A Knife to Remember

business of professional counseling?“
    “No...“
    “Then don’t. You wouldn’t be good at it.“ Shelley smiled. “Jane, you do know you’re going off the deep end, don’t you?“
    “Yes, but I thought a nice plunge into despair might be an antidote to the cheerfulness I’ve been feeling lately. I don’t feel I’m being a good mother if I don’t worry myself into a froth about something fairly regularly.“
    “So what were you saying about blackmail?“
    “Blackmail? Oh, yes! While I was standing over there I heard somebody trying to persuade somebody to talk to the director about doing something.“
    “Oh, that is enlightening!“ Shelley said. “Who are these somebodies?“
    “I couldn’t tell. But it was real blackmail.“
    “Is this the same kind of berserk overstatement you were making about Mike and Harwell?“
    “No, not at all. The one person was saying he or she had some kind of proof about the other person being in porn movies and how they never give prestigious awards to people like that. And this person would keep it a secret if the other one would talk to the director.“
    “But about what?“
    “I don’t know. But they both seemed to.“
    “Surely you have some idea of whether it was a man and a woman or two men or whatever?“ Shelley asked.
    “No, not really. I have the impression it was men, but I know it’s only because it was a brutal kind of conversation I don’t associate with women...“
    “You ought to get to a beauty shop more often to be cured of that idea,“ Shelley said.
    “What are you two plotting?“ Maisie said. Jane and Shelley hadn’t noticed that she’d rejoined them.
    In an undertone, Jane repeated to Maisie what she’d overheard.
    Maisie shook her head in disgust. “The blackmailer was probably Jake. He’s that sort of unprincipled person. It’s a wonder he’s still walking and breathing. As far as I can tell, he’s mortally offended nearly everyone he’s ever worked with.“
    “Then how does he get work? Doesn’t the director
know him? Why would he hire him?“ Jane asked.
“Oh, Jane,“ Maisie said. “The director doesn’t
hire him. The director is just an employee like everybody else, although he’s a very important employee and would never admit to being part of the ‘hired help.’ It’s the producer who puts the whole staff together. And the reason Jake gets work is because he’s so fantastically good at what he does. He just sits here in the middle of his vast national spiderweb of contacts and can lay his hands on any object you’d ever imagine. You want an eighteenth century tea service or a Revolutionary era spinning wheel or a Meissen toilet—you name it and Jake produces it without any fuss or bother. It just miraculously appears. Nobody likes him much, but he’s very, very good at what he does. It’s the same way with the principal actors. An extra has to be very agreeable, but a principal—if they’re good enough—can get away with murder.”
    Jane had been listening, but her mind had fastened on a detail. “Are there such things as Meissen toilets?”
    Before Maisie could reply, Shelley asked, “So who’s the producer on this production? Anybody we’ve ever heard of?“
    “I’m not sure. It’s a weird thing,“ Maisie said. “It seems to be a consortium of people, but the front man is a little nerd nobody’s ever heard of. He hangs around twitching and gulping nervously and makes lots of phone calls checking in with whoever he represents. That’s him over there on the phone now.”
    Maisie pointed to a rattled rabbit of a man speaking into the set telephone with his hand over the receiver so he wouldn’t be overheard. “Sometimes the money people like to stay in the background and run things from there,“ Maisie went on. “Not often, but it happens.“
    “But you told the person in your office that you were going to be talking to the producer soon,“ Jane said, then regretted this proof that she’d been eavesdropping.
    Maisie didn’t seem to mind. “I lied,“ she said cheerfully. “But it got me what I wanted in a hurry.“
    “I’ve always wondered what a producer does. You always see that on credits,“ Jane said.
    “Oh, the producer’s everything,“ Maisie replied. “The producer acquires the property—the story, that is—hires everybody from the scriptwriter to the janitor, and, most important, rounds up the money to make the film in the first place. That’s a huge