Bantz was in rage. "Everyone in the picture is booked first class on the flight to Rome… the crew, the bit players, the fucking cameo roles, the gofers, the interns. There is only one exception. You know who that is? The LoddStone accounting officer we sent there to control the spending. He flew economy."

On the morning of Eli Marrion's funeral, Bobby Bantz was screaming at Skippy Deere.

"Yeah, again, so what?" Deere said.

"This is fucking crazy, this is what's wrong with the movie business. How the fuck can you allow this to happen?" He was waving a stapled bundle of pages in Deere's face.

Deere looked at it. It was the transportation schedule for a picture shooting in Rome. "Yeah, so what?" Deere said.

Bantz became deliberate in his anger. "And the picture has on budget a school to be set up for the children of everybody on the picture. The budget has the renting of a yacht for two weeks. I just read the script carefully. There are twelve actors and actresses who have maybe two, three minutes in the film. The yacht is listed for just two days' shooting. Now explain to me how you allowed this."

Bantz shook his head. "I can't talk to Lorenzo, not when I don't have Eli to back me up. Lorenzo would tell me to go fuck myself and we'd lose the picture."

"You're the producer, talk to Lorenzo," Bantz said.

"Not me, " Deere told him. "Lorenzo has four one-hundred-million-dollar-grossing pictures, he has two Academy Awards. I'll kiss his ass when I help him onto the yacht. You talk to him."

Skippy Deere was grinning at him. "Sure," he said. "Our director is Lorenzo Tallufo. He insists his people travel first class. The bit players and cameo roles were written into the script because they were screwing the vehicle stars. The yacht is booked for two weeks because Lorenzo wants to visit the Cannes Film Festival."

There was no answer to this. Technically, in the hierarchy of the industry, the head of the Studio outranked everybody. The producer was the person who got all the elements together and oversaw the budget and script development. But the reality was that once the picture started shooting, the director was the supreme power. Especially if he had a record of successful movies.

Skippy Deere had to think fast, Bobby had him there. "It's a Japanese restaurant, the food is sushi. That's the most expensive food in the world."

Bantz was suddenly calm. People were always complaining about sushi. The head of a rival studio had told him about taking a Japanese investor to dinner at a restaurant that specialized in sushi. "A thousand bucks for two people for twenty fucking fish heads," he had said. Bantz was impressed.

"And he'd be right," Deere said. "What the hell, Lorenzo always steals five million off a picture. They all do it. Now calm down so we can show ourselves at the funeral."

But Bantz was now looking at another cost sheet. "On your picture," he said to Deere, "there's a charge of five hundred thousand dollars for Chinese take-out food. Nobody, nobody, not even my wife can spend a half million dollars on Chinese food. French food maybe. But Chinese? Chinese take-out?"

"OK," Bantz said to Skippy Deere, "but you have to cut down. Try to get more college interns on your next picture." Interns worked for free.

The Hollywood funeral of Eli Marrion was more newsworthy than even that of a Bankable Star. He had been revered by studio heads, producers, and agents, he had even been respected and sometimes loved by Bankable Stars, directors, and even screenplay writers. What had inspired this was his civility and an overpowering intelligence that had solved many problems in the movie business. He also had had the reputation of being fair, within reason.

In his later years, he was an ascetic, did not wallow in power, did not command sexual favors from starlets. Also, LoddStone had made more great movies than any other studio, and there was nothing more precious to people who actually made movies.

The president of the United States sent his chief of staff to give a brief eulogy. France sent its minister of culture, though he was an enemy of Hollywood movies. The Vatican sent a papal envoy, a young cardinal, handsome enough to receive offers for cameo roles. A Japanese group of business executives magically appeared. The highest executives of movie corporations from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Sweden did Eli Marrion honor.

The eulogies began. First a male Bankable Star, then a female Bankable Star, then an A director; even a writer, Benny Sly, gave Marrion tribute. Then the president's chief of staff. Then, just so the show would not be judged pretentious, two of the movie's greatest comics made jokes about Eli Marrion's power and business acumen. Finally, Eli's son, Kevin, and his daughter, Dora, and Bobby Bantz.

She got her laugh and it was Bobby Bantz's turn. Secretly he resented Dora's joke. "I spent thirty years building LoddStone Studios with Eli Marrion," he said. "He was the most intelligent, the kindest man I have ever known. Under him, my service of thirty years has been the happiest time of my life. And I will continue to serve his dream. He showed his faith in me by leaving me in control of the Studio for the next five years and I will not fail him. I cannot hope to equal Eli's achievements. He gave dreams to billions of people all over the world. He shared his wealth and love with his family and all the people of America. He was indeed a lodestone."

Kevin Marrion extolled Eli Marrion as a caring father, not only to his own children, but to everyone who worked at LoddStone. He was a man who carried the torch of Art on a film. A torch, Kevin assured the mourners, that he would pick up.

Eli Marrion's daughter, Dora, gave the most poetic speech, written by Benny Sly. It was eloquent, spiritual, and addressed Eli Marrion's virtues and accomplishments with a humorous respect. "I loved my father more than any man I have ever known," she said, "but I'm glad I never had to negotiate with him. I only had to deal with Bobby Bantz and I could outsmart him."

Two days after the funeral, Bantz summoned Skippy Deere to the studio and offered him the job of head of production of LoddStone, the job he had held himself. Now he was moving up to Marrion's job as chairman. The rewards he offered Deere were irresistible. Deere would get a share of profits of every movie made by the Studio. He would be able to green-light any picture budgeted for less than thirty million dollars. He would be able to fold his own production company into LoddStone as an independent, and name the head of that company.

The assembled mourners knew that Bobby Bantz had written the speech himself, because he had given an important message to the whole movie industry. That he was to rule LoddStone Studios for the next five years and that he expected everyone to give him the same respect they had given Eli Marrion. Bobby Bantz was no longer a Number Two man, he was a Number One.

Skippy Deere was astounded by the richness of the offer. He analyzed this as a mark of insecurity on Bantz's part. Bantz knew he was weak on the creative side and counted on Deere to cover him.

It gave Skippy Deere a glow to think of how rich they would all become. For Deere had been around long enough to know that even Bankable Stars sometimes came to old age in semipoverty. Deere was already very wealthy, but he thought that there were ten levels of being rich and he was only on the first level. Certainly he could live in luxury the rest of his life, but he could not have his own private jet, he could not have five homes and keep them up. He could not keep a harem. He could not afford to be a degenerate gambler. He could not afford another five divorces. He could not afford to keep a hundred servants. He could not even afford to finance his own pictures over any period of time. And he couldn't afford an expensive collection of art, a major Monet or Picasso, as Eli had done. But now someday he would move up from the first level to perhaps as high as the fifth level. He would have to work very hard and be very cunning, and most important, study Bantz very carefully.

Deere accepted the offer and appointed Claudia De Lena to head his production company. Not only because she was creative, not only because she really knew movie making, but because he knew she was too honest to undercut him. With her, he would not have to watch his back. In addition, and this was no small thing in making movies, he always enjoyed her company, her good humor. And their sex thing had been gotten out of the way a long time ago.

"I'm particularly interested that we have Athena Aquitane do our next picture," Bobby Bantz said.

"Great," Bantz said. "Now remember I always knew what Eli really wanted to do but couldn't because he was too soft. We are going to get rid of Dora and Kevin's production companies. They always lose money and besides I don't want them on the lot."

For starters, he was going to make a deal with Melo Stuart so that Melo would give LoddStone preferential access to all the Talent in his agency.

Aha, Deere thought. Now that Bantz controlled LoddStone, he hoped to get Athena into bed. Deere thought that as head of production he had a shot, too.

Bantz outlined his plans, and Deere was surprised at how daring they were. Obviously Bantz was determined to take his place in the world of power.

"I can handle that," Deere said. "I'll make it clear to him that I'll give him the green light on his favorite projects."

"I'll tell Claudia to work on a project for her right away," Deere said.

"You have to be careful on that one," Deere said. "They own a lot of stock in the company."

Bantz grinned. "Yeah, but Eli left me in control for five years. So you're going to be the fall guy. You will refuse to green-light their projects. I figure that after a year or two, they'll leave in disgust and blame you. That was Eli's technique. I always took the rap for him."

"No," Bantz said. "Eli and I consulted our lawyers and they say Molly's argument would lose in the courts. I'll negotiate some money but not gross. That's sucking our blood."

"I think you'll have a hard time moving them off the lot," Deere said. "It's their second home, they grew up on it."

Deere pondered the problem. "He'll never kill himself but he could die a natural death in the next five years. We should ensure ourselves against that."

"I'll try," Bantz said. "Another thing. The night before he died, Eli agreed to give Ernest Vail gross with some money up front on all the pictures we made from his shitty novel. Eli made that promise because Molly Flanders and Claudia nagged him on his deathbed, which was really a lousy thing to do. I've notified Molly in writing that I'm not bound legally or morally to keep that promise."

Bantz said into the phone, "I just wanted to confirm our appointment for four P. M. Yes, we'll talk about your script next week." He hung up the phone and gave Deere a sly smile.

"So, has Molly answered?" Deere asked.

"Yeah, the usual bullshit lawyer letter," Bantz said. "I told her to go fuck herself."

Bantz picked up the phone and called his psychoanalyst. His wife had insisted for years that he go into therapy to become more likable.

Deere knew that Bantz had a rendezvous with Falene Fant at the Studio's Beverly Hotel Bungalow. So Bobby's therapist served as his beard because the Studio had taken an option on the therapist's original screenplay about a serial murder psychiatrist. The joke was that Deere had read the script and thought it would make a nice low-budget movie, although Bantz thought it was shit. Deere would make the movie and Bantz would believe Deere was just doing him a favor.

Then Bantz and Deere chatted about why spending time with Falene made them so happy. They both agreed that it was childish for important men like themselves. They also agreed that sex with Falene was so pleasurable because she was so much fun, and because she made no claims on them. Of course there were implied claims, but she was talented and when the right time came she would be given her chance.

Bantz said, "The thing that worries me is that if she becomes some sort of half-assed star our fun may be over."

The two of them went over the production and release schedules. Messalina would be finished in two months and would be the Locomotive for the Christmas season. A Vail sequel was in the can and would be released in the next two weeks. These two LoddStone pictures combined might gross a billion dollars worldwide, including video. Bantz would see a twenty-million-dollar bonus, Deere probably five million. Bobby would be hailed as a genius in his first year as successor to Marrion. He would be acknowledged as a true Number One exec.

"Yeah," Deere said. "That's the way Talent reacts. But what the hell, then she'll make us a lot of money."

Deere said thoughtfully, "It's a shame we have to pay Cross fifteen percent of the adjusted gross on Messalina. Why don't we just pay him back his money with interest and if he doesn't like it, he can sue. Obviously, he's leery about going to court."

"Isn't he supposed to be Mafia?" Bantz asked. And Deere thought, This guy is really chicken shit.

At that moment the door to Bobby Bantz's office burst open and there stood Molly Flanders. She was in fighting garb, trousers, jacket, and white silk blouse. And in flat heels. Her beautiful complexion was a blushing red with rage. There were tears in her eyes and yet she had never looked more beautiful. Her voice was filled with gleeful malice.

"Yeah," Deere said. He looked at his watch. "It's getting close to four o'clock. Shouldn't you be on your way to Falene?"

"I know Cross," Deere said. "He's not a tough guy. His sister Claudia would have told me if he was truly dangerous. The one I worry about is Molly Flanders. We're screwing two of her clients at the same time."

"OK," Bobby said. "Christ, we really did a good day's work. We save twenty mil on Vail and maybe ten on De Lena. That will pay our bonuses. We'll be heroes."

"OK, you two cocksuckers," she said. "Ernest Vail is dead. I've got an injunction pending to prevent you from releasing your new sequel to his book. Now are you two fuckheads ready to sit down and make a deal?"

Ernest Vail knew his greatest problem in committing suicide was how to avoid violence. He was far too cowardly to use the most popular methods. Guns frightened him, knives and poisons were too direct and not foolproof. Head in a gas oven, death in his car by carbon monoxide, again left too much uncertainty. Slitting his wrists involved blood. No, he wanted to die a pleasurable death, quick, certain, leaving his body intact and dignified.

Ernest prided himself that his was a rational decision that would benefit everyone except LoddStone Studios. It was purely a matter of personal financial gain and the restoration of his ego. He would be regaining control of his life; that made him laugh. Another proof of sanity: He still had his sense of humor.

Swimming out into the ocean was too "movies," throwing himself in front of a bus was also too painful and somehow demeaning, as if he were some homeless bum. One notion appealed to him for a moment. There was a sleeping pill, no longer popular, a suppository, which you just slipped into your rectum. But again, it was too undignified and was not completely certain.

He started with the note to his first wife, whom he thought of as his only true love. The first sentence he tried to make objective and practical.

"Get in touch with Molly Flanders, my lawyer, as soon as you get this note. She will have important news for you. I thank you and the children for the many happy years you've given me. I do not want you to think that what I've done is a reproach to you in any way. We were sick of each other before we parted. Please do not think my action is because of a diseased mind, or any unhappiness. It is completely rational, as my lawyer will explain. Tell my children that I love them."

Ernest rejected all these methods and searched for something that would give him a happy certain death. This process cheered him up so much that he almost abandoned the whole idea. So did writing rough drafts of suicide notes. He wanted to use all his art not to sound self-pitying, accusatory. Most of all he wanted his suicide to be accepted as a completely rational act and not one of cowardice.

To Cross De Lena, he wrote, "I finally did the right thing." He had sensed De Lena's contempt for his waffling.

Then he wrote a note to Molly Flanders that read, "Go get the bastards." This put him in a better mood.

Finally his heart opened up when he wrote to Claudia. "You gave me the happiest times of my life and we weren't even in love. How do you figure that? And how come everything you did in life was right and everything I did was wrong? Until now. Please disregard everything I've said about your writing, how I demeaned your work, that's just the envy of an old novelist as out of date as a blacksmith. And thank you for fighting for my percentage even though finally you failed. I love you for trying."

Ernest pushed the note aside. It would need a lot of rewrite. He wrote notes to his second and third wives, which sounded cold even to him, informing them that they were being left small portions of his estate and thanking them for the happiness they had given him and reassuring them they also were in no way responsible for his action. It seemed he was not really in a loving mood. So he wrote a short note to Bobby Bantz, a simple "Fuck you."

He stacked up the notes, which he had written on yellow second sheets. They were terrible but he would rewrite them, and rewriting was always the key.

Kenneth Kaldone was the greatest dentist in Hollywood, as famous as any Bankable Star within that small milieu. He was extremely skillful in his profession, he was colorful and daring in his private life. He detested the portrayal in literature and movies of dentists as extremely bourgeois and did everything to disprove it.

But composing the notes had stirred his subconscious. Finally he thought of the perfect way to kill himself.

He was charming in dress and manner, his dental office was luxurious and had a rack of a hundred of the best magazines published in America and England. There was another, smaller rack for magazines in foreign languages, German, Italian, French, and even Russian.

First-rate modern art hung on the walls of the waiting room, and when you went into the labyrinth of treatment rooms, the corridors were decorated with autographed pictures of some of the greatest names in Hollywood. His patients.

No patient of Kenneth Kaldone's would be forced to put his teeth in a water glass at night. No patient would ever feel pain in his elaborately outfitted dental chair. He was generous in his use of drugs and especially in the use of "sweet air," the combination of nitrous oxide and oxygen inhaled by patients though a rubber mask, which remarkably killed any pain to the nerves and transported his patient into a semiconsciousness as nearly pleasurable as opium.

The only thing Kenneth believed in was the art of dentistry. There, he was an artist, he kept up with all technical and cosmetic developments. He refused to make removable bridges for his clients, he insisted on steel implants to which an artificial series of teeth could be attached permanently. He lectured at the dental conventions, he was such an authority that he had once been summoned to treat the teeth of one of the royal bloods of Monaco.

He was always bubbly with cheerful good humor and vaguely effeminate in a way that was strangely misleading. He loved women but did not understand in any way a commitment to women. He regarded sex as no more important than a good dinner, a fine wine, wonderful music.

Ernest and Kenneth had become friends on Ernest's first visit to Hollywood almost twenty years before. Ernest had suffered an excruciating toothache at the dinner of a producer who was courting him for the rights to one of his books. The producer had called Kenneth at midnight, and Kenneth had rushed to the party to drive Ernest to his office to treat the infected tooth. Then he had driven Ernest to his hotel, instructing him to come back to the office the next day.

Ernest later commented to the producer that he must have a lot of clout for a dentist to make a house call at midnight. The producer said no, Kenneth Kaldone was just that kind of a guy. A man with a toothache was to him like a man drowning, he had to be rescued. But also Kaldone had read all of Ernest's books and loved his work.

The next day when Ernest visited Kenneth in his office, he was effusively grateful. Kenneth stopped him with an upraised hand and said, "I'm still in your debt for the pleasure your books have given me. Now let me tell you about steel implants." He gave a long lecture that argued it was never too early to take care of your mouth. That Ernest would soon lose some other teeth, and steel implants would save him from putting his teeth in a water glass at night.

But Ernest's main interest in Kenneth was as a character for a novel. Ernest had always believed that in every human being there was one startling perversity. Kenneth had revealed his, and it was sexual but not in the usual pornographic style.

They always chatted a bit before a treatment, before Ernest was given sweet air. Kenneth mentioned that his primary girlfriend, his "significant other," was also having sex with her dog, a huge German shepherd.

Ernest said, "I'll think about it."

"No," Kenneth said, "I can't treat a patient who disagrees with me about my work."

Ernest laughed. "It's a good thing you're not a novelist," he said. "But OK."

They became friends. Vail would call him for dinner whenever he came to Hollywood and sometimes he made a special trip to L. A. just to be treated with sweet air. Kenneth spoke intelligently about Ernest's books, he knew literature almost as well as he knew dentistry.

Ernest loved sweet air. He never felt pain and he had some of his best ideas while he was in the semiconscious state it induced. In the next few years he and Kenneth built a friendship so strong it resulted in Ernest having a new set of teeth with roots of steel, which would accompany him to the grave.

Ernest, just beginning to succumb to the sweet air, took the rubber mask off his face and said without thinking, "You're screwing a woman who screws her dog? Don't you worry about that?" He meant the medical and psychological complications.

Kenneth did not grasp what was implied. "Why should I worry?" he said. "A dog is no competition."

At first Ernest thought he was joking. Then he realized Kenneth was serious. Ernest put his mask back on and submerged himself in the dreaminess of the nitrous oxide and oxygen, and his mind, stimulated as usual, made a complete analysis of his dentist.

Kenneth was a man who had no conception of love as a spiritual exercise. Pleasure was paramount, similar to his skills in killing pain. Flesh was to be controlled while indulged.

They had dinner together that night, and Kenneth more or less confirmed Ernest's analysis. "Sex is better than nitrous," Kenneth said. "But like nitrous, you must have at least thirty percent oxygen mixed in." He gave Ernest a sly look. "Ernest, you really like sweet air, I can tell. I give you the maximum -- seventy percent -- and you tolerate it well."

"Not really," Kenneth said. "Unless you keep the mask on for a couple of days and maybe not even then. Of course, pure nitrous oxide will kill you in fifteen to thirty minutes. In fact about once a month I have a little midnight party in my office, carefully selected "beautiful people." All my patients, so I have their blood work. All healthy. The nitrous turns them on. Haven't you felt sexual under the gas?"

Ernest asked, "Is it dangerous?"

Ernest laughed. "When one of your technicians goes by I want to grab her ass."

Kenneth said with wry humor, "I'm sure she'd forgive you. Why don't you come by the office tomorrow at midnight? It's really a lot of fun." He saw Ernest looking scandalized and said, "Nitrous is not cocaine. Cocaine makes women sort of helpless. Nitrous just loosens them up. Just come as you would go to a cocktail party. You're not committed to any action."

Ernest thought maliciously, Are dogs allowed? Then he said he would drop in. He excused himself by thinking it would only be research for a novel.

But now, years later, Ernest knew he had a way of killing himself. It would be like painless dentistry. He would not suffer, he would not be disfigured, he would not be afraid. He would float from this world to the other in a cloud of benign reflections. As the saying goes, he would die happy.

The problem now was how to get into Kenneth's office at night and how to figure out how the controls operated…

He did not have any fun at the party and did not really participate. The truth was, the nitrous oxide made him feel more spiritual than sexy, as if it were some sacred drug only to be used to worship a merciful God. The copulation of the guests was so animal-like that for the first time he understood Kenneth's casualness about his significant other and the German shepherd. It was so devoid of human content that it was boring. Kenneth himself did not participate, he was too busy operating the controls on the nitrous.

He made an appointment with Kenneth for a checkup. While Kenneth was studying his X rays, Ernest told him that he was using a dentist as a character in his new novel and asked to be shown how the controls for the sweet air worked.

"But couldn't it be dangerous?" Ernest asked. "What if you got drunk and screwed up? You could kill me."

Ernest hesitated a moment, trying to look embarrassed. "You know I enjoyed that party years ago. Now I have a beautiful girlfriend who is acting a little coy. I need some help. Could you let me have the key to your office so I could bring her here some night? The nitrous would just tip the balance."

Kenneth was a natural-born pedagogue and showed him how to work the controls on the tanks of nitrous oxide and oxygen, stressing the safe ratios, lecturing all the while.

Kenneth studied the X rays carefully. "Your mouth is in terrific shape," he said. "I'm really a great dentist."

"No, it's automatically regulated so that you always get at least thirty percent oxygen," Kenneth explained.

"A really beautiful girl?" Kenneth asked. "Tell me which night and I'll come and work the controls."

"No, no," Ernest said. "This is a really straight girl. She wouldn't do even the nitrous if you were around." He paused for a moment. "She really is old-fashioned."

"The key?" Ernest said.

Ernest was stunned and then ashamed. He had not thought of harming Kenneth. Kenneth was looking at him with a reproachful smile tinged with sadness. Ernest took the key from Kenneth, then in a rare show of emotion, he gave Kenneth a tentative hug. "So you understand," he said. "I'm being completely rational."

When he returned, he had a key in his hand. "Take this to a hardware store and get it duplicated," Kenneth said. "Make sure you let them know who you are. Then come back and give me my key."

"No shit," Kenneth said and looked directly into Ernest's eyes. Then he said, "I'll just be a minute," and he left the treatment room.

Ernest was surprised. "I don't mean right now."

Kenneth packed away the X rays and turned to Ernest. For one of the few times since Ernest had known him, the cheerfulness in his face was gone.

"When the cops find you," Kenneth said, "dead in my chair, I don't want to be implicated in any way. I don't want my professional status jeopardized, or my patients deserting me. The cops will find the duplicate and track it down to the store. They will assume trickery on your part. I assume you're leaving a note?"

"Sure I do," Kenneth said. "I've often thought about it for myself in my old age or if things go bad." He smiled cheerfully and said, "Death is no competition." They both laughed.

"And you don't think I'm crazy?" Ernest said. "Doing it for money I can't spend…"

"Everybody in Hollywood knows," Kenneth said. "Skippy Deere was at a party and someone asked if he was really going to do the picture. He said, "I will try until Hell freezes over or Ernest Vail commits suicide.""

"You really know why?" Ernest asked.

"Why not?" Kenneth said. "It's smarter than killing yourself for love. But the mechanics are not that simple. You have to disconnect this hose in the wall that supplies the oxygen, that disables the regulator and you can make the mixture more than seventy percent. Do it on Friday night after the cleaning people leave so you won't be discovered until Monday. There's always a chance you can be revived. Of course if you use pure nitrous oxide you'll be gone in thirty minutes." Again he smiled a little sadly. "All my work on your teeth wasted. What a shame."

Ernest opened the door that led to the work area. As he walked down the corridor, he was greeted by the photos of Bankable Stars. There were six treatment rooms, three on each side of the corridor. At the end was Kenneth's office and conference room where they had chatted many times. Kenneth's own treatment room was attached, with his special hydraulic dental chair, where he cared for his high-ranking patients.

Kenneth's office was a half-hour walk from the hotel, and Ernest stepped out feeling a sense of freedom. Nobody walked in L. A. He was hungry but was afraid to eat anything because it might make him throw up when he was under the nitrous.

The office was on the fifteenth floor of a sixteen-story building. There was only a single civilian guard in the lobby and no one in the elevator. Ernest turned the key in the door of the dental suite and entered. He locked the door behind him and put the key in his jacket pocket. The suite of rooms was ghostly still, the receptionist's window glinted in the early morning sun and her computer was ominously dark and silent.

Two days later, on a Saturday morning, Ernest woke very early in his Beverly Hills Hotel room. The sun was just coming up. He showered and shaved and dressed in a T-shirt and comfortable jeans. Over them he wore a tan linen jacket. His room was strewn with clothes and newspapers, but it would be pointless to tidy up.

Ideas for future novels floated through his head, insights into many people he knew, none of them malicious, which was what he loved about nitrous. Shit, he had forgotten to rewrite the suicide notes, and he realized how, despite his good intentions and language, they were in essence insulting.

That chair was extra luxurious, the padding thicker and the leather softer. On the mobile table beside the chair was the sweet air mask. The console, with its hose linked to the hidden nitrous oxide and oxygen tanks, had its two control knobs turned to zero.

Ernest was now in a huge, sailing colored balloon. He floated over the world he had known. He thought about Eli Marrion, who had followed his destiny, achieved great power, was regarded with awe for his ruthless intelligence in using that power. And yet, when Ernest's best book came out and was bought for the movies, the one that earned him the Pulitzer, Eli had come to the cocktail party his publishers gave him.

Ernest adjusted the dials so that he would get half nitrous oxide and half oxygen. Then he sat in the chair and put the mask over his face. He relaxed. After all, Kenneth would not be sticking knives into his gums now. All the aches and pains left his body, his brain roamed over the entire world. He felt wonderful, it was ridiculous to think of death.

And Bantz was not a villain. His relentless pursuit of profit was a result of his experience in a special world. If truth be told, Skippy Deere was worse, because Deere, with his intelligence, his charm and his elemental energy, and his instinctive moves to betrayal in a personal sense, was more lethal.

Eli had put out his hand and said, "You are a very fine writer." His coming to the party was sensational Hollywood gossip. And the great Eli Marrion had shown him the final and absolute mark of respect, he had given him gross. No matter that Bantz had taken it away after Marrion died.

Another insight came to Ernest. Why was he always knocking Hollywood and films, sneering at them? It was jealousy. Film was now the most revered art form, and he himself loved movies, good ones anyway. But he envied more the relationships in making a movie. The cast, the crew, the director, the Bankable Stars and even the "Suits," those crass execs, seemed to come together in a close if not ever-loving family, at least until the picture was finished. They gave each other presents then and kissed and hugged and swore eternal devotion. What a wonderful feeling that must be to have. He remembered when he wrote his first script with Claudia, he thought he might be admitted to this family.

Benignly saturated with forgiving nitrous, Ernest decided he really didn't want to die. Money was not that important, Bantz would relent or Claudia and Molly would find a way out.

But how could that be with his personality, his malicious wit, his constant sneering? But under the sweet nitrous oxide, he could not even judge himself harshly. He had a right, he had written great books (Ernest was an oddity among novelists because he really loved his books), and he had deserved to be treated with more respect.

Then he remembered all his humiliation. None of his wives had ever truly loved him. He had always been the mendicant, never enjoyed requited love. His books had been respected but never aroused the adoration that made a writer rich. Some critics had reviled him and he had pretended to take it in good sport. After all, it was wrong to get angry with critics, they were only doing their job. But their remarks hurt. And all his male friends, though they sometimes enjoyed his company, his wit and honesty, never became close, not even Kenneth. While Claudia was truly fond of him, he knew Molly Flanders and Kenneth felt pity for him.

His depression came back. He tilted back in Kenneth's lounge chair and watched the sun rise over Beverly Hills. He was so angry at the studio screwing him out of his money that he couldn't enjoy anything. He hated the dawning of a new day; at night he took sleeping pills early and tried to sleep as long as he could… That he could be humiliated by such people, people he held in contempt. And now he could no longer even read, a pleasure that had never before betrayed him. And of course, he could no longer write. That elegant prose, so often praised, was now false, inflated, pretentious. He no longer enjoyed writing it.

Ernest reached over and turned off the sweet air. It took just a few minutes for his head to clear and then he went to sit in Kenneth's office.

For a long time now, he had awakened every morning dreading the coming day, too tired to even shave and shower. And he was broke. He had earned millions and had pissed it away on gambling, women, and booze. Or given it away. Money had never been important until now.

He sprang up and walked into the treatment room. Kenneth had told him what he must do. He pulled out the cable that held the two plugs, one for oxygen and one for the nitrous oxide. Then he plugged back only one. Nitrous. He sat in the dental chair, reached over and turned the dial. At that moment he thought that there must be some way to get at least a ten percent oxygen flow so that death would not be so certain. He picked up the mask and put it over his face.

The pure nitrous hit his body and he experienced a moment of ecstasy, a washing away of all pain and a dreamy content. The nitrous hit and scrubbed out the brain in his skull. There was one last moment of pure pleasure before he ceased to exist, and in that moment, he believed there was a God and a Heaven.

The last two months he had not been able to send his kids their support payments or his wives their alimony. Unlike most men, sending those checks made Ernest happy. He had not published a book for five years, and his personality had become less pleasant even to himself. He was always whining about his fate. He was like a sore tooth in the face of society. And this image itself depressed him. What kind of soapy metaphor was this for a writer of his talent? A wave of melancholy swept over him; he was completely powerless.

Molly Flanders savaged Bobby Bantz and Skippy Deere; she would have been more careful if Eli Marrion was still alive.

Bantz immediately called Melo Stuart and the chief counsel for LoddStone Pictures. They were in the meeting room within a half hour. Melo was necessary to the meeting because he was the packager of the sequels and earned a commission on the Bankable Star, the director, and the rewriter, Benny Sly. This was a situation that could require him to give up some points.

"You have a new sequel to Ernest's book coming out. My injunction will stop that. The property now belongs to Ernest's heirs. Sure, maybe you can override the injunction and release the picture but then I sue. If I win, Ernest's estate will own that picture and most of what it earns. And for a certainty we can prevent you from making other sequels based on the characters in his books. Now, we can save all that and years of trouble in court. You pay five million up front and ten percent of the gross of each picture. And I want a true and certified account of the money on home video."

Deere was horrified and Bantz enraged. Ernest Vail, a writer, would have a greater percentage of the profit on the pictures than anyone except a Bankable Star ever got, and that was a fucking outrage.

"What can you guarantee?" Molly asked the counsel. "To a ninety-five percent certainty?"

Molly Flanders broke in angrily. "You call killing himself a threat to the Studio?"

"And blackmail," the chief counsel said smoothly. "Now we've completely researched the law in this situation, which is very tricky, but even then I advised the Studio we could fight your claim in court and win. In this particular case, the rights to the property do not revert back to the heirs."

"No," the counsel said. "Nothing is that certain in the law."

The chief counsel said, "We studied the situation when Mr. Vail made his first threat against the Studio."

It was Melo Stuart who rose and restrained Molly with an affectionate and imploring hug. "Hey," he said, "we're just negotiating. Be civilized."

Molly was delighted. She would retire with the fee she earned when she won this case. She got up to go and said, "Fuck you all, I'll see you in court."

Bantz and Deere were so terrified they could not speak. Bantz wished with all his heart that Eli Marrion were still alive.

They cut the deal. Ernest's estate got four million up front and 8 percent of the gross on the picture about to be released. He would get two million and 10 percent of adjusted gross on any other sequels. Ernest's three ex-wives and his children would be rich.

Molly said quietly to Bantz, "Do you want to risk losing everything? Can your counsel guarantee that you will win? Of course he can't. Are you a fucking businessman or some degenerate gambler? To save a fucking lousy twenty to forty mil, you want to risk losing a billion?"

He led Molly back to her chair, noticing there were tears in her eyes. "We can make a deal, I'll give up some points in the package."

Molly's parting shot was, "If you think I was tough, wait until Cross De Lena hears how you screwed him."

Molly savored her victory. She remembered how one night she had taken Ernest home from a party. She was pretty drunk and extremely lonely and Ernest was witty and intelligent and she thought it might be fun to spend a night with him. Then when they arrived at her home, sobered up by the drive, and she took him to her bedroom, she had looked around despairingly. Ernest was such a shrimp and so obviously sexually shy and he was really a homely man. At that point he was tongue-tied.

Dottore David Redfellow received Don Clericuzio's summons while attending an important meeting in Rome. He was advising the prime minister of Italy on a new banking regulation that would impose severe penal sentences on corrupt bank officials, and naturally he was advising against it. He immediately wound up his arguments and flew to America.

In the twenty-five years of his exile in Italy, David Redfellow had prospered and changed beyond his wildest dreams. At the beginning, Don Clericuzio helped him buy a small bank in Rome. With the fortune he had made in the drug trade and deposited in Swiss banks, he bought more banks and television stations. But it was Don Clericuzio's friends in Italy who helped guide him and build his empire, helped him to acquire the magazines, the newspapers, the TV stations, in addition to his string of banks.

But Molly was too fair a person to dismiss him at such a critical time. So she got drunk again and they went to bed. And really, in the dark, it hadn't been too bad. Ernest enjoyed it so much that she was flattered and brought him breakfast in bed.

He gave her a sly grin. "Thank you," he said. "And thank you again." And she perceived that he understood everything she had felt the previous night and was thanking her not only for bringing him breakfast but also as his sexual benefactress. She had always been regretful that she had not been a better actress, but what the hell, she was a lawyer. And now she had performed for Ernest Vail an act of requited love.

But David Redfellow was pleased also by what he had done on his own. A complete transformation of character. He acquired Italian citizenship, an Italian wife, Italian children, and the standard Italian mistress as well as an honorary doctorate (cost, two million) from an Italian university. He wore Armani suits, spent an hour every week at his barber, acquired a circle of all-male cronies at his coffee bar (which he bought), and entered politics as advisor to the cabinet and the prime minister. Still, once a year he made his pilgrimage to Quogue to fulfill any wishes of his mentor, Don Clericuzio. So this special summons filled him with alarm.

Dinner was waiting for him at the Quogue mansion when he arrived, and Rose Marie had outdone herself because Redfellow was always rapturous about the restaurants of Rome. Assembled to honor him was the entire Clericuzio clan: the Don himself; his sons, Giorgio, Petie, and Vincent; his grandson, Dante; and Pippi and Cross De Lena.

It was a hero's welcome. David Redfellow, the college-dropout drug king, the louche dresser with an earring in his ear, the hyena riding the kills of sex, had transformed himself into a pillar of society. They were proud of him. Even more, Don Clericuzio felt he was in Redfellow's debt. For it was Redfellow who had taught him a great lesson in morality.

He always claimed it was quite simple. You learned the official's yearly salary and offered him five times that amount.

David Redfellow was a twenty-year-old college student in 1960 when he first started dealing drugs, not for profit but simply so he and his friends could have a steady cheap supply. An amateur endeavor, just cocaine and marijuana. In a year it had grown so big he and his classmate partners owned a small plane that brought goods over the Mexican and South American borders. Quite naturally they soon ran afoul of the law, and that was where David first showed his genius. The six-man partnership was earning vast amounts of money, and David Redfellow laid on such massive bribes that he soon had on his payroll a roster of sheriffs, district attorneys, judges, and hundreds of police along the Eastern seaboard.

In his early days Don Clericuzio had suffered a strange sentimentality. He had believed that the forces of law could not be generally corrupted in the matter of drugs.

But then the cartel of Colombians appeared on the scene, wilder than the wildest of the Old West movie Indians, not just taking scalps but whole heads. Four of Redfellow's partners were killed, and Redfellow made contact with the Clericuzio Family and asked for protection, offering 50 percent of his profits.

Petie Clericuzio and a crew of soldiers from the Bronx Enclave became his bodyguards, and this arrangement lasted until the Don exiled Redfellow to Italy in 1965. The drug business had become too dangerous.

Don Clericuzio said drily, "You will not be doing business with them, you will do business only with me and Giorgio. If you need help you can call on Pippi De Lena. I have decided to go on with the business I spoke to you about. Giorgio will tell you why."

Now, gathered together over dinner, they congratulated the Don on the wisdom of his decision many years before. Dante and Cross heard the story of Redfellow for the first time. Redfellow was a good storyteller and he praised Petie to the skies. "What a fighter," he said. "If it wasn't for him I would never have lived to go to Sicily." He turned to Dante and Cross and said to them, "It was the day you both were christened. I remember you both never flinched when they almost drowned you in Holy Water. I never dreamed that someday we would be doing business together, as grown men."

Redfellow enjoyed that story. "He is a very clever man. He knows you will not go to court so he takes away your money. That's good business."

"You think that's funny?" Dante said to Redfellow.

Giorgio told David the latest developments, that Eli Marrion was dead and Bobby Bantz had taken over the Studio, that he had taken away all the points Cross owned in Messalina, and returned his money with interest.

Dante was drinking a cup of coffee, and he eyed Redfellow with distaste. Rose Marie, who was sitting beside him, put her hand on his arm.

Redfellow studied Dante for a moment. He made his face very serious. "Only because I know that in this instance it is a mistake to be so clever."

"So Grandson," he said to Dante, "how would you solve this problem?"

"Send him swimming to the bottom of the ocean," Dante said, and the Don smiled at him.

The Don observed this exchange and it seemed to amuse him. In any case he was frivolous, a rare occurrence, which his sons always recognized and enjoyed.

"And you, Croccifixio? How would you solve this situation?" the Don asked.

"Petie and Vincent?" the Don asked.

"I'd just accept it," Cross said. "I'd learn from it. I just got outfoxed because I didn't believe they'd have the balls."

Cross was taking the Don seriously. "Eli Marrion's house still holds his paintings and they're worth about twenty or thirty million. We could hijack them and hold them for ransom."

"No," the Don said. "That would expose you, reveal your power, and no matter how delicately handled, could lead to danger. It is too complicated. David, what would you do?"

But they refused to answer. They knew the game he was playing.

"You can't just ignore it," the Don said to Cross. "You will be known for a fool and men all over the world will refuse you any respect."

David puffed on his cigar, thoughtfully. He said, "Buy the Studio. Do a civilized businesslike thing. With our banks and communications companies, buy LoddStone."

Cross was incredulous. "LoddStone is the oldest and richest film studio in the world. Even if you could put up the ten billion, they wouldn't sell it to you. That's simply not possible."

Petie said in his joker's voice, "David my old buddy, you can get your mitts on ten billion? The man whose life I saved? The man who said he could never repay me?"

Cross said, "The problem is how to get Bantz out of the way. He controls the Studio and whatever his faults, he is loyal to Marrion's wishes. He would never agree to selling the Studio."

Redfellow waved him away. "You don't understand how big money works. It's like whipped cream, you get a small amount and whip it up into a big froth with bonds, loans, stock shares. Money is not the problem."

Now the Don made his decision. He said to Redfellow, "Carry out your plan. Get it done. But with all caution. Pippi and Croccifixio will be at your command."

"I'll go out there and give him a kiss," Petie said.

"One more thing," Giorgio said to Redfellow. "Bobby Bantz, by the terms of Eli Marrion's will, has total command over the Studio for the next five years. But Marrion's son and daughter have more stock in the company than Bantz. Bantz can't get fired but if the Studio is sold, the new owners will have to pay him off. So that's the problem you have to solve."

"Don't worry," the Don said. "I have a lot of money in those banks."

David Redfellow smiled and puffed on his cigar. "Just like the old days. Don Clericuzio, the only help I need is yours. Some of those banks in Italy may be reluctant to gamble on such a venture. Remember, we will have to pay a big premium over the actual worth of the Studio."

Pippi De Lena had watched all this with a wary eye. What disturbed him was the openness of this meeting. By procedure only the Don, Giorgio, and David Redfellow should have been present. Pippi and Cross could have been given orders separately to help Redfellow. Why had they been let in on these secrets? Even more important, why were Dante, Petie, and Vincent brought into the circle? All this was not like the Don Clericuzio he knew, who always kept his plans as secret as possible.

As soon as they were out of sight, Dante turned to Giorgio and said furiously, "And who gets the Studio when we own it? Cross?"

Vincent and Rose Marie were helping the Don up the stairs to go to bed. He had stubbornly refused to have a lift chair installed on the railings.

David Redfellow interrupted coolly. "I will own the Studio. I will run it. Your grandfather will have a financial interest. This will be documented."

Cross drove their rented car to the airport. During the drive, Pippi said to Cross, "I'm going to spend some time in New York City. I'll just keep the car when we get to the airport."

Giorgio agreed.

Petie drove Redfellow back to Kennedy Airport where his private jet waited. Cross and Pippi had used a chartered jet from Vegas. Don Clericuzio absolutely forbade the owning of a jet by the Xanadu or any of his enterprises.

Pippi studied all of them. He was good at scenting danger. That's why he had lived so long. But this he couldn't figure out. Maybe the Don was just getting old.

"You were OK," Pippi said. "But the Don was right. You can't let anybody screw you twice."

Cross saw that his father was worried. "I didn't do well in there," he said.

Cross said laughing, "Dante, neither one of us can run a movie studio. We're not ruthless enough."

When they arrived at Kennedy, Cross got out and Pippi slid across the seat to get behind the wheel. Through the open window, they shook hands. In that moment Pippi looked up at his son's handsome face and felt an enormous wave of affection. He tried to smile as he slapped Cross gently on the cheek and said, "Be careful."

"Everything," Pippi said. Then, startling Cross, he said, "Maybe I should have let you go with your mother but I was selfish. I needed you around."

Cross watched his father drive away and for the first time he realized how much his father worried about him, how much his father loved him.

"Of what?" Cross asked, his dark eyes searching his father's.