Authors: Jeffrey Robinson
“You were asking about Carlos Vela and the overdue rent for Scarpe Pietrasanta . . .”
“I was?” Gallicano said. “Who's Scarpe . . .”
“Scarpe Pietrasanta.”
“Never heard of him.”
“And Carlos Vela?”
“Yeah, I saw Trump's e-mail. He had to go.”
“I thought you knew that Scarpe Pietrasanta . . . it's a shoe company on the nineteenth floor . . . it's in the report.”
“If it is, I didn't pay attention. Sorry.”
“The owner died and his widow . . .”
“Nope. It's not really my neighborhood. This is what the boss gives you the big bucks for.”
Belasco hung up and looked again at Antonia's e-mail.
Following up on a couple of queries from Anthony
.
He wasn't exactly sure why, but instead of erasing it, he saved it in his hold file.
“Mr. Belasco? A moment of your time, please?”
Mr. Advani was at his door.
“Sir,” Belasco stood up and walked from behind his desk to greet the man. “Please . . .” He extended his hand to shake and then brought him into the office.
Dressed in a dark suit, Advani sat on the couch while Belasco pulled up a chair.
“It was most kind of you to be there when we arrived home on Saturday.”
Out of the corner of his eyes, Belasco noticed that two of Advani's assistants and several bodyguards were waiting just outside the door.
“It was my pleasure, sir. I trust that you and Mrs. Advani are settling in all right.”
“Yes, we are doing very well, considering the amount of flying time we have done in the past few months.”
“It doesn't get any easier,” Belasco said.
“No, it doesn't,” Advani forced a polite smile, then got down to business. “This evening's residents' board meeting.”
“Yes sir.”
“Will you attend?”
“I don't normally, sir. This is the residents' condo committee and unless there is a matter . . .”
“There is,” he said. “It concerns this fool-hearty proposal by Mrs. Essenbach to install a rain forest. Have you ever heard of anything this outlandish?”
The Advanis had all of the fortieth floor and half of the forty-first. Mrs. Essenbach lived above the Advanis on forty-two. A year ago, she'd somehow managed to purchase the other half of forty-one.
Advani was very bitter about losing it, as he himself had tried to top her offer.
“I am aware that this will be discussed,” Belasco said.
“And vetoed,” Advani insisted. “There is no way that this woman should be allowed to disrupt our lives with major construction . . . or should I say, reconstruction . . . in the building. As you are well aware, her plans affect me directly, as her rain forest will be immediately next door to my second floor. Can you imagine the humidity and moisture problems? And the animals? I know she's not permitted to bring animals into the building, but Brazilian jungle animals? Mark my words, she fully intends to sneak them in. Along with insects? This is lunacy.”
Belasco confided in Advani, “I have serious doubts, sir, that this will ever happen.”
“She simply must not be permitted to do this,” Advani said. “A jungle immediately next door to me? I will not permit it. I am prepared to do whatever I must to see that she is stopped.” He stood up, shook Belasco's hand. “I hope I can count on you . . .”
Pierre answered him diplomatically, “I'm here to do whatever I can for the residents.”
“Thank you,” he said, and left.
Returning to his desk, Belasco typed an e-mail to the boss, reminding him of the background in the matter. He ended the memo with, “Mr. Advani assures me he is prepared to do, whatever he must to see that she is stopped. This might present you with the chance to back away and let him play the bad guy.”
An e-mail came back saying, “When it comes to Mrs. Essenbach, I don't need, nor do I want, anyone else to play the bad guy. It is my pleasure.”
Belasco liked that.
Advani and the boss were both taking aim at Mrs. Essenbach. But then, if Dr. Gildenstein was rightâand Belasco had every reason to think he wasâeveryone else on the board was taking aim at her, too.
That provided cover for him.
I get to play the good guy
.
Taking his calendar, he jotted down, “Drinks after Board meeting. 9:30. Gildenstein.”
Above that, he'd noted his three o'clock appointment with Rebecca Battelli and someone from his accountant's office.
He picked up his phone and dialed Scarpe Pietrasanta to remind her.
The number went straight to voice mail.
He hesitated, was about to hang up, but at the last minute left a message. “It's Pierre Belasco. Checking up on you. Bye bye,” and he hung up.
Bye bye?
He winced.
I never say bye bye
.
A
T TEN
to three, Ronnie Rose showed up.
“Accountant here. Delivery.”
“You told me you were going to send one of the juniors.”
“No, you told me to send someone junior. My wife says this company makes sensational shoes and gave me her size, just in case. I'm here at her orders.”
Belasco took Rose outside, turned left on Fifty-Sixth Street, and then into the atrium entrance. On the way to the nineteenth floor, he briefed Rose on Rebecca.
But the door at Scarpe Pietrasanta was still locked.
No one answered when he knocked.
Again, voice mail picked up his call.
“It's Pierre Belasco. I'd promised to drop by at three with my accountant. If you get this message, would you phone me please?”
This time when he hung up he didn't say “bye bye.”
And after waiting in Belasco's office for twenty minutes, Rose left.
A
rriving home after dinner on Saturday night, Zeke had asked Birgitta what she wanted to do.
She'd answered, “I'm staying here for the time being. Until you and I settle terms and I can get myself someplace to live.”
Still in shock that his marriage had evaporated so abruptly, he'd told Zoey and Max, “Not to worry,” and had driven that night to Malibu.
His place was toward the end of Malibu Colony Road. But even as secluded as it was, with Mikey Glass just up the streetâhe warned himself,
no sense announcing I'm home âcause he'll show upâ
Zeke made sure to park in his garage.
Like all the houses along that stretch, Zeke's was perpendicular to the beach. The entrance from the street led into a big living room that ran the length of the house to a glass-enclosed patio where all three sides opened completely onto a mahogany deck. Outside, there were chaise lounges and chairs for a dozen people to sit in the sun or have a meal at the big, pink marble table next to the huge outdoor grill.
The beach was down a few steps.
On one side of the living room there was a large, open kitchen with a dining room next to it. On the garage side, stairs led up to four bedrooms.
The master bedroom overlooked the beach from a patio. There were bedrooms
for Zoey and Max and one for a guest. Above the garage he'd built himself an office with a patio facing the beach.
He'd bought the house while he was still married to Miriam and she'd hired Caesar Dahl to decorate it. Everyone in Malibu was vying for him, but Zeke knew Dylan Tyke, the set designer who was Caesar's lover. After Zeke got Dylan a job working on two pictures with Sean Penn's company, Dylan returned the favor by putting the Gimbels on the top of Caesar's “to do” list.
Unfortunately for Caesar, though, right after he finished the Gimbel beach houseâin seashell whites, sandy off-whites, and Malibu pale blueâhe and Dylan had a fight while at their home in Rio. And Dylan shot him.
Dylan wound up with fifteen years for manslaughter and Zeke's house became famous for being, as the
New York Times Magazine
cover story put it, “The Ultimate Dahl House.”
Savannah had hinted about making some changes, which Zeke refused to let her do. And when Birgitta insisted on decorating the bedrooms and turning his office into a gym for her, Zeke also said no. His excuse was, this is how Caesar Dahl wanted it. But deep down what he really meant was,
this is how Miriam and I liked it
.
M
OST OF
S
UNDAY
morning was spent on his office patio, talking on the phone to Bobby Lerner about Birgitta's divorce demands and going over the details of the Sovereign Shields deal.
“You have a chance to look through their client list?” Bobby asked.
“Yeah, I did. And I know a lot of these guys. Some pretty good athletes, very marketable. But the funny thing is, when I went back to see, you know, historically, who Shields had and who the Trumans had, I found one of my neighbors in New York.”
“Who's that?”
“Tennis player named Carson Haynes. He signed with them in 2001 but got out of the game a few years later. I'll have to ask him if they ever found him any work.”
“Nope,” Bobby said. “Don't remember him.”
“He's married to a gorgeous Cuban girl who does the news in New York.”
“Maybe you should try to sign her.”
“Not a bad idea,” Zeke said. “I see them every now and then at parties. Maybe next time I'll ask.”
When Max and Zoey showed upâ“Why should we have to stay in LA alone with her?”âthe three of them drove halfway back to Santa Monica along the Pacific Coast Highway for a late brunch at Duke's.
Zoey and Max then went home to Miriam's.
On Sunday night, Zeke called Birgitta, but there was no answer at the house and, by then, he was too tired to call her cell.
O
LINDA CAME
to work early Monday morning and was surprised to find Zeke already there.
“Is Madame with you?”
“No,” he said, and changed the subject. “What time is Nobu delivering?”
“At eleven.”
“We'll be eight and we'll eat outside.”
Olinda began preparing the table while Zeke phoned the Colony's gatehouse off the Malibu Road and gave the guards there the names of his guests.
Bobby Lerner was first to arrive. “I stopped by the office to check your pre-nup. Essentially, she gets nothing. A little bit of cash to tide her over, but not much else. Basically, nada.”
“What does ânot much else' mean?”
“Her two cars. Any jewelry you bought her. Possibly the two Julian Schnabel paintings. But I'm not sure about them. Of course, she will ask for the Warhols, but they're safe.”
“There are three Schnabels.”
“Okay, three Schnabels. Her lawyers will make up a list. If she doesn't remember the third one, we won't remind her.”
“What will be on their list?”
“Everything they can think of. Same shit we went through with Savannah, but worse because Birgitta is smarter.”
“And nastier.”
Bobby assured him, “No matter what they put on their list, the pre-nup is what it is. Everything in New York is safe because it's an office. Out here, trust me, we're watertight.”
“How much is a little bit of cash?”
“A lot to her but not a lot to you. What are you worried about?”
“How much?” Zeke demanded.
“No more than two and a half.”
“Fuck me.” Zeke shook his head. “My father earned twenty-eight grand a year. With that he sent me to law school, sent my brother to med school and sent my sister someplace where she could find a doctor husband. How much did your old man earn?”
“Not as much as yours,” he confessed. “But I never had a sister who wouldn't settle for anything less than a doctor.”
Zeke kept shaking his head. “Two and a half? Doesn't that strike you as being obscene?”
“In Chicago, yes. In LA? Imagine life without the pre-nup.”
Lenny Silverberg was the next to arrive.
Now seventy, tall with white hair and a permanent tan, he'd hung up his Wall Street boots more than twenty years ago to become a full-time “dabbler.” He dabbled in film and he dabbled in television, but what he really liked most was to dabble in music. Instead of stocks and shares, he bought songs.
“All I have to do is ask my grandchildren what they're listening to.” His music catalog, supposedly holding nearly seventy-eight thousand songs, was estimated to be the third most valuable in the world, right behind the old Michael Jackson catalog and Paul McCartney's. “Except for some Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen hits, and maybe a little Cole Porter, I don't have to listen to anything I own.”
“How's the Bel Air,” Zeke asked, “and your Mexican singer, whose name I can never remember?”