Another Thing To Fall

by Laura Lippman

  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.

  Chapter 15

  "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 underst
and 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.

  "Strictly Ballroom," Tess admitted. "When the music goes out, and the father starts to clap, and they show they can do the paso doble without any music at all…."

  Her eyes started to mist, making her seem truthful, but she was still thinking of that carrot-haired man, dying on the cold cement of a parking lot, leaving her to fight for her own life — and avenge his.

  "You haven't shot down my central point. Anything sounds ludicrous when boiled down to the pitch. But it's all in the execution. Why do you think Hollywood produces so much crap?"

  "Because there's seldom any economic penalty?"

  "No. Well, yes. I mean, no. People's careers do suffer from doing critically disdained work—"

  "If it's also commercially inert."

  "The point," Flip said irritably, as if unused to being interrupted, and he probably was. "The point is that the writing, the performances, the visuals — those will combine to make this show something really special. That's why we're starting small, on a C-list cable network with only eight episodes. People forget, but there was a time when getting a series on HBO was considered second-rate. The Sopranos was pitched to the networks first, and they all passed. By the way, has anyone ever proposed adapting your life story?"

  Food arrived — a house salad for Flip, a much heartier steak salad for Tess — and she was spared answering right away. "Last year — I was involved in a case of some notoriety, and some producers circled for a while."

  "You make them sound like vultures."

  Tess forked up a mouthful of steak and greens that required much judicious chewing.

  "They were just doing their job," he persisted. "Look, you go to the movies. You read newspapers and magazines, right? Well, the material has to come from somewhere."

  "A friend of mine was killed in front of me. I killed a man. I never thought of it as material. A woman you know was killed in your office last night. Are you going to make a miniseries about that?"

  Flip blushed, and she warmed to him. She knew he was pure Hollywood, bred and buttered, as the old Baltimore saying went. Flip's father was the one who had the claim to Charm City normalcy, a claim he had pretty much squandered years ago. But Flip did seem relatively down-to-earth.

  "How—"

  "Shot him." Over and over again, until the clip was empty. Shot him, but only after gaining advantage by almost gouging his eye out with scissors. She withheld these details as a courtesy.

  "That must have been awful."

  "It was. That's why I feel for Lottie, walking in on Greer."

  "I can't imagine — this is going to sound heartless—"

  "Go ahead."

  "I can't imagine Greer engendering that kind of passion in anyone. She was a little machine. We used to joke about it, Ben and I, call her Small Wonder, after that sitcom." He glanced at Tess to see if the cultural reference connected for her. "The one about the robot? Voice Input Child Identicant, Vicki for short?" Tess couldn't even fake knowing what he was talking about now. "Well, anyway, she was just extremely competent, her feathers never ruffled."

  "Still, they like the fiancé for it. Ex-fiancé, maybe. There seems to be some confusion about whether they were on or off."

  "Never met him. Frankly, I wasn't sure I would have believed he even existed if it weren't for the ring on her hand. Certainly, she wasn't spending any time with him, once we got into production."

  "How did you find Greer, anyway?"

  "She found us, poor thing. Called my father's production company. My dad has a policy. If you have an area code beginning with four-one-zero, you get treated with respect and deference by his office. Maybe that was my problem. I had the wrong area code, so my dad never had time for me."

  Oh, poor little rich boy. "So how does that connect you to Greer?"

  "Her dad was a teamster, worked on one of my father's early films. She called my dad's assistant, and I told Lottie to interview her with an open mind. She started off as an unpaid intern in the writers' office, basically an assistant to my assistant. Then my assistant left, and Ben came to me, said I should give the job to Greer, that she was actually fantastically competent. And, for once, Ben was right."

  "For once?"

  "He's not the best judge of other people. Especially women. Although Greer isn't exactly Ben's, um, type."

  "You mean — he sleeps with women, then tries to find them jobs?"

  "Sometimes. It's not as crass as you make it sound. Ben really is a fool for love. He falls for a girl — or thinks he does — courts her, builds her up big-time, then sleeps with her, and bam, all interest gone. It's like sex is the third act for him, and the only thing he knows to do afterward is to go to the credits. Over the years, he's doled out a few jobs to soothe their hurt feelings. Actors, usually."

  "Guys?" She hadn't figured Ben for being that inclusive in his sexual appetites.

  Flip looked at her as if she were insane. "Women. Oh — we call them actors, Tess, not actresses. Actress is considered derogatory."

  Whereas actor is shot through with dignity. "Are you sure that Ben didn't sleep with Greer?"

  "Let's just say I'd be shocked. So not his type. Why, you think the fiancé killed her in a jealous rage?"

  Tess shook her head. "I won't second-guess Tull, or get in his way. He's good police."

  "People really say that?"

  "Say what?"

  "‘Good police.' I've heard it on television, bu
t I thought it was pure affectation."

  "It's what cops in Baltimore call themselves. Police, a police, a murder police. Where do you think the television shows got it?"

  "Thought they made it up, like Ben and I do. You can be over-reliant on reality, you know."

  Tess was unsure if Flip was explaining his rules for writing or his worldview.

  "Let's leave the homicide investigation to Tull. I'm far more curious why you were so quick to blame Selene for what happened to me last night. You sold me on the idea that she was this poor little fragile actress — actor — at risk from her own bad behavior and, possibly, unwanted fan attention."

  Flip glanced around the restaurant, almost empty this late in the lunchtime hours. "Okay, I wasn't entirely forthcoming when I hired you. But wouldn't it have been irresponsible of me to tell you that I suspected Selene of the various problems on set? I didn't want to prejudice you against her. In fact, I was hoping the two of you might bond, and she would end up confiding in you."

  "We were getting along famously until she drugged my drink. So why do you think Selene is the source of your problems?"

  "Selene is signed to a five-year contract. That's standard. When she signed it, she probably thought the show had no shot of going five years, but then, when she signed it, she was thrilled to have any steady gig. Plus, she didn't know we planned to leave her in the nineteenth century."

  So Derek had been right: The producers demand commitment, but it's not mutual.

  "Then Baby Jane was finally released, and Selene's success heightened the profile of our show. The network demanded we keep the Betsy character if we wanted any chance of getting a pickup for second season. They also ordered a lot of rewrites to beef up her part. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't change the name before it's over, which will freak Johnny Tampa out — and he's already plenty freaked. This was supposed to be his comeback. Instead, it's Selene's buildup."

  "So, you think Selene might be the source of the fires, the leaks to the newspaper, the community malcontents, even the Nair in Johnny Tampa's cold cream?"