Unlike Anthony Pellicano spying target Linda Doucett (and she said it to his face in federal court last week), we here in Hollywood can't claim that the fallen p.i. is "the only bad guy [we]'ve ever known". But he's the baddest, if you will, bad guy to drive around Beverly Hills with a Louisville Slugger in quite a while. And of all the names on the government's witness list as they build their case against Pellicano in federal court, Paramount chairman and chief executive officer Brad Grey is about the biggest. So how did the Federal prosecutors who had Grey on the stand last Thursday manage to make the morning's testimony generally so tepid?

Wearing an untroubled expression and dark blue suit set off by a red and blue-striped rep tie, Grey answered an early question from Assistant United States Attorney Kevin M. Lally by intoning, "Mr. Fields is obviously one of the great legal minds," and proceeded to repeatedly lay the Pellicano mess at Bert Fields' doorstep. (In April of 2006, the government investigators had informed Fields' law firm that they were not to be indicted in the Pellicano case, and Fields has steadily denied involvement in anything illegal.)

Tuesday morning brought a declaration from prosecutors that Fields planned to claim his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called t testify--but Fields denied that in later calls with reporters.

Grey's implication was that as a busy Hollywood exec, "Having never been in a law suit before"--although "running what at the time was the most successful management company in the industry")--he couldn't know about the questionable practices of a Pellicano. (This would appear to be contradicted by comic Garry Shandling's previous testimony that Grey had warned then-management client Shandling against using Fields in an earlier dispute, because, "With Bert Fields you get Anthony Pellicano. I don't think you want to work that way.")

Grey issued a statement, after Shandling's steadily deprecatory testimony went public, denying the bulk of the comedian's allegations:

I am extremely saddened by Garry's recollection of events dating back more than a decade. His representation is very different than what I remember and what I know to be true. Garry and I had a long personal and professional relationship, which frankly ended when he hired David Boies, and sued me and Brillstein Grey for $100 million. His actions forced us to hire our own lawyer -- Bert Fields -- and our friendship was overtaken by a legal process that was directed by lawyers and which ended with an equitable settlement.

Washington power lawyer David Boies, who represented Shandling in the suit against Grey and in a subsequent memoir made mock of him for his wholesale amnesia when testifying during that time, disputed (to Alison Hope Weiner of the Huffington Post) Fields' assertion that Grey paid only $4 million to settle and also launched an aside:

The money that Mr. Fields refers to -- $4 million -- was in addition to the other more important elements of the settlement. One of things that makes Bert a popular lawyer, he's very aggressive on asserting things on behalf of his clients and attacking their opponents.

Although Lally managed to make Grey tiptoe out so far as to say, "I think I endorsed and wanted to bring Mr. Pellicano in...could have been [Fields' firm] Greenberg, Glusker could have been me", the Paramount chief said he spoke to Pellicano during the Shandling case only "from time to time," but "found him to be very supportive, intriguing and generally professional."

He said a mouthful with that middle adjective, if you take the word down to its root, but in fact the Pellicano that the jury and spectators have seen is a sad, stooped Uriah Heep, self-justifying and unctuous at times, oddly threatening at others.

The former p.i. was never more sad to watch than when he cross-examined Susan Maguire, whom he had milked for an estimated $1 million. Mustering considerable dignity as she testified under a grant of immunity about her mega-developer husband, she recalled how on first of several times that. Pellicano played a recording of a wiretap for her, on which her philandering husband could be heard sobbing call with his psychiatrist. She noted that Pellicano was excited because her husband "was a mess." Asked if the tap was legal, Pellicano said it was, then laughed. Finally he ushered him into complimenting his investigative prowess, and won her acknowledgment that he'd been loyal to her. "He's still loyal to you now," said the now-broke Pellicano, who's never repaid the $200,000 she loaned him to get out of tax trouble.

At this stage must be repeated that neither Grey nor Fields has been charged with any crime in connection with the case. And perhaps to insure no such thing happens, Grey was accompanied by a quartet of lawyers and a spin consultant. One of the phalanx of suits managed to carry his cell phone into the courtroom, and it noisily gave forth his ring tone during testimony. (That went over, to borrow a phrase quoted from Pellicano, like a fart in church, and resulted in a marshal temporarily escorting the miscreant from the courtroom.)

Although most of the reporters present would say, whether in the hallway afterward or in their published accounts, that Grey had been interrogated almost too delicately, the government's thumb-wrestling dialog with the former manager, near the conclusion of the government's direct questioning may loom larger later.

Here's how the New York Times' David Halbfinger (who interviewed still-controversial Pellicano accuser and upcoming witness Anita Busch in Monday's paper) recounted the moment:

Mr. Grey remembered the precise week in February 2001 when Mr. Pellicano was brought into the Zenga case, but said he could not recall whose idea that was. "It was decided that that was what needed to be done," Mr. Grey said.

Prosecutors did not remind Mr. Grey that he had, at the time, just been subjected to a grueling deposition by Mr. Zenga's lawyer, or that one of Mr. Grey's lawyers had written in an e-mail message that Mr. Grey wanted to hire Mr. Pellicano.

And the Los Angles Daily Journal's Robert Iafolla probed for further nuance:

Kevin M. Lally gingerly asked questions of Grey, mostly going over surface details about the two suits and the executive's limited involvement with Pellicano. But near the end of direct examination, Lally focused in on the date on which Pellicano became involved in the Zenga case. Although Lally cajoled Grey to say that it was Feb. 3, 2001, Grey insisted the first week of February was as specific as he wanted to testify to - even after Lally gave him a document to refresh his memory. That date came up again during testimony from the next witness, attorney Gregory Dovel, who represented Zenga against Grey. Dovel said on Feb. 5 - the first workday after Feb. 3 - Grey's legal strategy changed. "Grey and his legal team began to focus more on Zenga's friends and family," Dovel said.

Though Grey would be subject to a brief cross-examination by Chad Hummel, attorney for LAPD Sergeant Mark Arneson and an imposing figure both legally and physically (he approached the podium with the bearing of a power forward, albeit in a lavender tie, tripping slightly on a cable as he studied his notes en route), Grey would not be cross-examined by Pellicano.

In fact, though Pellicano has been (understandably but uncharacteristically) almost contrite when faced with his former clients, even if he now began a new strategy of throwing blame on those clients he probably couldn't do any more ham that he already has. As AUSA Lally said during the trial's opening arguments, "You will learn that Mr. Pellicano was the biggest government informant in this case." He was referring to the private investigator's habit of recording his conversations with clients, a practice that ahs already produced some fascinating show-and-tell. (Playback of seized audio files have included Pellicano futilely nudging major league slugger Matt Williams towards illegal surveillance of unfaithful actress wife Michelle Williams, and his wheedling of client Lull to stake him to an extra $100,000 so he could continue to make an adversary's life "fucking miserable". He chided radiologist Lull that his ignorance of how the misery was applied would protect him--"You want more detail, I'll give you more detail."

Grey, whose office at Brillstein-Grey was just steps away from Pellicano's during the time he considered making the sullen p.i. the central character in an H.B.O. series, is presumably not to be heard on those tapes. Obviously if the government had anything in their back pocket that contradicts his account on the stand of Fields being the prime mover in hiring Pellicano (Grey said the move was "left to the lawyers"), his testimony last Thursday would have left him in considerable legal jeopardy.

For now, the trial has taken a long weekend's pause, with plenty more bad news promised for Pellicano on Tuesday with the government's next set of witnesses.

(Viacom's Sumner Redstone and Paramount's Brad Grey attend the premiere of 'The Spiderwick Chronicles' on January 31, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Barry King/WireImage)