But Tompkins’s lawyer, a certain Bob Block of the Hollywood law firm of Block, Bascombe and Abeloff, begged to differ.
A Letter of Agreement is not a binding contract and an allegedly experienced film-sales agent like Adrienne Clegg should know this. But she evidently does not—which is not at all surprising, considering how she has treated the film sales of Delta Kappa Gangster as her own personal expense account, allowing her to live the high life and indulge in overpriced whims.
There were several more paragraphs about how Continental Divide was one of France’s best-known international film-production houses—and how the $750,000 advance to Stuart Tompkins was also being matched by an additional $150,000 for first option on his soon-to-be-completed new screenplay—which, though initially contracted by Fantastic Filmworks, had now been taken over by the French. There was another angry quote from Adrienne saying how her company had a signed agreement with Stuart for first refusal on the screenplay—and that she was planning to tie the entire film up in “the biggest damn lawsuit Stuart Tompkins has ever seen.” The Daily Variety reporter seemed to see right through such bluff, stating that he couldn’t imagine a small-beer operation like Fantastic Filmworks taking on “a major European player” like Continental Divide, “because their pockets simply aren’t deep enough . . . and they are now very empty after having their one and only ‘banker’ taken away from them.”
“Good God,” I said after quickly scanning the piece. Alkan was still on the other end of the phone.
“It is something of a mess,” he said. “And I took the liberty of calling Bob Block and explaining that I was representing you as a duped investor in Fantastic Filmworks. He told me that Fantastic Filmworks were under siege on all fronts, as all that profligacy has resulted in such substantial debts. That’s what’s worrying me here, vis-à-vis you. The company was never incorporated or made limited liability. You are an officer of a partnership. From what I can gather, you are also the only member of said partnership who has anything in the way of assets or equity . . . unless I’m mistaken . . .”
“Theo’s only asset is a vast collection of DVDs.”
“Are there any valuable collectors’ items among them?”
“I doubt they’re worth half a million.”
“And Ms. Clegg . . . ?”
“Maybe she has Cayman Islands accounts . . . but I tend to doubt it.” I could have added that the woman always struck me as something of a vagabond, always fleeing the last place in which she screwed up and setting up shop in the next city that would be taken in by her lies . . . for a while.
“I did check into Ms. Clegg’s background . . . and the reason why, perhaps, she was so reluctant to incorporate the company was because she already has three previous bankruptcies behind her. Had she asked for incorporation, checks would have been made—”
“And I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in right now.”
“It’s sometimes very difficult,” he said quietly, “to think in a cold, pragmatic way about an investment when you are also investing in the person with whom you are sharing your life.”
“You don’t need to make excuses for me. I knew what I was doing and I let neediness get in the way of clear thinking. The thing now, Mr. Alkan, is to limit my liability as much as possible. So tell me this—what’s the worst-case scenario?”
“The absolutely worst case?”
“That’s what I said.”
“The creditors of Fantastic Filmworks commence legal proceedings to seize all your assets up to the amount of debt owing.”
“Jesus,” I said—even though I’d known this was coming.
“Now let me reassure you—that is absolutely the worst-case scenario and one that I will fight like hell to avoid . . . if, that is, you want to engage me to fight this.”
“Oh, you’ve got the job, Mr. Alkan.”
“You don’t have to decide this today, Ms. Howard.”
“Yes, I do. We need to fight this immediately.”
“That’s fine by me. And I do understand you are a college professor without bottomless pockets . . .”
“How much do you think this could cost?”
“At this point, without really knowing the extent to which the creditors might be pursuing you, that’s difficult to say. I would probably need a retainer of, say, five thousand dollars.”
“Jesus,” I heard myself say again.
“Might that prove difficult for you to raise?” he asked.
“No, I have it,” I said. That was a half truth. I had $9,352 (I dug the statement out of my desk as I was talking to Alkan) in a money market account at Fleet Bank, the result of saving a steady $300 a month for the past . . . well, I wasn’t going to do the math right now, though I did know that this account was the start of a college savings fund for Emily—and that what little money I had left over from the Freedom Mutual days (around $16,000) was my emergency stash, to be touched only if I was absolutely destitute.
“I’ll send you a check tomorrow,” I said. “But if the legal costs run higher . . .”
“Let’s not worry about that for the moment,” he said, the translation of which could be: actually the fees could run to five times that amount because, contractually speaking, you could lose everything you own.
“My one and only major asset in the world is my apartment in Somerville. Were I to lose all that . . .”
“I’m going to make certain you don’t.”
Even though it may cost me $50,000 to hold on to it.
“There are many loopholes we can use, like the fact that Clegg refused to provide you with up-to-date accounts as a way of shielding you.”
“But the worst-case scenario still is . . .”
“I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say that, yes, there are great concerns here. And I’m not trying to slap you on the wrist, but you should never sign a business agreement without having a lawyer read through it first.”
“I was dumb.”
“No—your intentions were good ones . . .”
“But naive. And now I’m going to be asset-stripped for my naïveté.”
“I believe I can save you from that.”
“But you can’t be definitive about that.”
“Ms. Howard, my position here is akin to that of an oncologist. If an oncologist feels the situation is hopeless, then it is truly hopeless. If a lawyer believes the case is discouraging he also says so. I’m not saying that here. But like any cancer specialist I cannot give you a definitive answer to the question anyone in your situation wants to know: Will I unequivocally defeat the bastards? More than likely, yes . . . but I can’t say more than that. Because life is never definitive, is it?”
After I concluded this call I sat in my office very quietly for around twenty minutes, trying to absorb all that I had just heard. Part of me was furious with myself for not having taken the necessary protective steps in the first place. Part of me simultaneously wondered whether I had subconsciously set myself up—as we all do so often despite our protests to the contrary. After all, I hated Adrienne Clegg on sight. And yet, I still—still!—signed over all that money and also allowed myself to be named an officer of the company. What was I thinking?
I was thinking: I deserve all the bad stuff that is going to come down from this. Because . . .
Because there is a part of me that always believes I deserve disaster.
And if the next few weeks proved anything it was the discovery that, when people want to get even, they always get vindictive.
I was in daily contact with Mr. Alkan—as he was almost in daily contact with the long list of people and companies to whom Fantastic Filmworks owed money. Their landlord in Cambridge was still chasing for his $19,000 in back rent. The helicopter charter people in Nice were not responding well to two unpaid bills for over $17,000. A caterer in LA was still trying to chase them down for $9,400 that they dropped on a big bash when they were swanning around the American Film Market. And then there was—
That was a point which often vexed me—her need to spend in such a lavish and excessive way and Theo’s ready compliance when it came to buying into her profligacy. What compulsive need was she fulfilling? What terrible damage was she trying to set right? Or was she simply one of those malignant people who couldn’t help but wreak havoc wherever she landed? I had my theories (and like all such speculations they changed hourly) but what I did understand now was that—whether it was intentional or not—there was some trigger in the woman that made her want to fail. How else could you explain turning a $1.5 million windfall into financial catastrophe? And with Theo—my Theo—she found a willing accomplice.
For the biggest betrayal here was the one that Theo perpetrated on himself. By allying himself with such a psychotic loser he made me realize: he wants the failure too. It was something akin to an amateur poker player who—with beginner’s luck—wins a vast pot. Then, terrified of this financial godsend, let alone the success, he doesn’t bank a large portion of his money. Instead he decides to remain at the table and gamble recklessly with his good fortune until, of course, it’s all been blown. He finds himself not only broke but in serious debt to boot.
And then, like my father, he had to vanish into that geographic place called nowhere, leaving others to deal with the mess he’d left behind.
“Vanished” was the operative word here. A few days after I read that Variety story online and sent a flurry of emails to Theo and Adrienne, demanding they speak to me (there was, of course, no response—nor any to the dozen messages I left on their respective cell phones) there was a new article in Daily Variety.
Mr. Alkan saw it before me and phoned me at the university to tell me its content.
“According to the journalist who’s been investigating all this, Ms. Clegg and Mr. Morgan have gone to ground. As in disappeared without a trace.”
I was online and on to the Daily Variety website within moments. There it was—replete with the headline:
Fantastic Filmworks Duo Disappear Owing Half a Million
The story went on to explain that only days after threatening lawsuits against their defecting star director, Stuart Tompkins, “Fantastic Filmworks duo, Adrienne Clegg and Theo Morgan, have literally gone AWOL, with a bevy of creditors and lawyers trying to trace their whereabouts.”
The journalist stated that the “duo”—last seen in London, staying at the “minimalist chic Metropolitan Hotel”—were due to board a flight from London Heathrow to Los Angeles, where they were planning to meet their own legal team—as well as have a thrash-out session with Stuart Tompkins’s lawyers. But at the very last minute, they no-showed the flight.
Evidently smelling a great story, the journalist also explained how he spoke to the concierge of the Metropolitan in London, who confirmed that the couple did leave on the day in question and asked him to make reservations for them on a mid-morning Eurostar train to Paris. The couple spent one night in a Paris hotel—the George V (and he pointed out the $780 price tag they paid)—but then checked out with no forwarding address. They hadn’t been heard of since.
“As you can imagine,” Mr. Alkan told me in the first of many phone calls that day, “all the creditors are swarming around us as you are the only accessible ‘partner’ in the company. Now—a couple of ground rules here. I note that you don’t have an unlisted phone number. What I want you to do is not answer your landline—or, at least, buy one of those old-fashioned answering machines where you can hear the message being left for you, so you can screen all calls. And if an unknown number pops up on your cell phone, don’t answer it.”
“What happens if people start calling me at the university?”
“Again, I’d get one of those answering machines.”
“Everything comes through a central switchboard.”
“Then tell anyone who needs to contact you to use your cell—and simply don’t pick up the phone. Sorry to sound dramatic but there are a lot of angry creditors desperate to find someone to cover the money they’re owed. Never underestimate the awfulness of people when money is involved and the individuals in question take offense at being cheated. The fact that you are the innocent party here is, I’m afraid, secondary to it all. You are the only alleged representative of the company so you will be the focus of their anger. But it will pass—especially as I plan to contact every creditor and inform them that my client was simply an investor in the company and cannot be held legally responsible for their debts.”
I started calculating just how much this exercise would cost me. There were over thirty creditors. Say Mr. Alkan spent ten minutes emailing and/or phoning each of them. That would be three hundred minutes. Or five hours . . . at two hundred dollars per hour. And then there were all the phone calls with me, and all the discussions with Bob Block at Block, Bascombe and Abeloff, and all the other attendant business to do with keeping me from being swamped by this mess.
“How much have you billed me for to date?” I asked.
“Let’s worry about that later.”
“I need to know.”
“Around four thousand dollars. But look—all going well, this round of emails and phone calls to all the creditors will hopefully get them off your back and then we can get a court judgment stating that you are not responsible for Fantastic Filmworks’s accrued debts, and that will be the end of it.”
“In other words, around another five thousand dollars on top of the five I’ve already paid over.”
A pause.
“I wish this could be cheaper for you,” he finally said. “But all I can promise you is that I will try to end this all as quickly as possible. I’m very conscious of the fact that your resources are limited.”
“Is there any sign of the two outlaws?”
“None at all. Interpol are now involved, given that there are now allegations of fraud. I could, of course, engage a private investigator on our behalf, but the cost would be—”
“Forget it. Just keep the vultures away from me and I’ll tough things out until everything dies down.”
“Toughing things out” turned out to be exactly right. For the next two weeks I was the subject of a frequently intense and vituperative campaign of intimidation by several of Fantastic Filmworks’s creditors. According to Alkan, 75 percent of the creditors accepted his explanation that, as the sole investor in the company, I couldn’t be held responsible for their financial mismanagement—but these were the big organizations (the hotels, car and helicopter rental companies, and financial services groups) who could absorb a bad debt, and probably decided that it wasn’t worth harassing a low-paid academic who was stupid enough to invest in a splatter movie. But then there were a handful of creditors who wouldn’t buy this explanation—and made it their business to frighten me into settling up with them.
The caterer in California—Vicky Smatherson—was one of the more aggressive ones. From the sound of her voice she was in her early forties—and she was very “take no shit” in her tone. I was at home, playing on the floor with Emily, when she first rang. As soon as I heard the phone begin to chime I stiffened. As it continued to ring, Emily asked me: “Why you don’t answer the phone, Mommy?”
“Because I’m playing with you,” I said with a tight smile. Then the message kicked in, followed by: “This is Vicky Smatherson—and your associates owe me over ninety-four hundred dollars for a big party they threw out here. Now maybe ninety-four hundred dollars isn’t much to a bunch of big shots like you, but it’s a goddamn fortune to me and I’m damned if I am going to let you get away with not paying me. If you think I’m being a little extreme here, tough shit. You will find out just how fucking difficult and relentless I can be if—”
I made a dive for the answering machine and turned the volume way down. Emily looked both bemused and unnerved by the call.
“That woman is angry
at you,” she said.
“She’s just upset.”
Then the cell phone sounded. I checked the screen. I didn’t answer it. A moment later, the landline blared back into life. I double-checked that the answering machine volume was well and truly off. As it rang and rang, the cell also rang and rang. Emily smiled in the midst of all this cacophony and said: “Lots of people want Mommy.”
I was so popular that the two phones kept ringing off and on for the next ten minutes until I had the good sense to unplug the landline and turn off the cell. After that I got Emily to bed, poured myself a double vodka, and phoned Christy in Oregon—where I managed to catch her in her office.
“As always,” I said, “I have something of a story to tell you.”
As always, the story came rushing out in one long rant.
“Jesus Christ,” she said when I reached the part about Theo and Adrienne vanishing to the ends of the earth or wherever the hell they were right now.
“My guess would be Morocco,” Christy said. “A good place to go to ground—and handy for the south of France, should they want to sneak back across the Mediterranean for a decent meal.”
“I think you can eat pretty well in Morocco,” I said. “Especially with other people’s money.”
“You mean, especially with your money.”
“I’m absolutely certain that the funds are well and truly spent. Now their creditors are going to take my apartment away from me.”
“No, they won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I won’t let them. Anyway, I’m certain you’ll get the favorable court judgment that your lawyer is promising you, and then everyone will be off your back.”
“And if that doesn’t happen? If it goes the other way . . . ?”
“Then you’ll survive somehow—which is what we all do. If you lose the apartment you’ll get another apartment. If you have to declare bankruptcy to meet all the debts, then you’ll eventually recover from that. It’s all very unfair, I know. But life is so often like that. Unfair, unjust, and more than a little cruel.”
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #2 Page 97