system required that every call be recorded with date, time, and a brief description, even if it was something as innocuous as “Mrs. Flip for Flip. RE: Jewish holidays.” He turned back to July. Yes, in that final month, the poor guy had called constantly, first for Alicia, who had been expert in dodging such kooks, but then it had been Greer who started taking his messages for Flip. Ben wondered that Greer hadn’t been tempted to tamper with these records, but the guy’s death had been a suicide, straight up, and both girls had readily told the police that the guy was a nut job who called the office, trying to get face time with Flip. Actually, it was Ben he wanted. But he hadn’t known that, and Greer hadn’t told him. That one small lie — a lie he had never asked anyone to tell, a lie he wouldn’t have thought to use to cover his own ass, because he didn’t know it needed covering — had changed everything.

But the thing that gnawed at Ben was that he really couldn’t remember if he had ever met the guy. The guy said he had, and there was the envelope, stuck among Ben’s old papers. And he had sent a photocopy of a photograph, as if that proved anything — twenty-year-old Ben, looking bored and sweaty on the set of Phil Tumulty Sr.’s last Baltimore-based film, an ill-advised attempt to reconnect with the light, whimsical touch he had before he started making megabucks pictures like
The Beast
and
Gunsmoke: The Movie
. Flip had been pissed that Ben wanted to work for his old man, but what other connection did Ben have if he wanted a P.A. job? Flip was the one who met all the big guys, as a little kid, who could drop names like Steve and Barry and Penny and Rob and Francis and Marty. Ben knew one guy, and that guy was Phil Sr., the father of his best friend. So what if Flip hated his dad? It was Ben’s foot in the door.

And the job had proved educational in a way Ben never could have predicted. Working on
The Last Pagoda,
he had found out what it was like to be part of a big, fat, stinking flop where everyone was utterly deluded about what they were doing, where everyone kept insisting it was great, genius, a return to form. God, in hindsight, it had been so obviously snake-bit. Start with the title. Locals might have understood that the pagoda was a well-known Baltimore landmark, but everyone else thought the movie was some thirteenth-century shogun shit. As for the script — even at the age of twenty, Ben could see that Phil Sr. had lost touch with everything in his work that a mere ten years earlier had made it original and fun. The question that had plagued him, even at twenty, but now, especially, at thirty-five, was:
But does he know? Does he know that he’s squandered his magic?
He had wondered the same things about other directors he once loved. Because if they could lose their instincts about their work — couldn’t anyone? Even Ben?

Where was the fucking letter? Goddammit, Greer, where did you hide it, you thieving, scheming cunt?

He returned to the phone logs, going forward now. The strange happenings around the set had started after the suicide of Wilbur Grace. He didn’t want to connect the two things — he still believed that the production was simply having a run of bad luck — but someone else had been in Greer’s apartment. Someone else
knew
.

“Got your food,” Lloyd said, coming through the door, then stopping short, a frightened look on his face when he saw Ben rooting through the boxes. “Hey — I know I’m supposed to go through those things, but I thought it was okay to help on the script first, do the boxes in my downtime. Is that okay? I was just trying to be helpful.”

Greer had said those very words:
I was just trying to be helpful
. Ben stared absently at Lloyd, then shook his head. “I was procrastinating. The script’s not coming. I think I’m going to be here all night.”

“The security guard that the building hired leaves at eleven,” Lloyd said. “But I’ll stay, if you like. Lottie says no one’s supposed to be alone here anymore, not if the building won’t change the security code.”

“I can’t keep you that long. Tell you what — I’ll eat my dinner, see if I get a second wind. If I’m still not feeling it, we’ll both go. Sometimes, part of doing a job is knowing when to stop for a while.”

“I’ve got a lot to do,” Lloyd protested. “I really need to stay until I finish.”

You’re killing me, Lloyd
. But what the hell, he could always come back.

“Tomorrow, Lloyd. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. One day, we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter anyway.”

“Okay. Can I grab my knapsack? I left it in Flip’s office.”

“Enjoying the big man’s digs while he was out today?”

Lloyd’s discomfiture was almost comic. “Well, he has a computer, and Greer’s is password protected and it was easier for me to work there until an IT guy could come in, and Lottie said it was okay—”

“Whoa, settle down. I was just teasing. Do whatever you have to do, and we’ll both head out when I’ve finished my dinner. You want some?”

Lloyd made a face. “That weird-ass hamburger? No, thank you. I grabbed a sub from Mustang’s.” Again, he looked guilty. “I hope that was okay, getting something while I was out—”

“Don’t sweat it, Lloyd.” Ben wished his own conscience could be weighed down by something so inconsequential as a sub.

A soft rain had started, a gloomy harbinger of the days to come. It always seemed to rain on her days off, not that it really affected Alicia, given that her primary day-off activity was smoking. Still, she objected on principle; the weather didn’t know that smoking was her only hobby. Oh, she did other things, too. Read — and smoked. Watched television — and smoked. Sat at the computer, paging through home decor sites, a cigarette burning almost constantly. Ran errands, smoking on the drive to and from. Some nights, when she tired of her own company, she would walk down to one of the local bars, buy a draft — and smoke. Maryland was one of the last holdouts, with smoking still permitted in its bars and restaurants, although that was said to be changing by next year. Until then — she was going to smoke every chance she got.

She looked at the piece of paper on the coffee table. Was it really so valuable? Without Greer, could anyone swear to its — what was that word, the one used for the antiques and rare objects that she studied covetously in the windows down at Gaines McHale?
Provenance
. Greer, who thought she was so clever, had been stupid to remove it from the envelope, but then — if she hadn’t opened the envelope, she never would have known what she had. What if the envelope had been sealed, after all those years? That wouldn’t have buttressed anyone’s position. Perhaps that was why Greer had gotten rid of the envelope. Plus, it would have been too bulky to hide in her choice spot, especially with that other sheet, which Alicia had left where she found it. She had debated that with herself, leaving the other document behind, but she decided to take only what she needed.

When she drove down to the production offices Friday night, her only thought was to be helpful. As she had told Mr. Sybert, she
knew
Greer, and if she thought things through, she would figure out her hiding place eventually. Greer couldn’t destroy the document, because that would end her power. So she had to put it someplace where it was unlikely to be discovered, but also in a location where, if it should be found, Greer couldn’t be blamed. That was Greer’s MO, avoiding blame, and she had to know that what she was doing was illegal. You couldn’t hide documents, because lawyers might want them, much less then swear they never existed. Greer had been willing to risk perjury, and for what? A job in the writers’ office, a job as Flip’s assistant, maybe a shot as a script supervisor or associate producer down the road.

Greer thought so small.

Alicia didn’t. And even as she told herself that she was just trying to help Mr. Sybert out, once she had the document, she couldn’t ignore its value. Oh, she would give Mr. Sybert a chance to make his best offer, but shouldn’t Ben and Flip have a chance, perhaps even Tumulty Sr.? He had the real deep pockets. He would probably be willing to put up a lot of money to bail out his own son — and avoid being tainted by the implication that he was somehow involved. Then there were her other…
clients,
as she liked to think of them. Was this item of use to them? Possibly, but that was harder to gauge. No, she wouldn’t bring them into this negotiation, and she didn’t owe it to them to do so. She had been paid to do specific things, create disruptions on the set, and she had. That account was in good standing. She was a freelance worker, not exclusive to anyone.

How much should she ask for? And — not to be a total geek, but she had to think everything through — what would be the tax implications? She should probably set it up as a contract, with her providing unspecified services to Tumulty’s production company. Quarterly payments for, say, up to five years. Too much? Not enough? A million dollars sounded like a lot, but it wasn’t enough to support her for the rest of her life, even if she checked out as early as her parents had. Maybe she should ask for a yearly stipend, some phantom job in Tumulty’s production company?

The phone rang, and she jumped, stabbing out her cigarette as if she had just been caught by one of the nuns, smoking in the girls’ room at St. Ursula’s. But it was just the contractor, pointing out the obvious: He couldn’t work on the deck tomorrow if the rain continued.
No shit, Sherlock.
Well, that suited her anyway. She had meetings set up for tomorrow morning, and it would be better if no one was there.

“Of course,” she said. “But it would be nice if you could get it installed in time for the Christmas holidays.”

“You use your deck at Christmas?”

Shit, didn’t anyone understand sarcasm anymore? She wanted to slam the phone down on him, but her contractor was one man she never risked offending. He was too much in demand. Instead, she told him to get to the job when he could — and she would pay the balance when the work was done. That should get results. Money was the universal language.

Speaking of which — she really should give Mr. Sybert a chance to counter before she approached Tumulty Sr. She didn’t think he could be competitive, but she owed him the courtesy of making his case, the sad old schlub. She felt almost guilty, taking his money all these weeks, and giving him nothing in return but the information on the e-mailed call sheets and memos, and the code to the security door, which he had never even used.

Instead, Alicia had used it. It seemed as if an eternity passed in that split second while she waited for the front door to buzz Friday night —
could they have changed it, after all?
— but once in the building, it couldn’t have been simpler to set off the homemade smoke bomb, then hide in a ladies’ room on the first floor. She had stayed there, in fact, until almost two in the morning, which had been unnerving. And wouldn’t it have been a bitch if Lottie had remembered to lock the office door after all that?

But, of course, Lottie didn’t. Because Lottie would have thought it through, even as she fled, and worried that firefighters would break the door down if she locked it. Careful Lottie, prudent Lottie, always two steps ahead of everyone. It had been a bonus, getting one over on Lottie with that smoke bomb, tricking her to leave the office with the door unlocked. Okay, Lottie had been in the right to fire Alicia, but she couldn’t possibly have known that at the time. No one could prove that Alicia had given those things to Wilbur Grace. God, imagine what Lottie would have done if she had figured out that Alicia had
sold
him the things he wanted. But all they had were Greer’s meticulous telephone logs, showing that he had called for Alicia several times. They could prove the connection, nothing more. It was easier, in the end, to cop to being naïve, instead of admitting to being greedy.

She felt a pang for Greer, strange to say, even though she had sacrificed Alicia so willingly, screwed her the first chance she got. Two local girls from similar backgrounds — they should have been friends, not competitors. They had their moments of solidarity, laughing behind Lottie’s — or Ben’s or Flip’s — back. You couldn’t work next to someone, day in and day out, and not feel
something
. Poor, stupid Greer, who thought she was the winner because she got Alicia’s shit job, only to be killed by her crazy-jealous boyfriend. At least she had a boyfriend. Alicia was in a two-year dating slump, although that was in part because she couldn’t respect anyone who was attracted to the current Alicia, the loser at the video store. She wondered if she might find someone to her liking, once she was rich. She wondered if she could ever know if a man loved her for herself, or her money.