"Name five historical roles played by Gary Oldman," Seth said.
Ian's face lit up. He had been reading the first of a short stack of scripts. No one read or absorbed a screenplay faster than Ian Whitestone.
But even a mind as quick and encyclopedic as Ian's should have taken more than a few seconds on this one. Not a chance. Seth had barely mouthed the question before Ian was spitting out the answer.
"Sid Vicious, Pontius Pilate, Joe Orton, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Albert Milo."
Gotcha, Seth thought. Le Bec-Fin here we come. "Albert Milo was fictional."
"Yes, but everyone knows he was really supposed to be Julian Schnabel in Basquiat."
Seth glared at Ian for a moment. Ian knew the rules. No fictionaliza- tion of real-life characters. They were sitting in Little Pete's Restaurant on Seventeenth Street, across from the Radisson hotel. As wealthy as Ian Whitestone was, he lived on diner food. "Okay, then," Ian said. "Ludwig van Beethoven."
Shit, Seth thought. He really thought he'd had him this time.
Seth finished his coffee, wondering if he'd ever stump the man. He looked out the window, saw the first flashbulb pop across the street, saw the crowd swell toward the entrance to the hotel, watched the adoring fans gather around Will Parrish. He then glanced back at Ian Whitestone, his nose once more stuck in a script, the food still untouched on his plate.
What a paradox, Seth thought. Although it was a paradox suffused with a strange sort of logic.
Granted, Will Parrish was a bankable movie star. He had been responsible for well over a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales over the past two decades, and was one of only half a dozen or so American actors over the age of thirty-five who could "open" a movie. On the other hand, Ian Whitestone could pick up the phone and get any of the five major studio heads on the line within minutes. These were the only people in the world who could green-light a film budgeted at nine figures. And they were all on Ian's speed dial. Even Will Parrish couldn't say that.
In the film trade, at least at the creative level, the real power was with men like Ian Whitestone, not Will Parrish. If he was so inclined-and he quite often was-Ian Whitestone could pluck that heart-stoppingly beautiful yet thoroughly untalented nineteen-year-old girl from the crowd and drop her right into the middle of her wildest dreams. With a brief layover in his bed, of course. All without lifting a finger. All without causing a stir.
Yet in just about any city other than Hollywood, it was Ian White- stone, not Will Parrish, who could sit unmolested and virtually unobserved in a diner and eat his meal in peace. No one would know that the creative force behind Dimensions liked to put tartar sauce on his hamburgers. No one would know that the man once referred to as the second coming of Luis Bunuel liked to put a tablespoon of sugar into his Diet Coke.
But Seth Goldman knew.
He knew these things and so much more. Ian Whitestone was a man with appetites. If no one knew about his culinary peculiarities, only one other man knew that, when the sun dropped below the lowest roofline, when people dressed in their nighttime masks, Ian Whitestone saw the city as his own twisted and dangerous buffet.
Seth looked across the street, spotted a young, stately redhead at the back of the crowd. She had not gotten anywhere near the movie star before he had been whisked away in his stretch limo. She looked crestfallen. Seth glanced around. No one was watching.
He rose from the booth, exited the restaurant, spritzed his breath, crossed the street. When he reached the other curb he thought about what he and Ian Whitestone were about to do. He thought about how his connection to the Oscar-nominated director ran much deeper than that of the average executive assistant, about how the tissue that bound them snaked through a darker place, a place that sunshine never graced, a place where the screams of the innocent were never heard.