Word for Word

0:00 A Hill Full of Rerouted Cars

0:04 Watson: From the case log. September, two thousand and sixteen. Los Angeles. A Thursday evening, hot and hazy, in the converted craftsman house Holmes and I rent above Echo Park. The one-oh-one had sat stalled for an hour on the kitchen radio. Lately Holmes had been logging every car a phone app rerouted up our narrow hill, while I called out plates from the porch window.

0:28 Watson: Another one. White minivan, Arizona plate, driver yelling at his phone. Holmes: Arizona. Note the sunburn on his left arm, Watson. He's been driving since dawn.

0:38 Watson: You've filled an entire notebook. The neighbours think you work for the city. Holmes: The neighbours ought to thank me. Someone must document the invasion.

0:48 Watson: You promised this ends when the notebook does. Holmes: I bought a second notebook. Watson: Holmes.

0:54 Holmes: They were cheaper as a pair. Watson: You're hopeless. Black pickup, California plate, mud on the tailgate.

1:02 Holmes: Mud, in a drought. Write that down for me. Watson: That one didn't turn around.

1:09 Holmes: No. It parked at our curb. Grace: Mister Holmes? Sorry, I— I didn't know where else to drive.

1:18 Holmes: You found the hill without the app, at least. Who are you? Grace: My name is Grace. A producer's lawyers sent me this letter tonight.

1:27 Watson: Come in out of the heat, Grace. Sit. Grace: I need someone to read it before morning.

1:32 Holmes: Then give it here. Watson: Wait, Holmes, wait. I can see the first line. This is... it's about a memoir?

1:40 Grace: Mine. I'm writing one. Watson: Then it's a civil quarrel. Lawyers threatening an author isn't a crime.

1:48 Holmes: Your objection, Watson. Plainly. Watson: She needs an attorney by morning, not a detective. We'd only cost her the night.

1:56 Holmes: Fair. Which paragraph put you in the car? Grace: The second. Those are my sentences, quoted back at me. Word for word.

2:06 Watson: From something you've published? Grace: From a memoir I'm still writing. Nobody has seen those pages.

2:13 Watson: Good Lord. Holmes: An attorney can answer a threat. Who answers that?

2:20 Watson: All right. Not an attorney. Get your jacket, the pickup can—

2:23 Holmes: Already on, Watson. Our guest knows the road down. Watson: From the case log: the traffic study ended that night, unfinished.

2:38 Pale Squares on the Walls

2:41 Watson: Grace led us up three switchbacks into Laurel Canyon, to a bungalow where half the furniture was already gone. Holmes: Pale squares on the walls. A deep dent in the rug. You've been selling, Grace. A piano, I'd—

2:55 Grace: Keep your voice down, Mister Holmes. Holmes: The piano? Grace: My grandmother's sideboard stood there. The piano went first.

3:03 Holmes: First. So you were still hoping when you sold it. Watson: She didn't drive to Echo Park for an inventory.

3:11 Grace: He's not wrong, Doctor. Lawyers are expensive. The piano bought me about a month.

3:17 Watson: And you whisper in your own parlor. Grace: A year now these walls have— I don't know. Feels like they're listening. Could be I'm just tired...

3:27 Watson: You look it. When did you last sleep a whole night? Grace: Before he made sure nobody in this town would ever hire me again.

3:35 Holmes: Blackballed. And the memoir is what's left. Grace: It's all that's still mine. If I tell it right, every word right, somebody might finally believe me...

3:47 Holmes: Somebody has already read it. Before you finished it. Grace: He took my work. Now he's taking my sentences.

3:57 A Reporter at the Side Door

4:00 Watson: In her kitchen, close to midnight, the kettle had only begun to sing when a reporter let himself in at the side door. Teague: Grace, you said word for word — word for word, in a lawyer's letter? Who are these two?

4:14 Grace: Teague, this is Mister Holmes, and Doctor Watson. Teague's my reporter. Teague: We said nobody new. That was the whole—

4:23 Holmes: Two notebooks, Teague. You write in the right-hand one. The left you keep buttoned.

4:29 Teague: So? Holmes: So the buttoned one is full of names you can't print. Teague: Women's names. Off the record, every one. Scared out of their — they're scared.

4:40 Teague: A year I've been on him. Nine women talk to me, and not one will let me use her name. Watson: They've seen what happened to Grace.

4:48 Teague: And now his lawyers swear they'll sue the magazine into the ground before I've printed a line— Holmes: Over a story nobody's read. Teague: That nobody's allowed to read. My editor, Vivian — three drafts, three spikes. Not yet, Teague. The lawyers.

5:04 Holmes: The letter quotes Grace's book, not your notes. So far. Teague: If they have your pages, they'll come for my women next.

5:14 The Card from London

5:18 Watson: Out back, the porch boards still held the day's warmth, and Grace sat on the top step turning a business card in her fingers. Holmes: You keep turning that card over. Like you wanted to believe it.

5:30 Grace: I did want to. Three weeks back a woman called my old agent. Said she ran a fund in London. For women.

5:39 Teague: For women. They all say for women. Grace: She took me to a hotel bar in Beverly Hills, real dark. And she offered— forty-five thousand dollars. For one speech at her gala.

5:53 Watson: For one speech. To a woman this town won't hire for a commercial. Grace: I know. I know.

6:01 Holmes: Bait, cut to fit the hole in your parlor wall. And she left you a card. Watson.

6:08 Watson: Heavy stock, raised lettering. It says Ravenscourt Capital, of London, and gives a London number. Holmes: Did you ring it?

6:17 Grace: Once. Somebody answered with the name, pretty as you please. I felt such a fool for—

6:24 Teague: Phone lines are cheap. Anybody can rent a London number by the month. Watson: What did she look like, Grace?

6:30 Grace: English. Beautifully spoken. Hair up, I think—

6:34 Holmes: You think. Grace: Tinted glasses, candlelight. I'd never swear to her face.

6:42 Dust on the Windowsill

6:46 Watson: Grace's study had once been a sleeping porch; Holmes went round it on his knees while Teague held a flashlight. Holmes: Outlets, clean. The telephone is only a telephone.

6:58 Watson: So nobody's listening through these walls. Holmes: Or climbing through them. Dust on the sill, unbroken. The pages left this house with you, Grace. By daylight.

7:09 Grace: Not daylight. Evening. The second time I met her, at the same bar.

7:16 Teague: You took the chapters? To a stranger? Why would you—

7:19 Grace: She asked to read how it began. Then my sister rang from Macon, and I stepped out to the lobby. Ten minutes, maybe—

7:28 Holmes: And the chapters stayed on the table. With her. Grace: She was the first soul in eight years who wanted to hear it. I wanted somebody to— I'm sorry. I'm so... I'm so stupid.

7:43 Watson: You're not stupid. She set you up. That's what she was there for.

7:48 Teague: All right. All right, Grace. Listen, I've got something too. Last night. A woman rang the switchboard and asked for me by name. Diner off Sunset, back booth, half the bulbs dead. Wig, tinted glasses.

8:02 Watson: Tinted glasses again. Teague: Every woman hiding from that man wears glasses after dark, Doc. Holmes: She asked for you by name. You haven't printed a word about him yet.

8:13 Teague: Women talk. They— look, they pass me hand to hand. That's how this works. She gave me his hotel suite, same as the others. Then my pen died mid-sentence. Only she saw it, thank God.

8:28 Teague: I finished on one of hers and stuck it in my coat in the dark. Never looked at it. Holmes: Who else knows about her?

8:35 Teague: Nobody. Not Vivian, not the— nobody at the desk. You three.

8:40 Grace: It won't leave this house. I've nobody left to tell. Holmes: Good.

8:46 Teague: A fellow victim, Holmes. She found me.

8:50 Marble and Echo on Wilshire

8:54 Watson: Next morning at nine, the magazine's lobby on Wilshire was all marble and echo, and Holmes and I waited at its newsstand. Noa: Times or Journal, hon? Times is fresher, Journal's thicker.

9:07 Watson: The Times, thanks. Noa, is it? Your badge is on upside down.

9:12 Noa: Oh, for Pete's sake. Every single morning. That's two dollars, sir.

9:19 Holmes: The woman by the elevators has kept her back to the room since we came in. Noa: That's Vivian, our editor. Don't take it personal, she's like that with everybody before ten.

9:29 Watson: Charming. Vivian: No. Noon. Tell the printers noon, I can't talk here.

9:36 Vivian: You've been staring at my back since you walked in. Shall I turn round for a proper look? Holmes: Printers at noon. And you turned your back on your own lobby to say so. Nobody hides from a printer.

9:50 Vivian: In this building we hide from lawyers. And from strangers sniffing round our calls. Who are you?

9:57 Watson: John Watson. This is Sherlock Holmes. We're asking about Grace's book, not the magazine.

10:03 Vivian: Grace's book isn't ours to fret over. Teague's story is, and every stranger who handles it's a gift to that man's solicitors. You'll get no further than this marble. My magazine isn't your client, Mr. Holmes.

10:19 Breakfast on a Car Hood

10:23 Watson: Two levels under the street, among concrete pillars and exhaust, we found Teague eating breakfast off the hood of his car. Holmes: She's barred us. You expected that. You've been down here all morning, not upstairs.

10:37 Teague: Upstairs she watches who I talk to. Down here it's just me and the valets. Watson: She says she's protecting the magazine. I half believed her.

10:47 Teague: From what, the truth? His lawyers cough, she spikes me. If my story dies, his suit goes away. Very tidy.

10:55 Holmes: She was whispering to the printers when we arrived. Wanted them at noon. Teague: Printers? We went to press Tuesday. Nothing's at the printers till next month.

11:06 Watson: Huh. Holmes: Then the printers were a cover, for anyone in earshot. Whatever that call was, she didn't want it heard.

11:14 Teague: And think it through. Vivian won't go near a source. Never met one of my women. The woman at that bar was a polished Englishwoman Grace has never met. So's my editor.

11:25 Holmes: So is half of Beverly Hills at cocktail hour. Teague: Half of Beverly Hills isn't spiking my story. Watson: Holmes. Was the woman at that bar Vivian herself?

11:38 Heels on the Ramp

11:41 Watson: Ten minutes on, heels came clipping down the ramp, and Vivian stopped short at Teague's fender with her car keys in her fist. Vivian: Teague. I barred them from the building, and you've brought them to the basement.

11:55 Teague: It's a garage, Vivian. Different rules down here. Vivian: Same lease, same solicitors.

12:02 Holmes: One question, and you're in your car. A week ago Monday. Where were you that evening?

12:07 Vivian: At home. Alone, with a dreadful manuscript and a worse bottle of wine. Holmes: You answered before I gave you the hour.

12:16 Vivian: Because the answer's the same for every hour. I'll swear to it, if swearing amuses you. Good morning.

12:24 Watson: She never asked why that Monday. Holmes: No. Anyone else would have asked. She couldn't get out of here fast enough.

12:32 Teague: She never asks about anything she means to kill. Here, Doc. My diner notes, before she kills those too.

12:40 Watson: Your hand's worse than a surgeon's. She says he kept the suite freezing, and she sat on the bed while the ice ticked like a clock. Nobody invents a detail like that. Shock fastens on small sounds. I've seen it in emergency rooms for twenty years.

12:57 Teague: That's why I— that's why I believe her. Best page I've got. Holmes: Then guard it. Who'd want it gone first?

13:05 Teague: Vivian will spike this one too. Watch her.

13:09 A Saab at the Meter

13:13 Watson: Holmes's dented Saab sat at a meter on Wilshire with its windows down, the street baking, his fingers drumming the wheel. Say it, then. English, polished, and a total stranger to Grace.

13:27 Holmes: The investor was a stranger to Grace too. Tinted glasses, candlelight. Grace couldn't swear to her.

13:34 Watson: Which is exactly what you'd want if Grace might one day walk into your magazine. Holmes: Or what any stranger would want. Glasses hide a shy woman just as well as—

13:44 Watson: The shy don't lie about printers. Or swear an alibi before you've named the hour. Holmes: No. They don't.

13:51 Watson: And still you won't say it. Holmes: Not on a feeling. Did you see the tag swinging from her mirror?

13:59 Watson: Something green. Plastic. Holmes: A resident's gate tag, Rossmore Avenue printed on it. Gated garages log every tag in and out.

14:08 Watson: Ah. Clever. Holmes: She swears she was home. Aguilar can learn if that's true.

14:16 Tube Lights at the Station

14:19 Watson: At the Wilshire station on Venice Boulevard, under a tube light buzzing like a trapped fly, Lieutenant Aguilar frowned at his screen. Aguilar: Let's be clear, Holmes. I work homicide. Nobody's dead.

14:33 Holmes: And burglary won't open a file on a book that was copied, not stolen. Which is why we came to you, Aguilar. Aguilar: You came because I owe you one. This is me paying it. Her property manager emailed the gate log as a courtesy. No warrant, no case, no paper.

14:50 Watson: And? Aguilar: Her tag, that Monday. Out at seven, back past midnight. Twelve-forty, to be exact.

14:59 Holmes: Five hours and more. A drink in a hotel bar takes two. Watson: Then she lied to our faces in that garage. It's Vivian, Holmes. It has to—

15:08 Aguilar: Careful, Doc. A gate log tells you where her car went, not where she did. Watson: Her car didn't drive itself to Beverly Hills.

15:17 Aguilar: Maybe. Whatever you do with this, my name stays out of it. Holmes: It will. In the morning I'll accuse Vivian to her face, and she can tell me where that car went.

15:29 Accusations in the Lobby

15:32 Watson: By ten the following morning the marble rang with gossip and paper cups, and half the staff lingered near the newsstand when Holmes walked in. Noa: Morning, Doctor. Times again? You look like you didn't sleep, hon.

15:46 Watson: Not much, Noa. Keep the change. Vivian: You again. I thought I'd been perfectly plain, Mr. Holmes.

15:54 Holmes: Plain, yes. Honest, no. Three weeks ago a woman bought Grace's trust in a Beverly Hills bar. She was a polished Englishwoman Grace has never met, in tinted glasses. And the night she met Grace again, you weren't at home.

16:10 Vivian: You're accusing me. In my own lobby. In front of my own staff.

16:16 Holmes: Of being that investor. Tell them where you were that Monday, and I'll apologise. Vivian: My evenings are no business of this lobby's. Or yours.

16:26 Holmes: You'd rather refuse in front of thirty people than answer. So the answer must be worse. Teague: Vivian, just tell him where you—

16:34 Vivian: Teague. You took my story to strangers and walked them into my building twice. You're suspended. Clear your desk by noon.

16:43 Teague: Suspended. Say that again, slowly. I want it word for word—

16:50 Noa: Oh, hon. That pen running dry mid-sentence again? Take a pencil, on the house.

16:56 Teague: Keep it, Noa. There's nothing left to write. Vivian: Noon, Teague.

17:02 Teague: A year, Holmes. A year of motel rooms, and hang-ups, and women crying down the phone at two in the— Watson: Teague.

17:08 Teague: No! Nine of them trusted me. Nine. And now it's... A year of work, spiked for good. On your word, Holmes.

17:19 Boxing Up a Desk

17:22 Watson: Within the hour Teague was below ground once more, jamming a cardboard box of desk clutter into his trunk while we stood by. Teague: Don't help. You've helped enough.

17:33 Watson: That's fair. Teague: Mug. Red Sox calendar. And this. Not Noa's pencil. The pen my source lent me in the diner booth.

17:45 Holmes: The one you pocketed in the dark and never looked at. Teague: Never had reason to. It quit on me upstairs, in front of Vivian. Half a line and done. So I twisted it open.

17:58 Watson: That's no ink cartridge. That's a battery. A wire. And that, good God, that's a microphone.

18:06 Holmes: Barely any ink. The rest is machinery. It's built to sit on a table and listen.

18:12 Teague: It's been in my coat since the diner. Grace's study, the newsroom, everything I've said— Holmes: No aerial. It records; it doesn't send. Whatever it heard is still inside it.

18:23 Teague: And look at the clip. Look— it's engraved, the same name as the investor's card. Holmes: Engraved, not printed. Someone paid to make a false firm feel heavy in the hand.

18:36 Watson: Two women in tinted glasses, carrying one firm's pen. Teague: Then Vivian— Vivian hired her. To work on me too.

18:48 After Hours on the Fourth Floor

18:51 Watson: Past eleven that night Teague's keycard still opened the fourth floor, and we crept behind him through rows of dead monitors to a glass office in the corner. Teague: She forgot to take my card. Sloppy, for Vivian.

19:06 Watson: Sneaking into your editor's office the day she suspends you. My lawyer would weep. Teague: So would mine.

19:14 Holmes: The safe, under the credenza. What's in it? Teague: My women. Legal made me hand over every real name for the libel lawyers. Vivian read the list herself.

19:24 Teague: Typed out, one page, locked in Vivian's safe since spring. Holmes: And the woman in the wig. What did she want from you at the end?

19:33 Teague: Names. Who else he'd hurt. Which ones talked. Just first names, she said. I didn't give her— no. I gave her nothing.

19:41 Holmes: Then think. Vivian's already read every name. The list is right there under her own credenza.

19:48 Watson: She'd never need to sit in a dark diner fishing for them. Teague: Huh. So the wig, the pen... It's not Vivian's game.

19:57 Holmes: No. I stood in that lobby with thirty witnesses. I accused the one woman who never needed to ask.

20:07 Eight O'Clock in the Glass Office

20:10 Watson: At eight the next morning Vivian let us into her glass corner office, Aguilar at our heels and Teague hanging back by the door. Vivian: Mr. Holmes, a policeman, and my suspended reporter. Is this an arrest or a sequel?

20:27 Holmes: An apology. I called you a spy in front of your staff, Vivian. I was wrong.

20:33 Vivian: How handsome of you. What changed your mind? Teague: Lieutenant Aguilar, the woman in the wig fished me for names that have been locked in Vivian's safe since spring.

20:42 Aguilar: Fishing's not my department. Holmes said "wired pen" on my voicemail. Nobody's dead, but that's a crime I can arrest for.

20:52 Holmes: Which leaves one thing for you to tell, Vivian. That Monday your gate tag went out at seven, back past midnight. Vivian: You've had my garage watched.

21:01 Aguilar: Read, not watched. Your property manager likes to help. Vivian: Lovely.

21:08 Holmes: You took an accusation in front of thirty people rather than answer. That's not fear. You're ashamed, and it's about someone in this—

21:16 Vivian: Oh, for— fine. Musso and Frank. A publisher across town wants me to edit his magazine. Five hours of dinner, and I didn't say no.

21:28 Teague: You were — you were interviewing? While you spiked me? Vivian: The printers were him, ringing for my answer. I was halfway out the door on you, Teague, and I couldn't bear you knowing.

21:41 Watson: So you let him call you a spy instead. Vivian: Wicked I can live with. Disloyal, in front of my own newsroom? Never.

21:52 Aguilar: Teague. Whoever lent you that pen, phone me a complaint with your name on it. Vivian: And then sit down at your desk. You're not suspended. Finish it. I'll print it.

22:02 Teague: You— seriously?

22:06 Two Sentences in a Parked Car

22:10 Watson: Holmes drove us one block, pulled the Saab to the curb and sat with the engine off, both hands on the wheel. Holmes: Two sentences, Watson. Tell me whether they rhyme.

22:21 Watson: I'm a doctor, not a songwriter. Fine, let's hear them. Holmes: Grace's study. Teague's pen dies in the diner, and nobody sees it but the woman across the booth.

22:32 Watson: He thanked God for that. I remember. Holmes: Yesterday, the lobby. A different pen gives out, and Noa asks if it's quitting on him again.

22:43 Watson: Reporters chew through pens. She sells a hundred a week. "Again" is a figure of speech.

22:50 Holmes: Perhaps. But "again" needs a first time, and a first time needs a witness. Watson: She sells newspapers, Holmes. She calls me hon.

23:01 Holmes: She does. Then who else, Watson, sat in that diner booth?

23:07 Back Beneath the Street

23:10 Watson: Teague's car still waited below the street with the box jammed in its trunk, and Holmes walked him twice around it before asking anything. Holmes: The diner, Teague. Your own pen died mid-line. Whom did you tell?

23:24 Teague: You three. In Grace's study, with the— with the flashlight. Only she saw, I said, and nobody's heard it from me since.

23:32 Holmes: Not at the newsstand? A grumble over your coffee? Teague: Never. I don't talk at that counter.

23:38 Watson: Noa might have meant any pen, Teague. Any day. Teague: Mine don't die. Same blue ballpoint fifteen years, bought by the box. That diner was the first to quit on me in years.

23:51 Holmes: Then when Noa said "again," she was counting from a night three people heard of. And one woman saw. Teague: Wait. Noa? Badge on upside down. Calls everybody hon...

24:05 Watson: Good Lord. Holmes: Easy to remember, hard to look at. That's the use of her.

24:12 Teague: She sat across from me in a wig and cried, and I — I let her watch me write.

24:23 Teague: Aguilar? Teague. You wanted a complaint with my name on it. A woman recorded me without my say-so. With a pen. I've got the pen.

24:33 Holmes: Fetch your diner notes, Teague. Then bring them, and Grace, to the newsstand.

24:40 The Lobby Clock Nears Noon

24:38 Teague: Right.

24:44 Watson: The lobby clock read a quarter to noon: Noa folding papers, Aguilar against a pillar, Holmes and I at the counter as Teague brought Grace in. Noa: Morning, hon. Doctor. And who's your friend? Paper, ma'am?

24:59 Grace: No. Thank you. Holmes: Teague, the diner notes. Read them to Grace, here, where the light's good.

25:06 Teague: Her words, as she gave them. "He kept the suite freezing. I sat on the edge of the bed—"

25:12 Grace: "—and the ice ticked like a clock, and I counted it so I wouldn't count anything else." Teague: Grace. That's the next line. Word for word.

25:23 Grace: Chapter three. I never said that aloud, Teague. Not to my sister. Not to you. It only ever lived on paper—

25:32 Grace: And she sat across from you and... wore it. Like a coat she'd... Watson: Grace. Sit. Breathe with me. Slowly.

25:42 Holmes: Then the woman in that booth had read chapter three, and only one stranger ever held it. Grace, Teague's dead pen. Did you ever tell anyone?

25:53 Grace: I said it wouldn't leave my house. It didn't. I told no one. Holmes: Noa. Yesterday you asked if his pen was running dry mid-sentence again. Again since when?

26:05 Noa: Hon, I sell pens all day long. Everybody's goes— Teague: I've never bought so much as a pencil at this counter.

26:12 Aguilar: Lieutenant Aguilar, LAPD. Mr. Teague says a woman recorded him in a diner booth. Care to tell me it wasn't you?

26:20 Noa: This is absurd. I sell newspapers, Lieutenant, and you haven't a shred of evidence that— Grace: That's her. Forty-five thousand dollars for one speech. I couldn't swear to her face. I'd swear to that voice.

26:36 Noa: That's— no, that's... Aguilar: Recording a private conversation without consent is a crime in this state. Hands on the counter.

26:45 Grace: Those were my words.

26:49 Evening Beneath the Ceiling Fan

26:52 Watson: That evening, back above Echo Park, Grace and Teague sat in our front room under the ceiling fan, a jug of iced tea sweating between them. Grace: Tell me how you knew, Mister Holmes. Slowly. I believe I've earned slowly.

27:09 Holmes: Two strangers, Grace. One gave you the card Watson read on your porch, Ravenscourt Capital, of London. Teague: And the other lent me a pen in the dark.

27:19 Holmes: Whose clip, in that garage, bore the same name as the investor's card. One firm. One woman.

27:27 Teague: So the woman with your chapters and the woman crying in my booth— Holmes: Were the same. She photographed your chapters at that bar table, Grace, then wore them to Teague's diner as her own life.

27:39 Grace: Oh. Watson: That's what I can't get past. She had the pages and his trust. Why hand him the pen at all?

27:47 Holmes: Because she was playing a fellow victim, and a fellow victim lends her pen. Saying no would've looked wrong. Teague: And for all of it, Aguilar charges one count. Recording me. One—

27:58 Grace: And my chapters? Watson: On her phone, every page. Evidence first, then yours.

28:06 Grace: Evidence. Eight years I've begged to be believed, and now my life's an exhibit. Teague: Vivian runs the story next month. Every word you'll let me use.

28:18 Grace: Use every one. They're mine again. Watson: For the log, then. Ravenscourt Capital—assets, one wired pen; liabilities, one newsstand clerk.