the Devil's Workshop (1999)

by Stephen Cannell

  "What're you gonna do?" Cris asked.

  "I let you go, I'm a dead man. Either that or I go to jail for life," DeSilva said. "I gotta do like I was ordered. Unhook yourselves and get out." Cris and Stacy exchanged looks in the back seat of the car. The glance told Stacy to be ready, that Cris was going to try something. She nodded subtly.

  They unhooked the chain and got the cuffs off. Then DeSilva opened the rear door and motioned them out while aiming the gun at them.

  As Cris stepped out, he tried to move as close to DeSilva as he could, but Nino was combat-trained and instantly backed off. "Stay where you are. Get down on your knees," he commanded. "I can do this so ya won't feel a thing." Cris and Stacy did as they were instructed.

  "Like you did with Max Richardson?" Stacy said.

  "I don't know nothing about that. Nick Zingo told me he committed suicide."

  "He was murdered," she shot back.

  "I didn't wanna kill the Indian," DeSilva said softly. "I can't stand it that I killed that guy."

  Cris watched as Nino brought the gun up to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. Cris had reached the end. He had nothing more to lose. He decided that he would lunge up off his knees, directly into the muzzle of the Beretta and almost certain death. He hoped Stacy would use his charge to get away into the night. But just as Cris was about to make his move, Nino DeSilva lowered his weapon.

  "Can't," he said softly. "Can't do it again." He stood ten feet away, staring at them. "Get out of here," he finally said.

  Cris nodded. He took Stacy's hand, pulled her up, and started to lead her away into the darkness. Then Cris turned and looked back at Nino DeSilva. He was standing with the gun at his side and his chin on his chest. "Sometimes men fall, but the good ones can stand again," Cris said.

  Then he turned and moved away, holding Stacy's hand.

  Nino DeSilva watched until he could no longer see them in the dark.

  Chapter 48

  HOW TO COOK A WEREWOLF

  You make movies about milking cows and picking flowers and I'll make movies about fucking and getting loaded and we'll see who puts more asses on theater seats," Buddy growled at Alicia Profit from the motor home's command chair.

  She had been talking about a movie she loved, made by some fruity Italian director. The flick had died in the art houses, and Alicia's enthusiasm for it pissed Buddy off. He demanded a little more allegiance from a Brazil Nut. Still, Alicia, who Buddy thought was too pretty and too young to be as smart and self-assured as she was, didn't back down.

  "Is it just about money, Buddy? You've got money. Is it just about seeing how high you can pile the greenbacks? How many Testarossas can you drive at once? I don't know why you never made The Prospector. That could have been a beautiful movie-- a man's search for himself before death. It was full of pathos and humanity. You shoulda fought for it."

  "Pathos? What's that, a Mexican restaurant? That script was a boring piece of shit. An old guy who's dying? Who the fuck cares? What kinda rock 'n' roll score you gonna put under that snore?"

  In fact, Buddy had loved the story, but had been talked out of it by the studio after he signed his new big deal. They wanted six high-budget kick-ass movies. The press release on the deal called it "The Buddy Brazil Action Pack." Buddy still pulled out the script of The Prospector and read it occasionally. Why the hell hadn't he fought for it?

  "I think it would have made a difference in the way people perceive you," Alicia defended, "like after Spielberg did Schindler's List He reinvented himself with that movie."

  They were rolling through Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. John Little Bear was driving the big blue-and-white coach. Billy Seal was sitting with Alicia and Rayce at the fold-out table. Buddy could feel both a heavy weight on his shoulders and a tired weight on his eyes. He knew it was the beginning of a bout of depression. He had snorted a few more lines to try to stave it off, but his body was burning the coke like factory furnace fuel. He was going deeper and deeper into a funk, and it wasn't helped by this conversation with Alicia, and the fact that they were in Gettysburg.

  The last time he'd been here he was only twenty-two years old, just out of film school and full of great ideas for redesigning the film business. He'd been in this historic town which had hosted the turning point of the Civil War, shooting a documentary, using five thousand dollars he'd saved up from summer jobs. It was every cent he had, but he had thrived on the challenge. The film was called The Two Hawks of Gettysburg and was about the Civil War, then and now, dealing with the socioeconomic and racial factors of American life one hundred years after the battle. He had tracked the lives of two people in the film: a black Union soldier named Evan Hawk, who died protecting a dream that was meager but filled with hope, and the black Union soldier's great-grandson, Reuben Hawk, a current Gettysburg factory worker. Reuben's life had fulfilled none of the hopes of his great-grandfather. "Seventeen minutes of pretty remarkable filmmaking," Sid Sheinberg had called it, comparing the work to Amblin, the film he'd seen by Steven Spielberg, which Sheinberg had loved and which had gotten Spielberg his first directing jobs in television. But Buddy had been afraid to ever direct again. It was his first bad Hollywood compromise, choosing instead to produce. Somehow, even at twenty-six, he had already started playing safe.

  Producing a big studio hit was still a huge long shot, but Buddy found he liked not having to take the full responsibility for what he made. When you were a director, if a movie failed it was "on you." When you were a producer, there were plenty of people to put the blame on. The writer was always the best and easiest target. Buddy had fucked over more writers than Kirkus Reviews. Of course, the director was easy to pin it on, or the studio, although that was trickier politically. Sometimes on his flops, Buddy was so busy running around behind the scenes making shit fall on colleagues that he felt like the Wizard of Beverly Hills, pulling levers behind a big velvet curtain.

  Slowly, over the years, he had slipped into the outlaw Buddy thing, with the black outfits and pimp accessories, his "McDaddy props," as Jack Nicholson called the hookers from Heidi's stable. There had been the endless stream of beautiful MAWs, who styled and profiled in his Malibu house. Munchable, long-stemmed wannabes: Models, Actresses, Whatevers, who perched on his sofa with their shoulders back, smiling, flirting, hoping for stardom. He had sampled these pleasures abundantly, but almost always felt horrible afterward, as if in all this luscious beauty there was also some hidden contamination, unrecognizable in its soul-destroying depravity.

  All of these feelings confused him, so he did more lines and shot more drugs and tried to make any painful introspection go away in a haze of lost weekends. He had left the twenty-two-year-old filmmaker with a camera and a dream way back there on the side of the rocky Hollywood road.

  Jack Nicholson, whom Buddy more or less idolized, called him "the Werewolf" because of Buddy's dark looks and nocturnal habits. In fact, Buddy was not much of a werewolf. Inside, he was more of a lost child, and in the moments before his depressions hit, he could see it all very clearly, could read his own uselessness like tea leaves in a Gypsy's cup. He knew that he was heading nowhere and accomplishing nothing. His mega-hits would not be watched by anybody when the cutting-edge sound-track music and trendy clothes were no longer popular. Like the Bee Gees and bell-bottom trousers, his material was caught in the moment in a way that defined him as temporary and unimportant.

  "Alicia, crank me up," he shouted, and out came her little compact. The lines were chopped and Hoovered up by Buddy, then the little black plastic emergency kit was returned to Alicia Profit's purse. Buddy never carried his own drugs. He couldn't take another possession bust.

  "Turn on the TV," he ordered, to change the subject and the memory. Buddy knew he was never going to make The Prospector, as much as he loved it, because he was afraid it wouldn't make any money. He couldn't stand the idea of producing a flop. Buddy was about flash, about winning. He was an end-zone dancer in a black shirt and vest, with three-inch-heel
ed ostrich cowboy boots. He was an outlaw.

  "The bodies inside Fort Detrick have yet to be identified," a beautiful news anchor said, her dyed blond hair cut to helmet length. "But early reports say that the individuals who were shot apparently infiltrated the Army medical base by riding on a supply train. What they were doing in the lab of Building 1666 is still a mystery to the doctors there, but sources close to the investigation say that Army scientists are trying to reconstruct the reason from the chemicals and products used in the lab. The intruders killed two soldiers and left four accomplices dead before they stole a jeep and crashed out through the main gate of Fort Detrick. The Army still runs a medical facility at the Fort, but most of the property was decommissioned ten years ago ..."

  Buddy stared at the TV screen, and the depth of his depression grew. He felt like a man with a hundred-pound sack on his back. Were Cris and Stacy among the dead? Was the whole thing up to him now? He had made a promise to himself that he would not quit, and that promise was still driving him, but he had made a career out of shirking and ducking and claiming credit that was not his. Now he was pitted against a formidable enemy. Not just film critics with their angry, sarcastic jibes, but crazy fanatics with bio-weapons and automatic rifles. Buddy felt skewered by events, like a rotisserie chicken turning over a slow-burning fire, dripping fat and getting smaller by the moment.

  "We're leaving Gettysburg. We'll be in Harrisburg in about half an hour," Rayce said softly.

  Buddy wasn't listening.

  "Where to then? You still want to go to the rail yards, like you said?" Rayce persisted.

  Buddy was thinking about Cris and Stacy: brave, committed, and maybe dead.

  "How 'bout it?" Rayce said.

  "Huh?"

  "I said, do you still want to go to the rail yard in Harrisburg?"

  Buddy looked at the rugged stuntman, then around the motor home at the rest of his Brazil Nuts. Their faces showed a strange lack of commitment. He knew that most of them thought this was just another Buddy fantasy, a paintball fight that would make Buddy feel tough, but was not really dangerous. Their expressions told him they doubted they were ever going to find Kincaid, that Buddy didn't want any trouble, he only wanted to look tough... only wanted to be able to brag about it in Hollywood afterward: " 'Member that time we were locked and loaded, goin' after that crazy motherfucker? That gonzo preacher? He's lucky I never got close enough to light him up, the fuck."

  "Harrisburg switching yard, Mr. B.?" Alicia repeated, looking at him and seeing a strange lost-child expression she had never seen before.

  "I guess so," Buddy answered weakly.

  Rayce nodded at John Little Bear, who shifted into overdrive. They passed out of Gettysburg, heading toward Harrisburg, and Buddy's strange collision course with destiny.

  Chapter 49

  SWITCHING YARD

  The blue-and-white motor home arrived in Harrisburg a few minutes past noon. They pulled into the parking lot next to the rail yard without taking any precautions whatsoever.

  Buddy was still in the command chair, trying to find his old Captain Kirk persona that he used in his Malibu living room before a paintball fight. He would sit in his five-hundred-dollar custom cammies explaining the rules of engagement and dividing the participants, making sure he always had the best shooters on his team. Now, as he sat behind John Little Bear, who had just shut off the engine, he didn't know exactly what to do, how to even begin to instruct them. All he could think about was the terrifying sensation he had felt when the burst of nine-millimeter slugs tore into the rented Blazer up at Vanishing Lake. As he gazed out the front window of the motor home, Buddy could see hundreds of stainless-steel tanker cars that he assumed were full of gas or oil.

  "Whatta you want to do, Mr. B.?" Alicia said brightly.

  "I... I don't know." Buddy uttered the unfamiliar words and looked at Rayce for help.

  "I'm gonna get out an' check around," Rayce said. "You wanna give me a better description of what I'm looking for?"

  "I told you, the leader's got silver-gray hair and they're all dressed like bums with F. T. R. A. tattooed on their arms. You better take one of the weapons," Buddy said.

  " 'At's okay, I'll just have a look," Rayce drawled. He got out of the motor home, and Buddy watched him stand in front of the vehicle before he moved off in the general direction of the lines of silver tanker cars.

  "This guy Kincaid's a motherfucker," Buddy warned. "We take no chances. It's important that I run this operation from the motor home. It'll be our C. P. We'll be on radios and I'll call the plays from here."

  "Good idea," Alicia said, rolling her eyes slightly as she looked over at John Little Bear.

  They sat in the motor home and waited for Rayce to return. Almost half an hour passed as Buddy paced in his plush command post. He was looking at the Brazil Nuts. John Little Bear was characteristically stoic, sitting like Geronimo, the renegade chief, his flat features betraying nothing of what might be going on inside. Billy Seal, the black stunt captain he had used on ten pictures, was calmly playing solitaire at the small table. Alicia Profit was reading a magazine. Buddy was another story altogether. He was a collection of nervous jerks, twitches, and strained expressions.

  "They got Rayce. I know it!" he suddenly blurted. "He was just gonna take a look around. A look! That takes a fucking half hour? He's gone. Okay, okay... all right, they got Rayce. We're down one man. We need to organize something. Personally, I think if Rayce got scragged, we've got a police situation here. Alicia, get on the cell and scare up somebody at the Harrisburg P. D."

  Alicia picked up the telephone and was dialing Information when the door jerked open and Rayce appeared in the threshold, scaring Buddy shitless. He jumped back, terrified, and whacked his hip on the motor home's low counter.

  "They're here, over thirty a' them. They're on the far side of the switching yard. I first saw a group of them over by the Yard-master's office, going through the trash, getting some papers out. I followed 'em back and found the rest of the group in a gully, on the other side by the big water tower. A real scruffy buncha bohunks."

  4 'They're carbon-sheet spotting,'' Buddy said, showing his knowledge of the rails gleaned during two days with Cris Cunningham.

  "Carbon what?" Alicia said.

  As he rubbed the sore spot on his hip, Buddy explained how the extra train line-up sheets thrown away by the Yardmaster could be used to select cars.

  "One other thing, pard--you're right about these guys being armed. They got a pile of artillery. All of 'em are packin' side arms, and I must've counted at least six or seven fully automatic weapons: a coupla Uzis, some B. A. R. S., a coupla mini-fourteens..."

  "You still want me to get the police on the phone?" Alicia said, holding up the cell.

  Buddy nodded. "Tactically that's the right play," he whined with damn little command presence.

  "Thing is, they looked like they're heading off. Soon as the guys showed up with the sheets they got from the trash, they started moving out."

  "Away from the station? Away from us?" Buddy asked hopefully.

  "I think so ... they moved off that way." Rayce pointed out of the motor home's front window in the direction of the northeast section of the yard.

  "Okay, Alicia, you get the cops on the phone. I'd better stay here and talk to 'em. John, Rayce, and Billy, you each take an automatic weapon and move out. Keep them in sight. Reconnoiter back here after we find out where they're heading."

  "Sin not to disagree, but if you're calling in the law, I'd just as soon not be caught with an illegal fully automatic weapon in my hands," Rayce said.

  "If you're gonna stand around acting like a pussy, then you joined the wrong team," Buddy said, finally getting some Captain Kirk into it.

  "You're the one hiding in the motor home, asshole," Rayce said angrily, and suddenly the inside of the vehicle needed de-icing. Everybody was frozen in silence, waiting for Buddy to explode. A Brazil Nut never questioned the producer's testoste
rone level.

  "Look, Rayce, I'm not fucking hiding," Buddy said in a less hostile voice, so everybody took a deep breath and relaxed slightly. "Somebody has to run this ground op, otherwise we got nothing but confusion. Don't worry about the automatic weapon. I have a gun dealer's license. I'll tell the cops we're doing pick-up shots on a film, or some fucking thing.... Movie work, everybody loves the movies."

  Buddy moved to the closet and broke out the Dominator, which was way too big to lug around, and neither John Little Bear, Rayce, nor Billy wanted the sniper's rifle. They had also brought an Uzi and two H&K Close Assault weapons. Rayce and Little Bear each took one of those; Billy grabbed the Uzi. They all tromboned the slides and checked the safeties. The motor home was filled with the sound of well-oiled weapons as they clicked and clacked inside the hot narrow space. Buddy handed each of them a headphone walkie-talkie that he always insisted his paintball team use to communicate.

  "Okay, move out," Buddy ordered. "We're on Channel 18."

  Rayce, Billy, and Little Bear exited the motor home and split up. The headphone units looked slightly ridiculous on them as they ran into the hot sunshine, miked up like a Japanese ski club.

  "Get the cops on the phone," Buddy instructed.

  Alicia, who had been listening to Buddy with the forgotten phone in her hand, started dialing again, and after going through half a dozen people, telling each one who Buddy was, she finally got a Public Affairs Officer and handed the telephone to Buddy.

  "You're going to make a movie here?" the man said excitedly.

  "We've got a situation at the switching yards," Buddy corrected. "There's armed hobos with weapons, and I think you need t'get some people out here fast."