Reading the press accounts, it seemed a sordid and convoluted tale: on May 15, police officers stopped Mr. Mulligan, who specializes in financing deals for movie and television studios, while responding to a call about a man trying to break into cars in a Jack in the Box parking lot. The police searched Mr. Mulligan's car, and found thousands of dollars in cash; The banker told the cops that he was tired, they escorted him to a motel and told him to wait for the officer to return; Mr. Mulligan got tired of waiting, left the motel, and was subsequently beaten.

At any rate, that's one version of the story, at the end of which Mr. Mulligan was preparing to sue the city for $50 million.

There's another story, fed by the LAPD to CBS Los Angeles yesterday, in which Mr. Mulligan told officers that he'd ingested "white lightning"—a commercial name for bath salts—marijuana, and that he hadn't slept for days. And that the banker sustained his injuries after police found Mr. Mulligan wandering around in traffic and attempted to move him out of harm's way.

“They concocted a story to justify the unmerciful beating that they gave him,” Mr. Mulligan's lawyer told Bloomberg.

It's hard to know exactly what to make of it, but—bath salts, Hollywood finance, erratic police behavior—you can sign us up for a second helping.