The Bequest (10 page)

Mike and Teri
sat in a corner booth at a well-lit Denny’s restaurant
on Wilshire Boulevard, where Mike nursed his coffee but Teri speared
pancakes from her Grand Slam and ate with gusto, hoping to bury fear
with food. She was also in no mood for Mike’s lecture, which had
continued unabated via cell phone as they drove their respective vehicles
back to civilization from the desperate neighborhood inhabited by the likes
of Leland Crowell—if, indeed, that was who he was.

“I still can’t get over it,” Mike said.
“So I gathered.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Look, Mike, you can keep asking the same question over and over

“That doesn’t mean you go to war zone areas of this God-forsaken
city by yourself in the middle of the night. And you damn sure don’t go
into hotel rooms with strange men by yourself. Who knows what might
have happened!”

The voice belonged to Bob Keene, who trudged across the restaurant
toward them. Even with a golf shirt thrown over sharply creased jeans and
deck shoes, he looked slick, with every hair in place. Even his stubble of
beard seemed calculated to scream “casual.” Mike slid over as Bob sat next
to him.

“I’ve already asked her that,” Mike said.
“Five times,” Teri added. “And the answer was the same all five.”
“Well, I haven’t heard it, so what was it?”
“I saw that tattoo on his forearm, and it triggered something in my

memory. I had to find out who he was.”
“And it was Crowell?” Bob asked.
“I have no idea. Remember, I never met Leland Crowell in my life.

A waitress appeared and Bob ordered coffee, then sent her on her
way. “So it was Crowell.”
“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 think 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.

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?