The Remake

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  Still, R.J. managed to think. He had to get out from under a couple of murder charges, and that meant getting back to California. But he couldn’t chase down Janine Wright’s tax records from there, and he had to do that, too. He had said he would, and anyway he wanted to see her in the slammer.

  Rooting for records was something Wanda could do. Probably do it better than he could, in fact. She was amazing with bureaucrats. Where R.J. would lose his temper and start yelling, she could drip honey or acid, whichever would work, and she got results he could only dream about.

  Sure, Wanda was the answer for that. Give him a chance to wrap up the other thing, find the killer. And just incidentally, while he was at it, keep Casey safe.

  Casey. Jesus Christ. R.J. sighed.

  In spite of everything else that was happening, R.J. couldn’t keep his mind off Casey. She had always run hot and cold, driving him crazy. But now he didn’t even know where to start, which end to pick up and look at. He only knew everything else was going to be a lot harder to do until he had figured out what Casey wanted. And whatever it was, he would find a way to want it, too.

  But hell, first he had to keep her alive.

  For the rest of the trip back to the city he tried to keep his thoughts on the killer. It worked for the most part. Mary would sob every now and then, and Roberta would murmur to her. Casey shoved her way into his thoughts every five or ten minutes, but he kept at it, adding up what he knew about the two murders.

  Two killings, in two cities, with two very different MOs. The lawyer poisoned in Manhattan. The writer with his head hacked off in L.A. All they had in common was the remake. Could it be two killers? It was almost fun to think about a secret organization dedicated to stopping the remake. Guys in black hoods taking secret oaths in the basement, pricking their fingers and swearing on an upside-down Bible.

  Sure, a secret society. And R.J. was really Doc Savage, cutting through the underworld like a bronze blade.

  It had to be one killer. One guy, and R.J. tallied up what he knew about him.

  He was smart—he’d figured the way into the Hotel Pierre, which was not easy. He was strong enough to climb up the outside of Levy’s house, strong enough to overcome the writer and cut his head off with a pair of scissors. And he thought he was funny, with the cute rhymes in the letters he sent. The lettering said he was probably a show-biz insider.

  It really wasn’t much to go on. It’s simple, R.J. thought.

  Strong, funny, show-biz insider…. The killer is Joe Piscopo.

  He needed something more, some angle that would give him a starting point. Otherwise…R J. hated the thought, but he was getting the idea that the killer would do it again long before R.J. managed to figure out who he was. And he could kill everybody on both coasts, one at a time, before those goddamned paper-shuffling cops figured it out.

  It was dark by the time they got back to the city. R.J. rode the limo to the door of Roberta’s building and climbed out onto the sidewalk, holding the door for Mary. She was still crying, and Roberta still had an arm around her.

  R.J. paid off the driver and walked Mary to the elevator, in spite of Roberta’s glare.

  “Listen, Mary,” he told her. “I’ve got to get back to the coast.”

  She looked up at him with red eyes. “That’s—You’re not giving up?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not giving up. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

  The bell clunked and the elevator arrived. R.J. patted the kid’s arm. “You just take your time, and don’t worry,” he told her.

  “All right,” Mary sniffled. “But R.J.? You’re going to get her, aren’t you? You’ll find something about Mother?”

  “I just might,” R.J. said. “Take care of yourself, kid.”

  R.J. left her there with Roberta. He was already on the sidewalk by the time the elevator doors slid shut.

  He walked across town, taking the time to think. R.J. always thought better with New York in the background. But by the time he got to his apartment he hadn’t come up with much new. What there was, Ilsa drove out of his head right away.

  R.J. had a neighbor who fed the cat while he was away. He fed her again anyway, but Ilsa still went into a two-hour gymnastic routine, complaining that she was hungry, lonely, and bored, and where the hell had he been, anyway?

  By the time he made himself a small steak and some broccoli from the freezer, the cat had calmed down. She went back to ignoring him, but from closer than usual.

  After dinner, R.J. realized he was beat. Whether it was jet lag, or the funeral, or the combined weight of the last few days, he could barely keep his eyes open. So he didn’t even try. He washed up the dishes and went to bed.

  In the morning he barely dragged himself out of bed. A long hot shower, three cups of coffee and R.J. still didn’t feel at the top of his form, but he thought he might manage to make it through the day. He threw on some clothes, buttoned his coat, and staggered off to his office. He needed to catch up on a little paperwork, and there was a direct flight back to L.A. in the afternoon.

  “Boss!” Wanda yelled at him as he walked in.

  “That’s me,” he admitted.

  “The lieutenant has called four times this morning! You’re to call him the second you’re in!”

  The lieutenant was Henry Portillo. Wanda had almost no respect for policemen. Lieutenant Kates was just Kates to her; Detective Boggs was Boggs or That Dumb Gorilla. But Uncle Hank she approved of, and as a mark of her approval, she called him by his rank.

  R.J. grunted. If Uncle Hank had called four times, he wasn’t just checking up. Something had happened. Maybe there’s been a break in the case. Maybe they’d gotten lucky with the glasses they’d found at Levy’s house.

  “I’ll call him in a minute. Let me go over this with you first.”

  “Boss, it’s important enough to keep the lieutenant waiting?”

  “If you’ll pay attention, he won’t have to wait long.”

  She stuck out her tongue, and R.J. pulled the papers Pauly Aponti had given him from his coat.

  Wanda was fast. She caught on to what was there, and what needed to be done a lot quicker than R.J. had.

  “No problem, boss,” she told him, and R.J. put it out of his mind. Wanda would take care of it.

  He turned back to the other thing, the reason Portillo had called. He hoped it was a break in the case, but it occurred to him as he sat in his chair and dialed Portillo’s number that he had only been thinking about the situation from one side, the cop’s side, where he usually worked. He was a suspect now, maybe the suspect, and a break in the case could just as easily mean he was headed for the slammer.

  It was a good thought. It was right, too.

  “R.J.,” Portillo said when he picked up the phone, and R.J. knew from his tone that it was bad. “We have had another letter.”

  “Hell, Uncle Hank, I couldn’t have done it. I’m in New York.”

  He could hear Portillo breathing out, attempting control. “Can you tell me exactly where you have been, hijo?”

  “Sure. To my office, to a funeral, back to my office. That’s it.”

  “And where was the funeral?”

  “In Connecticut, Uncle Hank. Relax, nobody would ever go up there. A little place called Torrington.”

  There was a long silence on the line, very long.

  “You there, Uncle Hank?”

  “You had better come back at once, R.J.,” Portillo said, and there was great weariness in his voice.

  “I’m on my way,” R.J. said. “What’s up?”

  “The new letter,” Portillo said slowly, “was yet another death threat against the movie.”

  “I figured it would be. So?”

  “So, hijo, it arrived this morning by Express Mail. And it was postmarked from Torrington, Connecticut.”

  CHAPTER 24

  It felt to R.J. as if jet lag was finally catching up to him. He had kidded himself that he had ducked it by coming back to
New York so soon after flying to L.A. But going back again, just like that, was too much for his system. He felt like hell, and he was starting to worry about something new.

  Somebody was out to get him.

  Oh, sure, he knew he had a cop on each coast who wanted to see him in prison and didn’t care how it happened. And he’d made plenty of enemies in his life who would just as soon see him suffer if they could arrange it. This was something else, something more. Something that had trickled into his brain when he hung up the phone on Henry Portillo.

  It had sprouted on the way to the airport, and during the long flight back to L.A. it had grown big enough to build a tree house in.

  Somebody was out to get him.

  Adding up all that had happened, capped with the letter postmarked from Torrington—it was just too much to be coincidence. Every time R.J. was in New York the killer was in New York. When R.J. was in L.A., so was the killer. It was okay to believe that it was all coincidental—up to a point. The last letter, from Torrington, had passed that point.

  He didn’t have any proof, but he was sure. Somebody was getting ready to kill again, and they wanted R.J. to take the fall for it.

  It was almost funny. R.J. could even feel a small, savage laugh growing inside him. Very funny, he thought. I’m the only guy who can catch you, so you’re working with the cops to put me away. Killer and cops on the same side. Har-de-har-har.

  Sure. A real laugh-riot. Just keep chuckling and watching the bodies pile up. What was it they called it in the movie business? The Body Count. They said to have a big picture you had to have a big body count.

  The remake was shaping up to be a really big picture.

  R.J. knew the body count was going to climb. It was going to keep climbing, because this guy was good at what he did. And if he turned out to be just as good at framing R.J., there wasn’t going to be anybody around to stop him from killing again and again.

  Henry Portillo might have been able to do it, but he was trapped by police politics, like a fly in a honey jar. He could buzz a little and beat his wings, but he wasn’t going anywhere they didn’t want him to go.

  No, it was up to R J. and he had to act fast. Before the killer got to somebody else—before R.J. ended up sitting on the wrong side of a set of bars.

  This time R.J. didn’t fall asleep on the plane. He kept working it over in his mind, the one question that could bring it all to an end: Who? Who had enough stake in the remake that they’d kill to stop it? But there was no answer. With Kelley dead, it could be anybody. A stranger, one of Wright’s discarded lovers, a film buff—anybody.

  R.J. sat and ground his teeth together until he was on the ground in L.A. He got a headache, but no answer.

  Henry Portillo was waiting for him. He looked tired, worn down. “I’m sorry, R.J.” was his greeting. “You must come to see the captain right away.”

  “Captain Davis?”

  Portillo nodded.

  “Well, hell, Uncle Hank,” R.J. said. “That makes me sorry, too.”

  Portillo had nothing to say to that. He just took R.J.’s arm and led him through the terminal. His big blue Chevy was parked at the curb, the red light showing on the dashboard.

  “Get in,” he said to R.J.

  R.J. threw his bag in back and climbed into the front seat. Portillo nosed the car into traffic and headed for the freeway.

  Portillo didn’t say a word all the way downtown. He wove in and out of traffic at close to 100 miles per hour and they were in Captain Davis’s office in half an hour.

  Davis was behind his desk. When R.J. walked in, he leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. There was a smug sneer on his face. “Well, well,” he said. He didn’t offer R.J. a seat, but R.J. took one anyway. Portillo stood stiffly just inside the door. “Glad you could make it, Mr. Brooks.”

  “Cut the horseshit,” R.J. said. “If you got something to say, say it and let me get back to work.”

  Davis raised an eyebrow. He was enjoying himself. R.J. didn’t like that. If Davis was happy, it wasn’t going to be good news for him. “Work?” Davis said. “What work is that, Mr. Brooks?”

  “I know you have a tough time figuring this stuff out, Captain, but there’s a killer out there, and he’s going to kill again. And since nobody else seems interested in stopping him, I thought I might give it a try.”

  Davis nodded. “I see. So this killer is going to kill again. You feel sure of that, do you?”

  “I know it. You would, too, if you’d take your head out of the commissioner’s ass for five minutes.”

  Davis ignored that and R.J. knew he was in trouble. The captain just looked at him with a secret little smile.

  “But I do know it, Mr. Brooks. And I am doing something about it. I’m going to put the killer in jail.” And he gave R.J. the biggest cat-ate-the-canary smile R.J. had ever seen.

  R J. felt his stomach do a triple gainer, double back-flip into a swan dive. “You know who it is?” he asked.

  “Yes I do, Mr. Brooks.” Davis was almost laughing now. He unlocked his hands and pointed a lazy finger at R.J. “It’s you.”

  “Cut the crap,” R.J. snarled. “You know damned well I didn’t do it, and there’s nothing to go on but your goddamned wish that I did it so you could look pretty in the papers.”

  “Is that what you think?” Davis said, still smiling.

  “That’s what I know,” said R.J.

  Davis reached into a drawer and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. “Know what this is?” he said softly.

  “A bag. It has an envelope inside.”

  “Wrong, smart ass,” Davis said through his teeth. The smile was gone now. “It’s a one-way ticket to Folsom. With your name on it.”

  R.J.’s mind was blank. He had no idea what could be so damning about an envelope. “What the hell are you babbling about?”

  “This is the envelope the latest death threat came in, Mr. Brooks.”

  “So?”

  “It’s postmarked Torrington, Connecticut. We know you were in Torrington at the time it was mailed.”

  “So were thirty-two thousand other people,” R.J. said.

  Davis’s smile was the biggest, meanest thing R.J. had ever seen. “That’s true,” he said. “But none of them have your fingerprints.” He dangled the baggy daintily over the desk. “This does.”

  A thousand things went through R.J.’s mind. The only one that made it out was “What?”

  “Your fingerprints, Mr. Brooks,” Davis said, as if he were talking to a four-year-old. “You made one small mistake this time. Your fingerprints are on this envelope. What happened? Did you leave your gloves in your other suit?”

  R.J. looked at Portillo, who was standing up straight now. Portillo shook his head. “I didn’t know, R.J.”

  “No, he didn’t know,” Davis said with a smirk. “The lab report just came back, and there’s no doubt about it. A thumb print so clear it’s like for a textbook or something. Plus an index finger and three partials. The lab says there’s not the smallest doubt about it. It’s you, Mr. Brooks. Your fingerprints.”

  He leaned forward and there was no more smiling or smirking. Now there was only mean-faced danger. “I’ve got you, buddy-boy. I’ve got you good. And if you think you’re going to wiggle out of this one, you’re the one with his head up his ass. This is just the start. It’s enough to arrest you, but it’s only the beginning.”

  R.J. noticed Davis’s hand was trembling. He wants me bad, he thought. And he just might have me.

  Davis leaned back again, took a deep breath and got control of himself again. “Know what they’ll do to a movie star like you up at Folsom?”

  “Sure,” R.J. said. “Same thing you’re doing to me now. But they’ll probably be nicer about it.”

  But Davis just stared at him. “It’s funny,” he said. “Now that I’ve got you, your wise-ass attitude doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “Well, your dumb-ass one bothers the hell out of me. Have I got thi
s right? You’re arresting me for these murders?”

  “In a few minutes. I’m having too much fun right now.”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  “Sure, Mr. Brooks. You’ll get your lawyer. Not that it’s gonna do you any good.”

  “We’ll see about that. For starters, he can look into just how legal it is for you to interrogate me like this without him being here, and without you reading me my rights. Then we can move on to the good stuff, like whether you get to keep your job when I catch the real killer and let the whole damn world know what a brainless asshole you really are, Captain. Do you know what the press is going to do to a dumb, crooked, mean-spirited, butt-head cop like you?”

  Davis clenched his jaw so hard R.J. thought he heard one of the caps crack. Then he nodded, just once.

  “All right, Brooks,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent—”

  CHAPTER 25

  Jail wasn’t so bad. It was a lot nicer than the waiting area on the BMT. Fewer punks, too. Some of the guys were pretty nice, in fact, and R.J. found he had a lot in common with them. They were all innocent, for starters. A lot better company than Captain Davis. And some of them thought just as highly of Patrick Ewing as R.J. did.

  Of course there was a couple of sour grapes guys who only wanted to talk about how great the Lakers used to be, but you had to expect that in an L.A. jail.

  In fact, R.J. probably wouldn’t have minded his stay in jail, not at all, if he hadn’t been worried about Casey. Uncle Hank would have a couple of men keeping an eye on her, sure, but it wasn’t the same as if he was watching her himself.

  At least, he hoped it wasn’t. After his last scene with her in the restaurant he wasn’t so sure. For all he knew she could be shopping for a new boyfriend right now, and an L.A. cop might fit the bill just right. These guys weren’t even real cops. Spent their off-duty time hanging out in juice bars at health clubs. Worrying about how tight their buns were.