The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [187]
“It was when Viktor died that I changed my mind. He was the oldest dog in Hollywood, a veteran even for a borzoi, but he had been blind for years and barely moved from his favorite spot on the porch. Of course it was a tragedy because he was one of our last few links with Misha. But for Azaylee it was a disaster. We scoured the country for another borzoi and finally he arrived: six months old, a golden coat like Viktor, and ready to play. Rex was an instant hit but he wasn’t Viktor, we all knew that. And when I saw that look creeping back into Azaylee’s eyes, that feyness, the sliding away again, I called Dick and said that maybe he had better do those tests after all.”
Hollywood
C. Z. was waiting for Dick to arrive from the studios with the day’s rushes. They had got into the habit of showing them at his house late at night rather than at the studio, partly because he enjoyed Dick’s company but mostly because it brought some life to his big, empty house.
It was ten o’clock and the sky outside the tall windows overlooking the perfect gardens was dark: He might have been anywhere in the world, a well-dressed anonymous person in a polished anonymous room in some anonymous city. It was eight years since he had beaten Mel Schroeder at his own game and ended up as owner of a couple of ramshackle barns on Cahuenga with a movie camera and a few reels of film, and in that time he had become the legendary C. Z. Abrams the movie mogul, up there with Goldwyn and Zukor, Fox and Warner. But in his heart he was still Zev Abramski, a lonely man. So lonely that he needed Dick Nevern’s company and the pressure of a twenty-hour work day to fill his time, and then, if he was lucky, he would be so exhausted he might catch four hours of dreamless sleep before he faced another day.
He had seen from Mel Schroeder’s eyes that he’d thought he had a real sucker there, sitting waiting for him on the veranda of the Hotel Hollywood sweating in his black pawnbroker suit and stiff white collar, embarrassed by his guttural English and his foreign look. But Schroeder hadn’t known about the anger and despair that had kindled a fire in him, and Schroeder was only the first of a dozen men to feel the razor edge of Zev Abramski’s ambitious mind cut them to the ground.
With his usual caution, learned through many hardships, Zev had done a little checking of Schroeder and discovered that he had already sold four phony “studios” to gullible men via his ads in small local journals in one-horse townships across the country. Discouraged, he had decided not to meet Schroeder after all, but then he had looked into things a little deeper and changed his mind. Schroeder’s scam was to show a remote piece of land he had bought for a few dollars because there were no roads and it was virtually inaccessible. He would explain that everyone was out on location in the desert or at the beach and that he conducted all his business from his office in Hollywood, and that’s why there was only one camera around and no people. He displayed the reels of film and pointed out the virtues of the tottering wooden buildings that normally housed cattle or hay that he grandiosely called studios. Next he brought out the fraudulent balance sheets for Schroeder’s Movie Studios showing sales of hundreds of two-reelers to mythical distributors across the nation, with a tidy sum of one hundred thousand dollars in profit plus seventy-five thousand still owed the company. And no nasty red figures in the debits column.
“All bought and paid for by yours truly,” he had told Zev, mopping his sweating brow as they strode around the hot, dusty acres, “and it’s a going concern; five movies in production today and more scheduled. My trouble is I can’t take the climate.” He thumped his chest. “The old ticker, y’see. Doctor says I must get back East where it’s cooler—and pronto. If not, I’m a dead man.” He winked at Zev, pale and icy-eyed in his hot black suit. “With them odds, who am I to say no?” He stared at him silently for a moment and then he said, “I like you and I’m gonna make