The Best Defense

by A. W. Gray

  Cudmore flashed a look of desperation. “How?” Sharon crossed her legs. “By talking to me here, right now. I’m only looking for information. Informally, here in your office, that’s more pleasant. Under subpoena and on the witness stand if I have to, but hey.”

  “Talk about what? What can the most fucked deal in the history of motion pictures have to do with a murder trial?”

  “Everything, or nothing. Depends on what I learn.”

  “That writer,” Cudmore said. “His fault, all his. Nothing but a schmuck with a computer. Just like all writers …”

  “But schmuckier than most?” Sharon asked. “Excuse me, but I know a little about this already, from Darla. I thought Curtis Nussbaum brought you the deal.”

  “God, you wouldn’t…You’ll never get me to say anything bad about Curt. Never. Never bad-mouth anyone in the business, that’s tantamount to suicide.”

  “That’s what Mr. Levy told me,” Sharon said. “But, excuse me, didn’t you just bad-mouth the writer? Writers in general?”

  “Those schmucks are different.”

  “I … see,” Sharon said. “We’re not progressing very fast. Maybe we’d better stick to what happened.”

  “Dead On.” Cudmore seemed on the verge of hysterics. “Jesus H. Christ, Dead fucking On.”

  Levy regarded the floor like a man at a wake.

  “What Darla told me,” Sharon said, “is that Curtis Nussbaum personally optioned the novel. Is that unusual for an agent to do?”

  Cudmore and Levy exchanged a look. “Nussbaum takes some risks,” Levy said. “Guy gambles high. Always has.”

  Cudmore switched into gossip mode. “His debt is astronomical, Vegas and points beyond Foolish money management. Not that I’d ever…”

  “Bad-mouth anyone in the business,” Sharon finished. “Yes, you told me. Start from day one, when Nussbaum optioned the book.”

  “Before that writer fucked everything up?” Cudmore said.

  “Yes, even before then.” Sharon had her legal pad out, taking notes. “What was the option price? If you’re privy to that.”

  “It was a whole lot more than an option,” Cudmore said, blinking. “It was an outright sale. Two million dollars. Poor Curtis…”

  “I’m assuming on the logistics,” Sharon said. “But I suppose he buys the book, and then turns around and sells it to the studio.”

  Cudmore opened a drawer and withdrew a prescription bottle, which she squeezed until her knuckles whitened. “Now, don’t be blaming me. Everyone’s blaming me, don’t you start. Anyone would have bought that deal. David Spencer committed. Darla Cowan committed.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Levy butted in. “Spencer, yeah, he’s Nussbaum’s to commit. I never made no commitment for Darla.”

  Cudmore undid the cap, popped a pill into her mouth, and swallowed water from a glass near her elbow. “You would have, Aaron. You would have. Jesus Christ, with David Spencer involved? Talk about high concept. The highest of the high.”

  “Dead On must have been quite a story,” Sharon said, “to interest all those people.”

  Cudmore looked puzzled. “It must have been. I didn’t read the proposal.” She looked at Levy. “Did you read the proposal, Aaron?”

  The agent waved a hand as if battling mosquitoes. “Nah. David Spencer backed out before we talked real turkey to you people.”

  Cudmore’s eyes were suddenly moist. “Poor David. He had such a schedule …”

  “Before the writer screwed everything up?” Sharon asked.

  “That schmuck,” Cudmore said.

  “Asshole,” Levy said.

  “Oh?” Sharon blinked in amazement. God, these two. She said, “How much did this writer get the studio to commit to this disaster?”

  Cudmore looked off. “Preproduction budget, sixty million. That’s before a director got involved.”

  “Let me get a feel for this, Ms. Cudmore. That isn’t money you pay out immediately, is it?”

  Cudmore showed a determined pout. “To a writer? We’re not that crazy.”

  Sharon wasn’t so sure about that. “How much did you pay Mr. Swain?”

  “I’d have to check the record. Twenty thousand, I think. Through Curt, of course. We don’t deal directly with these people.”

  “I see. And part payment to the actor as well, I suppose.”

  Cudmore exchanged a glance with Levy. “Well,” Cudmore said, “David was an artist. Much in demand.” “You paid him more?” Sharon doodled a question mark on her pad.

  “You don’t get a David Spencer for nothing, Sharon. You up-front before he’ll even discuss.”

  “And David Spencer’s asking price was … ?”

  “Six million. Not all up front. Only a portion.”

  “How much of a portion?”

  Cudmore shrugged with her hands. “Only a third.” “Only … Let me be sure I’m following here. Curtis Nussbaum brought you a property, Dead On, an unfinished novel to which you didn’t know the story. You advanced the writer twenty thousand dollars against two million, and advanced David Spencer two million against six. Without a manuscript to work with, without reading the author’s proposal …”

  Cudmore nodded. Her anger seemed to have subsided some, now a woman explaining her position. “Curt Nussbaum’s word plus David Spencer’s commitment was plenty for anyone in the business to set the gears in motion. Put the novel with our publishing arm in New York, commit a promotional budget for the book. Our publishing people hired a jacket-cover designer, made commitments to the major bookstores. On this end we commissioned a screenwriter to do a treatment. We’re not talking minor expenditure here.”

  Sharon blinked in disbelief. “All of this without a finished book?”

  “We put the writer with David,” Cudmore said.

  “I’m assuming,” Sharon said, “that both the writer’s and the actor’s money, all of that went initially to Curtis Nussbaum?”

  Cudmore’s lashes lowered in sympathy. “Poor Curt. So much to ride herd on.”

  Sharon made rapid notes. She was getting a grasp of what went on, her lawyer’s instinct already translating the wheeling and dealing into terms understandable to a jury. It wouldn’t be easy, making the twelve tried and true see the point. “I don’t suppose you know,” Sharon said, “what poor Curt did with all this money. While the actor and the writer were collaborating.”

  “Not ours to know. Not ours to know. And don’t call that abortion a collaboration, Sharon. The schmuck wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “The writer,” Sharon said.

  “What other schmuck is there?” Cudmore said.

  Sharon looked at Aaron Levy, the agent stoic in his chair, acting as if this type of transaction went on every day. She said to Marissa Cudmore, “What is it that this writer wouldn’t do?”

  Cudmore rolled her eyes upward. “Anything. Everything. Poor David told me after a month, the schmuck refused to develop a character to whom David felt he could do justice.”

  “I did some acting,” Sharon said. “I’d think, if the story, the book was powerful enough, the actor could tailor the character to suit his persona once the project was in production.”

  Cudmore’s expression went livid once more. “Now you’re talking like the schmuck, the writer. That’s what he thought, kept turning in a pile of drivel. Never did satisfy poor David, which finally killed the project.” Visible beyond her through the window, a couple of actors wandered by dressed in what appeared to be spacesuits.

  Sharon tapped her ballpoint against one front tooth.

  “Didn’t you have a way to monitor the writer’s progress?”

  “Monitor? You bet your sweet ass, monitor. What, you think we let these schmucks wander around with no direction? After three months with nothing concrete, I took charge personally. Called the schmuck, six in
the morning, noon, again in the evening. Asked for pages to read, something to show he wasn’t just sitting on his ass. Two months of solid bullshit, lies, promises …”

  “Maybe he was busy with David Spencer, developing this character,” Sharon said.

  “He tried that lie,” Cudmore said. “But I was in constant touch with David as well. David told me after a few months he just couldn’t work with this schmuck any longer.”

  Sharon chewed her inner cheek. She allowed some sarcasm to creep into her tone. “You were calling him three times a day, and David Spencer didn’t like the character he was creating. You’d think under the circumstances he would have whipped the book right out, wouldn’t you?”

  “Right.” Cudmore nodded vigorously. “Right.”

  God, Sharon thought, this woman’s too caught up to realize it when someone’s pulling her chain. “So what happened?” Sharon asked. “I assume you can’t let something like that go on and on.”

  “Eventually you can’t. In this instance, with what we’d committed, we tried everything. I even tried buying Swain out, commissioning a ghost to finish the novel. The schmuck wouldn’t even talk about it. Claimed it was his book. His book, with our money sitting in his pocket.”

  “The whole twenty thousand dollars,” Sharon said. “Right,” Cudmore said.

  “And two million dollars sitting in the actor’s pocket. Or more to the point, his agent’s pocket,” Sharon said.

  “David was an artist,” Cudmore said. “You have to understand.”

  “I think I do,” Sharon said, writing down, Check Nussbaum’s other bank accounts. She crossed her forearms over her notepad. “How did you resolve the issue?” she asked.

  “We had no choice. We had to cancel.”

  “You asked for your money back?”

  Cudmore’s tired gaze rested on her desktop. “Poor Curtis.”

  “He had difficulty anteing up?”

  “Oh, no.” Cudmore shook her head. “Curtis, God, no. Took a few days, but he came right in with a check. Poor David as well, it must have been a blow to him.”

  “The writer lost his advance, didn’t he?” Sharon asked. “The twenty thousand dollars?”

  Cudmore nodded furiously. “Just what the schmuck deserved.”

  “So you, meaning the studio, you’re not out any of the money?”

  Cudmore stared off in space. “The embarrassment …”

  Poking out from Sharon’s satchel was the printout of Rob Stanley’s account, the one whose balance, on the day of Spencer’s death, had amounted to fourteen bucks and change. “Let me ask you something,” Sharon said. “Do you have any knowledge of where the money came from when Nussbaum refunded to you?”

  Cudmore looked at Levy. “Not our problem,” she said. “I assume from David and the writer, though it’s been our experience that the writer never has anything left of the advance to refund. Always blows it all …”

  “On rent and such?” Sharon said.

  “Not our problem. God, these schmucks.”

  “The writers,” Sharon said. “Not the actors.”

  “Right,” Cudmore said.

  Sharon batoned her pen between her fingers as she considered more questions. “I’ll need Harlon Swain’s address and phone number,” Sharon said. “So you’ll know, I’ll be talking to him.”

  Cudmore went over to a file cabinet, tugged open a drawer, and thudded two inch-thick folders onto her desk. “Hope you have better luck than I.” She showed an urgent look. “Sharon, I can’t be testifying to any of this. I simply can’t.”

  “With your full cooperation here and now,” Sharon said, “I can’t see that you’d have to.” She tore a slip from a pad. “Write Mr. Swain’s address and number on this, please.”

  Cudmore bent her head to write. “What do I tell Michelle?”

  Sharon felt a pang of regret, which subsided in an instant. As an actress she’d always wanted to play a movie star’s role. Having a movie star play her role, however, just wouldn’t thrill the same. She said, “Afraid you’ll have to put her on hold.”

  Cudmore slid the paper over, blinking in disbelief. “Put Michelle on hold?”

  Sharon accepted the paper, read the writer’s address and phone number, folded the paper, and slipped it inside her satchel. “For now.”

  Slowly, incredulously, Cudmore shook her head. “No one puts Michelle on hold. Not even Mike Ovitz.”

  “And he puts everybody on hold,” Levy said from off to the side.

  Sharon moved her gaze from Cudmore to Levy and back again. She smoothed her skirt. “Look, I know this is hard to believe, and I’m not sure I believe it myself. I got into this by agreeing to help a friend, Darla, wound up as her attorney, for which I’ll collect a fee. My fee’s all I’m entitled to ethically, no residuals, no other deals. Tough pill to swallow, huh?”

  Cudmore rocked back in her chair. “Now, that I like. A woman of morals. Definitely a high concept. Highest of the high.”

  “And friends in low places,” Sharon said wryly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Cudmore. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  She gathered her gear. “Now I’ve got to … oh.” She set her satchel on the floor, opened the snaps, and dug inside.

  Cudmore gave Levy a knowing look. “I just knew it. She has her own proposal. If it’s something one can live with …”

  “Could you look this over for me?” Sharon said, sliding the Spring of the Comanche photo over in front of Cudmore. “I’m interested in the guy far right. The rest of the people in the picture, we all know who they are.”

  Cudmore picked up the picture and studied. Levy got up, went behind Cudmore, and looked over her shoulder. Levy said, “Nussbaum’s man.”

  “Security man,” Sharon said. “That much we already know. I’m looking for a name.”

  Levy waved a hand. “Lots of these guys. Blend in with the furniture.”

  “So I’m told. If you could just search your—”

  “Chuck Hager,” Cudmore said.

  Sharon stared at her.

  Cudmore tossed the photo aside. “I knew him at Central Casting. He was an aspiring actor once. I heard he got into security. I’ve seen him around. Lousy actor, but as a gofer, a lot of credentials.”

  Levy poked his tongue into his cheek. “Lot of these guys hanging around.”

  Sharon ignored the agent and concentrated on Marissa Cudmore. “What credentials are those, Ms. Cudmore?”

  “He could fly airplanes, for one thing.” Sharon felt a surge of excitement. “Jets?”

  “If it has wings, that guy can fly it,” Cudmore said. “Persian Gulf vet. We used him once here at the studio to take some actors and directors to a premiere in Kansas City. Kept them from having to ride with the flyovers.”

  Now Sharon was puzzled. “Flyovers?”

  Cudmore nodded vacantly. “Flyover people, yeah. That’s the people we generally fly over, going from L.A. to New York. Ride commercial with a plane load of them, they’ll drive you crazy. Ask a lot of questions. Much easier to fly private, just with your peers.”

  Sharon quickly wrote Chuck Hager on her notepad.

  “Do you know if Curtis Nussbaum has access to a private jet?”

  “Curt, sure,” Cudmore said. “If he doesn’t own one, he has access.”

  “How about, a way to get in touch with Mr. Hager,” Sharon said.

  “Try Mathis Security. Last time I saw him …”

  Sharon scribbled the name of the agency. Her adrenaline was pumping. She snatched, up the photo, put it away, and gathered her things. “I can’t tell you how much help you’ve been. We’d hold the subpoena in abeyance, Ms. Cudmore. Unless you hear differently from me, I won’t be needing you in court.” She stood. “I have my own transportation from here. Sorry to lead you on, Mr. Levy. But thanks for the ride.” She hurried toward the doo
r.

  From behind her Levy said, “Hey.”

  Sharon turned. He stood stoically behind Cudmore, both the agent and the producer staring at Sharon as if they couldn’t believe that such an airhead existed.

  Which they probably can’t, Sharon thought, and I can’t believe myself sometimes. “Yes, sir?” Sharon said.

  Levy shifted his toothpick from one comer of his mouth to the other. “Look,” he said, and then said, “Look,” a second time. He glanced at Cudmore as if wondering if he should speak in front of her. Then he shrugged and zeroed in on Sharon once again. “This don’t kill no book deal, does it?” Aaron Levy said.

  Sharon hustled through the movie lot, high heels clicking, her satchel bumping her hip, and used the cell phone as she headed for the gate. Directly in front of her was a girl wearing a gorilla costume, the ape’s head tucked underneath her arm, and a man with ears pointed like Spock’s, who was also using a portable phone. There was a click in Sharon’s ear, and Lyndon Gray answered. She said, “It’s Miss Hays, Mr. Gray. Do you know where the front gate to Mammoth Studios is located?”

  The Englishman chuckled. “Been there often, mum. Twenty minutes?”

  “If you can make it sooner. Any luck in locating our mystery man around the courts building?”

  “Negative. Even had Benny Yadaka search a six-block area. Nothing. If you have better ideas…”

  “Not only do I have better ideas,” Sharon said, “I got the guy’s name. Chuck Hager. On the way here, Mr. Gey, I’d appreciate if you’d find me the number for Mathis Security.”

  “I know the firm, Miss Hays. Not the whitest of reputations.”

  “Why am I not surprised about that?” Sharon said. See you in a few, unless…”

  “Unless I can get there more quickly,” Gray said cheerfully. “ I have the petal to the metal, as they say.” He disconnected.

  Sharon folded up the cell phone and stuffed it away as she reached the gate, stepped up onto the walk-through, and passed the guard’s station. She fought the urge but couldn’t resist, and threw a final wistful look behind her. The White House and Treasury Building loomed in the distance, with the ghetto neighborhood to the right and, farther still to the right, the snow-capped peak towering over Dreamworld USA. What wouldn’t I have given? Sharon thought. She did a determined eyes-front and paraded ahead, conscious of the guard watching her through the window. He was a man in his fifties, with pale blue eyes beneath the brim of his uniformed hat.