Along the way they talked about how to settle Charlotte Buchanan’s case. An eavesdropping outsider, Rep thought, would probably have found their meandering discussion desultory and inconclusive. Rep, though, had an odd sense that they were making a kind of oblique and indefinable progress.
“I don’t know,” Eastman mused toward the end of their ramble, “you think she’d go for Guild arbitration? Bullet-proof confidentiality agreement, no transcript and no appeal? Even if she lost it’d be a kind of respect.”
“I don’t like our chances if the arbitrators are members of the Screenwriters Guild, since they couldn’t help thinking about the next time they might have a shot at working for you. Maybe we could look at using Guild rules and standards with a neutral panel. But we’d still have to have some discovery.”
“Boxcar discovery would be a problem. Might be able to work something out, though. Tell you what. Do you think she’d be willing to just talk to me? See if we can get on the same wave-length?”
“I’ll ask her,” Rep said.
They were tramping by now through the dark recesses of level 5 of the hotel’s parking ramp, approaching the Viper. Eastman clicked the locks up from ten feet away, and Rep quickened his steps until he gratefully sank aching legs and weary muscles into the front passenger seat.
He was comfortable for just about one full second. Then he saw something that had him sitting up tensely. Eastman must have seen the same thing because he reacted at the same moment.
“Get out!” he barked.
Rep got out. In a hurry. So did Eastman.
Rep’s neural reflexes had gotten well ahead of his logical processes, so it took him a couple of seconds to understand what he’d noticed and why it had spooked him. The trigger was a spotless rear-view mirror, without the greasy thumb-smudge Eastman had left on the way downtown. No smudge meant someone had wiped it clean after Rep and Eastman had left the car. Someone wiping the mirror clean probably meant someone worried about fingerprints—ergo, someone who’d been doing something inside the car that he (or she) didn’t want anyone else to find out about later on.
“Bomb, you think?” Rep asked as Eastman joined him about eight feet behind the car. He was astonished at the casual way he asked this chillingly plausible question. He shouldn’t have been feeling calm. He should have been struggling to control his bladder.
“Doubt it,” Eastman muttered. “Too public a place, and they wouldn’t have known how much time they’d have.”
“What, then?”
“I have a pretty good idea. Let’s see if I’m right.”
Striding decisively forward, Eastman swung the trunk lid up. He searched the inside of the trunk methodically, then lifted the pad on the bottom and probed at length through the spare tire well and the tire itself. After a good ten minutes, he came out empty-handed, and slammed the trunk lid disgustedly.
He stepped around to the passenger door that Rep had left open. Frowning with concentration, he thrust his fingers deeply between the back and seat cushions, then under the seat. He shook his head.
Now he opened the glove compartment. He fingered the maps and the owner’s manual and the registration. Then, triumphantly, he beamed and pulled himself from the car’s interior. He was holding a small, brown envelope, perhaps one and a half inches by four.
“What’s that?” Rep asked.
“About enough happy dust for two good lines, unless I miss my guess,” Eastman said. “Under the circumstances, though, I don’t think we’ll bother with a chemical analysis.” He sprinkled white powder on the pavement in a space three cars away. He tore the envelope into tiny fragments and flung them toward the wall.
“I think we can go now,” he told Rep.
Rep acquiesced, even though he found scant comfort in Eastman’s joining him in the Reasonably Respectable People Who’ve Recently Destroyed Criminal Evidence Club. He didn’t have any better ideas, and even if he had he was too busy trying to sort things out to argue. Was Charlotte Buchanan that nuts? Was this part of the same amateur campaign as the hold-your-tongue nonsense? If not, how had a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine found its way in the last three hours into a car provided by the Milwaukee mayor’s office? If so, how had she managed all this cloak and dagger stuff, breaking into a locked car and cleaning up fingerprints when she was through? Did Eastman suspect Buchanan? Did he have any idea that Rep suspected her?
Rep was still thinking when they pulled out of the ramp onto Mason Street, turned right onto Jefferson, and headed back toward Wisconsin Avenue.
“I think if we take a left on Michigan we can pick up a freeway along the lakefront that’ll basically take us right to the airport’s back door,” Eastman said. Rep nodded.
They had just crossed Wisconsin and, even with Eastman at the wheel, hadn’t yet hit thirty miles an hour when Rep noticed the flashing red and blue lights. A motorcycle cop was pulling them over. Conscious though he was of perfect innocence, Rep felt an icy tremor in his gut. Looking through the windshield, he noticed another motorcycle cop waiting at the Jefferson/Michigan intersection, and saw what he would have bet was an unmarked car pulled up on the opposite side of the street.
“Duh, what a bore,” Eastman said to himself, popping the leather-wrapped steering wheel impatiently with the heel of his right hand. “On the other hand, this may have a perverse entertainment value.”
He had his driver’s license and the Temporary Car Loan form supplied by the mayor’s office ready by the time the cop reached the driver-side window. The policeman examined them gravely for a very long thirty seconds.
“May I see the registration, also, sir?” the officer asked then.
“I’m not sure we have one. The car’s a loaner, just for the day.”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said. “Would you mind just opening the glove compartment and seeing if there’s a vehicle registration in there?”
“Of course, officer.”
Eastman opened the glove compartment. He had barely begun to finger the documents inside when the cop brusquely intervened.
“Excuse me, sir, would you mind if I looked through the glove compartment myself?”
Only in the most technical sense was this a question. Everything in the cop’s tone, clipped delivery, and body language made it an order.
“Why no, officer, I have no objection whatever to your looking through the glove compartment yourself. You have my knowing, intelligent, complete, and unqualified consent to do so.”
The cop frowned at this, his expression suggesting for the first time that he wasn’t sure he was still in control of the encounter. He recovered quickly.
“Would you gentlemen please step out of the car?”
Rep and Eastman obeyed. Rep noticed that they were picking up unabashed stares from most of the pedestrians in the vicinity. Rousts apparently weren’t all that common in this part of downtown Milwaukee.
The cop slipped into the driver’s seat, leaned across to rest his right elbow on the passenger seat, and spent what seemed like five solid minutes searching every atom of space in the glove compartment. His expression when he pulled himself back out of the car suggested a constipated elephant just after coitus interruptus.
“Thank you, sir,” he said to Eastman. “The, uh, reason you were stopped was an illegal lane change back there the other side of Wisconsin Avenue. Since you’re a visitor to our city, we’ll just let it go with a warning. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Milwaukee, and please drive carefully.”
The motorcycle seemed to belch angrily as the officer made a u-turn and sped away. Rep and Eastman slipped back into the car.
“We were set up,” Rep said.
“I was set up,” Eastman corrected him as he made a thoroughly signaled swerve into the driving lane. “Someone planted sky-powder in the car and then dropped a dime on me.”
“Well Hemingway would’ve been proud of you. Your performance epitomized grace under pressure. Witho
ut your consent, by the way, that was a completely illegal search.”
“In the legal textbooks, maybe,” Eastman said. “Not in court. After the first three times they have a film held up because a star gets busted for possession, producers become experts on criminal procedure. If I hadn’t consented, he would’ve held us up ’til one of his buddies had a chance to fetch a warrant, or maybe he would’ve found some excuse to make a custodial arrest so he could search the car without a warrant.”
“His buddy couldn’t have gotten a warrant.”
“Sure he could. The cop busting our chops would have made a prearranged signal that supposedly meant he’d seen traces of something suspicious when I opened the glove compartment, and one of his pals would’ve run to a tame judge.”
“But there wasn’t anything suspicious for him to see,” Rep protested.
“Right. But none of this folderol would matter unless there had been. I don’t care what you learned your first year in law school. On the streets, the real rule about search and seizure is, if you find something, the search was legal—at least ’til you get to the court of appeals; and if you don’t find anything, who cares?”
They had by now made their way to an almost empty freeway. Eastman was cruising along at precisely the posted speed limit.
“I’m thinking this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to you,” Rep said.
“You can’t make movies without making enemies.”
“Did you make any enemies with Red Guard!?”
“Must have.” Eastman shot Rep a quick, sly look. “After all, I made at least one with In Contemplation of Death, didn’t I?”
“If you did, I apparently made the same one.”
“Whatever,” Eastman said jovially as he pulled a computer disk from his shirt pocket and handed it to Rep. “Tell you what, I’ll make you her hero by the time you see home again. Here’s something to keep you company on the plane ride back to Indianapolis. That has the twelve official drafts of the script for ICOD, as we called In Contemplation of Death. In chronological order, with completion dates.”
“Message: You have nothing to hide and you want to do the right thing.”
“Right,” Eastman said. “Look. You and I know I could’ve bought your client’s story for twenty-five thousand bucks plus two percent of the net, and since there was never going to be any net that means I would’ve had it for less than one-tenth of one percent of my budget. You’ve got my ideas about an exit strategy for this mess. Make my pitch to your girl, and let’s see if we can make the clients happy for once, instead of making the lawyers rich.”
“What can I tell you?” Rep said. “I’ll call her.”
***
And he did. The moment he could reach a pay-phone in Indianapolis, he dialed Charlotte Buchanan’s home number. He got her answering machine and left a message. Then, impulsively, anxious for her approval, he dialed her office number at Tavistock.
“Ms. Buchanan isn’t in,” an efficient voice told him. “May I take a message?”
“I’ve already left a message for her at another number,” Rep said. “Do you expect her in later today?”
“No,” the secretary said. “Actually, she’s visiting our facility in Kohler today and isn’t expected back here until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Kohler,” Rep said lamely after an uncomfortable pause. “As in, Kohler, Wisconsin.”
“That’s right.”
“Which is within driving distance of Milwaukee, isn’t it?”
“About an hour away,” the secretary confirmed.
“Right,” Rep said, more to himself than to her. “No message.”
He limply hung up the phone. His shoulders drooped as he walked to his car.
Chapter 8
“Hey,” Melissa said delightedly at 4:25, “you’re home early.”
“I didn’t even stop by the office to check messages,” Rep said. “I had nine-point-four billable hours in by three-forty-five this afternoon. I was afraid if I worked any more today my pension might suddenly kick in and mess up all our tax planning.”
“Somehow you don’t seem as, I don’t know, buoyant as I’d expect from a guy who had nine-point-four billable hours booked and was still home in time to spend an extra one-point-five non-billable hours with me.”
“I’m a little preoccupied. There were some developments today.”
“Spill,” Melissa said, making sure that he caught the glint in her eyes.
“I’m really not supposed to.”
“Pretty please?” She added her impish smile to the mischievous glint.
He spilled.
“So,” he concluded, “now the fat’s in the fire for sure. I have to write a memo explaining this whole thing without making myself look like too much of an idiot.”
“Why?”
“So the firm can disengage itself from this case.”
“Again, why? Because the nice man gave you a plane ride and therefore no one who works for him could be a plagiarist?”
“No,” Rep said. “Because we can’t press a claim for Charlotte Buchanan while at the same time suggesting to her father that she needs professional help before she literally takes a shot at Aaron Eastman.”
“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “I think you might be jumping to conclusions.”
“Nothing would make me happier than to have you talk me into believing that,” Rep said. “But I don’t see it. There’s too much coincidence. I put the hold-your-tongue package in the freezer early yesterday morning, she’s in the office late that morning, and it’s gone with no explanation by mid-afternoon. Then Eastman gets set up in Milwaukee when she just happens to be within convenient driving distance. The hold-your-tongue thing maybe you could pass off as a bad joke. This stunt today, though, makes me think Charlotte is spiraling out of control.”
“It’s what happened today that I’m having trouble with,” Melissa said. “Charlotte could’ve done the childish threat with the string and the meat. But today someone tried to frame a guy for possession of cocaine.”
“Right. I’ve seen the look in Charlotte Buchanan’s eyes when she gets worked up about this and, believe me, she’s more than capable of it.”
“Psychologically capable, maybe, but how about nuts and bolts?” Melissa asked. “I suppose it’s not that much of a trick to buy cocaine, even in Indianapolis, and anyone would know about wiping fingerprints off. But how did she follow you without being noticed? If she didn’t do that, how did she know where the car would be? How did she know you and Eastman were going to be in Milwaukee, for that matter? And how did she finesse her way into a locked car without leaving any sign that she’d forced her entry? When I was a kid you could open a car lock from the outside by fishing through the door seal with a bent coat hanger, but I don’t think that trick works with any car built in the last ten years.”
“I don’t know how she managed it,” Rep conceded. “But someone did it, and who else is there?”
“Well, let’s think about that. Based on your description of today’s episode, I’d say Aaron Eastman did a fairly remarkable job of keeping his cool.”
“Grace under pressure personified,” Rep agreed. “When I commented on it he told me stuff like this had happened to him before.”
“Well, there you are. Unless Charlotte’s grudge goes back longer than we think there’s apparently someone else in the picture. After all, didn’t that one guy who called you back say that Eastman was involved in some kind of shadowy stuff a lot more sinister than a plagiarism claim?”
“Yeah,” Rep said, shrugging without enthusiasm.
“I mean, think about it,” Melissa continued. “The most remarkable thing about your meeting with Eastman today was that it happened at all. Aaron Eastman must get plagiarism claims all the time. There can’t be many of them that he deals with by inviting the claimant’s lawyer onto a bomber for a face-to-face chat. So why did he put this elabora
te move on you?”
“Maybe because he suspects there really is something to Charlotte’s claim and he has to take it seriously.”
“But he denied that and you thought he was being honest with you, right?”
“True,” Rep admitted.
“If you’re right, there has to be another reason. Maybe Eastman just wanted to size you up. Maybe there is a harassment campaign against him, and what he suspected was that Charlotte’s claim itself was part of it. Maybe he wanted to brace you to get a gut feeling about whether you were in this for Charlotte or were part of a bigger machination.”
Rep had the unpleasant but not unfamiliar sensation of certainty diminishing.
“If he did think that,” Rep said, tracking Melissa’s reasoning, “then this hypothetical other player in the background becomes more plausible.”
“A lot more plausible candidate than Charlotte Buchanan for copping white powder and burglarizing late-model sports cars.”
“But now we’re taking coincidence to the quantum level,” Rep said. “Charlotte Buchanan happens to get me involved with a guy who happens to have another enemy whose attack happens to dovetail with her attitude. What would one of your students get for a plot like that?”
“C or C-plus, depending on grammar and diction,” Melissa said. “I’m an easy grader. Which is about what I would’ve given And Done to Others’ Harm. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it’s nothing special.”
“I didn’t think much of it either,” Rep said.
“And that gives me even more trouble than coincidence. How did Charlotte get an agent like Julia Deltrediche to represent her?”
“Eastman said the same kind of thing,” Rep admitted. “He said he knew the story was good because otherwise Deltrediche wouldn’t have been handling it.”
“So we have anomalies even if we make Charlotte the villain,” Melissa said. “Look, I have an idea. Why don’t you give me the disk that Eastman let you have and pop out for some Chinese? I’ll run through the script versions and see if any brilliant insights work their way into my brain. After dinner you can join me. Put off your memo until we’ve done that and you’ve had a chance to sleep on it and maybe talk to Charlotte Buchanan about today.”
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