The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [216]
“We arrived back in California feeling wonderful. Zev was rested and completely revitalized. After the war when the full horrors of the concentration camps were revealed, he had donated large sums of money to international charities and had given most of his time to supporting them. Now he said he was going to get back into the business again. He was going to take back control of Magic and run it his way.
“The telephone rang as we walked through the door and I picked it up and said hello.
“’Matiushka, ‘she said, ’ it’s Azaylee.” It was the first time she had called herself that in twelve years, and I knew it meant trouble.
“We went over to see her right away. She was sitting on a sofa with her legs tucked under her, twisting a handkerchief in her hands, and she looked pale and shrunken and afraid.
“She stared at Zev as if he were a ghost. ‘You don’t look ill!’ she exclaimed.
“‘Of course I’m not ill,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’ve never felt better in my life.’
“‘Oh, thank God!’ A look of relief replaced the tension on her face and she smiled. ‘After what Jakey was saying I thought you were dying….’
“He sat beside her and took her hand. ‘And what is Jakey saying?’
“’That you are getting old, that your era has come and gone, that it’s time for new blood in Magic’s veins. He said you’ve slowed down, that you have some mysterious illness no one wants to talk about. I overheard it at a poker game he held here a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the usual sort of poker game. There were important men there, money men….’ She looked at him, as clear-eyed and alert as I’d ever seen her, and said, Oh, my God, Zev, now I see what he’s doing, now I see why he’s telling everyone you are sick…. He wants Magic!’
“Word flew around Hollywood that C. Z. Abrams was ill. He hadn’t gotten where he was in the business without making enemies, and now they were snapping at his heels like a pack of wolves eager to snatch the prey from their rival. Jakey had played a dirty maneuvering game. Magic was a corporation with millions in assets, mostly their lot on Cahuenga, but as their movies—and the business—got bigger, so did their borrowings. Jakey had been in control for the past few years, and he had been switching the company’s business to new banks he told Zev were eager to finance the big productions he had in mind. He had become very friendly with a particular young banker, Alan Rackman, who was always there with the big loan when he needed it.
“Jakey told Zev that Magic was in trouble. Their year’s profits had fallen by sixty percent but not only that, the accountants said that large sums of money were unaccounted for: They had ‘gone missing.’ He said it was a good thing Zev was back because they needed to talk to him urgently. When Zev asked about the stories that he was ‘ill,’ he said he’d just been repeating what he’d heard around town—he’d even read it in Daily Variety. And there it was: ‘C. Z. Abrams dashes to Europe for treatment for a mystery “illness.” Worries about brain tumor said to be affecting his business decisions.’
“It went on to say how Magic’s performance had been declining since the long absence of its chairman, along with the death of Dick Nevern, but that despite rumors of hefty financial trouble, its president, Jakey Jerome, was going ahead with production of three major movies that season as planned.
“Everything happened quickly after that. Jakey’s friend Rackman, the banker, accused Zev of diverting large sums of company money to his ‘charities,’ insinuating that they were not charities at all but had simply ended up in Zev’s foreign bank accounts. He produced ‘doctored’ checks on Magic’s accounts to prove it. It was what they used to call in gangster movies a ‘frame-up,’ but they were piling up the evidence against him as well as citing loss of competence and accusing him of being responsible for the company’s financial disasters, even though Jakey had been running the company for the past few years. They even threatened to cite senility