Beating the Babushka (13 page)

“Absolutely,” said Adam, grinning. “Pissed off the French, let me tell you. After we released the film internationally, the frogs started a letter-writing campaign to get the movie banned. ’Course the publicity drove the Germans and the English to the theaters in droves. I heard the audiences cheered when the asteroid toasted the Champs Élysées. We broke a London record for box office receipts—it was great.”

“You were talking about costs,” prompted Cape, “and the sale.”

“Right,” said Adam. “So like I said, movies are expensive. To get this one made, I had to beg, borrow, and steal.”

“In that order?”

Adam narrowed his eyes, then gave Cape a thin smile.

“Funny guy,” he said.

“So how’d you get the money?”

“That’s the point,” said Adam. “Every time you make a movie it’s a gamble, and the stakes are huge. The movie’s a hit, everybody gets rich. It’s a bomb, then we’re talkin’ a lot of cash right down the drain, not to mention the reputations of a lot of people who take themselves very seriously.”

“Not sure you answered my question,” said Cape pleasantly.

“Relax,” said Adam. “Because it’s a gamble, and there are only so many people out there with that kind of cash, it’s different for every movie. That’s a big part of my job.”

“Raising money.”

“Finding investors to back the production costs.”

“Where do you find them?”

“Anywhere I can,” said Adam simply. “Under a rock, if I have to. Sometimes it’s a rich eccentric who wants a taste of Hollywood, other times it’s a big corporation looking for product placement in the film. We’ve even fronted the money ourselves, or split costs with another studio.”

“Sounds complicated,” said Cape sympathetically.

“It’s a pain in the ass,” said Adam fervently. “And that, you nosey son of a bitch, is why I want to sell the company.”

Despite the language, Adam’s tone was comparatively civil. Cape realized this had become a business conversation for him, not something personal. Adam Berman was on a soapbox, representing himself in the court of public opinion. Cape had just heard the rough draft of the press release. He marveled at the ability to move seamlessly from one mood to the next, light to dark and back again, with almost no physical warning signs. Looking at the half-empty glass in Berman’s hand, he concluded it wasn’t just the booze. This guy was right out of central casting for a Hollywood stereotype—the bombastic type-A movie executive. Adam was so lost in the role that he’d forgotten how normal people behaved.

Cape decided it was time to reel him back in. “So if you sell, then someone else can pick up the tab. You get to focus on making movies again.”

Adam snapped his fingers and pointed, his eyes bright. “Bingo. The big-ass media company gets the prestige of owning a premier movie studio, and we get the big corporate checkbook to fund production of the next asteroid movie, or whatever we decide to shoot after that.”

“So you want me to be discreet.”

“I want you to go away,” said Adam, “but obviously that’s not gonna happen, not if my dear brother wants you around. Shit, I can’t even get you outta my office.”

Cape shrugged. “Inertia.”

“Maybe it’s better that you’re looking into this instead of the cops. Maybe that abrasive bit—” He caught himself, barely. “Maybe Grace was right about that.”

“The cops are looking into this.”

“That’s what worries me,” said Adam, rubbing his chin. “They’ll bumble around, the way cops do, and fuck up my schedule. Unless you figure something out first—then maybe they’ll lose interest, go back to eating donuts.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to fire me?”

Adam shook his head, suddenly magnanimous. “You’ve got chutzpah,” he said. “I could use some of that around here. And besides, we’re a family business—you’re one of us, I guess.”

“Gosh,” said Cape, knowing the sarcasm wouldn’t register.

“You Jewish?” asked Adam. “Me and Harry, we’re Jews. Not that it makes any difference, but it’s always nice to work with another member of the tribe, you know what I’m saying?”

“I’m circumcised.”

“Close enough!” Adam slapped his hand on the desk. “Welcome to the Empire family.”

Cape stood up. “Thanks, Mr. Berman,” he said, backing slowly away from the desk. He figured it was better to leave on a high note. “I won’t let you down.”

Adam nodded absently as he fondled the empty tumbler in his hand and stared vacantly at his desk.

Cape was at the door. “Anything else you need?”

Adam’s head swiveled sideways. He frowned as he stared at his desk, as if trying to remember something. When he glanced at Cape, his eyes looked glazed once again.

“Yeah,” he said. “Get somebody up here to fix my phone, will you?”

Chapter Thirty

Angelo wondered if a pierced tongue really felt better during oral sex.

Strolling through the lobby with the cup of corporate coffee he’d bought on the corner, he pushed his sunglasses onto his head so he could make eye contact with the receptionist as he crossed to the elevators. He figured one more week of meaningful eye contact and she’d agree to blow him in his office.

“Heh-whoa, An-juh-woh,” she said warmly, light glinting off the metal in her face. Jesus, but those had to hurt going in, and what did she do at an airport? Must be a strip search every time.

“Hey, Celene,” said Angelo, dropping his voice an octave to signal his virility. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Not much,” she replied, smiling broadly at having said something that didn’t sound like a tongue twister. Angelo construed her expression as pure lust. “That phone guy is here.”

Angelo stopped in mid-stride. “What phone guy?”

“To fix Mistuh Buh-man’s phone,” said Celene tentatively.

“I got that phone fixed yesterday,” Angelo said to himself as much as anyone. Then, turning back to the receptionist, he asked, “What did the guy look like?”

Celene smiled hopefully. “Kinda cute.”

Angelo scowled. “And security took him up?”

Celene blanched, the metal pins in her eyebrows, nose, and lips vibrating with anxiety. Before she could say anything, Angelo snapped.

“You’re fucking kidding me. You didn’t call security?”

Celene looked at her bank of phones, willing them to start ringing.

“He’s up there now, with no escort?”

Celene looked up and shrugged. “He th-thed the ph-phone was broken.”

Angelo stared at her for a full minute with open disdain until he felt cold sweat trickle down his back, his imagination running wild over who might be wandering around upstairs. Suddenly that blowjob seemed impossibly far away.

Without another word, Angelo turned and sprinted for the elevators.

Chapter Thirty-one

The lighted button on the intercom stared at Cape like an unblinking eye, daring him to make the first move.

Cape had left Adam Berman alone with his empty glass, then walked the length of the hallway, hesitating only briefly at the elevator. Even though he’d been embraced as the newest member of the Empire family, he doubted Adam would remember having said that, let alone admit it. Cape estimated he’d been in the building at least twenty minutes, if not thirty. He was pushing his luck if he wanted to avoid a confrontation with security.

With a final look over his shoulder, he pushed the button.

Nothing happened. No buzzer or chimes sounded from the other side of the door. He hoped to get himself inside as he did with Adam, without an invitation. He tried the door handle, but it was locked. Leaning closer to the intercom, Cape pushed the button again, speaking clearly into the microphone.

“Avon calling.”

Silence. Cape stood for several seconds, wondering if he should have claimed to be the Fuller Brush Man, but worried he’d be dating himself. He was considering aluminum siding as his next play when he heard the click of an electric door latch.

Harry Berman smiled placidly from his screen. Cape took a short step backward, trying to put the face in some kind of perspective. Despite Grace’s descriptions, the first encounter with the floating visage was unnerving. The gigantic eyes blinked as Harry quietly regarded his visitor, giving Cape the queasy sensation that the wall was shaking in an earthquake

“Have a seat, detective,” said Harry, the bass from the speakers reverberating through Cape’s chest.

Cape scanned the room as he pulled up a chair some distance from the screen. One wall was all windows, though the blinds were drawn, obscuring what Cape imagined was a view of New York Harbor, if his bearings were right. The other walls were bare, paneled in an expensive-looking dark wood, with the exception of the wall facing Cape, which was moving again.

Harry’s enormous head swiveled left and right as he followed Cape’s visual tour of the office. The motion made Cape dizzy. He was glad to be sitting down.

“Pretty spartan, I suppose,” said Harry pleasantly. “I’m not there to spruce it up.”

“Where are you?” asked Cape, studying the scene behind Harry’s giant head. Sailboats bobbed in choppy waters off a rugged coast, the horizon bleeding away on either side.

“Someplace safe,” replied Harry. “Someplace nice.”

“Safe from what?” asked Cape, careful to look at the camera above the screen. “Or should I say whom?”

Harry smiled, but his eyes looked infinitely sad. “Do you know much about sociophobia, Mr. Weathers?”

Cape shook his head. “Not really,” he replied. “Fear of social situations, interpersonal contact—is that right?”

“In most cases, yes,” nodded Harry. Cape was getting used to the motion. It was like being at sea, onboard a fishing boat. Once you adjusted to the scale and the motion, your stomach settled down.

“But not in your case?” asked Cape.

“My case is a bit more…extreme, I suppose.”

“You seem perfectly comfortable to me,” said Cape, trying to sound sincere.

“Oh, I am,” said Harry, smiling. “But if you were to come here—or I there, well…” His voice trailed off, echoing around the room.

“Uncomfortable.”

“Paralyzed,” corrected Harry. “Absolutely rigid with anxiety. Unable to speak.”

“Must be hard for someone in the movie business.”

“It was devastating,” nodded Harry. Cape resisted the urge to nod with him, the force of the motion so compelling. “But I’d already established my reputation in the industry by that time, and I was always well connected. I’m not the first media mogul to run his empire over the phone. The whole damn industry is just a bunch of people yakking on cell phones.”

“So it hasn’t stopped you from running Empire?”

Harry shook his head. “Quite the contrary,” he replied. “It has given me…perspective. I can look at things from a distance, both literally and figuratively.”

“I thought you might be hiding from someone,” said Cape. “Someone in particular.”

“You have someone in mind?”

Cape shrugged. “I was hoping you’d tell me. Maybe I could help you find them before they find you.”

“No one is looking for me,” said Harry emphatically. “And no one can find me.”

Cape studied the coastline again as Harry broke eye contact. Something about the water, the way the view seemed too big for the window. The sense you were up high, not in a beach house. He switched his gaze back to the camera. “Surely your presence has been missed.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, then grew wide again as the smile returned. “You’re talking about my brother, aren’t you, Mr. Weathers? Or should I call you Cape?”

“Cape’s fine.”

“An unusual name,” said Harry jovially. “Is it a family name, or is it short for something?”

“Capable—my parents wanted to instill confidence at an early age.”

Harry chuckled, the sound like kettle drums in the confines of the office.

“How refreshing to meet someone with a sense of humor.”

“You’re the first person to notice,” said Cape. “And you’re right, I was asking about your brother. It seems he’s running the show these days.”

Harry nodded. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it? But surely in your profession, you must know that things aren’t always as they seem.”

Cape shrugged. “You haven’t made a movie in a while.”

“True,” said Harry. “My circumstances have removed me from the day-to-day joys of production, but there are other matters that demand my attention. The studio’s relationships with certain actors, critics, distributors, and theater owners, for example. I spend hours on the phone each day maintaining those contacts.”

“Adam has certainly kept busy in your, um, absence,” said Cape. “He’s been stacking one movie after another, each one bigger than the last.”

“Ours is a collaborative venture,” replied Harry. “My brother brings ambition, and I bring craft. Together we’ve proven that Hollywood can exist outside of Los Angeles.”

“Is that why you started Empire? To prove something?”

Harry chuckled again. “You are direct, aren’t you?” he said amiably. “I like that, I must say. Yes, I suppose that’s true. My brother was blacklisted in Hollywood, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Indeed.” Harry nodded until a giant hand appeared briefly and stroked his chin. “He was working for one of the big studios—it doesn’t matter which one—they’re all the same. He was moving up quickly. Reading scripts, getting a hand in development. He was attached to several major projects.”

“What happened?”

“He slept with a co-worker, another young producer.”

“So?” asked Cape. “Doesn’t that happen all the time in Hollywood?”

“Of course it does, but this young producer was engaged to the head of the studio.”

“Oops.”

“You have a talent for understatement, Cape,” replied Harry. “My brother fucked the wrong woman, and we got fucked in return.”

“We?”

“The studio chief went after both of us,” explained Harry. “It was personal, and he was very powerful. You know the expression ‘you’ll never work in this town again’?”

“He meant it.”

“Hollywood is a small town,” said Harry. “He knew we were brothers, and he decided to burn the whole family. I was working at another studio and already had two small, critically acclaimed movies under my belt. I had good relationships with some actors. I was going someplace, but it wasn’t meant to be—one indiscretion later and we were on the street. Goodbye Hollywood, hello New York City.”

Cape searched Harry’s projected face for any signs of remorse or anger, but found none. “Given it was your brother Adam who left his fly open, you seem pretty gracious about the whole thing.”

Harry frowned momentarily, then looked at Cape with a somber expression.

“I love my brother, but he’s a child. An impetuous boy who has dedicated his life to winning a game he doesn’t understand. He is brilliant, in his own way, but he needs adult supervision.”

“You’re saying you’re still in charge,” suggested Cape. “And not out of touch.”

The wall rose up again as Harry smiled, then settled.

“Are you referring to the sale of Empire Studios, detective?”

“Am I?”

“How discreet of you to not simply come out and say it.”

“So you know about it?”

Harry laughed, loudly this time. Cape unconsciously gripped the arms of the chair.

“Know about it?” asked Harry. “Why, Cape—I arranged it.”

Cape looked closely at the foot-wide eyes on the screen and nodded in understanding. “You have all the industry contacts.”

“My brother doesn’t spend much time in theme parks,” said Harry. “He’s afraid of mice.”

“Why sell?”

“Didn’t Adam explain that to you? For the money, of course.”

“But control of the studio. Your films—”

“Are my legacy,” said Harry. “I don’t care if anyone goes to see my movies on opening weekend—I want to know people will be watching my movies ten, or even a hundred, years from now.”

Cape remained silent, waiting for the punch line.

“But even I have to admit that artistic vision won’t pay the rent,” continued Harry. “And even for my so-called small films, the rent is considerable. Now that our studio can attract top talent, the quality of our films has gone up considerably.”

“And so have the budgets.”

“A small film costs over ten million dollars,” said Harry. “And that assumes all the actors take a pay cut, because they want to make the film, maybe win an award. The big movies—my brother’s cartoon creations—cost a fortune. They used to generate enough money to carry us through the next production, but finding individual investors to back each individual movie has become…untenable.”

“So you made the call to let the big entertainment companies know that Empire was on the block.”

“Of course, but don’t tell Adam. He’s more productive when he thinks he’s in charge. After he started getting calls, he acted like it was his idea.”

“Why didn’t you tell him yourself?”

Harry sighed, causing Cape to lean back in his chair as the wall appeared to expand outward. “My brother and I don’t speak.”

“Why? You seem to agree on the sale.”

“We agree on almost everything, when it comes to business,” said Harry. “It’s art that pushed us apart. My brother has a chip on his shoulder that won’t go away. He’s obsessed with size, with money. He believes that I think he’s a hack, with no artistic sensibilities. And I suppose he’s right.”

“You’re brothers.”

“That only makes it worse,” said Harry. “Sibling rivalry on a colossal scale. It’s why we worked so well together at the start—boyhood competition applied to the movie business. But when we started measuring our success differently, when the critics and the press started to favor my films over his movies, then the underlying tension became too great. A couple of years ago, it came to a head. That’s when I lost my brother—to the greed of Hollywood.”

“But you both want the money from the sale.”

Harry shook his head. “For different reasons, Cape. Very different reasons. The infusion of capital will free us both to pursue our own interests, without being dependent on this symbiotic relationship between his movies and mine. I won’t look to him for cash ever again, and he won’t be under the shadow of my films with the critics.”

“You’re going to split Empire into two different companies,” said Cape. “And you need someone to fund your separation from your brother.”

“Right now we’re Siamese twins who have grown to hate each other, joined at the hip. The buyer of our studio is the surgeon, and their money is the scalpel.” Harry moved his head sideways to reveal fog on the horizon. The sailboats had vanished and the water looked choppy.

“You want Adam to think he’s the one driving the deal.”

Harry nodded. “I don’t know if he’d scrap the deal altogether, but he’d certainly mess it up, if only out of spite. He couldn’t stand knowing he was the beneficiary of my contacts, my influence. He’d try to cut a deal with another company, just to prove he could go it alone—costing us months, if not years of progress.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“I’m taking that for granted, detective.”

“But why tell me in the first place?”

“I have a feeling you’d find out eventually,” replied Harry. “You seem, well…tenacious.”

“Stubborn, at any rate.” Cape shifted in his seat, waiting for the next time Harry pulled back from the screen. Fog on the water. Cape had seen that view before, driving in a car.

“I believe in being forthright,” said Harry. “You can tell when you’re speaking to a man of character, even if you’re looking at him through a camera lens.”

“Speaking of which,” said Cape. “How did you know who I was? I never introduced myself.”

The giant eyes blinked, revealing nothing. “You’re not the only resourceful one involved in this case, detective. I do my homework. And to be honest, I don’t get many visitors.” The eyes shifted toward the door, then back to Cape.

Cape took the hint. “But you’re probably overdue for a visit from Angelo.”

Harry smiled again. “Another man who does his homework. How excellent. Don’t worry about Angelo. He’s just a little over-protective. Sometimes forgets who he works for.”

“Must be tough, between you and your brother.”

“Poor Angelo must bear the brunt of our rather dysfunctional relationship. I suppose it’s made him conflicted. I think sometimes it’s easier for Angelo to work for himself than either Adam or me.”

“I’m not worried about him, but I don’t have much time,” said Cape. “And I doubt he’ll do anything but waste mine, even if you and your brother are the ones paying me. It would be easier on everyone, especially Angelo, if we didn’t cross paths.”

Harry chuckled again. “You certainly sound capable. I look forward to seeing your progress with the investigation.”

“So do I.” Cape stood and started toward the door. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Berman.”

“Harry,” boomed the friendly voice. “I was always just Harry.”

“Well, Harry,” said Cape, turning back to face the camera. “I was just wondering…”