Chester shook his head. "Wathn't uth," he promised.
"Who's the rest of 'us'?" Remo asked.
Even as Remo spoke, Chester's fearful eyes darted over Remo's shoulder to the front door. For an instant, a glimmer of hope sprang alive in their black depths.
Remo squashed it immediately.
"Three guys. Three guns. Just came in the front door," Remo supplied without turning. "Are they 'us'?"
Chester's shoulders slumped. He nodded.
As he did so, his dangling beer bottle banged somberly against the table's damp plastic surface. "Okay, let's take it outside," Remo said thinly. Rising to his feet, he grabbed Chester's bottle in one hand. He was pulling the grunting killer to his feet when he heard a familiar determined crinkling of artificial fabric hustling toward him.
"Remo," Quintly Tortilli urged, bounding up beside him. He was glancing over his shoulder to the main entrance.
"I see them," Remo said, voice level.
"They hang with him," Tortilli insisted, pointing a pinkie and index finger at Chester. "I seen the dudes in here before. Maybe we better fly?" Tortilli was more skittish than usual-even by Quintly Tortilli standards. Gone was all of his earlier bravado. Dropped in the middle of a real life-and-death scene, the director's natural instinct for self-preservation had kicked in.
Remo nodded tightly. Tugging Chester by the bottle, he led them to the rear exit. He waited long enough to be sure the trio of armed men had seen them before ducking outside.
The rear door of the bar spilled into a cluttered alley. A mountain of garbage bags was heaped against the grimy brick wall. Swinging Chester by the bottle, Remo tossed the thug onto the trash heap.
"I think they saw us," Quintly Tortilli whined. He bounced from foot to foot a few yards down the alley from Remo. His body language screamed "Retreat."
"They didn't..." Remo began. Tortilli's shoulders relaxed. "...until I waved them over."
"You what?" the director asked, fear flooding his darting eyes. "You're kidding, man, right?"
Remo held up a finger. "Hold that thought." He hadn't even lowered his hand before the rusted door burst open. The three hoods he'd waved to from across the bar spilled into the alley.
"Guns!" Quintly Tortilli shrieked. He became a flash of purple polyester as he dived behind a cluster of trash bags.
All three weapons were drawn before the thugs had even bounded out the door. Although they twisted alertly, none of the men had expected their target to be standing a foot from the door. Before they knew it, Remo was among them.
He danced down the line, swatting guns from outstretched hands. At the same time, his flying feet sought brittle kneecaps. Guns skipped merrily away along the soggy alley floor, accompanied by the sound of popping patellas.
When the men fell, screaming, Remo was already pivoting on one leg. A single sweeping heel punished three foreheads. All three men dropped face-first to the ground. As the life sighed out of them, Remo turned to Chester Gecko.
Chester was attempting to sit up on the pile of heaped trash, blood-filled bottle still dangling from his nose.
"That was the preview," Remo said icily. "Time for the feature presentation."
Chester tried to scurry backward up the garbage mountain. Bags tore open beneath his kicking heels, spilling their rotting contents into water-filled potholes.
"Wait!" he cried. "I gnow more!"
When Remo paused, Chester sensed his opportunity. But before he could speak, they were both distracted by a shrill sound issuing from beside the garbage mound.
"Whoa, you are heavy duty," Quintly Tortilli whistled.
Sensing the end of the battle, the director had just come crawling into view. His eyes darted from the trio of bodies near the door back to Remo. "I am going to option your story," he stated with firm insistence.
"Put a sock in it, Kubrick," Remo snarled. He returned his attention to Chester Gecko. "Spill it," he demanded.
"Da one we did wath juth a little job," Chester insisted. He was panting in fear. "I gnow thome guyth who dot hired to pland a bunch ob bombth. Dey were hired to blow up a whole thtudio."
Remo glanced at Quintly Tortilli. The director's balled-fist face was drawn into a puzzled frown. "Cabbagehead?" Remo asked Chester.
The hood shook his head. "Thmall botatos. Dith ib a Hollywood thtudio. Ith going down today. We arranged da bomb thupplieth." When he nodded to his dead friends, his expression weakened.
"Where'd you hear this?" Tortilli asked.
"Da guy who dold me already dot paid." Chester shrugged.
Remo's stomach had twisted into a cold knot the instant Hollywood was mentioned. "What studio?" he said hollowly.
Chester sniffled. He winced as he inadvertently sucked a noseful of bloody beer back into his mouth.
"Tauruth," Chester burbled.
It was the last word he ever spoke.
Quintly Tortilli didn't even see Remo move. In a mere sliver of time, the dangling beer bottle had swung up and launched forward.
Facial bones surrendered to the thick glass spear, puckering Chester's face in at the center.
As the hood collapsed to the garbage heap, beer bottle skewering his brain, Quintly Tortilli let out a low whistle. More a reaction to Chester's revelation than to the killer's abrupt death.
"Taurus," he said. "Man, they've taken their hits over the last few years but-ka-blammo!-this has got to be the mother of them all." He turned to Remo. "You know, I-"
Tortilli found that he was alone. Glancing around, he spotted Remo racing toward the mouth of the alley, arms and legs pumping in furious, urgent concert.
At Chester's revelation, unseen by Quintly Tortilli, a rare emotion had sprung full-bloom on the cruel face of Remo Williams. And that emotion was fear.
Chapter 11
In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, tightened federal regulations had made it increasingly difficult to purchase massive quantities of fertilizer without proof of need. This was deemed necessary to keep terrorists from visiting explosive death on another unsuspecting domestic target. But difficult wasn't the same as impossible. Lester Craig could attest to that.
"You realize we've got enough shit back there to take out half a city block?" Lester asked proudly from the driver's seat of a large yellow Plotz rental truck.
It was as if his seatmate didn't hear him. "Guard," William Scott Cain said in icy reply. Lester had met William the day they'd started work on this project. Lester didn't like his partner at all. Lester was more of a good-old-boy type. His passenger was more an Ivy Leaguer whose snobbishness was never more evident than in the condescending way he gave out commands.
Guard. William Scott Cain made that simple, five-letter monosyllabic word sound like an insult.
"I see him," Lester griped, muttering under his breath, "ya smug little bastard."
They were at the north gate of Taurus Studios in Hollywood. The high white wall of the motion-picture studio ran in a virtually unbroken line all around the complex.
Lester steered up the slight incline in the road where the high walls curved around to the simple guard shack. They stopped at the plain wooden barricade.
"Passes," the guard said tersely.
The attitudes of studio guards traditionally ran hot and cold. Hot was reserved for celebrities and executives. For the likes of Lester and his companion, the attitude of all guards bordered on hostile.
"He wouldn't ask Tom Hanks for his pass," William groused even as Lester flashed each of their laminated cards at the guard.
Once the guard was satisfied, he leaned in his booth. A moment later, the gate rose high in the air.
"Thank you kindly." Lester smiled at the guard, for what he knew would be the last time.
The two-and-a-half-ton truck with its cargo of ammonium nitrate eased past the uplifted wooden arm. With an ominous rumble, it headed deep into the Taurus lot.