“Damn it, Bob, the answers to your questions don’t change either just because you ask them again. I’ll say it real slow for you: I don’t know if it was him.”
“But it could be him.”
“Of course it could be. And could just as easily be someone else.”
“It really doesn’t matter if it’s him or not. If he’s got a copyright certificate and we can’t prove he’s not, he wins.”
“We can trump that if we’ve got an order from a probate court giving the script to Teri,” Mike said. “Dead or alive, if the court—”
“Is that really the law?” Bob asked. “Or is that just wishful thinking?”
“Look, if there’s a court order—”
“I don’t know if there is one,” Teri said.
The reappearance of the waitress with Bob’s coffee was all that stopped him from exploding. After she left, he leaned across the table, red-faced.
“What the hell are you talking about? Are you saying there’s no probate order?”
“I’m saying I don’t have one, and I’ve never seen one.”
“Surely you at least had a copyright assignment. Something— anything that makes it yours legally.”
“Just a lawyer who said Crowell willed it to me, and a mother who showed up at my house and gave it to me. You’re the one who had the lawyers working on all this, clearing the chain of title. I just assumed they’d cleared everything. Isn’t there a clearance letter for the E and O carrier?”
“There has to be,” Bob said. “No way the studio would release the movie without it.”
“So send the lawyers back in there to look at everything. I’m not saying there’s no probate order; I’m just saying I’ve never seen it if there is.”
“I think we’re overlooking the obvious here,” Mike said. He pushed his cold coffee away and rubbed his eyes. “If the guy’s not dead, does it really matter if we’ve got a probate order or not?”
“That’s what I was just saying a while ago,” Bob said. “Now you act like it was your idea all along. But surely an order has to mean something, at least for chain of title.”
A sound at the front entrance drew their attention that way. The hostess pointed them out to Doug Bozarth, who had just entered. Like Bob, his appearance was slick, dressed in business casual. Unlike Bob, he had bothered to shave before arriving.
He pulled a chair up from a nearby table and sat between Bob and Teri, who occupied the ends of the benches on their respective sides of the booth.
“I understand we have a problem,” Bozarth said.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Mike said.
Bozarth stood. “Good. Just let me know what the plan is so I can go back to bed.”
Silence from everybody.
“That’s what I thought.” Bozarth sat back down. “Okay, let’s start over. I understand we have a problem.”
“We were just wondering, if the guy’s not dead, whether he has a legal claim on the script,” Mike said. “I don’t know a lot of probate law, but I don’t think you can inherit something if the guy you inherited it from didn’t die.”
“We can win that lawsuit,” Bob said. “No court’s gonna let this guy fake his death then suddenly pop up and grab his script back.”
“That misses the point,” Bozarth said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about winning a lawsuit. I care about not getting sued. My people have got seventy-five million dollars tied up in this movie, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Lazarus screw that up.”
“I’m betting the publicity’ll drive the box office even higher,” Mike said.
“That’s only if we get to release it. But if this guy gets an injunction, we’ve got a real problem. And, long shot or not, what if he wins? What then?”
“If he wins, he gets a cut,” Mike said. “How is that any worse than paying him off now?”
“The last thing we need is the finances under a microscope on this deal,” Bob said.
Teri perked up at that. For a while, she felt as if she didn’t belong in the conversation, but now her antennae quivered. “Why? Where did the money come from?”
“You waived your right to ask that when you dragged everyone into a movie you don’t have the rights to,” Bob said.
“I have the rights,” Teri snapped.
“Do you really?” Bob asked.
Teri felt the heat rise and knew that her face had turned sunburn red. “You didn’t seem to have any problem with rights when people were throwing money at us, Bob. People like Mr. Bozarth, here.” She turned to focus on Bozarth. Her voice rose an octave as fear and outrage waged a war within her psyche. “You came to us, Mr. Bozarth, remember? The way I understand it, you were begging us to take your money. And maybe this is a question I should have asked a long time ago, but where did that money come from?”
In contrast to Teri’s agitation, Bozarth’s voice was calm. Almost unnaturally so. “It’s too early to worry about that right now. If we can head this off—”
“I think right now is a helluva good time to worry about it.”
“If we can head this off, it’ll be a non-issue, and we’ll all be happy. We’ve got two things to do for starters. First is to find out where the rights to the script are, legally. I’ll get my lawyers working on that. The second thing is to find out what’ll it take to make this guy go away.”
“And we’ve got to find out who he is,” Mike said.
“If we can make him go away, it doesn’t matter who he is.”
“How can you make sure he goes away?” Mike asked.
“Leave that to me,” Bozarth said. “Teri, how’d you get the script in the first place?”
“His lawyer called me about it after Leland Crowell died. Then Leland’s mother brought it to my house.”
“Who was the lawyer?”
“Spencer West, attorney-at-aw.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Go see him tomorrow. See what you can find out about the probate. Go see the mother, too. We need to know if they’re all in this together with the undead.”
“She’s a little creepy for my taste.”
“Any creepier than the dead writer coming back to life?” Bob asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bozarth said. “Talk to her anyway. Then make contact with Crowell.”
“Or whoever he is,” Mike said.
“For now, let’s assume he is who he says he is,” Bozarth said. “We can’t afford to underestimate him or make any miscalculations. There’s too much at stake.”
“I agree,” Mike said. “But there’s no way we can give this guy what he wants.”
“What does he want?” Bozarth asked.
“He said he wants fifty percent of the gross.”
Bob dropped his head on the table with a loud thunk. It had the desired dramatic effect of drawing everyone’s attention his way. “That could be over a hundred million,” he said. “If this thing hits, it could be hundreds of millions.”
“He knows it’s ridiculous,” Bozarth said. “He’s just negotiating.”
“How do you know?” Bob asked. “This guy doesn’t know anything about the business. He doesn’t know what costs are involved and how profits get split up. He probably doesn’t know gross from net from his ass from a hole in the ground. For all we know, when he says fifty percent, he means fifty of the box office. First dollars.”
“People like this are always negotiating,” Bozarth said. “You just said it, Bob, he has no idea how the business works. I doubt if he even understands what fifty percent of the gross means or how much it could be. He’s fishing for a number, so we’ll give him one.”
By now, Teri realized the truth of what Bozarth was saying. This man, whether he was really Leland Crowell or not, had just enough knowledge to be dangerous. He knew he could claim ownership of the script and cause a few heart palpitations, maybe milk a dollar or two out of the producers, but he had no idea of the real value of what he was doing.
“I th
ink Mr. Bozarth is right,” she said. “From what I’ve seen of this guy, he wants money now. He needs money now. He’s not going to wait for the back end, even if we promised it to him.”
“How do we know that?” Mike asked. “And what happens if we give him money now, then he shows up again on the back end.”
“He won’t.” Bozarth said the words with a surety that sent a shiver coursing through Teri’s spine.
“How do you know he won’t?” Mike asked.
“It’s my business to know.”
“You mean it’s your business to make sure,” Teri said.
“Take it however you want,” Bozarth said.
He met her eyes evenly. She searched his face for signs of humanity, but found none. Just a blankness that would make any poker player proud. And in that instant she knew, without knowing, that Leland Crowell, or whoever the scraggly-haired man was, was living on borrowed time.
“Teri, do you think you can do all that?” Bozarth asked. “Talk to the mother and the attorney and then—”
“Just because I’m an actor doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” she said.
“Of course not.” But his tone said the opposite. Unspoken was the rebuke that she was the reason they were in this mess in the first place. How smart did that make her?
Bozarth scooted his chair back and stood. “Well, I think that’s all we can do for right now.” He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Teri. “Call me after you’ve talked to the lawyer and the mother. Then we’ll decide how to handle the writer.”
“Are you sure you haven’t already decided?” Teri asked.
Bozarth smirked, the only emotion he had shown all night, then turned and left.
The others waited until Bozarth was out the door then Bob turned to Teri, barely able to suppress his anger. “You remember that apology I gave you? Well, I take it back.”
With that, he abruptly lurched to his feet and stormed off.
CHAPTER 18
Mike walked Teri out to her car, which was parked next to his in the parking lot. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close, but she felt no warmth from the closeness. All she felt was the chill that Doug Bozarth’s words, both spoken and unspoken, left in her heart. The truth was that, when she first realized the implications of Leland Crowell’s resurrection, her next thought was how much better off she would be if he were dead. Then, when she pulled the .22 from her purse and aimed it at him, thoughts of pulling the trigger tickled her consciousness. No one knew she was there—or so she had thought at the time. And surely no one would actually believe she had been there. What would Teri Squire be doing in a squalid hotel room in that part of town?
Yes, it would have been easy enough to dispatch the man back to the great beyond from whence he had apparently returned. She could have taken the screenplay and its registration documents, slipped his drivers license into her pocket, and no one would have been the wiser. It would be quite unlikely that the man could even be identified. After all, he was already dead, and had been for two years. How can you kill a dead man?
But as soon as those thoughts entered her mind, she banished them. Killing a man eroded one’s soul, no matter how pure the motive might be. That was more than esoteric bullshit. Teri knew it for a fact. And she also knew that money—and surely that was what this was all about—was never a pure motive. Yet that was Doug Bozarth’s motive. He hadn’t actually said he was bent on killing Leland Crowell, but everyone at the table knew that was what he meant.
The question that nagged at her was whether it was just talk, or whether Bozarth was actually capable of killing a man over money. The answer should have been obvious. Every day, newspapers carried stories of people who killed over Dallas Cowboys jackets, basketball shoes, and even parking spaces. Doug Bozarth had seventy-five million dollars on the line, and that was motive in anyone’s book. If he carried out his promise to “know” that Crowell would not show up on the back end with his hand out, could she live with that? Or did she have an obligation to stop him? And if so, how? She couldn’t very well go to the police and tell them that Bozarth had indirectly threatened—very indirectly; so indirectly, in fact, that it took considerable interpretation in her overactive mind to reach that conclusion—to kill a man who was already dead. They would laugh her out of the police station, lumping her in with other Hollywood crazies and their insane rantings.
Mike must have sensed her thoughts. “He’s not going to kill anybody,” he said.
“I know he’s not going to, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have it done.”
Mike turned her around to face him, but she refused to make eye contact. “Look at me,” he said. “Teri, look at me.”
When her gaze finally settled on him, he continued. “He’s a businessman. He travels in circles we can only read about, but they’re still business circles. He’s not a killer.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know.”
Again, with the “knowing.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Look, our lawyers vetted him. Remember, we’ve got to comply with the Patriot Act, so we’ve got to know where the money comes from, especially foreign money. Everything passed muster.”
“So where did the money come from?”
“I didn’t say I knew. Like I said, the lawyers vetted him, and they say everything’s aboveboard.”
“Are these the same lawyers who vetted the chain of title on the script?”
“Look, don’t make waves on this,” Mike said. “Let’s just do what he says. It’s a business decision for him. He’ll figure out how much to pay to make this guy go away, and that’ll be the end of it. He’ll consider it just part of his investment. Hell, he’ll probably even write it off on his income tax. Don’t read anything more into it than that.”
She looked at him for a good fifteen seconds, debating how to respond. At last she chose acquiescence—at least on the surface. “I guess you’re right. I’m tired, and I’m still a little scared, that’s all.”
“What you need to do is go home and go to bed. Your mind will be clearer tomorrow.”
She unlocked her car with the remote, and he opened the door for her. She slid in behind the wheel and started the engine.
“You want me to come home with you?” he asked.
“Like you said, I need sleep.”
“All right.” He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Sleep good. Call me tomorrow when you get up.”
Two hours later, Teri was still wide awake, sitting cross-legged on the bed, hunched over her laptop. All her research had turned up a big zero. Although she considered herself an expert at Internet research, Douglas Bozarth remained as big a mystery as when she started. He had made money in real estate development in Colorado then parlayed that into oil and gas, building up an oil exploration company that had international contracts in the middle east. He sold the company for over a billion dollars, earning him a place on the Forbes list of richest Americans. Since then, it looked like he had just played with his money and his contacts, putting together investment groups in various ventures, home and abroad, including this virgin foray into the movie business. But other than generic, publicist-blessed releases and stories, she could find virtually nothing about his personal life.
The good news, though, was the absence of certain kinds of stories: no arrests and convictions, no SEC investigations, no sex scandals, no bankruptcies—and no murders. Ultimately Teri determined that, in this case, no information was good information. Either he was a good, clean upstanding businessman or he was very discreet, or both.
She looked at the clock on her computer screen. Nearly four a.m. Not entirely satisfied, but too tired to continue, she shut down the computer and set it aside, turned off the light, and crawled beneath the sheets. Five minutes later, she was asleep.
A thin man slumped in a leather chair in the middle of a U-shaped computer table. Monitors faced him from all three
sides. He stared intently at the monitor directly in front of him, then picked up his cell phone and hit a number on speed dial. After four rings, a male voice answered.
“Learn anything?”
“Internet research. Lots of Internet research.”
“What was she looking for?”
“Lots of searches, but all of them had the same two words. Douglas
and Bozarth.”
“She find anything?”
“Nothing she was looking for.”
“Let me know if she ever does.”
It seemed as if Teri had barely closed her eyes when an unending buzzing sound filled her ears. At first she thought it was a dream, then the alarm. After knocking the clock to the floor, but with no success at stopping the sound, she realized it was the door buzzer. She was going to have to replace that with a kinder, gentler ring tone.
She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. At the same moment, the Magnum, P.I. theme music blared from her cell phone. She snatched it up and looked at the read-out. The first thing that struck her was the notice that she had four missed calls. How had she slept through those?
Then she focused on Mona’s name as the caller. She accepted the call and held the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“So you’re still alive.”
“Just barely.”
“I’ve been ringing your doorbell for five minutes.”
“Well stop it, damn it.”
“Then let me in.”
“Give me a minute.”
Cell phone in hand, Teri staggered to the front door and opened it to greet her producing partner. Mona brushed past her and on to the kitchen. Teri followed meekly. As Mona set about making coffee, Teri sat at the kitchen table and held her head in her hands.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Mona asked.
“That seems to be the consensus.”
Mona spun around, her brow knit, her lips pursed. “I’m serious. When Mike told me you went to that hotel room at night, all alone, I couldn’t believe it. Who knows what could have happened.”
“The fact that I’m sitting here, listening to you lecture me, is proof that nothing did.”
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