Action! Page 19

  AJ glanced at Ray, who became a silent partner. “Sir, you’re underestimating how strongly demographics favor us. The baby boomers are hitting prime moviegoing age. They’ve been raised on TV dinners, but they want more.”

  “I think he’s right.” Those were Herbert Allen Jr.’s first words since ordering the three-pound lobster. And they earned the recent Williams College graduate a glare from his uncle.

  “As for filmmakers, sure they’re fickle,” AJ acknowledged, “but if you manage them properly, they’ll stick by you.”

  A commotion at a nearby table aborted the debate. “You’re a miserable pig, Lazar.” The man shouting was Otto Preminger, a director better known as the Nazi prison camp commandant in Stalag 17. He towered over a bald sixty-year-old whose Coke-bottle-thick oversized black glasses made him look like he’d tripped out of Mr. Magoo.

  “Oh shit,” Ray murmured.

  “Who are they?” Herb Jr. asked.

  “The short guy’s ‘Swifty’ Lazar.”

  “A literary agent,” AJ added. “He reps Nabokov, Gore Vidal, guys like that.”

  Swifty was on his feet, which brought him face-to-face with Preminger’s belt buckle. “You would have botched the material.”

  “Otto tried buying the film rights for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood,” Ray explained as he edged out of the booth. “Lazar sold them to another director.”

  Preminger turned his attention to a woman seated at the table. “I feel sorry for anyone who has to go to bed with this crook.”

  Ray closed in . . . too late. Mary Lazar slapped the director, and her husband smashed a water glass into his temple. Preminger crumpled while the couple fled the scene.

  “Waiter, my bill.” Charles Allen shook his head. “Mr. Jastrow, I don’t believe anyone can manage these kind of ruffians.”

  Outside the restaurant Ray waxed philosophical, dabbing at the blood on his suit with a wet napkin. “Charles is a tough nut, but that contretemps didn’t help matters.”

  “My only ally was the kid,” AJ remarked testily. “What gives?”

  “You need to experience the hardball they play in the big leagues.”

  “The only lesson you just taught me was how to duck and run. Are you giving up?”

  “I want to reflect on that before our next meeting.” Ray hoofed it to the Theater District to pester Neil Simon for his next play.

  But AJ had no place to go. A cop came over to question him because Preminger was pressing charges. “Can’t help you,” he lied. “I was having too much fun to notice.”

  The more her husband traveled, the more Stephanie inhabited the kitchen. It was packed with her gadgets, secondhand cookbooks, and scraps of paper with new recipes she’d scribbled down in the night. For lunch with her mother-in-law, Steph experimented on a quiche Lorraine using shrimp instead of bacon. Opening the oven, she noted that the quiche jiggled like the one they’d sampled in Brittany on their fifth anniversary, but the piecrust seemed a bit sad. Had it gotten soggy swimming under the eggs and cream? Prebaking was probably the key.

  “I don’t understand why you spend all that time preparing something that will be tomorrow’s bowel movement,” Maggie commented.

  Steph ignored the crudeness since the woman cleaned her plate. “Mom, we talked with the psychologist about your idea of Ricky going to that clinic in Texas. Dr. Mittman thinks it could prove damaging, so let’s forget about it, okay?”

  “Not okay. What could be more damaging than allowing him to rot in that school, listening to children call him a retard?”

  “Letting him fail in some untested program, that’s what. I’ve indulged your harebrained schemes for too long. You suggested vitamins, I bought out the drugstore. Try hypnosis, you said, so I carted him to that quack downtown. He’s had two sets of reading glasses even though his vision’s twenty-twenty.”

  “Better to try things than sit around. We’ll discuss this with AJ.”

  “No, we won’t!” Steph was damned if she was going to be dismissed. “We won’t discuss it again.”

  “Why are you so touchy?”

  Because you’re an insensitive cow! “Because what we do with our son—our son—is none of your business.”

  “Since when did I become an outsider?”

  “Since now! I’m his mother.”

  “And a splendid job you’ve done. He’s the unhappiest child I’ve ever seen.”

  “The subject is closed.”

  Maggie sighed. “Very well. Your husband’s under enough pressure.” She gathered her purse to leave. “The quiche was delicious. But be careful—you’re enjoying ten pounds too much of your own cooking.”

  Steph raced upstairs, where the scale confirmed her mother-in-law’s cattiness. After all the jokes AJ made about monster butts, there was no way that she was becoming his next target.

  The day after the debacle at ‘21,’ AJ encountered his second Charlie. Charlie Bluhdorn was cut from a wholly different cloth, but he shared Allen’s insatiable drive to make money and his grim view of AJ’s idea. “You’re fucking crazy,” Bluhdorn barked in heavily accented English.

  AJ was beginning to agree. He was in the living room of a man he’d met through his lover, an investor Wall Street had labeled the Mad Austrian, who’d made his fortune in the auto-parts business and whose last conquest had been a zinc-mining company. Bluhdorn and his conglomerate, Gulf + Western, seemed so unlikely a contender that Ray had skipped the trip to Connecticut.

  “First, I only buy companies that want me to buy them,” he lectured. “The other way’s too big a pain in the ass. Second, I like well-managed businesses, and the guys at Paramount sound like circus clowns.” Before he could get to “third,” the phone rang again and Bluhdorn got involved in a heated conversation about buying some sugar company in Puerto Rico.

  When he finally hung up, AJ dived back in. “I’m telling you, Mr. Bluhdorn—”

  “Charlie.”

  “The movie business is in need of a kick in the ass—the kind you could provide. The men running it haven’t a clue about the future.” He was Mike Todd born again. “Paramount’s the worst offender. Barney Balaban and Paul Herzog squandered a franchise. But as bad as they performed, the breakup value of Paramount is still worth more than the market cap.” He was yelling from frustration.

  Bluhdorn grabbed AJ’s analysis out of his hand. “Dupee!” Out of nowhere stepped a young man with the kind of lean, hungry eyes that caught rounding errors in the fourth decimal. “Take a look at these numbers. See if they’re as full of shit as our visitor.”

  It was the skimpiest of victories, but it enabled AJ to catch his breath.

  “What the fuck does an agent do?”

  “Think of me as a pimp for actors and directors.”

  Bluhdorn guffawed. “You’re screwing Romy Schneider, aren’t you?” His emphasis on verbs made him sound particularly aggressive.

  “She’s my client. It would be highly unethical . . . and dumb.”

  Bluhdorn looked him up and down. “She fucks you, but she won’t fuck me. Tell me how that makes sense.”

  The question provided AJ’s last chance. “Romy thinks the world of you. But you’re in the wrong business. Ladies like her don’t fall for guys who manufacture widgets, even if they have all the money in the world.” For once, the man had no response. “Call me if you like the numbers. Otherwise, thanks for your time.” AJ waved good-bye without waiting to be excused and headed back to the city.

  His bravado cracked before he reached White Plains. The trip had been worse than useless. He’d lied to Kamen that he had a lead on signing a stage actor named Dustin Hoffman. Now he would have to lie again that he’d failed. His play for Paramount was a washout. If a stranger had guessed he was having an affair, the rumor was sure to reach Stephanie. In his downward spiral he missed the turnoff to the Major Deegan and backed up on the highway, only to be flagged down by a state trooper, who wrote him a fifty-dollar ticket. AJ banged his steering wheel. These ri
sks were insane. The only way he could calm down was to make a solemn vow to go straight.

  For two weeks AJ kept his religion. He accepted defeat graciously when his bosses denied his request to sign Richard Pryor. At his yearly performance review he thanked Lastfogel and Weisbord for his two-thousand-dollar raise, even as he fumed at its unfairness. In his conversations with Romy he doggedly stuck to business, despite her whispering how much she longed to be with him.

  His anxiety abated, but it was replaced with a headache so pounding and persistent that he swallowed bottles of Excedrin until one morning he discovered blood when he used the bathroom. The doctor assured him that it was only a reaction to the painkillers. To celebrate not having cancer, AJ drove Steph, Ricky, and Jess to visit Sea World and the San Diego Zoo. Seeing the pleasure his children took in the vacation, AJ decided his life was fine, just fine.

  But when they returned home on Sunday, a long-distance phone call from the Dominican Republic set his world spinning anew. Despite the lousy connection, Bluhdorn’s gruff accent was unmistakable. “How the fuck are you?”

  “Good. And you?”

  “I’ve been thinking about your crazy idea. You know what—I love it! I’m coming to L.A. next week, so don’t go nowhere. And take whatever money you got and buy Paramount stock.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can make you rich.”

  AJ usually avoided the artistic funk of Laurel Canyon, with its shanty bungalows, one-horse lanes, jackknife turns, and London-fog lighting, so it wasn’t surprising he got lost trying to find Dan Cohen’s house. The writer had invited him to hear a speech by his friend Tom Hayden, who had just returned from a visit behind enemy lines to Hanoi. The more attention he’d paid, the more uncomfortable AJ had felt about the war in Vietnam. He’d even written his congressman to urge hearings on America’s involvement, but the guy hadn’t bothered to write back.

  A neighbor with the dead-eyed daze of a stoner finally directed him to a wood-and-glass cottage on Hermit’s Glen. There were no Cadillacs and Lincolns, de rigueur at most Hollywood affairs. Parking his Pontiac between a Harley and a Dodge Dart, AJ approached the house, which hung precariously over a ravine. Skunk was in the air. Forty people showed up, and sat around listening to Phil Ochs on the stereo and smoking grass. Cohen welcomed his guests and introduced the Diggers, a group of mimes from the Bay Area, who performed a short play about the atrocities of the South Vietnamese army.

  A young man came over with a jug of wine and poured AJ a glass. With his pudgy cheeks, blond curls, and full mouth, he looked like a Raphaelesque angel who’d rebelled by growing a beard. “I know what you’re thinking, but the mimes were a lot better than last week’s entertainment.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m serious. Dan showed a documentary about teenagers in Da Nang who make puppets out of bombshells from B-52s.”

  “Point taken. I’m AJ Jastrow.”

  “Pete Leventhal. Nice to meet you.” He studied AJ’s Brooks Brothers button-down. “Let me guess. Dan’s mother sent you to bring him back to the fold?”

  “Worse. I’m a William Morris agent hoping to sign him. But I’m also trying to learn what’s going on in Southeast Asia.”

  “A royal fucking. Wait till you hear Hayden. He, Dan, and I all went to school up in Berkeley. I’m the lawyer for Get Out Now.”

  Cohen tapped the microphone and introduced the intellectual guru of the New Left. With his tousled hair, coffeehouse pallor, jeans, and work shirt, Tom Hayden embodied the generation that distrusted anyone over thirty. AJ hoped no one noticed that he’d passed the cutoff. Hayden denounced the idiocy of the domino theory and the American leaders who believed in it. All that drove Lyndon Johnson and the old guard, Hayden insisted, was “Don’t Tread on Me,” the machismo ethic that America could never tolerate disrespect. But in this war, military might wouldn’t make right.

  AJ distrusted proselytizers, but he burst into applause and raised his hand when Hayden asked for questions. “I just got back from Taiwan, where I had the chance to see the low morale of our troops. Do the North Vietnamese suspect we’re vulnerable?”

  “Their defeat of the French convinced them they’ll prevail, but I’m interested in hearing your observations, since the only part of Vietnam I could get into—or out of—alive was the North.”

  AJ held the spotlight—uncomfortably at first, then with burgeoning enthusiasm. Afterward, Pete Leventhal walked him to his car. “We need people like you, people who can influence the media to get our message out.”

  “Don’t overestimate what I can do.”

  “AJ, you’ve got charisma. If you tell your clients and friends, they’ll listen. We all listened to you tonight.”

  “That’s flattering—”

  “Come on up to Berkeley next month for our Vietnam teach-in. Learn more.”

  AJ accepted eagerly. On the way home he imagined what he might be doing in Washington if Mike Todd hadn’t seduced him to Hollywood. Shit! The date of the teach-in conflicted with a William Morris staff meeting. Of course, he couldn’t miss that.

  CHAPTER 25

  The instant the Los Angeles Times smacked against the pavement, AJ darted onto the driveway, clad only in pajamas. He hadn’t been this anxious for news since his college acceptance letters had arrived. Steph’s investment ideas began and ended with United States Savings Bonds, so she’d labeled him a lunatic for risking double their savings by buying two thousand shares of Paramount stock on margin. Executives in Hollywood rarely invested in their companies. His father had never owned a share, and Barney Balaban—after nearly four decades on the job—owned barely ten thousand.

  So far he was beating the game. The stock had risen to sixty-eight, three dollars a share more than he’d paid. Under “P-Q-R” in the stock tables he located the ticker symbol for Paramount. Next to it the price was . . . no, it couldn’t be fifty? He was ruined. Inside the house the phone rang—probably his broker calling his margin loan. But as his panic deepened, he realized he’d read the line for Paragon Petroleum. Paramount had skyrocketed to seventy-one, the biggest gainer on the New York Stock Exchange. An article credited the rise to speculation in the wake of the Siegel-Martin proxy fight. AJ kissed the page and danced into the kitchen. Twelve grand in profit went down smoothly with his orange juice. In less than a hundred hours he had earned a third of his annual salary—without hard work or kissing ass.

  Charlie Bluhdorn had transformed his pink poolside cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel into a Gulf + Western annex, complete with a secretary, multiple phone lines, reams of computer printouts, and . . . a chipper Paul Dupee? My analysis must have checked out, AJ thought. Charlie paid the ultimate compliment of dismissing his entourage and yanking out the phone jacks. The haphazard way he rubbed lotion over his milky white body suggested a man with limited sunbathing experience.

  “Thanks for the stock advice.”

  “Only the beginning, my friend. Did I miss a spot?” AJ applied a dollop in the middle of the thicket that was Charlie’s back.

  “Call for Mr. DeWitt. Call for Mr. Dick DeWitt.” Joey, the midget-sized pager who’d played a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, pranced around the pool area until he spotted a man whose toupee had been dyed green by the chlorine.

  “This DeWitt’s a big shot?”

  “Nope,” AJ replied. “A journeyman producer whose last two movies flopped.”

  “He’s gotten more calls than me.”

  “Dick has himself paged so that people will think he’s important.”

  “Fuck me.”

  When agents perceived a producer as “cold,” AJ explained, they avoided him like smallpox and steered their scripts and talent to guys who were “hot.” To heat up his image, DeWitt had hired a publicist to get him invited to premieres and mentioned in Variety. AJ could see Bluhdorn salivating at the prospect of capitalizing on the town’s insecurity. But first he had to buy a ticket in.

  Herb Siegel had given Bluhdorn an earful. He and his partne
r were a couple of poor bastards who’d wandered into a back room where a gang was planning a bank robbery; they couldn’t get out but were too honest to join the crooks. According to Siegel, Paramount was sinking under Herzog’s mismanagement. He’d blown a chance to make a whopping profit by selling the studio’s annex, believing they would need it for increased production that never occurred. After purchasing David Susskind’s company, Talent Associates, Herzog had sold it back to Susskind for a multimillion-dollar loss. The studio faced a dozen lawsuits from actors and directors alleging breach of contract.

  “It’s worse than I imagined.”

  “That’s why Weisl’s shitting himself,” Charlie confided. “Herzog’s his guy. If these stories leak, he’ll look like a fucking idiot.”

  “Doesn’t he already, after what happened at the trial?”

  “Nah, he spread the word that Balaban went senile. Here’s the drill. I need eight hundred thousand shares to control Paramount, but there’s so little outstanding stock it’s hard to acquire. Drummond at Sara Lee owns a huge block. Lester Crown of General Dynamics has ninety thousand shares, and a guy named Dan Rottenberg holds several thousand more. Right now those guys are all in Weisl’s pocket. I called to say I might be interested in taking a stake in Paramount, but Weisl treated me as if I was too dumb to realize I’d never get into his club.”

  “So we’re screwed?”

  “If we were, I wouldn’t be here. Eventually I’m buying Siegel’s and Martin’s shares. They can’t win a proxy fight—there’s already too much bad blood. When I offer Herb the right price, he’ll pocket the profit. So the next step is to shake loose one of the pro-management groups. The minute Weisl believes he could actually lose—and be publicly embarrassed—he’ll get out, especially when I come along as the savior.”

  “But if he finds out you’re trying to dislodge his backers, won’t he see Gulf + Western as the black hats?”

  Bluhdorn grinned mischievously. “He’ll never know, because you’re the one who’s going to do the dirty work. You’ve got to use your relationship with your chum in Chicago to sour Drummond on Paramount.”