by Stuart Woods
“I’ll be down in fifteen,” Peter said, unsnapping a suitcase and starting to hang up jackets and suits.
Stone went back to his office, shaking his head. What a shock! The kid was nearly a man in both appearance and manner!
4
Stone and Peter arrived at Centurion’s Fifth Avenue offices on time. Peter was carrying a slim leather envelope-style briefcase, and Stone wondered what was in it. They were asked to wait for a moment while Leo Goldman finished a conference call to the coast.
“You’re a film student?” Stone asked Peter. “In high school?”
“We have only one film class at school, so perhaps I should have said, ‘student of film.’ ”
“I see. What part of film most interests you?”
“I want to direct,” Peter replied.
Of course, Stone thought. Everybody wants to direct. “Good,” he said.
“Mr. Goldman will see you now,” the secretary said, just as Mike Freeman walked in.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, shaking hands with Stone.
“We had a short wait anyway,” Stone replied. “Mike, this is Peter, Arrington’s son.”
“Of course,” Mike said, shaking the boy’s hand. “I heard a lot about you from your mother on a flight across the country in her new airplane.”
“Yes, she told me you helped her find and buy it,” Peter said.
They walked into a large square room, which was decorated with abstract paintings. Leo Goldman, Jr., rose from his chair and pumped everybody’s hand. He was short, stocky, and balding, and he waved an unlit cigar when he talked.
“And this is my friend Peter,” Stone said. For some reason, he didn’t mention Peter’s last name. He wasn’t sure why.
“Good to see you, Stone, Mike. And Peter, I’m very glad to know you.”
Peter nodded and managed a shy smile.
“Peter is a student of film,” Stone said, “and he wanted to meet you.”
“Yes, Mr. Goldman,” Peter said, “I’m an admirer of your work as a producer, particularly Chain Letter.”
Goldman looked surprised. “Well, Peter, you have an eye for quality, but perhaps not for commercial success. That one was my worst turkey.”
“Oh, I liked Blast, too,” Peter said. “And I liked your father’s work when he was running Centurion.”
Goldman roared. “That’s more like it. Let’s sit.” He waved them to a round conference table in a corner, and after a few pleasantries, Goldman launched into a description of his first year at the helm, covering grosses and expenses along the way. He talked nonstop for forty minutes, also covering his production plans for the coming year and a number of TV pilots that were currently in production. “Any questions?” he asked when he was done.
“Not from me,” Stone said. “I think you’ve covered everything I could have asked.”
“That goes for me, too,” Mike Freeman replied.
“May I ask a question?” Peter said, half raising his hand.
The three men stared at him.
“Of course, Peter,” Goldman said.
“I noticed that three of the new productions that you’ve mentioned are budgeted at between seventy and eighty million dollars, whereas in the past Centurion has always kept its budgets in the fifty-million-dollar range. Why the increase?”
Goldman blinked. “You’ve been reading the annual reports, haven’t you?”
“I read everything about Centurion,” Peter said. “It interests me.”
“Well, there are three things that have increased these budgets: creeping rises in general costs, which are inevitable; increased salaries for the stars of those films, who are all hot young actors; and the fact that all three of those pictures are action-based and shot on location, instead of just ordinary in-studio productions.”
“Do you think the grosses will justify the increases in budgets?” Peter asked.
“I think the grosses will more than justify the increases,” Goldman said, “and if I’m wrong, I’ll be answering to Stone, Mike, and the other directors this time next year.”
“Thank you,” Peter said.
“Anything else, gentlemen? Peter?”
All three shook their heads. “We’ll let you get back to work, Leo,” Stone said, rising.
As they took their leave, pausing at the office door to shake hands, Peter spoke up again. “Mr. Goldman, I hope this isn’t an imposition, but I wonder if I could ask your opinion about something I’m working on.”
“Sure, Peter. What are you working on?”
Peter opened his leather envelope and handed Goldman a bound sheaf of papers and a DVD. “I’m making a film at school, and this is the script and a recording of the seventy minutes I’ve already shot. I’d appreciate it very much if you could find time to take a look at it and let me know what you think. I could use some expert advice.”
Goldman received the script and the disc. “Where can I get in touch with you?”
“At Stone’s, for the next two weeks,” Peter replied.
“I’ll be in touch,” Goldman said.
The three left the building, and Peter did some window-shopping while Stone and Mike talked.
“How old is that kid?” Mike asked.
“Fifteen, going on sixteen.”
“Going on forty,” Mike said. “He certainly knows how to take advantage of an opportunity, and he has charm, too. Have you looked at his script or the recording?”
Stone shook his head. “I knew nothing about it. He asked if he could come to our meeting, said he was a student of film, but no more than that.”
Mike shook his head and laughed. “He’s got enough chutzpah for the film business.”
“He certainly does,” Stone said. “And I’m still getting over the fact that he’s not the twelve-year-old I was expecting.”
“He took in every word of Leo’s briefing, too, and asked good questions that neither you nor I thought of.”
“Embarrassing, wasn’t it?” They both laughed, then said good-bye and departed in opposite directions.
Stone and Peter strolled down Fifth Avenue together through the throngs of shoppers. They passed the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza.
“That’s nice,” Peter said. “I’ve seen it on TV.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I hope I didn’t speak out of turn at the meeting,” Peter said.
“Not at all, Peter. Mike and I were impressed with your understanding of what Leo was saying. We both completely missed the budget increases, which I’m sure is what Leo intended.”
Peter laughed aloud. “I’ll bet he did, too.”
“What grade are you in now?”
“Well,” Peter said, “that’s kind of problematical.”
“Oh? You aren’t about to get booted out, are you?”
“Oh, no!” Peter said, looking shocked.
“Only joking,” Stone said.
Peter looked relieved. “It’s just that I’ve been on sort of a special program of courses,” he said. “And it looks like I’ll be graduating in June.”
Stone blinked. “At fifteen?”
“I’ll be sixteen. I know it’s unusual, but the school said they thought the accelerated program was the best way to keep me interested.”
“Were they right?”
“Oh, yes; it’s been great!”
Stone wondered how he was going to keep this kid interested for two weeks.
When they arrived back at the house Stone took Peter in through the office entrance and introduced him to Joan.
“I’m very glad to meet you, Peter,” she said. “Funny, I was expecting someone younger.” She shot a glance at Stone, who rolled his eyes.
“Stone, your client Herbert Fisher is waiting to see you,” she said.
Stone sighed. “Come on, Peter,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to a New York character.” He led the way to his office.
5
S tone introduced Peter to Herbie Fisher. “Peter, I have s
ome business to discuss with Herbie. Why don’t you go upstairs and get unpacked? We’ll leave for dinner at eight-fifteen.”
“All right,” Peter said, and ran up the stairs.
Stone turned and looked at Herbie. “What’s going on, Herbie?” he asked. “You look kind of soggy.”
“That’s because I went for a swim in New York Harbor.”
“In December?”
“It wasn’t exactly my choice.”
Stone went into the little bathroom off his office, got a towel, returned and handed it to Herbie. “Have a seat and tell me about it.”
Herbie took off his sodden overcoat, draped it over a chair, and sat down, running the towel over his hair. “Well, I went on a singles lunchtime cruise,” he said.
“They do cruises in December?”
“Singles don’t care if it’s cold; it’s warm inside the yacht.”
“Yacht?”
“These are expensive cruises. They use a seventy-foot yacht, and they serve a good lunch and wine. It’s two hundred fifty a head.”
“Sounds profitable. Any likely women?”
“Yes, a number.”
“So why did you decide to get off before the yacht reached the dock?”
“There was an altercation,” Herbie said.
“What started it?”
“There were these two guys, dressed well, but kind of beefy. They had knives.”
“For this they charge two-fifty a head?” Stone asked.
“I don’t know what they were doing there. Well, no, that’s wrong; I have a very good idea what they were doing there.”
“Which was?”
“Stephanie.”
Stephanie was Herbie’s sort of ex-wife. She and her brother had, according to news reports, stolen nearly a billion dollars from their father’s asset management firm and skipped to a Pacific island nation with no extradition treaty.
“She sent me some divorce papers a couple of times, but I just threw them away,” Herbie said.
“Never a good idea to throw away legal documents,” Stone pointed out. “Then what?”
“I was standing near the rear of the yacht’s saloon, talking to a girl, and these two guys appeared and said they needed to talk to me. They shoved me out on the afterdeck, and one of them said, ‘You should have signed the papers.’ Then both of them produced switchblades.”
“And how did you handle that?” Stone asked, fascinated now.
“I thought about it for about a nanosecond,” Herbie said, “and then I decided that there was no way to handle it that didn’t involve a lot of spilled blood, and it was my blood in question, so I ran for the rail. I jumped on a rear cockpit seat running, then just took a long leap.”
“And where was the yacht at this time?”
“Out near the Statue of Liberty,” Herbie replied.
“I suppose the two guys didn’t follow you into the water?”
“No, it was really, really cold. I made for Lady Liberty.”
“Wearing an overcoat?”
“I thought it would get even colder if I took it off. I swam like hell, and I was beginning to get pretty tired when my feet touched bottom. I waded the rest of the way. There was a dock with a ladder, so I climbed up that. I found a men’s room and turned on the heated hand-dryer thing, you know?”
“Yes, I’ve met many of them.”
“I dried my clothes a little and got warm, then I went back outside and mingled with the tourists, who were boarding the ferry for the return trip. Nobody asked me for a ticket.”
“I guess they’re unaccustomed to selling tickets to patrons who arrived at the statue under their own steam.”
“Yeah. When I got ashore I took a cab here.”
“Why, Herbie? What would you like me to do?”
“I would like to be divorced,” Herbie replied. “Will you handle that for me?”
Herbie had won the lottery a couple of years before, and he had paid Stone a million-dollar retainer to handle all his legal affairs, and not a few of his personal problems.
“Of course,” Stone said. “Maybe the best way to start would be to send me the papers Stephanie asked you to sign. Do you still have them?”
“Yeah, they’re somewhere in my apartment.”
“Well, grab a cab, go home, get out of those clothes, take a nice hot bath with a glass of brandy floating in it, and when the brandy is all gone, get out of the tub and fax me the papers.”
“That’s the best advice I’ve had all day,” Herbie said. With some difficulty he got into the sodden overcoat, and Stone walked him to the door.
“And, Herbie,” Stone said, “don’t let anybody you don’t know into your apartment. Tell the doorman to be on the lookout for strangers who want to see you, and don’t hesitate to call the police if the two guys show up.”
Herbie nodded and ran for a cab.
Stone stepped into Joan’s office. “Herbie just took a dip in New York Harbor,” he said.
“He told me.”
“How much of Herbie’s retainer is left?”
“About half a million dollars,” she said.
“I don’t suppose we can just write him a check.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“He’s faxing over some divorce papers from Stephanie.”
“I’ll bring them to you when they come.”
Stone nodded and went to his desk. He returned some phone calls, and then Joan buzzed him.
“Herbie’s on the phone,” she said. “I’ll bring in the papers.”
Stone picked up the phone. “The fax just arrived, Herbie.”
“I know, I just sent it.”
Stone took the papers from Joan. “Hang on while I take a quick look through them.” He did so. “Okay, they’re pretty standard. She wants you to admit to adultery and agree to a divorce.”
“Adultery? I didn’t do any adultery.”
“It doesn’t matter. New York is the last state with no-fault divorce; it has to be for cause, the usual choices being adultery, cruelty, or mental cruelty. There’s a move afoot in the state legislature to change that, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
“How about stealing a billion dollars and running?” Herbie asked. “Is that a good enough cause?”
Stone thought about it. “Well, it wasn’t your billion dollars, was it? I’m not sure if stealing somebody else’s billion dollars is grounds for divorce.”
“It’s gotta be,” Herbie said. “I mean, if she had stuck up a liquor store and had gone to prison for it, wouldn’t that be grounds?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but, Herbie, if you want the quick way out of this, it’s to just sign the papers, and it will soon be over.”
“I’m not having it said in the papers that I committed adultery.”
“All right, how about this? I’ll draw up a petition for divorce claiming that she’s the adulterer. You can sue her, instead of the other way around.”
“I like that better,” Herbie said.
“Wait a minute, she’s still on the Pacific island, isn’t she?”
“As far as I know.”
“Then it would be very difficult to serve her with the papers. Let me call her lawyer and see if we can work out something.”
“Stone, what about the division of property?”
“Well, you’re both entitled to equitable division of your assets, but you were only married for a couple of months before she left, the property you each owned before the marriage is exempt, and neither of you would have had time to accumulate much in the way of assets during the marriage.”
“How about the billion dollars she stole? That was accumulated during the marriage, so isn’t it a marital asset?”
“Well, now I’m stumped, Herbie. I think there would be a lot of problems with that. First of all, she’s obviously put the money out of reach of the government or anybody else, so even if we won the case, you’d never be able to seize the assets.”
“Maybe not, but it would be fun to win it.�
�
“It would be an expensive process, Herbie.”
“I still have a big credit with you, don’t I?”
“It would be throwing good money after bad.”
“But satisfying.”
“Herbie, let me talk to her attorney and see what we can work out. I’ll get back to you after Christmas.”
“Why after Christmas? How long could it take?”
“People have a way of disappearing from their offices around the holidays, and I’ve got houseguests on my hands. You met one of them this morning.”
“Well, okay.”
“I’ll speak to you after New Year’s.”
“Wait a minute, you said after Christmas.”
“Nobody’s back in the office until after New Year’s. It’s just a fact of life, Herbie. Bye-bye and Merry Christmas,” Stone said cheerfully, then hung up before he got a response.
Joan was leaning against the doorjamb, laughing.
“Oh, shut up,” Stone said.
“And Merry Christmas to you, too!” she said, and went back to her office.
6
S tone and Peter arrived at Elaine’s slightly before Dino and Ben, so they had a good view of the boys as they entered.
Ben was dressed in black leather jeans and a jacket and a black T-shirt. What appeared to Stone to be some sort of satanic symbol hung from a chain around the boy’s neck. Like his father, Ben was of slight stature, but wiry. Introductions were made, and the boys shook hands solemnly, if not warily. They all sat down.
Ben gazed across the table at Peter’s tweed jacket and necktie. “You always dress like that?” he asked. “Or just when trying to impress adults?”
“Most of the time,” Peter replied, glancing at a menu. “The girls seem to like it.”
Stone and Dino exchanged a glance and rolled their eyes.
“I’m staying out of this,” Dino said.
“As am I,” Stone replied.