Passing Through the Flame (4 page)

“And I’ll have an aquavit, George,” Taub said smoothly, deciding that he didn’t like Carbo. The man was clearly a smart-ass. But Hector kept every conceivable liquor and mixer on hand for just such eventualities. Carbo would soon find himself drinking his disgusting little exercise in snottiness.

“Let me come right to the point, Mr. Taub,” Carbo said. “If the purchase goes through, my company will be doing the developing, and Mr. Williams’ bank will do the major share of the financing. So while we technically can’t speak for all the principals involved, our recommendations will probably be decisive.”

“And since you’re the principal interested party on Eden’s end,” Williams said, “the three of us can hack it out together with some assurance that none of us are talking to secondary figures; is that correct?”

“That’s right,” Taub said, with a lot more firmness than he felt. There was something peculiar going on here. These guys had to know that Horst was dead set against the deal, that it was presently a standoff on the board of directors. They were granting him more power than he had. Does that mean that
they
have less power than they pretend? Or what?

The drinks arrived: Williams’ bourbon, Taub’s aquavit bitter-cold in a tiny tulip-shaped glass with bits of herring on the side, and Carbo’s rum mess in a frosted wine glass. Taub watched with a certain satisfaction as Carbo sipped his drink.

Surprisingly, Carbo smiled, gave a little nod of his head. Gak! He actually
liked
the thing!

“As things stand now,” Carbo said, “the deal looks attractive from my point of view, assuming, of course, that we can settle on a reasonable figure. The location may not be as prime as it was when Twentieth sold off the land for Century City, but a development like that right in Hollywood should upgrade the area, provided we take care to provide plenty of free parking. Century City is a good model, but they did make some mistakes. We plan a complex with more appeal to the middle-middle class. A hotel, restaurants and a department store to be sure, but also an amusement area, a large shopping arcade like the Farmers’ Market, perhaps even a swimming pool. Our preliminary studies indicate that the property is large enough to accommodate all that and adequate parking, too.”

Taub savored the icy bite of the caraway-flavored liquor along with the sweetness of Carbo’s words. Carbo was clearly telling him that his development plans were well advanced, that he was hot to get the studio property. If only my end of it was as far along! he thought.

George brought in small bowls of cold gazpacho. With this, Taub had decreed a cold, dry chablis, though something red might have been justified. But they could continue the chablis along with the spinach salad, which would avoid the pretentiousness of serving three wines with a business lunch.

“The financial aspects are a bit more complex,” Williams said. “We want to inflate the price somewhat.”

“Inflate the price?”

“As I said, it’s rather complex, in fact the more complex we can make it, the better. Basically, we want to buy two things; the physical property of the Eden studio and as big a tax loss as we can manage. So we have to agree on two prices: one for the actual studio property and another for the tax loss. Say ten cents on the dollar for the tax loss, seventy-five million for the property, just as working figures. We buy the package as a syndicate and sit on it for a year, during which we can contrive to take the loss, then we separate out the physical property and sell it to Tony at a depressed price, take another loss, then come back in as Tony’s partner in the development project. Everyone does nicely but the IRS.”

“It seems a bit confusing to me,” Taub said, “but I’m no accountant. All I want out of this is the liquidation of Eden Pictures so that Eden Records can get out from under a losing parent company. What money EPI makes out of it is gravy from my point of view, though of course I have no objection to gravy.”

“It sounds as though we’re going to be able to do business,” Williams said. Carbo looked relaxed, pleasantly attentive.

The spinach salad arrived: crisp leaves of spinach barely wilted in hot bacon fat, dressed with the drippings, the crumbled bacon, fresh chives, crumbled hard-boiled egg, and just a dash of tarragon vinegar. Simple, elegant, a nonfilling lead-in to the heavy main course.

“Very nice,” Carbo muttered after his second mouthful, the first verbal attention either of them paid to the food. The conversation lulled.

It was Taub’s move now, and all three knew it. The deal was mutually acceptable, though details would have to be negotiated by lawyers and accountants. Taub’s problem was, that while Carbo and Williams were in a position to make a verbal agreement, he was only number two man at Eden Productions Incorporated, and at the moment controlled only a minority on the board of directors. It was a bad subject to have to broach, and he hoped to do it over the entree, which was really a knockout.

“We understand that there are some problems on your end of things,” Williams said, finishing his salad, leaning back a bit in his chair, sipping his wine.

Carbo swirled the chablis in his glass, smiled, and said, “Perhaps we can help you out there. Our interests, after all, coincide.”

Taub pretended to be concentrating on his wine. It was important not to appear to be in the weak position he was actually in, but there was no denying that he hadn’t figured out a way to ace out Horst. Horst was fighting for his life, he knew it, and he was no patsy. Horst had been around. I can’t afford to turn down any help these guys can give me, Taub thought, but I’ve got to be careful not to appear to need it, or they’ll take me to the cleaners.

Almost as if he were reading Taub’s mind, George appeared with the tornedos Rossini. Pedro has really done it up brown, Taub thought as he inspected the entree. The filets of beef were covered with a half-inch layer of Strasbourg goose liver pate, which in turn was papered with a layer of truffles. The side dishes were cold asparagus vinaigrette, whole broiled mushroom caps, and spaghetti Caruso made with fresh chopped goose liver rather than the conventional chicken liver. Hector had dredged up a dusty bottle of Mouton Rothschild ‘59, and George brought it out in a plain basket with the cobwebs still clinging to the bottle.

Taub had the satisfaction of seeing Carbo’s eyebrows go up a quarter of an inch as the food was served, the wine uncorked, and the aroma hit his nostrils. Williams made no sign of appreciation, but dug in with gusto. This was the strategic moment to drop the other shoe.

“I believe we can be frank with each other,” Taub said. “I can tell you at this point that I’m confident that the details of the deal can be worked out to my satisfaction. However, to be blunt... there are differences on the board of directors....”

Carbo waved his hand deprecatingly. “Believe me, Mr. Taub,” he said, “we understand the situation. As president of Eden Pictures, John Horst would hardly want his record company subsidiary to sell his studio out from under him, and of course he’s fighting the proposal with everything he’s got.”

Taub took a deep sip of wine and a bite of filet. Thank God it was out in the open and hadn’t turned them off.

“Horst is behind the times,” he said. “The film end of Eden is never going to get out of the red because the day of the big studio facility is over. There’s just no way to make enough films that will earn out enough money to justify the overhead of an old-fashioned major studio like Eden. The profits from Eden Records are all that’s keeping EPI afloat. Unfortunately, Horst has a vested interest in keeping the studio operation going—it’s all he knows.”

“What I don’t understand,” Williams said, “is why anyone else would support Horst’s position, when it’s obvious that the studio is running at a built-in loss.”

Taub shrugged. “There’s not much logic in it. Fifteen years ago, Horst took over Eden as a boy wonder. He’s not a boy anymore, and he’s not a wonder anymore, but in fifteen years he’s been able to stack the board in his favor with film people. Eden Records was started as a way of cashing in on a series of big musicals Eden made in the fifties, and it’s always been considered a side venture. Today the major part of EPI’s cash flow still goes through the studio—at a loss—while we bring in all the profit off the rest. The film people on the board are perfectly content to have the record end subsidize the film end forever, and the accounting has been purposely tangled up so that the stockholders would have a hard time figuring out what the real situation is.”

“What a business!” Williams grunted. “I wonder how we managed to turn a profit on most of the films we invested in.”

“You invested in individual films, not in a studio,” Taub said. “That’s how.”

“Well the problem seems simple enough,” Carbo said. “Either the board of directors must be discredited with the stockholders, or Horst must be discredited with the board, leaving you in the dominant position.”

“Preferably both,” Williams said. “As I see it, the key to the situation is Jango Beck.”

“Exactly,” said Carbo.

“Jango Beck?” Taub, who had been sipping at his wine, swallowed half a glassful. A nauseating vortex formed in his gut, the exact feeling of the world being pulled out from under him from the inside that he had felt nearly ten years ago in San Francisco, in the Den, in the darkness, with that scratchy 8mm stag film strobing at him, and Jango standing languidly beside him.

“Why do you want to bring Jango Beck into this?” Taub said. “He’s not the kind of person you want to do business with.”

“Beck swings some weight at Eden, doesn’t he?” Williams said. “As president of Dark Star Records and vice-president of Eden Records, he figures to be on our side, doesn’t he? And he’s known to be a resourceful individual.”

“You could put it that way,” Taub said. If you wanted a fancy way of calling him a dirty son of a bitch, he thought. That film, that goddamn film. What would these two guys say to that? Me being worked over with a riding crop and a dildo by a couple of dykes....

“All I want is to save your ass, Mike,” Jango had said. “That’s why I bought the film. You know what Gruber would’ve done, he would’ve released it. Sooner or later, it would’ve gotten back to your bosses at the station, and you know those hypocritical bastards would’ve fired you for moral turpitude. And then you know how straight your wife is....”

All this oozing out of Jango, but it had been Jango who had taken him to that party and filled him full of coke and whites and wine.

... Blackmail with a smile....

“You could put it that way,” Taub said. “Jango’s a resourceful individual all right. You could also say that he’d sell his grandmother to Saudi Arabian slavers if he could turn a buck in the process.”

“But he would make that profit, wouldn’t he?” Carbo said, stuffing a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth.

“He knows which way the wind blows,” Williams said.

He sure does, Taub thought. The whole blackmail scene had been designed to get Taub to push the first LP by a group that Beck had discovered. To give the album max play, and to talk up the group on the air as much as possible without becoming too obvious. He could also maybe mention the group to whatever connections he had at Warner’s or Eden or Capitol, because Beck was going to cut the LP with his own bread on his own Dark Star label, which he was inventing for the purpose, and he wanted a major to pick it up for distribution. The resultant success of the group would make it “economically feasible” for Beck not to resell the stag film.

But the group that Jango had blackmailed him into pushing had turned out to be the Velvet Cloud He had pushed, and he had mentioned them to Harry Adler at Eden, and Beck had made a deal with Adler, and a year later when the Velvet Cloud was rising like a rocket and Adler needed a number two boy, he had remembered who had turned him on to the hottest thing Eden had a piece of. So Mike Taub had made a reputation as an early discoverer of the Cloud, which had gotten him started at Eden, which had gotten him to where he was today. All because Jango Beck had blackmailed him.

Irene was two wifes ago, and that film, if it still existed, would be good for a few laughs in the circles he moved in now, in fact might be a good advertisement. He and Beck met frequently in the halls of the Eden Tower, had lunch together once in a while, went to each other’s parties, and treated each other like heavyweight gentlemen. It had all come up roses.

So why am I so afraid of getting Jango Beck involved in this deal? Taub wondered. Why am I getting heartburn over perfectly gang-busters tornedos Rossini?

But deep in his fluttering gut, Taub knew why he feared involvement with Jango Beck. Jango had set him up, tied him in a gift package, and mailed him to himself, and he had walked right into it and through it, every step of the way. Sure I lucked out, but if the group had been Joe Schmuck and the Velvet Lox, I would’ve had to push that too, and I might now be ODed in a gutter somewhere or still holding down a crummy DJ job at Kay-Bay instead of sitting in a private dining room atop the Eden Tower eating tornedos Rossini and trying to put together an eighty-million-dollar deal.

And Jango hadn’t cared whether I lived or died. It was only my good luck that I benefited from having been had. Next time out Jango might as soon leave me hitchhiking out of town in a barrel with my mind blown out.

There were too many stories these days linking Jango Beck with too many bad scenes... the Manson Family... the Mafia... cocaine... satanist cults... berserker radical politics... heavy S & M scenes....? The farther Taub could stay from Jango Beck’s affairs, the better he’d like it. Having to share the same corporate umbrella with Beck was more than bad enough.

“Look,” Taub said, “I don’t think you really understand what Jango Beck is like. You can’t trust him further than—”

“Let’s just say that parties I do business with have dealings with Beck too,” Carbo said. “Let’s just say that these interests lead me to believe that there are reasons why Jango Beck will be cooperative in our particular venture.”

He leaned back in his chair. Taub didn’t know exactly what Carbo meant, and he knew for dead certain that he didn’t
want to
know. What Carbo had said sounded bad enough. Taub’s stomach was really churning. He would’ve called for a Bromo now, if that wouldn’t have put him in the position of insulting the food on his own table.