The Remake

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  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 t
ime 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.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Casey—” he said, but she pulled her arm away.

  “This script thing is making me crazy,” she said. “Please, I’ve got to get this under control. It’s important.”

  “So is your life.”

  “R.J.,” she said, with that same I’ll-break-your-balls tone she had used on the elf, “I’d love to see you later, but right now I have a lot to do. This is my job. I’m at work.”

  “You said that already.”

  “You can’t just show up at my job and expect me to drop everything and have a nice chat, all right? I’ll see you later.” And she was off across the hangar and out the door at the far end.

  R.J. watched her go, fighting down his feelings—anger with a touch of fear for her safety, shaken together with admiration at the way she was handling these Tinsel Town Turkeys—and him. And there was something else there, too, a softer feeling. Maybe he was just glad to see her. Even her back.

  “There you are,” Uncle Hank said at his elbow.

  “Yeah. I think so.” He turned to see a sour-looking guy with a goatee standing beside Portillo.

  Portillo jerked his head at the sourpuss. “We’re in trouble,” Uncle Hank said. “Janine Wright wants us in her office right away.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Janine Wright’s office was on the top floor of the only building on the lot that wasn’t a remodeled hangar. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was a real building. It only had two floors, and Janine had herself a good-sized chunk of the second one.

  Windows wrapped around two full walls of the office. On the other two walls there was enough brand-name modern art to start a pretty good little museum. A kumquat tree blossomed in a corner beside an L-shaped kid-leather sofa. In front of the sofa a coffee table stood on a Navajo rug. The coffee table looked to be a solid chunk of quartz crystal with a glass top. Except there were four or five live birds inside it, chirping miserably.

  Janine herself sat behind a massive ebony desk in a high-backed black leather chair. The desk was a good twenty feet long and she sat right in the middle. Her hands were clasped in front of her, making what looked like one large fist, and she gave R.J. and Portillo a terrifying glare as they were shoved through her door. “Sort of like Christians getting pushed in with the lion,” R.J. said to Portillo.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” demanded Janine.

  “Just doing my job, Ms. Wright,” said Portillo mildly.

  “Not you, greaseball. I mean that asshole. How dare you bring that son-of-a-bitch onto my lot? I told you he’s trying to kill me!”

  R.J. pulled away from Portillo and walked calmly across the wide floor to Janine Wright’s desk. When he got there, he leaned slowly over and put one palm down on the ebony surface, just to the left of the blotter. Then he very carefully pushed sideways. The blotter, the solid marble pen holder, the telephone, the calendar, the In/Out basket, two large potted plants, and a huge stack of papers, printouts and scripts all slid the full width of the desk and onto the floor at the far side with a series of crashes, plops, thuds, bangs, and thumps. The trash can fell over and rolled back and forth in a quarter circle.

  Then R.J. walked all the way back to the center of the desk and leaned in until his face was an inch from Janine Wright’s.

  “You stink,” he said in a reasonable tone of voice. “There’s nothing about you that anybody could possibly like or admire. You just stink. Nobody tells you that because they’re afraid of you. Lieutenant Portillo doesn’t tell you because it’s part of his job to be polite, even to a scumbucket like you, because you are a scumbucket with political clout.

  “But I don’t care. I don’t work here, I don’t live here, and I don’t give a good goddamn what goes on here. But I grew up here, and I know all about assholes like you and the crap you do to everybody around you because you think you can get away with it. Well, you can’t get away with it with me. You can’t buy me, threaten me, or persuade me to do jack shit I don’t want to do. So don’t pull any of your horseshit with me, lady. I’ll shove it right back down your throat.”

  R.J. leaned in even closer. The tip of his nose touched hers. “And be polite to the lieutenant.”

  She frowned at him. He had to give her credit. She didn’t even blink. But there was a little bit of uncertainty in her eyes now as she said, “Pick up my stuff.”

  “No.” He moved back a few inches.

  She frowned again, then looked beyond him to Henry Portillo. “Why did you bring him here—” Her eyes flicked to R.J., then back to Portillo. “—Lieutenant?”

  “That’s better,” R.J. said, and stood up straight.

  Portillo strolled across the big floor and stood beside R.J. “I brought him along,” said Portillo, “because I believe he may be able to assist me in the course of my investigation.”

  Janine Wright stared at him. “Horseshit. He sent the fucking letters and you know it.”

  Portillo shook his head. “I don’t know it. And you—”

  She snorted. “Then explain this!” She held up an envelope. “He’s not here in L.A. ten minutes and another one of the fucking things shows up in my mail! With an L.A. postmark! What about that, huh?”

  Portillo’s face was like an Aztec mask with two eyes carved from glittering gems. “May I see that, please?” He stepped forward and took the envelope. As he pulled the note out, R.J. leaned over his shoulder and read:

  If you were just a little brighter

  you wouldn’t need a brand new writer

  I can do this lots more times

  I got lots of tricks and rhymes

  STOP THE REMAKE NOW

  Portillo folded the note and put it in his pocket. “Does this mean anything to you, Ms. Wright?”

  “No. We’re not looking for a new writer. Jason Levy has been on this project from day one. He’s cheap and dependable.”

  “Then as far as you know—”

  The door opened at the far end of the room. “Excuse me, Ms. Wright,” said the sour little dork with the goatee. “A Detective Sergeant Brannigan is on the line.” He managed to look even more disgusted as he nodded at Henry Portillo. “For the lieutenant.”

  “Tell him to go fuck himself,” Wright snarled.

  “I suggested something like that,” said the goatee tartly. “But he said you would probably want to know about this, too.”

  “Know what?”

  The goatee looked like he had a mouthful of rotten lemon. “Jason Levy is dead. Murdered.”

  * * *

  Jason Levy’s house was a small, neat wooden place stuck on a hillside in Coldwater Canyon. It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a small carport, and probably cost a half-million bucks.

  Jason Levy was waiting for them on the floor of the living room. He was a Cool Guy. You could tell he had thought so. He was about thirty and had an expensive shaggy haircut, an expensive leather jacket, and a pair of expensive silk pants. And right now, somebody had half-hacked off his head with a pair of expensive, walnut-handled scissors. They had left the scissors stuck into Levy’s neck. What was left of it. As if they thought they might come back later and finish the job.

  R.J. had seen uglier deaths. He just couldn’t remember when. He turned away, moving to join Portillo over by the window.

  A window had clearly been forced open: its screen was bent and flung on the floor. Portillo was looking carefully at the scratch marks on the window frame. Standing beside him was Detective Sergeant Brannigan, a large doughy guy with long sideburns.

  “I gotta tell you, Sarge,” Brannigan was saying. “If you don’t got the note, I woulda said maybe we check this guy out for gay.” He nodded at Levy’s body. “The scissors and all. Looks like what ya call homosexual rage.”

  Brannigan said it like he wanted Portillo to pat him on
the head, tell him he was a good boy. Instead, Portillo just glanced at him, and then turned to R.J. “What do you think?”

  R.J. shook his head. “The script must be worse than I thought,” he said. “That’s one of the meanest edits I’ve ever seen.”

  “Meaner than poison?” Portillo asked softly.

  R.J. glanced over his shoulder at the nearly headless body of Jason Levy. “Yeah,” he said. “Meaner than poison.” He looked back at Portillo. “You connecting the two of them? Officially?”

  “Officially? Not yet. Too much paper work. In my own mind, however—” He shrugged. “You can only believe in coincidence so far, hey?”

  “Jeez, lookit this,” Brannigan said, and for a moment R.J. thought he was just p.o.’d at being ignored. But when he and Portillo turned, they saw Brannigan leaning out the window, looking down at the side of the house. Portillo leaned out.

  “Well,” he said after a moment, and turned to Brannigan. “Get them.” Brannigan disappeared out the window, squeezing his doughy bulk through quickly for such a big guy.

  “What?” R.J. asked.

  “Don’t touch them,” Portillo said out the window.

  “Don’t worry,” came Brannigan’s strained reply. A moment later his hand came up, holding a Ziploc bag with a pair of black-framed reading glasses in it.

  “They’re not Levy’s,” R.J. said. “They’re too cheap looking. And he was too young—those are the kind of cheaters a middle-aged guy would wear.”

  “Maybe the gardener dropped ’em,” Brannigan offered, struggling back through the window. “Except there’s no garden down there. Nothing but dirt and a eucalyptus tree.” He brushed himself off. “They were wedged into the support beam,” he told R.J. “The beams that hold up the house. Right where you’d have to climb to reach this window. So if a guy had them in his pocket—”

  “Good work, Detective,” Portillo cut him off. “Very good.” Brannigan looked so pleased he didn’t seem to mind when Portillo turned away from him again. “There’s some kind of serial number on the frame,” he said to R.J.