The Paper Dragon (25 page)

"I understood you earlier to say you were
denying
my motion."

"If that's what I indicated… no, Mr. Willow, I meant that I'm reserving judgment on it."

"Thank you, your Honor."

McIntyre looked up at the wall clock. "It seems to be the end of another day," he said. "So unless there's anything further, we'll recess until tomorrow morning at ten o'clock."

Thick white snowflakes were swirling in the air when Sam Genitori and his assistant came out of the courtroom. A cover of white clung to rooftop and pavement, hushing the city, and snow shovels scraped on courthouse steps and sidewalk, a rasping steady counterpoint to the metallic jingle of skid chains on distant streets. Genitori put on his hat, ducked his head against the fierce wind, and stepped into the vortex of flying flakes. Beside him, Michael Kahn sucked in a draught of cold air and shouted over the wind, "I
love
snow, I love snow." Sam lost his footing on the slippery steps at that moment and would have gone tumbling to the sidewalk below were it not for Kahn's suddenly supporting arm. The assistance annoyed Sam more than Kahn's redundant confession had — "I love snow, I
love
snow" — an emotional involvement Sam could neither share nor understand. Sam detested snow. It was cold and wet and damned uncomfortable, and besides it caused accidents and traffic jams. Leo Kessler was waiting for him uptown, and he didn't need a snowstorm to delay his arrival. He looked up, squinting into the wind, and saw the chauffeured limousine across the street, on Duane. "There it is," he said to Kahn, and walked swiftly toward the big car, its roof and hood covered with snow, its sides a wet shining black. The chauffeur was reading a copy of
Mad Magazine
; he barely looked up when Sam opened the back door. Kahn climbed in, and the chauffeur reluctantly put aside the magazine. Then, with the unerring instinct of all servants everywhere, he lunged straight for the jugular.

"This snow'll make us late," he said.

"Just get there as fast as you can."

"580 Fifth?" the chauffeur asked.

"No, Malibu Beach," Sam said dryly.

"By way of Santa Monica or the freeway?" the chauffeur asked, deadpan.

"580 Fifth," Sam answered, demolished by superior wit. He stretched his legs, took off his hat, patted his thinning hair into place, and then tilted his head back against the cushioned seat.

"Were you impressed?" Kahn asked.

"By whom?"

"The witness."

The car was in motion. Sam always felt a bit queasy in a moving vehicle, a reaction he attributed to his ulcer, or perhaps only to his proximity to Kahn, who seemed to be occupying a great many moving vehicles with him of late. He was constantly amazed by the fact that Kahn was not related to someone in the company. He could not imagine how anyone as imbecilic as this young man had ever managed to get through law school, no less become an employee of the firm, all without being someone's nephew. "The witness left me cold," he said, and belched.

"Excuse
me
" Kahn supplied.

"Do me a favor," Sam said. "When we get to Leo's office, shut up."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean shut up. Don't talk about the witness, don't talk about the case, just shut up and listen. You'll learn a great deal about law and high finance and tits."

"I know all about those already," Kahn said, offended.

"You can
never
know all about tits," Sam answered. "There's always something new to learn. The subject is inexhaustible."

"And I don't happen to like that expression," Kahn said. "I
don't
happen to like that expression," he repeated.

"Tits?"

"Yes, that."

"Did the witness impress
you
?" Sam asked, shrugging.

"Yes."

"In what manner?"

"I think he was telling the truth," Kahn said. "I think Driscoll
did
steal the play. Why else would Willow have moved for dismissal on a jurisdictional technicality? I'll tell you why. He knows his man stole the play, and he's afraid to put him on the stand."

"That's ridiculous," Sam said. "Willow was only trying to save time, energy, and money. If he could have got the case kicked out of court today, that would have been the end of it forever."

"I still think Driscoll's guilty. And I wouldn't be surprised if Ralph Knowles dipped into the company files, too, when he was writing the movie."

"My young friend," Sam said, "have you ever been thrown out of a seventh-floor window?"

"What?"

"All you have to do in the presence of Leo Kessler is suggest —
suggest
, mind you — that API was in any way a party to this plagiarism, and I can guarantee he will hurl you seven stories to the street below, where you will be crushed by oncoming traffic."

"Then you do think it was plagiarism?"

"Who said so?"

"You just called it plagiarism, didn't you?"

"I should have said
alleged
plagiarism," Sam amended, and then shrugged again.

"Well, what
is
your position?" Kahn asked.

"My position is the position Artists-Producers-Interna-tional pays me to maintain. There was no plagiarism involved here, neither on the part of James Driscoll nor on the part of any person or persons employed by API. That is my position."

"That's your
official
position."

"That's my
only
position."

"But how do you feel personally?"

"I feel fine, thanks, except for my ulcer."

"You know what I mean."

"Sure, I know what you mean."

"Well?"

"There was no plagiarism," Sam said flatly.

They had come uptown past Canal Street, where the big black limousine had nosed its way silently through the truck traffic heading for the bridge, making a sharp left turn onto Third Avenue. The Chinese banks and groceries had given way to the wholesale clothing and lighting fixture stores, the fleabag hotels and flophouses only sparsely represented until just now, when they suddenly appeared like dim gray specters in the blinding snow. Derelicts shuffled along the sidewalks here and lay in gutters and doorways, making Sam sick just to look at them. His most vicious nightmare was one in which he suddenly woke up divested of his law degree and his position with API, his house in Massapequa gone, his boat scuttled, everything he had fought for in the past twenty years vanished with the night to leave only a trembling immigrant Italian struggling with the language, selling chestnuts on a Bronx street corner for five cents a bag. He awoke from this dream each time in a cold sweat, the smell of roasting chestnuts in his nostrils, and each time he held his hands out in front of his face, peering at them in the dark, certain that the fingers would be stained brown from the juice of the nuts. His wife would say, "Go to sleep, Sam, you had a bad dream," but he would lie awake trembling in the dark, terrified by his near miss — they had almost taken it all away from him, they had almost closed the jaws of the trap before he'd had a chance to scurry out of it. He could not account for the basis of this dream, since he had never in his life sold chestnuts in the Bronx. Nor, for that matter, had he ever even
lived
in the Bronx. Moreover, neither of his parents were immigrants, and they had never been really poor. The dream-trap was more like a race memory that could be traced back to a grandfather he had never known — and yet his grandfather hadn't sold chestnuts, either, so what the hell could it be? His grandfather had come to this country when he was twenty-one years old, after studying economics at the university in Milan. When he arrived here, he had been given a job immediately in a bank on the Bowery, where he dealt mostly with Italian-speaking immigrants. The job paid a good salary each week, and he had managed to save enough for the purchase of the house in Massapequa, which had since been passed down to Sam's father and recently to Sam himself. So what was this business with the chestnuts? And why did the sight of all these ragged bums all over the sidewalk trouble Sam so badly?

He was grateful when Cooper Union appeared on the left of the limousine. In the small park outside the school, a coed in a black hooded parka, her legs crossed, leaned forward eagerly to divulge some secret of the universe to a budding young artist or engineer, and another girl, wearing a paint smeared smock and lighting a cigarette, came through the glass-paneled doors of the building, looked up at the sky, and sniffed the snow, ahh, to be young again.

Sam took in a deep breath. The Bowery and its dregs were falling behind the car, the hock shops appeared now like glittering toadstools. Beside him, he could smell the always-present slightly sour smell of Michael Kahn, as though someone had recently burped him but neglected to wipe his lips afterwards. Sam closed his eyes, and remained silent for the rest of the trip uptown.

There were wags in the industry, as there will be wags in any industry, who were of the opinion that the initials API did not really stand for Artists-Producers-International but stood instead for Asses, Pricks, and Imbeciles. If such was truly the case, the facade of the organization revealed neither ineptitude nor villainy, but seemed instead to echo a benign and somewhat informal attitude toward crass commercialism. The New York API offices covered the entire sixth, seventh, and eighth floors of the Longines-Wittnauer Building at 580 Fifth Avenue, just next door to Brentano's. The decorating scheme of the offices had been carefully calculated to disarm by none other than Mrs. Leo Kessler herself, better known in the industry as Katie Kessler, whose credit card — SET DRESSER: KATRINA L. KESSLER — had flashed from a hundred or more silver screens in the past two decades. To her further credit, the offices seemed to relax all visitors immediately, setting the tone for businesslike discussions in an atmosphere as informal as the living room of a Bel Air ranch. There were some who preferred the mid-Victorian decor of MCA's offices, with its old English prints in the elevators, and its green leather furniture, but Sam Genitori never failed to experience a slight lessening of tension the moment he stepped off the elevators here, and he silently thanked Katie each time.

"He's waiting for you," the seventh-floor receptionist said.

"What time is it?" Sam asked.

"Almost five. He said to send you right in."

"Is he alone?"

"Myrna's taking dictation."

"You'd better buzz him," Sam said.

The receptionist made no comment. She lifted the phone at her elbow, dialed a number, and waited. "Mr. Genitori is here," she said, and paused. "Yes, sir, right away." She hung up, nodded, and said, "You can go right in."

"Thank you."

"How's the trial going?" she asked.

"Nicely," Kahn replied.

"Mr. Genitori?" she asked, ignoring Kahn.

"Nicely," Genitori said, and walked immediately down the long corridor, followed by Kahn, who was beginning to sulk. Halfway down the hall, they passed a harried-looking brunette with a steno pad.

"He's waiting for you," she said.

"We know, Myrna."

"How's the trial going?"

"Nicely," Sam said, and glanced at Kahn, who said nothing. Kressler's office was at the end of the hall. Sam knocked on the door before opening it, and waited for Leo to shout his customary "Enter!" to which he customarily replied, "All ye who abandon hope here," and which customarily went clear over Leo's head, as it did now.

"What the hell does
that
mean?" Kessler asked.

"It's an old Milanese adage," Sam said, and started to close the door behind him.

"Michael, get lost someplace, will you?" Kessler said.

"Me?"

"Yes, I have something to discuss with Sam personally, okay? That's a good boy."

"If this relates to the trial," Kahn said, "I think…"

"Go get a cup of coffee, huh?" Kessler said, and waved him out impatiently. The sulking look on Kahn's face gave way to one of crumbling petulance. Sam was certain he would begin crying before he reached the corridor. He ushered Kahn out and closed the door behind him.

"Lock it," Kessler said.

Sam locked it. "Mr. President," he said, "I wish to report that the Russians have just bombed San Francisco."

"Very funny," Kessler said. "Someday you'll learn that the motion picture business is not funny."

"What
is
the motion picture business, Leo, if not funny?"

"The motion picture business is a vast fantasy surrounded by twat," Kessler said, "but not funny, not funny at all. How's the trial going?"

"All right."

"Will we win it?"

"I hope so."

Kessler rose from his desk suddenly. He was sixty-two years old, a tall slim man who wore a black suit each and every day of the week, augmented by black shoes and socks, black tie, white shirt, and generally a vest of either red or yellow corduroy with brass buttons. He was partially bald, and his nose was either naturally hooked or had once been badly broken, so that his profile had the curvilinear beauty of a modern piece of sculpture, rounded flesh sweeping into the arc of nose and jutting jaw, fierce eyes glinting from beneath black bushy eyebrows. He paced the office with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, the thumbs overhanging, his shoulders hunched as though he were balancing an invisible load, his step springy and disjointed. He neither looked at Sam nor acknowledged his presence, speaking as though dictating a memo to a recording machine or explaining a particularly difficult dream to an unresponsive analyst.

"
Scimitar
," he said, "I wish I'd never heard of it. Thirty million dollars to make, plus all the trouble later with that bastard Nasser and his filthy Arabs, they should all drop dead from constipation. Thirty million dollars, and it's playing hard-ticket in twelve American cities, and with the business we're doing we won't get back that thirty million for the next thirty years, is it any wonder the stockholders are a little nervous? A
little
nervous, who's kidding who? There's a stockholders' meeting next month, January the 18th, to be exact, and I know just what's going to be proposed at that meeting because it was proposed at last year's meeting while we were still pouring money into that lousy
Scimitar
, even before Mr. Nasser started up with us, that bastard should rot in his grave. It was proposed at last year's meeting, January the 12th, to be exact, that Leo Kessler, whose father happened to found Kessler's Inc. — before we got so cockamamie fancy with all the tax dodges and the Artists-Producers-Inter-national — it was proposed at last year's meeting that Leo Kessler step down as head of studio operations, mind you this was
before
the movie opened,
before
it started losing money even in Los Angeles, where they'll go see
anything
.