L.A. Times Page 14

  “Italian.”

  “What did they do about your religious upbringing?”

  “I was a lapsed Catholic by the time I was six.”

  “If you were Jewish, you’d be perfect.”

  “You’re going to love Eliot Rosen. He’ll probably drive you crazy, but you’ll love him. He may be the new Orson Welles.”

  Leo groaned. “You got any idea how much money was lost backing Orson?”

  “Eliot is going to make you a lot of money; I’ll see to it.”

  “Well, you’re as tight with a buck as anybody I ever saw; if he works for you, he’ll make money for me.” Leo flicked the ash off his cigar. “I hear you hired a production manager from outside the studio.”

  “That’s right, Leo; I wanted somebody who’d report to me instead of you.”

  “You hired Barry Wimmer.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Michael, you gotta know he did time for stealing from a production.”

  “He was a cokehead. He’s clean now.”

  “I’m worried.”

  “Leo, he’s so grateful for the chance that he’ll work three times as hard as anybody else would.” Michael paused. “Cheap, too.”

  “I like that part. If he steals from me, I’ll take it out of your end.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What’re you paying the kid Jewish director?”

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  Leo smiled broadly. “Don’t you let him fuck up.”

  “Leo, even if he fucks up he won’t cost you nearly as much as Marty White would.”

  The women returned to the table, and as they sat down, Amanda Goldman’s foot ran down the back of Michael’s calf. He gave her a brief smile and filed that move away for later consideration.

  CHAPTER

  28

  Michael put down Mark Adair’s first-draft screenplay of Pacific Afternoons and picked up the telephone.

  “Hello?” a deep voice answered.

  “Mark, it’s Michael Vincent.”

  “What did you think?” Adair asked.

  “I think it’s wonderful. You’ve captured the book, both in structure and in intent, and you’ve made the book’s dialogue work beautifully.”

  “But…?”

  “But nothing. I think it’s shootable as is.”

  “No producer has ever said that to me,” Adair said warily. “There has to be something else.”

  “There is something else, but it in no way detracts from what you’ve done.”

  “What is it?”

  “Near the end, you’ve left out a crucial scene and substituted something that doesn’t work nearly as well.”

  “Are you talking about the scene where the doctor sings to the girl and wins her heart?”

  “I am.”

  “There are two reasons that could never work in this film, Michael.”

  “What are they?”

  “First, it would come off as mawkish, sentimental, and unbelievable to a modern audience; second, you’ll never get Bob Hart to do the scene.”

  “Mark, the scene is sentimental, I’ll grant you that, but it is by no means mawkish—at least not the way we’ll shoot it.”

  “Name me a picture where that sort of thing has worked.”

  “All right, A Room with a View.”

  Adair was quiet for a moment. “There was no singing in that.”

  “No, but the period was one that accepted sentimentality as normal; the period of Pacific Afternoons is much the same, and the characters are not very different.”

  “What about Bob Hart? How will you get him to do it?”

  “You leave that to me. When the time comes, I’ll want your support to help persuade him, though.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell you what, Mark; I’ll make a private deal with you. Put the scene back in—just as it is in the book—and if, when you’ve seen it on film, you don’t think it works, then I’ll shoot your substitute scene.”

  “You’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse. Now tell me what other criticisms you have of my script.”

  “I can’t think of a thing. I’m sure Bob Hart—and especially Susan Hart—will have some comments, and the director may as well, but it won’t be anything that damages what you’ve done. I won’t let that happen.”

  “Who’s going to direct?”

  “A young director named Eliot Rosen. He’s very smart and sensitive, and you’re going to love him.”

  “I’ll get right on a second draft.”

  “Don’t write a second draft; just insert the scene, and leave everything else as it is.”

  “Bless you, my son.” Adair hung up.

  Michael replaced the receiver and reflected on how well everything was going. His intercom buzzed. “Yes?”

  “Michael,” Margot said, “Sergeant Rivera is here; I’ve told him you’ve got a tough morning, but he’d like to see you if you can manage it.”

  A trickle of fear ran down Michael’s bowels. “Send him in,” he said, keeping his voice calm.

  Rivera was alone this time. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said, extending his hand. “I won’t take much of your time.”

  “Glad to see you, Sergeant,” Michael said, shaking his hand and waving him to a seat. He held up Mark Adair’s screenplay. “The first draft of the screenplay of Pacific Afternoons is in, and it’s great. Looks like we’ll be shooting in the spring.”

  “Good,” the sergeant said, easing into a chair. “I thought I’d bring you up to date on where we are on the Moriarty homicide.”

  “Great, I’m all ears. I haven’t seen anything in the papers about it for a few weeks.”

  “I haven’t released anything to the papers.”

  “Have you made an arrest?”

  “No, and I’m not sure we will.”

  Michael guarded against feeling relief. “Why not?”

  “Looks like a mob hit, pure and simple; a contract job.”

  “Moriarty had mob connections?”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but somebody who’s connected wanted Moriarty dead, I guarantee you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “The car was driven by a low-grade hood from Vegas named Dominic Ippolito—real scum.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “Some hikers found Dominic dumped in the desert near Twenty-Nine Palms; his fingerprints were on file.”

  “Did you find the car?”

  “Dominic was in the car. It was a mess—down a ravine four or five hundred feet.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Not quite; we found some other prints in the car that were interesting.”

  Michael’s heart nearly stopped, but he didn’t blink. “Yeah?”

  “The car was stolen; there were the car owner’s prints, of course, and his wife’s, but the other set was unusual.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They belonged to somebody named…” He took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and glanced at it, then handed it to Michael. “Vincente Michaele Callabrese.”

  Michael found himself staring at his own birth certificate. “Who is he?” he managed to say. He put the paper on his desk so that Rivera wouldn’t see his hands shaking.

  “He’s the son of Onofrio and Martina Callabrese, and he’s twenty-eight years old. That’s all I know; that much was on the birth certificate.”

  Michael, who had been imagining handcuffs, saw a glimmer of hope. “You weren’t able to find out anything else?”

  “Nothing, and that’s very unusual. There is apparently no other piece of paper in the world on this guy—no Social Security number, no driver’s license, no insurance—the guy has never had a credit card or a charge account. The only reason we know about him at all is that he had an arrest when he was eighteen, for car theft—the charges were dropped for lack of evidence—and he got himself printed. That put him in the FBI fingerprint files. There was no photograph on file; I don’t know why.”
>
  Michael remembered it well. “You mean there’s no way to track him down?”

  “Nope. But he’s almost certainly mobbed up.”

  “Why do you say that? Because he’s Italian?”

  “No, it’s just that it’s nearly impossible for anybody to live to be twenty-eight years old in this country and not have a lot of paper on him. The only people who have no paper on them are people who’ve been using forged or stolen paper all their lives, and that adds up to mob.”

  “So what does all this mean?”

  “It probably means something like this: Moriarty has some dealings at some time with somebody who’s connected, and something goes wrong; he makes an enemy. The enemy talks to somebody, money changes hands, and a contract is put out on the guy. Callabrese, or whatever name he goes by, is probably the mob contact. He was the second man in the car. He, or somebody he knows, hires Ippolito to make the hit, and Callabrese goes along to make sure it’s right. Then, when it’s all over, Callabrese puts a bullet into Ippolito and dumps him and the car in the desert, thus making it impossible for Ippolito to ever tell anybody who hired him. Only Callabrese wasn’t smart enough to wipe his prints off the car. That tells me something about him.”

  “What?”

  “That he’s not the brains behind all this. Otherwise, he’d have taken more care to cover his tracks.”

  “I see.” Rivera was right; he’d been stupid. But he’d been so frightened at the scene that he hadn’t thought about prints until later. “So what’s your next move?”

  “I don’t have a next move,” Rivera replied. “But one of these days this guy Callabrese will make a mistake and get picked up. I’ve flagged his prints, so if he ever gets arrested again and is printed, I’ll get a call from the FBI inside of a week.”

  “Sergeant, I’ll be frank with you; it doesn’t look like we’ve got a movie here. This is all too incomplete.”

  “I figured.”

  “But if you ever come across another case that looks good, I want to hear from you.” Michael had meant this to dismiss the policeman, but Rivera didn’t move.

  “There’s something I’d like to satisfy myself on,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it’s interesting that this Callabrese guy has two names that are similar to yours—Vincente and Michaele.”

  “An interesting coincidence,” Michael said. He was frightened again now.

  “How old are you, Mr. Vincent?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Do you have some paper that would document that?”

  “Sure.” Michael was ready for this; he opened the file drawer in his desk and rummaged through the personal file. “Here,” he said, handing the policeman a birth certificate.

  Rivera read it carefully. “You’re thirty, all right, and Callabrese was born at Bellevue Hospital, whereas you were born at St. Vincent’s.” He looked up. “Are you Italian?”

  Michael shook his head. “Jewish.”

  “I see you’re growing a beard.”

  “I’ve had a beard off and on for years.”

  “I wonder if you’d be willing to do a lineup for me.”

  “Are you kidding?” Michael said. “I saw a movie when I was a kid where a guy agreed to do that, and he got picked out, even though he was innocent.”

  “Well, you’re within your rights,” Rivera said, standing up.

  “It isn’t that I’m standing on my rights,” Michael said, walking him to the door. “I just don’t have the time for something like that. I’d waste half a day, and that’s a lot of money in this business.”

  “Sure, I understand.” He held out his hand. “I’ll let you know if I come up with another case that might make a movie.”

  “You do that,” Michael said. “And Sergeant?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could I have my birth certificate back?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Rivera said, handing back the paper.

  “I’ll be happy to make a copy for you, if you need it,” Michael said.

  “Oh, no, no; just an oversight.”

  Some oversight, Michael thought, as he watched the homicide detective go. The certificate was real, on file—Tommy Pro had seen to that years ago. But now Michael’s fingerprints were on it. He sat down at his desk and took a few deep breaths. He hoped to God that Rivera was satisfied.

  Margot came in with the mail. “This is everything that isn’t junk,” she said, placing the pile on his desk.

  “Thanks.” He rummaged around his desktop and through the drawers.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “My letter opener.”

  “You’re always losing things; I’ll find it while you’re at lunch.”

  When Michael came back from lunch, the letter opener was on his desk.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Michael looked across his desk at his director. Eliot Rosen was tall, skinny, and ill-shaven. At this moment he was exploring a nostril for something.

  “Eliot,” Michael said, “promise me that when Bob and Susan Hart get here you won’t pick your nose.”

  “Sorry,” the young man said, blushing. Eliot blushed a lot.

  “I’ve shown them your reel, and they’re impressed, but they still want to meet you. There’s a lot riding on this meeting, Eliot.”

  “I know that,” Rosen said.

  “Remember, you’re not just talking to the actor but to his wife as well. Susan Hart is the hardest to handle of the two, and I don’t want you to mess this up by kowtowing too much to Hart. Include her in everything you say, and if you can muster some charm, that would help, too.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Rosen said.

  “If there’s an argument about anything, follow my lead, do you understand?”

  “Listen, I have opinions, too.”

  “Not at this point you don’t. If you have an opinion that might spark some controversy with the Harts, express it to me first, and privately. If it’s a point I think we can win, then I’ll carry the ball, okay?”

  Rosen nodded. “Okay,” he said sullenly.

  “Eliot,” Michael said placatingly, “you’re at the beginning of what I think is going to be a big career. Don’t screw it up by alienating a powerful star and his influential wife. If they want something that’s bad for the movie, I’ll protect the movie, don’t worry. And when we get to the part about the singing scene, don’t say anything; just nod agreement.”

  “I’ve got a lot of problems with that scene,” Rosen said.

  “Eliot, we’ve already been over this; the scene stays in, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  “All right, all right, you’re the boss.”

  “Don’t resent it, Eliot; everybody has a boss around here, except Leo Goldman, who is, effectively, God. Leo has given me a lot of freedom, and I’m not going to let anybody compromise that, especially a first-time director.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “Don’t worry, this picture is going to establish you.” He smiled. “After Pacific Afternoons I won’t be able to afford you.”

  Rosen smiled. “I like that idea.”

  There was a brief knock on the door, and Margot showed in Robert and Susan Hart.

  Michael went to Susan first, giving her an affectionate hug and kiss, then he shook Bob’s hand warmly. “I’m so glad to see you both,” he said, “and I can’t wait to hear your reactions to the screenplay. And may I introduce Eliot Rosen?”

  The young director shook both their hands. “Your work has given me a great deal of pleasure,” he said to Bob Hart. “I’m thrilled to be on this picture.”

  Hart accepted this praise graciously, and everybody took a seat on the facing sofas before the huge fireplace.

  “I remember this set,” Hart said. “I loved the movie, and I loved Randolph. I always wanted to play the part.”

  Michael smiled. “That’s a very good idea,” he said. “When we’ve finished Pacifi
c Afternoons, we ought to explore the possibilities.” He leaned forward on the sofa. “Now,” he said, “tell me what you thought of the screenplay.”

  “I just loved it,” Hart said.

  “There are problems,” Susan interjected.

  Michael picked up a copy of the script from a stack on the coffee table. “I want to hear about every one of them, starting from the beginning.”

  Susan Hart, speaking without notes, went through the screenplay, scene by scene, noting criticisms large and small. Michael noted that nearly every one of them was aimed at increasing the size of her husband’s part and augmenting his dialogue. He agreed with Susan immediately on more than half her points and promised to consult with Mark Adair on the rest, then get back to her.

  “Finally,” she said, “the singing scene has to go.”

  Michael did not react immediately, but turned to her husband. “Bob, how do you feel about that scene?”

  “I can do it,” Hart said quietly.

  “But he won’t,” Susan said firmly. “Bob has devoted the past twenty-five years to building an image that has become solid gold. I won’t allow him to do something that would shatter that image in the minds of his public; we’ll back out of the film first.”

  “Let me tell you how I feel about that, Susan,” Michael said to her, then directed himself almost entirely to Bob Hart. “Bob is at a turning point in his career; he has mined the vein of police, western, and action movies brilliantly, and he has reached a point where to continue exclusively in that vein would simply be repetition. If he does that, even the fans and critics who have loved all of it are going to begin to fade away. Another thing: it has been a long time since a script has really drawn on all of Bob’s talent as an actor.”

  “That’s very true,” Hart said. His wife glanced sharply at him.

  “Bob has resources that his public has not seen yet, and this film is going to stun them, I promise you. Here we have a somewhat retiring but thoroughly masculine character with many, many facets. He proves his manhood when he stands up to the trainer who has been abusing horses, and he shows remarkable sensitivity in the scenes with his child patients. Still, he is unable to express himself to this woman he fears may be too young for him. But, in this one terribly moving scene, he wins her heart forever. Now what can be wrong with that?”