Brain Drain td-22

by Warren Murphy

  Walter Mathias Bledkden was catching the Beverly Hills sun while reading The Wretched of the Earth when he felt something tug at his left foot, dangling in the lung-shaped swimming pool.

  "Stop that, Valerie," he said.

  "What did you say?" said his wife, wading through another script she would reject. She sat behind him.

  "Oh. I thought you were in the pool. I thought you tugged at my foot."

  "No," she said.

  "Well, I know that. You're not in the pool."

  Suddenly he couldn't move the foot. He yanked, but it wouldn't move. It felt as if it were in a vise.

  "Help," yelled Walter Mathias Bleekden and his wife dropped the scripts and ran to the edge of the pool where she saw his foot caught in the chrome ladder. She untangled it and went back to her scripts.

  "That chrome ladder wasn't there before," said Bleekden. He was in his late fifties and suntan lotion glistened off the white hair of his chest.

  "It must have been, dear," said Valerie.

  "I know it wasn't," said Bleekden.

  "Maybe it's your white guilt, reading that book."

  "I'm through my guilt phase. I'm into my activist phase. Only those who stay beyond the fray should feel guilty. My next picture is going to be significant. Socially and morally significant. I don't have to feel guilt. Guilt is bourgeois."

  "Your next picture had better be box office."

  "That's what I'm talking about. Morally significant is box office. Black is money. Poverty is money."

  "I saw a nice treatment of an Indian theme. There's this wagon train surrounded by the Seventh Cavalry and it's rescued by the Sioux."

  But Walter Bleekden did not answer. He was struggling with his beach chair. Somehow his neck was through the webbing and his hands grappled furiously at the arms. Valerie tugged but he could not be freed. Underneath the chair his face turned blue and in the insane moment he could have sworn he heard a voice:

  "Phone Wanda Reidel."

  It seemed as if it came from the legs of the chair.

  "Yes," he gurgled and he felt his wife's hands yanking him free.

  "My lord, this is freaky," said Valerie. "What are you doing, strangling yourself?"

  "The chair grabbed me."

  "Let's get out of the sun, dear," said Valerie.

  "It grabbed me."

  "Yes, dear. Let's get out of the sun anyhow."

  Settled in the spacious living room with leather furniture built into the floor, Walter Mathias Bleekden mixed himself a tall light scotch and, still shaking from the beach chair incident, drank it down. He clapped his hands for his houseboy, who did not appear immediately. If there were two things that bothered Walter Bleekden, it was oppression of racial minorities and uppity servants.

  "Where is that houseboy?" grumbled Bleekden.

  "He'll be here, dear. After all, this isn't that Wanda Reidel garbage. This is real life."

  "What Wanda Reidel? Did you say Wanda Reidel?"

  "Yes. She's trying to put together a package with you and that hot young writer, Bertram Mueller. A gross theme. It's a takeoff on Hitchcock's The Birds. The furniture and all the surroundings turn against people. Gross. Awful."

  "She promised me Marlon Brando. And now she wants to give me Biff Ballon. I won't talk to her."

  "You're very wise, dear. It's a loser."

  Bleekden nodded. He felt very pleased with himself until later in the day when he went to the bathroom to relieve himself. He opened the door to the bathroom, looked inside and suddenly returned to the living room with his fly still open.

  He picked up the silver-handled telephone and dialed.

  "Hello, Wanda darling," he said, eyes glazed in terror. "I hear you want to talk to me."

  Valerie, surprised, looked in the bathroom. There was the houseboy, kneeling at the bathtub, his shoulders resting on the rim. The bathtub was full. His hair floated above his head at the water line. There were no bubbles coming from his nose or mouth. A massage spray hose was wrapped around his throat.

  "Give Wanda my love," yelled Valerie from the bathroom.

  Bertram Mueller was finishing a script for Warner Brothers that afternoon when he thought he felt the orange crate move. Mueller typed his work on leftover newsprint using a thirty-five-dollar-and-ninety-eight-cent Woolworth typewriter. His films never failed to gross less than fifteen million dollars, this despite no dialogue ever containing a word with a "Y" in it. That key had broken in the late 1960s when the desk he had built collapsed with the typewriter on it. Normally, such a small fall would not damage even a cheap typewriter, but Mueller had also installed the floor himself.

  It took a week to dig the typewriter out of the basement. Mueller hated to waste money on nonessentials. Why spend money on furniture if you could build it yourself? Why waste money on a new typewriter if you could write films that grossed fifteen million each without using a "Y," which wasn't even a legitimate vowel and not much of a consonant either.

  Mueller thought it was strange that the crate he sat on moved. He hadn't built the crate.

  He looked out over the Pacific from the living room in the newly rented Carmel home for which he paid eight thousand dollars a month. If he was going for eight thousand a month, he certainly wasn't going to squander forty-two dollars on a store-bought chair. Eight thousand a month was more than enough to spend on living quarters, especially when supermarket chains were giving away orange crates.

  There was that tug again and now a strangling sensation. He'd have to switch brands of cigarettes. His head felt clouded as if someone were pulling a cord around his neck. The room became dark and he heard the words: "Call Wanda Reidel."

  He came to on the floor. That was the first strange incident. Then he discovered that someone had taken his lawnmower and thrown it into the Pacific. The waves lapped up against the handle. And he heard that voice from nowhere again.

  "Call Wanda Reidel."

  That was a strange thing for a Carmel beach to say.

  Back at'the house, he phoned Wanda Reidel.

  "Are you trying to reach me for something, Wanda?"

  "Yes, Bert. I've got the right package for you."

  "Not that thing where the environment rebels? What is it called? Racket Lover?'

  "Bleekden is going to direct it."

  "How did you get him?"

  "Same way I'm going to get you."

  "Are you doing something to my furniture?"

  "You know me, Bert. I just try to do my best for my clients. Besides, cardboard boxes aren't anything to worry about."

  "My furniture is wood now, if you want to know."

  "Stick with me and I'll put you in velvet, love."

  "Not with Racket Lover."

  "Bleekden's in."

  "I will not have my name associated with that second-rate farce you're trying to peddle, Wanda," said Mueller.

  "Two points off the top," said Wanda, meaning Mueller would get two percent of the film's gross after negative costs.

  "It's trash, Wanda."

  "Four points, Bert."

  "It is an abomination and a waste of time and money and talent. Biff Ballon. Phooey."

  "Six points, Bert."

  "When do you want the script?" said Bertram Mueller and could have sworn that he heard the phone handle tell him he made the right move, just before Wanda signed off with a "Kiss, kiss."

  Before cocktails, Wanda Reidel had put together another "Wandaful package." She made sure she was seen eating out, stopped in on a party to which she was not invited so that those people who viciously asked her how everything was going could be singed to the marrow.

  "Just put together a Bleekden-Mueller-Ballon deal with Summit. Today. Glad you asked," said Wanda.

  "Great," said the hostess, with a most rewarding gulp, showing her panic at not having invited Wanda in the first place. The anguish of competitors was what made Hollywood worth living in.

  "How did you do it, darling?" asked the hostess. "Make a deal with the
Mob?"

  "Talent, sweetheart," said Wanda, passing up those tempting little bowls of caviar and sour cream, refusing even those crunchies that she normally couldn't resist. She didn't even bother with a midnight snack. She might even become thin.

  Of course, there were some worries. Gordons was a find of finds. She'd have to get him signed up, one of those contracts just short of violating the emancipation proclamation. And she'd have to find out what he wanted. Everybody wanted something.

  She would handle all that in the morning, she thought. But as she prepared for bed, rubbing her one-hundred-and-seventy-pound, five-foot-four blimp of a frame with Nubody oil that cost thirty-five dollars an ounce-she used a pound a night-she noticed that the door to her bedroom opened quietly behind her. It was Gordons, but now, instead of the white delivery boy's coat, he wore a beige pants suit open to his navel, marcelled hair and a neckchain with half a dozen amulets. She did not ask how he had gotten into her estate or through the electronic guarded door or past the butler. Anyone who could get Bleekden and Mueller through terror in one day could certainly get into her itsy-bitsy eighteen-room mansion.

  "Hi, doll," said Gordons.

  "You've gone Hollywood, precious," said Wanda.

  "I adapt to all situations, love," said Mr. Gordons. "I've done my part in the tradeoff, hon. Now it's your turn."

  Wanda turned to uplift her breasts. "Whatever you want," she said. And Mr. Gordons explained, telling his life story and his difficulty with the two humans.

  "Oh," said Wanda when it was clear he did not want her. She put on a light fuscia gown with ermine collar.

  "You have got a problem there, love," said Wanda. "You say this House of Sinanju has lasted a thousand years? More than a thousand?"

  "As far as I know," said Mr. Gordons.

  "I like what you tried with their boss, Smith. Good thinking."

  "It was an attempt. It did not work. Still, it might if they go back and attempt to free him."

  "Well, if you're not exactly a normal man, then I shouldn't feel bad that you don't want me physically."

  "Correct. It is not a comment on your sexual desirability, love."

  "Let's go downstairs to the kitchen," said Wanda. She had ordered that her refrigerators be cleared of all fattening foods and stocked only with garden vegetables and skimmed milk. Therefore Wanda went to the servants' refrigerator and stole their ice cream and doughnuts.

  "Creativity, creativity. How do we get you creativity?" She dunked a chocolate-coated doughnut in the fudge ripple. A crust broke off and she ate that with a spoon.

  "I have come to a decision about the creativity," said Mr. Gordons. "I have decided that creativity is a uniquely human attribute, and I have resigned myself to doing without it. Instead, I am going to ally myself with a creative person and use that person's creativity to help me attain my goal. You are that person."

  "Of course," said Wanda. "But we need a contract. You don't do anything without a contract. You sign with me for say, sixty-five years, with an option for thirty-five more. Not a lifetime contract. That's illegal."

  "I will sign any contract you wish. However, precious, you must live up to the bargain," said Mr. Gordons. "The last person who failed to live up to a deal with me is in a refrigerator, love."

  "All right, all right. What you need is creative planning. New thought. Original ideas. Boffo dynamite ideas. How do you kill those two guys?"

  "Correct," said Mr. Gordons.

  "Cement. Put their feet in cement and drop them in a river."

  "Won't play in Peoria," said Mr. Gordons who had heard that phrase used recently.

  "Blow them up. A bomb in their car."

  "Too common," said Mr. Gordons.

  "Machine guns?"

  "Stale."

  "Find a woman to seek out their strength and then betray them?"

  "Biblical themes haven't moved since Cecil B. De-Mille," Gordons said.

  Wanda went back to the servants' refrigerator. There was a cold pot roast and cream cheese. She spread the cream cheese on a piece of pot roast.

  "I have it."

  "Yes?"

  "Ignore them. They're nobodies. The best revenge is living well."

  "I cannot do this. I must destroy them as soon as possible."

  "What business are they in again?"

  "Assassins, as well as I can determine from the fragmentary information available to me, sweetheart."

  "Let's think a little longer," said Wanda. She thought as she ate the pot roast. She thought about what Gordons could do for her. He could help her sign up everybody. All of Hollywood. All of the New York television crowd. She could run the show. And more. He had those computer papers, whatever he called them. They revealed the existence of some secret killer organization. Wanda Reidel could use that to monopolize the press. She would own Page One. Nobody could get in her way.

  "Are you done thinking yet?" asked Gordons.

  "How old are they again?"

  "The white man is in his thirties. The Oriental may be in his eighties. They use traditions passed on from one generation to the next, I believe.

  "Traditions, traditions," mused Wanda. She sucked a sinew of pot roast from a lower tooth. "Join their traditions. Adopt them. You said you were adaptable. Become them. Become what they are. Think like them. Act like them."

  "I attempted that," said Gordons. "It was why I did not attack the younger one when I had him alone. I thought of what they would do and I decided that if either of them was me, he would wait to get both his targets together. So I waited, and I failed in my attempt to blow them up."

  "Have you tried praying?" said Wanda.

  "Sweetheart, loved one, precious," said Mr. Gordons, "you're running out of time before I ram that cream cheese through your vestibulocochlear nerve."

  "What's that?"

  "Your eardrum, love."

  "Let's don't be rash. What else do you know about them?"

  "The older one is enamored of the daytime television shows."

  "Games?"

  "No, the story shows."

  "Soap operas?"

  "They are called that. He particularly likes one called 'As the Planet Revolves,' featuring a person named Rad Rex."

  "Rad Rex, hmmmm?" said Wanda. "All right. Here's what we do. First, we're going to knock them off one at a time. That's sounder planning."

  "If you say so, precious. But how will I be able to do that?"

  "You've got to give me a little time to handle that. I've got something in mind. Rad Rex, hmmm?"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He had it, and if they wanted it, they were going to pay for it. Dammit, it was that simple to Rad Rex so why wasn't it that simple to his asshole agents at the Maurice Williams Agency too and those goddam assholes at the network.

  A half hour show, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and every twittering clit in the country must be watching "As the Planet Revolves" between two thirty and three o'clock every day. Well, if he was going to continue to play Dr. Wyatt Winston-one-time physicist and now a noted surgeon-they were going to pay him for it. That was it. Case closed. Roma locuta est.

  For heaven's sake, he hoped they didn't think he was playing that insipid macho twit because he liked to. Money. Pure and simple. And if they didn't want to pay for it, let them get somebody else. Try Rock or Roddy or Rip or Rory. There were plenty of good actors around.

  Rad Rex stood up from the violet couch and went to the bar in the leather-walled living room to make himself a banana daiquiri.

  He walked carefully, as if he were setting his feet down on two rows of uncooked eggs and trying not to crack them. The overall impression was one of a man who would be at home in ballet slippers.

  He hurt, and it was his own fault. He had put on his dark mustache and dark wig to cover his strawberry-blond curly hair and had gone to a leather bar on the West Side last night and wound up doing a fist number for the rough trade, and he hurt. He would not do that again. This time he meant it.
Suppose he had been recognized? Suppose he had wound up with his face smashed?

  He put the drink's ingredients in the blender, carefully covered it so nothing would splatter on his green suede suit, then turned the switch. He held his hand on the blender as it whirred the drink to life. He giggled. It felt like a vibrator. He giggled again.

  "Vibrators I have known and loved," he said to himself.

  "How can one love a vibrator?" The voice was metallic and hollow and sounded to Rad Rex as if a wall were speaking to him. He spun around.

  But the apartment was empty. He looked around carefully and felt gooseflesh grow on his shoulders and neck. Empty. But that had been a voice, dammit, a voice.

  He swept his eyes around the living room again, then shrugged. It was getting to him. The pressure of these interminable negotiations over a new contract was just becoming too much.

  Rad Rex poured his drink into a Waterford crystal goblet and took it back to the couch, holding the drink away from his side so the condensation didn't drip onto his suit. After the negotiations were over, he was going to take a vacation. That was all. He needed to get away. Two weeks would be nice. Maybe Sausalito. Or Puerto Vallarte. Anyplace where people didn't watch television.

  Anyplace where he could be free to be he. Where he could be free to be feeing-and-feeing.

  He giggled again, then stopped, sipped from his daiquiri and spilled a large mouthful all over his green suede trousers when the hollow voice came again: "You have telephone messages."

  The voice was very close this time and it was metallic. He did not turn around. If the owner of the voice looked like the voice sounded, he did not want to see him.

  "Who's there?" he said, staring resolutely at his bar, hoping to catch a glimpse of something in the polished stainless steel door of the refrigerator cabinet, as if a reflection would not be as dangerous to him as an eyes-on view.

  "Get your telephone messages," the voice answered.

  The telephone was at Rad Rex's right hand. He carefully placed his drink down atop a thin marble coaster on the glass and driftwood table, then pressed the button for the recorder attached to his telephone. As he always did when nervous, he twirled they key he wore on a chain on the left side of his trousers.

  The tape whirred, gabbling excitedly backwards, and then the gabbling stopped and he knew he had reached the end of the message. He pressed the talk button and turned up the volume. He stared in the refrigerator door again but saw nothing. He picked up his glass again and sank back into the couch. The velvet cushions were soft, and they enveloped his shoulders like a lover. It was one of the reasons he had designed the couch just that way. To soothe. To relax. For a moment he forgot the voice he thought he had heard.