I glanced over at Charlie and wondered if I should step out, but his headphones were still on, and he didn’t seem to notice I was on the phone.
“I only have mascara and concealer. I won’t respect myself if I buy more makeup for one date.”
She sighed. “Fine, your outfit can do all the talking. I’ll bring a few options.”
I hung up and started packing up my laptop to take the subway downtown to listen to oral arguments in the Texas Hold’em case.
“I’m the last guy to tell a woman what to do, but most guys don’t like a lot of makeup. Just do what you normally do,” he said as I threw a khaki trench over my suit.
I pretended to be distracted by my phone. “Good to know, thanks.”
On Wednesday morning, Leo’s name appeared on the New York office visitor list.
I hadn’t heard from him since I’d hurriedly left the gallery opening. The fact that he hadn’t reached out to let me know he was coming to the city somehow made me feel exposed. I wondered if he sensed my attraction and was keeping his distance.
I still had to plug the last few holes in the settlement strategy before I could present it to Leo. I’d backed into the budgets for two of the movies, but I couldn’t find where the other two were shot or if tax credits even were involved. I searched IMDb and scrolled through the cast and crew, looking for inspiration to hit. I noticed the name Max Carlton listed as the “line producer” on both films and quickly typed an email to the firm’s dedicated “librarian”—a master researcher with a reputationof being able to dig up more dirt than a private investigator—to see if he could locate an email address or phone number.
Within minutes, the librarian responded with a Pennsylvania cell phone number.
Max Carlton picked up on the second ring. I introduced myself as an attorney from New York with a few questions about two films he’d recently line-produced.
“There’s a pretty tight confidentiality provision in my contract,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong though—if I wasn’t afraid of getting sued, I’d be happy to help you nail whoever it is you’re after. Those were two of the worst productions I’ve worked on in thirty years.”
“Worst how? If you don’t mind me asking,” I said, tryingnotto sound like a lawyer.
“Bad people. Cutting corners, safety hazards everywhere, antiunion shit. I won’t work for people like that anymore. Falls in the ‘life’s-too-short’ bucket.”
I explained I was trying to figure out if the budget of each movie was over $5 million.
He laughed in a way that told me he’d smoked every day of those thirty years.
“Let me just say this: You don’t pay an actor $3 million on a $5 million movie and have anything to show for it. As for the other one, we shot it in NOLA. You can look up Louisiana tax-credit filings online.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. I was already googling the Louisiana tax-credit portal.
It was almost too easy.
There was no way the budget for the NOLA film was less than $8 million, making the total for just three of the four movies$26 million. I wondered who else’s money they stole. That was someone else’s problem.
I sent Leo an email letting him know I had a possible settlement strategy to run by him, omitting that I knew he was working from New York.
He responded a few minutes later, saying he was in the city for the week and free to meet the next morning. His email was polite and professional. Maybe my sudden exit from the gallery openinghadbeen a red flag, and he was dialing it back down. Or maybe I’d just imagined all of it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In brief, despite extensive expert testimony and compelling evidence to uphold the defendant’s acquittal, the appeals court reversed the district court’s ruling that Texas Hold’em poker is a game of skill, not chance, and was therefore appropriately considered to be an illegal gambling business under Section 1955,I concluded the email to Eddie after the Second Circuit announced its decision in the Texas Hold’em case the following morning.
The “game of skill, not chance” argument was officially a dead end.
My calendar flashed a fifteen-minute heads-up for the settlement meeting with Leo. I pulled out a flattened granola bar from the bottom of my tote bag, then gathered my laptop and notes and tried giving myself a mental pep talk.
Half an hour later, I put down the marker, looking back and forth between the conference room’s oversized whiteboard and Leo’s face. I felt out of breath. He hadn’t said anything the entire time.
“Who represents the film fund again?” he finally asked.
“Damian Entwhistle.”
He smiled. “Let’s bring that fucker in for a meeting. I want to watch you tell him exactly why it’s in his client’s best interest to settle.”
