by Stuart Woods
“I think she’s awake,” Stone said.
Vance knocked, then he went into the bedroom, carrying suitcases, and closed the door behind him.
Stone took the coffee pot out onto the terrace and sipped it until it was cold. Vance was in the bedroom with Arrington for more than an hour, and he could hear nothing.
Finally Vance emerged from the bedroom, looking tired and drawn. “Arrington wants to talk to you,” he said.
Stone went into the bedroom and closed the door. Arrington was taking things out of suitcases and putting them into another.
“Please sit down,” she said.
Stone sat on a sofa and waited for her to begin.
She came and sat next to him. “First, you need to ask me some questions about the last couple of weeks; let’s get that out of the way, then I have some things to say to you.”
Stone nodded. “All right.” Then he began to ask the questions.
54
She was terribly calm, he thought, considering what she had been through. She sat looking at him, waiting for his questions. “How were you taken?” he asked, finally.
“I was shopping on Rodeo Drive; I went back to the parking lot to get my car, and two men pushed me into a van. They taped my eyes and mouth and hands, and I heard them going through my handbag, talking about my car keys. I think one of them drove my car.”
“Where did they take you?”
“I don’t know. They moved me every day; sometimes they took off the blindfold when I got there; sometimes they untaped my hands. I got to a phone in some back room somewhere and tried to call you. Twice.”
“I figured that out,” Stone said. “You were in the storeroom of a restaurant. I found the matchbook.”
She smiled. “Good detective.”
“Did anyone ever tell you why you were taken?”
“A couple of times, one of them said, ‘Don’t worry; we’re not going to hurt you. When your husband comes through, we’ll take you home.’I asked what they meant by ‘comes through,’ but they wouldn’t say. I assumed they meant ransom.”
“But you talked to Vance every day.”
“Yes, but they would only allow me to say that I was all right. They wanted me to beg him to get me back, too. I tried not to do that.”
“Did anyone ever tell you who had ordered your kidnapping?”
“No. I asked, but they wouldn’t tell me. I heard an occasional reference to ‘the boss.’”
“When did they take you to the yacht?”
“I was on two boats, at different times; I was on the big yacht twice.”
“Did they take you there by boat?”
“The first time they did; the second time the boat was at a dock. That was yesterday.”
“Did they ever hurt you? Rough you up?”
“Once one of them slapped me, after I used the phone. His name was Vinnie, I remember that. I’d like to kick him in the balls, if I ever have the chance.”
“You won’t; he’s dead. Was there another one named Manny?”
“Yes, but they kept changing. There was a Tommy and one they called Zip, too.”
“Any other names?”
“No, just the four of them.”
“Did you ever hear the names of Sturmack or Ippolito mentioned?”
“No; I know them both, so I would have remembered.”
“It was Ippolito’s yacht.”
“I got that impression from your conversation with Dino last night.”
“Did you ever hear the name of Martin Barone?”
There was a flash of recognition. “I heard one of them mention ‘Marty’ once.”
“In what connection?”
“It was something like, ‘Better check with Marty.’”
“About what?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you have any idea at all what they wanted from Vance? He’s been very close-mouthed.”
“No, I don’t. As I said, I thought they wanted ransom, and you can’t blame Vance for not talking about it; I heard them say over and over to him on the phone that if he said anything to anyone, I wouldn’t be coming back.”
“How did you know that I was in L.A., at the Bel-Air?”
“The trade paper. It said you were at a party at Vance’s house, so I figured he had turned to you for help.” She put her hand on his. “I’m glad he did.”
“Would you recognize the other two men—Tommy and Zip—if you saw them again?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Do you know their last names?”
“No.”
“Can you describe them?”
“Tommy was about six-four, well over two hundred pounds, a weightlifter, I’m sure; coal-black hair, about thirty. Zip was shorter, a little under six feet, but heavily built; he had black hair going gray, and I guess he was in his early forties.”
“Good. Can you think of anything else about your captivity that might help us find out who was responsible?”
“It must be Ippolito, since I was on his yacht. Do you really think David Sturmack is involved? He was always very kind to me; I liked him.”
“I think the two of them are in it together. What was your relationship to Ippolito like?”
“There was none. I only met him twice, once at a dinner party at David Sturmack’s house, and once at a cocktail party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a charity thing.”
“I guess that’s all I have to ask.”
“My turn, then.”
“All right.”
“First of all, I want to tell you about the beginning, when I was supposed to come sailing with you. I had begun to believe that you were never going to make any kind of real commitment…”
“I was going to ask you to marry me when you got to St. Marks.”
A tear spilled down her cheek. “Boy, my timing was great, wasn’t it? I guess I was kind of hurting, more fragile than I thought, and Vance made me feel better. The more time we spent together the better it got, and after I came back to L.A. with him, well, I guess I became infatuated. I thought I was in love with him.”
“Aren’t you still?”
“I haven’t entirely figured that out yet, but I intend to. I’m certainly very fond of him, and I have great respect for him as a man.”
“Even after you were kidnapped, and he didn’t get you back right away?”
“I knew he was doing everything he could, and he’s explained his actions to my satisfaction. I don’t hold anything against him for what happened—I believe it was completely beyond his control.”
“He told you he’d be moving here with you while we sort everything out?”
“Yes, but I’m not staying.”
“Arrington, this isn’t over; we have to protect you.”
“I’m going back to Virginia; Betty Southard is arranging a chartered jet right now, and there’ll be some security people to meet me at the other end.”
“Why are you going back?”
“Vance told you I was pregnant, didn’t he? I figure that’s the only way he could have gotten you out here.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Don’t you have any questions about that?” she asked.
“I think I’ll just let you tell me what you want to.”
She smiled. “That’s like you, Stone; you were always a good listener.”
“Thank you.”
“You didn’t give away much, but you did listen.”
Stone said nothing.
“I am pregnant. I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to figure out who the father is, but my periods have been irregular for months, and I honestly don’t know; it could be either of you.”
“I see,” Stone said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“So here’s what I’m going to do about it,” she said. “I’m going back to Virginia to be with my family and to have my baby. Vance has agreed to submit to a blood test, and I want one from you, too.”
“All right,” Stone said. “I want to know
as much as you do.”
“If the baby is Vance’s, I’ll come back to California and be the best wife and mother I can. I know I don’t love Vance as deeply as I’ve loved you, but I think we can still make a good marriage of it, and a home for the child.”
“And if the baby isn’t Vance’s?”
She placed a hand on his cheek and kissed him lightly. “I love you, Stone, I really do. But I don’t know what you’re feeling, and…”
“I’ll tell you…”
“Don’t,” she said. “It wouldn’t do me much good to know right now. If the baby is yours, I’ll tell you, and we’ll talk about it. Certainly, you can be a part of his life. Or hers. But you and I have some things to work out, and we have to face the fact that we may not be able to work them out. I can’t let myself think too much about that until the baby is born; I have to protect myself emotionally. It’s no good for me to make a commitment to you and then find out the baby is Vance’s. Surely you can see how hard that would be for me.”
Stone nodded.
There was a knock on the door.
Arrington kissed him again, and then got up and opened the door. Betty Southard was waiting there.
“Good morning, Arrington,” she said. “I’m glad to see you back. They’re flying the Centurion jet from Van Nuys into Santa Monica; they should already have landed and refueled by the time we get there.”
“I’m ready,” Arrington said. She closed her suitcase and handed it to Betty. “Bye,” she said to Stone. “I’ll call you, but it may not be for a while.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Stone said, past the lump in his throat.
55
Vance came back to the suite after Arrington had gone. He called room service for more coffee, and after it had come, he sat down on the terrace with Stone. “First of all, I’d like you to represent me as my attorney in this matter. Will you do that?”
“I’m not licensed to practice in California,” Stone said, “and if you should somehow become involved in a trial, you’ll have to get a California attorney. But for the moment, at least, I will advise you, and you may consider anything you say to me to be privileged, as communication between a lawyer and his client.”
“All right,” Vance said, “what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Stone said. “And don’t leave anything out.”
“It started with stock,” Vance said. “Centurion stock. The company isn’t publicly owned, it’s very closely held, only a dozen or so shareholders of any size, and a couple of dozen smaller ones, mostly valued studio employees. Somebody began contacting shareholders, offering to buy their stock, obviously trying to find a way to gain control of the company.”
“Who?”
“No one knew at first; it was being done through a third party. Lou Regenstein got wind of it, but it was his strong impression that people were being intimidated into selling or, at least, keeping their mouths shut about having been approached. It was very bizarre, very ominous.”
“When did they approach you?”
“Wait, there are other things I have to tell you that will make this make more sense.”
“All right, go ahead.”
“David Sturmack and I have been good friends for a long time; I guess he and Lou have been my closest friends. It was David who introduced me to Oney Ippolito. I was involved in a real estate development project—a shopping mall—and our financing fell through. I was faced with either coming up with a very large amount of cash—thirty million dollars—or losing the five million I had already invested. I called David for advice, and he arranged a lunch with Ippolito. A week later, we had the financing from Safe Harbor.”
“Was the project a questionable one?”
“I never thought so. The managing partner had had some problems in the past with repaying debt on a project, and that made our lender shy away. The mall is open now, and doing excellent business. It was a good deal for Safe Harbor.”
“What happened next?”
“It was all very gradual. I began shifting my banking business to Safe Harbor, until finally they had everything—checking accounts, CDs, T-bills, and all the trusts I had set up over the years, including one for Arrington. Whenever I had a business investment that required financing, they were always willing and eager. When Oney asked me to join their board, I accepted.”
“How long have you been on the board?”
“Seven or eight months, I guess. I haven’t been happy.”
“Why not?”
“It became apparent to me early on that Oney expected me to rubber-stamp any decision he made, particularly the ones concerned with his personal compensation—stock options, bonuses, et cetera. The other directors, David Sturmack among them, were obviously in his pocket. I’m on three other boards, and I take an active part; I take my responsibilities to the shareholders seriously. I was ready to quit early on, but Oney persuaded me that I owed him something, and that I shouldn’t make him look bad by resigning. I agreed to stay on for a few months more. Then he came to me and said he wanted me to be the television spokesman for the bank. I flatly refused.”
“How did he take that?”
“Not well. I explained that I had never done a television commercial and that I never would. I’ve carefully built a persona as an actor, and I didn’t want to squander that. He said that persona was the very reason he wanted me. After all, I was connected to the bank as a customer, I had done business with it, I was on its board; it made sense for me to be a public spokesman. I refused again, and I told him I was giving him thirty days’ notice, and then I would resign from the board. He had that time to put the best face on it, and I promised him I would not make my reasons public.”
“Did he put further pressure on you?”
“Not immediately. But the following week, David Sturmack came to me and said that someone was willing to pay handsomely for my Centurion stock—double what it’s worth, I reckon. I told David that I couldn’t even consider that until I’d talked to Lou Regenstein about it.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He urged me not to reveal to Lou that I’d been approached, and especially not that he was the one who’d done the approaching. There was something very hard about it, almost threatening.”
“What did you do?”
“As soon as he left my office I called Lou and told him what had transpired. Lou was very angry about it, and I promised him I wouldn’t sell the stock. I had Betty put my shares in a new safe deposit box the same day.”
“You felt that threatened?”
“It’s hard to explain, but yes.”
“Is Centurion a very profitable studio?”
“Not wildly so, but year in and year out, it does well. The studio has always operated without much debt, but the last year or two there had been a couple of expensive failures, and Lou started to borrow from Safe Harbor, with the board’s approval. I’m on the board.”
“Why were they so anxious to get the studio, if it’s not all that profitable?”
“The real estate.”
“What real estate?”
“The land the studio sits on. That was Lou’s theory, anyway. All the stockholders and everyone on the board knew that the land was as valuable as the business itself The back lot had been sold off years ago, for a few million dollars, which was stupid. It would be worth twenty times as much now. The studio sits on the biggest piece of land remaining in Los Angeles that is still held by a single owner—more than four hundred acres. If you tried to put together that much well-located, contiguous land in L.A. by assembling it from different owners, it could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe as much as a billion.”
“Why doesn’t the studio sell it, move to the sticks, and build a new studio?”
“The costs of doing that, of building from scratch, would be nearly as much as would be gained by selling the land. Anyway, all the stockholders are deeply involved in the movie business; all of them—producers, dire
ctors, studio executives—know that what we have is unique and can never be re-created. They’re all wealthy people, so they don’t need a lot of money from the sale. There’s a traditional practice, but not a hard rule, that if someone wants to sell his stock, the studio will buy it back, with the price determined by a previously agreed formula. The same if someone dies—the studio will buy back the stock from the heirs. There’s no real market for small parcels of stock outside the studio family, so it worked for everyone. Whoever was behind this wanted to gain control by assembling a block of shareholders, ignoring the buy-back tradition, then buying out everyone else.”
“I see. But then the new owners would be in the same position as the old owners, wouldn’t they? They’d have a big asset that makes money and that would cost as much to move as to stay. They wouldn’t just close down the studio, raze it, and sell the land, would they?”
“Lou thinks there’s more to it. He thinks they’re using Century City as their example.”
“The big group of office buildings?”
“Yes. Century City was built on what used to be the back lot of Twentieth Century—Fox; they sold out to developers. Lou thinks the prospective owners—let’s call them Sturmack and Ippolito, since they already own a substantial minority of the shares—don’t want to sell the land; he thinks they want to do the development themselves, and with Safe Harbor and other money behind them they could do it. It would be worth billions in the end.”
“One bank could finance all that?”
“No. But there’s something else I haven’t told you.”
“Go ahead.”
“A couple of years ago, Oney sent me to a man named Barone, who runs some sort of financial services company. Barone asked me if I’d like to make a substantial investment for an absolutely amazing return, tax-free.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes, but I didn’t see it at the time. I gave him half a million dollars, and every month a man delivered cash payment to me. I’d give the money to Barone and he would send it abroad, for a fee, where it would be invested in a company name.”
“He’d launder the money?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s what you’d call it.”