The Ayatollah's Money

  Chapter 37 – Roger Goes Hunting

  Roger has a knack for making contact with famous people and getting them to help the Junes in their capers. This may have to do with the fact that Gwen threatens to make him sleep in a different bedroom with only the dog for company, or it may just be an unusual but useful talent he developed along the way. Smart money’s on the former. He had gotten Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney and Renee Fleming, among others, and now he was tasked to get George Clooney and Steven Soderberg. He took the dog for a walk on The Battery and put on his thinking cap. Usually it takes Roger a few laps up and down the promenade to get his mental juices flowing, and then a few more to generate an idea, and then a few more to develop the idea into a form that he can take back to Gwen to critique. The dog knew this from much prior experience, knew his roles were to protect his master from disturbance during this delicate process and to act as sounding board for the nascent ideas. This meant he could look forward to a good long walk, and during the early stages, before Roger called on his talents, he could stalk seagulls perched on the promenade railing and telepathically challenge them with threats of sudden and fatal charges and pounces.

  So it surprised the dog when during only the second lap on the walkway Roger stopped, looked out at the water, and turned to the dog saying, “I got it. I got it. Why reinvent the wheel. Just do the same thing that worked before.”

  The dog said, “What thing?”

  “The big advertisements in all the newspapers around the world thing.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember. Maybe it’ll work. Won’t know till you try, but it’s worth a shot. How much will that cost?”

  Roger crossed the road and sat down on a bench next to a huge Civil War seacoast mortar which at one time had protected Fort Sumter. The dog was disappointed the walk was being truncated, but lay down next to the bench and gave the evil eye to a pigeon which had the temerity to waddle nearby, looking for a piece of popcorn. Roger said, “Good question,” took out his cell phone, and called Laleh. “Hi, it’s Roger.”

  “Hello. What kind of wine are we having with dinner tonight?”

  “What kind would you like?”

  “A German riesling, say, ten years old.”

  Roger loved that Laleh loved wine as much as he did, though he had a nagging sense in the back of his mind that in the long run he may be responsible for her becoming an alcoholic. He took a note from her book and thought, not my problem, and said, “I have an idea about getting Clooney, and I need to know how much money you have to spend on this thing. You said you have a lot, but you’ve never said how much that is. This thing I’m thinking of will cost a lot, so I have to ask.”

  “That’s ok, I don’t mind. Everyone will have to know sooner or later, when the expenses start flowing in. I have about,” and she paused, doing a little arithmetic, “I have $100 million minus what I spent in London on the fancy hotel room and the meals and wine, and minus what I’ve spent here on the meals and wine, which hasn’t been that much because you and Gwen treat most of the time.”

  Roger thought for a moment, and said, “You have almost $100 million you want to spend on a movie, and you’ve never done this before, and are trusting us to make the production work, with no guarantee of success or payback?”

  Now it was Laleh’s turn to think, after which she said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I better not spend it all on this project. Maybe I should save some to live on afterwards. So let’s say I have $99 million to spend, if we need it.”

  Generally Roger took people at their word, so he said, “Ok, thanks hon,” and hung up. He looked down at the dog, who looked up at him and said, “That oughta to be enough, don’t you think?”

  Roger nodded, and went back to developing the idea further, which went like this. A year earlier he had tricked Pete Townshend into agreeing to transcribe the lost Stravinsky ballet score from orchestra to synthesizer and performing the music for the eight productions of the ballet at The Hall, by putting huge glossy ads in a bunch of newspapers and magazines published in England and the States, and doing the same thing on several dozen prominent entertainment websites. The ads said Townshend would be performing the lost Stravinsky ballet in Charleston, and implied this was as a competitive response to Paul McCartney’s earlier composition of an original score for The American Ballet Theater in New York City, and of course Townshend saw the ads and called the number on the ads, which was the June’s number, and from there Gwen took over, convincing him to do the production. She had this magic thing with people, and he was putty in her hands. All those ads cost $3 million, but the June’s had backers with deep pockets, like now, and the ploy had worked. Hence Roger’s admonition to himself to not reinvent the wheel.

  With this settled he and his buddy took a couple of turns on the promenade for exercise and then headed home. A little later Gwen came into the kitchen and heard him down in the wine cellar. She stamped on the plexiglass hatch and yelled down through it, “You got it figured out yet?” She hadn’t decided how long to give him to produce the goods before she kicked him out of their bedroom, but it was going to be soon.

  He climbed the steps to the hatch, opened it, and handed her two bottles of Donnhoff 2004 spatlese riesling. After he closed the hatch he said, “I think so. Gonna try the same thing we did with Townshend. Put a bunch of ads in all the major newspapers and entertainment magazines, and on some websites, saying Soderberg is coming out of retirement to direct a film in a small theater, and Clooney is the star. Hope one of them bites, and then convinces the other to join the project. Then they find the woman, who if it was me directing the thing would pay whatever it cost to get Zellweger back in the saddle with Big George.” Roger had a thing for Zellweger after seeing her and Clooney together in Leatherheads. She was a knockout.

  Gwen asked, “How much is that going to cost, and does Laleh have enough to pay for it, and everything else?”

  “You know how much it cost last time, so this time should be about the same. And, yes, she has enough. She said she had $99 million to spend on the project.”

  Talk of money at this level didn’t faze Gwen a bit. She and Roger were well off, not wealthy, but they had friends who were, and had played caper games at very high stakes on several occasions. She said, “I wonder where she got it?”

  Roger shrugged and went about the important business of getting the wine at the correct temperature to go with dinner. Laleh had become quite the stickler on that point.