by Howard Fast
In some strange way, Max realised, it all made sense – or as much sense as most things.
Feldman had aged, He had shrunk, or perhaps his width made him appear smaller, his width and his little belly protruding against the tight vest of his three-piece suit and his fringe of gray hair around his mostly bald skull. After all, a quarter of a century had gone by since Max had first said to him, ‘How about it, Freddy. You want to be my lawyer?’
‘Well, I’d have to take that up with my employers.’
‘What employers? You mean Meyer Sonberg and his brother? You got more brains in your little finger than both of them put together. They’re loser lawyers, crumb bums, ambulance chasers –’
‘Come on, Max.’
‘You remember back on Henry Street, them tough Irish kids from St Mark’s Place used to come around looking for trouble, and we used to beat the shit out of each other. Only, when they caught you alone, you talked them out of it. I’ll never forget that. Well, I want a lawyer in my company, someone who can talk the bad guys out of it.’
Twenty-five years ago; still Max remembered that first time. Perhaps Feldman remembered it too, looking around Max’s office, then telling him, ‘Send Shelly home.’
‘Why? It’s only four-thirty.’
‘You don’t need her anymore today. I don’t want anyone outside who might overhear us. Let her cut the telephone and go home.’
Max stared at Feldman for a long moment. Then he went to the door and told Shelly Greene to call the studio switchboard and tell them no more calls and then go home.
‘I’m not taking any chances,’ Feldman said. ‘I don’t want to be overheard. Not that this won’t come out, but I want it to come out straight and properly, not as gossip.’
‘If you don’t think having Greenberg and his partner all over the place, demanding every record and checkbook we own and pulling out the ledgers from ten years back – Well, if you don’t think that has everyone gossiping and speculating, and three days ago they bring in five young snotnoses who act like they own the lot –’
‘I told them to, Max. I told them time was running out and they should bring me whatever they had.’
‘From all this hush-hush crap, they brought you something.’
‘Yes.’
‘All right. Don’t sit there like some half-assed judge. What have you got?’
‘We’ll start with Jake Stein. They’ve only gone back seven years. In that time, it appears – mind you, appears, because this still is not a regular no-holds-barred audit – that he stole close to five million dollars. Now understand me, this is Jake Stein as captain of the swindle. From what Greenberg and his men can come up with, two other men are directly involved and a number of others are indirectly involved.’
‘Who are they? Ruby and Benny.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I suspected those two bastards were skimming the theatres for years, but how can you get that out of an audit of the studio books?’
‘That’s what frightens me, Max. We can’t. What we get is another side of it, cardboard companies that don’t exist, acting as suppliers. For example, an outfit called Creative Market Research, market analysis and consulting. We’ve paid them three thousand dollars a month for seven years. Ruby has the authority to sign checks regarding distribution. It’s a laundry outfit, pure and simple. Take another type of thing. A film is budgeted. The director is in there for fifty thousand. He kicks back ten thousand to Ruby.’
‘You got proof of that?’
‘Ralph Leone – five pictures, five kickbacks, fifty thousand to Ruby. Ruby has been billing Jake Stein for years – consultant, unit manager, production manager.’
‘And Benny?’ Max asked icily.
‘Benny. Why in hell must I give this to you?’
‘Because I’m telling you to.’
‘All right. You know with every picture we make on location, there’s a cash slush fund, three to five hundred dollars a day. It bribes the cops, pays for background homes, and pays the releases from background people we want to use –’
‘You telling me something I don’t know?’ Max demanded angrily.
‘OK. The unit manager dispenses it. Sam Snyder’s been talking to a couple of unit managers. They both pay off Benny, which probably means that every unit manager working outside the lot is paying Benny fifty dollars a day. Nice money – and, goddamn it, Max, they all think you’re in on it, that you’re skimming the company.’
‘That little bastard. What else?’
‘You want me to go on? It’s sickening. There are four office workers who don’t exist, two guards, two carpenters – Jake Stein was a genius. And we haven’t even touched distribution, where Ruby is king shit.’
Max’s cheeks were quivering. He closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘My own flesh and blood.’
‘Easy, Max, please,’ Feldman pleaded. ‘We got to handle this.’
‘How? How? Just tell me how in hell we handle this?’
‘All right. The board of directors meets in three days. You have to explain that Stein’s death and Stein’s house instigated our action. Then you make full disclosure of everything we have, everything, and then I’ll make a motion that we postpone any decisive action on the board’s part until a complete audit is made, and I’ll suggest that we bring in a firm of prestigious San Francisco accountants to do the audit. It will probably take them a couple of weeks, and that will give us some breathing space.’
‘For what?’
‘At this moment, I just don’t know. I want to read some law and consult some colleagues.’
‘And what happens to those two shithead brothers of mine?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do they go to jail?’
‘Max, I just don’t know. Give me a chance to think and inquire.’
Ruby was three inches taller than Max, and with his even, sunburned features, his dark, curly hair, and his tight body, he appeared a good deal less than his forty-four years, and one and another of the many girls that slid in and out of his life had remarked that he really couldn’t be Max’s brother, they looked so different. Ruby was a valid Hollywood product. There were only two topics of conversation in his life, sex and movies. His areas of interest were somewhat broader. He played golf and tennis, and he enjoyed being in the company of the stars. His name had been linked to half a dozen lady stars, and in this linkage there was some truth and some puffery.
Max found him on the tennis court behind their Beverly Hills house, meticulously clad in white flannels and white short-sleeved shirt and in the company of three giggling blondes. Ruby, who had one divorced wife in New York and another in Los Angeles, contented himself with a suite of rooms in the Beverly Hills Hotel as his own residence, at the same time he felt free to use the huge house that Max had built for Sarah and Freida, the forlorn unmarried sister. Nominally, it was Max’s residence, but he almost never slept there. Benny, who headed up the New York office, still in the old Hobart Building on Fourteenth Street, preferred a hotel to Sarah’s Beverly Hills house, since a hotel gave him full opportunity to use the female facilities his brother Ruby so generously supplied. Ruby had built the tennis court himself. ‘Didn’t cost you a nickel,’ he explained to Max, and Sarah found that the sight of her two younger sons playing this strange game behind her house was curiously satisfying. Even in the most bitter days of poverty on Henry Street, Sarah had never been given to self-denial, and it was absolutely astonishing how easily she fell into the life of Beverly Hills. At age seventy-one, she was still healthy and vigorous and determined to take full political advantage of her role as Max Britsky’s mother. And as ever, Ruby was her staff and delight.
For a few minutes, Max watched her staff and delight returning a tennis ball to his blond opponent, and then he walked onto the court and said to Ruby, ‘Tell the girls to go home. I want to talk to you.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘For Christ�
��s sake, Max, you could at least ask me decently.’
‘Why? You’re so fucken decent, I got to ask you decently?’
Ruby faced Max for a moment; then he sighed and called out, ‘OK, girls. Pack it up and go home. I got business to talk with my brother.’
‘Well, who drives us? You want us to walk home?’
Ruby handed one of them a twenty-dollar bill. ‘Call a cab. Use the phone inside. Now, blow.’
Each of them made certain to pass Max slowly, and each of them said, ‘Good-bye, Mr Britsky’ to Max, not to Ruby.
‘Tootsies, sweet little tootsies,’ Ruby said, looking after them.
Max’s response to this was to deliver a stinging slap across Ruby’s face.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you!’ Ruby cried. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Don’t raise a hand to me, you shithead!’ Max yelled as Ruby’s hand came up. ‘Just try it, and I’ll beat the shit out of you!’
Ruby’s arms dropped to his sides. ‘Max,’ he whispered, ‘what in hell is going on?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on. Jake Stein died and we ran an audit.’
Ruby’s jaw dropped. Speechless now, he stared at Max.
‘Tell me what we found, little brother.’
‘All right! All right!’ bravado beginning to return after the initial shock. ‘So we skimmed a little here and there. Everyone does it. It’s in the nature of the industry.’
‘You lousy little creep. I pay you eight hundred a week and expenses, and I pay that for a schmuck who couldn’t pull down fifty a week on the open market, and you tell me you skim a little here and there. A little? How many millions add up to a little? I took care of you from the time you were pissing in your diapers. I fed you. I put clothes on your back, and this is the way you pay me back? What did you do, work it out with Benny, the two of you making a fancy little syndicate of crime?’
‘Come on, Max. We didn’t wreck the company. So we took a little cream off the milk. There’s plenty left.’
‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right.’
‘So why all the –’ Max had turned on his heel to walk away, and Ruby said, ‘Wait a minute.’
‘For what?’
‘A minute ago, you were ready to take my head off.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So?’
‘Well, it’s done. No use of my getting so excited about it. The way I figure, maybe you and Benny, you’ll be lucky and you’ll pull down the same cell. Then you’ll have all those years to think about it and decide whether or not it’s a crime to take a little cream from the milk.’
‘Jesus, what are you talking about?’
‘Jail, brother – j-a-i-l. That’s what happens when you become a crook and you get caught, and sure as hell, that’s going to happen to you.’
‘Max, you’re kidding!’ ‘Oh? We’ll see.’
‘Max, you’re crazy. You can’t put Benny and me in jail. We’re your brothers.’
‘That’s right. You’re both my brothers.’
Max’s board of directors, like many other boards, reflected not only his company but a number of other institutions closely allied with it. Max was chairman of the board and also president of Britsky Productions. Sam Snyder was vice president of Britsky and also a member of the board. Fred Feldman, the third member of the board, was secretary of Britsky Productions, and Bert Bellamy and Clifford Abel were both members. Abel was the art director at the lot and Bellamy was vice president in charge of distribution. Sally, chiefly as a part of her settlement with Max and her very substantial stock holdings, was also a member of the board, but since her divorce from Max, she had not attended any of the meetings. Outside the company, there were three more members of the board, to add up to a total of nine: Kurt Avanti, a vice president of the Bank of America, Julius Holms, a vice president of the Chase Bank, and Royce Byron, one of the many vice presidents of the telephone company.
The years had brought an air and appearance of distinguished prosperity to Bert Bellamy. He had thickened without becoming fat; his abundant hair had gone from corn silk to white, and he wore a pince-nez with quiet authority. Clifford Abel had changed least of all; he had retained his youthful delight and excitement in every new aspect of Britsky Productions. Avanti, half Italian, half German, was properly aloof and suspicious, as befitting a banker who represented one of the largest banks in the world, and while Julius Holms had known Max since the old New York days, he too was highly conscious of the forces he represented. Tall, skinny, dour, Royce Byron always gave the impression of the Greek in the camp of the barbarians. In the old days, the telephone company had backed the trust and had been soundly drubbed by Britsky, but time had brought both new patents and new cooperation.
Max had suggested to Feldman that as secretary of the corporation, he was best suited to present the facts, aware at the same time that Feldman was more charming and amiable than he could pretend to be. No one in his right mind could think of Freddy Feldman in terms of malfeasance, and Feldman’s rather transparent treatment of everything in legal terms even helped a bit. When he had finished, Avanti stated, ‘For the moment, I am simply expressing normal shock and surprise. I would like to address a few questions to our president and chairman.’
The others nodded their agreement. Each of them had something to say, but each deferred to Avanti. The people working in the company had some indication of what Feldman would say. To the three outsiders it was a total and shocking surprise.
Max rose and nodded. ‘I’ll answer any questions. Our decision is complete disclosure.’
‘Whose decision would that be?’
‘Mr Feldman and myself. We discussed the first findings.’
‘When did you or Mr Feldman discover these shortages?’
‘It was not a matter of discovering shortages,’ Max said. ‘After Jacob Stein’s death, Mr Snyder and I paid a condolence call on his family at Mr Stein’s home, which is located in a very fine section of Los Angeles called Bel Air. As a matter of fact, neither I nor any other officers of the company had social relations with Mr Stein, so it was our first visit to his home. Prior to that, I had been informed that Mr Stein had not asked for a raise in wages for the past twelve years. He was being paid three hundred dollars a week, a very low wage for a man of his caliber and intelligence.’
This drew bitter laughs from around the table where the board members sat.
‘A crook, but a smart one,’ Max went on. ‘He was not liked in the firm, and we feel that he must have felt that if he asked for more money, it would give us an excuse to let him go. He did not want that, and since he supervised the payroll, no one commented.’
‘Still, you must have known. How could it escape you?’
‘We’re a very large organisation, Mr Avanti. A lot escapes me. But when we saw the Stein home, we realised there had to be a discrepancy between what he was paid and what he spent.’
‘You and Mr Snyder?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your next step was to take it up with Mr Feldman?’
‘He’s our attorney.’
‘Of course.’
Then Holms, of the Chase Bank, asked, ‘Can you make any estimate of what the final figure will be?’
‘At this point, no. I wouldn’t dare to.’
Royce Byron asked Bert, ‘Mr Bellamy, how would you assess the financial condition of Britsky Productions?’
‘We’re in no danger, absolutely not. In a rough way, I can assure you that our cash flow is sufficient to service our credit line, pay our current expenses, and provide for continuing operations. Our profit for the year nineteen twenty-seven will probably be the largest in our history.’
‘I’m relieved to hear that, quite relieved. I think I speak for most of us when I say that these revelations have been shocking almost beyond belief. The magnitude of the sums embezzled is almost without equal in the annals of modern business –’
Max leaped to his feet and said, ‘Now hold on,
Mr Byron. I don’t want to make little of this; it’s just too damn big. But I lived through the days of Gould and Vanderbilt. At least here the stockholders were robbed, not the public, and since I’m the largest stockholder, I took most of that beating.’
‘You can’t complain. You took it from your family.’
‘That’s below the belt!’ Sam Snyder roared.
‘This gets us nowhere,’ Avanti said, ‘nowhere at all. And until we know the facts, we have no course of action. If the board so wishes, I will be responsible for bringing in our own accountants. I think we should give them at least a full month to do the audit. Can I make this as a motion?’
‘So move,’ Feldman said. ‘Are there any demurs?’
There was none, and the motion was carried. They agreed to meet again in thirty days. ‘And I think,’ Holms said, ‘that we should make every effort to have Mrs Upper-man present. I think that for the record we should have a meeting of the entire board.’
‘I will try,’ Feldman agreed.
‘You understand, Max,’ Avanti said to him before he left, ‘that none of this is directed against you personally. Some of the finest people I know have some colorful families, perhaps myself included. It takes a few generations to sort ourselves out, and there the Yankees have the jump on us. For myself, I feel that your management of this company has been nothing short of brilliant.’
‘It’s a nothing fuss in a teapot,’ Clifford Abel said. ‘I’d let them steal the whole bloody lot if we could come out of it with one great film. Who gives a damn?’
Julius Holms shook hands warmly with Max before he and Avanti left. Clifford Abel followed them. Bert Bellamy mumbled a few words and walked out with Royce Byron.
‘He didn’t have to leave with Byron,’ Max said to Snyder and Feldman. ‘That was deliberate as hell.’
‘Sure it was deliberate,’ Feldman agreed. ‘Don’t be a muttonhead, Max. Bellamy and Byron had been waiting for an opening for years, and I’m not a damn bit sure that our two banking boys are going to be either with us or neutral.’
‘Bert Bellamy – My God, Bert Bellamy, he was like a brother to me.’
‘So was Ruby.’