"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.
"So this year, on January 18th, the stockholders of this fine company are going to sit back and look at the figures and they're going to learn that Scimitar has earned back only ten million dollars in a six-month showing, and that's a far cry from the thirty million dollars it cost to make, and an even farther cry from the two and a half times we have to earn back because that rotten director talked me into doing it in color, seventy-five million dollars before we're even off the hook. The stockholders are going to jump on that the way Moses jumped on the water, seventy-five million dollars. Will anyone remind them that I've earned ten times seventy-five million dollars for this company since my father died, God rest his soul? Will anyone remind them of Dust, which earned twelve million at a time when twelve million was equal to thirty-five million today? Will anyone remind them of The Peddlers at ten-and-a-half million profit, or Marcia Steele at six million profit, or The Paper Dragon at fourteen million, which book we bought for thirty-five thousand dollars, and which entire picture cost us only eight-fifty to make, will anyone remind them of what Leo Kessler has done, or only of what Leo Kessler has failed to do?
"Oh, let me tell you they are going to remind us of The Paper Dragon if we lose this trial. They are going to remind us that in the past three years we have had only one film that really made any kind of money, and that film was The Paper Dragon, which only enabled us to get rolling on Scimitar. Without Driscoll's book, we'd never have got involved in that lousy desert out there with that Swedish bitch screwing everything in sight, including the Moslem camel boys, and maybe the camels, too, what a production, I wish I'd never heard of it! They are going to remind us that here was a winner, The Paper Dragon, a profit of fourteen million dollars, and due to Mr. Leo Kessler's expert handling of the company, it turns out that this winner, ha! was plagiarized from something that was offered to API back in 1947 and again in 1952, something that is right there in our studio files for Ralph Knowles to look at while he's doing his screenplay. And when we add that to Scimitar and the money that's going down the drain with that one, you can rest assured that Mr. Leo Kessler will be out on the street selling pencils, look what happened to Griffith."
"What happened to Griffith?" Sam asked.
"Birth of a Nation, the biggest movie ever to be made in the history of the business, he dies a pauper in a Hollywood fleabag. Who'll remember Dust when Mr. Leo Kessler is kicked out on his ass?"
"Nobody," Sam said.
"You said it."
"We'll win the case," Sam said. "Don't worry."
"That's good," Kessler said, "but that's not why I sent young snotnose Kahn out to ogle the office girls, and it's not why I asked you to lock the door, either. If we win the case, we don't need locked doors. We'll have the stockholders down on us anyway, but at least I can then say 'What the hell are you yelling about? Who was it who made the money for us to later invest in Scimitar, Sam Goldwyn maybe? It was me, it was me who saw possibilities in The Paper Dragon, it was me who brought it to the screen, it was me who made fourteen million dollars with it, so who has a better right to be daring with a picture that could still maybe earn out the cost once we're through with two-a-days and can go into general release, the Swedish bitch is big box office, and don't forget it.' That's what I can say." He paused. "If we win the case."