Shallow Graves

his favorite directors, Bergman, Fassbinder, Kurosawa and Truffaut, but in his heart he wanted to make quality films.
    With film schools pumping out students who learned cinema (not, no, never movies ), there was no lack of independent directors in the U.S. making wonderful, small, serious flicks. But Lefkowitz’s particular talent was that he worked within the system. His films were mostly financed, and wholly distributed, by major studios, one of which he presently had a five-movie housekeeping deal with (this being one of the better gold rings in contemporary movieland). Balls, a temper and an ability to convince people that he had vision had managed to get him into bed with this huge entertainment conglomerate, which was putting up 80 percent of the money for any five pictures he wished to produce.
    Good muscle tone, a beach permit for his Mercedes, and a housekeeping deal for five flicks. It didn’t get much better than this. But, although he could legitimately be spending this lunch hour reflecting on his good fortune, what Lefkowitz was in fact obsessing about was New York, the Empire State, while he swung back and forth in a three-thousand-dollar leather chair.
    The reason for this meditation sat in front of him on his desk (which was huge but not at all immaculate): a battered, red-covered script, marred with doodles and numbers and words. It was the first flick in the five-movie deal. A dark and lyrical film called To Sleep in a Shallow Grave. A picture that had no buddies, no car chases, no wisecracking teenagers, nokarate fights, and not a single actor magically turned into a dog, baby or person of the opposite sex.
    The property had had a strange history. The film was in turn-around—another studio had bought the script and started production. A month later, though, it had been canceled. Lefkowitz, who’d lusted to do the film ever since he’d read the book it was based on years before, immediately snatched up the rights. But buying a turn-around property meant paying a premium; he had not only to pay for the script itself but he also had to reimburse the first studio for its production expenses. So what should have been a small art film became overnight a big-budget monster.
    Then a famous rule in Hollywood proved true: If anybody wants it, everybody wants it. Last week, two other studios started bidding for the film.
    Loyalty in Hollywood is a moving target and Lefkowitz’s studio would have sold the property out from underneath him in a minute, except that under his contract he had an absolute right to make the movie.
    Absolute, that is, provided the film met a complicated series of production deadlines. It now seemed there was a serious possibility that these deadlines might be missed. Already the company was two weeks behind schedule and Lefkowitz knew that the studio lawyers had notified the production execs that if principal photography didn’t begin in three weeks, all bets were off. Lefkowitz would be in breach, and Shallow Grave would disappear from his company faster than a gold chain on the streets of New York.
    Lefkowitz was reflecting on this when the assistant producer, a handsome, intense thirty-year-old, walked through the door.
    Since he’d been working for Lefkowitz, the young man, who’d been so eager and talked so flippantly about ball-busting when he’d accepted the job, didn’t look so young anymore. He definitely wasn’t as eager. And the only privates he thought about regularly were his own.
    “He’s calling at three,” the AP announced.
    Lefkowitz examined his Oyster Perpetual. Five minutes. “Tell me what happened.”
    The assistant producer began, “Marty—”
    “Who’s Marty?”
    “Jacobs. Pellam’s assistant.”
    “Okay.”
    “He was killed, and—”
    “Jesus.”
    “Pellam ended up in the hospital. I’m not sure but the way the sheriff explained it they seem to be separate accidents.”
    “What happened to Marty?”
    “The car blew up.”
    “Jesus. What about his family?”
    “The sheriff called and he told them. I made a call for your office. You don’t have to do anything, but—”
    Lefkowitz said, “We’ll send flowers. You know that florist, the one I mean?”
    “Will do.”
    “I’ll write a note too. How’s Pellam?”
    “I’m not sure. All I know is I got a message saying that he was going to be calling in at three.”
    “We should get mobiles in all the honey wagons. It’s crazy we don’t. Look into that,