The dark faces of the Arabs were clouded in looks of perpetual suspicion as they roamed amid the Teamsters and studio men, their flowing robes dragging in the coagulated pools of oil spilled long ago.
The young men from Taurus could not have been long out of college. They had the earnest, peeved looks of spoiled rich kids who were used to getting their way. Manicured fingers pointed in every direction. To the ships, to the crates, to the crane, to the trucks.
The Taurus men wore oversize suit jackets of blue, purple and green. Apparently the coats had been fashioned from the same material used to keep eggs from sticking to the bottom of frying pans, for they had a glossy Teflon sheen. Ponytails hung halfway down their jacket backs and bobbed in irate protest with every shouted word.
For their part the Teamsters seemed to be ignoring every word uttered by the young men. They went about their jobs with the sort of infamous union sluggishness that would have put a giant sloth to shame on its most indolent day.
As he came upon the bustling, shouting crowd, Remo was looking for only one individual in the sea of nearly three dozen men. But as he scanned the group, he didn't see Assola al Khobar's face.
Unable to locate the terrorist, Remo singled out one of the studio types.
"Hey," he said, tapping the young man on the shoulder, "is Mr. Koala around here somewhere?" He was embarrassed to use the name Bindle and Marmelstein had given the terrorist.
The Taurus man turned his head slowly, disdainfully to Remo. His head was the only part of his body that moved. The studio man saw instantly that he was looking at a Nobody.
The affronted studio executive looked down at Remo's hand where the offending finger that had had the temerity to touch his person had scurried off to join its four disreputable friends. His entire face puckered arrogantly.
"I beg your pardon," the young man said through clenched teeth.
His nose was so pinched it looked as if someone had sewn his nostrils shut. Indeed this was actually the case. He had instructed his plastic surgeon to make the two openings razor thin. Of course he had stressed that they not be so narrow as to preclude the insertion of a straw.
"Koala," Remo repeated. "They told me at the studio he was here."
"Was is the operative word, isn't it?" the man said caustically. Wind whistled from his slitlike nostrils.
"Don't tell me he's gone." Remo complained.
"I believe I already have."
With that the man turned away. He rolled his eyes histrionically to a pair of his ponytailed colleagues who stood nearby.
Remo exhaled in frustration. "Where did he go?" he asked.
"I think he went to the Hollywood lot," one of the other young men offered. "He's supposed to be working with the stunt teams today."
The expression on the face of Remo's young executive became horrified. He could not believe that his associate didn't have sense enough not to talk to a Nobody. The kid was only six months out of college. He obviously did not have the life experience that came with eighteen whole months working for a major movie studio.
The junior executive's misbegotten notions of courtesy had the precise effect that that sort of thing invariably had. As the more senior of the young executives shot a withering glare at his companion, Mr. Nobody became even more emboldened.
"What's all this stuff for?" Remo asked, crinkling his nose. He pointed over at the ships and their cargo.
The older of the young men raised a staying hand to his junior, lest the other executive inspire further conversation in the Nobody. He then turned his withering eye on Remo.
"Excuse me," the man said with a deep, impatient sigh, "but are you anybody I should care about?"
Clearly he thought Remo was not. Before the question had passed his lips, he was turning back to his companions. He nodded to the younger Taurus executive, silently informing the man that this was how one dealt with Nobodies.
It was the attitude that did it. The ponytail bobbed smugly over the shiny blue suit jacket. The face was aimed deliberately, snidely away.
Remo had already had a bad enough day without having some preening Hollywood type copping an attitude with him. Before he even knew it, he was reaching out. His hand curled around a fistful of ponytail.
The young Taurus executive knew he was in trouble the minute his Tony Lamas began rising slowly and inexplicably from the oil-stained dock. As he began to sense the odd phenomenon of his body levitating, he also became aware of a horrible wrenching sensation at the back of his head. The pain worsened as his floating body turned slowly in place. He found himself-hovering in air-face-to-face with the same Nobody he had just brushed off. The Nobody's hand disappeared beside his head.
The Teamsters seemed to enjoy the arrogant young man's predicament. They pretended not to notice Ponytail Man dangling in midair even while slanting satisfied glances at the confrontation. For their part the Arabs stayed away, too, their suspicion deepening at the sight of Remo.
"I am really a very nice man," Remo explained calmly to the executive.
"I'm sure you are," gasped Ponytail Man. He stretched his toes to the ground. They missed by inches.
Remo frowned. "But you've been behaving in a not nice way to me. Now, I asked a polite question. Where I come from, polite questions are responded to with polite answers."
"A film!" Ponytail Man cried. The pain in the back of his head was white-hot. Explosive. "You must've read about it! The biggest ever!"
"All this junk is for one movie?" Remo asked, surprised.
"Mr. Koala demands realism," Ponytail Man said. "With our budget we can afford to have realism shipped in."
"Koala?" Remo said. "Isn't this stuff up to Bindle and Marmelstein?"
"Yes, yes!" Ponytail begged. His eyes were tearing. As was his scalp. "But Mr. Koala is their superior."
"Polypeptide strings are superior to those two," Remo commented aridly. "So Koala's in on this movie?"
"Yes!" the man pleaded. He was weeping openly now. "It's his baby."
Remo was rapidly losing interest in the whole movie angle of this assignment. He tipped his head as he examined the artificially constructed face of the young executive.
"Did anyone ever tell you your nose looks like a wall socket?" Remo asked.
He dropped the man to his feet.
Back on solid ground, the ponytailed executive instantly began inspecting the back of his head with sensitive fingertips. He was surprised when they came back blood free.
"So where in Hollywood did Koala go?"
One of the other executives quickly told Remo the location of Taurus's Hollywood lot.
"Great," Remo complained. "More bumper-to-bumper driving. I hope I have an easier time getting out of here than I had getting in."
Turning, he walked away from the small crowd. "You should have taken the Harbor Freeway," the younger, more courteous Taurus executive offered to his departing back.
When he was certain Remo wasn't looking, Ponytail Man smacked his young colleague in the head, even as he continued to probe gingerly at the aching portion of his own scalp.
The punk was too polite. He'd never in a million years make it in the movie business.
Kids these days just didn't have a clue.
Chapter 10
This was Waterworid, Heaven's Gate and Bonfire of the Vanities all rolled into one. An epic disaster on a scale grander than anything in the history of motion pictures. With no script, no A-list stars and an AWOL director, the latest, greatest Taurus Studios film was in danger of becoming a career-crushing cataclysm. And no one was feeling the pressure more strongly than the cochairman of Taurus, Hank Bindle.
In the back of his chauffeur-driven jeep, Bindle was touring the Hollywood lot of the old Summit Studios complex. Summit had been around since the earliest days of Tinseltown, but like most of the big old companies it had fallen on hard times of late. It was forced to lease out much of the lot space it had employed during its moviemaking heyday. With the funds generated by the rent, the former feature-film company was able to concentrate on its more lucrative television enterprises. Right now Summit had turned over every lot and soundstage to the new Taurus war epic.