Fade to Black td-119 Read online

  "So, Mr. Remo," Hank Bindle said, smiling weakly into Remo's upside-down face, "what brings you back here?" Still flat on his back, he attempted to cross his legs casually.

  "Knock it off, you ninnies," Remo growled. Reaching down, he dragged the two men into seated positions on the rug. "Who'd you hire to blow up the studio?" he demanded.

  "The studio?" Marmelstein bluffed. "Oh, did that blow up?"

  Fear compelled Hank Bindle into trying another tack. "Bruce hired him," Bindle blurted, pointing at his partner.

  Bruce Marmelstein's eyebrows nearly launched off the top of his head. "We both did," he countered angrily.

  "But he came to you first."

  "He came to both of us."

  "On your speakerphone," Bindle proclaimed. "Your ears were closest."

  "I'll show you close ears!" Marmelstein screeched.

  He was scrambling across the floor, hands snatching for his partner's bobbed ears, when he felt something grab on to his ankle. All of a sudden, he was off the floor and his desk was flying toward him very fast. When they met, his head made the desk's steel surface go clang! The desk, in turn, made Marmelstein's head ring. It was still ringing when Remo dumped the executive back to the floor.

  "From a strictly technical standpoint, I might have been involved in the actual hiring, too," Hank Bindle admitted, eyeing his partner worriedly.

  "Who'd you hire?" Remo pressed.

  "He called anonymously." Marmelstein winced, rubbing the growing bump on his forehead. "And he got through?" Remo asked, dubious, remembering the hard time he'd had calling from Seattle.

  "He said he was Hank's masseur," Marmelstein offered. "Priority stuff like that gets right through."

  Bindle nodded. "I've been feeling very tight in my shoulder. I was shot last year, you know."

  "Too bad he didn't have better aim," Remo said, deadpan. "What did the guy on the phone say?"

  "That he had a surefire way of boosting a movie's gross. I think he might have just been putting out feelers at the time. You know, calling all the studios. Pitching the idea. This was before the Cabbagehead thing," Marmelstein said.

  "You know about that?" Remo said flatly.

  "Everyone in town knows about it," Bindle insisted. "What a marketing coup. Suburban Decay wouldn't have been a blip if it wasn't for that family getting whacked."

  Remo's eyes went cold. "People died, Bindle," he said evenly.

  "People never die," Bindle insisted. "Look at Freddy Krueger. He's been dead a bunch of times. How many times has Jason been zapped by lightning and brought back? Hell, Spock wasn't even gone a whole movie." He smiled brightly.

  Remo wanted to be amazed. Appalled, even. But this was typical Hollywood. Hank Bindle wasn't capable of separating real life from the fiction of film.

  "Of course, we know that people actually technically do die," Marmelstein offered when he saw Remo's hard expression. "But they were going to eventually anyway. And if their deaths can spark something at the box office, why not give their lives some meaning?" He smiled and nodded, the very soul of reasonableness.

  At that moment, Chiun and his movie were the only things preventing Remo from giving meaning to the lives of Bindle and Marmelstein. By Herculean effort, he kept his more violent urges in check. "How much?" he asked, jaw clenched tightly.

  "To do the lot?" Bindle asked. "Eight million."

  "Which we hid in the production costs of your friend's movie," Marmelstein added. By the look Bindle shot him, he realized he had made some verbal misstep.

  "It wouldn't have been too critical to the production," Bindle cut in. "After all, we've still got the Burbank lot."

  "None of the principal actors were here," Marmelstein offered brightly. Again, he got the same look from his partner.

  "Plus Taurus would get some ink for a change," Bindle interjected hurriedly.

  "The publicity would have been worth it alone."

  "And the insurance would cover the cost of everything afterward."

  "Nothing but wins." Marmelstein smiled.

  "Mmm-hmm," Remo said. "And how many people were on the lot when the bombs were supposed to go off?"

  "Gee, I don't know," Bindle said, eyes flirting with the periphery of worry. "Bruce?"

  "I'd have to check with personnel. A thousand, two thousand? We've got tons of people here all day."

  "Including Chiun," Remo said, tone flat. Marmelstein suddenly realized why his partner had been shooting him such dirty looks.

  "Oh, was he here?" Marmelstein asked, all innocence.

  Remo didn't press it.

  "Okay, were you supposed to talk to the guy who arranged the bombing afterward?" he asked.

  "For other matters," Marmelstein admitted vaguely.

  "More box-office boosting?" Remo said, disgust in his face.

  "That might have been an item on the agenda," Bindle said uncertainly.

  "That stops now." He was thinking of Smith. If the anonymous caller phoned back, the CURE director could probably trace the call to its source.

  Remo glanced down at the two Taurus executives.

  Bindle's forehead still bled from his unsuccessful assault on the second-story office window. Marmelstein nursed the swelling purple lump on his own head. Sitting on the floor, they watched Remo expectantly. Dogs fearful of an unpredictable master. Remo's thin lips were stretched tight.

  "You two dolts are lucky," he menaced. "If anything had happened to Chiun. Anything at all..."

  In a whistling blur, Remo brought his hand up and around, slapping it against Hank Bindle's massive stainless-steel desk. The desk made an ugly crackling sound like that of ice dropped in warm water. A black, razor-slice fault line shot across the desk's surface. When it reached the far side, the huge steel slab dropped open.

  As the two sections thundered onto the carpeted floor, Remo was already turning away. The room-rattling boom was reverberating in Bindle's and Marmelstein's ears when he slipped from the room.

  It was several seconds later-as the last aftershocks were dissipating in the building's foundation-when Bruce Marmelstein finally got up the nerve to speak.

  "I don't know what they've got against our desks," he whispered. Hand clapped on his forehead, he climbed uncertainly to his feet.

  Bindle followed suit.

  "Think we should we have told him about that other little thing?" Bindle asked as he examined the huge desk sections.

  "New York? Are you crazy? Absolutely not," Marmelstein insisted. "If he was upset by almost deaths ...well..." his voice trailed off.

  "I suppose," Bindle agreed reluctantly. "At least we could tell him about-"

  "No! We're not telling him anything," Marmelstein snapped before his partner had a chance to finish. "Hank, we have got to save this turkey one way or another. God knows it's not going to do any box office on its own. We need a boost."

  Eyes worried, Bindle slowly nodded. But even as he agreed with his Taurus cochairman, he couldn't pull his eyes from the shattered remnants of his desk.

  Chapter 17

  It was nearly half an hour since the sole truck bomb had exploded. Police and fire officials had cordoned off the Taurus lot. Remo had Soundstage 9 to himself as he called Smith from an old rotary phone he found on a desk near the big hangar's small side door.

  "Report," the CURE director said without preamble.

  "I'm in Hollywood," Remo replied, displeasure at his location evident in his voice. "Someone just tried to relocate Taurus Studios to Neptune."

  "Yes," Smith said. "My computers just alerted me to the explosion. A truck bomb, according to reports."

  "Try bombs," Remo stressed. "I stopped five. You're hearing about the one that got away."

  "Given your presence there, presumably this is connected to the Seattle situation?"

  "Yeah," Remo said. "The box-murder punks led me here."

  "They were responsible for the studio bombing, as well?"

  "No, I iced them back in Washington. Different psychos,
same agenda. You remember Bindle and Marmelstein?"

  "I was surprised to see that they are still cochairs of Taurus," Smith answered. "After the financial fiasco of last year, I would have thought they would be gone with the new regime."

  "Gotta love Hollywood," Remo said. "The bigger the disaster on your resume, the higher up you go. Anyway, they're the ones who hired someone to blow up Taurus."

  Smith was stunned. "Their own studio?" he asked, incredulous.

  "A bomb out of Taurus," Remo offered. "You have to admit, what they lack in smarts they make up for in irony."

  "Remo, what possible reason did they have?" Smith pressed.

  "Insurance, career move, a high-colonic Rorschach told them to do it? Who knows with those clowns? I don't think the studio is long for this world, Smitty. Nishitsu bought the place after the Ebla debacle, then turned and sold it to some buggy Vegas billionaire casino owner. Rumor is he's planning on selling everything off. From the studio's film archives down to the last can of Who Hash. If it's true, Bindle and Marmelstein are out on their lifted asses."

  "And as revenge they wanted to blow up the studio?" Smith asked, amazement fading. He had met the two men once. Hard as it might be to believe, there seemed little they'd be incapable of.

  "I doubt it was revenge," Remo said. "More like desperation. You've got to understand these guys, Smitty. They're not like real human people. They don't really think things through. I think they probably just want to get through their next picture."

  "Explain," Smith said crisply.

  "The movie's costing a bundle to make. They figured they'd trash the Hollywood studio, relocate completely to Burbank and use the notoriety of the explosion to give them a bump at the box office. If this one movie is a hit, they might be able to put the studio back on track. Either that or at the very least they could parlay that hit into a job with another studio. Course, there'd be a lot of dead bodies to clean up, but they could always put the key grips and gaffers on corpse patrol. Pending approval of SAG, the AFL-CIO and the local medical examiner's union, of course."

  "Amazing," Smith said. "Were they able to shed light on who is responsible for all of these occurrences?"

  "No," Remo said. "It's the same as Seattle. An anonymous phone caller arranges everything for cash. But Bindle and Marmelstein seemed pretty sure everyone in town knows about the box-office boosting that's been going on. If they're right, any of those guys on the Cabbagehead backers' list is likely to know about it, too."

  "Hmm," Smith mused. "I had no luck with the phone records at the Randolph apartment in Seattle.

  But if we know that the individual behind this has been in contact with the larger Hollywood studios, there might be a way to winnow out the field on that end, assuming the same phone was used."

  "That sounds like a big if," Remo said.

  "It is all we have at the moment. I will instruct the mainframes to begin a search of phone-company records. They will sort through all of the calls to the major studios and match those that are identical."

  "How long will that take?"

  "Perhaps several hours," Smith said, "but given the incestuous nature of the entertainment industry, it could well be several days."

  Neither Remo nor Smith was pleased with waiting that long. Particularly for a lead that might not even pan out.

  "Okay," Remo sighed. "At least bug Bindle and Marmelstein's phones. They said the guy was supposed to call in after he blew up the studio."

  "Perhaps given his failure, the engineer will not even call," Smith speculated. "I will tap into their phone line just in case." The sound of the CURE director's efficient drumming fingers issued over the line. He spoke as he typed. "There were agents on the scene, presumably." Given the fact that there were six bombs in all, it was a statement of fact, not a question.

  "I just talked to a couple of them before I called," Remo said. "They were hired like the others. A voice on the phone. If it's any help, only one of them was from Seattle. The rest were hired out of some crummy local acting class."

  "They were actors?" Smith said, surprised.

  "Not real actor actors," Remo explained. "They were just extras on a movie that's being filmed here. That's what got them access to the studio in the first place. They got their ten bucks in the mail."

  Smith hesitated. "Remo, are you saying they were hired to blow up a Hollywood studio and kill countless numbers of innocent people for a mere ten dollars?"

  "Apiece," Remo said. "And if you're shocked by that, then you've never been a struggling L.A. actor."

  Smith let it pass. "I will see what can be dredged up as far as the phone records are concerned." He was about to terminate the call when Remo broke in.

  "While I'm cooling my heels, I could rattle a few cages around here. Stefan Schoenburg and the other Cabbagehead backers are just a derivative screenplay away."

  There was a moment of consideration during which Remo heard only Smith's nasal breathing. When he finally spoke, the older man sounded infinitely tired.

  "No," Smith sighed wearily.

  "C'mon, Smitty. It's either that or I hang around here watching Bruce Marmelstein apply wrinkle cream every twenty minutes. And you don't want to know where he puts it."

  "No, Remo," Smith insisted. "The situation for us is more delicate than it might normally be." The next words he spoke sounded like a guilty admission. "Schoenburg and the rest have all been generous supporters of the President."

  Remo was taken aback. "We never worried about that junk before, Smitty. We're not political, remember?"

  "We are not," Smith agreed. "But the President has been making things exceedingly-" he hesitated, trying to put the most tactful spin on things "-difficult of late."

  "Since when?" Remo pressed. "This is the first I'm hearing about it."

  "It did not concern you," Smith said. "Nor does it now. I am only informing you of this so that you do not do anything rash. Remo, I will not hesitate to send you after Schoenburg if he is implicated in this affair. Until such time, however, it is in this agency's best interest to avoid unnecessary complications."

  Smith had to struggle to get out every word. They obviously did not sit well with the older man's rock-ribbed New England soul.

  For a long time, Remo had told himself that he didn't like Smith. His employer was cheap, coldhearted and had the personality of a moldy cod. But for more years than he sometimes cared to remember, Smith had been a major part of his life. The CURE director had even saved Remo's life on a number of occasions. Like it or not, Remo had come to a reluctant conclusion a long time ago: Smith mattered to him.

  And now, thanks to the time in which they now lived, the man whose conduct as head of CURE had always been above reproach was being pressured into disregarding one of the basic founding tenets of the agency he had built.

  Remo wasn't particularly fond of any President, but he'd decided early on that the current occupant of the White House was a political bottom feeder. He hadn't thought he could like the man any less. Until now.

  Remo decided not to press the issue.

  "Let me know if you find anything," he said after an awkward moment of silence.

  "I will," Smith said, a hint of relief evident in his lemony tone, as if he'd expected Remo to argue the point. "If I learn anything from the phone records, I will call you at Bindle and Marmelstein's office."

  Wordlessly, Remo dropped the phone back in its cradle.

  The soundstage seemed big and drafty. Like another world. In spite of the soundproofing, Remo could hear the occasional lone siren beyond the nearby wall. Most had already found their way to the New York set.

  Remo heard without hearing. His thoughts were on Smith.

  The President was a man who had slid to the top on a track greased with lies and false smiles. He couldn't begin to understand the sacrifices someone like Smith had made.

  Although the possibility for friction had been there from the start, Smith's love of country had always superseded any persona
l distaste. He had worked with the nation's Chief Executive for one and a half terms. And now, with the light of day visible at the end of the dark tunnel, the President had finally turned his destructive sights on CURE.

  "Just hunker down, Smitty," Remo muttered to the empty hangar. "One more year and he's history."

  Unknown to Remo, forces were conspiring at that moment to reduce the President's second term by a quarter.

  Chapter 18

  Reginald Hardwin was a brilliant actor who, for one reason or another, had never quite made it.

  That he was an acting genius was without doubt. All anyone had to do was ask him. He was on a level so far above the rest of the noisome rabble, as he called his peers, that he would need a telescope to properly look down on them. If they were stars twinkling in the heavens of celebrity, his talent as a thespian was the midday sun.

  But fate had conspired against poor Reginald Hardwin.

  He had just missed being Richard Burton. Too young.

  He was almost Anthony Hopkins. Too sober.

  He should have been Jeremy Irons. Too old.

  For twenty years, he watched the stars of others rise higher and higher in the heavens while he toiled anonymously in repertory theaters around America. He was Prospero in Connecticut, Mercutio in San Francisco and Falstaff in Miami. His Lear was the finest ever seen in Des Moines.

  Even with an impressive list of credits "on the boards," Hardwin had never snatched that elusive gold ring of acting: movie stardom.

  Of course, early in his career he had poohpoohed the entire concept of film acting. That sort of thing might be fine for the likes of Olivier and Gielgud, but he was a real actor. His first love was the stage. Anything else smacked of cheap commercialism.

  Hardwin held this conceit for as long as it took him to realize that Hollywood not only was not beating down his door, it didn't even know where his door was.

  He quickly changed his game plan.

  Hollywood might not have sought him out, but that only meant they hadn't taken the time to pull their noses out of their plebeian scripts long enough to see what a real actor was. He decided that he would go on casting calls just for the fun of it, rejecting on principle any and all offers that came his way.