“Personal or business?” Candy said.
“Business. I heard he mismanaged the studio into an economic pit. He had a lot of money out that did not return investment. He bought a lot of bad properties, packaged them wrong, and they bombed. He couldn’t get the product into the theaters after a while. So then I heard he started embezzling from the profitable releases to cover the losses on the bombs, and he started juggling books so that his bosses wouldn’t know how bad it was.”
“His bosses are who?” Candy said.
“Oceania Limited: Petroleum, Timber, Mineral Processing, and Moviemaking.” Zeke shook his head and made the kind of mouth movement you make when you’ve gotten ashes on your tongue.
“Oceania catch on?” I said. Candy looked at me and frowned. “Oops,” I said. “Am I in your space?” Candy shook her head in small annoyance looked at Zeke.
“Did they?” she said.
“Catch on?” He shrugged. “Hammond is still there.”
“Because he got money from a mobster to cover the losses?”
Zeke nodded. “That’s what I hear.”
“What did the mobster get?” Candy said.
“I don’t know,” Zeke said. “It’s not the kind of thing I want to know too much about. What I hear about mobsters they must have got something.”
“They got Hammond,” I said.
“What do you mean `got‘?” Candy said.
“Like Mephistopheles `got‘ Faust,” I said. “But they won’t wait to collect.”
“Why are you so sure?” Candy said.
“It’s too easy. They bail him out and now they own him, and they’re in the movie business and he fronts it. Dirty money goes in, clean money comes out.”
“You think the Mob controls Summit Pictures?” Candy said.
“If what Zeke hears is right, I can almost promise you,” I said.
Candy looked at Zeke. “What do you think?” she said.
He shrugged. “He’d know more about that than I would, I think.”
Candy looked back at me. “It makes sense, doesn’t it.”
I nodded.
Zeke said, “I will deny ever saying anything about this, Candy.”
“You won’t have to,” Candy said. “I’ll never mention you. You can trust me.”
He nodded. “There’s no one else I would have talked to,” he said.
“It would be nice to believe that, Zeke,” she said. ‘ They looked silently at each other for a while and I looked out the window. Then Candy said, “Thank you, Zeke,” and we got up and left.
Chapter 9
“I WANT TO go to dinner,” Candy said, “and I want you to escort me.”
“I’ll risk that,” I said.
We went to The Palm on Santa Monica. The walls were covered with clumsy murals of show-biz celebrities in caricature. But my plate was covered with medium-rare butterflied lamb chops and asparagus with hollandaise.
I drank a little beer. “You have a plan?” I said.
“Keep talking and asking,” she said. She ate a scallop carefully. “That’s what investigative reporting is. Talking, asking; asking, talking.”
I nodded. “Who you going to ask and talk with next?”
“Somebody at Oceania.”
“Got a name?”
“No. Any suggestions?”
“Why not the president. Might as well get as close as we can to God.” I ate some lamb chop.
“I agree. We’ll do it tomorrow morning,” she said.
A man next to us-dark suit, white French cuffs, large oynx cuff links-said to the waiter, “Tell Frank I’m out here and tell him to give me that center cut he’s been saving.”
The waiter, an old man with no expression on his face, said, “Yes, sir. How you want that?”
The middle-aged man said, “How do I want it? Frank knows damn well how I want it. Barely dead.”
He raised both hands as if measuring a fish while he spoke.
