The Remake (32 page)

She kicked him in the shin. “Stop calling me kid,” she said. “You keep calling me that, and I’m not a kid. I’m a woman.”

“I guess you are at that,” R.J. admitted ruefully. “But you don’t need to rape me to prove it.”

“It wouldn’t be rape if you’d cooperate,” she said. “Why won’t you?”

R.J. shook his head. He had been about to say that he couldn’t, that he was committed to somebody else, and suddenly that made him wonder if that was true. And then he almost laughed out loud, because he was sitting in the dark with a beautiful naked girl, mooning about Casey.

“There’s someone else,” he said finally. “I think.”

“What does that mean? You think? Shouldn’t you be a little more sure than that before you say no to me?”

“It’s complicated,” he admitted. “We’re kind of at a crossroads with each other right now.” And he realized as he said it how true that was.

“I’m not asking you to marry me,” Mary said. “Just—you know. For now. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, we’ve killed some time, right?”

“I can’t,” R.J. said.

“Because it’s
wrong
?” she hissed at him.

“Yeah. For me, right now, it’s wrong.”

She sat there on the couch with the blanket draped around her. It didn’t hide the fact that she was naked underneath it. It didn’t hide the fact that she was feeling pretty blue, either.

“Well,
shit,
” she said, her head hanging down toward her knees.

“Damn it, ki—Mary, don’t take it like that.”

“How am I supposed to take it?”

“Listen,” R.J. said, with as much kindness and firmness as he could manage. “I’m flattered as hell. You’re a terrific-looking girl and I’m going to have to sit in a bucket of ice water for a week to get over this, but the answer is no. It would be great, but it’s too complicated. I have to work out this other thing first. And besides, you’re my client. I have a hard and fast rule—I almost never sleep with my client.”

There was a rustle of cloth as the blanket moved and he felt a quick squeeze. “Hard, anyway,” she said and stood up. The blanket slid to the floor and she stood in front of him again, naked and looking great that way.

“All right, R.J.,” she said. “Just so you think about what you’re turning down.” And she slowly turned, making sure he saw all of her, and then slithered away down the hall.

“Believe me, I’m thinking,” he muttered, and shook his head. Forget getting back to sleep. He’d be throbbing for hours. What the hell got into her? And for that matter, what the hell got into him, turning her down? Was he going crazy, or just getting old?

Maybe that was it. Senile dementia. Too much aluminum in his diet. He didn’t eat enough fish and now his brain was shrinking. Hell, he’d never in his life turned down a tumble with a girl as good-looking as that. And whatever he’d said to her, he had slept with clients. Plenty of times. It was surprising how often they wanted to, figured it was part of the deal; after all, he was in a service industry.

He’d liked most of them a lot less than he liked Mary, too, so that had nothing to do with it. So what did it have to do with?

Casey?

Again, he’d never been particularly faithful in past relationships. Why stay single if you were going to get yourself trapped in something with all the disadvantages of marriage? “Seeing someone” didn’t have to mean “
not
seeing someone else,” and as far as he was concerned it never had.

Until now. Until Casey.

He hadn’t thought about it, but he’d blurted it out and now he knew it was true. He was committed to Casey. Even though he had no idea if she was committed to him, he had said no to fooling around with Mary because he didn’t want to put his relationship with Casey in any danger. He didn’t even know if he had a relationship with her anymore, but didn’t feel like taking the chance.

R.J. flopped back down on the couch with a groan. His brains were turning to mush, going soft on him, no matter how hard he was elsewhere.

And why did all of this have to come down on him right
now, when he needed to be especially sharp? How could he catch a killer with all this other stuff slamming into him? What was the old saying, about how it never rains unless it pours? In his case, it was pouring, and that wasn’t water falling on him, either. It was pure, uncut raw sewage.

R.J. lay there for a long time, thinking about love and death. He never did get back to sleep.

CHAPTER 41

It was bright and early when they rolled up to the gates of Andromeda Studios. R.J. wasn’t feeling particularly bright, but he couldn’t argue with the early part. He hadn’t slept much the night before, thinking about what might happen today, and he hadn’t slept at all the night before that, after his naked visitor had left him.

The encounter with Mary had left him in short temper for the meeting with Janine Wright, but luckily Portillo and Bertelli had been there to sweet-talk her—and to keep R.J.’s temper in check. He felt his bile rising just being in the same room with her.

But in the end she had agreed. Had to, really. There was no other way, and whatever she might say about bad publicity selling tickets, the body count was high enough now, even for her.

“Good morning, John,” Portillo greeted the handsome young actor at the gate.

John flashed him a smile. “Hey, Lieutenant,” he said. He glanced into the car and did a small double take when he saw R.J. “Um, Lieutenant, I’m not supposed to let that guy on the lot.”

“There’s been a change in plans, John,” Portillo told him. “I’m sure it’s all right. They just forgot to update you.”

The young actor still looked doubtful. “I don’t know. It could mean my job.”

Mary leaned over so John could see her. “It’s really okay, Johnny,” she said. “I kind of need him with me for protection.”

“Muh-Mar—Miss Kelley?” the gatekeeper blurted, and to R.J.’s surprise the kid blushed. “Whu-when did…what are you…?”

Mary gave him a sweet smile. “We’re all supposed to be on the set. Mr. Brooks is working for me.”

“I, I…um,” John stammered. He was fire-engine red, and obviously so flustered by Mary that he couldn’t find the floor with his foot.

“Please?” Mary said, and John lurched backward and stumbled for the button that opened the gate.

As the car moved forward onto the lot, R.J. snorted. “I think he likes you, Mary,” he said.

She looked at him coolly. “Some people do,” she said. “I don’t know why you find that so strange.” And she turned away and looked out the window.

Portillo gave R.J. a dark look. “Oh, brother,” R.J. muttered to himself.

Since the incident on the couch two nights ago Mary had been a little distant, which R.J. guessed was only natural. He couldn’t be sure since he’d never turned a woman down before, not when she was naked and in his arms, but he guessed this was how she might be expected to react.

Still, it was certainly putting a crimp in the working relationship. She hadn’t said a word to him since, nothing more complicated than “Yes, no, pass the salt, please.”

But what the hell. They were here, and there was a job to be done. And in a little while it would be over, one way or the other.

Portillo pulled into a parking spot next to a step van that was parked near the soundstage.

R.J. put a hand on Mary’s shoulder and she stepped away from it. He shrugged. “Listen, Mary,” he said. “Just keep your eyes open, and stay close to me.”

“I’ll try,” she said, with a tone of voice that said it would be hard work to stay close to him.

R.J. ignored it. “My guess is, it’s going to be a lot of waiting and maybe nothing happens. He knows we’re waiting for him, but I think he’s got to try, anyway. You’ll be safe, there are twenty cops all over the soundstage, and another dozen studio security guys. And I’ll be right there with you.”

She gave him that tone of voice again. “Oh. Then I guess there’s really nothing to worry about,” she said, and she turned away and went in.

R.J. was beginning to wish he had just said fine, the hell with it, and let her have her way with him on the couch. He swore under his breath and followed her in.

Portillo went to check the perimeters and talk to his men. Mary quickly and pointedly found somebody she knew and went to stand and talk with them, leaving R.J. by himself.

All around the set, everything looked almost exactly the same. To R.J., it looked like the crew were even wearing the same T-shirts. The long row of food tables still stood along the wall, surrounded by casually grazing Teamsters, and the same three or four guys were still hustling at top speed while everyone else stood around in clusters, talking, and sipping coffee.

The set itself was completely different. The walls of the cheap hotel were gone and in their place was a smooth, featureless white screen. It folded around the stage with no visible seams or corners.

Three huge wind machines crouched in an arc around the set. Nosing in between them was the front end of an airplane, what looked like a DC-3. The nose and windshield were there, perched above the soundstage. Behind them was nothing, no tail section, no wings. The airplane was chopped off weirdly in accordance with movie-making logic; if the shot only shows the nose, you don’t need the whole damn plane.

R.J. knew what the set-up meant. From the other machines and technicians standing around, R.J. could see they were all set to re-create the famous scene. Wind, rain, and heartache.

R.J. had seen the original maybe a hundred times. His mother and father facing each other on the runway, the wind and rain whipping around them, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, as they said good-bye. He still couldn’t watch it without getting a lump in his throat, and he wasn’t the only one. It was maybe the most famous movie scene of all time.

And there was the beach boy, standing next to the porn queen, in perfectly re-created costumes, getting ready to shoot that scene again. R.J. could hear the beach boy, repeating one of the lines over and over, in a bad imitation of his father’s famous growl.

R.J. had no problem seeing in his head what they were trying to copy. His mother and father, eaten up by passion and now torn apart by a world gone crazy.

Like any kid he’d seen his dad unshaven and in his underwear, heard the two of them yelling things at each other—he knew they were human beings.

But they were the two perfect star-crossed lovers in this scene, too. And when he thought of them together, he thought of them standing there, holding hands and saying good-bye as the rain whipped at them.

It was his family portrait, damn it. And these half-baked clowns were cutting off the heads and sticking their own faces through the holes, smirking and gawking like two rubes at the fair.

And to make it worse, there was Casey on the other side, talking with the bearded guy who was always racing around with a clipboard.

Great, R.J. thought. Now the picture is complete. Mom, Dad, and Casey. Three people who have yanked on my strings more than any others.

And standing next to Casey, looking bored and mean at the same time like a dozing rattle snake, was Janine Wright.

R.J. just looked. He felt like his guts had just gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson.

Janine Wright had agreed to loiter on the set for a day and act as bait. Not because she really gave a damn, but she knew it was publicity, and she knew that for every clip she placed on the evening news she sold thousands of tickets to the movie.

So there she was, surrounded by a clump of photographers, looking around for somebody to disembowel and eat. And just maybe, somewhere nearby, somebody was looking at her the same way.

R.J. turned away and headed for the food table. A large silver coffee urn stood on one end. He went over and grabbed a cup. There was no point in trying to talk to Casey. And there was nothing for him to do except wait. So he sipped the coffee and did that, trying to keep an eye on Mary and not on the horrible mockery on the soundstage.

Six cups of coffee and two apples later he was still standing, waiting, and watching. R.J. felt like he would slosh if he moved. But his feet and his back were aching from just standing. And in spite of trying not to watch what was going on out on the soundstage he’d seen and heard enough to make him feel queasy.

So he talked himself into a short walk around the outside of the soundstage. Just to stretch for five minutes, check around, see if maybe Kelley was hiding behind an old piece of scenery or something. And mostly to get away from all of it before he bit a camera.

He stepped over to where Mary Kelley and a young guy in a salad bowl haircut were talking about something with an unlikely name that might have been a band from what they were saying.

“Excuse me,” R J. said. Mary turned cool blue eyes on him.

“Yes?” she said, the way you might talk to the gardener when your mouth was full of cucumber sandwich and petits fours.

“I’d like to step outside for a couple of minutes,” R.J. said.

“Oh, please feel totally free,” Mary replied. The bad haircut snickered.

“Thanks,” R.J. said, and grabbed her by the arm just above the elbow.

“Hey!” Mary said as R.J. yanked her toward the door.