‘These little eateries in Chinatown are the only places where you find the real thing. The Breslows took me to eat in a fancy Chink joint on La Cienega last Monday. Waiters in claw-hammer coats, finger bowls with lemon slices, linen bibs to protect your necktie, and everything. But at the end of the line, what have you got?’
Stein’s son shook his head to show that he didn’t know.
‘Chop suey. That’s what you’ve got,’ Charles Stein pronounced sagely. ‘Not these delicate little specialities that the cooks up here on North Broadway know how to put together.’
‘Is Breslow going to make that movie?’ said Billy.
‘He’s spending money on pre-production,’ said his father.
‘I’d like to see one of the majors getting involved in it. If Paramount or Universal put their machine into action… ’
Charles Stein reached for two paper-wrapped fried shrimps and put them in his mouth in rapid succession. He crunched them in his teeth and wiped his hands on his napkin. ‘What do you do, when you are not writing your column in Variety?’ said Stein with his mouth full.
‘But I don’t write any… ’
‘It’s a joke, son,’ said his father wearily. Oh, my god, he had heard about the generation gap but this was the San Andreas fault! ‘If Breslow puts together a halfway decent little film, he’ll take the rough-cut round the world and get back his money four-fold, five-fold, maybe, and still have a piece of the equity. He couldn’t hope for anything like that if he takes this deal to the majors.’
‘Here, dad,’ said Billy. ‘I didn’t know you knew anything about movie financing.’
‘Movie financing is no different from any other kind of financing,’ said Stein. ‘Anyone who knows the difference between red ink and the black kind can understand the movie industry.’
‘You’re seeing a lot of the Breslows lately.’ A girl came into the restaurant. The dining room was large and crowded with local Chinese clients. The waitress seated her in a booth on the far side of the room. Billy Stein admired her tailored suit of cream-coloured silk, its yarn stubbed to make a texture in the weave. On the lapel there was a small gold brooch. The brightly coloured silk neckerchief completed the effect. She slid her large sunglasses up on to the crown of her head in order to scrutinize the menu and then looked at the tiny gold wristwatch on her suntanned wrist.
For a moment there was a pause in the activity. Staff and customers alike watched the beautiful young woman as she produced a packet of cigarettes from her handbag. An elderly Chinese waiter hurried forward to strike a match for her. She was out of place in this run-down restaurant on the wrong side of the freeway. She belonged down in the ‘golden triangle’ or at the Bel Air country club. But this was Los Angeles and even the sight of a radiantly beautiful woman does not halt business for more than a moment or two. The three dark-suited Chinese men in the next booth went back to discussing insurance, the two blue-shirted security men at the corner table took up again the issue of Dodger Stadium tickets, the barman finished mixing four vodka martinis and the Steins went back to the subject of Max Breslow.
‘I’ve been seeing a lot of the Breslows,’ said Charles Stein, ‘because I want to keep an eye on what the little son of a bitch is doing.’
Billy Stein took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. The lenses were corrected for his vision and in spite of the coloured glass they gave him a better look at the young woman across the room. She was stunning, he decided. He flicked a couple of pastry fragments from the front of the faded blue denim jacket and glanced down to be sure that the large gold medallion was visible in the unbuttoned front of his shirt. He was wearing his favourite boots-light brown suede from Italy with criss-cross laces all the way up the front to the knees. The young woman must have noticed the movement for she looked up from the menu. He caught her eye but she looked away quickly. ‘I thought you were getting to like him.’
‘I said he was a good businessman,’ said Charles Stein, while chewing. He waved one of the little minced pork dumplings in a horizontal movement to show that his son had got it wrong. ‘That doesn’t mean I like him.’ He dipped the second dumpling into the dish of soy and put it into his mouth. ‘Means I got to watch out for what he might try to pull.’
‘For instance?’ said Billy.
‘Did it ever strike you, Billy, that if Breslow could get his hands on all the documents we got out of the mine, he wouldn’t need me?’
‘He wouldn’t need any of us,’ said Billy, still giving some of his attention to the woman, who was now ordering a meal. Perhaps she was not waiting for some companion after all, thought Billy. It was unusual for a woman so stylishly dressed to take lunch over here in Chinatown; for her to have come here to lunch alone was unthinkable. Even so…
‘Right,’ said Stein. ‘He wouldn’t need Colonel Pitman, wouldn’t need me. Wouldn’t need any of “the Raiders” for anything at all. And that would suit him very well because he doesn’t enjoy having me looking over his shoulder, and interfering with everything he’s doing and planning.’
‘If he stole your papers,’ said Billy, ‘if he stole them and then didn’t pay you the money you need… ’ He tugged on the gold chain round his neck, and tightened his fist in anger. ‘I’d take that old Mauser pistol you brought home from Germany and blow him away.’
‘Now, now, Billy.’
‘You think I couldn’t do it, dad. You’re wrong. I took that old gun out into the desert last year and spent a little time learning how to handle it. That’s a wonderful pistol, that Mauser. You should see what I can do to a row of cans… ’
‘Breslow ain’t going to stand around like a row of tin cans, Billy. You forget any idea of rough stuff. I don’t even like to hear you talk that way. What would momma have said if she’d lived to hear her son talking like some cheap hoodlum?’
‘OK, dad, but what are you going to do to make sure he doesn’t rip us off?’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking of that, Billy. First, you’ve got to understand how much trouble we’ve gone to in order to prevent Breslow finding out where the files and papers and everything are hidden. It’s essential that we keep the location a secret from him and from anyone associated with him. And that goes double for that Brit!’
‘I forgot that you met the Brit. What was he like?’
‘You missed something, Billy,’ said Stein. He drained the last of the tea into his cup and then waved the teapot lid at the waitress to get more. ‘Boyd Stuart, he calls himself. What kind of faggot name is that? But he’s no faggot when it comes to weighing in; two hundred pounds at least, and I’d guess he knows how to handle himself, and never mind the fancy accent. About forty years old… the sort of face that makes it difficult to guess the age. Cunning! You could see it in his eyes.’
‘Sounds as if you like him even less than you like Breslow,’ said Billy Stein, who had long since grown used to his father’s extreme and unpredictable passions about the people he met.
‘Too Aryan for me,’ said Charles Stein. ‘I saw too many guys like him striding around in the POW cages with SS flashes on their collars.’
‘Did you ever stop to think, dad, that maybe… ’
‘I’m a racist,’ Charles Stein completed the sentence. He took one of the hot towels that the waitress had brought along with a fresh pot of jasmine tea and, lowering his head, buried his face in it for what seemed a long time. Billy Stein looked to see if the wonderful girl was watching his father’s ablutions and was relieved to see that she was giving all her attention to a plate of roast duck. ‘Yeah, I’m a racist,’ said Stein, emerging happily from the towel like a walrus surfacing for a fresh herring. ‘And it’s too late to change me now, Billy, so we’ve both got to put up with it.’