Indecent Exposure Page 3

  As Alan Hirschfield sipped a glass of wine and kibitzed Joe Fischer, who was playing pinball, David Begelman sidled over:

  "Oh, Alan, by the way, did Joe mention the matter of the Cliff Robertson check?"

  "Yes, he said something in passing. What's up?"

  "Well, I just wanted to be sure you knew it was being taken care of and you needn't be concerned about it."

  "What's being taken care of? What's the problem?"

  "It apparently is just a minor misunderstanding. I'm not even sure myself yet of all the details, but I do know that it's nothing to worry about."

  "Fine, if you say so, David, I'm not concerned."

  The moment passed, swept away in the hubbub of the party, as three of the foreign guests approached to pay their respects to Hirschfield and Begelman, who then gradually separated and began working the room, greeting each of the guests individually.

  FOUR

  In East Hampton for the weekend, Cliff Robertson received David Begelman's three phone messages and telephoned him at home in Beverly Hills the next morning, Saturday, June 4.

  "Cliff, I appreciate your calling me back. The reason I phoned is that I'm interested in knowing what you know about this ten thousand dollars."

  "You're speaking of the ten-ninety-nine form?"

  "Yes."

  "I know only that I didn't get the money, and that I wasn't owed any money because I didn't work for Columbia in 1976." "I'm very interested in following this up because apparently there's been some mistake or misunderstanding somewhere along the line. Will you do me a favor?" "Okay."

  "Let me know personally if you hear anything further about this."

  "Sure, David, I certainly will."

  "And I'll keep you posted. I'm sure we'll have it clarified soon." "Fine."

  "Are you coming to California any time soon?" Begelman asked. "I have no immediate plans."

  "Well, if you do come, call me and let's have lunch. It's been too long."

  "Thank you, David, I'll do that."

  Robertson hung up. "I'm really impressed," he said to Dina, who had overheard part of the conversation. "Why?"

  "For an ex-agent, he's really minding the store. He's obviously dealing in millions at that studio, but he's not overlooking a relatively small matter of ten thousand dollars."

  The casual invitation to lunch amused Cliff. An entirely phony gesture of friendship so typical of Hollywood in general and Begelman in particular, he thought. David had been Cliffs agent until a few years earlier when they had quarreled bitterly over a film deal and, in effect, called each other liars. There had even been a lawsuit. The Red Baron suit. (The film was to have been about air combat in World War I.) Now Begelman is friendly again, Cliff mused. Only in Hollywood will an agent betray a client one year and cozy up to him the next as if nothing had happened.

  On Tuesday, June 7, David Begelman telephoned Bud Kahaner, Robertson's accountant at Prager & Fcnton.

  "Bud, I wonder if I could ask you to relay word to Cliff that we've solved the mystery of the ten thousand dollars. We've looked into this very carefully and it turns out that a young man who was employed here at the studio last summer somehow managed to embezzle the money. We've confronted him with it and he's admitted it. His father has come to me on bended knee, promised full restitution, and begged us not to prosecute his son. So far as we can determine, this is his first offense, so we are not inclined to press charges. That seems to me to be the proper, fair, and compassionate thing to do, but I wanted to let you and Cliff know and make sure that you both agree with this approach."

  Begelman gave the same message to Michael Black, Cliffs ICM agent, with one elaboration: the young man who had stolen the money had been working in New York on the Obsession promotional tour and was supposed to have given the money to Cliff for his expenses.

  "Sure," Cliff said when Bud Kahaner reported the conversation. "1 don't want to send the kid to jail. It's a pretty heavy crime for a first time out, but if it's true, and if nobody's breaking any law by not reporting it, I don't sec anything to be gained by prosecuting." Kahaner agreed, and assured Cliff that Columbia had sent a notice to the IRS canceling the errant Form 1099.

  The next morning, Robertson flew to Chicago and drove to the home of friends in suburban Winnetka, Illinois. He and daughter Heather were scheduled to be there for part of the summer with Dina while she appeared in the Robert Altman film, A Wedding, which was being shot nearby. Cliff phoned Evelyn Christel that afternoon to confirm some travel arrangements. He was to fly to New Zealand in two wrecks to make several appearances in a campaign to raise funds for the mentally ill. Since his 1968 Oscar-winning performance as a mentally retarded laborer in Charly, Robertson had given a lot of time and money to charities that help the mentally handicapped and in 1977 was serving as chairman of the National Mental Health Association. Evelyn confirmed that his plane and hotel reservations were in order.

  "I guess the mystery of the ten thousand dollars has been solved," Cliff said.

  "Yes, it appears to be," Evelyn said, having heard Begelman's "young man" story from Bud Kahaner's office. "Columbia sent me a copy of the check and I passed it along to Prager & Fenton," she added. "I thought they should have it."

  "Check? What check?" Cliff asked.

  "The check that was made out to you and this young man apparently cashed."

  "I didn't know there was actually a check made out. Nobody told me how the kid got the money. You mean he forged my name on a check?"

  "Yes, he signed your name on the back. It's a big splashy signature, 'Cliff Robertson.' Doesn't look at all like your signature."

  "That's amazing. I had no idea there was an actual check. It's incredible that a young kid could get away with something like that. I wonder how he cashed it."

  "I don't know. Prager & Fenton has the check. There's probably a stamp on it that tells where he cashed it."

  When Dina arrived home from the Wedding set, Cliff exclaimed, "Jesus Christ, guess what! The kid who stole the ten thousand dollars actually forged my name on a check and cashed it. This wasn't some sophisticated bookkeeping manipulation. There was actually a check made out to me for ten thousand dollars and the kid forged my signature as the endorsement and actually took it out and cashed it! It's amazing!"

  Robertson still essentially believed Begelman's story. Even though he had distrusted David since their quarrel years before, there obviously was no connection between that episode and this one. Still, as Cliff relaxed at the sprawling Winnetka home over the next few days, the forgery preoccupied him. How could a kid—a menial temporary employee—simply scrawl a famous person's name on a check for $10,000 made out to that famous person, cash it, and walk away with the money? The more Cliff mulled over the question, the more it intrigued him. And then he learned something more that injected a note of implausibility into the intrigue. Someone at Prager & Fenton, describing the check to him over the phone, said that the stamp on the back seemed to indicate that it had been cashed at some branch of the Wells Fargo Bank in Los Angeles, perhaps the Beverly Hills office. It wasn't until Cliff hung up the phone that he asked himself how the young man could have cashed the check at a bank in Los Angeles if he had been employed at Columbia in New York. David Begelman had told Cliff's agent that the youth had worked in New York on the Obsession promotional tour. While it was possible that he lived in California or somehow cashed the check while traveling there. Cliff supposed, it seemed unlikely.

  Cliff was sufficiently curious to ask Bud Kahaner to try to learn from the Wells Fargo Bank the circumstances of the check cashing. Kahaner agreed to do what he could, but with the potential IRS problem eliminated and the basic mystery seemingly solved. Cliffs fascination with how the check got cashed wasn't enough to prod Bud to immediate action during this busy mid-June week.

  In the leisure of his Illinois retreat, however, with little else to occupy his mind. Cliff Robertson's curiosity turned gradually to concern, bordering on compulsion. He had to know
whether the story of the young man was the complete account of what happened. He had to know whether David Begelman was lying. On Friday, June 17, not having heard from Kahaner. Robertson began dialing telephone calls from the Winnetka home into the vast bureaucracy of the Wells Fargo Bank in Los Angeles. His first call, to the Beverly Hills office, was transferred among several people, none of whom could or would help.

  "We can't give out information like that by phone."

  "You'll have to write a letter."

  "Are you sure you're Cliff Robertson? Cliff Robertson, the actor?"

  He got no further at Wells Fargo's regional headquarters for Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles, or at its Southern California headquarters in downtown LA.

  Linda Bjork got Cliff's call as the frustrated afterthought of a switchboard operator who had run out of options. Bjork. an earnest, conscientious woman in her early thirties, was the operations officer of the Wells Fargo branch situated on the ground floor of the Wilshire Boulevard building which housed the Southern California headquarters of the bank. Although Linda Bjork thought it was odd that a celebrity himself would telephone rather than have a representative do it. she knew instinctively that the man on the line was the Cliff Robertson and that his concern was genuine.

  "I have a problem and I don't know where to turn anymore."

  "What's wrong, Mr. Robertson? I'll certainly try to help you."

  In a voice revealing deep frustration. Robertson told Linda Bjork his story and said he suspected that Columbia Pictures had not given him a complete or accurate account of what had happened. From his description of the check, she deduced that it had been cashed at the main Beverly Hills branch office, which, like other banks catering to the show business community, occasionally bends procedures to accommodate the demands of its wealthy and eccentric clientele.

  "I've already talked to about a dozen people there and got nowhere," Robertson said.

  Bjork assured Robertson that the bank's Beverly Hills operations officer, Lorie Fitzsimmons (whom Cliff's calls had missed), could help him. Bjork offered to have Fitzsimmons telephone him. Cliff asked instead that Loric Fitzsimmons call his accountant and said he would alert Bud Kahaner to expect her call.

  The Wells Fargo Bank's Beverly Hills headquarters occupied a twelve-story building of gray-green glass and beveled mirror trim at Little Santa Monica Boulevard and Camden Drive opposite the Mandarin Restaurant and Dick Dorso's fashion boutique. Operations Officer Lorie Fitzsimmons governed her domain from a desk in a green-carpeted sector of the ground floor adjacent to the main retail banking arena. Fitzsimmons, an effusive and somewhat star-struck veteran of Beverly Hills banking, was delighted with the task that Linda Bjork gave her.

  "Cliff Robertson? Really? Oh, wow!" she said to Bjork.

  Lorie Fitzsimmons attempted to call Bud Kahaner that Friday afternoon but did not succeed in reaching him until the following Tuesday morning. She said she would need a copy of the check, and Kahaner sent it immediately by messenger. Because of the sensitivity of the inquiry, Fitzsimmons did the necessary research herself instead of assigning it to a clerk. Using the encoded numbers on the back of the check, she located the nine-month-old transaction on microfilm and displayed on a screen the bank's photograph of the front and back of the check. The endorsement "Cliff Robertson" appeared clearly, as did the initials "JRL," which Fitzsimmons recognized as those of Joseph R. Lipsher, the vice president in charge of the bank's entertainment-industry lending, who apparently had approved the cashing of the Robertson check.

  On the screen opposite the check was its "offset entry"—the disposition of the proceeds from the check. The offset entry was a receipt for $10,000 in American Express traveler's checks. The receipt had been signed by David Begelman, the president of Columbia Pictures.

  With Heather in tow, Cliff Robertson landed in Los Angeles shortly after noon that day, planning to lay over until Thursday moming before flying on to New Zealand. Before leaving the airport for the Bel-Air Hotel, he phoned Evelyn Christel to see if there were any messages or changes in his schedule.

  "Bud Kahaner wants to see you right away. There's a problem with the Columbia Pictures check."

  "What is it?"

  "He told me not to say anything to you on the phone, but you'd better call him immediately. He sounded almost desperate." Robertson phoned Kahaner.

  "You've got to come up here right away, Cliff. I can't explain over the phone."

  "But I've got Heather with me, Bud. We've got all our luggage. Can't I at least go check into the hotel first?"

  ",No, Cliff, this is urgent. I'd much prefer that you come directly here."

  Cliff and Heather took a taxi to the RCA Building, a symbol of the new Hollywood amid symbols of the old on Sunset Boulevard. Just down the hill from the house where Nathanael West wrote The Day of the Locust, and just a few blocks from the crypts of Rudolph Valentino, Harry Cohn, Cecil B. Dc Mille, and Bugsy Siegel, the RCA Building mostly housed companies in the record industry. The CPA firm of Prager & Fenton, somewhat out of character, occupied a small suite of offices on the seventh floor. Leaving Heather and their luggage in the care of the receptionist. Cliff settled into a chair behind the closed door of his accountant's office. Bud Kahaner handed him photocopies of the front and back of the Columbia Pictures check, and for the first time Cliff was able to examine the document that had come to haunt him. His eyes immediately were drawn to the expansively scrawled endorsement, so different from his own.

  Bud Kahaner, a serene white-haired man in his fifties with a high-pitched speaking voice, wasn't easily excited. Born and reared in Brooklyn, he had been an IRS agent in Manhattan for fifteen years and had grown accustomed to confronting fraudulent and bizarre financial transactions.

  "Cliff, we may have a serious and somewhat alarming situation on our hands here. I've spoken with Miss Fitzsimmons at Wells Fargo Bank, but before we discuss what to do, I want you to hear the basic facts directly from her. She felt it was appropriate if she told you directly as the primary party rather than relay it through me." Kahaner dialed Lorie Fitzsimmons's direct number and Cliff picked up the extension.

  "This is Bud Kahaner again, Lorie. Mr. Robertson has just arrived in town and is here with me. Would you be good enough to repeat the things you told me a while ago?"

  "Certainly."

  "The check appears to have been brought in last September tenth," Kahaner said, "and approved for cashing by the person whose initials appear on the front and back of the check."

  "That's right, it was approved by Mr. Lipsher, Joe Lipsher, the head of our entertainment industry division."

  "And it was cashed?"

  "Yes, it was exchanged for ten thousand dollars in American Express traveler's checks." "And who cashed it?"

  "Mr. David Begelman, the president of Columbia Pictures. He apparently told Mr. Lipsher at the time that he was about to leave on a trip and would be traveling with Mr. Robertson."

  "Thank you, Lorie."

  Robertson and Kahaner hung up and stared at each other. Cliff was too shocked to speak.

  "Let's review what we know, Cliff," Kahaner said. "We know the following things for sure: You never received this money and obviously were not owed it. Yet a check obviously was made out to you and cashed. We have it right here in front of us. Begelman's story about the young man—the 'mystery is solved' story—obviously was a lie. Begelman almost certainly forged your signature and cashed the check himself, and bought traveler's checks in his own name. I guess there's still a slight possibility of an innocent explanation, no matter how bizarre, but that appears extremely unlikely. We have to face the fact that David Begelman almost certainly used your name to embezzle ten thousand dollars from Columbia Pictures. It's possible that this is just the tip of an iceberg. You just may be sitting on a hydrogen bomb."

  "What do I do now?"

  "I think you should seek legal counsel. It's possible that you could just let it go and nothing more would come of it. But suppose som
ething surfaces through another channel. Suppose somebody else catches Begelman stealing, and they investigate and trace this transaction back to you. If you haven't reported it, or at least gotten legal advice, it's going to look like either you actually got the money or were covering up for Begelman."

  Robertson and Kahaner discussed lawyers and decided Cliff should not use the attorney who normally handled his movie and television contracts, Gunther Schiff. Schiff, who had practiced law in the Hollywood community for a quarter of a century, had long been friendly with David Begelman, and Cliff felt that Schiff might feel awkward in a sensitive criminal inquiry that pitted him against Begelman. Instead, Cliff chose to call Seth Hufstedler, the senior partner of a distinguished Los Angeles law firm which did relatively little entertainment work but handled a number of nonentertainment matters for the Robertson family.* Nervous and agitated, Robertson phoned Hufstedler from Kahaner's office and explained the situation. Hufstedler asked Robertson to come to his office immediately. Another taxi was called, and Cliff and a confused, restless Heather Robertson headed several miles down the Hollywood Freeway to the Crocker Bank Plaza in downtown Los Angeles and the twenty-second floor suite of Beardsley, Hufstedler & Kemble.

  The legal community in downtown Los Angeles differed sharply in appearance and atmosphere from its counterpart across town in Beverly Hills and Century City. The downtown firms served mainly banks and big corporations and functioned with the unspoken but firm conviction that they actually practiced law while their show business brethren merely made and unmade deals between childish people engaged in childish endeavors. While that was a considerable exaggeration, the contrasting tones of the two communities suggested at a minimum different styles. In Beverly Hills law offices, one saw open collars and gold baubles, Record World and Daily Variety, and bright—sometimes garish—decor. The chatter tended to be loud, urgent, and constant. Downtown, there were ties, three-piece suits. The Wall Street Journal, bland motifs and subdued, well-modulated conversations.