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law school.” Manucci leaned forward in his chair, addressing me now. “Weren’t some of your investors leery of your new one because it isn’t a musical or a Neil Simon–type play that rakes it in?”
    “My new one,” I said, “is like the plays that have survived over the years, O’Neill, Tennessee Williams at his best.”
    “They weren’t in poetry, were they?”
    “Whoever described it to you as poetry in a derogatory fashion was misleading you, Mr. Manucci. Tennessee Williams used elevated language.”
    “He didn’t do too well in the end, did he?”
    “I produced one of his best plays. Would you deride Shakespeare for using elevated language?”
    “There ain’t no elevated anymore,” Manucci said, “just the subway.” He looked to see if we would laugh at his joke. When we didn’t, he did.
    “I wish you’d take a look at my new play. Will you read it?”
    Manucci, leaning back into the sofa, said, “That’s very flattering, Mr. Riller, but I don’t know that I’m a judge. I know automobiles. I know horses. I know money. I know women. Now some of the women I see, they like to go to Broadway plays, it’s very exciting to them, live theater, and I like them to be excited you understand, so it’s mutually beneficial. I get to see shows that are good and some that are not so good, but what would I know personally? I told my accountant to ask around. He knows a couple of the people who’ve been in with you pretty steady. They talked as if they were friends of yours, not just investors. They admire the hell out of you as a producer, but they told my accountant they don’t think this one has a hope in hell in today’s market, that’s why they’re staying out. You lied to me about the reason.”
    In my circles, people don’t call each other liars except behind the other person’s back.
    Ben, I never lied to his father. Pay attention. Don’t lie. Use your brain.
    “What my accountant tells me,” Manucci went on, “is that in your business you’re the general partner and the investors are limited partners, and when all the money’s in, the partnership is allowed to start spending it and not before. He tells me this play of yours been in rehearsal for six weeks, you’re headed out of town for bookings, and the partnership is a long way from closing. Is that true?”
    I nodded.
    “Who’s been shelling out for the actors?”
    “I have.”
    “Personally?”
    “That’s the only kind of money I’ve got.”
    “What about the set, isn’t that expensive?”
    “In this case, yes,” I said.
    “And it’s built?”
    “It had to be.”
    “Who paid for it?”
    “I haven’t yet.”
    “You’re going to get the set builder mad if you don’t pay.”
    I nodded, trying to smile.
    “In fact,” Manucci said, “I had a little talk with your set builder before you came. He says he’s going to close you down out of town unless he gets paid.”
    “He’ll get paid.”
    “Out of what? You’ve raised only twenty percent of the money you need and no more’s coming in.”
    “Twenty-two percent,” I said, hopeless. He’d researched everything.
    I stood up so his eyes would have to follow me as I paced.
    I said, “Mr. Manucci, you know I’m here to discuss an investment from you that would enable the show to go forward on schedule, but I have to be sure…the money is clean. I don’t mean to pry—”
    “You’re prying,” he cut me off. His face was chiseled stone. Then the muscles in his cheeks relaxed. I’d have hired him as a character actor in a flash.
    “I don’t know what you know about me, Mr. Riller. I’m going to tell you. When you sit down.”
    I retreated to my place on the sofa opposite him.
    “When you pick a play, Mr. Riller, it’s got to meet your standards, right?”
    I nodded.
    “Would you have produced Let My People Come , one of those things?”
    “No.”
    “It’s got to be something you want to be associated with, right? Right,” he said. “I don’t do