Another Thing to Fall

“You’re George?” she asked. Fifteen years had worn much differently on this man than they had on Ben. Harder. Was it just that the trip from twenty to thirty-five was less fraught than the journey from early forty-something to late fifty-whatever? Or had this man weathered a much tougher fifteen years than Ben?

“I’d prefer to be called Mr. Sybert. I deserve that courtesy.”

“Okay, Mr. Sybert.”

Ben looked stricken, as if knowing the man’s name put them at greater risk. It’s not Reservoir Dogs and he’s not Mr. Brown, Tess yearned to tell him. For one thing, you’re not tied to that old sofa. For another, you still have both your ears. There was a dead body at their feet and the man had already revealed his relationship to Wilbur Grace. His name was small potatoes.

“So you came here this morning, thinking you were going to be given this letter?”

“Yes.”

“And you just happened to have a gun with you?”

Mr. Sybert hesitated, working through the implications of Tess’s question.

“None of this matters, Mr. Sybert,” she assured him. “I’m not a police officer, and this isn’t a confession. I’m merely curious. I want to know your side of things. Did you come here, knowing you would use violence if Alicia didn’t give you what you wanted? Or was it more like the night at the production office, where you lost control and killed Greer when she refused to listen to you?”

“I didn’t kill that girl,” he said tentatively, as if testing a story out. “She was dead when I got there. I started to search for things, but I got scared and left.”

“Here, though…” Tess was making a considerable effort not to throw up when she looked at the body between them. Judging by Ben’s face and the sickly dairy smell that lingered in the room, he had lost that battle sometime earlier.

“I pulled the gun, but only to get what I wanted.” He was still trying out his story, thinking as he spoke. “It was an accident?”

“I can see how that might happen,” she lied. Again, one didn’t have to be a regular viewer of CSI to wonder how a person got shot in the back of the head, accidentally. The silence in the room stretched out, uncomfortable, possibly lethal. Tess knew that she could get to her gun and get a shot off. But Ben was so nearby. She couldn’t be sure that Mr. Sybert wouldn’t shoot him, if only by accident. And – she tried to suppress the thought, but there it was, flickering at first, then bright as neon: She didn’t want to kill this man, if she could avoid it. Yes, she knew he had shot Alicia, and probably in the most cowardly fashion possible. She didn’t believe his story about Greer, either. Yet she couldn’t help thinking that if she kept calm, if she continued to show him respect, all three of them might leave here alive.

“A friend of mine explained the basics of the Zervitz case to me,” Tess said, more to Ben than to Sybert, as if she had all the time in the world. “The thing that sticks in my head is that they never proved the producers of the film saw the original treatment. They just proved that they might have, that it was reasonable to infer that from the similarities. Expert witnesses for both sides then argued whether the film clearly plagiarized the two-page scenario. The plaintiff ’s witness said yes, the defense’s witness said no, and the jury decided they believed the plaintiff.”

“Home court advantage,” Ben muttered. Tess wished he would stop being so damn feisty. She had a hunch that simple acknowledgment could go far in this situation.

“Well, let me be the judge. Literally. Mr. Sybert, would you show me the letter-”

“No,” he said, patting his breast pocket with his left hand. “I don’t intend to let anyone else touch this.”

“Then read it to me, Mr. Sybert. Go through it, a paragraph at a time, and then we’ll let Ben counter how his idea was different. After all, with me you’ll have – what did Ben call it – home-court advantage. And I always root for the home team.”

She was charmed in spite of herself by how conscientiously Mr. Sybert managed to remove the letter and his reading glasses from his pocket, all the while keeping a firm grip on the gun. Ah, too bad, she had hoped he might put it down for this recitation.

“Let the record reflect,” he began “that the letter is dated June 19, 1992. Now that I have it in my possession, I can have someone test it, however they do that, prove that it was written when it says it was, but you can see” – he flipped it quickly, too quickly for Tess to see anything, not that it mattered – “that it was written on a typewriter, just as I told you. That typewriter is still in Bob’s house by the way, so we’ll be able to match it.”

“Noted for the record,” Tess said, in what she hoped was a judicious tone.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ben said. Tess tried another stern look, but Ben was impervious. Luckily, Mr. Sybert had started to read.

“‘Dear Mr. Tumulty: As you may recall, we met a few years ago, when you were filming Pit Beef. I was the photographer who came to the set with my brother-in-law, George, and talked to you about the old Westview movie theater, how weird it was to see Barry Levinson use that as a nightclub in Tin Men. Anyway, I am a filmmaker, too, and although I usually work from classic texts, my brother-in-law, George, had a terrific idea the other day: What if Wallis Warfield Simpson, a Baltimore girl as you well know, didn’t marry King Edward, but instead settled in Windsor Hills with a nice Baltimore boy who worked in a factory?’”

He looked up at Tess expectantly. “Okay,” she said. “I see the royal angle. You had the would-be Duchess of Windsor settle for a Baltimore boy-”

“A factory worker,” Mr. Sybert clarified.

“Ben has a steelworker romancing Napoleon’s future sister-in-law. I’ll give you that point. It’s suspiciously similar.”

“Don’t I get to speak?” Ben asked.

“Keep it brief,” Tess admonished.

“Okay, two things: Betsy Patterson’s marriage to Jerome Bonaparte didn’t last. And, two, our original plan was for Ma

Tess pretended to think about this. “I see what you’re saying,” she said. “Still, this round goes to Mr. Sybert.”

The man’s chest seemed to expand. Someone was listening to him, drinking in every word with rapt attention. Attention must be paid, as Mrs. Loman had tried to tell us. Mr. Sybert resumed reading.

“‘Now, as many people know, Edward was thought to be a Nazi sympathizer. But if Wallis Warfield Simpson had married someone else and Edward had not, in fact, given up the throne, could that have affected the outcome of World War II? In our alternative version of history, Mrs. Simpson’s decision to marry a Baltimore man has that catastrophic effect, and the present day shows us a world controlled by the Nazis. The resistance’s only hope is to send an emissary back into the past and get Mrs. Simpson to make a different romantic choice.’”

“That’s a direct steal from the Terminator,” Ben said. “I can’t believe you’re calling me a plagiarist when you’re ripping off James Cameron right and left.”

“Ours is an homage,” Mr. Sybert replied. “Besides, that’s our very next line – Think Terminator, by way of Robert Harris. See, the fact that you mentioned that movie proves that you read Bob’s letter.”

“Or proves that there’s no such thing as an original idea, so it’s actually reasonable to believe I developed my show without ever seeing your stupid letter.”

Stupid was a mistake. Tess saw the man’s cheeks redden while his chest, swollen with pride just a few seconds ago, started heaving.

“I agree with Mr. Sybert,” she said quickly. “There’s a difference between conscious tribute and ripping off someone’s idea without acknowledgment. And it is awfully coincidental that you cited the same movie, Ben.”