Of course, the most frustrating thing about Ben was that the work, once done, was stellar. Not that Lottie had any intention of letting him know that.

Besides, she had bigger worries. Something was rotten in the city of Baltimore. Throughout her career, Lottie had battled government interference, various actors’ addictions, and nepotism. She had weathered weather, gone toe-to-toe with God and won the argument. But this production was off in a way that Lottie couldn’t define, and it troubled her. They were making their days more often than not, Flip was dealing pretty well with the network demands for more Selene, and no one in the cast had been arrested. Yet.

Still, there was someone in the production who couldn’t be trusted, although she wasn’t sure who it was. Lottie had never worked with any of these bozos before – not Flip or Ben, but also not the string of second-rate directors that the network had foisted on them, and definitely none of the union locals here in Baltimore. The last, at least, had been a pleasant surprise. The crew was disciplined and professional, honed by years of steady work. Even the Teamsters were a joy, relatively. But no spring ran forever, and Mann of Steel was now the city’s only shot at getting something up and running for a few years. Movies spent more by the day, but a successful television series spent it longer. Even a two-season run for Mann of Steel would be a godsend for the city, make its little slice of Diehard 4 look anemic.

So why did it feel as if someone was actively rooting against the project, orchestrating its problems? Ever since that night in August, when the police had come to them with those photographs and the story of that poor man, hanging from his ceiling fan, Lottie had felt a sickening thump in her stomach, the sense that the production was somehow outside her control, an unfamiliar sensation for her.

And she had been right – that was the beginning of their troubles, more or less, although Johnny Tampa had been whining from almost day one. Flip had his theories, but Lottie thought he was cracked. Take Mandy Stewart, the so-called community activist who was always spouting off to the newspapers. Lottie knew exactly why Mandy Stewart had become such a vocal critic, and it didn’t have shit to do with the neighborhood. A local baker, she had approached Lottie about getting the production to use her goods. Lottie would have worked it out, too, if the woman had been even semireasonable, but she had quintupled her normal prices. Lottie knew this for a fact, because she had asked her assistant to call and pretend he was looking for pastries for an event at the local library, and gotten the real quote. Then there were the retired steelworkers, who had nothing better to do than drum up bad press. Again, they would go away if Lottie would hire one of them as a consultant, but she refused to be bullied that way. Why did locals try to kill the goose that laid the golden egg? Well, not kill it exactly. No, it was more like fattening a goose for pâté, only in this case, they squeezed everything out. Everyone seemed to think that Hollywood minted its own money, that it produced currency the same way it produced stories.

One thing she knew for sure: This Theresa Esther Monaghan of Keyes Investigations was crazy if she thought she could bid a security job so high. They could get twenty-four-hour rent-a-cops for not much more. Flip could promise anything he liked, but all the paper moved through Lottie’s office, and she had the final say on expenditures. She would knock Monaghan’s price down and insist that the kid, the one she was forcing on them, take an unpaid internship. The specter of that small victory lifted her spirits and carried over to her conversation with the locations manager, whom she proceeded to ream with the quiet, no-nonsense tone that everyone on the crew had learned to fear. Flip yelled, Ben blustered, but it was Lottie’s quiet voice that got things done.

“Man, isn’t this something?”

Lloyd stood in the middle of what looked to Tess to be a relatively ordinary suite of offices, indistinguishable from any other in the city, aside from the fact that this one featured posters from several film and television projects she had never heard of – No Human Involved; Ottoman’s Empire; Mildred, Pierced.

“It’s something,” she managed.

“And look in there.” Lloyd dashed through the open door of the corner office before Tess could admonish him, emerging with a winged statue.

“This thing is heavy,” he said, hoisting it in two hands. “I want to thank the members of the Academy and my mama-”

“Don’t forget God. He’s big this year.”

The dark-haired man slouching in the doorway was tall and thin, with the type of sharp-featured face that Tess usually found attractive. But there was something a little mocking in his eyes, unkind. Lloyd was only seventeen, and his life had been sheltered in a lot of ways. Besides, he couldn’t be the first person to play this game. Tess bet almost everyone who saw the Emmy grabbed it instinctively, delivering a mock acceptance speech. The cleaning lady had probably done it.

“I’m sorry,” Lloyd said.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” the man said. “And I doubt that Flip would care. Greer – now Greer is another thing. She just had it all shined up, special for the boss man. But then, Greer is always buffing Flip’s Emmy, in one sense or another.”

Was that supposed to be a double entendre? It didn’t fit the dynamic that Tess had observed between Flip and Greer. Besides, the girl had a fiancé.

“How do they get your name on it?” Lloyd said, puzzling over the inscribed base. “Wouldn’t that give away who won, ahead of time? They always make a big deal of it being a secret.”

“You get them blank, then they send you a band that’s fitted over the base. Or so I’ve heard.” There was a lot of topspin on the last word, but Tess decided to make nice, anyway.

“Tess Monaghan. I’m coming on board as security for Selene Waites, and Flip agreed that the production would find a space for Lloyd here in the writers’ office, as an intern, doing whatever you need.”

She was a little bitter about Lottie MacKenzie, whom she had yet to meet, shortchanging Lloyd that way. It had been bad enough, agreeing to a cut in her own fee, but the truth was that Tess had jacked it up quite a bit, testing the limits, and even the renegotiated price was far better than what she usually got. Denying minimum wage to Lloyd was downright mean-spirited – not to mention detrimental to Crow’s hope of instilling a work ethic in the kid.

“Can you type?” the man asked Lloyd.

“Sorta…,” Lloyd said, an honest enough answer. Tess had seen him on a computer keyboard. He used the two-finger method, and his speed was admirable, his accuracy and spelling less so.

“Work a photocopier? Answer phones? Get a lunch order right? The last is really the most important. A writers’ office, like an army, travels on its stomach.”

Tess thought that Lloyd would bristle at this list of less-than-illustrious tasks, but he nodded earnestly.

“Whatever you want, Mr. Marcus.”

“Ben,” the man said, then on a delayed double take: “How do you know my name?”

“When I learned I was going to work here, her boyfriend, Crow” – he jerked a thumb at Tess – “sat me down with the computer, and we went over everybody’s credits on IMDb, then I matched the names to images on Google.”

“Were you familiar with our work before you did that little exercise?” Tess couldn’t decide if the question was supercilious, or merely insecure. Of course, it was possible to be both, to use the former as a cover for the latter.

“I seen The Beast twelve times,” Lloyd said. “It’s one of my favorite movies.”

Ben Marcus looked pained. “That’s Tumulty, and Tumulty Senior at that. We don’t give points for that around here.”