Manny Di Presso

Manny Di Presso is an actor turned lawyer whose abrupt appearance at Fangoso Lagoons turns a comic attempt to steal a boat into an account of a disputed business deal. Hiding beneath a blue tarp and pursued by men in gray suits, he says that his client, Tony Jaguar, alleges Pierce Inverarity never paid for bones supplied for Beaconsfield’s cigarette filters. The claim brings an unsettled piece of Inverarity’s business into Oedipa Maas’s investigation, while Di Presso’s flight leaves her and her companions stranded.

Identity and Introduction

Di Presso enters the scene disguised beneath a blue polyethylene tarp, calling for help from a boat anchored a dozen vessels away. Metzger recognizes his voice before Oedipa recalls him as Metzger’s actor-and-lawyer friend. Di Presso asks the group for a ride and warns that someone is watching them with binoculars. Metzger helps Oedipa aboard the 17-foot aluminum trimaran Godzilla II, then reaches to assist Di Presso; instead of taking his hand, he pulls away the tarp and reveals Di Presso in a skin-diving suit and wraparound shades.

The entrance makes concealment literal and briefly comic: Di Presso is not a mysterious figure beneath the covering but a familiar acquaintance using an improvised disguise. His caution, however, is not merely theatrical. He says he is being watched and soon identifies the pursuing party as connected to a client’s lawsuit, giving the scene’s slapstick business a more serious cause.

From Acting Back to Law

Di Presso explains that he has returned to practicing law. He tells Metzger that the television pilot in which Metzger claims he played Di Presso will never be bought unless Metzger performs an exceptionally conspicuous, dramatic act that arouses public interest. His joke about needing a sensational defense to generate attention folds his own professional predicament into the group’s conversation about acting and publicity.

Oedipa observes that, if Di Presso really played Metzger in the pilot, the casting was typically Hollywood: the two men do not look or act alike. The remark punctures Metzger’s claim without resolving whether the pilot existed. Di Presso’s own change of profession is clearer: he has left acting, or at least found it insufficient, and is again working as a lawyer.

The Bone-Charcoal Dispute

Di Presso connects the lawsuit to Beaconsfield, whose cigarette filters Oedipa remembers are made with bone charcoal. He says Tony Jaguar, his client, supplied some of the bones and alleges that Inverarity never paid him. The wording matters: Di Presso presents the account as his client’s allegation, not as a judgment or independently verified fact.

The claim supplies a specific commercial dispute amid the uncertain traces of Inverarity’s affairs. It also gives Di Presso a defined role in the conflict: as Jaguar’s lawyer, he is pursuing an allegation against Inverarity’s interests, even as he tries to escape the men following him. His brief explanation does not establish what happened to the bones, whether payment was owed, or how the suit will be decided.

Pursuit and Flight

As the Paranoids listen nearby, Di Presso becomes alarmed, insisting that people snoop, bug apartments, and tap phones. The young musicians laugh at his fear, but the scene soon gives him a more immediate reason to run: a runabout approaches, with two figures in gray suits crouched behind its windshield. Di Presso tells Metzger that he is making a run for it and asks him not to bully the men if they stop, because one of them is his client.

He disappears down the ladder, and the Godzilla II starts up. Oedipa realizes that Metzger has taken the boat and that the others are marooned. The episode ends not with Di Presso’s legal problem resolved, but with his departure setting off a practical consequence for Oedipa and the group. They remain at Fangoso Lagoons until after sunset, when their cigarette signals attract the security force’s attention.

Narrative Role

Di Presso’s appearance briefly makes an abstract connection between Inverarity’s business and an actual claimant: Tony Jaguar alleges nonpayment for bones used in Beaconsfield filters. The information enlarges the field of possible disputes surrounding Inverarity without confirming the truth of the allegation. Di Presso is both a source of evidence and a comic agent of disruption, arriving in disguise, explaining a lawsuit, then fleeing in a way that strands Oedipa and redirects the episode toward the night at Fangoso Lagoons.

His scene also juxtaposes performance with legal responsibility. He arrives in a costume, speaks in a deliberately comic broken-English manner when claiming Sicilian relatives, and jokes about a spectacular defense; yet his client’s alleged loss gives the encounter a concrete stake. The contrast does not solve the mystery around Inverarity. It shows how, in Oedipa’s search, even a fleeting and farcical encounter can open another unresolved account.