Breslow picked up a stainless-steel letter-opener, toyed with it for a moment and looked at Stein. ‘It was a sad business with Mr MacIver,’ said Breslow. He said it with the same sort of clinical indifference with which an airline clerk comforts a passenger who has lost his baggage.
Stein remembered MacIver with a sudden disconcerting pang of grief. He recalled the night in 1945 when MacIver had crawled into the wreckage of a German Weinstube. They were in some small town on the other side of Mainz. The artillery had long since pounded it flat, the tanks had bypassed its difficult obstacles, the infantry had forgotten it existed, the engineers had threaded their tapes all through the streets, and left ‘danger booby traps’ signs in the rubble. Stein remembered how MacIver had climbed down from their two-and-a-half-ton winch truck saying that goddamned engineers always put those signs on the booze joints so they could come back and plunder it in their own sweet time. Stein had held his breath while MacIver climbed over the rubble and across the wrecked front parlour of the wine bar. For a moment he had been out of sight but soon he reappeared, flush-faced and grinning in triumph, fingers cut on broken glass and sleeve dark and wet with spilled red wine that shone like fresh blood. He was struggling under the weight of a whole case of German champagne.
MacIver had eased a cork and it had hit the roof of the cab with a noise like a gunshot. They poured it into mess tins and drank the fiercely bubbling golden champagne without talking. When they had finished it, MacIver tossed the empty bottle out into the dark night ‘It’s a long time between drinks, pal.’
‘For an officer, and a flatfoot, you’re a scorer,’ said Stein.
It was a hell of a thing for an officer to do. A long time between drinks: he could never hear that said without thinking of MacIver.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Breslow politely. His head was cocked as if listening to some faint sound. Stein realized that he’d spoken out loud.
‘It’s a long time between drinks,’ said Stein. ‘It’s an American saying. Or at least it used to be when I was young.’
‘I see,’ said Breslow, noting this interesting fact. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘OK,’ said Stein. ‘Rum and Coke if you’ve got it.’ Breslow rolled his swivel chair back towards the wall so that he could open the small refrigerator concealed in his walnut desk.
‘It’s darned hot in here,’ said Stein. ‘Is the air-conditioner working?’ His weight made him suffer in the humidity and now his hand-stitched suit showed small dark patches of sweat.
Breslow set up paper napkins and glasses on his desk top and put ice into one of them before adding the rum and Coke. He did it fastidiously, using metal tongs, one cube at a time. For himself he poured a small measure of cognac, without ice.
Stein had been nursing a floppy straw hat. As he eased himself slowly from the low armchair to get his drink from the desk, he tossed his hat on to a side table where film trade magazines had been arranged in fan patterns.
He didn’t get his drink immediately; going to the window he looked out. Melrose came close to the freeway here in one of the older districts of the city. This office was an apartment in a two-storey block repainted bright pink. Across the street brick apartment buildings and dilapidated little offices were defaced with obscene Spanish graffiti and speared with drunken TV antennae, and the whole thing was birdcaged with overhead wires. The freeway traffic was moving very slowly so that the Hollywood hills beyond wobbled in a grey veil of diesel fumes. Stein pulled his sunglasses from his face and pushed them into the top pocket of his jacket. He blinked in the bright light and dabbed his face with a silk handkerchief. ‘Damned hot.’ The sun was blood red and its light came through the slats of the Venetian blind to make a pattern across Stein’s wrinkled face. It was always like this the day after a bad storm.
‘I’ve spoken to the janitor,’ explained Breslow. ‘The repairmen are working on the air-conditioning. Yesterday’s heavy rain got into the mechanism.’
‘MacIver owed me money,’ said Stein, ‘a lot of money. He gave me a part of his interest in your movie as surety.’
‘I hope you took the precaution of having him put that in writing,’ said Breslow.
‘Right,’ said Stein. He did not enlarge upon it; it was best to keep such untruths as brief as possible.
‘We are not even in the pre-production stage at present,’ said Breslow. He put the cognac to his mouth but it did no more than moisten his lips. ‘It is possible still that we will decide not to make the film. Unless we make it, there will be no money.’
‘All MacIver’s war experiences, was it?’
‘Together with some anecdotes he gathered from his comrades, some guesses about what went on in high places, and some creative writing concerning MacIver’s intrepid contribution to the Allied victory.’
Stein took his drink from the desk and tasted it before adding another measure of Coke. Then he looked at Breslow who was still enjoying his own description of MacIver’s manuscript
‘The movie-going public is always interested in such stories,’ explained Breslow, ‘A little gang of rear-echelon soldiers stealing everything they could lay their hands on.’ His eyes were still on Stein and he smiled again. ‘Crooks in uniform: it’s an amusing formula.’
Stein’s hands went out with a speed that was surprising in such an overweight physique. His huge fingers and thumb grasped Breslow’s shirt collar with enough force to rip the button loose. He shook Breslow very gently to mark his words. ‘Don’t ever act disrespectful to me or to MacIver or any of our friends, Breslow. We don’t let strangers discuss what we did back in 1945. We left a lot of good buddies out there in the sand and the shit and the offal. I buried my kid brother on the battlefield. We stumbled on a little good fortune… that’s the way it goes. The spoils of war… we were entitled. You just remember that from now on.’ He released his grip and let Breslow straighten up and adjust his collar and tie.
‘I’m sorry to have offended you,’ said Breslow, with no trace of regret. ‘I understood you to say that you were not one of Mr MacIver’s comrades.’
Stein realized that he had been deliberately provoked into revealing more than he’d intended. ‘The spoils of war,’ said Stein. ‘That’s what it was.’
‘No offence intended,’ said Breslow, with a humourless smile. ‘You can call it anything you want; it’s quite all right with me.’
Disarrayed by his exertions, Stein hitched up his trousers and tucked in his shirt with a practised gesture. ‘Were you in the war, Mr Breslow?’
‘I was too young,’ said Breslow regretfully. ‘I spent the war years in Canada working for my father.’
‘Breslow,’ said Stein. ‘That name comes from Breslau, the German town, right? Were your folks German?’
‘What do I know about towns in Germany!’ said Breslow in a sudden burst of irritation. ‘I am a US citizen. I live here in California. I pay my taxes and stand at attention when they play the national anthem… What do I have to do? Change my name to Washington DC?’
‘That’s a good joke,’ said Stein, as if admiring an expensive watch. He took the Coca-Cola can and shook the last few drops into his glass before draining it.
‘You’ll get your money, Mr Stein,’ said Breslow. ‘Providing of course that you furnish the necessary agreement signed by Mr MacIver. We’ll not wait for probate if that’s what’s worrying you.’ Breslow sipped a little of his cognac. ‘There is a lot of money available to buy the documents Mr MacIver spoke of.’
‘What documents?’
‘Secret documents… about Hitler. Surely you’ve heard of them.’
‘I might have heard rumours,’ admitted Stein.
‘A great deal of money,’ said Breslow.