She shrugged. “Sure. It’s been gossip around the industry for a while.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She just looked; not unfriendly, not mad at him, but not really registering how much this bothered him. She did not understand, would never understand, the turmoil this was making him feel. He wasn’t sure he understood it himself. All he knew was that he hadn’t been this mad in a long time.
“Honestly, R.J., what does this have to do with you?”
He couldn’t answer that, not without going deeper into himself than he wanted to. So he didn’t answer. He tried to shrug it off, tried to enjoy a birthday dinner with Casey.
But it was harder work than he could do on such short notice. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how good Casey looked in the carriage ride through the park, the wind in her hair and a rosy glow in her cheeks—no matter what, he couldn’t shake off the feeling.
R.J. was mad and didn’t really know why or what to do about it. But the dinner was spoiled, there was no question about that.
Somebody was spitting on his parents’ graves, and he didn’t like it.
CHAPTER 5
The morning Post had him on the front page. The Times, of course, had to play it low key and stuck him in the Arts section. R.J. didn’t dare turn on the TV. He knew he’d be all over the dial.
He hadn’t slept much. The final part of his birthday present to Casey had left him tired, but as she drifted off to sleep almost purring, R.J. remained wide awake. He looked at the gorgeous face pillowed on his shoulder and thought, What the hell have I got to complain about?
Casey’s face in sleep had taken on a softness that it never had when she was awake. All the defenses were gone; it was just pure Casey now, and that was amazingly good. As R.J. traced the lines of her face with a light fingertip, he had a quick vision of what their children would look like.
He thought about that and sat up. Casey grumphed once and rolled over.
Children, hell. Casey didn’t want children. She didn’t really even want a long-term relationship of any kind as far as he could tell. And what the hell was he going to do with children? He couldn’t handle the son he already had. Hadn’t even seen the kid in a couple of years, and his mother was sending frantic letters that the boy was out of control. Well, that was her fault, and her problem. She’d made that choice when she had shut him out of raising the kid. He sent the checks and a present at Christmas and his son’s birthday. If that wasn’t enough, well, sorry. He’d done all he could.
R.J. was wide awake now. He realized his mind had spun him off onto other things that worried him because he couldn’t figure out why this business of the remake should bother him at all.
He got up and paced in the next room. It wasn’t his problem. It had nothing to do with him. He stood by the window and stared out for a while, then just sat on the couch and tried to figure out why, since it really didn’t mean a thing to him, it bothered him so much.
Okay, big deal, a remake. So what? It wasn’t his movie. It wasn’t even his dad’s movie, legally speaking. Dad had been paid for it, and the money had helped put R.J. through school, and probably paid for his first bicycle. Wasn’t that enough? Why should he feel connected to the goddamned thing? The suits on the coast owned it, it was theirs, he hadn’t even thought of the movie in years.
R.J. had left Hollywood behind him years ago, and if it was trying to catch up to him—well, he didn’t have to let it. Just shrug it off, keep plugging where he was, forget about it, right?
Only he couldn’t forget about it.
Morning came and found R.J. slumped on the couch, finally asleep, when Casey came out to go to work. Her hand on his shoulder woke him. He blinked up at her, feeling stupid and thickheaded.
“Do I snore?” she asked him.
He tried to answer but had to clear his throat a couple of times first. “What?”
“Do I snore? Bad breath? Anything like that?”
R.J. didn’t get it. His head hurt and his eyes were puffy and he couldn’t get his brain to tell him anything beyond an urgent request for coffee and this was a hell of a way to start what looked like it was going to be One of Those Days. He had no idea what Casey was talking about.
“No. You sleep quietly and your breath is great,” he said.
“Is the bed too lumpy?”
“For Christ’s sake, Casey.”
She tugged his ear playfully. “I woke up alone in the middle of the night. I had no idea where you were.”
“You were worried?”
She nodded and gave him her small cat smile. “Yeah. It took me over five seconds to get back to sleep.” She let go of his ear and gave him a little slap on the cheek. “Your loss, hoss. You could have helped me stay awake. See you later.” And she was out the door before he could think of an answer.
R.J. took a shower, hoping the hot water would wash away some of the sand in his head. It did, but it left the anger. He didn’t feel like eating anything, so he got dressed and headed for the office, stopping to pick up some doughnuts and cinnamon rolls in case he changed his mind.
“My, my,” Wanda greeted him, cocking an eyebrow at the doughnuts. “What’s the occasion? Or is this just what celebrities eat for breakfast?”
He flung his coat at the coat rack. “Celebrities eat their young for breakfast,” he said. “For lunch they eat whoever is closest, and for dinner they eat themselves.” He dropped the doughnuts on Wanda’s desk.
“We are very profound this morning,” she said. “Especially for somebody who is the lead teaser for most of the news programs and front page of the Post.”
“I saw it,” he snarled.
“And did you see this?” she asked quietly. She pushed the Business section toward him. There was a photograph of an attractive but hard-looking woman under the headline ANDROMEDA CEO IN TOWN. Under the picture it said, JANINE WRIGHT TO SPEAK TO STOCKHOLDERS.
R.J. looked up at Wanda. “What’s this?”
She smiled. It was almost mean. “Boss, we both know you were going to stomp into your office and sulk for an hour and a half. Then you’d stick your head out and snarl at me to find out who was making the goddamn remake. Then you’d fret for a while, trying to figure out how to get to them.” She tapped a neat red nail on the picture in the paper. “Here she is, gift-wrapped. Staying at the Pierre.”
R.J. stared at the picture. Then he stared at Wanda, who just stared back, looking cool, amused, and in control. R.J. finally had to laugh. “Doll, you’re amazing, you know that?”
“Of course I know it,” she said.
R.J. picked up the newspaper, grabbed a cinnamon roll and headed into his office.
He sat at his desk, munching the doughnut and reading the article. Janine Wright, president of Andromeda Studios, had arrived in New York yesterday. Although she was allegedly just in town to talk to a group of concerned stock owners, the rumor was that she was using the trip to plant some publicity seeds for the studios’ hot new project, the remake of As Time Goes By.
There were also a couple of hints about Andromeda’s disastrous previous year, all their prospects having withered at the box office. Janine Wright herself had gotten behind this remake and pinned a lot of Andromeda’s hopes on the project. She was sunk, and maybe the studio, too, if it didn’t fly.
There were one or two references R.J. didn’t get about Janine Wright’s “legendary way with people.” From the tone of the piece, R.J. gathered that Wright was an ogre. Well, he wasn’t expecting to meet any saints. Not from Hollywood—especially not the head of a studio. They didn’t get the job by being sensitive to people’s feelings; they got the job by killing everyone else who wanted it. That hadn’t changed since his father’s time.
None of that bothered R J. He had cut his teeth with these people, and he would—
Would what? Wait a minute, what did he think he was going to do? Show them the error of their ways? Politely suggest that they give up the idea of the remake and do something else, instead
? And if they refused, threaten them with his camera bag?
R.J. couldn’t see any scenario that might work. He pulled a cigar from his desk and began to chew it thoughtfully. Only one thing motivated these people: money. To get them to do something you either had to give them money, or threaten to take money away from them.
R.J. was pretty flush right now, for him. That meant he could buy a steak for dinner if he wanted it. It didn’t put him in Janine Wright’s league. So if he couldn’t offer them any significant cash—
An idea flitted in. He thought about it. It might work. The odds weren’t good, but maybe he could bluff it out without having to play the hand.
He knew he looked like his old man. And thanks to the jackals of the press, everybody knew who he was. Maybe, just maybe, he could threaten them with so much bad publicity and so many bogus lawsuits, they would cut their losses and give up the idea of the remake. If they were in such bad shape, they might back away from any legal tangle that could keep them from scoring quickly at the box office.
It could work. It probably wouldn’t but it could. If he could get together all the fans, film buffs, nostalgia freaks, and cranks, he could sure stir up a shit storm—maybe enough of a shit storm to get Janine Wright to back down.
Anyway, she might swallow the bluff. R.J. leaned back in his chair and threw the mangled cigar at the waste basket. Let’s just see what she’s made of, he thought with satisfaction.
R.J. picked up the phone and dialed the Hotel Pierre. A very smooth voice, sounding like it had just been oiled, answered. “Hotel Pierre, how may I help you?”
“Albemarle Florist,” R.J. said. He always used the name Albemarle because it was impossible to understand; no one could look it up because they could never quite piece it together. “We have a very large basket for a, uh—” He rattled a sheet of paper on his desk, just for effect. “—Jasmine White?”
There was a pause so short R.J. wasn’t sure he heard it at all. “We have a Janine Wright registered.”
“Uh…” said R.J., taking a stab at it, “is that in the Presidential Suite?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Yeah, do I gotta carry it all the way up to the, what, the top floor?”
“The top floor, yes. No, sir, if you will deliver to the Sixty-first Street entrance we will take it from there.”
“Beautiful,” said R.J. and hung up.
He was feeling smug, first that his little scam had worked and second that he had guessed right about the suite. Of course, the Presidential. Where Nixon had stayed. That’s the way these moguls thought. President of a studio, president of the U.S., what’s the difference? Except the President of the U.S. didn’t make a quarter of what Janine Wright would make. And if any U.S. president did to the national budget what the studios routinely did to theirs, he’d be out of office and into Leavenworth.
It didn’t matter. He had a plan. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it beat the hell out of sitting around the office, eating cinnamon rolls.
R.J. stood, stretched, and strolled for the door, snagging his coat as he went by Wanda’s desk. “Reverend Lake will be here at two,” she warned him.
He shrugged into his coat. “If I’m not back by then, you can show him the pictures.”
“If you’re not back by then,” she threatened, “I’m taking a sick day.”
R.J. grinned at her, waved, and headed out the door.
CHAPTER 6
The Hotel Pierre was a swanky old place on 61st and Fifth. It had the kind of old-school big-dollar feel to it that always made R.J. want to blow his nose on one of the thick Oriental carpets, carve his initials in one of the Colonial writing desks in the lobby, throw dirty socks up to hang from the chandeliers.
But right now his problem was more immediate. If you stepped in through the door on Fifth Avenue you’d find yourself in a lobby swarming with attendants in white gloves, wearing gray uniforms with gold trim; a dark-suited concierge, bell captain, valets, clerks—hell, the place was a discreet, charming, posh, tastefully understated Gestapo headquarters. And one did not simply waltz in and head for a guest’s room. One would find oneself waltzed out the door again by a white-gloved bouncer in record time.
But getting into places like this was R.J.’s job, and he had come prepared.
Holding a clipboard he’d brought along, loaded with a computer printout, a small stack of index cards, and a pen stuck through the clip, R.J. approached the staff entrance on 61st Street. The printout was nothing more than some blank business form he had on the computer at his office, but nobody had to know that.
He was not even two steps in the door of the staff entrance when a gray uniform blocked his way.
“We’re not hiring this week,” the uniform told R.J.
“Oh, really,” said R.J. He decided to run with the lead he’d been given and quickly took out the pen and held it poised over his clipboard. “And have you filed the forty-two-dash-twelve-slash-four-eleven B with our office explaining why not? Considering what our files say this ought to be good.”
R.J. looked up at the uniform and watched his smooth superiority fall from his face and hit his shoes. “Uh, what?” he said.
R.J. glared at him under one raised eyebrow. “So you haven’t filed a forty-two-dash-twelve-slash-four-eleven B?” He slammed the pen back under the clip. “I’ll have to see your Minority Hiring Report.”
“Um,” the man sputtered out, “I, it—the personnel office is back there.” The uniform moved quickly away, no doubt looking for something to polish.
“Have a nice day,” said R.J. grimly, and headed back the way the uniform had pointed.
I ought to move, R.J. thought. Tahiti, maybe. Or Sri Lanka. Anyplace where a clipboard is a free pass to be a bully is no place to live.
Going through a large gray door, R.J. found himself in a hallway. At the far end he could see the glowing red letters of an Exit sign. It hung over a gray metal door. R.J. went through the door and found a flight of stairs next to a service elevator. He pushed the Up button, and a moment later the doors slid open.
R.J. rode up to the top floor without interruption. He got out of the elevator, and looked around for a clue to the whereabouts of the Presidential Suite. The Pierre wasn’t the kind of place to put a brass plaque on the wall and let a hard-working guy know which room was the right one. Naw, they were way too tastefully discreet. R.J. would have to work at it.
About halfway down the hall there were two large oak doors. They looked fairly presidential to R.J. The rest of the rooms on the floor had single doors.
A large serving cart was parked to the side of the double door. The ruins of a presidential-looking breakfast were lying all over the cart. R.J. stepped forward to survey the contents. A bill was tucked under a plate of half-nibbled lox. There was an absurd total at the bottom, and next to it, a scrawled signature: J. Wagt, it looked like. But hell, a signature is a signature. R.J. was willing to bet the ranch that Wagt was really Wright.
Some days, J. thought, being a detective was a lot easier than others. He knocked on the double door.
Just as he was getting ready to knock for a second time, the door swung open. Inside stood a girl, no more than twenty-one. She was medium height, slender, with black hair that was obviously dyed from a lighter shade, and dressed in deliberately slashed, baggy clothes. The girl stared at R.J. with an empty expression. Then suddenly, a look of recognition swam into her pale blue eyes.
“Oh,” she said.
“Is Janine Wright here?” R.J. asked.
The girl nodded. “Come on in,” she said, with an air of who-the-hell-cares that made R.J. certain Janine Wright wouldn’t like it.
He went in, anyway.
Janine Wright was sitting on a settee that probably cost more than any car R.J. had ever owned. She was an elegant-looking woman with short blond hair and the hardest eyes R.J. had ever seen. She was dressed in a two-inch-thick terry-cloth robe and had a telephone glued to her ear, and as he walked i
nto the room she glanced up at him like he was a piece of second-hand furniture.
“Fuck that,” she said into the phone, “and fuck you.” She looked away, to a sleazy-looking, mean-faced little guy in a three-piece suit sitting on the opposite end of the settee. She snapped her fingers at him and he delivered a cigarette, then lit it for her.
Janine Wright looked back at R.J. And spoke into the phone. “No. You’re dead, you hear me? You don’t work, ever again. You want me to spell it? I own your balls now. Well, eat shit and die, asshole,” and she hung up. “Fix it, Murray,” she said to the weasel.
Her eyes now locked onto R.J. “Well,” she said, and her voice was doing the same thing her eyes had done, talking to him as if he couldn’t really understand words. “You look just like him.”
R.J. had expected to start off by telling her who he was. Now he hesitated. The way she had said that had boxed him in, dismissed him at the same time it identified him. He felt like a pet caught pissing on the rug.
“Well?” she prompted.
“A lot of people think I look just like him,” he said. “A little makeup, the right clothes, I would look just like him.” He was about to add, “And that could cause you some bad publicity,” but the weasel didn’t let him.
“Do you know how much trouble you’re in, coming in here like this?” the little guy barked. R.J. corrected his first impression. Not a weasel; one of those scruffy, obnoxious little terriers. The kind that only bites you when your back is turned.
She cut him off. “Shut up, Murray.” And then to R.J., “How much do you want?”
There she was again, pushing him off balance, jumping around so he would stay confused. He had grown up watching that technique used by people like her, and he didn’t like it, but it still worked. “How much what?” he said, pushing back a little.
She blinked. “Who’s your agent?”
R.J. grinned. A stock comeback like that meant he’d won one. He had her confused.
“I don’t have an agent. I don’t believe in agents,” he said. “I like to do everything myself.” And he cracked his knuckles.
The Remake Page 3
