Ben spread his hands. “I was only-”

“That picture was a classic. He didn’t keep a print? Never mind. I’ll run it for you. You should see it. The talent that man had.” Lasner was off now, waving his cigar to draw Ben along with him. “He was the one that got away. The Ufa directors who came over. The great ones.” He raised three fingers. “Murnau-well, he got away, too, that car crash. Lang we’ve still got. And Otto. His trouble? Expensive. Sets. He thought we were making Intolerance.” He looked again at Ben. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Now I know who you are,” he said, leaning back and opening his jacket, visibly relaxing.

Ben smiled to himself. An industry, but still a family business.

“He was ahead of his time with those sets, you know,” Lasner was saying. “But they were all like that, the Ufa people. Even the ones who came later. You know why? No Westerns. They never learned to shoot outside. It was all controlled light with them. Of course, they had the facilities. In those days, what they had in Berlin-I’m still knocking my brains out in Gower Gulch trying to borrow arc lamps, and over there they’re making cities. Otto,” he said, shaking his head. “I can see the resemblance now, around the eyes. I knew your mother, too. A looker. So what happened? They split, you said.”

“Another woman, I guess. That’s what I heard. My mother never talked about it.”

“Well, he was like that. He always had an eye. So that’s why he stayed there? Some skirt?”

“I don’t know. He probably thought he’d get through it-that’s what people thought then. He was making pictures with Monika Hoppe. Goebbels liked her. Maybe he thought that would protect him, they’d look the other way. Anyway, they didn’t. He was arrested in ’thirty-eight. They sent a notice to my mother. This was when they still thought they had to explain it.”

“So,” Lasner said, looking away. “Some story.”