“I wouldn’t do that to you, Mom,” she said solemnly.
“I just want to tell him what I think of what he did to you. It’s disgusting. He’s a huge liar. And Brig too. What they did is as bad as the money.” There were times when Tallie thought so too. The money was dishonest but impersonal. But what they had done together was a knife in her heart. She couldn’t bear thinking of either of them anymore. It was the definition of betrayal.
“I think so too. Anyway, it’s wonderful to be here, and I’m happy to be with you. I’m sorry to start it off with an awful, sordid story.”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Mom. It’s so terrible. Do you think you’ll ever date anyone again?” Max couldn’t imagine her trying again, or trusting anyone after this, neither woman nor man, since she had been exploited by both, and sorely abused.
“Not at the moment,” Tallie said firmly. “That’s the last thing on my mind, and the last thing I’d want to do.”
“Does Grampa know?”
“Yes. As always, he gave me good advice.”
“How is he?”
“So-so, kind of weak right now. But he gets that way sometimes, and then he perks up. I hope he will.”
“I’ll be home in a few weeks, and I can keep him company. I’m coming home before summer school.” Unlike most of her peers, who wanted to drag their college education out for five or six years now, Max wanted to finish in less than four, and go straight to law school, if they’d let her. She had signed up for summer school that summer, and Tallie was proud of her and so was her grandfather, with good reason. She was an outstanding and dedicated student, and always had been. “When do you finish the picture, Mom?”
“A few weeks after I go back. Then I’ve got post-production, and then I’m done. We can go somewhere when you come home after summer session. I’m taking some time off after this movie. I need it.” And since she wouldn’t be working with Hunt on the next one, she wanted some time to find a new project that appealed to her. She loved the movies that Hunt produced, but there were plenty of other good ones out there. She was determined to find one of them.
They lay cuddling on the bed for a while then, while Max tried to absorb all that her mother had told her. It was so enormous that it was hard to get her mind around it. It was huge!
“What a dick Hunt is,” Max said sadly. She had lost all respect for him after hearing the story. “And Brig is a total crook.”
“You’re right on both counts. No morals, no principles, no honesty, no integrity. They’re rotten people.”
“Are you glad she’s going to prison?” Max was curious.
“Yes, I am. It’s not very forgiving of me, but I think she should pay for what she did, and pay me back as much as she can.”
“Will she?”
“I don’t know. Supposedly you lose money on these deals and you don’t get much back.”
“Let’s hope it will be different for you. I’ll say a prayer for you, Mom.” When she said it, Tallie nearly cried. She had all the correct instincts about right and wrong.
“What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” Tallie asked her. Max wanted to go to a small neighborhood restaurant with her mother. It sounded good to Tallie too. After all her hard work and misery in L.A., she wanted to get out, and she loved being with her daughter.
Tallie loved Max’s favorite restaurant too. They had burgers and French fries, and they walked home afterward in the balmy spring air. New York was beautiful that time of year, and when they went back to the apartment, Max got in her mother’s bed, and they watched TV and relaxed. Max’s head was still spinning with all the news.
Chapter 15
THE NEXT MORNING Max and Tallie got up and went out to breakfast. They ate at Cafe Cluny nearby. Tallie had eggs Benedict, and Max scrambled eggs. And they took their time and talked a lot. Tallie loved catching up with Max’s doings and news. The boyfriend had already faded out, and she was working hard at school and having fun hanging out with her friends, and she wanted to introduce her mother to some of them that night. Tallie had agreed to take four of them to dinner. They went to Da Silvano, which was one of Tallie’s favorite restaurants, with delicious Italian food. And they sat at a table outside on the sidewalk, where they could watch people wander by.
And for the rest of the week, they walked through SoHo and Chelsea, went to galleries, shopped, went uptown to MoMA, walked through Central Park and listened to a steel band. They went to a Broadway play one night, and did all the things they both loved doing in New York. For the entire week, Tallie kept checking her cell phone to see if there was a message from Jim Kingston, telling her that Brigitte had been arrested. But she knew it was too soon since they had to get the indictment from the grand jury and the warrant from the judge, and Brigitte was probably still in Mexico anyway, but Tallie checked her phone several times a day. She would have preferred it to happen while she was away, but suspected it probably wouldn’t.
The week went by too fast, and Tallie was getting ready to fly back to L.A. on Sunday night. She’d had almost a week there, and she and Max had had a ball. And now she had to finish the movie, starting on Monday.
When she left Max at the apartment, Tallie held her tight and thanked her for her understanding about everything that had happened.
“Of course. Next time the shit hits the fan, don’t wait to tell me,” Max admonished. She had written an e-mail to Hunt, and shown it to her mother, telling him how disappointing and dishonest he was, and she felt better after she wrote it. Tallie was touched by what she’d said. Max was totally let down by him. And she had nothing to say to Brigitte. At least Hunt hadn’t stolen anything from her mom, except her time and trust. But Max thought what he had done was terrible too, he had turned out to be a liar and a cheat and she’d told him that she never wanted to see him again, so it was a loss for her too. And she wanted nothing to do with his new girlfriend and the baby. He was fired. And she told him what he’d done to her mother was unforgivable. And in a strange way, the losses they shared had brought them closer to each other in the past week. And Max was coming home soon.
* * *
Tallie didn’t hear anything from Jim for the first few days she was back in L.A. She was working hard on the set, trying to bring the film in on time, and she was almost there. They had a heat wave, and everyone complained about the long hours she was insisting they work. And much to her surprise, she heard nothing from Brigitte after she got Greg Thomas’s e-mail, letting her go. She sent nothing to Tallie, not a text or an e-mail or a letter, no apology, no regrets, no remorse, no sadness over the friendship they had lost and the seventeen years that had gone up in smoke. Just silence. Tallie’s father said he wasn’t surprised.
“I’m not sure people like that ever feel remorse,” he said when Tallie dropped by one night on the way home. It was late, it was ten o’clock, and she had been on the set since six that morning. “I think the kind of flawed character that allows someone to lie and steal like that has no empathy for the people they hurt. They just turn the page and go on,” her father said wisely. He looked better again when she got back from New York, and he seemed to have more energy than he’d had in a while, and Tallie was relieved.
“I think you’re right, Dad,” she said sadly. She had expected to hear something from her. She also told him all about the time she’d spent with Max in New York, and he loved to hear about it. Max called him once a week, but occasionally she forgot when she was busy, and he called her. He was excited about Max coming home before summer school, and so was Tallie.
It was another week before she had a message from Jim Kingston on her phone, and she called him back as soon as she saw it.
“Anything new?” she asked anxiously, and he sounded very calm when he answered.
“Yes. Jack and I arrested her this afternoon. She’s in custody tonight, and she’s being arraigned tomorrow.” After waiting months for this, her heart fluttered when she heard it. She felt ghoulish being excited
about it, but she was. She wanted closure, but that was still a long way away. This was just the beginning of all the official procedures.
“How did it go? Was she freaked out?”
“No, not at all. She was very calm and extremely pissed.” He didn’t sound surprised, but Tallie was. That wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. She thought Brigitte would be scared when she was finally caught, maybe hysterical and crying.
“Do you think she expected it?”
“No. I think she thought she had gotten away with it. I think she thinks she still will. She thinks she’s very clever. Now she has to get an attorney and defend herself,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Do you think the judge will keep her in jail?” Tallie asked hopefully.
“No. She’ll be out on bail or her own recognizance tomorrow, after she pleads at the arraignment.” She was going to plead not guilty, of course. Even if she pleaded guilty later in some kind of deal with the U.S. attorney to reduce her sentence, no one ever pleaded guilty at the arraignment. “How was your trip to New York?” He hadn’t spoken to her since.
“Nice. I had a great time with my daughter.” She sounded happy when she said it.
“How did she take all this news?”
“She was shocked, and very disappointed in both of them. She loved them both, and she’s known Brig since she was a baby. At first she couldn’t believe it.” But neither could Tallie, he knew. “Then we got our minds off it and had a lot of fun.”
“I’m glad. You deserve it. I’ll let you know when she gets out after the arraignment.” But there was nothing more for Tallie to do. Now the U.S. attorney assigned to it had to build their case over the next many months and go to trial, and Tallie would be a witness, as the victim. That was her official role in the whole sordid affair.
Jim called her again the following afternoon, and told her that Brigitte had given the deed to her house as a bond in lieu of bail, and she had been released. So she hadn’t gotten off scot-free, but she was out of jail.
“Be a little bit careful,” he told Tallie. “You don’t have to be paranoid, just be alert. She probably wouldn’t do it, but you don’t want a confrontation with her at this point.”
“No, I don’t. How was she in court?”
“Cool, arrogant, and rude,” he said, which stunned Tallie, but not him. “Nature of the beast. She acted like the whole thing was an imposition, and she talked down to the judge.”
“Did he react to it?” Tallie asked in fascination.
“No, he’s used to it. It probably hasn’t sunk in yet that she’s not getting out of this. She thinks she’s still in control, and she kept saying ‘Do you know who I am?’ ” It was what Jim had suspected about her from the beginning. She thought she was the celebrity and the star. She thought she was Tallie, or who Tallie would be if she chose to act like a star, which she didn’t. Brigitte’s sense of entitlement oozed from her pores, and was offensive. “She’s being charged with four counts of embezzlement, fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion, as I suspected. She’s in deep shit now, but she hasn’t accepted that yet. She’ll be a lot less grand when she’s in prison cleaning toilets.” The image he conjured up made Tallie shudder. It was all too real, and she couldn’t imagine Brigitte there for a minute. “It’ll probably wind up in the press fairly soon,” Jim warned her, “because you’re listed as the victim. When the reporters see that, they’re going to be calling you.”
“I have nothing to say,” she said calmly.
“That won’t stop them.” They both knew that was true.
“I’m glad Max isn’t here.” Tallie called her that night, though, and told her. She wasn’t keeping secrets from her anymore now that she knew the story. And they talked about it for a while. It was still so shocking to both of them and nearly impossible to believe.
The next morning, Tallie realized that that would be the last she’d hear about it for the next many months. It wouldn’t go to trial until the following year. The wheels would move slowly, the government would build their case, and in a long, long time it would be over. It seemed to take an eternity for criminal cases to be put to rest. And she talked to Greg Thomas about it the day after. He was preparing their civil suit, which would also take about a year before it went to court. It was frustrating and like watching paint dry it was so slow. She complained to her father about how slow the process was, and he reminded her that that was the way the law worked, and Tallie wasn’t going to change that, no matter how frustrated or impatient she was.
Tallie hadn’t hired a new assistant. After everything that had happened with Brigitte, she didn’t want to, at least not yet. It made more work for her, but she was more comfortable doing it herself.
She was sitting in her kitchen, paying a stack of bills, when her cell phone rang on Saturday, and she answered it without looking at who it was, and her heart nearly stopped when she heard a familiar voice. It was Brigitte. She sounded matter-of-fact and ice cold.
“I want to pick up some things I left at your house,” she said to Tallie without preamble. Her voice was cold, without apology or explanation of what she’d done.
“There’s nothing of yours here,” Tallie said calmly, but her heart was pounding. She wondered if Brigitte was going to say anything about getting arrested. But she knew Brigitte couldn’t get in. Greg Thomas had had her locks changed when she was in New York, and she was glad he had.
“I left a briefcase with some papers in it, in the downstairs hall closet,” Brigitte said in a determined tone.
“I’ll send it to you,” Tallie said, sounding firm.
“I want it now,” Brigitte said, and her tone was degenerating rapidly to a high pitch.
“I’m not home,” Tallie lied, beginning to feel uncomfortable about the call, and she remembered Jim’s warning to be alert and cautious.
“Yes, you are. I’m standing outside your front door,” Brigitte said, and the word that came instantly to Tallie’s mind was evil.
“It won’t do you any good. I’m not letting you in. And I’m not alone here.” She had added that for good measure, and Brigitte just laughed.
“What bullshit. You’re always alone, and you’re going to be forever. You’re pathetic. He didn’t love you. You know that, don’t you? He loved me. That’s why he stayed with me for three years. He was just using you for his movies. He told me that many times.” Her words cut through Tallie like a knife, which was what Brigitte had intended. She wanted to get even because she’d been caught.
“He didn’t love either of us,” Tallie said quietly. “He loves the girl who’s having his baby. He told me that too, that he loves her.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Brigitte sounded furious at what she’d said, and Tallie wondered if she really was outside, but she didn’t want to look. “She trapped him. She’s a clever little whore, and she screwed both of us over and stole him from us, and got pregnant to do it. She’s a lot smarter than we are.”
“Maybe so.” And then Tallie couldn’t keep herself from asking. “How could you do that to me, Brig? After all those years, how could you do that with him, with the money, all of it. How could you look me in the eye every day, or yourself when you looked in the mirror?”
“Oh please, don’t make me laugh. Don’t give me all that morality crap. You bumble around looking like a homeless person. He didn’t want you. What man wants someone who looks like that? I carried you around for all those years, while you were making ‘great’ movies. You had his money backing you, and his name, and me keeping your head on straight and driving you around like a cripple. Without the two of us you’re nothing. And without your name, no one is going to invest in his movies. If it hadn’t been for me, no one would even know who you are. Half the time people think I am you. The only reason they even know who you are in this town is because I was out there doing PR for you, looking like a star. Tallie, you’re nothing. Hunt used to say it to me all the time. We used to laugh at you when we were in bed.” She was vici
ous and angry, and her voice was rising in pitch, and Tallie didn’t want to hear another word of what she was saying. She knew it wasn’t true, but what Brigitte said was sick, the product of a disturbed mind. And Tallie was shaking from what she’d heard so far.
“Stop it, Brig.”
“You realize this is his fault, don’t you,” Brigitte said in a trembling voice. “If he hadn’t gone off with that little whore, we’d still be together, and you wouldn’t know the difference, you’d be happy. And if he hadn’t confessed to you about me, I’d still be with you.” Yes, and stealing my money, came instantly to Tallie’s mind.
“He didn’t tell me,” Tallie said firmly.
“Yes, he did, he must have. No one else knew.”
“Someone else told me. You weren’t as discreet as you thought.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, it’s true. Let it go, Brig. It doesn’t matter now, and it won’t change anything, for any of us. It’s all over.”
“It’s all his fault,” she repeated. Tallie could tell she wanted her to be angry at Hunt too. She was, but more than that, she was hurt. And she wasn’t going to ruin the rest of her life over him and Brigitte. She wanted to put this behind her now. She was only sorry it couldn’t happen sooner, and Brigitte couldn’t go to prison tomorrow, instead of in a year, after the trial. But there was no doubt in her mind that Brigitte would wind up behind bars, and belonged there. “He thinks he’s going to testify against me, doesn’t he?” Brigitte said in a voice of utter fury. “If he hadn’t gotten involved with that girl, you wouldn’t have known about any of this.”
“Yes, I would. I found out about the money because of the audit for the Japanese investor. You were up shit creek from then on, and it would have come out eventually anyway. Someone would have figured it out, even Victor.”
“It’s all Hunt’s fault.” It was her fault, as well as Hunt’s, but Tallie didn’t want to talk to her any longer.
“I’ll send you the briefcase.”
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