Fade to Black td-119 Read online

  Remo locked eyes with Smith. "Then trust me now. You do not want to know."

  The tone was somber, deadly serious. His expression could have been carved from stone.

  For an instant, Smith opened his mouth, about to press the issue further. He thought better of it almost at once. Mouth creaking shut, he stepped out the door.

  Remo clicked it shut behind him.

  As he descended the steps to the sidewalk, the CURE director thought of times in the past when Remo had worn that same expression in regard to the Master of Sinanju. As he hurried down the sidewalk, Harold Smith decided that it might be prudent to stock up on Maalox and Alka-Seltzer on the way home. Just to be on the safe side.

  Chapter 3

  Shawn Allen Morris's resume boasted five years of "intimate experience at the frazzled edge of the film industry." In a forum where truth was always subjective, Shawn had raised the art of inflating one's personal experience on a resume to gargantuan proportions.

  The implication was clear. He was claiming that, like many young men in Tinseltown, he'd spent years toiling on low-budget "indie" films. Even by resume standards, this was an utter lie. The truth was, the closest Shawn had ever come to the film industry was working on a canteen truck on a vacant tract of land near the Paramount lot.

  The high point of that job had been the day John Rhys-Davies-Sallah from the Indiana Jones movies-had stopped by for a cheese danish.

  When he had first arrived in Hollywood, Shawn spent his evenings attending film school. For 175 bucks per class per semester, he and his classmates would sit in the dark watching Ingmar Bergman movies and pretend to find meaning in them.

  At night, he'd talk for hours with his fellow would-be auteurs. And though the arguments were loud and frequent, Shawn and his friends did have some common ground. They all agreed that they were intellectuals and visionaries while the rest of the world was comprised of nothing but Independence Day-watching troglodytes. When day came, these underappreciated geniuses would emerge bleary-eyed from their coffeehouses only to go back to their jobs parking the cars and busing the tables of the aforementioned troglodytes.

  Shawn was no different than his classmates. His years of experience in night school left Shawn Allen Morris qualified for one thing: running a canteen truck.

  Graduation came and went, and still, after five long years of school, each daybreak found Shawn wiping down the same cracked Formica counter with the same smelly rag and selling the same putrid egg-salad sandwiches to the same sweaty, hairy teamsters.

  He would have languished there forever-his genius never recognized-had fate not finally dealt him a movie-inspired chance meeting.

  Business had been slow that fateful afternoon. Shawn was about to close up shop when the fireengine-red Jaguar squealed to a desperate stop in the lot beside his ratty old canteen truck. A frenzied young man sprang out. Wild-eyed, he raced over to Shawn, who was in the process of collapsing the supports to the trapdoor above his counter.

  "I need a blueberry bagel with cream cheese!" The customer's intent face was borderline frightening. His cheekbones were high and pointy, jutting out almost as far as his bizarrely elongated chin. His lower jaw extended out, as well, putting his lower teeth in front of his uppers. His face was contorted in a perpetual half grimace, half smirk.

  At first, Shawn assumed the man was an actor in creature makeup for some bad sci-fi movie. It was only when he was smearing the cream cheese on the bagel that the customer removed his pair of heart-shaped red sunglasses. Shawn's mouth dropped open.

  "You're Quintly Tortilli!" he gasped.

  "That's the name on my Oscar," the customer snapped urgently. He waved an angry hand at the bagel. "Give it here, asshole."

  Shawn hesitated. He knew of Quintly Tortilli all too well. The man was a hero to every failed filmmaker. Although he was now one of Hollywood's most famous directors, only a few short years before, Tortilli had been employed as an usher in a theater. This in order to be closer to the films he loved so much.

  According to all the bios, Quintly devoured films. When he'd made the transition into movies, the young director had borrowed heavily from everyone and everything. Sometimes he regurgitated whole scenes and plots from obscure B movies in his own loud, ultraviolent films. In any other industry this would be seen for what it was: stealing. In Hollywood it was "homage." Quintly Tortilli was a true Hollywood success story. And now he was displaying some of his famous impatience at the canteen truck of Shawn Allen Morris.

  As Tortilli flapped an angry hand, Shawn hesitated. He held the precious bagel away from his customer.

  Shawn had tried to break into the motion picture business in every legitimate way imaginable. He had nothing more to lose. As Quintly Tortilli waited testily beside the truck, Shawn raised his hand. Fingers uncurling, he allowed the bagel to plop to the truck's floor. For good measure, he ground a heel into the smooshy cream cheese.

  Tortilli's already demented eyes widened. "What the fuck did you do that for!" he screamed.

  Shawn's voice didn't waver. "I want a job in film," he said softly.

  "What?" Tortilli snapped, his knotted face twisting into a caricature of human anger. "Gimme my fuckin' bagel!"

  "A job for a bagel," Shawn insisted. "Quid pro quo."

  "Quasimodo what?" Tortilli ranted. "What the fuck is this? All I want's a fuckin' bagel, for fuck's sake."

  "And I want a job in film," Shawn replied calmly. "Get me one and I'll give you your bagel." Tortilli's voice had been growing in volume and pitch. By now it was a woman's whine combined with a high-pitched shriek.

  "What the fuck!"

  "That's my offer. Take it or leave it." Shawn crossed his arms firmly over his chest. For added emphasis, he made a show of grinding his foot further into the flattened bagel.

  Tortilli fumed for a moment. Finally, his twisted alien's face split apart at a point between his curled, jutting nose and his witch's chin. "You start tomorrow," he hissed. "Now give me my fucking bagel!"

  That was that. In two days Shawn was two states up the coast, sitting behind a desk in the Seattle offices of fledgling Cabbagehead Productions.

  Cabbagehead had been established by a group of wealthy backers who were hoping to break into the independent end of the film industry. The company was supposed to produce the types of counterculture art movies that invariably got good word of mouth at Academy Awards time.

  The motivation of Cabbagehead's anonymous benefactors didn't matter to Shawn. He was home at last. In the motion picture industry. It didn't matter that in his job he had to act as location coordinator, producer, wrangler, set designer, assistant editor, occasional gaffer and-due to his experience on his canteen truck-caterer. Thanks to Quintly Tortilli's lust for instant bagel gratification, he was finally where he belonged.

  In the eight months he'd spent in the dreary Pacific Northwest, Shawn had overseen the production of thirty-eight motion pictures. Most were barely above the amateurish level of college films. But that didn't matter because no one here was into big budget Hollywood glitz. They were making "serious" films. All of the wretches who drifted in and out of the Cabbagehead offices knew it was only a matter of time before a dozen gold statuettes lined the empty shelf above Shawn Allen Morris's cheap lobby desk.

  During his eight months in that tawdry office, only two people had ever seemed unimpressed by all they were trying to accomplish there. The first was the mailman. That bourgeois bastard always had a smirk on his face whenever delivering the bizarrely wrapped and addressed packages sent to Cabbagehead from would-be filmmakers. The second undazzled visitor walked through the front door one afternoon as Shawn was reading a screenplay entitled Hate Like Me, written by a lesbian Black Panther California university professor named Tashwanda Z.

  Cabbagehead couldn't afford secretaries, so Shawn was sitting at the tiny desk in the main waiting room when the man entered. Shawn could tell straight off that he was a prole. Probably thought Back to the Future was great cinema.
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  The man looked to be somewhere in his thirties. He wore a white T-shirt and a pair of tan chinos. His leather loafers seemed to glide across the floor without touching it. Unlike the bemused expression of the mailman, this bumpkin's dark face was somber. Almost cruel.

  Although possessed of a slight build himself, Shawn was not particularly intimidated by the thin young man as he crossed the lobby to his desk. Shawn didn't even put down the script he was reading when the man spoke.

  "You in charge?"

  Shawn sighed with his entire body. Delicate hands closed the script. "I am President Shawn Allen Morris," the Cabbagehead executive replied disdainfully. "And you are?"

  "Remo Valenti, MPAA."

  Shawn snorted. "In that getup? Yeah, right. Look, if you're here to pitch a script, forget it. I've got four films in production even as we speak, two more green-lighted for next week that I haven't even read yet and, to top it all off, I just found out one of my shit-head lead actors got called for jury duty and was too stupid to weasel out of it, so my people have to recast. So unless you're good with a bullwhip and a chainsaw, there's the door."

  Testily, Shawn reached for another script. He was dismayed to find a hand pressed on the cover. The hand was attached to the thickest wrist Shawn had ever seen. The Cabbagehead president looked up into the dark eyes of his visitor. They were like tiny manhole covers, opened into utter blackness.

  "Listen, Sam Goldwyn," Remo said, "I don't want to be here-you don't want me here. Why don't you just tell me what I want to know and I won't slap you with an NC-17."

  "You don't even know what NC-17 means." Shawn smirked.

  It was Remo's turn to smile. "Sure, I do," he said. "It means No Crap or I Break 17 Bones. First one's a freebie."

  The hand flashed by faster than a single movie frame.

  Shawn felt a horrible, crunching pain at the ball of his right thumb. The brittle crack of a lone metacarpal filled his horrified ears. He gasped in pain.

  As Shawn pulled his broken hand from his desktop, Remo waggled a cautionary finger.

  "Now tell the truth," he warned, "or you'll get an NC-17 and a PG-13. Give me the who and where on whoever's killing people to make these junk movies of yours sell."

  "That's why you broke my freaking thumb?" Shawn demanded. He stuffed the injured digit under his armpit. "I already told the cops a million times. I don't know what the hell's going on. At first I thought it was just a lucky coincidence, but now I think maybe someone's out to sabotage us. And it's really too bad," Shawn added. "When I heard about that first body I thought ...whoa! My ship's come in. The press was fantastic back then. Rode the crest of that wave straight into Telluride. But it's gotten crazy lately. That Anderson thing was too much. One body, maybe two helps a movie. But four? That's overkill."

  Remo's eyes were flat. "I'll show you overkill in a minute," he promised. "For now, there has to be some kind of connection."

  Shawn tried to shrug. It was hard to do with his thumb jammed under his arm. "That's what I thought," he agreed. He quickly added, "Not that Crating Sally wasn't an Oscar contender even before that torso showed up in the orange crate. But the press coverage didn't hurt to keep us fresh in the minds of voters. We only missed that one by a couple of votes," he added bitterly.

  Remo had seen the Crating Sally poster on the wall on the way in. A woman's frightened face peered out from the shadows of an ordinary wooden crate. It was clear from the size of the box that there wasn't room for any arms or legs inside. A pool of blood formed in front of the box.

  It was part of an overall theme. On all of the posters around the room, blood, mutilation and kinky sex seemed to be a recurring motif.

  "Don't you make anything with talking pigs or cartoon bugs around here?" he asked, amazed. "We'd never sell out for monetary success," Shawn sniffed in reply. "Cabbagehead is about creating art."

  Remo shook his head. "'This isn't art," he informed the youthful executive. "Art is a statue in the Louvre. Art is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Art is a painting of the Virgin Mary that looks like the Virgin Mary."

  "We did a movie about her." Shawn nodded. "Updated the whole Christ mythology. Mary was a whore in Canada who wanted to get an abortion. We almost got the jury prize at Sundance for that."

  He had hardly finished speaking when he felt another sharp pain. This one in his ring finger. As the sound of yet another cracking bone filled his ears, Shawn swore he saw a flash of movement this time. Remo's hand returned to his side.

  "What the hell was that for?" Shawn cried.

  "All the nuns at St. Theresa's Orphanage," Remo said. "Okay, so you don't know who's behind this. You the owner?"

  "No," Shawn answered quickly, hiding the rest of his fingers below his desk. "We're sponsored by a consortium of investors out of Hollywood. I don't even know who they are."

  "You don't know who your own boss is?" Remo asked doubtfully. "How'd you get the job?"

  "I-" Shawn stopped dead.

  A look of inspiration. Almost delight. Shawn shot to his feet. He winced at the pain in his hand. "I'll show you," the independent film executive enthused. He bounded from behind his desk. As he headed for the door, his face held all the enthusiasm of a Roman centurion who was about to shove a Christian into the mouth of a ravenous lion.

  THE BUTCHER, THE BAKER AND THE CANDLESTICK MAKER was the type of film no one would ever see even after all the major film critics in America placed it on their year-end ten-best lists.

  As Shawn Allen Morris guided him onto the Butcher set, Remo was first surprised by the lighting. He doubted anything being shot in the shadowy Seattle supermarket parking lot would be visible once the film was developed.

  A grisly orgy was taking place on a pile of rotting garbage. Softly chugging pumps spurted red goo from nozzles buried under latex in the faux-mutilated corpses of five deathly still actresses.

  Guiding the actors off-camera was a thin figure in a purple polyester suit. His back to Remo, he was hunched beside a camera watching the scene play out in all its lurid glory. As Remo approached, the man raised a hand, slicing it down sharply.

  "And ...cut! Fucking beautiful! Perfect! That's a wrap everybody! Dailies at my place by midnight. And don't lose them in the fucking cab."

  When he spun around, triumphant, Remo saw that he was wearing a flowered disco-era shirt open to the navel. Gold chains hung in layers over his mottled black chest hair. Surprise bloomed full on Quintly Tortilli's knotted face.

  "Morris, you idiot, this is a closed set," he barked.

  "He's with the MPAA, Quintly," Shawn Allen Morris confided, aiming an unnaturally crooked finger at Remo. The oily rag from the car that he'd wrapped around the digit unspooled. On the cloth, the yellow, grease-smeared image of Wee-Wee the TeeVee-Fattie beamed at Tortilli. Wincing, Shawn rewrapped his makeshift bandage around his broken fingers.

  "What the hell happened to you?" Tortilli didn't wait for a response. He wheeled to Remo. "And since when do you MPAA ratings fascists kamikaze a movie that's still in production? You go back to those fossilized dictators in Hollywood and tell them they can shove their butcher knives. Every single instance of the word fuck in this film is artistically essential. I'll release it without a fucking MPAA rating if I have to. I'm holding a fucking mirror up to society, man. Deal with it." Eyes wild, Tortilli's pointy chin trembled with passion.

  Once the diatribe had reached its passionate conclusion, Remo extended a single, uninterested finger at the panting Quintly Tortilli. He looked at Shawn Allen Morris. "Who the hell is this?"

  Shawn gasped. "That's Quintly Tortilli," he hissed. When Remo's expression failed to change, Shawn pitched his horrified voice low. "The Quintly Tortilli. Only the most famous director in America Quintly Tortilli."

  "Oh." It was clear Remo still didn't know who on earth the director was. "He ever do anything good?"

  Shawn's nervous eyes grew wider. He glanced at Quintly Tortilli, who was now glaring more than enough hatred for both Remo and Shaw
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  "He won an Oscar for Penny Dreadful," Shawn instructed hoarsely. His eyes pleaded with Remo to recognize Tortilli. Even if he had to pretend.

  It was the movie title that finally sparked recognition in Remo's eyes. "You mean he's responsible for the piece of garbage that revived Jann Revolta's movie career?"

  Shawn Allen Morris felt his stomach collapse into his bowels. "Is that the phone?" he announced abruptly. And with that, he turned and ran for all he was worth. As he bounded back to the highway, his filthy bandage flapped a TeeVee-Fattie flag at the air in his wake.

  Turning from Shawn's retreating form, Tortilli crossed his arms over his chest. "Okay, storm trooper of the Hollywood thought police, what do you want?" he demanded.

  "For you to promise me you're not going to resurrect Gabe Kaplan, too," Remo said. "Barring that, a list of Cabbagehead's backers will do."

  Tortilli snickered loudly. "Fuck you," he offered.

  He turned and walked away from Remo. Or tried to. When he attempted to take a step, his foot froze above the ground. Something held him firmly in place.

  When he looked down, he found a hand wrapped around his neckful of gold chains.

  "Look, I don't even want to be here," Remo said.

  As he spoke, Quintly Tortilli felt himself being lifted into the air. Remo was using the director's necklaces like a handle. A knot of linked gold jutted from Remo's hand.

  "I wanted to stay home," Remo continued, not a hint of strain on his face. "But I'm being punished because I've been too picky about boring assignments."

  Tortilli stretched his toes. They didn't reach the ground. Arm extended, Remo was holding him a good six inches off the damp parking lot.

  "On top of that, I've gotta make sure my boss doesn't find out about any of this freaking hush-hush movie junk."

  "Chlckkkkggghhh..." said Quintly Tortilli.

  "What?" Remo asked, distracted. "Oh, yeah." Reaching over with his free hand, he swatted the director in the shoulder.

  Tortilli felt the entire revolving world screech to a halt. As the Earth stopped, he alone began to spin. It was like an amusement park ride gone wild. He twirled and twirled and twirled in place until his brain felt as if it would spiral out his ear. The parking lot around him turned into a smeared horizon of indistinct blots.