Pulp Friction

The first evidence of Pellicano's wrongdoing in the Zenga case, according to the Feds, came on Feb. 6, 2001. That day, a Los Angeles Police Department detective who was allegedly on the private eye's payroll began a series of illegal background checks on Zenga, his wife and five others. The background checks started the day after Grey had finished a contentious three-day deposition. Among the zingers: after Grey repeatedly denied having been told that Zenga and the firm would be producing partners, Zenga's lawyer confronted him with a 1998 e-mail from a Brillstein-Grey manager informing Grey that "BGE (Brillstein-Grey Entertainment) and Bo Zenga are producing this project for Dimension." "THANKS," Grey replied. Grey dismisses its significance: "Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals found the e-mail unpersuasive and threw out the case," says a Grey spokeswoman. Nonetheless, Zenga cited the incident in his amended civil complaint last week.

Within days of the deposition, Pellicano was allegedly tapping Zenga's phone, according to the federal indictment. Dovel says federal prosecutors gave him eight pages of typewritten wiretap summaries that they said Pellicano had written after listening in on Zenga's calls. "Some of it was word for word," says Dovel, who cited those notes in his filing last week.

Pellicano succeeded in creating what Dovel calls an atmosphere of "fear and uncertainty." He says Pellicano began paying visits to potential witnesses to dig up new dirt, and launched a campaign to win over Zenga's ailing mother, Madeline Thomas, who has since died. Then there was Pellicano's unsettling ability to tip off his bosses to details of Zenga's case. Once, Dovel and Zenga were talking over the phone about an account Zenga held at a bank that had been merged out of existence. "Bo is trying to get copies of his checks," Pellicano wrote in his summary, Zenga's suit claims. Within days, the successor bank received a call from Pellicano and a subpoena from Fields's firm. Dovel says the coincidences piled up to the point that he and Zenga wondered whether their phones were tapped--though at the time they dismissed the suspicion as "paranoia."

In 2003, Zenga was called to appear before the grand jury investigating Pellicano. That probe, which led to the current scandal, began after Pellicano allegedly arranged to have a dead fish and a sign reading stop placed on the broken windshield of a Los Angeles Times reporter who was working on a story about possible Mafia ties to actor Steven Seagal, a Pellicano client. The day before Zenga was set to testify, Dovel says, a man came to Zenga's door telling him that one of his car windows had been broken. After Zenga had a look, he went back in the house and the phone rang. A man at the other end said, "Don't." But Zenga went before the grand jury anyway. While Zenga's reputation in Hollywood was tarnished for a few years after the "Scary Movie" suit, his work on 2004's "Soul Plane," which he helped write and produce, got him back in the game. Meantime, Pellicano is behind bars, awaiting his day in court. Perhaps Zenga's film noir will have a Technicolor ending after all.

© 2006