“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Oh,” Stone said, ripping open the little envelope. It read: CALL ME TONIGHT, NO MATTER HOW LATE. “Sorry, Bill, I was preoccupied, I guess, and I didn’t even read it.”
“How the hell did you get to know David Sturmack?”
“I met him at a dinner party last night, at Vance Calder’s house.”
“Only last night? He called me about you yesterday afternoon; that was before you even met him?”
“That’s right.”
“Jesus, what are you doing in Hollywood, having dinner with movie stars and fixers?”
“Fixers?”
“Don’t you even know who David Sturmack is?”
“I know he has a lot of influence in the movie business; that’s about it. Who else is he?”
“Stone, if it doesn’t happen on the Upper East Side between Forty-second and Eighty-sixth Street, you don’t have a clue, do you?”
“Am I supposed to know who Sturmack is?”
“Well, maybe not. Only a handful of people really know, and I happen to be one of them.”
“Why is he so little known for such a powerful fellow?”
“Because he wants it that way. Things usually get to be the way Sturmack wants them.”
“Oh.”
“You bet your ass. That was some conversation I had with him yesterday; he called me right out of the blue. I’m glad I was in.”
“Bill, you were telling me who Sturmack is.”
“He’s the prince of fucking darkness, that’s who he is.”
“You copped that line from a movie.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true,” Eggers said defensively.
“I guess not; now explain yourself.”
“It started like this: Sturmack’s old man, whose name was Morris, or Moe, was Meyer Lansky’s right-hand man for thirty years.”
“No kidding?”
“Absolutely no fucking kidding. Word is, he sent son David to law school both to make him respectable and to make him useful.”
“And he was useful?”
“You better believe he was. His specialty was the mob connection to the unions; he was very tight with Hoffa and Tony Scotto and a dozen other big-time labor guys. In the late fifties he went west and became a conduit between the Hollywood unions and the mob. He was always very discreet; he didn’t even practice law out there, so nobody could go running to the bar association if they didn’t like his methods. Over the years, he’s sunk more and more out of sight until he’s practically invisible, but at the same time he’s gotten a better and better grip on the town.”
“How do you know all this, Bill?”
“I know everything about everybody; didn’t you know that?”
“Come on, tell me how you know.”