Brain Drain Read online

  But Chiun only hissed at him that he should not forget himself and then clambered aboard the giant blue–and–white bus that was already filled with other Hollywood sightseers who were paying three fifty each for the privilege of riding through the streets of Beverly Hill and being gawked at by the townies, who thought they looked funny, and by the pimps, who were ever alert for fresh young meat who might easily be convinced that the way to a movie contract was through a producer’s bed and, yes, that the man with the big belly and the twenty–dollar bill was really one of the biggest producers in the world, even if he did say he was a tie salesman from Grand Rapids, Michigan…

  In turn the people on the bus gawked back at the townies, who they thought also looked funny and at the pimps because they just knew by the pimps’ clothes and cars that they had to be big stars, never realizing that in a town built on stardom, that lived for stardom, the real stars were the only ones who didn’t dress like stars. In another town, wearing jeans or slacks and sneakers and doing your own shopping would be a perfect way for a star to melt into the background, to become invisible. But in California, Hollywood–style, it worked in reverse, and the real star–watchers kept their eyes peeled for people who looked dull. And ordinary. And so the cloak of disguise turned out to be a neon light blinking overhead that raucoused, look at me, look at me, here I am.

  Which was, after all, just what the stars wanted, their parallel to the Howard Hughes’ I–don’t–want–any–publicity gambit which had guaranteed him the most intensive press coverage of any almost–living man in the world.

  Wanda Reidel was a different matter. She dressed like a slob, not by design, not to call attention to herself, but because she didn’t have the sense to know she wasn’t beautifully decked out. She thought she looked great; Remo thought she looked like the wife of the owner of an East Fourth Street lighting fixtures store.

  Her wrists jangled and clattered with bracelets as she pointed a purple fingernail at Remo, who sat in a suede chair across from her desk, and demanded: “What do you want, love? I thought you were on the level, but with those bones in your face, don’t tell me you’re not an actor.”

  Remo resisted the urge to shout, “Just a break, Ms. Reidel. Just a break. I’ll do anything for a break,” and instead said only, “I’m looking for Mr. Gordons.”

  “Mister who?”

  “Listen, love, precious, sweetheart, honey, dear, and darling. Let’s cut through all the bullshit. You represent Rad Rex. You had him tape that crap to get my partner and me out here. The only person… scratch that, thing that wants my partner and me out here is Mr. Gordons. You didn’t make a cent from Rex’s message, so you did it because Gordons told you to. It’s that simple. That gets us up to now. Where’s Gordons?”

  “You know you’ve got something.”

  “Yeah. A nervous stomach.”

  “You’ve got rich intensity. You’ve got the looks. The ability to sound hard. Manly, but without macho. Come on. A screen test. What do you say? Don’t tell me you never thought about one?”

  “I have, I have,” admitted Remo. “But then when they gave Sidney Greenstreet that part in The Maltese Falcon it took the heart right out of me, and I gave up and went back to what I do best.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is none of your business. Where’s Gordons?”

  “Suppose I told you he was that chair you’re sitting on?”

  “I’d tell you you were full of crap.”

  “You sure you know Mr. Gordons?”

  “I know him. I can smell the diesel fuel when he’s around. I can hear the tiny click–clicking of electrical connections in that make–believe brain. He smells like a new car. There’s none of that here. Tell me, what are you doing with him anyway?”

  And as soon as Remo asked the question, he had the feeling, the frightening feeling, that this dippo facing him might just be trying to promote Mr. Gordons into a movie contract. The incredible changing man. Mr. Chameleon. Supertool.

  “You’re not planning a movie, are you?” he asked warily.

  Wanda Reidel laughed. The laugh started in her mouth and ended in her mouth and involved no other organ or body part.

  “With him? God no. We’ve got other fish to fry.”

  “I may be one of those fish,” Remo said.

  Wanda shrugged. “Can’t make an omelet without a chicken somewhere being raped, love.”

  “I’m not worried about rape. I’m worried about being dead.”

  Wanda hmphhed. “You don’t even know what dead is. Dead is when you have to wait for a seat in a restaurant. Dead is when they change their private numbers and you don’t get them without asking. Dead is when suddenly everybody has a case of the outsies when you call. That’s dead, honey. What do you know about dead? This town is all dead. There’s just a few that stay alive and I’m going to be one of them. Gordons is going to help.”

  “You’ve got it wrong,” Remo said. “Dead is when the flesh starts to turn black and becomes a banquet table for maggots. Dead is arms and legs ripped off and stuck in a wall. Dead is brains scooped out of skulls that look as if they were crushed by a steam–shovel. Dead is blood and broken bones and organs that don’t work. Dead is dead. And Gordons will help you do that, too.”

  “Are you threatening me, lover?” asked Wanda, looking into Remo’s deep brown eyes that bordered on black and never imagining for an instant that Remo would kill her if he decided it would help stifle his next annoying yawn. He did not like this woman. Remo smiled.

  “No threats.” He stood up and touched Wanda’s bangled wrist with his right fingers. He pressed lightly. He smiled again and his eyes narrowed slightly and he moved his fingers again, and when he left the office a few minutes later, he had Wanda’s assurance that she would notify him as soon as she heard from Mr. Gordons—and he had a date for Chiun to meet with Rad Rex. Wanda, still sitting behind her desk, for the first time that day did not feel like having anything to eat.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I SAW THEM,” CHIUN SAID.

  “Yeah. Well, that’s not important now. Mr. Gordons in in town. I’ve found it out for sure.”

  “Wait,” said Chiun, raising a long bony finger for silence. “Just who is to say that this is not important? Do you alone decide what is important? Is that the way things are to be? After all the time and trouble I have gone to to teach you to be a human being? Now you say ‘that is not important’?”

  Remo sighed. “Who did you see?”

  “I did not say I saw a who. I said I saw them.”

  “Right. Them. Who’s them? Or what’s them, if you prefer.”

  “I saw Doris Day’s dogs.”

  “Gee. Wow. No fooling.”

  Pleased at Remo’s display of interest, Chiun said,

  “Yes, I saw them in the Beverly Hills. There were many of them. A woman was walking them.”

  “Was the woman Doris Day?”

  “How would I know that? However, she was fair–haired and lissome, and it might have been she. It might have been. She moved like a dancer. It probably was Doris Day. Blonde. Lean. Yes, it was Doris Day. I saw Doris Day walking her dogs.”

  “I knew you’d see the stars if you took that bus ride.”

  “Yes, and I saw others. Many others.”

  Remo did not ask who, and Chiun did not volunteer any names.

  “Are you all done now?” asked Remo.

  “Yes. You may go on with your inconsequential report.”

  “Mr. Gordons is in town. We’re his targets. And we’ve got a meeting with Rad Rex tomorrow. I figure that’s when Gordons is coming after us.”

  “It is about time that you performed well some act of importance. When is it, this meeting?”

  “At Global Studios. Five P.M.”

  “Five P.M.,” said Chiun. “My bus ride for tomorrow is at four P.M. I will not be back in time.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “No. It is all right. I am accustomed to dealing wit
h your ineptitude. I will take a different bus. It doesn’t matter.” He stopped in mid–sentence. Remo looked. Chiun was staring out the car window toward the sidewalk, where a group of pedestrians waited.

  “Look, Remo. Isn’t that… ?”

  “No,” said Remo. “It isn’t.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “YOU UNDERSTAND? HE WILL attempt to find you?”

  “Here now,” said Wanda Reidel. “Of course I understand. Who’s the creative one here anyway?”

  “Sadly, it is true,” Mr. Gordons said. “I am not creative. You are. Forgive my presumptions.”

  “Of course.”

  “You must be sure that he does not find you. Then release the information on the computer sheets that I gave you. The way we discussed. He will look for you and that will separate him from the Oriental, with whom I will deal. Then I will destroy this Remo. And you will have the publicity that you think is helpful to your career.”

  “I understand all that,” said Wanda impatiently. “This Oriental must be quite a man.”

  “He is,” Mr. Gordons agreed. “Most unusual. He has no fear and no weakness that I have been able to discern. However, with the element of surprise, I will be able to destroy him. I will now make the telephone call.”

  Gordons dialed the phone next to the pool at Wanda’s home in Benedict Canyon, one of the strips running from Hollywood to the sea, gouges in the earth, as if a giant had scratched his fingers through soft sand. As Gordons dialed, Wanda lay back on her beach chair, eating a bagel, rubbing Nubody cream over her skin.

  “Is this the one called Smith? This is Mr. Gordons.”

  Gordons listened for a moment, then said: “It will do you no good to know where I am. I am calling to tell you that the computer report on the secret organization you command will be made available to the press of your nation.”

  Pause.

  “That is correct. This will be done today at five P.M. by Ms. Wanda Reidel in her office. She will announce plans for a new motion picture about your secret government organization. It will star Rad Rex.”

  Pause.

  “That is quite accurate, one called Smith. I am going to use all the confusion this creates to destroy the one called Remo and the old Oriental. It is a good plan, is it not? Creative?”

  He listened for a moment, then yelled “nigger” and slammed the receiver back on its base.

  Wanda Reidel stopped examining her naked pubis. “What’s wrong? What did he say?”

  “He said I had the creativity of a night crawler.”

  Wanda laughed, and Mr. Gordons glared at her.

  “I would take that laughter to be mocking me if it were not for the fact that I require your services.”

  “Don’t ever forget it, Gordons. Without me, you’re nothing. I made you what you are today.”

  “Incorrect. The scientist at the space laboratories made me what I am today. You are trying to improve upon her work. That is all. I am leaving now, for there are things to do before I encounter the old one at five o’clock today.”

  And with a smooth gait, inhuman in its absolute uniformity, Gordons walked away, leaving Wanda at poolside. She was still there five minutes later when the telephone rang.

  “Hello, love,” she said.

  “This is Remo. I thought you were going to tell me when you heard from Gordons. What’s all this crap about a new movie?”

  “It’s true. All true.”

  “Why are you doing this?” said Remo.

  “Because Gordons wants me to. And because I want to. It’ll make me a household name. Everybody in this industry, television too, they’ll be knocking down my door when this breaks. I’ll be the… ” She stopped and said, “Five o’clock today. At my office. And don’t try to talk me out of it, because you can’t. See you, love. Kiss, kiss.”

  She replaced the receiver with one outstretched finger. Remo hung up the phone at the Sportsmen’s Lodge.

  “Chiun, you’re going to have to go see Rad Rex by yourself.”

  “I am old enough to travel alone.”

  “It’s not the travel. There’ll be a studio car. But I won’t be able to go. And Mr. Gordons has figured out a way to separate us.”

  “See,” said Chiun. “It is as I have always said. Even bad machines sometimes do good deeds.”

  “Oh, go scratch. I hope he eats you. Turns you into engine oil.”

  “Not before I see Rad Rex. To think after all these years.”

  “The car’ll come for you. I’ve got to go. To Wanda Reidel’s. I’ll catch up to you.”

  “Take your time,” said Chiun. “I should have some moments of rest during the day.”

  · · ·

  Unless they were familiar ones, limousines meant absolutely nothing to Joe Gallagher, a day–shift guard at the front gate of Global Studios.

  Nowadays anybody could rent a limousine, and some screwball groupies had been known to do just that. A half–dozen of them would pool their money, hide in the trunk, and then, when they got past an unsuspecting guard, park their rented rig someplace and go harass a star. That had happened just last month, and one of Hollywood’s reigning cowboy heroes—one of those ten percent of stars whom Joe Gallagher did not also classify as a bastard—had been gang–raped by six young girls, and an inexperienced guard at the gate had been canned.

  So Gallagher raised an imperious hand to halt the gray Silver Dawn Rolls Royce as it made the right–hand turn up the slight incline to the guard’s booth. The uniformed driver lowered the window.

  “A guest of Miss Wanda Reidel to see Rad Rex,” the driver said. His voice sounded bored.

  Gallagher peered in through the driver’s window and saw an old Chinaman sitting in the back seat, his hands folded calmly in his lap.

  The old man smiled. “It is true,” he said. “I am going to meet Rad Rex. It is true. Honest.”

  Gallagher turned away and rolled his eyes up into their sockets. Another nut.

  He consulted a clipboard in his booth, then waved the driver past.

  “Bungalow 221–B.”

  The driver nodded and started slowly inside the lot.

  “A bungalow?” his passenger said. “For a big star like Rad Rex? Why a bungalow? Why not that big ugly building over there?” Chiun asked, pointing to a tall cube of a building, with black sun–guard windows. “Who uses that building?”

  “Nobodies use that building,” said the driver. “Big shots use bungalows.”

  “This is very strange,” Chiun said. “I thought in this country, the bigger and more important you are the bigger the building you have to have.”

  “Yeah, but this is California,” said the driver as if that explained everything. And, indeed, it did.

  Bungalow 221–B was in the back of the lot. Rad Rex was already there, wearing his doctor’s smock, sitting at the makeup table in a large rear sitting–room/office and pouring out his tale of woe to the young man whom Wanda Reidel had sent over to be his escort around Hollywood.

  “Is this silly or what?” asked Rad Rex. The younger man, a curly–haired brunette with cheeks so lively they seemed rouged, shrugged and raised his hands, palm–upwards, at his sides, a move which jangled his silver bracelets.

  “I guess so, Mr. Rex.”

  “Call me Rad. It is. It is silly. I’ve come three thousand miles to meet a nobody who watches my stupid show. Have you ever seen my show?”

  The young man hesitated a split second, unsure of what to answer. If he said no, he might offend this creep. If he said yes, and Rad Rex was serious in his disdain for people who watched his show, it might reduce him in Rad Rex’s eyes.

  The thought of the simple truth—that he watched Rad Rex’s show only on infrequent occasions and then only to see if they were still hiring gays—never occurred to him.

  “Afraid not,” he said finally. “It’s on when I’m working, you see.”

  “You haven’t missed a thing. I play this doctor. Kind of a Marcus Welby with balls. Very big in
the ratings.”

  “I know that. It’s got to be very big for Ms. Reidel to handle you.”

  “Is Wanda your agent too?” said Rex.

  The young man laughed self–deprecatingly. “No, no, but I wish she were. If she were, I bet I could get something better than walk–ons and clothes modeling.”

  Rex looked the dark–haired man up and down. “Yes, you look like a model. Your body’s got the lines for it.”

  “Thank you, but I want to be an actor. A real actor, not just a star.”

  Rex turned back to the mirror and began putting a faint oil on his eyelashes with a Q–tip. The younger man realized he had offended him, that Rex probably had thought he was being insulted when the youth talked about being an actor and not just a star, and the young man stepped forward and said, “Here, Rad, let me help you.”

  He took the Q–tip from Rad Rex, placed his left hand along the side of Rex’s right cheek and began to stroke the oil gently on the actor’s eyelashes to make them look longer and thicker.

  Rex closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair.

  “Maybe we could find a spot for you in my show. But you’d have to come to New York.”

  “I’d walk to New York for a spot in your show.”

  “I’ll talk to Wanda about it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rex.”

  “Rad.”

  “Rad.”

  Knock, knock. The rapping reverberated through the room.

  “That must be your guest.”

  “Isn’t this terrible? Why me, Lord?” asked Rex.

  “Because you’re a star,” the younger man cooed, patting Rex’s cheek softly and then going to the front of the bungalow to open the door.

  “Wait. Do I look all right?”

  “You look lovely.”

  The dark–haired man opened the door and tried to contain his smile at the sight of the wizened old Oriental standing in front of him, wearing a black–and–red brocade kimono.