Fade to Black td-119

by Warren Murphy

  "Yes, but what's my motivation? You know, I don't need this. I've done summer stock for the past three years. I was even in a play in New York."

  "Broadway?"

  "Off-off Broadway. Dinner theater mostly. But I got noticed. My agent's sister knows Neil Simon's mechanic's brother-in-law. His wife saw me and loved me."

  Listening to the two men jabber, Remo had begun to get a troubled feeling. He hopped the hedge, landing on silent soles in the wide driveway. As the men continued to talk, he slipped around the fat angled tree trunk.

  "I was up for the lead in The Gypsy Lover," one terrorist was boasting.

  "No kidding?" asked the other, bored. He was staring out at the amber lights of E Street. "What happened?"

  He would never know the answer.

  The terrorist heard a grunt, then a thwuck. When he spun toward the commotion, he found to his shock and horror that the white ash tree had swallowed his partner. Or at least some of him.

  The man was doubled over at the waist, his head jammed deep into a puckered knothole where once there had been a limb. His arms dangled limply to the ground. It seemed impossible for so much head to fit in so little space.

  The surviving terrorist gasped, horrified. In his sheer panic, there was only one thing racing through his fear-paralyzed mind.

  "If you're dead, can I still borrow your leather jacket on Monday? I've got that One Life to Live audition."

  A face appeared before him. Hard. "Show's over," Remo said.

  The man suddenly realized what had happened to his partner. And in those dark eyes was promise of a similar fate for him. He abruptly dropped his gun and covered his male-model-perfect face with both hands.

  "Not in the face!" he begged. Remo obliged.

  A two-fingered tap to the chest shocked the heart between beats. When the dead man's hands fell away, there seemed almost to be a look of relief that his handsome face had come through his death intact. He collapsed to the asphalt.

  His concern deepening, Remo left the first two bodies.

  Another five men waited at the top of the staircase beneath the south portico's entablature. They were using the colonnade of thick support columns for cover.

  Keeping the farthest column on the left between him and the terrorist behind it, Remo moved swiftly up the left staircase. A few short bounds put him only a few feet away from the last man in line.

  "I can't believe we signed on for three of these," one of the men on the long portico was complaining.

  "It's pretty standard," another said. "The original with an option for two more. I guess they thought New York went well enough to warrant a sequel."

  The last word finished it. Sequel. They were talking about the bombing in New York and the terrorist takeover of the White House in movie terms. Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing.

  "What's that?" one terrorist asked suddenly. Another helicopter was sweeping in over the Ellipse. All eyes on the portico turned to the noise. And behind the final column, Remo used the distraction to his advantage.

  When the others were looking off toward the sound, Remo reached around the column. Grabbing hold of a shirt collar, he yanked. The terrorist's boots shot off the portico. He disappeared without a sound. Remo muffled the snap of cracking vertebrae with cupped hands.

  While the rest of the men were still fixated on the landing helicopter, Remo skipped to the next column.

  Only when he finished off the second man and was propping the body against the wrought-iron rail that ran between pillars did he realize that stealth was probably not necessary. The remaining three men seemed oblivious to everything.

  "Helicopters are pretty," one said, staring wistfully at the hulking shape of the distant chopper.

  "I thought they were gonna feed us," the second whined. "I've been eating nothing but margarine sandwiches for a month."

  "If you guys aren't doing anything after the siege, maybe we could, I don't know, hang out," the third suggested with a leer.

  Actors. No doubt about it.

  Remo walked out from behind the column. Their guns were lying wherever they'd dropped them. The men were all far too good-looking, with highlighted hair, bulging biceps and jaws that looked as if they'd been welded on.

  "Oh, hello." One smiled as Remo took hold of the other pair and stuffed their heads beneath the dirt of a nearby potted cherry tree. The actor frowned as his two companions wiggled in place. "Is this in the script?" he asked, getting reluctantly to his knees. "'Cause if it's not, I want another five bucks."

  The other two had stopped squirming. Remo released the inert bundles. When he looked down at the third, the man offered him the back of his neck.

  "You actors drain the fun out of everything," Remo grumbled.

  Taking the man by the shirt collar, he steered him headfirst into the nearest column. The head went splat. The column didn't.

  Leaving the five dead thespians to shine in their new role as corpses, Remo moved swiftly to the glass south doors of the White House.

  "IF YOU WANT to fire me, fire me. But listen, I'm the one who booked you this gig."

  "My talent got me New York," Reginald Hardwin insisted. He was sitting at the President's desk in the Oval Office.

  "Reg, baby, sweetheart. Listen to me. With talent and thirty-three cents you can buy a stamp. New York was penny-ante. A nickel-and-dime waste of all our time."

  Hardwin didn't bother to tell his agent how much he'd made for presiding over the Regency Building bombing. It was only two days since he'd hired Bernie Leffer. Like all Hollywood agents, if he learned of the amount, he'd somehow find a way to tap into the five million Reginald had been paid to do the Regency.

  "It was a first step," Hardwin argued into the phone.

  "First step being the operative words. Like baby step. Washington's the big one. Do you have any idea how much coverage this stunt is getting?"

  "Not really, no. A lot?"

  "What, they don't have TV in the White House?"

  "I don't watch television," Reginald Hardwin sniffed in his most superior British tone. "Except the occasional episode of Masterpiece Theatre. "

  "Well, I watch it. Just like every other red-blooded American. You're wall-to-wall, Reg. Everywhere. They're not just breaking into the shows-you are the shows. Every network. Gavel to gavel. Front to back. Cover to cover. Beginning to end. You are it."

  "Yes," Hardwin replied slowly. "Doesn't that make you a little nervous? After all, there is hardly a neat way out of this situation." He had risen to his feet and was peeking around the drapes. The activity around the White House hadn't lessened. If anything, it had only gotten worse.

  "There is a way out," Bernie insisted. "A way out that'll make you a multimillionaire. We discussed this, remember? You agreed."

  "Yes, I remember," Hardwin admitted.

  He was finding it difficult to stay focused. Reginald Hardwin the man had begun to eclipse Reginald Hardwin the terrorist character. His hours of waiting idly in the White House were beginning to jangle his nerves.

  "Ours is a celebrity-driven culture, Reg," the agent reminded him. "It doesn't matter how you get famous, as long as you are famous. Maybe being British you don't understand it, but that's the American way. Now, I can spin this off a million different ways. Even if it doesn't go the way I know it's going to go-and I'm 110 percent certain it will-but if it doesn't I can still spin it to your advantage. If everyone goes all ga-ga patriotic on us, we can license I Hate Reginald Hardwin T-shirts and bumper stickers. Hell-and this is off the top of my head, could be completely off base here-but think Reginald Hardwin toilet paper! People'd kill to wipe their asses on your face!"

  Hardwin was aghast. "Bernie, we never discussed-"

  "Got a call on my other line, babe. Gotta run." Closing his eyes on the mocking buzz of the dial tone, Reginald Hardwin replaced the President's phone.

  This was the tenth call he'd made to his agent since the start of the White House siege and the ninth for which he had used
the phone of the President of the United States. Let the Colonials pick up the tab.

  Bernie had avoided him the first nine times. Hardwin was beginning to think that things weren't going as well as his agent claimed.

  Wishing he'd gone with CAA, he left the phone and the President's desk. Hands behind his back, he strolled past the glass doors to the Rose Garden, walking grimly into the secretary's office to the right of the Oval.

  His men weren't there.

  They were all struggling American actors he'd hired either in New York or Los Angeles. And since they were actors, whenever they weren't sneaking off to have sex with one another in the study, they were off stealing towels and soap from the bathrooms. In between those times, there was only one other thing that kept the men busy.

  "Not another bloody union break," Hardwin complained.

  He marched into the hall. It was empty. This was unforgivable.

  "If you do not show yourselves immediately, I'm canceling the deli platter!" Hardwin shouted to the corridor.

  The bellowed threat should have brought a stampede of actors, all flapping towels and zipping flies. When none materialized, Reginald Hardwin felt the first twinge of concern.

  He had studied the White House blueprints carefully before taking this job-especially the special sketches given him by his employer. The voice on the phone had told him the optimum points where his men should be stationed. He went to each of them in turn.

  Checkpoint after checkpoint was left unguarded. By the time he reached the north portico without encountering even one of his men, his anxiety had grown wings of full fluttering fear.

  Hardwin peeked out the door.

  Cars jammed the street between the battered White House fence and Lafayette Park. Helicopters sat like angry insects on the grass, rotor blades whirring in perpetual readiness.

  It seemed that the enraged eyes of an entire nation were focused squarely on him. Reginald Hardwin panicked.

  Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out his cellular phone. He was ready to accept anything-even another demeaning underwear ad-if only Bernie could get him out of this.

  "Solomon, Raithbone and Schwartz."

  "Get me Bernie Leffer!" Hardwin begged.

  The woman's voice took on a frosty tone that indicated his call wasn't unexpected.

  "Mr. Leffer is with a client and can't be bothered for the rest of the day," she said.

  "Week," Bernie's voice wailed from the background.

  "The rest of the week," the woman parroted.

  "What?" Hardwin demanded. "What?" he repeated when his phone floated out of his hand. He jumped back.

  It was true. His cellular phone had taken on a life of its own. For a surreal moment, it seemed to hover in place.

  Hardwin's first thought was that the White House was haunted. But then an even stranger thing happened. A body seemed to materialize from the shadows around the floating telephone. The apparition-possessed of the cruelest face Reginald Hardwin had ever seen-spoke into the phone.

  "He'll call you back," Remo said coldly.

  He squeezed his hand shut. The cell phone cracked into brittle plastic fragments. Remo dusted them off his palms.

  Hardwin gulped, backing slowly away from the intruder. "Will I?" he asked, voice tremulous.

  "No," Remo said, eyes dead.

  "That's what I thought." Hardwin nodded. Turning, he ran screaming out the door. He got only as far as the middle of the portico before he found he wasn't making anymore progress. Even when he realized that the terrifying specter was holding him aloft, preventing him from fleeing, Hardwin's spindly legs continued to pump madly in the air.

  To escape unscathed, he would have to inspire fear in this fear-inspiring demon. A lifetime's worth of acting skills burst forth in one brilliant thespianic flash. For an instant, Reginald Hardwin the man was replaced once more with Reginald Hardwin the fiendish character.

  "Release me," he commanded, in his best diabolical-villain sneer, "or I swear to you Lucifer himself could not imagine a more terrible fate for you."

  "Okeydoke."

  Remo set Hardwin down. Legs still pumping, Reginald promptly ran at a full gallop across the north portico and straight into one of the white Ionic columns.

  The crunching impact smashed his nose, one cheekbone and an eye socket. Hardwin was pulling himself off the portico when Remo approached.

  "Stop!" Hardwin commanded, desperately trying to stay in character. "Or you consign your President to death. This building has been wired to explode in one minute. Only I can stop the countdown." He spit out a few bloodied incisors.

  "Give it a rest, Dr. Evil," Remo said, annoyed. "Bombs have an odor and I didn't smell any. You're just some dingwhistle actor who was hired to pull off this cockamamy plan. Now, what the hell is going on here?"

  As Remo spoke, Reginald Hardwin felt more and more of his character slip away until in the end there was nothing left but the actor beneath the role.

  "I want a lawyer," Hardwin squeaked. Tears welled up, stinging his injured eye.

  "We're beyond lawyer. Think undertaker," Remo said. "Who hired you? And if you tell me it was a voice on the phone who you never met in person and who paid you through the mail, you're going over that railing, ass, accent and all."

  Since this was precisely what had happened, Hardwin weighed the risk of lying and being thrown off the balcony or, apparently, telling the truth and being thrown off the balcony, as well. His eyes darted left and right in search of a third alternative that wouldn't result in his winding up airborne. He chirped in cornered fear.

  "Dammit, not again," Remo snarled. "What did he say?"

  Hardwin offered a hopeful, snaggletoothed smile. "Well, after we blew up the Regency-" he shrank from Remo's glare "-he called about this," he continued timidly. "He knew his way around the White House. He gave me blueprints and sketches. Things not known to the public. He was the one who arranged for the explosives in New York and the guns and the charges for the fence here. He seemed very connected with the underworld."

  "If you factor in whores and drugs, so's pretty much everyone in Hollywood."

  Remo was thinking of Stefan Schoenburg and his contributions to the President. His donations could have bought him an insiders' look at the White House layout. Face stern, Remo reached for Hardwin.

  "Die Down IV!" the actor gasped, jumping from Remo's hand.

  The name caught Remo off guard. "What?" he asked.

  "This," Hardwin insisted, waving both arms grandly to encompass both White House and grounds. "All this is part of Die Down IV. An extended action sequence takes place here."

  Remo's brow furrowed. "Someone told me Die Down IV is based on the Hollywood invasion last year," he said.

  "It is," Hardwin explained. "This is an interpretation of those events. An extrapolation, if you will. My contact didn't tell me this. I learned it through the actors' grapevine. I don't know if it's helpful, but if it's information you desire, I give you this freely in exchange for my life." His eyes were pleading.

  Remo was thinking about Bindle and Marmelstein. Quintly Tortilli had said Die Down IV was a Taurus production, set to kick off the summer movie season in just a couple of weeks. If this had anything to do with that, then-Chiun or not-the two Taurus cochairs were going to have more than just a little explaining to do.

  Before him, Reginald Hardwin took Remo's silence for agreement to his terms. The actor smiled. His eye behind his broken socket winced.

  "Sorry about all this, dear boy," he apologized. "Bit of a mess we've made for you, I suspect." He spotted a couple of his teeth on the portico and put them in his pocket. "Can't really blame me, though. Remember our credo-an actor lives to act."

  Remo looked up absently. He was biting his cheek in thought. "You're the exception that proves the rule," he said.

  Reginald Hardwin almost saw the hand that ended his life. He definitely saw stars. Unfortunately, none of them were him. And then the stars fell, the universe collapsed and the
curtain came down on the most brilliant acting career that never was.

  Chapter 25

  When Remo swung up from the darkened elevator shaft into the hallway of the First Family's residence, the first instinct of the Secret Service agents was to open fire. They found their fingers clutching air instead of triggers.

  To their astonishment, they saw that their guns were lying in a neat pile on the carpeted floor a few feet from the open elevator door.

  "Remo Barkman, assistant treasury director," Remo said, waving an ID at the startled agents. "Downstairs should be secure, but you better check. Until you know for sure, I don't want anyone announcing anything over the radio."

  The men quickly obeyed. A contingent remained to safeguard the First Family while the rest collected their guns and raced downstairs.

  Remo's sensitive nose detected a thin wisp of smoke in the air. He followed it to the library. Inside, the First Lady was in full shred mode. In her haste, she was destroying every scrap of paper she could lay her hands on. It looked like a tickertape parade had passed through the room. She stood ankle deep in strips of paper, a demonic look on her beauty-cream-caked face.

  "What the hell do you want?" the First Lady demanded when Remo stuck his head around the corner.

  She was stuffing the D.C. Yellow Pages into the smoking shredder. Yellow confetti flew out of the overstuffed bin.

  "Just checking to see if you're okay, ma'am," Remo said.

  "Do I look okay?" the First Lady snarled. She had finished with the phone book. An angry hand grabbed up a book of Walt Whitman's poetry. With the hilt of an antique sword that had belonged to Ulysses S. Grant, she began stuffing the volume into the shredder. The machine clunked and whirred in pain.

  "Who's that? Is it safe?" a familiar muffled voice whined timidly from the closet. Beyond the closed door, a dog barked.

  "Shut that damn dog up," the First Lady snapped. She was having trouble with the cover of the poetry book. She pounded it down with the sword hilt. "I swear, if that mongrel was female we'd be combing your DNA out of its mangy fur," she muttered.

  As the smoke detector began to sound, Remo ducked back out of the room. The poor overused shredder continued to clonk in pain as he headed to the Lincoln Bedroom.