The Remake (17 page)

He was just a step or two away from a jail cell, at a time when Casey’s life might depend on him being free and finding a killer. Now he had to move that much faster—catch the killer before Davis or Kates nailed him for jaywalking—and he couldn’t see any way to do it that didn’t leave Casey exposed. He hated it like hell but there was no way around it. But first—

“I have to go back to New York,” he finally said.

Portillo looked at him without expression. “I know that, R.J.”

“Just for a couple of days. Then I’ll be back. But—” He found it hard to say. Putting it in words made the danger more real somehow.

But Portillo understood. “I’ll keep an eye on Casey. Have somebody watch her house, keep an officer on the set, and another in the offices. That’s about all I can do.”

R.J. nodded. It was probably more than he could have done himself, but it was not the kind of thing a guy should delegate. But he had to be there for Mary Kelley. She was a client, and that still meant something.

“Thanks, Uncle Hank,” he said. He looked out the window of the car. The dry hills were almost visible through the smog. The traffic was moving bumper to bumper at sixty-five miles per hour. “I’d like to see Casey before I leave.”

Portillo looked at R.J. again. “I know that,
hijo.
That’s where we’re headed.”

CHAPTER 19

They got to the studio about twenty minutes later. The same young actor was working the gate and he let them in again with no problem.

It must have been union coffee-break time. The whole lot was swarming with people in jeans. They were lounging all over the place, leaning against cars, sitting on the pavement.

At the door to the soundstage a pair of Nazi storm troopers were yakking with a bearded Basque shepherd and a long-legged woman in a flamenco outfit. A guy in baggy pantaloons and a fez wandered by singing a Guns N’ Roses tune.

R.J. and Portillo pushed through and into the hangar. The set this time was a basement room, steam pipes dripping onto ratty-looking crates. A dingy bed stood under a high window.

Maggie DeSoto was sitting on the bed under the lights, this time completely topless. Her breasts stood out unnaturally, an obvious silicone job. She had her legs crossed and was kicking the upper foot and smoking a cigarette. She looked bored, as if she was waiting for a bus to take her to the library. Except
there were damned few people in the library dressed like that. Even in Los Angeles.

Once again there was a tense knot of people beside the camera. As R.J. approached them he could hear Trevor, the elfin director, speaking.

“—don’t care if she pulls his balls off and dusts the room with them, I’ll have him out of that great bloody Winnebago in five minutes or I’ll bloody well sue his fucking agent!”

Casey was standing beside the elf, trying to calm him down. It wasn’t working. He pushed her away and R.J. felt his blood coming to a boil, but Casey turned and saw him.

“R.J.!” she said with an actual smile. It was quick and strained, but it was a smile.

“Hi, Casey,” he said. “Would you like this guy in six pieces or a full dozen?” The elf looked alarmed and quickly backed away.

Casey put a hand on R.J.’s arm. It felt good. “He’s not the problem,” she said, nodding at the rapidly retreating elf. “It’s Alec.”

“The no-shirt guy? What’s his problem?”

Casey giggled. It was a sound so completely unlike her that R.J. just stared. “Apparently,” she said, the giggle still just a half breath away, “Maggie DeSoto put her hand inside his pants during the love scene.”

R.J. shook his head. “And?”

“And then she laughed and said something nobody else heard, and Alec stormed off the set and locked himself into his trailer. He says he won’t come out again until Maggie is fired and replaced with somebody decent.”

“Well then, great,” R.J. said. “Let’s take advantage and have some lunch. I need to talk to you.”

Casey frowned and shook her head. “Do you know how much it’s costing us for every hour this crew stands around doing nothing?”

“Well, hell, why throw good money after bad? Cancel the picture and let’s get something to eat.”

She ignored him, her eyes already roaming around the room, looking for something. “I can’t leave the set until this is cleared up, R.J.” Her eyes darted over to a bearded guy with a clipboard. “In fact, until Alec comes out of his trailer I’m going to be too busy to—Just a second, Bill,” she said as the bearded guy walked past. She fell in step with him and they walked off, already deep in conversation.

R.J. fumed. So the guy got his crotch grabbed, and because of that, now Casey was too busy to talk. And because this was Hollywood, they would solve it by telephone, if at all, and it would take three days. Time he didn’t have. He had a plane to catch.

It made him furious. He had to talk to Casey, let her know what was going on. Persuade her to keep a low profile and cooperate with the guys Henry Portillo would assign to her. And nobody was doing anything beyond high-powered fretting. Well, hell, there must be something he could do. He was from this town, from this life. He should be able to think of something.

But what? They sure as hell hadn’t had this kind of problem when he was a kid. If anything like this had ever happened on the set of one of his father’s pictures—not that it ever could have—his father probably would have—

It came to him just like that. He looked around the room. Casey was already on the cellular telephone, talking away a mile a minute. Portillo was talking to a cop over beside the food tables. The cop was practically at attention.

And on a chair beside Portillo, R.J. saw it.

Somebody had dumped a battered raincoat and a fedora on the chair. Wardrobe. Probably Alec Harris’s costume. Based on the one R.J.’s dad had made famous.

R.J. stepped casually over and picked up the hat and coat. Portillo glanced at him. “R.J.,” he said. It was part warning and part question.

R.J. ducked it with a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back, Uncle Hank,” he said, and headed for the door.

Outside he shrugged into the coat as he walked toward the two big trailers. They had signs on the door. The one on the left said
“ALEC HARRIS”
and had a couple of gold stars around it. Just in case the poor slob forgot what he was supposed to be.

R.J. put on the fedora. It was a little tight but he jammed it down onto his head anyway. Let the pinhead son-of-a-bitch get it tightened again later.

The door was locked, so R.J. wrapped his fist in the hem of the raincoat and punched through the window set in the trailer’s small door. He reached through, unlocked the door, and stepped up into the trailer, snapping up the collar of the raincoat.

“Jesus Christ,” said a pained, delicate voice, “you can’t come in here.”

R.J. turned and saw Harris lounging on the king-size bed. R.J. tugged on the brim of the fedora. “Is this the trailer reserved for the male lead?” he asked, and he heard the star gasp.

“Oh, my God,” Harris panted. “What are you doing here?”

“The question is,” R.J. said, “what are
you
doing here? In the star’s trailer?”

“Jesus, you look just like him!”

R.J. grinned at the stricken lifeguard. “I guess that’s why they called me. They were having some problems with that other guy.” R.J. sat in the big easy chair and put his feet up on the coffee table. “Who are you, pal?”

Harris was standing now, visibly trembling. “You even
sound
like him!” he moaned.

“I had a lot of practice. Say, I need some privacy before we start shooting.” He nodded at the door. “Would you mind?”

Harris stumbled for the door, muttering to himself. “They can’t
do
this. My agent said they wouldn’t
dare,
” he whimpered.

“Your agent steered you wrong,” R.J. told him. “Maybe if you talked to the director—”

Harris snapped his fingers. “That’s it! That’s right, Trevor’s got too much in the can already, he’ll fight for me!” And he fell out the door and hurried away toward the set.

R.J. stood up and watched him go, grinning. “I’m a ba-a-a-a-ad boy,” he said to himself.

R.J. gave it five minutes, just to be sure. Then he dropped the hat and coat on the bed and strolled back onto the set.

Alec Harris was already back in place, stretched out in fake passion with a still-bored Maggie DeSoto. She was looking across the set to the cop with Portillo and absentmindedly stroking Harris’s butt as a gang of technicians bustled around them.

R.J. grinned. All was right with the world.

Casey was standing behind the camera. R.J. came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Casey,” he said softly. “
Now
how about some lunch?”

CHAPTER 20

Casey took him to a swanky little place over in Studio City. It had a valet parking attendant who didn’t speak English, a headwaiter with a bad accent, a wine list eight pages long, and an orchid in the center of each table.

A bodybuilder and a bimbo sat at the next table. The guy was wearing a sleeveless shirt and bulging out of it in all directions. The bimbo was doing some pretty nice bulging-out of her own. She was packed into a red sheath that hung off her like a coat of paint. The guy sneered at R.J. and turned away as the waiter handed Casey the menus.

R.J. didn’t recognize anything on the menu except the Caesar Salad, and when that came he didn’t recognize that, either. It was loaded with strange vegetables and what looked like sun-dried minnows. Julia Child would have fainted. But R.J. poked at it with an herbal breadstick and managed to get some of it down.

That was easier than getting through to Casey. She got up every two minutes when the pager in her purse went off. She
apologized the first couple of times, but gave up after that and just made her phone calls. She tried to fill R.J. in about the complex negotiations she was neck-deep in as a way of explaining why she had to keep jumping up, but he lost her about the third time she mentioned gross points.

Finally the herbal breadstick snapped and so did R.J.’s patience.

“Casey,” he said. She looked over the orchid at him. He met her look and held it for a minute. Jesus Christ, he thought, Who the hell is this? How can I feel this way about somebody playing that tired old Hollywood power game? But he did feel that way, and some of the irritation dropped away.

“Casey,” he said again. “I have to go back to New York.”

She nodded. “It’s just as well. I’m really sorry, but I don’t have time for anything but the job right now.”

“I’ll be back in a few days, a week, I don’t know.”

She frowned. “It’s not going to be any better for me then.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry, R.J. I don’t mean to sound like this, but that’s the way it is. You caught me off guard, showing up like this. I mean, I’d love to spend some time with you, but this job is important to me.”

R.J. could feel himself getting cranky again. “More important than staying alive?”

Her lush lips grew thin and anger glittered in her eyes. “Aren’t you being just a little melodramatic, R.J.?”

“No. There’s a guy out there who has killed twice, and he’s going to kill again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. I know it. Damn it, Casey, you talk about your job, but
this
is
my
job. I’m good at what I do, too.”

“All right, R.J.,” she said, a little softer. “But I still think you’re overreacting. The police—”

“The police are half-wits. They think I did it. Jesus Christ, Casey, what do I have to say to get through to you? There’s a homicidal maniac on your ass. For Christ’s sake, just be careful. That’s all I’m asking.” She looked at him and gave a little nod.

R.J. took a deep breath and went on, not sure why this was so hard. “Uncle Hank is going to assign a couple of guys to keep an eye on you. Just cooperate with them until I get back, all right?”

“What does that mean, ‘cooperate’?” she asked him. “Am I going to have a patrol car in the shower with me?”

“Christ, I hope not,” R J. said. “It’s not going to be any big deal, Casey. Just a couple of guys watching out for you.”

She gave him another of those looks. “What if I don’t want anybody watching out for me?” she said.

R.J. blinked hard. “Excuse me?”

“You just assumed I would want protection. What if I don’t?”

“Then you’re nuts.”

“That’s very helpful, R.J. Very constructive.”

R.J. shook his head. “I’m sorry. When did we slip into being constructive? What the hell, Casey, I’m trying to save your life. Not start a meaningful dialogue.”

She nodded her head. Not like he was right, but like he had just said something that proved he was nuts. “That’s good,” she said. “Not much I can say to that, is there. Which is pretty much what you want, isn’t it?”

“What I—Casey, what I want is to keep you from getting chopped into small pieces by a maniac.”

“Why?”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”