"I should've brought some friends," Mitchell said. "Or some guys from the plant. We don't like the movie we make you eat it."
Bobby Shy laughed again. "Hey, I know you not going to like it. That's why you don't want to have anybody with you. I mean you wouldn't want to have anybody in the whole fucking world to see this flick but you, man, and that is absolutely word of honor, no bullshit."
They turned east onto Jefferson and after a few minutes, passing the Uniroyal plant and the Belle Isle Bridge and the Naval Armory, Bobby Shy hunched forward to study the street, a continuous row of dark storefronts.
"All right, pull in, anywhere this block."
"It's no parking along here," Mitchell said.
"Man, stop the fucking car, will you, please. Go in that gas station, it's closed."
Get a ticket now, Mitchell thought. That would be something. What're you doing around here? Well, you see this guy with the gun's taking me to see a movie. Oh, you're going to see a movie. Yeah. Well, where is this movie?
"Cross the street," Bobby Shy said.
They crossed Jefferson toward a theater marquee, Mitchell thinking of the policeman and then of his lawyer, Jim O'Boyle. I saw another movie, Jim. This time in a theater. A closed theater. In a closed theater, uh? It sure looked closed, with its bare marquee and dark foyer that was like the boarded entrance to a mine tunnel. A car passed on Jefferson, a faint sound behind him that faded to silence.
"Go on in," Bobby Shy said.
Mitchell tried one of the doors-the handles showing between the protective sheets of plywood-then the other door and stepped inside, into a deeper darkness.
"This way," a voice said. Not a voice he had heard before, or a face to go with the voice, only a small flashlight beam at knee height, pointing to the foot "You come through here." The light began to recede.
Mitchell followed it into the theater, past an empty candy counter to the right-side aisle. The voice told him to hold it there, facing in toward the seats.
Then the black man with the stocking must have taken the flashlight, because as the beam made a spot down the aisle in front of him, it was the black man's voice, close behind him, that said, "Where you like to sit, man? Take a seat."
Mitchell wondered if one place was better to sit than another. If it made any difference. If he was going to sit here or if he was going to do something. He walked about a third of the way down the aisle and into a row, taking the second seat. Behind him, maybe two rows, he heard a seat go down, hitting hard.
"I'm right here, baby, case you 'fraid of the dark."
A voice from above them, a familiar voice, coming from the projection room, said, "Can you hear me all right?"
"We hear you," the black man said.
Mitchell looked around. The black man was seated, head and shoulders without features. High on the back wall two squares of light showed the projection room.
"Turn the fuck around," the black man said. "You make me nervous."
For several minutes there was dead silence in the theater. Mitchell sat in darkness that had no form and reached to nothing, wondering what he was doing here, wondering if he could get up and walk out. He said to himself, They won't shoot you. They get nothing by killing you. But he was here now and he knew they would keep him here if he tried to leave. Probably. Unless he hit the guy first. The black guy. If he could get to him and belt him.
But Mitchell didn't move. In the moment he might have, if he was ever going to try it, a bright square of light appeared on the screen and he could see the rows of empty seats now in front of him and the pale, high walls of the theater.
"Titles would go here," the familiar lazy-sounding voice said. "And credits. Slick pictures presents… Tit in the Wringer. Or, how Harry Mitchell agreed to pay one hundred and five thousand a year and found happiness. Note, I said a hundred and five a year. Not just the first year, not just the second. No, every year of your life. But wait… here's the star of our picture, little Cynthia Fisher, not having any idea what the fuck is going on."
The girl's face, in color, nearly filled the screen, her expression puzzled, changing, frowning, nearly obscuring the look of fear in her eyes.
Her lips moved and the narrator said, his voice slightly higher and almost in sync with the screen, " 'What is this? Come on, what're you guys doing? I told you, I don't want to be in a movie.' "
The camera began to pull back, out of the close shot of the girl's face. "Some people," the narrator said, in his natural, lazy tone again, "you got to tie down to convince them they can act. I told Cini she's a natural. But, as you can see, she's very modest."
Mitchell was looking at her full figure now. She was sitting in a straight chair against a vertical pipe; a cement wall in the close background; a basement room brightly lit. He could see that her hands were tied behind her. A rope circled her waist tightly and seemed to go around both the chair and the pipe. She was wearing a print blouse that he recognized and faded blue jeans.
"Next," the narrator said, "to keep your interest or whatever up, a little skin."
The girl's eyes raised expectantly as the camera began to move in again. She was looking off to the side of the camera and her lips said, in silence, "What're you going to do?"
The camera held on her face. The picture on the screen moved unsteadily and the camera dropped to her blouse. Two hands came in from the side-hands and forearms in a dark shirt-clutched the front of the girl's blouse and ripped it open to her waist, then pulled it back tightly over her shoulders. One hand lingered, lifted a bare breast and let it fall.
"Not a lot there," the narrator said, "but then this is a low-budget flick, done on pure spec. Next scene…"
Mitchell was looking at a square of what seemed to be half-inch plywood, the size of a newspaper folded once. Hands, the same hands as before, lifted the square from where it was leaning against the cement wall and turned it around.
"No marks on either side, right? Right."
The hands raised the sheet of wood. Again there was a close shot of the girl's breasts before the tan, grained surface of the wood appeared, filling the screen. The camera pulled back, unsteadily, and Mitchell was looking at the girl again from perhaps ten feet: the sheet of plywood resting upright on her lap, covering her from waist to shoulders, the upper end propped beneath her chin.
"Now what have we here?" the lazy tone said.
For a moment Mitchell wasn't sure what he was seeing.
"A reverse angle," the narrator said. "We're now looking past Cini from behind, over her shoulder, to see what she sees. And what is it?"
The camera began to zoom slowly toward a table fifteen feet away.
"Right. A gun."
The revolver was mounted in a vise that was clamped to the edge of the table.
"You recognize it?"
Mitchell recognized it.
"Let's see it from the side. There. A thirty-eight S and W. You ought to recognize it, sport. It's yours. The box of thirty-eights on the table? Yours. The piece of paper? That's your permit."
As Mitchell watched, an arm extended a sport coat into the frame and dropped it on the table.
"And the coat. I believe you wore that to our first home movie session. Ratty-looking goods, if you don't mind my saying. What I like about it is your name inside. Now then- "Hello, what is that tied to the trigger?"
The camera moved in to feature the revolver.
"Why it looks like a wire. Funny, it extends back someplace, so that if you pull on the wire it fires the piece. That's pretty clever, isn't it? You can shoot the gun without messing up any prints that're on it. We'll let you think about that a moment. Meanwhile, here's our little star again."
The girl's face, above the plywood sheet, showed an expression of fright and bewilderment.
"Looks like she's sticking her head out of a box, doesn't it? Honey, relax. You're gonna do the scene. Don't worry about it."
Mitchell could see it coming. He pays or they kill her. And this is the way they would do it.