Indecent Exposure (6 page)
The man's gall is beyond all imagining. Cliff thought, as he nervously idled away the hours in the house in Hollywood.
Airborne for New Zealand the next morning, Cliff felt better. To the extent that he had been in hiding, he had escaped, at least temporarily. He was putting distance between himself and a difficult situation which was now in the hands of someone else. His past troubles with David Begelman were irrelevant. In this instance, he had simply witnessed a crime and reported it—the duty of any citizen. Surely the police would take appropriate action against Begelman.
To underscore the end of two difficult days, Cliff asked one of the first-class stewardesses to bring him a small bottle of champagne. Whether it was a tiny celebration or just a way to relieve tension was unimportant. He deserved it.
"What are
you doing, Daddy? It isn't even noon yet," asked a surprised Heather.
"Sweetheart, there are times in everyone's life when he is inclined to have a little extra to drink."
FIVE
As the senior vice president in charge of "physical production," John Veitch was Columbia Pictures' highest ranking nuts-and-bolts man. Veitch had come to Hollywood from New York in the late forties, working first as an actor and then as a production manager. He had worked on
Some Like It Hot. The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Magnificent Seven,
and
Major Dundee,
among other films. Many years later, it was Veitch, an impeccably groomed man with white hair and a deep tan, who exercised daily scrutiny over the complex logistics and vast quantity of hardware involved in the making of Columbia's movies. He oversaw the securing of sufficient quantities of horses for Westerns and sufficient numbers of automobiles for chase scenes. He made sure that they did not cost too much and that they were transported to the right locations at the right time. He concerned himself with bad weather, faulty cameras and lights, temperamental people, and all the other impediments to on-budget, on-schedule movie making. He and his assistants monitored all of Columbia's films in progress, whether that required strolling across the Burbank lot to a sound stage, or flying to Africa.
On the morning of Tuesday, July 5, John Veitch was at an optical facility in the Marina del Rey section of Los Angeles watching technicians complete the elaborate special effects for
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
His secretary telephoned and said that a Detective Elias of the Burbank Police needed to see him. Elias wouldn't say what it was about. It couldn't be handled on the telephone. Veitch asked that the detective come to his office in the Columbia executive suite at The Burbank Studios that afternoon-Robert Elias turned out to be a short Mexican-American in his forties with curly s
alt-and-peppe
r hair, a round, fleshy face, and a small potbelly. He wore a bright, open-collared sport shirt outside his trousers to conceal the .38 caliber service revolver on his belt. Although he normally answered his phone, "Check Detail, Elias," check forgers did not confront him as often as small businessmen who cooked their books and used-car salesmen who stole credit cards. David
Begelman
was Bob Elias's first movie-mogul forgery suspect.
Elias showed John Veitch a
n LAPD memorandum on Seth Hufste
dler's report of the forgery. Learning of the matter for the first time, Veitch said he was certain that there had been a mistake and that it was inconceivable that
Begelman
(who was then on a two-week trip to Europe) could have forged a check. Detective Elias said that if Columbia, as the apparent victim, wanted the police to conduct a formal investigation, the studio would have to file a complaint. Immediately after Elias left, Veitch telephoned David
Begelman
at the Plaza Athdncc Hotel in Paris.
Begelman
asked Veitch to see if the detective could come to the studio on Friday, July 15, David's first day back in the office after his trip.
Instead of seeing Elias that morning,
Begelman
telephoned the detective and told him that what appeared to be a forgery actually had resulted from an error in the Columbia accounting department and had been rectified internally.
"Columbia appreciates the concern and interest of the police department,"
Begelman
said, "but there will be no need for an investigation." David sounded sincere and truthful. His speaking persona, particularly on the telephone, had always been one of his assets. Assured and forthright, cultured and articulate, and without a trace of snake-oil resonance, his voice was youthful—the voice of a man at least two decades younger than his fifty-six years. Detective Elias thanked
Begelman
for his help in resolving the matter.
Caressed by Muzak. Begelman sat at his elaborate
faux marbre
desk and thought about the check and about Cliff Robertson. John Veitch's call to Paris had stunned David. In a quarter of a century as an agent and four years as a studio head, he had never encountered a situation quite like this one. David had been confident in June that he had assuaged Cliff"s concern, but obviously he had miscalculated. Although he was relieved that he had deflected Detective Elias so easily, he suspected that he had not heard the last of the issue; that he might never hear the last of it; that even now it might be beyond his control. Why had Robertson gone to the police? Why had he gone to what must have been extraordinary lengths to investigate
Begelman
's story of the young man's embezzlement, when Bud
Kahaner
and Michael Black had accepted it without question? One thing certainly was clear. Using Robertson's name to steal the money in the first place had been a big mistake, even though it had seemed perfectly logical at the time. Robertson had, indeed, been making a promotional tour for
Obsession,
and giving expense money to actors was a frequent practice of the studio. The accounting department had no reason to question
Begelman
's request for the check. After having it drawn, he had kept it in his desk for nearly a week. Then, late one afternoon, he had telephoned his friend Joe Lipshcr, who handled loans to the entertainment industry at the Wells Fargo Bank, and said he needed $10,000 in traveler's checks for a trip the next day. To accommodate
Begelman
, Lipsher sent an assistant from Beverly Hills to The Burbank Studios with the traveler's checks. The assistant accepted the Robertson check as payment without question, but when Lipsher saw it the next morning he telephoned
Begelman
and expressed concern about the absence of a second endorsement on the check.
Begelman
assured Lipsher that it was just an oversight; he was going to be traveling with Robertson and they both
would be using the money. Lipshe
r, a veteran Beverly Hills banker who had learned long ago that it was poor diplomacy to enforce strict banking discipline on major studio clients unnecessarily, wished Begelman bon voyage and approved the check.
Begelman had an enjoyable and very restful vacation in Bermuda over the next several days, despite the fact that stolen money and lies were paying for it. He had stolen in the past without being caught and he would steal again. Although he didn't plan his embezzlements as carefully as a bank robber planned a complicated heist, he wasn't reckless either, always making sure he had a plausible alibi in case questions were raised. Until now, questions had not been raised and wouldn't have been in this instance were it not for the IRS Form 1099. The 1099, however, wasn't the heart of the problem. Cliff Robertson was. Almost anyone would have accepted Begelman's "young man" story without question. Why had Robertson bothered to challenge the explanation, especially since he hadn't lost any money?
Begelman thought back to the
Red Baron
episode. Surely that couldn't have anything to do with Robertson's state of mind in the summer of 1977. As intense as the dispute had been,
Begelman
had never looked upon it as anything more than an argument over a business deal—the sort of thing that inevitably happened occasionally in the jungle of contracts and deals in which the entertainment industry functioned. Begelman didn't take business disagreements personally and knew few people who did. Could it be that Robertson was one of those few? It hadn't seemed so. They had had one or two cordial encounters since the
Red Baron
incident.
However, Robertson's career hadn't gone well in recent years. He hadn't had a hit movie and was less and less in demand. Was it possible that he
I...J
become frustrated, and harbored deep resentment against Begelman all these years, and now was seizing the opportunity of a forged check to try to get even?
Begelman
tried to telephone Robertson but couldn't locate him. His calls, however, prompted the Prager & Fcnton office to warn Evelyn Christel: "Don't talk to David
Begelman
unless you talk first to Bud Kahaner. If Begelman calls, say Cliff is out of the country."
Concealing his concern over the Robertson matter, David Begelman kept a date that Friday afternoon with a
New York Times
photographer, who was preparing pictures for an article on "The New Tycoons of Hollywood" which the
Times
was planning to publish in August.
Begelman posed with his Rolls-Royce. With a prominent nose, puffy facial features, receding dark hair, and shallow eyes, David was a plain man, capable of appearing modestly handsome through meticulous grooming, stylish dress, and the assertion of his notably charming, ingratiating personality. Attired this day in dark blazer, polka-dot tie, light slacks, and loafers, he leaned against the left front fender of the Rolls with his ankles crossed and his hands in the side pockets of his blazer. The expression on his face was serene. He looked like a man at the top of his game.
Actually, Cliff Robertson was not out of the country. He was ensconced in the house on Hackberry Lane in Winnetka where Dina was still working on the Altman picture,
A Wedding.
He had returned with Heather after ten days in New Zealand raising mental health funds and another ten days in Tahiti vacationing, and now was studying the script of a motion
picture which he was to begin fil
ming in London with Jean Simmons in mid-September. He also had just agreed to direct and star in a movie based on Pulitzer Prize winner James Kirkwood's novel
Good Times. Bad Times,
a story of tragedy at a New England preparatory school.
It had been well over a month since he had reported Begelman's forgery and, so far as Cliff knew, the police in Los Angeles had done nothing except ask him to swear out an affidavit of forgery. Even such a simple, preliminary request as that—from a detective in Beverly Hills—hadn't come until early August. Cliff mailed the affidavit to attorney Seth Hufstedler, who also seemed mystified by the lack of police action. "They [the police] all seem a little at a loss about how to proceed in a matter where somebody reports something to them that appears to be a crime but nobody wants to b
e a prosecuting witness," Hufste
dler told Robertson. "That confuses me because I thought the job of the police department was to investigate on its own."
Robertson's frustration grew. Even a sophistic
ated, influential lawyer like Se
th
Hufstedler
, a law partner of the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, didn't seem able to prod the authorities to action. There had always been a tacit assumption around Hollywood that the Los Angeles law enforcement agencies tended to take it easy on the movie colony. But how could they ignore a blatant case of forgery? Was some sinister force impeding the investigation? Cliff had not been able to shake off the fear planted by his accountant's comment that the check forgery might be the "tip of the iceberg," and by Seth Hufstedler's suggestion that he stay out of sight. The apparent inaction by the police fed his anxiety.
In the middle of August, while still in Illinois, Robertson decided on a new course of action. He telephoned Congressman Morris K. "Mo" Udall, the Arizona Democrat in whose 1976 presidential campaign Cliff had worked. The two had become friends. After hearing Cliff
’
s tale, Udall said: "It sounds like you may have your own Watergate."
"Well, what can I do? I seem to be at the end of the road in Los Angeles."
"There might be some federal crimes involved. Cliff. The check appears to have gone through a couple of national banks. And
Begelman
may have IRS problems if he's stolen any money. I'd consider calling the FBI."
Cliff fretted through Labor Day. Dina finished
A Wedding
and the family returned to New York. There was no news from Los Angeles. Finally, through a friend of Dina's family, Cliff arranged an appointment with the FBI in Washington for Monday, September 12, two days before he was to leave for London. An agent met him at National Airport and drove him to headquarters where he told his story and stressed his feeling that he might be in some personal danger. The agents asked that he telephone the FBI office in London immediately after he arrived.