But what kind of man begins the day by pouring a can of Diet Coke over a bowl of cereal? What kind of man can take his caffeine cold before sunrise? Welcome, everyone, to the terrifying world of Bert Fields — an entertainment lawyer so scary he would probably sue his own shadow.

I know what Fields eats for breakfast — and other tidbits, such as his ownership of a $250,000 Bentley Arnage and his marriage to the art consultant Barbara Guggenheim — because the lawyer was the subject of a 12-page profile in this week’s New Yorker magazine.

In Hollywood, this article has been read with the same kind of interest that Bob Woodward might have once shown in the Watergate transcripts. Why? Because Bert Fields — who, at a lean and weathered 77, still looks as though he wouldn’t think twice about connecting his fist with your oesophagus — is Hollywood. His clients have included Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Warren Beatty. In divorce proceedings — both marital and corporate — Tinseltown’s powermongers have squabbled like children over his services. It’s not hard to see why: Fields won a spectacular $250 million for Jeffrey Katzenberg after the executive was pushed out of Walt Disney.

And yet, for the past three years, Fields has been living with the threat of a federal indictment — thanks to the high-profile investigation into the crooked Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano (current residence: Metropolitan Detention Centre, Los Angeles), who is awaiting trial in October on 110 counts of skulduggery).

Fields began working with the allegedly mob-linked Pellicano in 1989, largely because of the PI’s knack of obtaining unflattering information about courtroom opponents. For example, when the late Top Gun producer Don Simpson was accused of sexual harassment, Pellicano discovered that the plaintiff had once hired a male stripper, allowing Fields to destroy her character in court. The case was dismissed. Fields soon got a reputation for being able to protect anyone from anything — and claims he has never lost a single case.

According to the Feds, Pellicano got much of his intelligence from illegal wiretaps — the recordings of which are now in their possession. The thought of a roomful of tape recordings, outlining the most intimate dealings of Hollywood’s elite, is almost too delicious for many in this gossip-fuelled metropolis to handle.

And yet Fields remains by far the biggest name under suspicion by the FBI. The big question: did he have any idea what Pellicano was up to? He denies it vigorously: “(Pellicano) came up with stuff that other people didn’t. I don’t know how he did it. It certainly wasn’t wiretapping.”

Perhaps the most remarkable part of this tale, however, is that Fields became seduced by the very town that lived in fear of him. How? By secretly writing Hollywood thrillers under the pseudonym D. Kincaid. The hero of these books is an LA entertainment lawyer named Harry Cain . . . who relies on a crooked private detective to do his dirty work.

In The Lawyer’s Tale, Fields (aka Kincaid) writes: “(Harry) didn’t want to commit extortion if he could avoid it. But he had to get a message to (his opponent) that would change his mind.” In Final Verdict, meanwhile, a client tells Cain: “Harry, I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. F***ing, stinking genius, the greatest f***ing genius in the world.”

Given how the books look to the Feds, genius isn’t the first word that comes to mind. But will the antics of Harry Cain give the Government enough for an indictment?

Probably not. The books are fiction, after all. And the real prize of this case remains the wiretap recordings. Fortunately for all concerned, Pellicano exercised more common sense than Fields. All the recordings in the FBI’s possession were encrypted using military-grade software. Even with the help of the CIA, investigators have been unable to decode them. There’s not much chance of Pellicano being helpful in court. As his lawyer said: “He is not a rat.”

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