Fade to Black td-119 Read online

  "Editing will punch it up," Hank Bindle assured him. "We'll fill it with digital fluff. Hell, we'll even see if we can get John Williams to score it."

  "We can't afford John Williams," Marmelstein cautioned.

  "Oh. How about Danny Elfman?"

  "Think second-string."

  Bindle was horror-struck. "Not Henry Mancini!" he gasped.

  "He's dead, isn't he?" Marmelstein frowned.

  "Oh, thank God," Bindle replied, clutching his chest in relief. "We'd be the laughingstock of the industry. In the first testosterone-injected blockbuster of the summer, the hero doesn't blow up a helicopter or bang a broad to 'Moon River.' Course the fags might like that. Maybe for homo crossover appeal we could get Celine Dion to do a 'Moon River' cover for the banging scene."

  "Probably too much, but I'll call her people," Marmelstein said.

  Nodding, Bindle leaned back in his chair.

  "We still have a problem on the set," the assistant director interjected. Arlen was nearly crying now as he stood, shifting uncomfortably before their desks.

  "Are you still here?" Bindle asked, frowning. "I thought we'd settled this."

  "We had," Marmelstein stressed. "The picture was hopelessly behind schedule. Now it's only behind. In two days it won't even be that anymore. Problem solved."

  "It wasn't my fault we were behind," the assistant director whined.

  Hank Bindle tapped a finger on his desk. "Look, who's directing this picture?" he asked.

  "I wasn't contracted to," the A.D. argued.

  "That's not the point."

  "But he put two union reps through a wall today," Arlen pleaded, his tone desperate. "Through a freaking wall."

  "They were insolent louts."

  The unexpected reply didn't come from either Hank Bindle or Bruce Marmelstein. The singsongy voice came from the direction of the office doors. Arlen jumped a foot in the air. He wheeled in time to see the big office doors swing quietly shut. The Master of Sinanju was padding silently across the carpet.

  Chiun stopped next to the panicked assistant director.

  "O Magnificent Oneness," the A.D. said, terror in his quavering voice. "I thought you were at the commissary."

  "They did not have proper rice," Chiun said, his eyes slivers of suspicion. "Why are you not at work?"

  "I...it...I-I was just reporting on our progress."

  Hank Bindle smiled. "Arlen was telling us how pleased he was with your managerial skills, Mr. Chiun."

  "Yes," Bruce Marmelstein agreed, an overly white grin spreading across his deeply tanned face. "He's very impressed. Says you're a real motivator."

  Heavy lids parted a fraction, revealing questioning hazel orbs. "Is this true?" Chiun asked the A.D.

  The man glanced desperately at Bindle and Marmelstein, then back to the old Korean. "I...that is...yes. Yes." He nodded emphatically.

  A sad smile cracked through the harsh leathery veneer of the Master of Sinanju. "I am deeply touched," he intoned. "But alas, your words of praise cannot be true."

  "Of course they are," Arlen said, sensing an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the terrifying old man. He forced warm enthusiasm into his voice.

  "No, no," Chiun said, raising a hand to ward off further undeserved approval. "For if this were the case, would you not be on the set right now?"

  Chiun's thin smile vanished in an instant, replaced by a granite-cold glare. His protesting hand was still raised. Arlen's sick eyes traced the contours of the old man's daggerlike fingernails.

  The assistant director gulped audibly. "I, um...better get, um... Look!" Pointing out the big office window, he turned and ran from the room.

  As the door swung shut, a placid expression settled on the weathered creases of the Master of Sinanju's face.

  "Damn, if the movie business doesn't fit you like a glove, Mr. Chiun," Marmelstein said, genuinely impressed at the way the old Korean had handled the assistant director. "Why, the look of pure terror you just put in that man's eyes? It's like Jack Warner's come back from that big projection room in the sky." His own eyes were misting.

  "You've really given the production a kick in the pants," Bindle agreed enthusiastically.

  "These people lacked discipline," said Chiun. "Their leader did not inspire order."

  "Leader," Bindle snorted sarcastically. "Don't even get me started on that one."

  Chiun raised an eyebrow. "Is something wrong?"

  "Nothing," Marmelstein shook his head. "Sore subject. Anyway, your presence here is really working out great. We're tearing through script pages like a runaway train."

  As usual, Chiun didn't know what the executive was saying. "This is good?" he asked.

  "Good? It's great! It means we'll make our May premiere date after all, which means we get a jump on the rest of the summer competition, which means we get a bigger chunk of the summer box office, which means those gross profit points you negotiated are worth even more."

  This the Master of Sinanju understood. "I love the movie business," he enthused.

  "And it loves you, baby," Hank Bindle said warmly. He rose from his desk, coming around to the tiny Asian. Bruce Marmelstein came behind him.

  Bindle put his arm around Chiun's bony shoulder. Such a move of familiarity would ordinarily cost someone at least one arm, if not his life. But Chiun felt such love in the room that he didn't object to the touch. Nor did he protest as Bindle and Marmelstein began to lead him from the office.

  "You're an asset this town can really use," Bindle said. "I can see a long relationship between the three of us. You as writer and set inspiration, us as resident executive geniuses. The sky is the limit. Anything you want, you just ask your old pal Hank Bindle."

  "Or Bruce Marmelstein," Bruce Marmelstein offered as he pushed the door open. They entered the lobby.

  "Since you mention it, I had come here to suggest higher quality rice at the eating place of the commissar," Chiun said.

  "Huh?" Marmelstein asked.

  "Commissary," Bindle explained to his partner.

  "Japonica rice. And fish," Chiun said. "Perhaps some duck. Duck is always nice."

  "Whatever you say." Bindle nodded.

  "We'll get right on it," Marmelstein agreed.

  "If I think of anything else, I will tell you."

  "We're anxious for your input," Marmelstein enthused.

  They ushered Chiun onto the elevator. After the doors had closed on the Master of Sinanju, the two of them let out a single relieved sigh. They returned to their office, plopping down behind their huge executive desks.

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Hank Bindle asked once they'd settled in. He was staring at the glass office doors.

  Marmelstein nodded. "That old fart's sold us a bill of goods," he said. "This thing is a bomb waiting to go off."

  "Why didn't we see it before?" Bindle wailed. "We wasted our money on the rights. I mean, come on. An honest cop fighting the system alone? Snore, snore, snore."

  "We should have seen it wasn't workable."

  "Workable? We'll be lucky if we're not severanced off with a big fat check and a pile of stock."

  "Golden parachute?" Marmelstein asked.

  "It's happened to all the biggies at one time or another," Bindle moaned.

  "Ovitz, Katzenberg. Remember Tartikoff? Most of them never recovered. The worst day of my life will be the day they give me that hundred-million-dollar check."

  Marmelstein shuddered. "Don't worry. It'll probably never come to that."

  Bindle sighed. Leaning an elbow on his gleaming desk, he looked over at his partner. "So what's the story on our little mini-sneak preview?"

  "No one's made the connection yet. I think it might be because of the chaos on the set. No one's seen the reports."

  "Hell, if it goes on much longer, I'll go down and tell them," Bindle said, slouching in his chair.

  "That wouldn't be smart. We really shouldn't link ourselves to it. If it goes on another day, I'll leak it by e-mail t
o Entertainment Tonight from one of the dummy accounts."

  "I don't know how one little blown-up building in New York is going to pull this turkey out of the oven," Bindle grumbled, "let alone bring it back to life."

  "It probably won't," Bruce Marmelstein explained. "We take it in steps. New York first, then the really big one. With the interest we'll generate, we could have a box-office hit yet."

  "Or the biggest bomb in history."

  Bruce Marmelstein laughed. "That's what's going to give us the box office."

  Hank Bindle nodded, bracing his forehead against his palm. "Movie promotion can be so demanding," he sighed.

  Chapter 10

  Pink plastic lawn flamingos lined the wall behind the hideous paisley sofa. The living-room rug sported images of cavorting blue Smurfs. The thick glass sheet that was the coffee table was held aloft by a single faux elephant foot.

  A substance resembling clear gelatin filled a thirty-gallon fish tank on the shelf near the kitchenette. Suspended at various points in the tank were severed doll limbs.

  Posters from films such as Surf Nazis Must Die, A Bucket of Blood and Frankenhooker adorned the walls, held in place by cheery multicolored thumbtacks.

  It was a lot to take in all at once. Remo wasn't sure if he wanted to throw up or run screaming into the hallway. Settling reluctantly on a third option, he followed Quintly Tortilli inside his Seattle apartment.

  "You like it?" the famous director asked as he dropped his keys near a plastic Fred Flintstone bank on the table near the door.

  "Blind whores have better taste," Remo said.

  Frowning, he flicked at the grass skirt on a tiny hula dancer attached to a table lamp.

  "Yeah," agreed Tortilli. "They always know, like, the best yard sales. My book's in the bedroom."

  Leaving Remo, he danced down a short hallway. Every inch of space in the living room was crammed with forced kitsch. From Felix the Cat wall clocks whose eyes moved back and forth with each tick of their tails to upright ashtrays fashioned to look like cowboy boots to a closet from which spilled clothes made of fabrics that had been to the moon. Anyone unfortunate enough to enter the apartment was pummeled by Quintly Tortilli's obnoxious personality.

  On an oil-stained desk, which looked as if Tortilli had rescued it from an abandoned factory, lay a dozen scripts. When Remo opened one, he found that the margins were filled with notes. The others he checked were in the same condition: all loaded with crazy pencil marks. He was about to turn from the desk when one of the script covers caught his eye. Surprised, he picked it up. He was skimming through it when Tortilli returned.

  "We're in business now," the director enthused, waving a mint-condition 1970s Josie and the Pussycats binder.

  "What the hell is this?" Remo asked, holding up the script.

  "Huh? Oh, I do script-doctor work sometimes. Blood Water, The Lockup. Strictly uncredited. Million bucks for a week's work. Those are the latest. I get 'em all the time."

  Remo looked at the cover of the script in his hand. "You're doing the rewrite on a TeeVee-Fatties screenplay?"

  Tortilli nodded. "Yeah, man. That's a great one. Originally it was all magic clouds and happy sunshine. In mine Tipsy gets cheesed off at Poopsy-Woopsy for using his scooter, so he beats him to death with a bag of frozen TeeVee-Fattie muffins."

  "Unbelievable." Remo tossed the script back on the desk.

  "Yeah," Tortilli agreed. "The violence and drugs were always, like, there in TeeVee-FattieLand, man. I just brought them to the surface." Notebook in hand, he went over to his Starship Enterprise telephone.

  While the director looked up numbers and dialed, Remo leaned against the door, arms crossed.

  "Do you have to try so hard all the time?" Remo asked.

  "I have an image," Tortilli explained. "Unfortunately, I don't know where it ends and I begin anymore." He straightened.

  "Hi, Bug?" He said into the phone. "Quint. How ya doin'?"

  After a few minutes of questioning, Tortilli gave up. The director had learned nothing. The next three calls proved fruitless, as well. He got lucky on the fifth.

  "Where?" Tortilli asked excitedly. He fished a Mork and Mindy pencil from his polyester pocket.

  Though he was poised to jot the address on his notepad, he didn't have to. "I know the place," he said. "Yeah. Yeah, I heard about it. One of them cut off his head shaving, right? Ouch. Break out the Bactine."

  Covering the receiver, Tortilli snickered softly. Pulling himself together, he returned to the phone. "I'm all set," he said, clearing his throat. "Remind me to make you a star. Later." Hanging up, he looked expectantly to Remo. "I think we've got something. The guy I called knows a guy who claims another guy was bragging he was in on the box murder. You know, the one with the torso."

  "I heard," Remo said flatly.

  "On the phone? You mean you can hear both sides of a phone conversation?"

  "It's hard to hear anything over your suit," Remo said dryly. He pulled the door open. "Let's go."

  Jogging to keep up, Quintly Tortilli hurried after Remo into the hallway. As he shut the door, he flicked off the lights, drowning the garish decor in blessed darkness.

  SEATTLE'S DESPAIRING youth had early on established the Dregs as the city's premier grunge bar. For a time, the pervasive gloom and hopelessness of its clientele was money in the bank. But then disaster struck. Resurgent optimism suddenly began to sweep the nation. One morning, the bar's owners woke up to find hope and enthusiasm saturating the popular culture. The change seemed to come overnight.

  The morose lyrics set to mournful tunes that had made Seattle the rage of the music scene only a few short years before were replaced by the upbeat sounds of the Backstreet Boys and Dixie Chicks.

  With grunge fading and alternative poised to die a sudden death, the Dregs had become the last bulwark for the music that had made the city famous.

  When Remo Williams walked through the front door, it was as if a pop-culture time machine had taken him back six years. He scanned the sea of plaid shirts, torn denim pants and goatees that filled the bar.

  "Looks like a beatnik lumberjack convention," he grumbled.

  A few of the nearest slackers looked his way, some suspicious of his T-shirt and chinos. But when a second figure popped in behind him, they instantly relaxed.

  Quintly Tortilli. The Hollywood genius was a frequent visitor to the Dregs. Accompanied by the young director of Penny Dreadful, the stranger couldn't be all bad.

  "Isn't this place great?" Tortilli yelled to Remo over the blaring sound system. Tables wobbled from the pounding bass. Ragged figures moped around the dance floor.

  Remo nodded to the crowd. "Stick a two-by-four up their asses and I could get them all work scaring crows."

  "Yeah," Tortilli agreed. "The ripped-jeans-and-flannel thing is still only a couple years retro. But if it holds on long enough, it'll come back into style." He sized up Remo. "Actually, if you don't mind, Remo, maybe you should think about updating your look. Don't take this as criticism-I'm saying this as a friend-but, I mean, how long have you been doing the whole T-shirt-chinos thing? Retro's one thing, but maybe you should think about keeping up with the times, man."

  "Look, dingbat, it's bad enough I'm stuck with you and that Teflon jumpsuit you're wearing without listening to your cockeyed fashion tips," Remo growled. "Hurry up."

  According to Tortilli's source, the man they were looking for was someone the director knew-if only vaguely. As he turned to the packed bar, his dull eyes narrowed. He looked from pasty face to pasty face.

  "I don't think I see him," Tortilli said in a disappointed tone.

  "Your pal seemed sure he'd be here," Remo insisted. As he spoke, he rotated his thick wrists impatiently.

  Quintly was still glancing from face to face. "You really could hear him, couldn't you?" He grinned, impressed. "You know, we should really talk about me writing your life-" He stopped dead. "Got him," Tortilli announced abruptly.

  With laserlike
precision, Remo honed in on the director's line of sight.

  The man was a burly slacker in red flannel. He sat alone at a cheap plastic table on the other side of the bar.

  "I don't know, man. He's kinda big." Tortilli frowned. "You might have trouble wasting this one. Whaddaya think?"

  When he turned, he found that he was talking to empty air. Quintly glanced back across the room. It took him a minute to spot Remo's white T-shirt. When he finally found it, he was surprised that Remo was already halfway across the bar. He was gliding through the dense throng like a silent spirit. Though people crushed in all around him, he seemed no more substantial than air.

  Tortilli shook his head, impressed.

  "How much for your life story, man?" he said in wonder. He ordered a rum punch from a passing waitress and quickly found a seat of his own, settling in to watch the floor show.

  IN THE COUNTERCULTURE environment of poseurs and criminal wanna-bes, Chester Gecko was the real deal. All 211 pounds of him.

  In an age where nearly every high-school student got a diploma and a pat on the head, regardless of academic achievement or lack thereof, Chester had failed to meet even the basic, lax requirements for graduation. Twice forced to repeat his senior year at Bremerton's Coriolis High School, he was finally thrown out after his geometry teacher made the mistake of asking him to demonstrate the use of a protractor in front of the class. It was eight years later, and the woman still used makeup to mask the scars on her cheek.

  Chester had been in trouble with the law nearly all his life, but thanks to a criminal justice system that sometimes seemed even more hesitant to deal with unruly elements than the public education system, he had yet to do any major time. It was actually a shame, really, for Chester was the type of individual who would have been happier in prison than he was in civilized society.

  Whenever he stopped in the Dregs, people instinctively knew to steer clear of Chester Gecko. He was easy enough to avoid; a burly, slouching figure with ratlike eyes, Chester drew more flies than friends. He generally sat alone at his table, practically daring someone to approach. And in five years, no one ever had.

  Until this day.

  Chester was sullenly sucking at his beer when he saw the skinny guy show up with Quintly Tortilli. Chester didn't like Tortilli anymore. Mr. Bigshot didn't answer his mail. Besides, he'd seen the director in the Dregs before, so it was easy enough to lose interest.