Indecent Exposure by David McClintick

achieved the status of Steve Ross or Herbert Allen in Manhattan society, or Lew Wasse rman in the upper st ratum of Los Angeles, the Brande is dinner demonstrated that he was on his way. He did not want anything to mar its success.
    It was with some hesitation, therefore, that Hirschfield distracted Leo Jaffe with the Begelman problem late that Friday afternoon, only four days before the dinner. But he was afraid that Jaffe would hear about it from someone else. Actually, Jaffe was miffed at Hirschfield for not telling him immediately upon hearing the news himself, but he registered only a token protest and proce eded with his work on the Brande is dinner.
    Despite his dismay at the Begelman revelations and Fischer's confirmation of the details, Hirschfield maintained the hope that the incident would turn out to be an aberration which somehow could be contained—handled privately within the company. This hope was lessened considerably, of course, by Fischer's report late Friday of the possibility of a second embezzlement, the Peter Choate - Tommy contract. Although Hirschfield wanted to examine the material Fischer had gathered as soon as possible, he was committed to business meetings all day Saturday, so he asked Fischer to come to the Hirschfield home on Park Road in Scarsdale at eleven o'clock Sunday morning.
    During a break on Saturday, Hirschfield decided to do a small amount of detective work on his own. He telephoned a man in Los Angeles who had recently left the Columbia studio after several years to take a post at another motion picture company. It was a man with whom Hirschfield had a close relationship and whom he could trust to keep a confidence.
    "I want to ask you a yes-or-no question," Hirschfield said. "Your inclination is going to be to say no, so I'd really like you to think about it before you answer."
    "All right, what is it?"
    "In all your time at Columbia, did you ever have occasion to suspect Begelman of doing anything improper? Improper in a financial sense, that is. In his handling of funds?"
    The man took only a few seconds to answer.
    "There was one thing that seemed sort of odd. A couple of years ago he hired somebody—some outside contractor—to install special sound equipment for Tommy. I could never put my finger on what it was, but something about it smel led fishy. I was never sure he actually hired the guy. Nobody ever saw him."
    Hirschfield 's sigh was audible e ven over the hiss of the coast-t o-coast telephone connection.
    "What's going on? Do you have a problem?" his friend asked.
    "I can't say anything right now. But can you remember anything more about this Tommy situation? Anything at all would be helpful."
    "No, just that David seemed to take an unusual amount of personal interest in hiring the guy. It was handled pretty much out of the chain of command. And then nobody ever saw any trace of the fellow. It may have been nothing, but since you ask, it did seem odd at the time."
    "Okay, thanks very much. And please don't say anything about this to anybody."
    Hirschfield sat at his dining-room table sipping coffee and studying the material that Fischer had spread before him. He was beginning to feel as much anger toward Begelman as shock and dismay. Here was documentary evidence that one of the two or three most important officers of Columbia Pictures Industries—some felt the most important— was a thief—a man directly responsible for restoring the health of Columbia's ailing movie studio and more recently its lethargic television production company; a man with whom Hirschfield had worked closely for four years and had a warm personal and professional relationship; a man whom Hirschfield had defended two years earlier when a powerful Columbia board member and stockholder— Matthew Rosenhaus—had wanted to dump Begelman and replace him with Frank Yablans, a recognized figure in the industry who had just been fired as the head of Paramount Pictures.
    A sense of dread enshrouded