“You could have told us a month ago,” says Jack.
“A month ago, I didn’t love the script,” says Herbie. “You understand this business. Things change.”
We let him have it then, but Herbie didn’t budge. The script was “great, super; ideal for my purposes” and “maybe in the spring finances will allow,” etc., etc.
Jack and I go slamming out of the office. “We’ve been had,” says Jack, “but I don’t know what his game is.”
I’m no wiser, and there we are swearing up a storm and kicking along the sidewalk when Jack says, “I forgot my hat.”
Personally, I never want to see Herbie again, but that hat’s a classic and Jack can’t write without it. To save time, we cut back in the side door of the garage and we’re tearing up the ramp when we see Herbie, suitcase in hand, heading for his black Mercedes. He’s whistling as if he hasn’t a care in the world.
“Hey,” says Jack. “I gotta get my hat out of your office.”
“No time,” says Herbie. “I’m in a major hurry.”
“It’s my Mud Hens hat,” Jack says. “I gotta get it.”
“Tough.” Herbie opens his trunk with the remote, throws in his luggage, and reaches for the door.
I’ve never seen Jack move quicker. Next thing I know, he has Herbie’s arms behind his back. Herbie’s struggling and shouting, and I clock him one and then again. He deserves it. Jack’s trying to trip him up, but Herbie breaks away and I stick out my leg. Crash, Herbie bangs into the side of the car and he kind of staggers and makes a lunge again for the door. I don’t know yet if I hit him or Jack did, but in all the confusion Herbie falls, bam, onto the cement and doesn’t get up.
He’s out cold. So much for man against the elephants. The garage is suddenly very quiet; I can’t even hear the traffic on the Strip. That’s an effect often used in thrillers of the psychological persuasion, but in real life, it surprises me.
Jack and I look at each other. “What are we going to do?” he says.
“He comes to, we don’t work in this town again.”
That’s a consideration. But I take a closer look at Herbie and suddenly I feel sick and hopeful at the same time. “I don’t think he’s coming to.”
Jack disputes this, claiming esoteric medical knowledge.
I check again and shake my head. “He’s not coming to.”
We look at each other for a moment, then bang. That’s what I mean by ideas in your head. We’ve plotted this out. And when somehow the situation jumps from the page to the VIP section of Herbie’s garage, we know what to do. Without thinking whether this is a good idea or a bad idea, we pick up his keys, grab Herbie the Inert and drag him to the back, where, yes, indeed, there’s the trash-compactor chute. Jack punches in the numbers; he always does his research, right down to trash-compactor access. With the over-the-top plots we cook up, you gotta have the details right.
Just the same, I’m in a sweat until the thing starts to grumble and the door slides open. One, two, three, heave! Herbie with his patent-leather loafers and his mean disposition disappears with a soft thud.
“What about his car?” I ask as Jack wipes the keypad and the handle.
“Leave it. We gotta get that hat, though.”
Up the back stairs, down the hall. I’m drenched with sweat and I can hardly breathe. Doing stuff like this is seriously different from even the most vivid imagining. At the door, I pull my shirt cuff over my hand and when Jack turns the key, we open the door, adrenaline bathing every cell, alert for alarms and sirens. I think I’m going to pass out before Jack grabs his hat and we get ourselves downstairs and onto the street. It feels like we’ve hit a wormhole and accessed some parallel universe, because everything looks the same but feels different.
Nothing is quite real to us; we’re light and new. At the same time, any thoughts about the garage and Herbie and the sound of the compactor bring certain details up to more reality than we can handle, number one being the script we followed. This is burned soonest and wiped off our computer disks, and we make an effort to erase the plotline from our neurons as well.
All this ultracaution blows up when we remember that our earlier copies made their way to Chez Herbie. Crisis time. Whatever fiscal or domestic machinations Herbie had in hand, he’d made sure his wife had access to our work. What for?
We’re clueless, but anyone who looks at the script’s evolution from heist to accidental kidnapping to executive kidnapping would sure have questions now. Especially the bereaved Mrs. Herbie.
By the end of the week, Jack and I are little more than sweat-soaked nerves. I get so that I’m hallucinating LAPD cruisers and I about leave my skin every time the phone rings. The longer — inexplicably longer — we wait for what seems inevitable, the worse it gets, and I think we’d both have been committable but for a lucky spell of hurry-up work on a soap pilot.
By the time we come up for air, the Rothberger case is on the back pages. A few months later, it’s stony cold. Herbert A. Rothberger disappeared from his office, leaving half a million dollars skimmed from Distracting Productions in the trunk of his Mercedes. No one has heard from him since.
A year later, Jack and I have almost convinced ourselves none of this had anything to do with us, when we get a call from Leonie Rothberger. Major panic attack, but we can hardly snub the new — and able — head of Distracting Productions.
Next afternoon: same office, different secretary; no more Bowflex and NordicTrack. Mrs. R. ran to a nice line of Asian porcelain and modern furniture. She had a big mane of blond hair and a vaguely predatory air. A fat pile of familiar-looking scripts sat on her desk.
“I’ve been going through the files,” she says. “Herbert had a number of your properties.”
“We’d been discussing some projects with him at the time — of his—” I’m at a loss for words, so I add, “So tragic for you,” though she hardly looks consumed with grief.
“Slipstream is a nice piece of work. I’d like to option it.”
Well, well! It’s nice to be appreciated even by the dangerous Leonie Rothberger. We have a good meeting about casting and production and she offers very fair terms. At the end, she puts her hand on the rest of the scripts. “What do we do with these?”
“We were under a bad influence at the time,” says Jack. “I think the shredder’s the best place for them.”
Leonie Rothberger gave a faint smile. She’s not a woman to reveal her emotions, but — scriptwriter’s eye — I pick up on that. “The wisest thing for your reputations.” A little pause; a warning? “Kidnappings and ransoms are so overdone.”
“And maybe for you too,” I says.
“He’d have taken the money and run, if he hadn’t been — intercepted somehow.” She looks at us very steadily. I guess right then that she has a good working theory of whatever Herbie’s game was and maybe also who did the intercepting.
I don’t trust myself to answer and neither does Jack. After a beat, Leonie Rothberger switches on an industrial-strength shredder and starts feeding in the scripts. “I hate to do this to gentlemen with imagination,” she says as our writing turns into packing filler. “But it’s for your own good.”
“Ashes to ashes and pulp to pulp,” says Jack.
Mrs. Rothberger gives a feline smile. “Amen to that,” she says.
The Theft of the Ostracized Ostrich
by Edward D. Hoch
© 2007 by Edward D. Hoch
Art by Mark Evan Walker