"That's no good, Davy.
We got to meet someplace where nobody'd see us."
"What about your house, then?"
"No good," Needlenose replied. "I don't trust the servants.
No restaurants, either.
Someone might snoop us out."
"Can't we talk on the telephone?"
Needlenose laughed. "I don't trust telephones much, either."
'"Wait a minute," David said, remembering suddenly. "I'm having dinner at my mother's tonight. Come and eat with us.
She's at the Park Apartments in Westwood."
"That sounds O.K.
She still make those knaidlach in soup swimming with chicken fat?"
David laughed. "Sure. The matzo balls hit your stomach like a ton of bricks. You'll think you never left home."
"O.K.," Needlenose said, "What time?"
"Seven o'clock."
"I’ll be there."
David put down the telephone, still curious about what Needlenose wanted.
He didn't have long to wonder, for Dan came into his office, his face flushed and excited, his heavy jowls glistening with sweat.
"You just get a call from a guy named Schwartz?"
"Yeah," David said, surprised.
"You going to see him?"
"Tonight."
"Thank God!" Dan said, sinking into a chair in front of the desk. He took out a handkerchief and mopped at his face.
David looked at him curiously.
"What's so important about my seeing a guy I grew up with?"
Dan stared at him.
"Don't you know who he is?"
"Sure," David said.
"He lived in the house next to me on Rivington Street. We went to school together."
Dan laughed shortly.
"Your friend from the East Side has come a long way.
They sent him out here six months ago when Bioff and Brown got into trouble.
He's union officially, but he's also top man for the Syndicate on the West Coast." David stared at him, speechless. "I hope you can get to him," Dan added. "Because, God knows, I tried and I couldn't.
If you don't, we'll be out of business in a week.
We're going to have the biggest, god-damnedest strike you ever saw.
They'll close down everything. Studio, theaters, the whole works."
10.
David looked at the dining-room table as he followed his mother into the kitchen. Places were set for five people.
"You didn't tell me you were having a lot of company for dinner."
His mother, who was peering into a pot on the stove, didn't turn around.
"A nice girl should come to supper for the first time with a young man without her parents?"
David suppressed a groan.
It was going to be even worse than he'd suspected.
"By the way, Mama," he said. "You better set another place at the table.
I invited an old friend to have dinner with us."
His mother fixed him with a piercing glance.
"Tonight, you invited?"
"I had to, Mama," he said. "Business." The doorbell rang.
He looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock. "I'll get it, Mama," he said quickly. It was probably Needlenose.
He opened the door on a short, worried-looking man in his early sixties with iron-gray hair. A woman of about the same age and a young girl were standing beside him.