A few unused studio buildings not visible before could now be seen beyond the rubble of the New York skyline. Their fronts had been blown backward into abandoned offices. Only one had any remnants of a roof left at all.
Beyond the shattered buildings, a vacant tract of dusty land spotted with dry scraggly brush extended to the distant studio wall. The high white rear wall of Taurus had survived the blast with no visible damage.
After a few bored minutes, Remo headed away from the shattered set. With nothing to go on at the moment, he decided to kill whatever time he had to spend at Taurus with Chiun. He went back the way he had come, into the more populated center of the studio complex.
Taurus employees had only been allowed back on the lot an hour ago. Given the excitement, however, very little work was getting done.
Remo found a group of three chattering secretaries standing outside the infirmary.
"The movie that was shooting on the New York set," he interrupted the trio of women as he walked past, "anyone know where it is now?"
"Soundstage 4," one woman supplied helpfully. Her hungry smile as she appraised Remo's lean frame was mirrored by the lascivious looks of her overly made-up friends.
As he walked off, one of the woman called, "Hey, gimme your script and I can make sure it gets read." Her lilt screamed "casting couch."
"Read?" scoffed the one who had first spoken.
"Produced," she called to Remo. "I can get you a three-picture deal off your first script."
"I can make sure you star," the third woman said, trumping her friends. "Just give your script to me. You can bring it to my apartment. Say, around eight o'clock?"
When Remo turned around, all three women were smiling eager capped teeth.
"I don't have a script," he said simply.
It was a phrase they had obviously never before encountered. Three looks of hope collapsed into expressions of utter incomprehension. Leaving the women to wrap their smoking brains around such an unimaginable concept, Remo headed to Soundstage 4.
The red light outside the door indicated shooting was in progress. Remo ignored it. Tugging the door open a crack, he slipped silently inside.
An older man in a cotton print shirt sat at a plain wooden desk inside the door. He had been scanning a bored eye over the latest Variety, but when Remo entered he dropped the paper and jumped to his feet, shaking his gray head.
"This is a closed set," the guard whispered.
"MPAA," Remo whispered back, flashing the appropriate identification. "This is a naughty-word raid."
The man studied the ID for a moment, beefy face scrunched in suspicion.
"Is this something new?"
Remo nodded. "Patricia Ireland says molesting interns is A-okay, but swear words lead to sexual harassment." He shrugged. "All I know is it's giving me more work to do."
Taking his eyes from the ID, the man settled in his worn seat. He seemed satisfied with Remo's claim.
"Yeah? Well, good luck," he whispered. He indicated the interior of the soundstage with an unhappy thrust of his chin. "The MPAA's gonna run out of calculators trying to add up all the swearing this guy puts in his movies."
He returned to his newspaper.
Remo wandered from the desk into the shadowy depths of the massive soundstage.
The guard's comment was strange. The Master of Sinanju didn't appreciate the use of foul language so common in America. To him it was the height of incivility.
Of course, Remo had heard Chiun use plenty of Korean curses during their earliest training sessions. But that use of language had ended long ago. Remo couldn't believe Chiun would write a film laced with profanity.
No one interrupted him when he stopped at the edge of the packed crowd of crew members. There was some kind of staged fight in progress. As the cameras rolled, the actors were screaming at each other at the tops of their lungs.
"You shit-heel-asshole-fuck!"
"Fuck you, you fuck!"
The last dollops of carefully scripted ambrosia dripped from the velvet tongue of a young actress standing in a mock-up of a cluttered apartment. Beyond the windows of the set, a backdrop of tenements stood in for the real New York.
The language devolved from there. The fight intensified into a romantic scene bordering on the pornographic.
Remo couldn't believe his eyes. Everything he was seeing and hearing was entirely unlike Chiun. As his disbelief grew, a familiar voice suddenly shouted from the rafters high above the set.
"And ...cut! Perfect. Damn, I am good."
Remo quickly found the source of the self-congratulations. Quintly Tortilli sat in a squat chair behind the long arm of one of the boom microphones.
With an electronic hum, the young director was lowered from his perch. A few assistants were waiting for him when he reached floor level.
Remo slipped easily through the crowd, coming through the crush of people immediately around Tortilli. They were only aware he was there when he spoke.
"What the hell is this?" Remo demanded.
Still seated, Tortilli turned in surprise. "Remo! Hi!" he enthused. He pushed his baseball cap back on his head. "Just taking back the reins from ol' Arlen here." He nodded to one of the men in his entourage. Relief was painted large on Arlen Duggal's exhausted face.
Remo was stunned. "Don't tell me you're directing this mess?"
"Sure as shootin'," Tortilli said with a broad smile.
"What about that parking-lot Battleship Potemkin you were presiding over in Seattle?"
"That little thing?" Tortilli dismissed. "A lark. I like to indulge my artistic whims. At the height of my Penny Dreadful fame I directed an episode of OR and guest-starred on an episode of China Girl. I like to drive my agent nuts with stuff like that."
"Your agent and everyone else who's ever seen you act," Remo commented dryly.
Tortilli's eyes darted nervously to the others. "Hey, everybody," he called, leaping out of his seat, "get lost." The men and women scattered like billiard balls after a break. "Didn't want them to get the wrong impression viz your little verbal jests re me," Tortilli confided after they were gone.
"Tortilli, human beings don't talk like that, no matter what Kevin Williamson says. And if you're worried about everyone thinking you're an asshole, you probably shouldn't have hosted Saturday Night Live. Why didn't you say this movie was yours?"
"I didn't know," Tortilli insisted. "I mean, I knew I was director, but I didn't know I was, like, the director. Of your friend's movie, that is. At least, not until you mentioned him in the car."
"So why didn't you tell me then?" Remo asked. He remembered Tortilli's twitchy reaction to Chiun's name. At the time he'd been so concerned for the old Asian's safety that he'd chalked it up to Tortilli's general twitchiness.
"I was going to. But people have an amazing knack of winding up dead around you, man. I figured you'd be ticked at me somehow." He quickly changed the subject. "But, hey, that was some ride today, right? I mean, real bombs. That whole 'blown to bits' thing looming over our heads. Armageddon City. I mean, far out!" Jumping up and down, the director gave Remo an idiot's grin.
"You must put sugar on your Cap'n Crunch," Remo commented absently as Tortilli hopped excitedly before him. He had just spotted Chiun across the set. Leaving the director to his frantic calisthenics, he walked over to the Master of Sinanju.
The old Korean had doffed his uniform. As he turned to Remo, he was dressed in a simple marigold kimono.
"Do I need to flee?" the Master of Sinanju asked dryly.
Remo held his hands out wide. "No bomb this time." He smiled. "Promise."
Chiun nodded. He didn't seem very interested in Remo. He was looking past his pupil.
Remo glanced back over his shoulder. All he saw was Quintly Tortilli and Arlen Duggal. When he turned back to Chiun, there was a look of anticipation on the old man's face.