Page 137 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Soaked to the Bone

“Mr. Lane, your father’s death might not have been an accident. I
must ask you to describe that conversation.”
He balked, staring at her with an odd mix of defiance and
incomprehension. Maybe I could be of use here.
“Tim,” I said softly, “it’s over. All the conflicts you had with G.F.
are going to come to light. Your privacy, although protected in
various ways by the law, will be pushed to the limit by its enforcers.
My own life has suddenly become an open book, and I realize that
the only way to close it again is to let a few pages be turned by
strangers. I know you have already had many bad experiences with
the medical and legal professions. This one may be the last for a long
time. You can start putting a lot of things behind you now, but first
we all need to get the immediate problem resolved.”
Had he heard me? I waited. Finally he blinked. And blinked again,
this time to push tears out of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, stiffening his back and clenching his fists.
“My last moments, my last memories of Dad will be of an argument,
an escalation of verbal abuse which drove me out of the house in a
black rage. I guess everybody knows he wouldn’t give me any credit
or any payment for the screenplay. And he was beginning to show
signs of interest in Fern Grotteau that I could not stand by and
watch.”
“Had he exploited you before?”
“Yes, but I was too weak to resist. In fact, I needed work, needed
someone to control my life and give it structure, and nobody would
hire me because of—well, various reasons. I did a lot of his writing.
He could barely string two sentences together. I edited. I proofread. I
composed letters to agents, to creditors, to lawyers. I checked
everything before he signed on the dotted line. And I made
suggestions, some of which helped him a great deal. The business
keeps changing: an older person has no idea what is going to be
popular. So when I started writing stories, he made sure he got hold
of them before I could show them to anyone else. The Organ Harvest
Festival was the first he decided to turn into a treatment for a major
motion picture. As such, it was worth a lot of money. But he
considered it his own property, and found ways to cut me out of it. I
came here to plead for enough money at least to get away from here,
to start a new life in another city. Not a chance.”

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