“Melvin Grant and I got to the hotel room, one of those big downtown hotels, so old even the walls have nicotine stains, and the elevators creak, and the radiators leak rusty water, room number—whatever it was—and the Committee men, they’re already there. It’s set up like it’s all supposed to be dignified. We engage in a lot of greasy formality before I swear on the Bible, and we finally get to it. Am I now or have I ever been a Communist, and I say, yes, sir—I really did call that little rodent “sir”—I was once a Communist, but I left the Party in thirty-nine when Stalin made his pact with Hitler, and I never went back. I am a dedicated American. So far so good. We exchange a few lines about how great our country is. All the time I’m sitting there, the cigarette smoke is getting thicker by the minute, and I’m thinking, what the hell right do they have to ask me any of this? Then they wanted names, and I realized that Melvin had sugarcoated the turd. If I named names, lots of my friends and comrades would also get their tits and dicks put through the wringer. I’ve been writing dialogue my whole adult life and I just couldn’t seem to make the lines they wanted come out of my mouth. I’m sitting there, wondering what I should do. I can’t invoke the First Amendment, free speech. I know that for damn sure. Look what happened to Dalton Trumbo, Adrian Scott, Ring Lardner, and the rest of the Hollywood Ten. They insisted the First Amendment protected them. That defense and the appeals went through the courts for a couple of years, and when the Supreme Court declined to hear their case, well, guess what? They all went to federal prison. So if the First Amendment is no good, what’s left but the Fifth? I kept looking around that hotel room, the rusty radiator underneath the window, the pigeons crowded on the sill. The mirror had a little crack in it. And then I looked at the bed, and I knew that no one but prostitutes had ever made love in that bed, no one but whores had ever made love in this room. So I took the Fifth.”

I listened to the pool water slurp along the sides for a few minutes. “What will you do now?”

He sipped in silence. “Well now I’ll lose my job with Empire, and no one else will ever hire me. They’re the only studio I’ve ever worked for.”

“But you have a contract with Empire! You’ve been there . . . longer than I’ve been alive.”

“The studios have dumped better writers than me, and all those writers had contracts too. The studio heads are a law unto themselves. When Leon Greene wants you gone, you’re gone.”

“It’s tragic.”