Indecent Exposure (10 page)

Flying west on Thursday morning. Fischer was nervous, his usual impassivity overcome by the
shpilkis.
Fidgeting in his seat, picking at his food, meandering about the first-class cabin, he groped for an explanation (and chastised himself for failing to press for an explanation three months earlier when Jim Johnson first brought the matter to his attention). If Begelman were going to steal, surely he would steal more than $10,000. It didn't make sense. Could the Cliff Rob
ertson check be one of many? Doe
s Begelman have millions in a Swiss account? Are other people involved? If a lot of money were being stolen from the studio, wouldn't the auditors have caught it? Were the studio's accounting procedures lax? Had auditors been paid to look the other way? Fischer knew that if widespread theft were discovered, several p
eople's jobs, including his own,
might be in jeopardy. There might be lawsuits, prosecutions. Had he been negligent? Could there still be an innocent explanation? There had to be! Why did Cliff Robertson go to the police? Why didn't his lawyers call Columbia's lawyers and try to clarify the matter internally?

Through their secretaries the previous afternoon. Fischer had let Begelman know that he was coming but didn't tell him why. Immediately upon checking into the Beverly Hills Hotel, Fi
scher telephoned Detective Silve
y and was dismayed to learn that she was out of the office on a case and wouldn't be in until eight the next morning. That meant he would have to confront
Begelman
without any documentary material. He drove to the studio, and as he expected, their conversation was inconclusive.
Begelman
was vague; he maintained that there had been an error or misunderstanding—or perhaps a series of errors or misunderstandings—which he thought had been clarified but which he would now look into again. He acknowledged having gotten the traveler's checks the previous September, just as he did prior to all of his frequent trips. But his secretary put checks and other documents in front of him to sign many times every day.
Begelman
said, and he didn't always look carefully at what he was signing. He couldn't imagine signing Cliff Robertson's name; perhaps there had been a Cliff Robertson check on his desk that day and it had been given to the bank by mistake. (Begelman calculated that, for the moment at least. Fischer didn't have enough information to challenge the gaping holes in his story. What about the talc of the errant young employee that Begelman had told to Robertson's representatives? What about the handwriting similarity?)

Actually. Fischer had grave questions about Begelman's story, or lack of one. For one thing.
Begelman
was too meticulous a person by nature not to know exactly what he was signing, no matter how many times a day he signed his name. For another, it had been Fischer's experience that
Begelman
had an exceptional memory. He retained the most minute details of the most complex motion-picture contracts. It was inconceivable that he didn't remember the details of the Robertson matter. But Fischer didn't press
Begelman
further that afternoon; he wanted to see the police file first.

Begelman
seemed markedly concerned about only one thing: Was Alan Hirschfield aware of the police inquiry? Fischer said no—the police had called him directly, and he had flown out in hopes he could resolve the matter without bothering Hirschfield. Begelman's relief was just the reaction that Hirschfield and Fischer had hoped for when they concocted the story the previous afternoon. They did not want to alarm
Begelman
unduly and prompt him to do something rash before Fischer had a chance to investigate.

Fischer arrived at the Beverly Hills Police Department precisely at eight Friday morning and found that the inside of the department— like so many other things in Los Angeles—belied its sunlit, tranquil, well-landscaped exterior. The detective squad room was like detective squad rooms everywhere—a bit intimidating, with glaring fluorescent lights, constantly ringing telephon
es, bolstered revolvers on polyestere
d hips, and heavy steel filing cabinets and desks, piled high with untidy stacks of files and jammed so close together that one could hear the conversation at the next desk as clearly as the conversation at one's own.

Joyce Silvey turned out to be a plain, slim, pantsuited woman in her middle thirties, with tired eyes and short, prematurely gray hair. Smoking a Marlboro 100, she greeted Fischer coolly and, without preliminaries, proceeded to display a convincing—and, to Fischer, shocking—array of documentary evidence supporting her assertion that Begelman had forged Cliff Robertson's name on a Columbia Pictures check and pocketed the money. She showed him the check itself (which naturally looked more incriminating in the detective's office in September than it had looked in Jim Johnson's office in June). Robertson's affidavit of forgery, a memorandum from the Los Angeles police summarizing its interview with Seth Hufstedler, and a statement from the Wells Fargo Bank that Begelman himself had cashed the check.
Silvey
said that she would need an official letter from Columbia Pictures stating whether it wanted to prosecute Begelman. Fischer had little to say. He took photocopies of her material and promised to be in touch with her soon.

Back outside in the bright, balmy sunlight, Fischer couldn't recall ever before having been so distraught. It was 11:45
a.m.
in New York. He put a dime in a sidewalk telephone booth behind the City Hall and called
Hirschfield
.

"We're in deep shit," Fischer said. "You wouldn't believe the stuff this cop showed me. It's obvious that David did it. The cop wants to know whether we'll prosecute. They want something in writing. I said I'd get back to her. What we need now is a good solid local lawyer who knows how to deal with the police."

"I've already got
a
call in to Mickey." Hirschfield said. "He was somewhere in Nevada yesterday and hasn't gotten back to me. Why don't you try to reach him."

Milton A. "Mickey" Rudin,
with offices five blocks away on
Wilshire
Boulevard, represented Frank Sinatra. Lucille Ball, and other entertainers, and on occasion over the years had represented Alan
Hirschfield
, whom Rudin had gotten to know when Hirschfield was Warner Bros.' investment banker in the sixties and Frank Sinatra had sold the controlling interest in his record company to Warner.
Hirschfield
considered Mickey Rudin one of the shrewdest and most perspicacious human beings he had ever met.

Fischer drove to the Beverly
Wilshire
Hotel, across the street from Rudin's office, and sipped coffee in the hotel snack bar while waiting for the law offices to open for the day. Rudin was still out of town, it turned out, so Fischer left a Columbia studio number and said it was urgent that Rudin telephone him as soon as possible. By 10:15 he was back in Burbank huddled with Jim Johnson and Lou Phillips. Instructing them to discuss the matter with no one else, he briefed them on the police investigation and asked that they think back over
Begelman
's tenure at the company to try to recall any other transactions—checks, contracts, transfers of money, and the like—which possibly could have been irregular. Nothing came immediately to mind.

Fischer then returned to
Begelman
's office and spread Detective
Silvey
's documentation on the coffee table in front of the sofa. "What about that endorsement, David?" "What about it?" "It looks like your handwriting."

"It isn't my handwriting, Joe. It simply and unequivocally is not. I swear to you on the life of my child that it is not my handwriting and that I have done nothing wrong—nothing which merits the attention of the Beverly Hills Police Department. It's obviously a horrible chain of coincidences for which there must be an explanation. I will make every effort to trace it back and see what happened."

"What about this young man in the accounting department embezzling money?"

"At one time a few months ago, it appeared that such a thing might have happened. I haven't heard how it was resolved."

"David, I've never wanted anything so much in my life as I want now to believe you. but I gotta tell you that this
police file looks depre
ssingly conclusive."

Begelman
shrugged, and the two men stared at each other. They had worked closely for four years—on the phone nearly every day and in person at least once a month. As terrifying as the prospect was, there was no question in Fischer's mind that
Begelman
was lying. And
Begelman
knew that Fischer knew. The beginnings of tears glistened in their eyes.

Without another word. Fischer gathered the pape
rs, returned to the visiting-executive
s' suite, and got out a yellow legal pad. Sitting alone at his desk, he made two lists: the first of the evidence against Begelman. the second of possible mitigating circumstances, possible reasons for believing
Begelman
's contention that it was all a misunderstanding. The first list overwhelmed the second. Fischer didn't feel any better, but the act of writing it all down helped to calm him and clarify his thoughts.

His solitude
was interrupted by Mickey Rudin,
calling from beside the swimming pool at Frank Sinatra's compound in Palm Springs. Fischer gave Rudin a brief account of what had happened but said he was reluctant to go into detail over the telephone and offered to drive to Palm Springs. Rudin suggested instead that since it was already Friday afternoon they wait until Monday when, as it happened, he was planning to be in New York and could meet in person with Fischer and Hirschfield. Fischer agreed.

A few minutes later, controller Lou Phillips arrived with more news that potentially was ominous. In early 1975, he recalled, David
Begelman
had asked the studio accounting depart
ment to prepare a check for S35,
000, payable to a
man named Peter Choate, whom Begelman
said he had hired as a special sound consultant to equip theaters around the country with new sound gear for
Tommy,
a film featuring music by the rock group The Who. Although Phillips had had the check drawn and sent to Begelman without question, he had thought it odd that the request had come from Begelman personally and not from the studio vice president in charge of such technical matters. Later,
Begelman
had asked Phillips repeatedly whether the auditors checking the financial records of
Tommy
had cleared the Choate expenditure. It was very unusual for Begelman to ask even once, let alone repeatedly, whether a particular transaction had been passed upon by the auditors. Phillips gav
e Fischer the file on the Choate
matter, which listed an office address for Peter Choate in Santa Monica but gave no further identification.

Fischer phoned Hirschfield again, and told him of the possibly irregular Choate transaction. Then he caught the late afternoon American Airlines flight to New York, accompanied by Jim Johnson, who had business the following week at Columbia's New York headquarters. The two men worried their way across the country, their moods dark
ening as rapidly as the sky on e
astbound flights at dusk. It seemed unlikely to Fischer that Begelman had stolen small amounts of money without also stealing larger amounts. There were many ways in which a studio president could steal. He could solicit kickbacks from producers whose motion pictures or television programs he had agreed to purchase or distribute. If money changed hands abroad, there was little chance of detection by internal auditors, the IRS, or anyone else. Fischer feared that in two days in Los Angeles he had barely scratched the surface, and knew there would have to be a full investigation. That almost certainly meant publicity— bad publicity—just as Columbia Pictures Industries seemed headed into its finest hour.

As they were parting at Kennedy shortly after midnight, it seemed to Jim Johnson that Fischer was more disturbed than he had ever seen him in the decade they had known each other.

EIGHT

The week had been at least as frustrating for Alan Hirschfield as it had been for Joe Fischer. Conducting normal business and putting up an amiable front, while waiting for the telephone to ring with devastating and highly confidential news, seemed more aggravating to
Hirschfield
than actually conducting the investigation. Had it been an extremely busy week it would have been easier. But the pace of business had not yet come up to full speed following the summer doldrums and the Labor Day holiday.

Hirschfield attended a cocktail party on Thursday evening at the Fifth Avenue apartment of his friend Robert Bernstein, the chairman and president of Random House. He lunched at
"21"
on Friday with an acquaintance in the real estate business. As he did routinely two or three times daily, he spoke by telephone with his stockbrok
er, Stan He
ilbronn, about personal investments, and with Herbert Allen about Columbia business. He spoke to Fred Silverman,
the head of programming at ABC, and Herb Schlosser,
the president of NBC; to Steven Spielberg, the director of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
to Jack Valenti,
the president of the Motion Picture Association of America; and to several other people. He said nothing to any of them about the David Begelman problem. He even spoke twice to Begelman about routine business matters, but by prior arrangement with Joe Fischer, he did not mention the embezzlement issue.
Begelman
. of course, did not raise it e
ither.