The Remake (33 page)

“Hey, yourself, your highness,” he said. “I’m trying to keep an eye on you, and since you graciously granted me permission to leave the room, you’re leaving the room with me.”

“But I was just—”

“You were just being a pain in the ass. I understand. It’s not a big deal, I have to work with pains in the ass every day. And you’re too nice to be any good at it.”

“Damn it, R.J.—” She tried to yank her arm away, but he held on tight.

“Damn it yourself. Listen, Mary, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But people get their feelings hurt every day. It’s part of what life is about. So get over it. You don’t want me to call you ‘kid’ anymore, so stop acting like one.”

She was quiet for a minute. At least she stopped struggling until they got close to the door. Then she sighed. “I guess it was—you know. Kind of funny.”

“Only if it had happened to two other people,” R.J. said. He let go of her elbow and turned to face her. “I said I was sorry. I mean that. You walked right into me when I was trying to figure out where I am with somebody else.”

“Bad timing,” she said. “The story of my life.”

“Bad timing,” R.J. agreed.

A guy dressed like a giant smirking blue lizard pushed past them behind Mary’s back. The poor yutz was pushing a dolly with a couple of metal tanks on it. A fistful of balloons was draped over the handlebar.

R.J. shook his head. “Look at that if you want funny.”

Mary turned and looked at the lizard’s back. “Oh, God, not
him.
More publicity.”

The Big Blue Lizard was one of the most famous characters on the tube right now. All over the country there were guys making a hard buck at kid’s parties with the suit. This one obviously made balloon animals, too, with his tanks of helium.

R.J. almost chuckled. “This is probably the schmuck’s biggest gig ever,” he said.

“Maybe. But he’s likely to get mugged here.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “The rights to the character are owned by another studio. So somebody is probably having a joke at Mother’s expense.”

“The less funny she thinks it is, the better I like it,” R.J. said, and they went out the door together.

Outside it was warm, the sun was shining, and R.J. supposed that birds were singing somewhere. Not on the Andromeda Studios lot. Not with Janine Wright on the set. The birds wouldn’t dare.

They walked one time around the building, taking about fifteen minutes to do it, stretching, breathing deeply. It was a large building, a converted airplane hangar. Henry Portillo had stationed men at all the key points. They were dressed in jeans or overalls.

“Oh, my God,” Mary giggled.

“What?”

“Those guys are trying so hard not to look like cops, you know what?”

“Yeah. It makes them look like cops.”

They had a small laugh together, and most of the tension from their awkward encounter in the night was gone.

After a few more minutes R.J. had walked the kinks out of his back and neck.

“You ready to go back inside?” he asked Mary.

She sighed. “Yes. I guess so. I just—”

R.J. waited for her to finish the sentence. She didn’t for a
minute. Then she sighed again and squared her shoulders. “Mother hasn’t even said hello to me. You know. Not that it matters, but—”

“But it matters.”

“Yeah.”

R.J. put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve been there, Mary. But everybody loved my mother, and I couldn’t even complain.”

She smiled a little. It wasn’t much, but it was better than a sigh. “You’ve had it rough, Brooks.”

“You too, Kelley.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go back in and watch the Teamsters eat doughnuts.”

The first thing R.J. noticed when they came back inside was how quiet it was inside. They must be shooting already, R.J. thought, and he peeked around to the set.

Between them and the soundstage were maybe fifteen people. And beyond them he could see another dozen and maybe fifteen more by the food tables.

And all of them were stretched out motionless on the floor.

CHAPTER 42

Kelley was here.

Had to be. There was no other explanation for a room full of people suddenly stretched out on the floor, and R.J. had no idea whether they were alive or—

Casey!

R.J. pushed Mary behind him, scanning the room for danger. Nothing. Nothing but a strange smell that made him dizzy. “Stay here,” he snarled to Mary. “Prop the doors open,” he added, and lurched quickly across the room to Casey.

Kelley. Somehow he had gotten in, slipped past all the security, and he was here, now, and somehow had even smuggled in something else, a way to put down a whole room full of people. But how?

If everybody knows what you look like and you want to get past them, cover your face.

Cover it with something that everybody expects to see anyway.

Something like a costume if you’re on a movie set.

Something like a Big Blue Lizard costume…?

Of course. It was simple, and R.J. felt pretty simple himself for not figuring it out sooner. He had known the lizard was out of place and thought it was a joke. He had forgotten Kelley’s sense of humor.

It was a joke all right. But the laugh was on R.J. And he would be out of laughs for a long time if anything had happened to Casey.

R.J.’s head was pounding and he felt dizzy as he ran across the room to where he had seen her last. There was no way to tell whether everybody was dead or just unconscious from looking at them as he stumbled past. But no one was moving, not even a twitch.

And whatever had knocked these people out, there was still some hanging in the air. Not enough to drop him, but he felt it.

It didn’t matter. He would have crawled on his belly the last twenty feet to get to Casey.

He knelt beside her and felt for a pulse. It was going strong, that beautiful big vein in her lovely neck throbbing with a steady beat. He lifted her eyelid. The eye was clear, the pupil reacted to the change in light, but there was nobody home. She was okay; that was all that mattered. He could leave her for a minute and concentrate on catching a maniac. Wherever he was. And as R.J. stood carefully, fighting the dizziness, he noticed for the first time.

Janine Wright was gone.

He had last seen her standing next to Casey. The cluster of photographers that had been following her around was still there, laid out in a fan shape. But the center of the fan was empty. Wright had been there. Now she was gone.

Where?

And even as he looked around, struggling against a creeping sleepiness from breathing the tainted air in here, he heard
it: a soft, faint scraping sound. Not far away, but he couldn’t quite place it in the huge hangar.

R.J. stepped softly across the room, trying to locate the sound. It came at regular intervals, a kind of—dragging?

Somebody dragging something heavy?

Like a body?

R.J. moved on, trying to keep the sound separate from the pounding in his head. He moved silently past the set. The two stars were stretched out in place. The makeup woman with the big hair was beside them.

The sound seemed closer now. R.J. went past the huge wind fans. At the foot of one was the dolly, draped with balloons, and two now-empty tanks. Whatever had been in the tanks, it wasn’t helium. Kelley had opened the valves right behind the fan to make sure that everyone in the entire hangar got hit fast. It had worked.

The dragging sound was interrupted by a thump and then it stopped. R.J. moved around back of the screen.

There. Along the wall, maybe thirty feet away, there was a ladder built into the wall, leading up to the catwalk. And climbing the ladder, with the limp body of Janine Wright over one shoulder, was the Big Blue Lizard.

R.J. reflexively reached for his gun, but he wasn’t carrying. Couldn’t in California. He’d have to go it alone, without the comforting weight of his .357 in his hand, and with a steady throbbing between his ears that was making concentration very tough.

Kelley was up on the catwalk now, Janine Wright’s body still over his shoulder. With the stuff in the air already making him light-headed, R.J. felt like he was watching some weird dream: a Big Blue Lizard carrying the woman away to its nest in the sky. And R J. was on the ground, with both feet stuck in cement.

He shook it off and moved to the foot of the ladder.

He started up, slowly, finding that his head was gradually clearing. Either the stuff was dissipating or he was climbing above it. Didn’t matter; either way, as long as he could remember how his hands and feet worked for another minute, he’d be okay.

R.J. made it to the catwalk and stood with his hand on the wall, swaying slightly. He took a deep breath and felt himself steady. Then he accidentally looked down. It seemed like a long way down to the floor. R.J. scrabbled at the wall for a handhold, momentarily dizzy again. He had never been bothered by heights, but then, he’d never been half off his nut from knock-out gas while chasing a maniac across a catwalk, either. And damn it, it
was
a long way down.

It didn’t seem to be bothering Kelley. If the lizard knew he was being followed, that didn’t seem to bother him, either. Of course, he was wearing the Big Blue Lizard mask. Maybe he couldn’t see or hear R.J. But he was walking along the thin strip of metal with his ex-wife over his shoulder, apparently as carefree as if he were walking through the park to a Sunday picnic.

R.J. wasn’t wearing a goofy, bulky blue suit, and he wasn’t carrying 150 pounds of woman over his shoulder, either. But it was all he could do to follow Kelley and stay on the catwalk. The guy was impressive, no question.

Kelley was moving much faster than R.J. could manage. He was now about a hundred feet ahead, over a distant section of the hangar. There was another scene set up on the floor over there, R.J. didn’t know what.

And now Kelley was stooping, dropping the motionless body of Janine Wright to the catwalk. R.J. felt it shiver slightly as she struck. He moved faster, aware that whatever Kelley had planned, Janine Wright was running out of time.

R.J. was seventy-five feet away. Kelley uncoiled a long rope from his other shoulder. He bent and began to tie it to Janine Wright’s feet. A faint orange glow came up from below and lit the lizard’s features.

Fifty feet away. Kelley finished the knots, yanked on them to make sure they would hold, and stood up with the far end of the rope in his hands.

Twenty-five feet. Kelley, holding tension on the rope, began to nudge the body off into the darkness below. Closer now, R.J. could see the glow underneath them was coming from a hole of some kind raised up off the floor. He didn’t have any idea what the glow was, but it wouldn’t be much fun for Janine Wright. And he couldn’t get close enough in time.

Janine Wright was headed down toward that glowing hole.

“Hold it, Kelley!” he called. Kelley paused, looked up. “That’s enough. Let her go.”

He said something R.J. couldn’t catch throughout the lizard mask.

R.J. shook his head. “Sorry. I’m sure it was a cute comeback, but I can’t hear you through that thing. Now pull her up and take a step back.”

Kelley didn’t step back, but he did pause. And then he pulled the lizard head off. He dropped it off the catwalk and then took off the gas mask he was wearing under it. “I said,” Kelley repeated, “that I don’t think you really want me to let her go from this height.” And he smiled. It was the gentle smile of a man making a small joke to help an awkward guest relax.

“You know what I mean,” R.J. said. “Just ease her down to the floor.”

“I wish I could. But I’m very sorry.” Kelley shrugged and lowered the body another few feet.

“Kelley!” R.J. said, taking a step forward.

“Mr. Brooks—” Kelley said, and held up the end of the rope. R.J. got his drift and stood still. “I would very much like to help you out. I know I owe you a few favors for the trouble I caused you.”

“You’re goddamned right you owe me,” R.J. said, thinking anything to keep him talking, just a little longer… “Why the hell did you frame me, you son-of-a-bitch?”

Kelley held up a hand, palm outward, and Janine bobbed upward on the end of the rope. The bastard is strong as hell, R.J. thought. “I really do apologize,” Kelley said out loud. “But when I saw what you said in the paper, I realized it made you a perfect suspect. A lightning rod. You’d take all the heat and leave me in the open to do what I wanted. I’m sorry, Brooks, really, and I’d like to make it up to you. But—” He smiled again. “Perhaps some other time? I’m kind of busy throwing my wife into a volcano at the moment.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I know. It really sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But remember, this is Hollywood. Crazy is the major industry.” He nodded down at the source of the glow. “A model volcano. What they call a miniature. With real lava flow. Temperature’s only a few hundred degrees, about as hot as a deep fry at a burger joint. But it should be enough for dear Janine. Funny that she should go this way. Kind of a sneak preview of her afterlife?”

He laughed. Not a crazed, wild-killer laugh, not at all. The laugh of a guy who had stubbed his toe and was making a joke out of it instead of complaining.