Focus: The mob, the star and the stinking fish

Like a dime-store detective tale, a Hollywood saga of private eyes and sleaze is leading right to the top, says Andrew Gumbel

This is a story that begins with a cliché straight out of dime-store noir. An investigative news reporter walks out of her house to find a dead fish and a fading rose left in a metal container on her car. The windscreen has a neat hole in it that may, or may not, be the result of a gunshot. A one-word note tells her exactly what is expected of her: "Stop".

To be frank, nobody was inclined to believe the reporter, Anita Busch, when she said last June that someone was out to get her. Okay, so she had been looking into links between Steven Seagal, the washed-up action star, and the Gambino mafia family in New York who were allegedly extorting money from him. But this was no't the mob's style.

The mafia does not, as a rule, intimidate reporters. And it does not resort to cheesy symbolic gestures, whatever crime fiction would have us believe. As one veteran Hollywood reporter, Kim Masters, said last week: "It was like something out of a bad TV series. You'd never see a plotline from The Sopranos sink so low."

The scepticism grew as Ms Busch, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter known to have a journalistic weakness for extravagant tales of intrigue and skulduggery, spent the summer flitting from one swanky hotel to another for her protection, all at the expense of her employers at the Los Angeles Times. But that was before things started getting a lot weirder and it became clear nobody in this tale was what they first appeared to be. In September, a thug pulled a handgun on a Vanity Fair reporter who was also writing about the Seagal-mafia affair, and clicked the trigger at point-blank range. Luckily for the reporter, Ned Zeman, the chamber was empty.

In October, the FBI arrested a low-life called Alexander Proctor and accused him of threatening Ms Busch. Held without bail, Mr Proctor started to tell investigators a seemingly incredible story: that he had acted under orders from Hollywood's pre-eminent private detective, Anthony Pellicano, who in turn was working for Steven Seagal.

Ten days ago, the feds raided Mr Pellicano's plush offices on Sunset Boulevard. They didn't find evidence directly linking him to the threats made against the journalists, but what they did find was eye-popping enough. In his private safe was sufficient plastic explosive to blow up an aircraft, plus blasting caps, two unregistered hand grenades, gold bullion, jewellery and $200,000 in cash. Last week, Mr Pellicano was brought to federal court in handcuffs and leg irons, and had to stump up a stunning $400,000 in bail. Although charged only with possession of illegal weapons, he remains under formal investigation over the Seagal affair.

The dime-store mystery has thus escalated into a genuinely gripping Hollywood tale of crime and sleaze, one so volatile there is no telling where it might blow up next. Mr Pellicano, for a start, could not be a more high-profile figure in the entertainment world. For 20 years he has been Hollywood's top private eye, successfully representing clients from John DeLorean to Michael Jackson to the Clintons with a modus operandi that, by his own admission, essentially involves digging up even more incriminating dirt on his client's accusers than they have managed to find themselves. He also cheerily admits a proclivity for intimidating his enemies with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Clearly, Mr Pellicano hasn't played by the rules for a long time, suggesting he has valuable friends in high places who have helped keep him out of trouble. At least until now.

The same may be true for the other protagonist in this affair, Steven Seagal. It has never been entirely clear how Mr Seagal got his start his movies, except that he somehow managed to hook up with Michael Ovitz, the shark-like super-agent of the Eighties, who in turn sold him as a commodity to Warner Brothers. It is also unclear what exactly he did before making his screen debut at the rather ripe age of 37. Mr Seagal himself has made numerous dark references to both the mob and the CIA, references that nobody – until relatively recently – took as more than the idle boasts of an on-screen macho man looking for a more glamorous image than that suggested by his background as a martial arts instructor.

What is known is that Mr Seagal has run up repeatedly against New York Italian-Americans who have subsequently come under judicial scrutiny for their ties to organised crime. The most glaring case in point is his former business partner, Julius Nasso, who is under indictment for association with the Gambino family and for participating in a scam to defraud Mr Seagal of hundreds of thousands of dollars in movie earnings. The fading tough guy is expected to be the star witness when Mr Nasso and his purported boss, Sonny Ciccone, go on trial on numerous mafia-related charges next year. In sworn depositions backed by law-enforcement wiretaps, the actor has described being threatened by four mobsters in Canada and scared into handing over $700,000.

To make its case, the FBI clearly has every interest in making Mr Seagal himself look as clean as possible, an innocent victim of machinations beyond his control. He has depicted himself as a recently converted Buddhist and vegetarian who deeply regrets the mindless violence of such crass movie as Above The Law and Exit Wounds. Others have even hinted he might be a government agent; he was reported recently to have been issued a licence to carry a concealed weapon in New York state, a privilege usually reserved for informants and government employees.

The image of the virtuous star unjustly wronged was always going to be a hard act to pull off, though, even before the latest allegations from Alexander Proctor surfaced. Mr Seagal has had a knack of collecting enemies in Hollywood, for reasons Ned Zeman summed up succinctly in his Vanity Fair piece, which was published in October. "Seagal's film career is in a death spiral," the magazine wrote, "thanks in part to his vile, simian behaviour toward colleagues, women, employees and reporters, not to mention his serial dissembling, his dime-store theology and his all-round vulgarism". Mr Seagal has not responded to the article.

Where this case goes from here depends on a lot of ifs. At this stage, Mr Proctor's accusations remain uncorroborated, and Mr Pellicano and Mr Seagal have denied his account. But if the private eye and the fading star are to be drawn further into this murky affair, that might start shedding extremely unwelcome light, not only on their activities but on the Hollywood establishment and on federal law enforcement.

If Mr Nasso is indeed proved to be a member of the Gambino family as charged, that means Warner Brothers went into business with organised crime when it sold him the overseas rights to Mr Seagal's movies. If Mr Seagal is shown to have been a less than innocent party, that will reflect poorly on the FBI.

Mr Seagal has insisted his contacts with the mob have been restricted to research for his on-screen roles. It's a line he might have cause to remember. His movie career may be on the slide, but his performance in the drama of his own life could just turn out to the role of a lifetime.