by Robert Evans
Chapter Thirty-Nine
MAY 12, 1989.
The last time I was in downtown Los Angeles was for the Academy Awards—the biggest night in Hollywood. Lights, limousines, stars. This time, it was a different story. Rather than the evening lights, it was the morning breeze. Rather than a limousine, I arrived in a nondescript car, hoping not to be recognized. My lawyer, Robert Shapiro, had arranged for my arrival as a witness. We had special permission to drive underneath to the judge’s entrance. A friend of Shapiro, a judge, was there to meet us and take us up to a private elevator. I stepped out of the elevator and looked Shapiro straight in the eye.
“I can’t do this, I can’t take the fifth. I’m going to testify.”
Grabbing my arm, my lawyer said, “If you do, I leave!” His eyes were as cold as his words. Did I pay heed? You bet I did.
Our attempts to avoid television cameras? Forget it! Heading down the long corridor to Division 30 of the Criminal Courts Building, it was Academy Award time revisited. Lights, cameras, action. Instead of an acceptance speech, words that I’d never thought I’d utter were going to come from my mouth: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully refuse to answer any questions based on my constitutional privilege under the Fifth Amendment.”
Eight long years before I was staying at Francis Coppola’s Napa Valley estate. Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Dyson Lovell, Coppola, and I were behind closed doors. Coppola’s just finished second-draft script of The Cotton Club was being read aloud by Gere and Hines to make comments and changes on. A knock at the door. Sofia, Francis’s daughter, came in and whispered in my ear. “An urgent call, Mr. Evans.”
“Damn it. Sorry, fellas.” I ran to the main house, rushed to the phone.
It was Greg Bautzer, still bristling from my 1980 coke bust.
“I’ve been hearing rumblings I don’t like.”
“About me?”
“Why do you think I’m callin’? This guy Radin, do you know him?”
“Yeah, why?”
“He’s missing, that’s why. And your name’s involved.”
“He’s not up here, I swear. Now can I go back to rehearsal?”
“Rehearsal? I stepped out of a meeting with Kirk Kerkorian to make this call. It’s no joke. You can’t afford another 1980.”
“Greg, how do I know where the guy is?”
“Bob, it doesn’t matter. If I hear it, others do too. Protect yourself, take no chances, you can’t afford more bad press. I’ve already put in a call to Robert Shapiro, he’s the best criminal attorney in town. Don’t leave the phone, and keep your fingers crossed that he’s available.”
“Greg, I hardly know this guy Radin. Where do I fit in?”
“Your name is Bob Evans, that’s where it fits in,” hanging the phone up in my ear.
I wanted to get back to rehearsal, but I didn’t want to piss off Bautzer, not again. The phone rang. My life changed.
“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I know a lot about you.”
For the next thirty minutes I told this new voice in my life, Robert Shapiro, everything that I remembered.
“It doesn’t ring true, Mr. Evans, you’re too bright, too successful, I don’t believe one word you’ve told me.
“You and I are going to have a long talk. Innocent or guilty isn’t the point. Lawyer-client confidentiality is. Forget me, any lawyer you deal with needs the confidentiality of truth.”
“Mr. Shapiro, I haven’t told you one lie!”
He began to laugh. “If I played back to a jury the conversation we’ve just had, they’d laugh me out of court.”
“I don’t know why, I’ve told you the truth. Can it wait four, five days? I’ll be finished with rehearsal.”
Another laugh . . . not a good one.
“Four, or five days. You needed someone yesterday, this is not ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ Mr. Evans. You’re lucky my wife’s a fan of yours. If you can’t fly down, I’ll fly up. Be in San Francisco early tonight, meet me at the Mark Hopkins, eight P.M.”
At three o’clock the next morning, after being examined and cross-examined with more harshness than Bobby Kennedy at his best, my new consigliere took a break (a cup of tea, two Bufferins, a cold towel), then sat staring, not at me, just staring.
“Do you know what I learned these last seven hours? You’re the single dumbest man I’ve ever met. How could someone who’s known all over the world, made history, be so fucking stupid?”
No one had ever talked to me that way before.
“A guy who can’t read or write has more smarts than you. You’re not guilty, you’re plain fuckin’ dumb innocent. Do you need help? You don’t know how bad. Let me be the one to lose sleep over it. The more you sleep, the less you’ll talk. Your mouth is more dangerous than an accident ready to happen. The only thing I demand is that you tell me everything, no matter how much it hurts. If you don’t, you’re the one who’s going to lose.”
“No problem, Mr. Shapiro. I’ve got nothing to hold back.”
“From now on, it’s not Shapiro, it’s the two Bobs.”
During the next days, I filled him in on every detail I remembered regarding Roy Radin. How I was looking to put together a motion picture company, to raise enough money privately to finance my own films and own the negative (the most valuable asset in Hollywood). How I was receptive to meeting rich people outside the industry, people who were captivated by the mystique of film. How my house became a revolving door from the wealthy to the entrepreneurial and the hustler—you name it, they all came in and out. How a chauffeur from Ascot Limousine, a company I half owned, told me about the new customer he was driving night and day, a wealthy divorcee from Texas looking to get into the film business.
“Who recommended her?”
“Oh, the Morrison family, the largest stockholders in General Motors, split their time between Bel Air, Grosse Point, and Palm Beach—top of the line. This lady I’m driving is good friends with them.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jacobs, Laynie Jacobs.”
“How old?”
“ ’Bout thirty-five, real looker—your type, Mr. E. Would you like to meet her?”
Wealthy? Divorcee? Midthirties? Real attractive? Fuck films . . . don’t have one of her kind on my dance card. Can’t show up with a twenty-one-year-old starlet at a serious dinner.
Two days later, escorted by our matchmaker chauffeur, we met. She was a real looker. Knowing that no lady is going to put fifty mil into the picture business, I wanted to get business over with quick.
“I need a minimum of fifty million dollars to start the company I’ve structured.”
Southern drawl and all, her response was just as I had thought. “Five or ten million was closer to what I was thinking of.”
“That’s a lot of money. I’d be careful who you meet. This town is full of talkers lookin’ for a way to take a lady like you. I’m giving you good advice; don’t put any money in films.”
“I do know someone who has that kind of money. Has access to it. Good friends with the Rothschilds. With your name he could raise it on the phone. Lives in New York.” A Southern laugh. “He’d come by bus to meet you.”
“We’re talking about a lot of money, Miss Jacobs.”
Battin’ her Southern belle eyelashes, “Call me Laynie. You should meet him.”
“No rush.”
Forget flicks! My head was into more creative play.
“Mind if I ask him to fly out?”
“Mind if I fix you a drink?”
“Rum and coke’ll be just fine. Let’s have him fly out . . . gotta Southern hunch. His name’s Roy Radin.”
We clicked glasses and toasted to her Southern hunch.
Having met many Laynies throughout my life, I didn’t need legal counsel, but that’s where it ended. When it came to business, knowing half of me is a twelve-year-old, I always protected myself with a Korshak. For the first time since I began shaving, I was without counsel—Ken
Ziffrin had just fired me weeks earlier. My M.O. had always been the same—whether it was a realtor, a financier, or an investment banker, credentials were reviewed by my legal eagles. Roy Radin’s credentials wouldn’t have gotten him through Paramount’s front gate. Good timing, huh?
Shapiro listened patiently, to everything I told him. It was obvious the prosecution was showboating, trying to connect Radin’s disappearance with The Cotton Club. There was never a deal between us or a dollar exchanged; there was a handshake, that’s all, to fund a company that never came into existence.
Four people had been accused of the so-called Cotton Club Murder, which had become one of the most highly publicized murder cases in Los Angeles history. Now the jury foreman announced the verdict. Laynie Jacobs-Greenberger (as she was then called): guilty. Of murder in the second degree, and kidnapping for the purpose of murder with great bodily harm. A crime carrying life without possibility of parole. Metzer, Marti, and Lowe—guilty. Metzer—first-degree murder. Marti—first-degree murder. Lowe—murder in the second degree. The jury would now begin to deliberate on the death penalty for Marti and Metzer for their role in the murder of Roy Radin.
Roy Radin’s death would normally not rate any interest in Los Angeles. At the time there were seventeen other first-degree murder cases in trial. However, because I had met with Radin and Jacobs and drawn up contracts to have Radin finance a motion picture company, I gave the case headline value; the names Robert Evans and The Cotton Club still sell newspapers.
Everything about this movie was a nightmare: the shooting schedule, the unions, the script, and the director, my dear friend, Mr. Coppola. With my personal need to pay attention to every aspect of the picture, I was totally drained, working around the clock, answering a hundred phone calls a day.
During Cotton Club’s production in New York, a celebrated movie star was in town promoting her film. We went to Elaine’s for dinner and then back to my brownstone. It was the first time in more than a month I had the luxury of spending time alone with a woman. Knowing that my dream of The Cotton Club was about to become a reality, I looked at her.
“You’ve never had better timing. You have no idea how much being here tonight with me means.”
It was after midnight. By habit I shut my phones off at midnight unless I’m expecting a specific call, since any call coming in after midnight is never a good one.
Rubbing my back, giving me a caressing massage, she saw the blinking light.
“The light’s blinking.”
“Fuck it . . . don’t stop.”
She continued her massage south. The light was still blinking.
“Pick the phone up, please. The constant blinking makes me nervous. It may be important.”
“It can wait till morning.”
“Please?”
A bit pissed, reluctantly I grabbed the phone. “Yeah?”
“It’s Shapiro. Roy Radin is dead. He’s been found in a deserted canyon near Lancaster.”
I lay there in shock, totally stunned, as if I had been poisoned. Before I could even ask a question, I heard words I will never forget.
“Evans, it’s no longer a missing-persons case. It’s a murder case.”
From that point on, I would always get an emptiness every time I picked up the phone and heard Shapiro’s voice on the other end. He told me that the police would be calling, that they’d want to talk to me, and that we would sit with them while I told them the absolute truth. Although I believed him, I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
I had already talked to the police about three weeks before, when a missing-persons report had been filed by Radin’s family. Shapiro and I had met with Glen Souza, who was the head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s missing-persons bureau. Souza told Shapiro how a lawyer had come out from Miami to meet with him in response to his request to talk to Laynie Jacobs. The lawyer traveled five and a half hours in each direction, only to sit with Souza and tell him that he was Laynie’s lawyer and had nothing to say.
Souza also gave Shapiro some information regarding Roy Radin’s background. He outlined the story of a drug rip-off involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was the first time that I had heard that Laynie Jacobs was married to a major drug dealer. He spoke of Radin’s large usage of cocaine.
The Radin family had hired a private investigator named John O’Grady, who called Shapiro seeking information about his missing client. O’Grady outlined his theory of the case to Bob. He told Bob about Jonathan Lawson—Radin’s secretary. O’Grady reported that Lawson saw Radin leave in a limousine that was headed for La Scala restaurant in Beverly Hills. He was being picked up by Laynie Jacobs. Radin had sensed something was wrong because he asked a former actor, Demond Wilson, to follow him with a gun. But, in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Sunset, Wilson lost sight of the limousine.
O’Grady discovered a man by the name of Tally Rogers, who had previously been convicted of a narcotics offense. He was a known drug dealer who had brought two hundred kilos of cocaine to the West Coast through Laynie. She discovered that those drugs were missing and unpaid for, and that Radin was the suspected culprit. O’Grady concluded that Roy Radin died as a result of a payback for this drug rip-off.
As in many a murder case, the law protects the perpetrator. The government has to build a solid case before they have a chance to indict and then win. That procedure is too expensive to go through without a strong prosecutorial belief of victory. Both politically and financially, the albatross of a hung jury, a mistrial, or an outright loss is a career-breaker to the underpaid prosecutors endeavoring to make their way up the ladder of success.
As the years passed, I paid little attention to the machinations of the government’s investigation of the murder, I had to believe they didn’t have enough evidence to build a case, indict, and win. As Joan Didion reported in the September 4, 1989, issue of The New Yorker:
Around Division 47 of Los Angeles Municipal Court, the downtown courtroom where this spring and summer a preliminary hearing was held to determine whether the charges brought in the 1983 murder of a thirty-three-year-old road-show promoter named Roy Alexander Radin should be dismissed or the defendants should be bound over to superior court for arraignment and trial. . . . “Everybody’s working this one,” a reporter covering the trial said one morning as we stood waiting to get patted down at the entrance to the courtroom, a security measure prompted in part by a telephoned bomb threat, and encouraged by the general wish of everyone involved to make this a noticeable case. “Major money,” he added. . . .
The almost febrile interest in this case derived not from the principals but from what was essentially a cameo role, played by Robert Evans. . . .
Not only was Robert Evans not “on trial” in Division 47 but what was going on there was not a trial—only a preliminary hearing, intended to determine whether the state had sufficient evidence and cause to prosecute those charged, who did not include Evans. . . .
“Mr. Radin was an obstacle to further negotiation involving The Cotton Club,” the prosecuting attorney had argued in conclusion. “The deal could not go through until specific issues such as percentages were worked out. It was at that time that [Laynie Jacobs-] Greenberger had the motive to murder Mr. Radin.”
I was struck by this as a final argument, because it seemed to suggest an entire case based on the notion that an interest in an entirely hypothetical share of the entirely hypothetical profits from an entirely hypothetical motion picture (at the time Roy Radin was killed, The Cotton Club had an advertising poster but no shooting script and no money and no cast and no start date) was money in the bank. All that had stood between [Laynie] Greenberger and Fat City, as the prosecutor saw it, was boilerplate, a matter of seeing that “percentages were worked out.” . . .
The detectives were keeping in touch with motion-picture producers, car phone to car phone, sketching in connecting lines not apparent in the courtroom. “This friend of mine in the sheriff’s office laid it out f
or me three years ago,” one producer told me. “The deal was, ‘This is all about drugs, Bob Evans is involved, we’re going to get him.’ ”
Here we had the rough line for several quite different stories, but it would have been hard not to notice that each of them depended for its dramatic thrust on the presence of Robert Evans.
Unfortunately for me, Didion was right. The night before I was to appear in the Criminal Courts Building of Los Angeles, I couldn’t sleep. I was in turmoil about the words that Shapiro said I must speak. I had searched for every alternative and consulted with friends and leading lawyers about my forthcoming appearance. Deep down I knew that I would be following Shapiro’s advice. But the decision was one of the most difficult I would ever have to make.
Shapiro had had chilling words of caution. “It’s possible, but very unlikely, that the judge will not let you exercise your privilege under the Fifth Amendment,” he said. “If that happens, the judge could find you in contempt of court if you refuse to answer any questions.”
He warned me further that the penalty for contempt could be an immediate jail sentence. I was stunned to learn that by following my lawyer’s advice, I might end up in jail! Shapiro then assured me that he was preparing for that possibility by drawing up a writ of habeas corpus; basically, he explained, if I were jailed, he would go to a higher court with it and get me released pending the review of the judge’s ruling. However, Shapiro did caution me that since it was Friday, if the case dragged on until the afternoon, there might be a problem because of the weekend.
There I was, a witness for events that took place eight years before. Now I was worried about ending up in jail. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, nor could I believe it could happen to anyone.
So there would be no surprises, Shapiro sent a letter to the district attorney (and thereafter released it to the press), indicating that I would follow his advice. I would not testify because the district attorney stated I had not been cleared as a suspect. Until the time that the D.A. had adequate information to clear me, Shapiro indicated, he would not change his opinion.
