Free Showbiz, A Novel by Ruby Preston Page A

he have been fishing for information that she might have? Or was she simply becoming cynical?
                  It had certainly been news to her that those rumors were floating around. But maybe he was just being an overzealous reporter.
                  Margolies wouldn’t stand for rigged reviews. He had too much money on the line. He is Broadway, she thought. Unless...
                  Her boss’s ethics left much to be desired, but bribing critics seemed a step too far, even for him. That would mean his entire career was built on corruption. He’d employed thousands of people on Broadway stages and was one of the single largest drivers of the largest economic tourist engine in New York. It just couldn’t be true.
                  Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Reilly: When can I see you again?
                  Her stomach fluttered again, but she forced herself to turn her mind back to the matter at hand. Could Reilly really be on to something? If it were true that Margolies had been bribing Kanter all along, she was probably the one person in the whole world who could find out. She stood up abruptly. There was only one way to know for sure, short of confronting Margolies directly.
                  She walked into Margolies’ empty office to have a look. If he had an organizational system besides Scarlett herself, it was unclear. She made it her habit every couple of weeks to sit down with him and the intern to sort through the piles and get everything filed away neatly in the row of filing cabinets lining his office wall.
                  At the moment, his imposing desk was littered with papers: the usual collection of file folders, sales reports, contract drafts, and ad comps that Scarlett had handed off to him in the prior days and weeks. The only uncluttered space in the whole office was a long shelf with Margolies’ pristine collection of Tony Awards.
                  Feeling guilty already, she walked around to his side of the desk. It was uncharted territory for her. And she couldn’t resist sitting in his chair. So this is how the world looks to Broadway’s biggest producer, she thought. I could get used to this. She eyed the file drawers under the desk. She couldn’t guess what he kept in there, since she managed the filing system. She gently pulled open the large file drawer.
                  Her phone buzzed on her desk in the other room and made her jump. Reilly again?
                  Not deterred from her mission, however, she started thumbing through the documents in his desk drawer. They appeared to be bank statements . A quick scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary. They looked like several years of monthly statements.
                  While the theaters collected the money from the Broadway box offices for distribution, Scarlett knew that Margolies kept several accounts for investor funds as well as development funds for future shows. Banking wasn’t in her job description. Scarlett helped manage the budgets, but Margolies handled the money himself.
                  Out of curiosity, she pulled out the file of statements from the past year and thumbed through for the months in which they’d had Broadway openings. There had been three openings from the Margolies office during the past year—an ambitious number. Two had received raves and were still playing successfully, and the third, Thelma & Louise , had come and gone.
                  She ran her finger down the list of deposits. Nothing raised any red flags in her mind. A quick glance at the withdrawals seemed in line as well. She turned to the next month with an opening night. Similarly uneventful, except... During the opening week of both shows, there had been a $10,000 cash withdrawal. Scarlett knew the opening-week budgets well. Any show expenses wouldn’t be coming from these