The performer-who looked about nineteen-spun to Remo. Filthy blond bangs slapped against his pasty face.
"That was Nirvana, dude," he snarled as Remo scooped up the telephone receiver.
"No," Remo explained, pressing the multiple-1 code that would connect him to CURE's special line. "Nirvana is a transcendent state in Buddhism of pure peace and enlightenment, achieved by stuffing a guitar down someone's throat. Wanna help me get there?"
The look in Remo's eyes cowed the sidewalk minstrel. Gibson guitar in hand, he beat a hasty retreat down the damp street in the direction of his smashed amp.
Smith answered on the first ring.
"What is it?" the CURE director asked tensely.
"I just heard about the explosion in New York," Remo said. "You want me to fly back?"
"There is nothing concrete yet," Smith said, voice flirting on the edge of exasperation, as if he'd already been through this with Remo.
"Is something wrong, Smitty?" Remo said, brow furrowing. "You're not generally on the rag right out of the gate."
The tension drained from Smith's voice. "I'm sorry," he sighed. "It's been a trying morning." He cleared his throat. "The explosion in Manhattan is barely forty-five minutes old. No useful information has yet been learned."
"They're saying terrorists on the radio."
"That is not known yet. And speculation is pointless and potentially dangerous at this juncture," Smith cautioned. "I need not remind you of the wild accusations that followed in the wake of the federal building bombing in Oklahoma City. I will continue to monitor the situation in New York and will decide on a course of action once the facts are known. Until then, do you have anything to report there?"
"It's weirder than I thought," Remo began. "Turns out this is a profit-making scheme after all. I met some of the entrepreneurs this morning."
"Explain."
Remo provided a rapid rundown of what he had learned from Leaf Randolph, including the fact that he'd been hired over the phone and that he and his companions were responsible for only the two Florida murders.
"I will have the apartment searched," Smith said once he was through, "in addition to checking phone records."
"Start with calls from California," Remo suggested. "I know independent movies usually love being up to their ankles in corpses, but this plot's way too complicated for them. Which reminds me, you didn't tell me the Cabbagehead backers list reads like the Fortune 500."
"What do you mean?" Smith asked.
"I mean you can't fling a dead cat at their offices without it landing on a check from some slumming Hollywood moneybags. They've got millionaires up the wazoo up here."
"Remo, according to my information, the studio is owned by one Shawn Allen Morris."
"Don't believe everything you read," Remo advised.
Smith hummed thoughtfully. "Give me some of the names, please," he said, his tone betraying mild intrigue.
Remo could almost hear the CURE director's fingers poised over his keyboard. He decided to go for the bombshell first. "Try Stefan Schoenburg on for size," he suggested.
The CURE director paused. "I have heard of him."
"So's everyone else on the planet. He's been picking all our pockets for the last twenty years." Remo then mentioned a few of the other names he could recall. Even though the rest were celebrities in their own right, Schoenburg was the only one Smith recognized. When he checked the others, he found that all were millionaires. One was actually a billionaire.
"One moment," Smith said, puzzled.
A few minutes of rapid typing ensued. When Smith returned to the line, his confusion was unmistakable.
"I believe I have found a partial list of investors," he said. "There are many more individuals than those you named. I have rarely encountered a more convoluted money trail. It is a veritable Gordian knot of finance."
"Must have hired Gary Coleman's accountants," Remo said. "So what's the deal?"
"I am looking at one producer's financial information now," Smith said. "He seems a typical Cabbagehead investor. Roughly half of the funds he invested in the Seattle film group seem to have been filtered through companies that distribute films of an, er, adult nature. The other half was routed circuitously through real-estate ventures."
"Were they just fronts?" Remo asked.
"No. The distributors and land transactions were legal. That some of the money was then siphoned to Seattle seems almost an afterthought during the normal course of business."
"Hmm. I'd heard that everybody in Hollywood was into either land or porn," Remo mused.
"Yes," Smith agreed uncomfortably. "Although knowing this does not answer the underlying question. Why would men who are successful in their own right seek to associate themselves with such a small-time film operation and then seem to act to cover up that association?"
"They'll only cover up until Oscar night," Remo explained. "After that they'll be pushing each other into the orchestra pit trying to grab the gold."
"I am being serious, Remo."
"Me, too," Remo insisted. "I'm only telling you what I heard. And given our past experiences in Hollywood, I don't think it stretches credibility. These numbnuts already have all the money in the world. Now they want recognition."
Smith mulled Remo's argument. "Perhaps," he admitted after a moment. "But what is the likelihood that Cabbagehead films could produce an award-winning movie?"
"C'mon, Smitty. Get out of the office once in a while. The sort of junk they make wins awards all the time."
The weary sigh of Harold Smith carried over the line.
On the other side of the country, alone in his Folcroft office, Smith was thinking of his conversation with the President. Perhaps he was a relic of another age, too far behind the times to be useful in this new era.
"If it is as you say, then it is possible the motivation here is egocentric," the CURE director admitted tiredly. "I will attempt to follow the money chain further. In the meantime, I would advise you to return to your source. He was helpful already-perhaps he knows something that could be of further use."
Remo balked. "Oh, come on, Smitty," he complained. "There's got to be some other way. Quintly Tortilli is a dingdong with a capital ding. You've got to stick him on the roof just to shut him up, and he dresses like a Latvian pimp. I got motion sickness just from looking at his shirt."
"Please, Remo," Smith pressed.
From his tone, he sounded too fatigued to argue. At the Seattle phone booth, Remo spun to face the road.
Row after row of coffeehouses faced one another across the street as far as the eye could see. Too many, it seemed, for all of them to be sustainable. Yet people continually entered and exited shops at a pace so steady Remo was certain they had to be going out one door and into the next. He closed his eyes on the seemingly choreographed activity.
"Fine, I'll track down Tortilli," Remo relented. "But if he isn't dead already, I just might kill him myself."
Before Smith was able to ask if he was joking, Remo dropped the phone back into its cradle.
WHEN THE SLACKER generation had first found a home in the independent-film industry, it seemed a match made in heaven. Every loafer with no job and an eight-millimeter camera could be a genius in his parents' basement without suffering through the mundaneness of everyday family, work or life responsibilities. But with the elevation of indie films beyond cult status, a new pressure was brought to bear on an industry not famous for its strong work ethic. The success of low-budget movies at Telluride, Cannes, Sundance and other film festivals had upped the ante even more. The Blair Witch Project only made matters worse. The urgency to be the studio to create the next Quintlyesque counterculture hit grew more intense with each season. At the moment, no one felt the pressure more than Shawn Allen Morris.