“He called me that?”
Bertelli nodded, beaming. “Yup. And then he really warmed up on you. But the important thing is, he wanted Janine Wright dead, the director and stars dead, the writer dead—everybody.”
“And,” said Portillo, “it looks like he is getting his wish.”
“And you really think he may have been acting as his own fairy godmother?”
“Who knows?” Bertelli shrugged. “Point is, nobody checked. And what they got on him is just as strong as what they got on you, buddy.”
Portillo, looking down again at the folder, whistled. “I would say, stronger. Listen: ‘This goes beyond box-office crime, the kind of remake madness that has made contemporary film such a contemptible hodgepodge of vulgarity, violence, and stupidity. This is desecration, pure and simple, and should be treated the way true cultures have treated desecration down through the ages. With ritual murder. Decapitate the writer. Disembowel the director. Crucify the stars. And for Janine Wright, mega-mongoloid producer of this sick travesty—suspend her over a hot fire by fish hooks, and slowly cook her…’”
“Good stuff, huh?” said Bertelli, arching his eyebrow.
“Well, I can see that I have a lot in common with this guy,” R.J. said. “What has he got against me?”
“He thinks you didn’t yell loud enough,” Bertelli said. “You were supposed to use the authority of your august lineage to bring down the temple around the bastards’ ears.”
“I can see how it might bother somebody when I didn’t do that,” R.J. said. “And what made Lieutenant Kates decide that this guy was not a suspect?”
Bertelli grinned. “Freedom of the press, R.J. Pure and simple. Gotta keep us thugs from coming down hard on a guy just for speaking his mind, capish?”
“Yeah, I capish that. Where is this Minch person?”
Bertelli shrugged. “Someplace called La Crescenta. Know where that is?”
Portillo nodded. “It is not far from Glendale. We can be there in half an hour.”
R.J. turned sideways and reached for his shoes. “Let’s be there,” he said.
But as R.J. got one foot into a shoe, there was a trilling sound.
“My beeper,” Portillo said. “Wait here for one minute.” He slid into his own tasseled loafers and headed for the telephone at the far end of the hall.
R.J. looked at Angelo, who shrugged and swallowed the last half glass of water, fanning his face with his other hand.
Portillo didn’t keep them waiting long. Before R.J. even had his second shoe on, Portillo was back looking pale and grim. “There’s another note,” he said. “And this time it threatens Janine Wright’s assistant.”
R.J. felt all the blood slosh down to his feet. “Casey,” he said hoarsely.
Portillo held out a hand and pulled R.J. to his feet. “That’s right,” he said. “Casey.”
CHAPTER 27
I said stop it, you said no sir
Now I’m getting plenty closer.
If you’d like a Hollywood laugh
try shooting the remake without any staff.
Stop the remake—don’t say no
or your assistant is next to go.
No matter how many times R.J. read the damned thing, it still said that. “Your assistant is next to go.” He read the photocopy Henry had given him again anyway, trying to keep his hand from shaking.
It didn’t change. The bright, cartoony cut-out letters. The goofy rhymes that didn’t quite work. If there weren’t already a couple of bodies lying around it would be hard to take it seriously.
But he took it plenty seriously. “Your assistant.” This was Casey they were talking about.
Casey.
They’d made it to the studio in about five minutes, siren wailing. Portillo had agreed to let R.J. talk to Casey first. He needed a few minutes to call in reinforcements and talk to studio security.
Angelo Bertelli had taken off at a run for the main gate and then a check of the perimeter. He would call in by radio to have men posted at weak spots.
R.J. hurried along the hallway from Janine Wright’s office, where he’d gotten the copy of the note, and then out into the sun. That bright California sun that made the whole movie business possible and made the rest of the country seem like a day job to a junkie. It made R.J. start a sweat as he ran across the lot, looking for Casey.
He found her coming out of the soundstage. She was talking on a cellular phone and scrabbling in her purse for a pen. She glanced at R.J. and turned her back, still talking.
R.J. reached around her and plucked the phone from her hand. “Ms. Wingate will have to call you back,” he said into the receiver. He pushed the Stop button.
Casey was glaring at him, her hands on her hips. “You son-of-a-bitch,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for that call for three days.”
He handed her the note. “Let’s hope you’re still waiting in three more days,” he said.
Still furious, she glanced at the note, opened her mouth. Looked up at him, then down at the note and read it quickly.
“Oh,” she said.
“That’s right,” R.J. agreed.
“And this is for real?”
“Uncle Hank thinks it is.”
She nodded. “All right. What do you want me to do?”
R.J. blinked, astonished. He had come expecting a fight, thinking he’d have to force her to accept protection whether she wanted it or not. And instead she accepted the whole situation calmly.
It must have shown on his face. She shook her head at him. “I’m not stupid, R.J.,” she said. “And I’m not going to die for the glory of Andromeda Studios. If Henry Portillo says my life is in danger, I believe him. So what do I do?”
“Come with me,” he said. “We’re setting up a secured room for you. With a telephone and a fax, so you can work.” She started walking toward the main office building. R.J. followed, trying to watch everywhere at once.
“What’s wrong with my office?” she asked.
“We have to assume he knows it’s your office. And there’s a window. He could have it staked out. Site a sniper rifle through it from a hundred yards away. Toss a Molotov cocktail through it. Plant a bomb on the outside. Throw—”
“All right, R.J., I get the idea. Windows are bad,” she said. But she did not say it like the old Casey would have, with acid amusement. This was all acid. “Let me just get a few things from my office.”
“No,” R.J. said. “He could have something already set up—the other times he didn’t send the note until he was ready to make his move.”
“So I just sit in this converted broom closet and it’s business as usual?”
“That’s right.”
They came to the front door of the office building. “And you’re going to be lurking around the whole time?” she asked. R.J. couldn’t quite read her tone, but it wasn’t playful and it wasn’t grateful. Maybe closer to scorn. And in spite of the way his heart was hammering and his whole mind was screaming at him to keep her alive, keep her safe no matter what, her tone hurt.
“That’s right,” he said. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“I’ve worked under worse conditions,” she said.
R.J. had never gone in for being a bodyguard. The real problem with it, as far as he was concerned, was that he didn’t like a job where you only got one mistake in your whole career. Because when you make that one small goof as a bodyguard, your client is dead and probably you are, too. R.J. didn’t like to fail. Not with those stakes.
Besides, it didn’t really even take a mistake. If somebody wants to kill you and they don’t care what it costs, they’re going to kill you. It was just that simple. You couldn’t stop somebody who really meant business.
The only thing that gave R.J. any hope at all was that he didn’t think Casey was the main target. The killer wanted to stay in business long enough to get the remake off track. And that meant he wouldn’t go all out to get Casey. So there was some chance of savi
ng her.
So R.J. stuck with Casey, playing bodyguard. He sat in her small, improvised office, watching her make calls, get calls, send faxes, get faxes. He didn’t think it looked as exciting as it sounded. Assistant producer. Whoopee. Sit in a closet, talk on the phone.
On the other hand, being a detective wasn’t too exciting right now, either. Scary, yes. But damned little adventure to it. Sitting. Watching. Wondering where the hammer would fall. Wondering what else he might be doing that he wasn’t.
Outside in the hall a couple of uniforms sat on folding chairs. One of them got up and patrolled the hall at random intervals.
There were two more cops at the front door and more outside sweeping the lot.
There were even a couple of SWAT guys on the roof, flicking their cold eyes back and forth over what they would probably think of as their Field of Fire.
Casey was about as safe as they could make her.
And it wasn’t enough. R.J. still felt the hair rise on his neck every time he heard a footstep in the hall. He was sure he was forgetting some basic precaution and it was making him nuts.
He sat there until seven o’clock at night like that, trying to figure what he’d forgotten and knowing he would never remember until it was too late. Somebody brought him a sandwich and some coffee. It still sat under his chair, untouched. The cops in the hall went home, replaced by the next shift. And R.J. sat.
Somewhere a pipe gurgled. A door opened and R.J. could hear lush, romantic music. It was rising hysterically, the strings screaming something and the flutes yodeling back. The door slammed and he could only hear the pipe again.
He glanced over at Casey and felt an electric jolt as he saw that she was looking at him. Her head was tilted slightly to one side and her perfect eyebrows pulled together in a puzzled frown.
“What,” he said, wondering what he’d done wrong.
“You,” she said.
“What about me?”
She shook her head, left, then right, very slowly. “I can’t figure you out,” she said.
R.J. snorted. “I have the same problem.”
“I mean it, R.J. You sit there with no expression on your face, like you could be waiting for a train or sitting at a funeral. And I watch you and wonder what you’re feeling, or even if you’re feeling.”
“Oh, hell, Casey—” R.J. started, but she cut him off.
“But then every time there’s a sound anywhere in the building your whole body gets tense, like you’re about to grab a grizzly bear by the throat or something. And when that cop brought in the sandwich, you were in between me and him before the door even opened.”
“I didn’t know who was opening the door,” R J. said, confused. Where the hell was she going with this?
“You’re protecting me,” she said.
“Jesus H. Christ, Casey. What did you think I was doing?”
She smiled. There was still a hint of mean in it, but it was playful mean, and it was the nicest smile R.J. had seen in a long time. “I thought you were playing cops and robbers,” she said. “I thought you were running some bullshit macho power trip on me. But if terrorists with Uzis and hand grenades had kicked in the door, you were ready to keep them away from me.”
“I was ready to go down trying,” R.J. said. “What the hell, Casey—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was just something that occurred to me. You know.”
He didn’t know, but he nodded like he did.
“Could you shut the door tight, R.J.? I think I’d feel a lot safer.”
Still totally baffled, R.J. got up and pushed the door tightly shut. When he turned around Casey was standing, kicking off her skirt behind the small desk.
“Uh…Casey—”
She shook her head and began to unbutton her blouse. “At least I know what you’re thinking now,” she said.
He started to ask her why that should be so important, but as the last wisp of her clothing hit the floor he realized the question could probably wait.
R.J. had shared wild passion with Casey plenty of times. But this time was different; gentle, almost introspective. Of course, the telephone still hit the floor, along with three file folders, as R.J. and Casey slid across the surface of the desk, joined together.
And afterward, it seemed to him that she held onto him just a little longer than usual, maybe with a trace more tenderness, a softness he had not seen from her before.
But once they had shrugged their clothes back on, she was quickly back to being all business. She straightened the desk, retrieved the telephone, and with one last smile for R.J., Casey dialed the phone and once more disappeared back into Mother Bell’s Invisible Empire.
She worked steadily for several more hours and he did not catch her eye again. Finally, Casey hung up the phone for the last time. She glanced at him, maybe the third time she’d looked at him all day.
“I’m ready to go home,” she said. “Do you have an armored car for me?”
“Stay put,” R.J. said. “I’ll have the car sent around.” He stood up and felt his joints creak from the tense inactivity. He stepped into the hall and the cops there glanced up at him. “She’s ready to go home,” R.J. said.
“Oh, happy day,” said the cop on the left, a stocky guy with a red mustache. He plucked his radio from his belt and passed the word as R.J. went back into Casey’s office.
“Long day,” R.J. said.
She shrugged. “There are a lot of those,” she said. “But today was probably worse than most. Robert Brickel didn’t come back from lunch.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s Robert Brickel?”
“You know. That awful-looking guy with the goatee that works out of Janine’s office. He’s so flaky, I wonder why she puts up with him.”
“He must know where some bodies are buried,” R.J. said.
“He must. He’s been late often enough, but to just take off the whole afternoon like that—He’d better have something good on Janine. He didn’t even call in.”
R.J. felt something run up his spine and back down again. It was a very small thing, very light-footed, and he frowned, waiting for it to take another run so he could see what it was. “Casey,” he said as the thing tickled him again.
She glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.
“This guy, Robert Brickel. What’s his job?”
She made a face. “Jesus, R.J., he’s the hatchet man. He does all Janine’s dirty work. Fires people. Runs the filing system. Keeps her schedule. Like that. Why?”
The little thing grew a few sizes and stuck around his throat. “Would it be fair to call Brickel Janine Wright’s assistant?”
Casey’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Yeah. Mine too.”
“Oh my God. Of course. Oh, R.J. what a bunch of jerks we are—”
But he was already stepping out and talking to the cop outside her door.
CHAPTER 28
They found Robert Brickel in the morgue with a John Doe tag on his toe. They were lucky to have found him at all. His body had been in the water at one of the large flood control dams in the Valley, the one out in the North Valley near the Foothill Freeway.
A party of Japanese tourists found him. They’d heard there were cranes living in the park around the dam. They’d come to photograph birds and had seen the body floating. They never found their cranes. But they’d taken some great pictures of the body. Then they had told their tour guide, bowing a lot. The tour guide had hissed and bowed back. Then he had called the consulate.
The consulate was unable to bow over the telephone, but his office called the cops, who fished the body out while the Japanese tourists took some more great pictures.
The cops didn’t bow, either. But they did take some more pictures before they loaded the body onto the wagon and drove it to the morgue.
And at 3:00 A.M., R.J., Portillo, and Angelo Bertelli stood looking down at the body.
“That’s him,” R.J. said.
Porti
llo nodded. “Yes. I agree. I will tell the captain and he can arrange a formal identification.” He turned away and left the large cold room for the telephone outside.
“Uncle Hank,” R.J. said.
Portillo stopped and turned back, looking irritated. “Yes, RJ.?”
“You can tell Davis one more thing.”
Portillo sighed with exasperation, as if he thought R.J. was going to suggest he tell Davis to jump up his own ass. “What’s that?”
But R.J. gave him a big grin instead. He let the grin just hang there for a minute. It felt good, and he went with it until Portillo started to turn away again. “Uncle Hank? I didn’t do this one.”
Portillo stopped dead. “Say it again, hijo?”
“I said, I didn’t do it. Couldn’t have. I’ve been sitting in the middle of fifteen cops all day.” He nodded at the body. “We know he was killed sometime this afternoon while I was warming a chair next to two uniforms. So unless they helped me carry the body, I didn’t do it.” R.J. felt the grin turn just a little mean, but he didn’t care. “Tell Davis that.”
The expression of annoyance dropped off Portillo’s face and for a moment, his jaw just dangled. Then he slammed his mouth shut with a click you could hear across the room. “Hijo de puta más grande en el mundo,” he muttered. R.J. was impressed; Portillo had a puritanical attitude toward profanity. If he was using it himself, he must have been floored by what R.J. had said.
“Wish I could say that in Italian,” Angelo said.
Portillo shook his head, and then he was smiling, too. He stepped back to R.J. and clapped him on the back. “I will tell Davis right now,” he said with a wicked grin. “I have his home number.” And he whirled away to the telephone.
R.J. and Bertelli watched him go, then turned back to the body on the slab.
“Ugly-looking guy,” Angelo commented.
“The water didn’t do much for his looks,” R.J. said. “But he didn’t start with much, either.”
“The preliminary report says head wounds and/or drowning,” Angelo said. “I’d give a shiny new nickel to know which. If he was killed at the dam, or someplace else—”
The Remake Page 17
