"Listen, guys, your fiduciary concerns viz the studio-nonblowing-up event are grounded, but are, you know, totally rejectable. Just because the place didn't blow up, it doesn't mean the money wasn't spent. Remember, guns and explosives don't come cheap."
"It was doody," Bindle whined.
"Shit costs," Tortilli said simply. "Plus the actors weren't free."
"Extras are a dime a dozen," Bindle said. "It's that Hardwin ham you paid too much to. He's a freaking underpants pitchman, for God's sake. Couldn't you have gotten someone like an F. Murray Abraham or a Stacy Keach type?"
Tortilli put on a reasonable tone. "If the utterly inconceivable happens and the shit hits the fan and this is traced back to you, do you want F. Murray Abraham associated in any way with a Taurus film?"
They considered for half a heartbeat. "Okay, the Hardwin cash was worth it." Marmelstein nodded. "But do you really think this White House stunt of yours will help?"
"It'll get us partway there." Tortilli nodded.
"What does it matter?" Bindle asked morosely. "Even if this is the biggest blockbuster of the summer, we're going to be stuck. Taurus is over. Our careers are shot."
Tortilli smiled. "Don't worry," the director said. "With the final act I've got planned, we won't just have the biggest blockbuster of the summer, but the biggest moneymaker of all time. I'm gonna sink Titanic and Phantom Menace. You'll be able to spin your way into the top spots at any studio in town. We'll all be sitting pretty."
"There's more?" Bindle asked, eyes worried.
"We've only had Acts One and Two. Don't forget Act Three." Tortilli smiled.
Bindle and Marmelstein exchanged a single worried glance. Their shoulders slumped.
"We're gonna trust you on this one, Quintly," Marmelstein sighed. "Since you're a genius and all."
To celebrate their partnership, Bindle poured them all a drink from the decanter at his knees. The three men drank greedily. For some reason the liquor was warm and watery.
"Tastes salty," Hank Bindle observed as he polished off the last of the strange yellow liquid.
Chapter 27
Lee Matson had wanted to be a Green Beret ever since he had seen the John Wayne movie of the same name.
"They're all over this killing stuff," he had assured his Berwick, Pennsylvania, high-school guidance counselor, who was trying to convince Lee to give college a try.
"Yes," Mrs. Patterson had said uncomfortably. Since striding into her office in his fatigues and boots, Matson, Lee W., had seemed a little too preoccupied with blood and bludgeoning and eviscerating small woodland creatures. He also never blinked. Not once. Her flesh crawled underneath her sensible cotton blouse.
"That's maybe something we can see as a goal a little farther down the road," the middle-aged woman offered, clearing her throat. "But have we considered the sound foundation college can give us?"
"Speaking of sounds," Lee enthused, unblinking eyes wide with enthusiasm, "did you know I've recorded eleven separate and distinct sounds a chipmunk makes when you hammer a nail into its head?"
As he went on to mimic each individual mortal squeak, Mrs. Patterson was already on the phone to the local recruiting office.
Just like that, he was in the Army.
And just like that, he was out two weeks later. "I swear I didn't know the bayonet was loaded, Sergeant," Lee begged as the boot-camp gate was locked behind him. "And that landmine was like that when I got there!"
The sergeant used a bandaged hand to push his hat back on his head. His eyes-one of them blackened-were pools of roiling menace. "In ten seconds, I open fire."
"But I want to proudly wear a green beret," Lee whined.
"Join the Girl Scouts."
To Lee, it was the most devastating thing that could possibly have happened. He had only one dream in life: to kill with the Green Berets. Now that dream had been dashed.
After washing out at boot camp, Lee began to take stock of his life and his future prospects. Things hadn't turned out the way he had expected. Okay. The same could be said for a lot of people. Lee decided to grab the bull by the horns. He might not be able to enjoy the legal protection of killing in the name of the American government but, by all that was holy, he would kill.
Of course, Lee didn't just run out and kill the first person he met. He wasn't crazy, after all. In spite of what his parents, teachers, Mrs. Patterson, his mailman or the United States Army thought.
Instead, Lee decided to hire himself out as a commando. A soldier of fortune with a don't-mess-with-me attitude and a high-tech, kick-ass arsenal for hire. Unfortunately, there just wasn't that much call for mercenaries in junta-free Berwick, Pennsylvania. Lee moved to New York.
It would have been great there for him if he hadn't come to the city during law-and-order Mayor Randolph Gillotti's ironfisted reign. The one time he tried to distribute his assassin-for-hire pamphlets in Midtown, he'd been arrested.
There was a long kill-free dry spell. Things got so bad that Lee was about to go the serial-killer route. He was on his way out the door of his apartment one evening to pick up his first tunnel-bunny hooker victim when the phone rang.
Lee had placed classified ads in all the major commando niche magazines. It turned out that the one in Guns and Blammo had caught someone's eye.
"Is this Captain Kill?" the giddy, rapid-fire voice asked. The caller sounded like a record recorded at 33 rpm and played back at 45.
Visions of murdered prostitutes dancing in his head, it took Lee a second to remember his topsecret commando code name, known only to a few thousand magazine readers.
"Yeah, that's me," he admitted gruffly. "Whaddaya got?"
Lee tried to sound like a cool professional. But when the voice on the phone began to outline the specifics of the job for which Lee was being hired, the novice soldier of fortune balked.
"You want me to kill a family?" Lee asked uncertainly.
"Not just any family. Their name's gotta be Anderson. Has to be a mom, dad, son, daughter. The whole Donna Reed thing."
"I don't know," Lee said. "My specialty generally is overthrowing neo-Communist regimes. Maybe you have a South American dictator you want iced?"
The caller was adamant: Name had to be Anderson. Family of four. And there were other specifics. "Why a tunnel?" Lee frowned.
"Do you want me to call someone else?"
"No, no," Lee said hastily. "Tunnels are good. We dug lots of them in Nam."
Lee, who was born two years after the fall of Saigon and whose only knowledge of Vietnam came from his favorite John Wayne film, listened intently to the plan the caller outlined for him.
It sounded almost like a plot synopsis. So detailed-even down to the methods that were to be used for killing the two Anderson females-that Lee felt an involuntary chill.
His only question came at the end, after his would-be employer mentioned once more how important it was that the family be named Anderson. "Where do I find them?" Lee asked. "Anywhere. Try a Maryland phone book."
"Why Maryland?"
The caller was so happily casual it was almost unnerving. "Why not?" he suggested.
After two weeks of legwork, Lee found what he was looking for in his third randomly selected phone book.
It had taken a while to dig the tunnel, but once he was through, the rest worked like clockwork. The murders, stealing his precious Girl Scout beret and sash as trophies, his escape. It was like poetry.
"Congratulations," his employer had said delightedly the day after news of the slaying broke in the papers.
"Just doing my job," Lee bragged. He was back in his New York apartment.
"And you're good at it, man. There's a bonus already on its way. Enjoy it. Catch ya soon." True to his word, the bonus had come by special Taurus studio courier that afternoon. The bag was even adorned with the famous constellation insignia of Taurus.