Chapter 6

We finally heard back from Mort on Tuesday morning and the news was good. The legal eagles at Twenty-First Century Fox had decided that our claim would trump that of someone who had not been involved in any of the events mentioned and the studio believed they could withstand the inevitable lawsuit that would follow. They cautioned that the movie better make money, however, or the legal fees would not look as good on the end of year ledger.

“There is one more bullet in the gun though, Jack. We have some people checking in to this, but I think we may have a way out of even that. It seems young Caravou has gone into hiding. There are certain people to whom he owes a great deal of money and who are anxious to find him. I think for a hundred grand more, we could have complete and total ownership of the story with no strings.” Mort said, then paused, clearing his throat.

“This is where we need to talk realistically, Jack. Yes, if you paid the money instead of us, you might gain ownership of the story, but he shopped it around. It is a great story and someone is going to make this movie. If done right, I think this could be a major motion picture. I don’t know that we will rival our last big hit, Avatar made us almost two point eight billion, but this could be in the top twenty if we do it right. I could see it up there with Jurassic World or Furious 7. Those two were Universal, one of our sister companies, and one pulled one point six, the other was one point five billion.”

My net worth, as of a couple of months ago, was right at one point eight billion, so barely more than one of the lower tier movies Mort had mentioned. No way was I going to get the studio to back off on this.

“Okay, Mort. Get the rights to the story from them, if you can, and we can work together on this. If it has to get out, I want to have some control of the message and I don’t want innocent people hurt.” I said, though inside I still quailed at the thought of the whole world knowing.

“Mort, remember I told you that I might be interested in investing, depending on the project? This is the project, Mort.” Jake said, winking at me. I tried to wave him off be he ignored me. “If you need a backer, or just want to spread the production costs around, you say the word. Hell, offer me enough, I’ll underwrite the whole damn thing.”

I just shook my head. Jake was Jake and he was going to do what he wanted to do.

“You won’t be sorry, Jake, this is a winner. And Jack, son, you made the right choice. Better us than some made for HBO docu-drama bullshit.” Mort chortled. I could almost imagine him rubbing his hands together, mentally counting coup on his rivals, not to mention counting the box office receipts!

“When would this all start?” I asked, before we got too far into the celebration portion of this travesty.

“I’d like you to come down to the studios again, Jack. Bring Jake with you, I’ll get my people working on contracts and so on, so make it Friday. We’ll start early and, unless there are changes, end by lunchtime. Mike, come see me when you get back to the studio, will you?”

With that, Mort was off the line and my future, at least for the next year or so, was pretty much decided. School was going to have to be a secondary concern, but I thought I could still take some classes. I would also try to make sure I had the time I needed to see the launch of Deckhouse’s new Trimaran yacht. Martin was promising some fantastic new tech and I was excited to be part of it all.

Shit. Now I had to go house hunting. In Los Angeles.

I had given Jake one of the downstairs offices as his own a couple of years ago, never going in there except to clean after he left each time, and he headed there to handle some business while I went into my office. My first call was to Erin Sung.

“Erin, find me a house in LA. Something away from downtown where I don’t have to hear traffic or breathe in the smog. I need enough room to entertain, probably, a pool is a must. Hot tub is cool, or I can have one put in. I will be here for a while, maybe a year.”

“No problem Boss. You want hot and cold room service too? I hear you can get that easy out there in La-La land!” Erin joked, but I could hear her fingers tapping away at her keyboard. “I’ll call you as soon as I have something. I’ll find you a more permanent berth for your big bath tub toy too.”

“Ah ... crap. I never even thought about that. Do that, please, and thank you for thinking ahead!”

That evening, to get my mind off of the movie fiasco, I made my rounds by telephone. First was to Frank and Nancy Pitts in Austin. Frank was the Chairman of the Demeter Trust. I had a hundred and forty-two million in funding going out through the auspices of the Demeter Trust this past year.

I had initially funded the trust with fifty million but as we found more and more charities that could use help or programs that were failing because of funding, I had increased the funding by another thirty million. And then another thirty, and ... well, you get the picture. Terry assured me it was all tax deductible and I needed the tax incentives.

Frank was the titular head of Demeter, but his wife and, officially, his administrative assistant, was de facto co-chairman. Chairperson? They had a relationship that worked and I was just glad I had the pair of them. Each one alone was an able administrator, but together they were magic.

Frank turned out to be an able fund raiser too! The Demeter trust had accepted donations for just over one-hundred and seventy million over the last year, several of those were named endowments, which means whatever effort we turned those funds towards would adopt the name of the sponsor. What sponsors couldn’t do, however, was dictate what the money would be used on. For example, a ‘Jane Smith Endowment’ would become the ‘Jane Smith Chair of Pediatric Oncology at AnyTown University Medical Center’ or even the ‘Jane Smith Scholarship Fund’.

Nancy turned out to be the best administrator. She had managed to keep our overhead, the amount of funds actually used to manage the charity, to less than three percent. I had given her a hard and fast five percent limit, with absolutely no expenditures over that for anything not directly related to the charitable efforts, and she had taken that limit as a challenge. That she cut that narrow margin even further without scrimping and saving was astounding!

This meant that a whopping ninety-seven point two percent of the money turned over to the Demeter Trust was used to help people, not to pad pockets, and that was admirable in anyone’s eyes. CNN, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Charity Watch had all awarded the Demeter trust the highest rating available for Costs per donation and expenses.

In other good news, the London office of Demeter was once again in the black and operating efficiently. After the scandal there, and our swift actions to kick ass and get it straight, an able administrator had been found and that nice Charlotte Jenkins was her second in command. She ended up with just over three hundred thousand British Pounds from the estate of the dirtbag lawyer who had struck her, but she stayed on because she believed in the mission of the Demeter Trust, to protect the youngest and most vulnerable.

One of the projects I started outside of the Demeter trust, then turned over to them so they could provide logistical and clerical support, was my scholarship project. Patricia Nance had been a Judge’s clerk while in law school, but after passing the bar had come to work for me instead. She managed the first dozen scholarships, six each to the University of Texas and to Texas Agricultural and Mechanical college, Texas A&M.

Now however, just two years later, she had her own staff of a dozen and I had sixty-two million paid out last year for the one thousand full-ride scholarships we had awarded. The average cost per year for each was in the neighborhood of fifty-five thousand, when you included all the little things like books, supplies, counseling and two trips a year home to visit family.

For now, we had capped the number of scholarships at one-thousand to see if we could maintain that over the longer haul. In five years, when all of the current crop had graduated or moved up to graduate programs, we would have a much better idea of what we did right and what needed improvement.

Next was a call out to the investment advisor that Terry had farmed out our money management to. I left instructions to be prepared to liquidate up to one-hundred-million on short notice. What they liquidated I would leave up to them, but I would need the money, probably, within a couple of days of calling.

My last call was to Stacy. We still wrote, called and video chatted, though not as frequently as we used to. Stacy had found a guy and was engaged, so she had other things on her mind. I could sense that our relationship was probably going to fall by the wayside, but I was okay with that, as long as she was happy. There had never been any real romance between us but I had often wondered what would have happened if we had lived closer.

While I was making like the good son and phoning everyone I had to call, I also got a couple of phone calls.

The first was from Erin who had conferenced in Burt in San Diego. They had found the perfect building and would close on it in another week. They did do a short-term lease so they could take immediate control and could start making the changes needed. Erin had also found a very nice condo for Burt that he could have as a perk or he could stay there until he found something he liked better. Even better, she told me that she was spending eleven million to buy the condo building and, as soon as she could shift the current residents, she was assigning condos to employees of the new Security company Burt was going to ramrod.

The second was a bigger surprise, it was Cade Taylor!

“Hey Jack! I am still in LA and hanging out with the movie stars!” she called, laughing uproariously into the phone. I could hear several other female voices in the background. “We just left one club, heading to another one. You will never guess what we spent an hour doing ... prank calling that weasel Beckham. What a douche nozzle! ‘Don’t call me anymore, I’ll report you!’ HA! Wait, wait! She called him something funny, wait a minute...” the increase in background noise told me she had pulled the phone away from her face.

“Chloe, Chloe, what was it? What did you call city boy, Dallas ... or Chicago ... Brooklyn? Okay, what did you call Brooklyn earlier? Tosser? Yeah! That was it!”

“He’s a tosser!” Cade said, speaking in the phone once more. I just had to shake my head and try not to laugh at her.

“Cade, you are drunk! I hope none of you are driving!”

“Nah, we’re not that stupid. Those Marines you got for me? They are aweshum! Anyone tries to give us a hard time, they just growl at them and the pretty boys run away. It’s fuckin’ hilare ... hilira ... halir ... It’s funny as hell!”

“Well, I am glad you are having fun. Call me when you are sober tomorrow, after you get over your hangover, and let me buy you guys dinner. I am in LA too and it looks like I might be here for a bit.”

“Really? That is aweshum! Look, Jack, I was kinda, you know, nervous ... no, that’s not true, I was scared. I am not as DC as I tell people, I use it to scare off all the freaks and, well, you kinda got to me. Oh! I am serious about you singing with me on my next album ‘cause you have a sexy voice, but I liked you as you too, you know? That’s funny. You, you, you, you, you know? Anyways, just figured I would tell you, you, you now so I could blame it on the booze if I get embarrassed later. Bye Jack, kissy kissy!”

In the background, six or seven voices yelled out, “KISSY KISSY!” and busted up laughing before the connection was dropped.

Okay, now that was funny!

Dinner the next night was at some place that Jake knew and we invited Annie and Mike to come along as well. He and Dave were leaving in the morning but he made sure to remind me that he was just a phone call away, and that he thought of me as family.

After dinner, Mike pulled me aside before they left and we sat down to talk turkey. “Listen, Jack, I work for Mort and I won’t be disloyal. Hell, it’s easy not being disloyal because he is a straight shooter. He has never, in the fifteen years I have known him, first as an actor working for him as a director and then as a regular employee, he has never deliberately screwed someone.

“That’s important. Not many people in this industry you can take at face value. Here’s the trick though, Jack, Mort is the president of the studio, but he is not the only one with a say in this. Do yourself a favor and get a good lawyer. Someone who knows the industry. There are tricks and fine print in Hollywood that the rest of the world hasn’t discovered yet, and none of them are nice.”

Mike shook my hand, gathered Annie up and they were gone, leaving me sitting there with a ball of ice in the pit of my stomach.

The next morning, I saw Jake and Dave off, sad to see them go but knowing that this was my problem and I had to deal with it my way.

I knew no one in the industry except for ... Chloe Moretz and I wasn’t about to go mooch a favor from her, even if she could help. I am sure she got way too many requests for ‘little favors’ because of her celebrity. Instead, I turned to my old stand-by, Terry. I paid him a lot and he had to take my calls.

“Bossman! Yo, if you are going to be in LA for a while, I might have to come down and review the books on the Century City building, you know? I still have spaces in my autograph book!”

“You are so full of shit that your eyes are brown, Terry! You didn’t ask for one autograph the last time you were here! You just stared and drooled...” I joked, laughing at him.

“Ow! That was hateful, Jack, but did you not notice how Lea Michele looks a lot like Patti? Different hair, but the rest ... what can I say, she just tripped my trigger. This time, now that I have my Patti, I will not be affected like that and can get those autographs.” Terry said righteously, ignoring my laughter.

“Look, I am going to be your buddy and not even tell Patti that you married her because she looks like a B or C-List celeb. Since I am such an all-around stellar guy, I am sure you would do me a favor in return, and find me a good Hollywood lawyer, someone familiar with the way business is done out here. I want a shark, but just a little shark, not a great white. This is more about protecting me than getting a payday.”

“Whoa, Jack, what’s going on out there, man? You get into some trouble? Usually that means more money in the coffers on this end, so I should encourage you.” Terry knew how to keep things from getting too serious. He had literally been with me almost from the moment I found out I even had money.

“Cam and her frog husband have been shopping around my story to the studios, trying to sell it for a movie. My fucking story, Terry, all of it. I think I have her stymied for the moment, but there are an unknown number of manuscript copies out there in various hands and someone is going to make this picture. Whether it is made for TV or just a book, if it is my story, I want it told my way.”

“Christ, Jack, I never thought ... well, none of us did. My mom is crushed about her, angrier than I have seen her in a long, long time. Let me hit up the old boy network and call you back, Jack. Fuck the sharks, I am getting you a killer whale.”

I knew I could count on Terry.

When I met with Mike and Mort Greenbaum on Monday, we were supposed to meet at the studio in a conference room. When my taxi arrived at the gate, Mike Sutter was waiting for us and looked surprised, then shook his head. He had us get out of the cab and told us he had expected a limo, then laughed.

“I am too Hollywood these days. Everyone rides around in limos or expensive cars, but you don’t even have wheels here, do you? And you are not a casual limo kind of guy either. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the taxi.”

I just shrugged. It hadn’t occurred to me to get a limo, though I had been thinking I needed wheels if I was sticking around, and a more permanent anchor or berth for my baby as well.

“I am supposed to be meeting someone here today, he said he would arrive before...” I was saying when the gate guard stepped up and interrupted.

“Is one of you Jack McCoy?” he asked politely, looking from Mike, to Dean and then to me. I raised a hand to shoulder height.

“This gentleman over here said he was meeting a client for a meeting and Mr. Sutter here was meeting a client for a meeting at the same time, so I thought I might be lucky!” the man said with a smile, gesturing over his shoulder at an older Mercedes sedan that was stopped at the gate.

Mike bent down to look through the passenger window and shook his head. “You have strange friends, Jack. That’s Neville Taft, and he’s kind of an institution here in this town.” Turning to the security guy, he asked him to let Mr. Taft in and direct him to the office building, then waved us ahead of him through the pedestrian gate to a four-seat golf cart.

We followed the Mercedes in the golf cart until it found a parking spot in a visitor slot outside the three-story office complex. Mike pulled the golf cart up into a set of spaces specifically for carts and we met the driver of the Mercedes at the front door.

Once inside, Mike turned and shook hands with the older gentlemen who had been identified as Neville Taft.

“Neville, always a pleasure to see you. I thought I heard you had retired. Still keeping your hand in, I see.” Mike said with a smile, then turned his attention to us.

“This young gentleman on the left here is Jack McCoy and I suspect you are here for him. The other gentleman is Dean Miller, Mister McCoy’s security chief and friend.”

We all shook hands and even as I watched Neville Taft give me the once over, I was doing the same in reverse!

The man was seventy if he was a day, a definite contemporary of Jake Reilly. He was tall, spare and immaculately dressed in a very expensive suit. His hair was as white as snow, though full and perfectly coifed as well. He had a very intelligent face and piercing eyes that, if I had to guess, missed very little. The lines around his mouth and eyes said he smiled a lot, but I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Jake could smile you right into a grave if he was angry, and I bet this guy could too.

When he smiled and nodded, after his scan, I felt like I could relax a bit and that made me smile in return.

“Mister McCoy, may I call you Jack? Good. Jack, I got a call from a fellow to whom I owe a great deal. Mike here was correct in one aspect, I am indeed retired these days. I do, however, take on the occasional project to keep my hand in, as it were. When I heard about you, about this fascinating issue, well, I thought it was something I might enjoy. It is unfortunate that we could not meet before this, but let us take, say, ten or fifteen minutes before we join the others, if you don’t mind?”

“No, of course not. Mike, is there somewhere I can speak with Mister Taft?”

Mike showed us to an empty conference room there on the first floor and told us to just come up to the third when we were done. He would go and let Mort know we were delayed a bit.

Inside, with the door closed, Mr. Taft seemed to relax a bit.

“Let’s take a seat and get to know each other.” He offered, not even batting an eye when Dean claimed the seat closest to the door, forcing us down the table a bit. I saw him watching Dean though and thought I saw approval there.

I spent the next ten minutes giving him the basic outline. This is me, that was Cam, she dumped me, her new husband is a dick who is trying to sell my life to make a quick buck. He took it all in, asking one or two clarifying questions, then sat for a moment letting it sink in.

“What do you want out of this, Jack?”

“Mister...” at his wave, I started over, “Neville, ideally I would find a way to stop the whole thing. Since the jerk sent out copies to every studio, that isn’t really an option. So, I would like to control the damage. If I could force them to make the movie as a complete and total fabrication, changing every aspect that could possibly point to me, I would. That is not going to work because someone would still make the original movie, or something similar.

“So, I think the best we can hope for is to change it just enough to protect my identity, keep me from being a paparazzi bait. There are aspects of the story that no one here knows, that Cam didn’t know. Those things could blow up and create international incidents, Neville, it is that serious.”

“Well, I can tell you that I am glad I came today. Not only is this already proving to be more fascinating than I had supposed, I think you will actually need my help. Getting old sucks, Jack, so when you have a chance to show you can still be relevant, well, it’s better than gold.”

I snorted and Dean actually laughed at that, and Neville Taft looked confused.

“After this is over, come with us to my boat. Since you are my lawyer, I have a fascinating story for you about how a man your age helped an orphan. He dropped a coin in the water and the ripples are still being felt.”

“Ah ... I will look forward to that, Jack. Now, let us go and see what Mort has up his sleeve, shall we?”

Upstairs on the third floor, we were directed into a much nicer conference room. The long, gleaming hardwood table would have sat sixteen people with room to spare, and a buffet of drinks and snacks stood waiting on a sideboard. Mort, a tall, older and buxom blonde at his side, climbed to his feet when we entered. Mike was there as well, standing over at a window and talking to a pair of middle-aged men in suits.

“Jack, Dean, welcome! Neville, when I heard you were here, I told Sylvia she had to attend the meeting. I already know I am not in your league, but Sylvia, she’s anther kettle of fish.” Mort said with a grin, coming forward to shake hands all around. “Neville, I think you know these guys but Jack, this is Tom Winton, legal counsel for Twentieth Century Fox and Bret Carter, counsel for Disney, the new owners of Fox since December.”

I wasn’t aware that Disney had bought Fox! Maybe there was hope that they wouldn’t want to be involved in a sicko movie like this one! Oh wait ... Jake had said something about that on the boat, fifty-two billion in shares or something.

That idea was shot down the drain right away, when Mort opened with, “Jack, we want to make this picture. We think, if treated right, it could be major. In fact, the director I am thinking of for this asked if we had considered making this the opening for a series of pictures, something to replace the Bourne series which, frankly, is not aging well. Jeremy Renner is a great actor, but he is pretty tied up with Marvel projects right now, also now a Disney product.”

I looked at Dean and he raised an eyebrow, his way of showing surprise in a group of strangers. Neville looked placid and unconcerned. Mike and the lawyers for the other side were watching me closely for a reaction.

When I didn’t say anything, Mort plunged on, still sounding excited.

“My guy in Paris has a contract with Caravou. In fact, it is so new that the ink is still wet. For the sum of three hundred and seventy-five thousand US dollars, he is signing away all rights to the manuscript. It was a real risk on our part, that isn’t chump change, but I figured if it came down to it, you might be interested in buying it from us.”

Yeah ... he kind of had me by the short curlies there. I would pay a lot more than that to keep this from being made in the first place.

“So, if I offered the studio a fair price for rights to the manuscript, then we could put this whole thing to bed right now? Say, a million dollars even? That is twice what you paid for the manuscript and the movie rights.”

Mort didn’t even bother to answer. His expression told me that wasn’t going to fly and, if I was being honest with myself, I knew it before I said it.

Fuckety fuck.

“Okay, but I have some real concerns and how they are addressed would change how cooperative, or how obstructive, I will be about making this movie.” I said, laying my cards on the table. Mort looked concerned but the two lawyers looked perfectly calm. Either it was good acting or they thought they had already seen every trick in the book. In either case, we would have to see if they remained that way.

“Okay, Jack, hit us. Tell us your concerns and let’s work together to get them addressed.” Mort said, leaning forward and looking eager.

“There are so many, but let’s start with the easiest to address. That manuscript has only part of the story, and not even close to all the good stuff. There are huge chunks missing that could turn a mildly interesting story into a barn burner. There are very few people who actually know the whole story, and Cam was not one. I would be willing to open up to your writers, give them most of the missing bits, if we can settle my other concerns.”

“Most of the missing bits?” Winton, the lawyer for Fox asked.

“There are parts that I won’t ever share with anyone, and I won’t be giving out names or exact dates, some locations will be changed, these are all to protect item number two, privacy. Look, I don’t want to be well known. I could go my whole life and never talk to another reporter, and I would be deliriously happy to have that happen. I don’t want anything to do with a ‘True life adventure!‘ or even a ‘Based on actual events‘. At best, I would be okay with ‘Inspired by current and historical events‘ or some such nonsense, but it would be better still if we just called it fiction.

“If you want my cooperation, then I want no indication that this is real; some people will figure it out, and there is nothing I can do about that, but most people won’t know and won’t care. That means no leaks, no slips to the press. The real story behind the story stays with the people in this room and whoever you have actually writing the script. I will insist on a non-disclosure agreement or clause with significant penalties.”

The three on the other side of the table put their heads together and were talking. Mike had seated himself separately from both groups and, when I looked his way inquiringly, he just shrugged.

“I’m a fixer. I got you and them together, so I am just here as a friendly face. If they want my input, they’ll ask.”

The Disney lawyer, Bret Carter, pulled away from the scrum on the other side of the table to ask, “What kind of penalties, and why shouldn’t we go with what we have and not risk it?” He didn’t sound combative, just curious, so I bit off my first reaction and went with a calmer reply instead.

“Look, I have a couple of billion dollars that I could use to bury this picture. Yes, you would still own the rights, but by the time we were done in court, it would have cost you so much that the movie would never make enough money for you to recoup the legal fees. My mentor and friend already offered to back me, and he has enough money that even Disney as a whole would be reluctant to cross swords with him. So, when I say significant penalties, I mean significant.”

“Who’s your...” He started to ask, but Mort was tugging on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear that made him turn a little green and swallow the rest of that question. With a nod, he turned back to the others.

When Mort and his lawyers came back to the table, he looked happy.

“Jack, we’re willing to go with those restrictions. The easy way of avoiding any unintended leaks is just to not tell anyone that this has any basis in fact at all. We’ll treat the script as any other fiction novel. You realize of course that if we go this route, your level of involvement with the movie will be considerably lessened and so would your level of influence on the content.”

Neville Taft cleared his throat and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table and smiling at the men on the other side.

“Not necessarily.”

I wanted to smile and did everything I could not to. The three men on the other side of the table, one of them a powerful studio big-wig, the other two powerful and influential studio lawyers, all sat back at least the same amount as Neville Taft sat forward, and all sort of quivered when the man spoke. I really had to find out more about the man who was my lawyer today!

“My client has information crucial to the story and he will have to be involved to ensure that none of the content creates any issues vis a vis revealing too much and making it too easy to identify the various participants. He has confided in me some of the concerns and I will say this much, there are international implications that would possibly rock the current administration in Washington DC.

“Outside of those concerns, he has proposed a compromise. He would be willing to invest in the making of this picture, putting his money where his mouth is, so to speak. I have already been given permission to represent another backer for this movie, should the studio decide to seek outside funding. Assuming we all reach an agreement at the end of the negotiations, of course.”