The Best Revenge (5 page)

Manucci guffawed. “Hey, this lawyer friend of yours is okay.”

As soon as Manucci lowered his eyes to look at the memorandum in front of him, Ezra gave me his Cheshire Cat smile.

Manucci, looking up, said, “Understand, you didn't give me too much time. My father caught me at home yesterday evening. Lucky I was able to get my accountant at his house. He got in pretty early this morning to make some calls. According to this,” he tapped the memo, “your record is exemplary.” He let the word lie there for a moment. “Fourteen hits out of seventeen times at bat. Anybody else come close besides DiMaggio?”

Ezra and I laughed, as the circumstances required. I noticed how the creases in Manucci's trousers were more sharp-edged than good taste would have permitted.
Ben,
I could hear Louie saying,
you are a snob like your mother. The important creases are in the brain, not in the pants.

I must make Nick comfortable with me, the way Louie would have made his father comfortable. I must bring him into my world because that is where he would be putting his money. Lightly, lightly, I said, “DiMaggio wouldn't have made it in the theater. In our business, if you bat three hundred, you're dead.”

Manucci nodded. Did that mean he was buying in? My heart was a bird flapping its wings, too big for its cage.

“Merrick,” I said, “is the Babe Ruth of Broadway. Actually, I was involved in eighteen productions. In my first, I was one of three co-producers.”

I watched Manucci's laugh subdue into a genial smile. Louie had
always said,
If a man's face improves when he smiles, it might be possible to trust him.

“Was it a flop?” Manucci asked. “The first one.”

That first production had me bounding out of bed in the morning, my happiness manic as I helped put director, cast, costumes, and set in place. And all the time Louie's voice was like a megaphone in my head.
Don't get so excited about a business deal. A business deal is not a woman.
I wanted Louie to shut up. Theater wasn't business.

Manucci was studying me over the top of his porcelain cup. “You were going to tell me if your first one was a flop.”

Pay attention,
Louie was shouting,
as if your life depended on it.

Shut up, Pop, life doesn't depend on any one deal.

If this doesn't work out, what will you do, sell suits? Stop daydreaming, the man is waiting for your answer.

“That first play ran five months, Mr. Manucci. It sold out only on Saturdays. We didn't advertise much. Word-of-mouth kept it going. The ticket brokers didn't send us people. People who saw it sent us people. We made a small profit.”

“How small?”

“Maybe fifteen percent on the investment. I'm guessing. It was a long time ago.”

“If you made a profit on your first one, you've got a right to be proud.”

He's not asking me the name of the play.

You're not looking for a cultural companion,
pisher.
Talk to him in the language he understands. Money.

“If a play's a smash, you can make four, five hundred percent,” I said.

Manucci wasn't smiling. How many hundred percent did he make on his loans?

“What was the name of that play?” Manucci asked.

For a moment I couldn't remember. I glanced over at coach Ezra.

“It was called
A Long Way to Tipperary
,”
Ezra said.

“World War One?” Manucci asked.

“No,” I said. “The hero is first-generation Irish. His father came from Tipperary.”

“I hope you don't mind my questions, Mr. Riller.”

It's his ball game,
Louie was saying,
let him pitch.

I thought, You're wrong, Louie. We take turns pitching or it's no ball game.

“Mr. Manucci,” I said, “I hope you don't mind a question from
me.”

“Be my guest.”

“From your first business deal, did you learn anything?”

Manucci thought a moment. Smiling at the memory, he said, “The first time I lent anybody big change I learned never pay attention to a guy's suit. This guy wore a terrific suit. He hadn't paid for it. He took a long, long time to pay me.”

I was aware of Ezra laughing along with Manucci now, an audience of two waiting for my response.

“From the
Tipperary
run,” I said, “I learned that if you build a better mousetrap, without lots of publicity nobody knows about it. Even the mice stay away.”

Ezra nodded. I was keeping the mood light.

“I also learned that it's too late to start promoting after you open. If you want a smash, you've got to set it up that way from the start, at least one name actor for the theater parties, roll the publicity long before you're in production, feed the gossip columns, and when you open in New York, advertise as if you were Ford launching a new car.”

“Like the Edsel?”

I let him relish his crack for a moment.

“Like the Mustang,” I said. “You have to get behind whatever you're launching.”

“Even if it's a lemon.”

“I don't produce lemons, Mr. Manucci.”

“Maybe not so far, Mr. Riller. Maybe this one'll be your first. Suppose the critics don't like what's-its-name?”

“
The Best Revenge
is its name,” I said. “If you've presold enough theater parties, it doesn't matter much.”

“How much?”

“If the production gets good word-of-mouth from the theater parties, it'll run.”

“What happens if you don't get theater parties, like on this one? Mr. Riller, I made one phone call before you came, somebody in your business who owes me, and from what he said it sounds as if your investors think your new play is controversial. Do you agree with that?”

Manucci sure was thorough. I said, “I've had my share of inoffensive hits. I decided it's time to have an offensive one. A lot of people thought John Osborne and Harold Pinter offensive at first.”

“Did they pay off?”

“Some did. Some didn't.”

“Mr. Riller, you sound as if producing plays isn't exactly a business.”

Ezra interjected. “Depends what you mean by business,” he said.

“A business,” Manucci said, “is when you get to take out enough more than you put in to be worth the trouble. It seems to take a lot of trouble to put a play on.”

“Compared to what?” I said.

“Compared to what I do.”

“Mr. Manucci,” Ezra said, “all of Mr. Riller's plays are part of a mix. Some are pure commercial for visiting firemen. Some are for serious theatergoers. If either lands big, they get everybody. A few of Mr. Riller's productions will continue to generate income long after we're gone.”

“Can you borrow against that future income?”

“Not really,” Ezra said.

“Mr. Hochman,” Manucci said, sipping coffee again as if it might lubricate his harsh consonants, “an asset is something you can borrow against now. Posterity is not an asset.”

Ezra started to speak. Manucci cut him off.

“If Mary my wife becomes Mary my widow and needs what's in my safe deposit box, she don't want to find future income. She wants to find cash money. No posterity, no prestige. Fellows in the fantasy business sometimes lose track of what's real.” He sighed and turned to me. “I hear the
Times
man has more clout than the rest put together. Ever try buying him?”

What do you do with the type of mind that imagines that what you can do on the docks you can do with the
Times
?

“I don't think that would work.”

“It works in every business I know. A hundred buys a traffic ticket from a cop. If Lockheed wants an okay from the Jap government, it costs a lot of millions. Everything else is in between. You think a critic who makes sixty thousand a year won't take thirty for one review?”

“It's not done.”

Manucci stood up. “How the fuck do you know it's not done? Maybe you don't do it. Maybe it's done with presents, not cash.
Maybe it's done by giving a paid annuity to somebody's mother. Maybe it's done by not doing something.”

I didn't understand.

“Not breaking legs. Mr. Riller, if I put money with you I got to know you're a realist.”

The intercom buzzed. Manucci went over to his desk, held the phone to his ear. What am I doing here? I looked at Ezra.

He gestured, palms down. Take it easy.

Louie in heaven, I thought, it wasn't like this when you went to see Aldo, was it?

Manucci was saying into the intercom, “No. No is no.” He disconnected whoever was on the line, then said, “Did you tape that, honey? Terrific. Now hold the calls for a while.” He was still seated at the desk across the room when he said in a voice that seemed to boom, “How come a guy with your track record is having such trouble raising money for your new play?”

Ezra interjected, “When Mr. Riller organized this partnership—”

Manucci, on his way back to the sofa, cut Ezra off. “Mr. Hochman,” he said, “if I advise your client to do anything illegal, you speak up. Otherwise you keep quiet because this is a meeting between him and me and you are an observer, understand?” He turned to me. “Please,” he said, “continue.”

I tried to speak casually. Nothing was to be gained by telling Manucci how desperate I was. Why else would I come to his father or to him?

“Most of the people who invest in the theater,” I said, “figure the downside gamble is a tax write-off against ordinary income, costing them thirty to fifty cents on the dollar net. That's if you lose everything, which is rare. This year most of my steadies have taken a bath in the market, short term and long term. They can't use losses.”

I couldn't tell whether he believed me. He sighed. “What's in it for you?”

“In a loss situation? The production usually contributes some part of the budget to my office overhead.”

Manucci laughed. “You spend a year of your time for some office overhead? I hear guys who produce movies can make three hundred big ones as their fee on a flop.”

“If a play's a success, as general partner I get fifty percent of the profits once the investors have their money back.” Why did my voice sound as if a mechanical monkey were talking?

“I'm like the movie producers,” Manucci said. “I like to see mine, win or lose.”

“I understand.”

“What I understand,” Manucci said carefully, lowering his voice so that I had to lean forward to hear him, “is that sometimes an investor is entitled to a piece of your piece, is that right?”

“That's a matter of contention,” Ezra said. “I've never permitted Mr. Riller to do that.”

“Please, Mr. Hochman, don't use words like
contention.
There's always a first time for everything.”

Ezra coughed.

“If you offered better terms than usual to some of your old-time investors,” Manucci said, “maybe they'd have come up with the money.”

“I couldn't have Mr. Riller do that. Word would get around to the others.”

Manucci tapped his forehead. “Mr. Hochman, you think you're doing your client a favor by butting in? I tell you, any lawyer did me favors like that I'd put in a tube and mail back to law school.” Manucci leaned forward in his chair, addressing me now. “Weren't some of your investors leery of your new one because it isn't a musical or a Neil Simon–type play that rakes it in?”

“My new one,” I said, “is like the plays that have survived over the years, O'Neill, Tennessee Williams at his best.”

“They weren't in poetry, were they?”

“Whoever described it to you as poetry in a derogatory fashion was misleading you, Mr. Manucci. Tennessee Williams used elevated language.”

“He didn't do too well in the end, did he?”

“I produced one of his best plays. Would you deride Shakespeare for using elevated language?”

“There ain't no elevated anymore,” Manucci said, “just the subway.” He looked to see if we would laugh at his joke. When we didn't, he did.

“I wish you'd take a look at my new play. Will you read it?”

Manucci, leaning back into the sofa, said, “That's very flattering, Mr. Riller, but I don't know that I'm a judge. I know automobiles. I know horses. I know money. I know women. Now some of the women I see, they like to go to Broadway plays, it's very exciting to them, live theater, and I like them to be excited you understand, so it's
mutually beneficial. I get to see shows that are good and some that are not so good, but what would I know personally? I told my accountant to ask around. He knows a couple of the people who've been in with you pretty steady. They talked as if they were friends of yours, not just investors. They admire the hell out of you as a producer, but they told my accountant they don't think this one has a hope in hell in today's market, that's why they're staying out. You lied to me about the reason.”