Question: Build a movie plot around this: Who does Ida Session identify herself as over the phone? Not in this part of the plot
Answer:
Set in 1937 Los Angeles, a private investigator named Jake "J.J." Gittes (Nicholson) is hired to spy on Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer for the city's water department. The woman hiring Gittes claims to be Evelyn Mulwray, Hollis' wife. Mr. Mulwray spends most of his time investigating dry riverbeds and water runoff outlets. Mr. Mulwray also has a heated argument with an elderly man on the street. Gittes finally catches Mulwray during an outing with a young blonde and photographs the pair, which becomes a scandal in the press. After the story is published, Gittes learns that the woman who hired him was not the real Evelyn Mulwray. Evelyn later visits Jake's office and threatens to sue him for defamation. (Her image of Gittes is not helped when he tells a dirty joke that she overhears.)Clues suggest a scandal in the city government: despite a serious drought and an expensive proposal to build a new dam, the Water and Power department is dumping fresh water into the ocean at night. The dam project is opposed by Mulwray himself, who cites a potential disaster because of weak geological formations in the rock where the dam is to be constructed -- Mulwray had previously supported the building of another dam that had failed due to similar geological conditions. While he addresses a public hearing on the project, that Gittes himself attends, he is ridiculed by several farmers in attendance, who need the reservoir and water the dam will create.Jake goes to Mulwray's mansion to speak to him but is only able to talk to Evelyn. While he waits for her, Mulwray's Japanese gardener works in one of the small decorative pools. He casually says "bad for the glass" in broken English, a comment that Jake dismisses. Jake notices a shiny object in the pool and tries to retrieve it, stopping when Evelyn appears. She tells him that Hollis usually takes afternoon walks at a reservoir and that she should look for him there.Gittes looks for Hollis at the reservoir but finds the police there instead, hauling his body out of the water...