“Would you like to see where Telly sat?” she asked.
Lettie said that wasn’t necessary, just knowing that he was a customer was enough for her. But I knew she was just being polite and had been hoping that someone even more famous than Telly Savalas had eaten there—so that she could tell her girlfriends about it. (No disrespect to the great star of the long-running show, “Kojak,” but Lettie was not of his generation.)
Withitall, the food was excellent and we couldn’t understand why the restaurant wasn’t more popular. When the waitress brought us our check, she furnished us with a possible explanation.
“Don’t tell anyone I said this,” she whispered, “but the owner died last year and the new one doesn’t have much personality.”
We were sorry to hear that. But as far as we were concerned, Tino’s was still the restaurant to beat in New York City.
We also paid a visit to Macy’s department store, which I found exhausting, although Lettie would still be racing up and down the aisles if I hadn’t pulled her out of there. Then we went to the fabled F.A.O. Schwarz toy store, where Lettie bought a stuffed cat that was made in Taiwan and had more life to it than the real ones we had back home.
No trip to New York City would be complete without a visit to the Empire State Building, so naturally we headed over there. It impressed us, even though some loudmouth in the elevator spoiled things by telling everyone they were erecting a taller building in Jakarta, Indonesia.
I almost popped him one, but I knew that Lettie abhored violence.
By the time we returned to our apartment, we were happily exhausted, and it was all we could do to kick back and watch some TV. Lettie tuned in to a sitcom on the living room set while I stretched out in the utility room and caught an excellent documentary on tics in Poland.
Then it was time for bed. I tucked Lettie in tight so that she wouldn’t fall off the canopy bed in the middle of the night, and then I prepared to retire myself. It was hard finding a place for myself with the file folders spilling out onto the foldup bed. But once I was comfortable, I could not resist taking a peek at the contents of one of them. (It wasn’t as if they were under lock and key.)
There were the usual prospectuses from Global Enterprises, Inc., offering deals in Europe that took advantage of tax loopholes and promised subscribers twenty times their investment in twenty minutes. But I also came across a brochure listing the upcoming schedule of a Jewish repertory theatre group in New Jersey. I was aware of the great contributions the Jewish people had made to the American stage (Fiddler on the Roof being a favorite of mine), and I was curious to see what this Jersey group was up to. They had a tasty variety of offerings scheduled, including an evening of Klezmer music, which I was not familiar with—and some one-act plays based on the writings of the esteemed novelist and vegetarian I.B. Singer, whose Gimpel the Fool I once had the pleasure of perusing. I could easily see myself sitting through either program, although we probably wouldn’t have the time to get out there.
There was a page missing in the brochure—and I checked the table of contents to see what it was for. Evidently, it was supposed to show a picture of the theatre’s artistic director. Out of curiosity, I looked at another brochure, a duplicate of the first, which did show his picture, and I received quite a surprise. Unless I was mistaken, the fellow in the photograph was the exact spitting image of Thomas Gnu, as represented in the slide projection I had seen in Peabody’s office. The same mean little simian face, the mop of black hair that probably wasn’t his, even the black turtleneck and black jacket. It may have been my imagination—after all, it had been several months since I saw the slide—but the resemblance was remarkable. Of course it was possible that the billionaire had an identical twin brother who had chosen to forsake the world of finance and go to work in the Jewish theatre of New Jersey.
Such occurrences are rare, but not unheard of.
Whatever the case, I decided to file this information away in my mind for future reference.
The next morning we had breakfast at a bagel shop, conveniently located just around the corner from our building—and I presented Lettie with a proposed agenda for the day: The Indian Museum; the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History (of course); and a visit to the Statue of Liberty, where we would go right into the fingers, which is something she had always wanted to do. That was provided they let visitors in there.
Normally, whenever I offered her my ideas for fun, she would respond by saying “great.” But on this occasion, the best I could get out of her was an unenthusiastic “fine.”
So I knew she had something else on her mind.
“What would you really like to do?”
“I’d tell you, but you would get angry.”
“When have I ever done that?”
“Never, but you would this time.”
“Try me.”
She told me that what she really had her heart set on was that visit to the William Morris Agency so she could get started on movie producing. I didn’t think we had a prayer of getting to see them, but I decided to humor her and looked them up in the directory. They were located in midtown somewhere between the East Side and the West Side. So we started out for their offices, taking a cab so that I could get it over with fast.
We found the building easily enough and strolled confidently into the lobby as if we had an appointment.
They had a long list of agents listed on the directory, and I picked out one of them at random. Then I told the security guard that we were from out of town and that we would like to see the agent I had picked out about movie producing. He called upstairs and to my great surprise, he told us to go right up there, the agent would try to squeeze us into his busy schedule.
At first I thought he was just being polite—but then it occurred to me that the William Morris Agency had a policy of seeing everyone who showed up—since you never knew where the idea for a great movie would come from. (Although seeing an eleven-year-old girl was pushing it a bit.)
We took the elevator up to the agent’s office and introduced ourselves to the receptionist who told us to take a seat in the waiting area, and she would get us in to see the agent as soon as possible.
We joined a group of half a dozen people out there and from the tone of their conversation, I could tell they were actors and jugglers and the like, trying to get a break in show business.
The agent kept us waiting for half an hour or so and just as we were about to give up on seeing him, a secretary came out and showed us into his office.
There were two agents waiting for us in there. The older one was a stocky individual with a ponytail and an earring and skin that looked like old French fries. The other fellow held a clipboard on his lap and might have been an assistant who was just breaking into the business. Though he was far the younger of the two, he was the one who was cleancut and conservatively dressed and had not chosen to wear an earring and ponytail.
The senior agent took a seat in a swivel chair, puffed on a cigar, as I had imagined all agents would, and leaned back with his hands behind his head.
“What have you got for us?” he asked.
Since he had directed the question to me, I tried to think of something to say, but I could not come up with anything. I was still amazed that we had gotten in to see him at all.
Then Lettie took over and said she would like to get started in the movie-producing business.
Before she could go any further, the senior agent cut her off in what seemed to me like a gruff way.
“I hear you,” he said, “but you can’t just come in here and expect us to hand you a package. We’re an established agency and you obviously don’t have a track record. You’ve got to bring us something.”
I thought that would be the end of the interview and frankly, I was happy we had gotten as far as we did.
What I hadn’t counted on was that Lettie had come prepared for the situation.
With little hesitation, she calmly proceeded to te
ll him the story of an aging firefly that was down to his last sparkle. He hears about a little girl who is dying and decides to fly to her bedside and do his last sparkle for her. He does—and the sick girl is so delighted and cheered up that she recovers. And then the firefly dies.
As she told the story, the assistant agent, whose name was Ken, kept saying, “Yes … I hear you … Oh, yes … That’s beautiful … I’m fainting … keep going.”
After Lettie finished telling her story there was a silence in the room, and we all leaned in toward the senior agent to see what he would say.
He took a puff of his cigar and thought for a minute.
“Does the firefly have to die?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” said Lettie.
“You’ll alienate half your audience,” he said. “And how can you do a sequel without the firefly? Couldn’t the firefly get better?”
“That would spoil everything,” said Lettie. “And who cares about a sequel.”
“Who cares about a sequel,” he repeated with a hoarse laugh. “Maybe that should be the title. I can see you’re new in the business.”
He took a reflective pull of his cigar at that point and said: “Let me think about it.”
Then he instructed Ken to give Lettie a copy of a screenplay to study so she could see what a movie looked like on paper. There were at least a hundred of them on the office shelves, and after glancing at a few, Ken selected one and handed it to her.
“I was following every word of your story,” he whispered to her. “And I loved it.”
I figured out that the senior agent couldn’t say he loved it, even if he did, but Ken could, since he wasn’t putting his head on the block.
The senior agent then escorted us back to the waiting area and rang for the elevator.
“There’s something there,” he said, handing me a cigar. “We’ll be in touch.”
“That was fabulous,” said Lettie, as we left the building.
I agreed, and if anything, I was more excited than she was. The fact that we had gotten in to see the agent was more than I had hoped for. And now he was going to give Lettie’s idea some thought, which was remarkable.
For the first time, I began to take Lettie seriously as a movie producer. After all, what difference did it make how old she was? Wasn’t it the quality of her ideas that counted! Maybe she would do my story someday, about an unemployed poultry man who gets involved in a dangerous global enterprise—and has to kill a few people. Of course, I couldn’t propose it to her now. But maybe someday, when it was all behind me.
After our meeting with the William Morris agents, it was hard for us to get worked up about the Indians and dinosaurs on our schedule. But we went ahead and saw them anyway, since our time in New York was limited. And then we wandered back toward our apartment, stopping here and there to peek in at some of the small stores that concentrated on one type of item, such as train sets and music boxes from France.
One that intrigued us was right around the corner from our building. It supplied police equipment such as clubs and bulletproof vests to the officers and students at the nearby police academy. There were also some items available to the public, although not many.
Lettie picked out a T-shirt that said NEW YORK’S FINEST and some panties, and I selected a leather belt that didn’t have much to recommend it other than that the police wore it, which was good enough for me. Somewhere along the line I had heard that wrongdoers often gravitate toward police activities. (When obviously, they should stay as far away as possible.)
If I wasn’t a prime example of that phenomenon, I’d like to know who was.
Once again, we decided to turn in on the early side since Peabody was arriving the following morning and I had a big day ahead of me.
I said goodnight to Lettie and told her how proud I was of her for the way she handled herself at the William Morris Agency.
“You’re the one,” she said. “They wouldn’t have paid any attention to me if you weren’t there.”
“I didn’t hardly say anything.”
“But you have charisma.”
“If I do, I’m not aware of it. And where did you learn ‘charisma’?”
“Would you like me to spell it?”
“That’s all right. I’ll take your word for it. And you told them an awfully good story.”
“I know,” she said. “I just hope they don’t screw up the casting.”
Chapter Nineteen
The next morning, after our breakfast, I found a store nearby that sold magazines from all over the world. What I thought is that I would lay in plenty of reading material for Lettie so that she could be occupied while Peabody and I conducted our business. I assumed she would select magazines that were targeted to her age group, or at least were about the movie industry—but she picked out half a dozen fat ones that contained glossy pictures of beautiful estates in places like Mexico and the Costa del Sol. They were as expensive as entire books, but I didn’t think she realized that, and I wasn’t about to make it an issue. As we left the store, it occurred to me that she could read through the magazines in about twenty minutes, so I stopped in at an electronics store and bought her a Sony Walkman and some tapes, which would give her plenty to do in case I got delayed.
After making sure that Lettie was safe and sound, I went uptown to meet Peabody at some kind of gentleman’s club that I assumed he belonged to. For the most part, the members were well-dressed elderly fellows who sat around in overstuffed chairs and didn’t appear to have a worry in the world. It didn’t take much to figure out how you got into a club like that. All you had to be was well fixed and to have the right connections.
Peabody arrived at the same time as I did, and we found a couple of overstuffed chairs of our own near the fireplace. He looked trim and well rested and was wearing an olive-colored suit that was so simple and understated that it had to have cost a lot of money.
We ordered brandies from a waiter who was old enough and distinguished-looking enough to have been a member of the club himself.
“How long have you belonged to this club?” I asked.
He took a quick look around to make sure that no one was listening.
“I’m not, actually,” he said quietly. “I just pop in here now and then and no one’s ever thought to question me. It is important to keep a pipe going, however.”
“I don’t have one.”
“I do,” he said.
With that, he produced a Sherlock Holmes-style model from his vest pocket, filled it with tobacco from a leather pouch and got it started.
“Now first off,” he said, “how is your darling Lettie? Probably off dating some young ne’er-do-well, I would imagine.”
“Not that I know of. She’s back at the apartment, reading magazines.”
“Don’t you wish,” he said with a laugh that was half a snuffle. “You’re so innocent, Binny. She’s dating her head off.”
Rather than keep insisting that Lettie was not dating her head off, I decided to end that line of conversation.
“If you say so.”
“The flat to your liking?” he asked.
“Couldn’t be better.”
“It’s lovely, isn’t it? Convenient location and all that. I’ve used it myself on occasion.”
And then he got down to the matter at hand.
“There are two of them this time around, as I mentioned, and Thomas Gnu is particularly anxious to get the matter settled, which is why he’s made these pukka arrangements.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Pukka,” he said. “Everything first-rate. You’ve got the apartment, he has me at the Carlyle, and I would assume the fee is satisfactory.”
“It is.”
“One of them, Masroor he calls himself, is a noted film producer in Karachi and the other—Gail Parsons—fancies herself as an actress. It seems that Thomas Gnu had once arranged the financing for Masroor to do a twenty-million-dollar film extolling the wonders of capitali
sm on the subcontinent, with Gail Parsons to star in it. Gnu quite fancied her and saw it as an opportunity to get into her knickers. At the last moment, the pair canceled the production and slipped off to do some piece of Noel Coward fluff on the stage in Peshawar. This embarrassed Gnu and has obviously stuck in his craw, making him determined once and for all to do away with them.”
“What they did doesn’t sound like such a heinous offense.”
“Here again, you’ve got to know our employer. He can be quite strange at times, and of course he has enough money and power to employ fools like us to deal with his neuroses.”
“Has he ever been involved in Jewish repertory theatre?” I asked, recalling the photograph that had been snipped out of the brochure.
“That’s an odd question,” said Peabody, who had the instincts of a snake. “Why do you ask?”
“So many people are these days.”
“Indeed. That comes as news to me. But to answer your question, I can assure you that Thomas Gnu has never expressed the slightest interest in Jewish theater, as you put it.”
He made a face when he said the word “Jewish” and I reached the obvious conclusion about his feelings toward that much-maligned people.
But I decided to let the matter drop.
“How do I get at them?”
“Easily. As it happens, Masroor is being given an award by a film society late this afternoon at the Warwind Hotel. Gail is doing the introductions, so it shouldn’t present any difficulty to get at the pair of them.”
For the first time, it sank in that there was a woman involved this time around, and I had to make sure that did not affect my performance. To do so, of course, would be sexist.
He handed me a badge for my lapel that said FILM SOCIETY OF THE SUBCONTINENT and said that it would serve as my invitation.
“How would you like this done?”
A Father's Kisses Page 17
