Taki Taki

Pelican crossing

Broadsides from the pirate captain of the Jet Set

issue 29 April 2006

New York

As they say, one couldn’t make it up, not even in Hollywood, which is where this Chandleresque saga took place. Ronald Burkle, the supermarket billionaire who has accused a minion at the New York Post of shaking him down, does not look like much, but then billionaires tend not to nowadays. Shakedowns seek out Burkle like groupies look for Jackson Scott. Back in 2002, Burkle went to the fuzz and told them a gentleman by the name of Anthony Pellicano, no relation to the Mykonian waterbird and symbol of the island, had demanded that Burkle pay him 250,000 greenbacks in exchange for the Pelican agreeing not to investigate him. Pellicano is a private dick in El Lay, although any resemblance to Sam Spade is purely coincidental. According to Pellicano, the man who had hired him to do the dirty on Burkle was none other than my old friend Michael Ovitz, once Hollywood’s most feared and powerful agent, now a fallen idol, licking his wounds somewhere out west.

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