"So, Mr. Remo," Hank Bindle said, smiling weakly into Remo's upside-down face, "what brings you back here?" Still flat on his back, he attempted to cross his legs casually.
"Knock it off, you ninnies," Remo growled. Reaching down, he dragged the two men into seated positions on the rug. "Who'd you hire to blow up the studio?" he demanded.
"The studio?" Marmelstein bluffed. "Oh, did that blow up?"
Fear compelled Hank Bindle into trying another tack. "Bruce hired him," Bindle blurted, pointing at his partner.
Bruce Marmelstein's eyebrows nearly launched off the top of his head. "We both did," he countered angrily.
"But he came to you first."
"He came to both of us."
"On your speakerphone," Bindle proclaimed. "Your ears were closest."
"I'll show you close ears!" Marmelstein screeched.
He was scrambling across the floor, hands snatching for his partner's bobbed ears, when he felt something grab on to his ankle. All of a sudden, he was off the floor and his desk was flying toward him very fast. When they met, his head made the desk's steel surface go clang! The desk, in turn, made Marmelstein's head ring. It was still ringing when Remo dumped the executive back to the floor.
"From a strictly technical standpoint, I might have been involved in the actual hiring, too," Hank Bindle admitted, eyeing his partner worriedly.
"Who'd you hire?" Remo pressed.
"He called anonymously." Marmelstein winced, rubbing the growing bump on his forehead. "And he got through?" Remo asked, dubious, remembering the hard time he'd had calling from Seattle.
"He said he was Hank's masseur," Marmelstein offered. "Priority stuff like that gets right through."
Bindle nodded. "I've been feeling very tight in my shoulder. I was shot last year, you know."
"Too bad he didn't have better aim," Remo said, deadpan. "What did the guy on the phone say?"
"That he had a surefire way of boosting a movie's gross. I think he might have just been putting out feelers at the time. You know, calling all the studios. Pitching the idea. This was before the Cabbagehead thing," Marmelstein said.
"You know about that?" Remo said flatly.
"Everyone in town knows about it," Bindle insisted. "What a marketing coup. Suburban Decay wouldn't have been a blip if it wasn't for that family getting whacked."
Remo's eyes went cold. "People died, Bindle," he said evenly.
"People never die," Bindle insisted. "Look at Freddy Krueger. He's been dead a bunch of times. How many times has Jason been zapped by lightning and brought back? Hell, Spock wasn't even gone a whole movie." He smiled brightly.
Remo wanted to be amazed. Appalled, even. But this was typical Hollywood. Hank Bindle wasn't capable of separating real life from the fiction of film.
"Of course, we know that people actually technically do die," Marmelstein offered when he saw Remo's hard expression. "But they were going to eventually anyway. And if their deaths can spark something at the box office, why not give their lives some meaning?" He smiled and nodded, the very soul of reasonableness.
At that moment, Chiun and his movie were the only things preventing Remo from giving meaning to the lives of Bindle and Marmelstein. By Herculean effort, he kept his more violent urges in check. "How much?" he asked, jaw clenched tightly.
"To do the lot?" Bindle asked. "Eight million."
"Which we hid in the production costs of your friend's movie," Marmelstein added. By the look Bindle shot him, he realized he had made some verbal misstep.
"It wouldn't have been too critical to the production," Bindle cut in. "After all, we've still got the Burbank lot."
"None of the principal actors were here," Marmelstein offered brightly. Again, he got the same look from his partner.
"Plus Taurus would get some ink for a change," Bindle interjected hurriedly.
"The publicity would have been worth it alone."
"And the insurance would cover the cost of everything afterward."
"Nothing but wins." Marmelstein smiled.
"Mmm-hmm," Remo said. "And how many people were on the lot when the bombs were supposed to go off?"
"Gee, I don't know," Bindle said, eyes flirting with the periphery of worry. "Bruce?"
"I'd have to check with personnel. A thousand, two thousand? We've got tons of people here all day."
"Including Chiun," Remo said, tone flat. Marmelstein suddenly realized why his partner had been shooting him such dirty looks.
"Oh, was he here?" Marmelstein asked, all innocence.
Remo didn't press it.
"Okay, were you supposed to talk to the guy who arranged the bombing afterward?" he asked.
"For other matters," Marmelstein admitted vaguely.
"More box-office boosting?" Remo said, disgust in his face.
"That might have been an item on the agenda," Bindle said uncertainly.
"That stops now." He was thinking of Smith. If the anonymous caller phoned back, the CURE director could probably trace the call to its source.
Remo glanced down at the two Taurus executives.
Bindle's forehead still bled from his unsuccessful assault on the second-story office window. Marmelstein nursed the swelling purple lump on his own head. Sitting on the floor, they watched Remo expectantly. Dogs fearful of an unpredictable master. Remo's thin lips were stretched tight.
"You two dolts are lucky," he menaced. "If anything had happened to Chiun. Anything at all..."
In a whistling blur, Remo brought his hand up and around, slapping it against Hank Bindle's massive stainless-steel desk. The desk made an ugly crackling sound like that of ice dropped in warm water. A black, razor-slice fault line shot across the desk's surface. When it reached the far side, the huge steel slab dropped open.
As the two sections thundered onto the carpeted floor, Remo was already turning away. The room-rattling boom was reverberating in Bindle's and Marmelstein's ears when he slipped from the room.
It was several seconds later-as the last aftershocks were dissipating in the building's foundation-when Bruce Marmelstein finally got up the nerve to speak.
"I don't know what they've got against our desks," he whispered. Hand clapped on his forehead, he climbed uncertainly to his feet.
Bindle followed suit.
"Think we should we have told him about that other little thing?" Bindle asked as he examined the huge desk sections.
"New York? Are you crazy? Absolutely not," Marmelstein insisted. "If he was upset by almost deaths ...well..." his voice trailed off.
"I suppose," Bindle agreed reluctantly. "At least we could tell him about-"
"No! We're not telling him anything," Marmelstein snapped before his partner had a chance to finish. "Hank, we have got to save this turkey one way or another. God knows it's not going to do any box office on its own. We need a boost."
Eyes worried, Bindle slowly nodded. But even as he agreed with his Taurus cochairman, he couldn't pull his eyes from the shattered remnants of his desk.
Chapter 17
It was nearly half an hour since the sole truck bomb had exploded. Police and fire officials had cordoned off the Taurus lot. Remo had Soundstage 9 to himself as he called Smith from an old rotary phone he found on a desk near the big hangar's small side door.
"Report," the CURE director said without preamble.
"I'm in Hollywood," Remo replied, displeasure at his location evident in his voice. "Someone just tried to relocate Taurus Studios to Neptune."
"Yes," Smith said. "My computers just alerted me to the explosion. A truck bomb, according to reports."
"Try bombs," Remo stressed. "I stopped five. You're hearing about the one that got away."