The Remake (13 page)

Around him on the plane the aisles were filling up. The people were starting to shove and whack one another with suitcases. It made R.J. homesick for Manhattan. He stretched and tried to come fully awake, but he couldn’t stand up to stretch properly, and he was slow to shake off the cold lump of terror in his stomach the dream had left behind.

“We’ll go over to the set later,” Portillo said. “They are doing all studio interiors this week.”

“L.A. is great,” R.J. grumbled. “Even the cops know the movie jargon.”

Portillo laughed. “Does that mean you don’t want to stop at the studio, R.J.?”

R.J. shook his head. On top of the last shreds of the dream he felt a thrill of anticipation. In a little while he might actually see Casey. “No,” he said. “Let’s stop at the goddamn studio.”

Portillo nodded. “I have some paperwork to catch up on first. I’ll drop you at home to finish your nap, then come get you in a few hours.”

CHAPTER 15

They arrived at Portillo’s small house in the East Valley and carried their bags in. “You know where your room is,
hijo,
” Portillo said, dumping his own garment bag onto the couch. “I will see you in a few hours.”

R.J. watched him go, swallowed by memories. The old place hadn’t changed much. Same furniture. Same slightly musty smell of leather, gun oil, and Mexican spices.

R.J. went down the short hall to the back of the house. Memories closed in on him in the dimness. This had once been his second home. After his father died and Belle had been too busy he had spent a lot of nights here, just because there was somebody here who gave a damn. It had made him laugh a lot of times over the years, the thought that an L.A. cop had more time to spare for him than his mother.

Well, that was all in the past. He’d worked it out and forgotten about it a long time ago. But the sight and smell of this hall could still bring some of it back.

R.J. pushed open the door to “his” room. And then he just stood in the doorway for a minute. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He even forgot that he was holding his suitcase.

The same tattered, quilted bedspread was on the bed. And over next to the window stood the same battered black bookcase. With a stack of his old books on it.

And his old baseball glove.

R.J. dropped his bag and picked up the glove and looked at it in the afternoon light coming through the glass. Just outside that window, in the backyard, he had learned how to throw a knuckle ball. How to catch the ball and whip it over to first. Had even practiced sliding in to home.

Until the maid at his house had complained about the ground-in dirt and grass stains. Then Belle had pulled one of her rare mother routines and told him to keep his damn pants clean. No more sliding.

R.J. sat on the bed and smiled. Because after that—

So many memories. Just from a kid’s damn ball glove. Well, hell, maybe he was a murder suspect, and maybe Casey wouldn’t talk to him, but this was a homecoming for him, too.

He closed his eyes, letting the memories wash over him. It was all too…

“Wake up, R.J.,” came the voice, and R.J. was jolted out of a sleep so deep he wasn’t sure what his name was. Henry Portillo was bending over him, shaking one shoulder with a hard hand.

“What time is it?” R.J. asked, slowly coming back to life.

Portillo straightened, shaking his head. “
Hijo,
you might as well ask, what year is it? I phoned twice from my office and you didn’t hear.”

R.J. sat up, his whole body creaking. “I guess I was really out of it.”

Portillo cocked his head to one side. “Perhaps you are too tired to go to the studio…?”

The thought of seeing Casey again sent a jolt through him and before he could even think of doing it he was standing. “I’m awake,” he said, not too convincingly. “Let’s go.”

Portillo was amazed to see him jump up so fast, but they went out to the car, R.J. shaking his head to clear away the cobwebs.

Andromeda Studios was in a far corner of the San Fernando Valley. The main buildings had once been an aircraft assembly plant and the place still looked like somebody was making machines there. Machines, instead of movies. Which was kind of appropriate, because the way Andromeda made its movies was more industrial than artistic.

Andromeda had clawed its way up in town as the studio that made all the copies. If another studio had a hit movie about a German shepherd getting elected senator, six weeks later Andromeda had one out about a collie in the White House.

If Paramount bought a script about aliens who looked like vegetables, Andromeda dashed one out about space monsters who looked like fruit.

The movies were rushed, awful, and the concept of doing business that way was based on the idea that the public was pathetically dumb. But it worked. Andromeda spent almost nothing, paying starvation wages and ignoring all the unions. Then they flooded the video market with their cheap copies, and in a few short years, by a process that could only work in Hollywood, they’d become legitimate. They had no hits, nobody could remember one specific movie they’d made, but they had arrived; they were a major player.

And then, finally, the hits began to come. Three years ago they got their first Oscar. And in the last two years, Andromeda put three movies on the list of top ten in box-office receipts.

And the person who made all that happen was Janine Wright.

There were rumors now, Portillo told R.J., that Andromeda had moved too far too fast. They were stretched to the
breaking point. They had to have a mega-hit on the order of
E.T.
or they were going belly-up. Without a few zillion bucks in quick cash transfusions, Janine would lose her studio.

It didn’t look like much of a loss. As Portillo drove his car up to the gates, R.J. thought the place probably hadn’t seen a coat of paint since the last time Howard Hughes dropped by. From the road it was shabby, seedy; the property looked as if it were abandoned and full of empty beer bottles and used condoms. Weeds grew up through the pavement.

Portillo slowed his big blue unmarked Chevrolet at the gate house. A uniformed young man with a clipboard stepped out of the hut and glanced into the car as Portillo rolled down the window.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” he said cheerfully as he saw who was driving. “Whatcha got today?” He peered over at R.J.

“More of the same, John. I’m afraid we need to nose around the lot a little bit.”

“No problem.” The young man grinned and Scotch-taped a pass to their dashboard. “Visitor’s Lot C please, lieutenant. Have a great day!” He gave them a huge smile and stepped back into the hut. A moment later the gate went up.

“Jesus Christ,” R.J. said. “Does that guy simonize his teeth?”

“John is an actor,” Portillo explained. “A nice boy. He has an audition next week for one of those cop shows. So he took his lunch break to study me, last week when I was out here.”

“Yeah? What did he learn?”

Portillo gave R.J. a huge smile. It looked a lot like the gatekeeper’s. “How to be nice, R.J. He learned to be nice. Picked it up right away. Twenty-some years, and you still haven’t got it.”

“I’m a slow learner,” R.J. told him, returning the grin in spite of himself.

They pulled into a parking spot in a huge lot next to one of the hangars. R.J. got out of the car and stretched—and coughed. He looked at the mountains. They were only a few
miles away, but they were barely visible through the thick haze of smog. I have a headache. So I guess I’m back, R.J. thought.

A Viking walked by talking to a Sumo wrestler. A moment later an attractive young woman in a harem suit rushed after them, saying things under her breath that would have made a sailor blush.

R.J. grinned again. He’d forgotten what a fun business this was. He’d never wanted to be an actor like his parents, but he’d played with the idea of doing something in the business, anything to keep him next to the high energy, odd sights, and twisted people. Luckily, he’d woken up in time to realize that it wasn’t for him. It would have taken him only a couple of weeks before he started punching out some of the badly bent half-wits who ran the town.

Three guys in jeans and black T-shirts strolled slowly past, pushing an empty hand truck and sipping coffee as they went. R.J. knew what that meant. Andromeda was a union shop now.

“This way,” Portillo said, pulling R.J.’s attention back to the hangar.

They went through a door with a red light above it. The light wasn’t on, but it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. Uncle Hank had his cop face on. Nothing was going to slow him down right now.

Inside the hangar there were fifty or sixty people. About ten of them were racing around like headless chickens; moving lights on the catwalk, sliding huge chunks of scenery around, rolling long black cables back and forth.

But most of the people were simply sitting or standing around. They were telling jokes, drinking coffee. A large cluster of actors, grips, gaffers, Teamsters, and carpenters surrounded a table covered with food—bagels, doughnuts, fruit, candy, juice, and coffee.

One woman was standing up on the set, all alone and ignored. R.J. recognized her: Maggie DeSoto. While the preparation for shooting the scene went on, she simply stood in
place. As R.J. watched she lifted her long skirt and absent-mindedly scratched her crotch. Nobody seemed to notice.

“Wait here,” Portillo said. “I’ll be right back.”

He headed for a bearded man with a clipboard standing over beside the food table. R.J. turned back to stare at the set. It wasn’t much. The inside of a cheesy European hotel room. Cracks painted on the walls. Glass shot out of the window. Maggie DeSoto turned and stared at R.J., her skirt still held up above her waist. A babble of voices took R.J.’s eyes away from Maggie’s legs.

On the far side of Maggie a camera was set up. A group of people stood beside it, apparently having a Hollywood discussion. Nobody was throwing punches yet, but everybody was talking at the same time. With the lights in his face R.J. couldn’t see much, but gradually he began to hear one voice calming down the others and taking over, telling them the way it was going to be and they had better learn to like it. It was a good voice; firm but not angry, controlled and tough but compassionate. It had a nice tone, good diction, a warm feeling to it.

Casey’s voice.

Without thinking about it, R.J. found himself moving toward Casey. He walked straight across the set, dodging two gaffers and one chubby woman with big hair and a makeup kit who was powdering Maggie DeSoto. Maggie herself put a hand out to touch him and said, “Hey,” as he walked by, giving him her version of a sexy smile, but he was focused on Casey’s voice and hardly noticed.

And then he was there, standing behind her, almost close enough to smell her hair. He just stood and listened and looked at her. He could see a quarter profile, her neck, ear, and cheekbone.

For a moment it was enough. No matter what other reasons he’d thought he had, this was why he had come out here.

Casey was explaining to them that a certain scene was out
and that was all there was to it. She was listing the reasons; financial, artistic, time. The rest of the group didn’t like it, but Casey was making them learn to live with it, telling them how to adjust.

“We’re not curing cancer,” she told them. “We’re making a movie. And we’re making it without this scene.”

“Just the sort of Semitic bullshit I’ve come to expect from this silly lot of buggers,” said a careful British voice.

“Trevor,” Casey said with steel in her voice, “you don’t have to like this. But you
do
have to go with it. Your alternative is over there,” and she pointed to the door, locking eyes with the speaker, a scruffy, small white-haired man with the red nose of a hard drinker and the face of the world’s meanest elf.

“Thank you, my dear,” the elf said. “I shall take it under advisement. Bernard!” he yelled, turning away from Casey. “Is the fucking light ever going to be in place or shall I fetch a fucking candle?” And as he strolled away the group around the camera broke up and Casey turned around to face him.

R.J. wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he didn’t get it. “R.J.,” she said. She blinked and frowned, clearly shifting gears in her head, before giving him a quick hug. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you for a minute.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I’m pretty busy right now. Can we talk later?”

“No,” he said.

Casey sighed and pushed her hair off her forehead. “R.J., I really am glad to see you, but this is my job. I’m at work. I don’t have time for personal stuff.”

“Make some time,” he said. “Did you know about the death threats?”

She blinked at him, gave her head a half shake. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “The goofy letter stuff? Is that why you’re here?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

She gave him a half smile, another shake of her head. “R.J.,
it’s just a couple of stupid notes, bad rhymes. They’re ridiculous.”

“The cops don’t think so. Neither do I.”

She touched his face, a quick brush with one hand. “It’s sweet of you to worry,” she said, in a way that thanked him and made him feel clumsy at the same time. “But I can’t take it seriously. I’ve got a job to do, and I don’t have time for death threats.” She touched his cheek with her lips, very quickly, and then stepped back. “Please. R.J. Let me talk to you later? I’ve got a million things going right now.”