Fade to Black td-119 Read online

  He glanced away for a second. When he looked back, the stranger with Tortilli had disappeared. Just like that. Vanished. As if the floor had opened up and swallowed him whole. Chester assumed he'd ducked back out the front door. But when he returned his bored attention to the dance floor, he saw something that made his stomach twitch. A few yards away, Tortilli's companion was melting out of the crowd.

  That was the only way Chester could describe it melting. It was as if he didn't exist one moment and in the next had congealed into human shape.

  Chester blinked. And in that infinitesimally brief instant when his eyes were closed, the stranger materialized in the chair across from his.

  Chester jumped, startled. He quickly recovered. "Get lost," he grumbled, forcing a gruff edge to cover his surprise. With a flick of his neck, he shifted his dirty brown bangs from his forehead. He took a swig from the half-full beer bottle clutched in his big hand.

  Across the table, Remo nodded. "After I've killed you," he promised. "Now, there's an easy-"

  "What?" Chester Gecko snarled, slamming his bottle to the table.

  "Hmm?" Remo asked.

  "What did you just say?" Chester demanded.

  Remo frowned, confused. "About what?"

  "Did you just threaten me?"

  "Oh, that. Yes." That settled, Remo continued. "Now, there's an easy way and a hard way to do this."

  "Go pound sand," Chester growled. Stuffing his bottle back in his mouth, he took a mighty swig.

  "I see we've opted for latter," Remo mused, nodding.

  And as Chester pulled the bottle from between his lips, Remo's hand shot forward.

  Too fast for Chester Gecko to follow, the flat of Remo's palm swatted the base of the bottle, propelling it forward.

  It skipped out of Chester's hand, launching back into his stunned face. As Remo's hand withdrew, Chester suddenly felt a great tugging just below his eyes, as if something were pulling on his nose. When he reached for the source, he found his beer bottle dangling from the tip. It hung in front of his slack mouth.

  He snorted in pain. Beer stung his nostrils. He gagged, spitting out the liquid.

  "I'd gobba kill you," Chester choked. But when he looked up, Remo's eyes were cold. Frighteningly so.

  "Bet you I can fit your whole head in there," Remo said evenly.

  The confidence he displayed was casual and absolute. And in an instant of sharp realization, Chester Gecko knew that this thin stranger with the incredibly thick wrists was not joking.

  Chester held up his hands. "Dno," he pleaded. The bottle on his face clacked against his front teeth. He yelped in pain, grabbing at his mouth.

  "Okay, let's establish the ground rules," Remo said. Reaching over, he gave the bottle a twist. The pain was so great, Chester couldn't even scream. His eyes watered as his bottle-encased nose took on the shape of a flesh-colored corkscrew.

  "Those are the ground rules," Remo said, releasing the bottle. "Understand?"

  Chester nodded desperately. The dangling bottle swatted his chin with each frantic bob of his head. Remo's expression hardened. "Who hired you to butcher that girl?" he asked.

  Chester felt his breath catch. Yet he dared not lie.

  "I don gno," he admitted. "Phone caw. Don gnow who he wath." He fumbled to twist the bottle back to its starting point.

  Remo frowned. Another phone call. The same method that had been used to hire Leaf Randolph. "How'd you get paid?" he pressed.

  "Potht offith boxth," Chester said. Blood streamed from his encased nostrils, dribbling into the bottom of the bottle. The golden liquid was taking on a thick black hue. This time, Remo remembered the question he had forgotten to ask at Leaf's apartment. "How much?"

  "Pive hunred thouthanth."

  Remo thought he had misheard. He made Chester repeat the amount. He found that he wasn't wrong. Chester Gecko had been paid five hundred thousand dollars to butcher a woman and stuff her torso into an orange crate.

  It was a lot of money. An insanely Hollywood amount.

  Remo's thoughts instantly turned to Cabbagehead's wealthy backers. That much money would have been chump change to any one of those men.

  Chester had told him everything of value. He just had one question left.

  "You know who killed that family in Maryland?" he asked.

  Chester shook his head. "Wathn't uth," he promised.

  "Who's the rest of 'us'?" Remo asked.

  Even as Remo spoke, Chester's fearful eyes darted over Remo's shoulder to the front door. For an instant, a glimmer of hope sprang alive in their black depths.

  Remo squashed it immediately.

  "Three guys. Three guns. Just came in the front door," Remo supplied without turning. "Are they 'us'?"

  Chester's shoulders slumped. He nodded.

  As he did so, his dangling beer bottle banged somberly against the table's damp plastic surface. "Okay, let's take it outside," Remo said thinly. Rising to his feet, he grabbed Chester's bottle in one hand. He was pulling the grunting killer to his feet when he heard a familiar determined crinkling of artificial fabric hustling toward him.

  "Remo," Quintly Tortilli urged, bounding up beside him. He was glancing over his shoulder to the main entrance.

  "I see them," Remo said, voice level.

  "They hang with him," Tortilli insisted, pointing a pinkie and index finger at Chester. "I seen the dudes in here before. Maybe we better fly?" Tortilli was more skittish than usual-even by Quintly Tortilli standards. Gone was all of his earlier bravado. Dropped in the middle of a real life-and-death scene, the director's natural instinct for self-preservation had kicked in.

  Remo nodded tightly. Tugging Chester by the bottle, he led them to the rear exit. He waited long enough to be sure the trio of armed men had seen them before ducking outside.

  The rear door of the bar spilled into a cluttered alley. A mountain of garbage bags was heaped against the grimy brick wall. Swinging Chester by the bottle, Remo tossed the thug onto the trash heap.

  "I think they saw us," Quintly Tortilli whined. He bounced from foot to foot a few yards down the alley from Remo. His body language screamed "Retreat."

  "They didn't..." Remo began. Tortilli's shoulders relaxed. "...until I waved them over."

  "You what?" the director asked, fear flooding his darting eyes. "You're kidding, man, right?"

  Remo held up a finger. "Hold that thought." He hadn't even lowered his hand before the rusted door burst open. The three hoods he'd waved to from across the bar spilled into the alley.

  "Guns!" Quintly Tortilli shrieked. He became a flash of purple polyester as he dived behind a cluster of trash bags.

  All three weapons were drawn before the thugs had even bounded out the door. Although they twisted alertly, none of the men had expected their target to be standing a foot from the door. Before they knew it, Remo was among them.

  He danced down the line, swatting guns from outstretched hands. At the same time, his flying feet sought brittle kneecaps. Guns skipped merrily away along the soggy alley floor, accompanied by the sound of popping patellas.

  When the men fell, screaming, Remo was already pivoting on one leg. A single sweeping heel punished three foreheads. All three men dropped face-first to the ground. As the life sighed out of them, Remo turned to Chester Gecko.

  Chester was attempting to sit up on the pile of heaped trash, blood-filled bottle still dangling from his nose.

  "That was the preview," Remo said icily. "Time for the feature presentation."

  Chester tried to scurry backward up the garbage mountain. Bags tore open beneath his kicking heels, spilling their rotting contents into water-filled potholes.

  "Wait!" he cried. "I gnow more!"

  When Remo paused, Chester sensed his opportunity. But before he could speak, they were both distracted by a shrill sound issuing from beside the garbage mound.

  "Whoa, you are heavy duty," Quintly Tortilli whistled.

  Sensing the end of the battle, the director had ju
st come crawling into view. His eyes darted from the trio of bodies near the door back to Remo. "I am going to option your story," he stated with firm insistence.

  "Put a sock in it, Kubrick," Remo snarled. He returned his attention to Chester Gecko. "Spill it," he demanded.

  "Da one we did wath juth a little job," Chester insisted. He was panting in fear. "I gnow thome guyth who dot hired to pland a bunch ob bombth. Dey were hired to blow up a whole thtudio."

  Remo glanced at Quintly Tortilli. The director's balled-fist face was drawn into a puzzled frown. "Cabbagehead?" Remo asked Chester.

  The hood shook his head. "Thmall botatos. Dith ib a Hollywood thtudio. Ith going down today. We arranged da bomb thupplieth." When he nodded to his dead friends, his expression weakened.

  "Where'd you hear this?" Tortilli asked.

  "Da guy who dold me already dot paid." Chester shrugged.

  Remo's stomach had twisted into a cold knot the instant Hollywood was mentioned. "What studio?" he said hollowly.

  Chester sniffled. He winced as he inadvertently sucked a noseful of bloody beer back into his mouth.

  "Tauruth," Chester burbled.

  It was the last word he ever spoke.

  Quintly Tortilli didn't even see Remo move. In a mere sliver of time, the dangling beer bottle had swung up and launched forward.

  Facial bones surrendered to the thick glass spear, puckering Chester's face in at the center.

  As the hood collapsed to the garbage heap, beer bottle skewering his brain, Quintly Tortilli let out a low whistle. More a reaction to Chester's revelation than to the killer's abrupt death.

  "Taurus," he said. "Man, they've taken their hits over the last few years but-ka-blammo!-this has got to be the mother of them all." He turned to Remo. "You know, I-"

  Tortilli found that he was alone. Glancing around, he spotted Remo racing toward the mouth of the alley, arms and legs pumping in furious, urgent concert.

  At Chester's revelation, unseen by Quintly Tortilli, a rare emotion had sprung full-bloom on the cruel face of Remo Williams. And that emotion was fear.

  Chapter 11

  In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, tightened federal regulations had made it increasingly difficult to purchase massive quantities of fertilizer without proof of need. This was deemed necessary to keep terrorists from visiting explosive death on another unsuspecting domestic target. But difficult wasn't the same as impossible. Lester Craig could attest to that.

  "You realize we've got enough shit back there to take out half a city block?" Lester asked proudly from the driver's seat of a large yellow Plotz rental truck.

  It was as if his seatmate didn't hear him. "Guard," William Scott Cain said in icy reply. Lester had met William the day they'd started work on this project. Lester didn't like his partner at all. Lester was more of a good-old-boy type. His passenger was more an Ivy Leaguer whose snobbishness was never more evident than in the condescending way he gave out commands.

  Guard. William Scott Cain made that simple, five-letter monosyllabic word sound like an insult.

  "I see him," Lester griped, muttering under his breath, "ya smug little bastard."

  They were at the north gate of Taurus Studios in Hollywood. The high white wall of the motion-picture studio ran in a virtually unbroken line all around the complex.

  Lester steered up the slight incline in the road where the high walls curved around to the simple guard shack. They stopped at the plain wooden barricade.

  "Passes," the guard said tersely.

  The attitudes of studio guards traditionally ran hot and cold. Hot was reserved for celebrities and executives. For the likes of Lester and his companion, the attitude of all guards bordered on hostile.

  "He wouldn't ask Tom Hanks for his pass," William groused even as Lester flashed each of their laminated cards at the guard.

  Once the guard was satisfied, he leaned in his booth. A moment later, the gate rose high in the air.

  "Thank you kindly." Lester smiled at the guard, for what he knew would be the last time.

  The two-and-a-half-ton truck with its cargo of ammonium nitrate eased past the uplifted wooden arm. With an ominous rumble, it headed deep into the Taurus lot.

  THE MASTER OF SINANJU stomped his sandaled feet angrily as he whirled onto the exterior set.

  It was a mock-up of a New York slum. Post-production computer effects would erase the large Taurus water tower that rose proudly in the background.

  "I cannot leave you for a moment!" Chiun cried, his high-pitched voice sending shock waves of fear through the gathered cast and crew. The hems of his scarlet kimono billowed about his ankles as he flounced up to the assistant director. His hazel eyes were fire. "I take but one rice break, and the instant my back is turned you lapse into indolence! Why are you not working, goldbrick?"

  Arlen Duggal was clearly petrified. At Chiun's typhoonlike appearance, he broke away from the female assistant he'd been talking to, backing from the fearful wraith in red.

  "It's not my fault...." he pleaded.

  "It is never your fault, slothful one. Nor will it be my fault when I remove your sluggish head from your lazy neck." Chiun glared at the comely young assistant.

  "Let me explain," the A.D. begged.

  The old man didn't hear. "Have you halted production on my epic saga to chatter with this hussy?" he demanded, pointing at the assistant. He raised his voice to the crowd. "Hear me, one and all, for I do issue a decree. From this moment forth, there shall be no females on this set. Remember to tell this to this slugabed's successor."

  "Mr. Chiun," Arlen's assistant interrupted.

  "Silence, harlot!"

  Tears were welling up in Arlen's eyes. "It really isn't my fault," he begged. "The extras aren't here."

  Chiun's eyes narrowed. He spun from the director and his assistant, scanning the gathered crowd. Most of the faces he saw belonged to behind-the-scenes crew. Very few appeared to be actual performers.

  "Where are my overcasts?" he asked all at once. "The scene we film today requires a multitude."

  "They haven't shown up yet," Arlen informed him.

  Chiun wheeled on him. "This is your doing," he said, aiming an accusing fingernail. "Your laxness infects the lower orders like a plague."

  Arlen ducked behind his assistant, grabbing her by the shoulders. Positioning the woman like a human shield between himself and Chiun, he ducked and wove fearfully.

  "I think they might be afraid," the A.D. squeaked.

  Chiun's furious mask touched shades of confusion. "Afraid of what?" he demanded.

  "Of all the tension on the set?" the A.D. offered.

  Chiun's face flushed to angry horror. "Are you creating tension on my set, as well?" he accused, his voice flirting with the early edges of cold fury. Hoping to defuse the situation, the woman behind whom Arlen was cowering spoke up.

  "They are here," she offered, wincing at the painful grip on her shoulders. "I saw a couple of them not five minutes ago. They were over by Soundstage 1."

  For an instant, Cluun seemed torn. As the old man stood stewing, Arlen saw his opportunity. Releasing his assistant, he began tiptoeing away in an awkward squat. He got no more than four teetering feet before a blur of scarlet swept before him. A daggerlike nail pressed his throat. When he looked up, he dared not gulp lest he risk piercing his Adam's apple.

  Chiun's eyes were molten steel.

  "Know you this, lie-abed," the Master of Sinanju hissed. "Your skills alone preserve your life." Spinning to the crew, he called, "Make ready, malingerers! I will see to the missing overcasts."

  As the old Korean marched away, the gathered throng let out a collective sigh of relief. Arlen Duggal dropped to his knees. After touching his throat with his fingertips, he relaxed. No blood. The tension drained from his shoulders.

  "Worst thing about this is I'd still rather put up with him than Rosie," Arlen muttered.

  He watched as the wizened figure disappeared around a building mock-up. Unbek
nownst to Arlen, the tiny Asian was marching straight into the blast zone of the first of six powerful truck bombs.

  REMO STOOD ANXIOUSLY at the bank of phones in the bustling terminal building at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Beyond the huge tinted windows at his back, massive idle aircraft sulked along the tarmac. Far off, a 747 rose into the bleak sky. Remo was on hold with Taurus Studios for five minutes before someone in the movie company's executive offices finally deigned to answer.

  "Taurus Studios. This is Kelli. How may I direct your call?" The woman's voice was bland and efficient, with a faint Midwestern twang.

  "Get me Bindle or Marmelstein," Remo insisted.

  The woman didn't miss a beat. "Who's calling?"

  "Tell them it's Remo."

  "First name or last?"

  "First."

  "Last name, please?"

  Remo stopped dead. He couldn't remember the cover name he'd been using the year before while on assignment in Hollywood.

  " 'Remo' will do," he said after a second's hesitation.

  "Oh. Like Cher," the woman droned doubtfully. He could tell she was about to hang up.

  "Wait! How about their assistant, Ian?"

  "He was hired by Fox to produce the next Barbra Streisand picture," the woman said frostily. Remo was getting desperate. He had to get through to warn Chiun.

  "Okay," he pressed. "There's a movie being made there right now. I know the screenwriter. Just-"

  But it was already too late. At the mention of the word writer, the line went dead.

  Remo slammed the phone down into the cradle. The receiver cracked and split open at the midpoint between earpiece and mouthpiece. Strings of multicolored wires were all that held the dangling plastic receiver together.

  He stood there for a moment, frozen. He had to warn Chiun.

  Smith. He'd call Smith.

  Remo hurried to the next phone. Scooping up the receiver, he quickly began to punch in the special code to CURE's Folcroft headquarters. He had only depressed the one key a few times-not enough to make the connection-when he froze.