XPD (22 page)

‘I was wondering why you sat so that you can see the door,’ said Billy.

He had hardly spoken the words before his father began to get to his feet. It was something not accomplished without causing considerable disarray to the plates and dishes on the table, and some spilled sauce. Billy wiped up the mess with a handful of paper napkins while his father shook hands, and listened to Breslow apologizing for being so late. ‘And that is my daughter, Mary,’ said Breslow. He indicated the young lady who had so distracted the younger Stein. Her name was really Marie-Louise, for she was named after her mother, but here in southern California she preferred the anglicized version.

‘Mary Breslow,’ she said. Billy Stein thought it was the most beautiful name he had ever heard. He took her hand and lowered his head in one of those hand-kissing gestures that he had copied from an old movie.

In all the flurry of apologies and explanations Mary Breslow found a new opportunity to study Billy Stein and she liked what she saw. This tall-handsome American was everything that California promised. His long dark hair was wavy and squeaky clean, his teeth white and perfect, and his suntan was the sort of dark golden brown that can never be acquired with indoor lamps. The faded denim work clothes, artfully threadbare in places, were tailored to emphasize his slim hips and muscular shoulders. Just in case anyone should mistake him for a manual worker, there was a monogrammed silk shirt, a paper-thin gold wristwatch and the suede high boots. Already she had heard her parents talk about the Steins’ private plane and the big sailing boat they took down the Mexican coast. ‘You’re such a silly girl,’ her father was saying. ‘You must have guessed that this was Mr Stein and his son Billy. You should have looked round to find them and introduced yourself to them.’

She smiled and Billy smiled too. And they all moved away from the chaos of the Steins’ table to another booth. ‘Nothing to eat for me,’ said Breslow hurriedly. ‘But I would like a drink.’ He turned to the waitress. ‘A Bloody Mary with plenty of Worcester sauce.’ Breslow straightened his tie and made sure that his jacket was buttoned. ‘May I speak with you for a moment, Charles?’ he said formally.

‘Why, sure.’ Stein recognized that Breslow’s restless movements and urgent need of a drink signified unusual circumstances. It was a conclusion endorsed by the speed with which Breslow consumed his Bloody Mary.

‘I want to show you something in my car,’ said Breslow.

‘Well, I’m sure the kids won’t mind waiting.’ He smiled at Breslow, for Billy Stein and Mary Breslow were already engaged in earnest conversation about discos in Acapulco.

Charles Stein followed Breslow outside into the street. The pavement was hot underfoot and, once they were out of the air-conditioned restaurant, the smog hurt Stein’s eyes so that he had to wipe them with his silk handkerchief. Breslow led the way down the ramp of the underground garage across the street and said nothing until he came to where his pale blue Mercedes Benz
450
SEL was parked. Stein looked at the car with surprise: the whole right side was smashed in. The doors were both jammed tight into the warped framework of the body and the glass smashed. At the front of the car the right wing had been ripped away to expose the whole of the wheel. Inside the car, the seats were glittering with broken glass, and a bent chromium strip had tangled into the headrest so that the upholstery was ripped through to the interior padding.

‘They tried to kill me, Charles,’ said Breslow.

Stein looked at him before answering. Breslow held his hand to his brow as if reliving the experience. The hand began to tremble.

‘You’d better come back to the restaurant and sit down,’ said Stein. ‘Then we should get you to a doctor and have him check you over.’ Stein looked at the car again. ‘When did this happen?’

Breslow looked at his watch. ‘Not even thirty minutes ago. I took the Ventura Freeway all the way to the Golden State; the Hollywood Freeway was jammed today, I heard on the radio.’

‘It’s Friday, the 13th,’ said Stein. He kicked the tyre to check that it had maintained its pressure.

‘Surely you are not superstitious?’ said Breslow.

‘It can’t hurt,’ said Stein.

Breslow looked at his wristwatch to see if it really was the 13th. ‘They nearly killed me,’ he said again.

‘Well, it can happen to anyone, Max. Come back and have another Bloody Mary and think yourself lucky you weren’t killed. It must have been a truck, eh?’

Breslow took Stein’s arm. ‘You don’t understand, Charles. When I say they were trying to kill me, I mean exactly that. This wasn’t any ordinary traffic accident. This fellow was working with two other drivers: one boxed me in, and the other one edged me over into the emergency lane and then tried to crush me against the median wall. Behind me, I had a big panel truck hitting my rear fender as I tried to slow.’

‘Max. Are you sure you’re not imagining all this? Some of these guys go crazy on the freeway. It’s easy enough to mistake some drunken salesman or some hyped-up kid for something else.’ Stein took Breslow by the arm but Breslow’s gasp of pain made him release his grip.

‘I hurt my arm struggling with the steering wheel,’ said Breslow.

Stein ran his hand over the car damage. ‘Look at that!’

‘They weren’t kids or salesmen, Charles.’ Breslow trembled again. ‘You can see the size of the truck from the way my top is damaged.’ He fingered the torn metal of the Mercedes’ roof. ‘He left some red paint behind, look.’

‘You’re a tough son of a bitch, Max,’ said Stein in an effort to cheer him up. ‘You kept behind the wheel and held on, eh? I don’t know how you got this heap all the way from the Ventura intersection without a tow truck.’ Stein laughed and voiced his secret thoughts. ‘Only a German would arrive apologizing for being late for lunch after that rumble.’

Max Breslow tightened his grip on Stein’s arm. ‘Mary mustn’t know, Charles, my friend. She would be sure to tell her mother. You must promise me help in getting her away from the restaurant. If she comes down here to collect her mother’s car,’ he nodded to indicate the yellow Chevette, ‘she’ll be sure to recognize my Mercedes.’

‘Come and have a drink, Max.’ Stein sneezed as the smog got to his sinuses.

‘It was the Britisher who did it, Charles. I’m certain of that.’

‘Why?’

‘They are desperate to get the documents. They’ll let nothing stand in their way. We must be clever, Charles, or they will kill the two of us, and there will be no money for anyone.’

‘I’ll tell the kids that something important has turned up,’ said Stein. ‘Let’s tell Mary that I am borrowing the Chevette. That way she’ll have no reason to come in here.’

‘How will she get home?’

‘Billy will take her home. He’ll love posturing and posing in that goddamned T-bird.’

‘It’s not parked down here?’

‘It’s only old dudes like us who pay for anything these days,’ said Stein bitterly. ‘Billy’s left his car at the sidewalk, just the way he always does.’

Chapter 18

Max Breslow looked around the Stein home with interest. In keeping with Stein’s theories about investment, his house was furnished with valuable antique furniture. Most of it had been selected for him by a dealer who had benefited from short-term loans guaranteed by Stein against the surety of the dealer’s stock. Charles Stein had little or no idea of the historical background to his furniture and carpets – a discovery which distressed Max Breslow when he tried to strike up a conversation about it.

The two men settled themselves into the comfortable armchairs in the large lounge which commanded a view across the city. Breslow noted the grand piano in one corner of the room.

‘Do you play the piano?’ he asked politely.

‘My wife insisted I get it for Billy, but that kid’s got a tin ear.’

Breslow nodded sympathetically and looked at the piano upon which a dozen or more framed photos vied for Lebensraum. Stein’s late wife was given pride of place there; framed in fine silver, she surveyed the unchanged room with a calm smile. On the rare occasions when Charles Stein and his wife had exchanged harsh words, she had told him that he would be better off and happier with a housekeeper than with a wife who slaved for her children, spent her life over the stove and was never appreciated. During his wife’s lifetime, Charles Stein had always denied that possibility, but the event had proved her right. He was happier with the housekeeper, who kept to her small apartment, and did not complain when he stayed up late reading the share prices or writing up his large collection of postage stamps. And the housekeeper did not want displays of affection from him, neither did she want to dress up and go to charity functions, nor ask why Billy had never had a bar mitzvah, nor tell Charles Stein that he would be happier if he lost fifty pounds in weight.

The housekeeper brought a tray of tea and his favourite kind of fancy cakes. ‘Did you notice all the flowers, Mr Stein? There was a special; I bought almost twice as many for only two dollars over what we regularly spend.’

Stein grunted. He did not much like flowers but he was prepared to regard the purchasing of them within the context of the overall upkeep of the house. ‘Maybe you’d like a real drink?’ he asked Max Breslow. The housekeeper stood, teapot in hand, waiting for the reply, but Breslow shook his head and she poured tea for both men.

‘I’ll tell you this, Charles,’ Max Breslow began after the woman had left them, ‘we’ll have to move fast or we’ll get nothing out of all this except an early death.’

‘You look much better now, Max,’ said Stein. ‘The colour is coming back into your face.’ It was a charitable remark to make about the pale visage of his guest.

Breslow smiled. ‘Do you mind if I smoke, Charles?’ When Stein shrugged to show his agreement, Breslow reached inside his blue blazer for a leather case. Stein waved away the offer of one of the small, dark, evil-smelling cigars which Breslow lit with studied care.

‘We must make all the material public,’ said Breslow. ‘I’ve thought about it a great deal, and consulted with a copyright specialist …’ He raised the hand holding the cigar, flattening the palm towards Stein. ‘Don’t worry, Charles. The discussion was all kept on a hypothetical level: no names, no subject matter, nothing to associate it with the movie. But …’ He paused while he took a long inhalation of the cigar and blew smoke. Stein remained impassive. ‘But,’ continued Breslow, ‘the fact is that we need to establish a clear claim to our rights in this material.’

‘It’s not our copyright,’ said Stein. ‘This stuff originated from all kinds of long-dead people: Dr Morell, Hitler’s adjutants, the secretaries, translators.’

‘Long dead, you say?’ said Breslow with a smile. ‘Those are the operative words. In law, as I understand it, copyright can be communicated by the transference of a document in some privileged way.’

‘Never mind all that legal double-talk,’ said Stein. ‘I went all through that kind of monkey business back in 1950. Get to what’s on your mind.’

‘You have to make all your material available,’ said Breslow. ‘It’s as simple as that. Until now we’ve continued in good faith but you’ve got to release the more sensitive material. At least release it to the translators, so that I can show it to publishers and film people and so on.’

‘Nothing doing,’ said Stein flatly.

Breslow leaned over until he was almost lying flat upon the sofa and, with the tips of his fingers, took hold of a brass ashtray. With difficulty, he straightened up and knocked a little ash into it before putting it at his elbow on a small side table. ‘We have a good script. I’m delighted with the young director I met last week and he’s free to start immediately. The executive producer I’ve used on the last two films is lining up studio space here in the city, and we are proposing to do a few outdoor sequences at a movie ranch out in the desert. The film will soon be starting, Charles. Now comes the time for our next move.’

‘Let’s see the way it goes for a week or two. I’ve never promised anything – I just said I’d think about it.’

‘First it was, let’s see if we can get the finance for a movie. Then it was, let’s see if we can get a satisfactory script. It’s been, let’s see, let’s see, let’s see, all down the line, Charles. Now we really have to get moving.’

‘There are a few ends still to be tidied up,’ said Stein. ‘I’d want to meet this director, take another look at the script and look over the contracts concerning the finance.’

‘Shall I tell you something, Charles? I suspect that the truth is that you don’t
want
to publish these papers. You’ve had these documents for so long now that they have become a part of your life. You talk of them in the same way that you speak of your stamp collection. You’ll never sell your stamps – you told me that last Monday – and I’m beginning to suspect that you are equally reluctant to lose possession of these papers.’

‘Maybe there’s some truth in that,’ conceded Stein.

‘In the ordinary way, perhaps it wouldn’t matter much,’ said Breslow. ‘But we are playing for big stakes, my friend. Who knows what money can accrue from a careful and skilful utilization of this fine asset? But make no mistake about the price of failure.’ Breslow rubbed his arm. ‘Isn’t it enough for you that the British tried to kill me today? How long do you think it will be before they make such an attempt upon your life too? How long before they decide to kill your Billy? Or my girl Mary? Ask yourself all this while you are demanding more time to think about the script and the director and the financing of the film.’

‘I’ll have to get some protection for Billy,’ said Stein. He wiped his mouth with his flattened hands. ‘I’ll have to get on to one of these security outfits and have them put a twenty-four-hour guard on him.’

‘Don’t fool yourself,’ said Max Breslow. ‘If something happened to your Billy I would blame myself if I hadn’t warned you that these people are professional killers. These are not muggers looking for the price of a few joints; they are killers … A couple of guys from a security outfit, you say … The sort of highly trained men that governments employ would kill them without a moment’s thought or hesitation. No, you’ll have to do better than that if you are to sleep at night without Billy on your mind.’