"Given your presence there, presumably this is connected to the Seattle situation?"
"Yeah," Remo said. "The box-murder punks led me here."
"They were responsible for the studio bombing, as well?"
"No, I iced them back in Washington. Different psychos, same agenda. You remember Bindle and Marmelstein?"
"I was surprised to see that they are still cochairs of Taurus," Smith answered. "After the financial fiasco of last year, I would have thought they would be gone with the new regime."
"Gotta love Hollywood," Remo said. "The bigger the disaster on your resume, the higher up you go. Anyway, they're the ones who hired someone to blow up Taurus."
Smith was stunned. "Their own studio?" he asked, incredulous.
"A bomb out of Taurus," Remo offered. "You have to admit, what they lack in smarts they make up for in irony."
"Remo, what possible reason did they have?" Smith pressed.
"Insurance, career move, a high-colonic Rorschach told them to do it? Who knows with those clowns? I don't think the studio is long for this world, Smitty. Nishitsu bought the place after the Ebla debacle, then turned and sold it to some buggy Vegas billionaire casino owner. Rumor is he's planning on selling everything off. From the studio's film archives down to the last can of Who Hash. If it's true, Bindle and Marmelstein are out on their lifted asses."
"And as revenge they wanted to blow up the studio?" Smith asked, amazement fading. He had met the two men once. Hard as it might be to believe, there seemed little they'd be incapable of.
"I doubt it was revenge," Remo said. "More like desperation. You've got to understand these guys, Smitty. They're not like real human people. They don't really think things through. I think they probably just want to get through their next picture."
"Explain," Smith said crisply.
"The movie's costing a bundle to make. They figured they'd trash the Hollywood studio, relocate completely to Burbank and use the notoriety of the explosion to give them a bump at the box office. If this one movie is a hit, they might be able to put the studio back on track. Either that or at the very least they could parlay that hit into a job with another studio. Course, there'd be a lot of dead bodies to clean up, but they could always put the key grips and gaffers on corpse patrol. Pending approval of SAG, the AFL-CIO and the local medical examiner's union, of course."
"Amazing," Smith said. "Were they able to shed light on who is responsible for all of these occurrences?"
"No," Remo said. "It's the same as Seattle. An anonymous phone caller arranges everything for cash. But Bindle and Marmelstein seemed pretty sure everyone in town knows about the box-office boosting that's been going on. If they're right, any of those guys on the Cabbagehead backers' list is likely to know about it, too."
"Hmm," Smith mused. "I had no luck with the phone records at the Randolph apartment in Seattle.
But if we know that the individual behind this has been in contact with the larger Hollywood studios, there might be a way to winnow out the field on that end, assuming the same phone was used."
"That sounds like a big if," Remo said.
"It is all we have at the moment. I will instruct the mainframes to begin a search of phone-company records. They will sort through all of the calls to the major studios and match those that are identical."
"How long will that take?"
"Perhaps several hours," Smith said, "but given the incestuous nature of the entertainment industry, it could well be several days."
Neither Remo nor Smith was pleased with waiting that long. Particularly for a lead that might not even pan out.
"Okay," Remo sighed. "At least bug Bindle and Marmelstein's phones. They said the guy was supposed to call in after he blew up the studio."
"Perhaps given his failure, the engineer will not even call," Smith speculated. "I will tap into their phone line just in case." The sound of the CURE director's efficient drumming fingers issued over the line. He spoke as he typed. "There were agents on the scene, presumably." Given the fact that there were six bombs in all, it was a statement of fact, not a question.
"I just talked to a couple of them before I called," Remo said. "They were hired like the others. A voice on the phone. If it's any help, only one of them was from Seattle. The rest were hired out of some crummy local acting class."
"They were actors?" Smith said, surprised.
"Not real actor actors," Remo explained. "They were just extras on a movie that's being filmed here. That's what got them access to the studio in the first place. They got their ten bucks in the mail."
Smith hesitated. "Remo, are you saying they were hired to blow up a Hollywood studio and kill countless numbers of innocent people for a mere ten dollars?"
"Apiece," Remo said. "And if you're shocked by that, then you've never been a struggling L.A. actor."
Smith let it pass. "I will see what can be dredged up as far as the phone records are concerned." He was about to terminate the call when Remo broke in.
"While I'm cooling my heels, I could rattle a few cages around here. Stefan Schoenburg and the other Cabbagehead backers are just a derivative screenplay away."
There was a moment of consideration during which Remo heard only Smith's nasal breathing. When he finally spoke, the older man sounded infinitely tired.
"No," Smith sighed wearily.
"C'mon, Smitty. It's either that or I hang around here watching Bruce Marmelstein apply wrinkle cream every twenty minutes. And you don't want to know where he puts it."
"No, Remo," Smith insisted. "The situation for us is more delicate than it might normally be." The next words he spoke sounded like a guilty admission. "Schoenburg and the rest have all been generous supporters of the President."
Remo was taken aback. "We never worried about that junk before, Smitty. We're not political, remember?"
"We are not," Smith agreed. "But the President has been making things exceedingly-" he hesitated, trying to put the most tactful spin on things "-difficult of late."
"Since when?" Remo pressed. "This is the first I'm hearing about it."
"It did not concern you," Smith said. "Nor does it now. I am only informing you of this so that you do not do anything rash. Remo, I will not hesitate to send you after Schoenburg if he is implicated in this affair. Until such time, however, it is in this agency's best interest to avoid unnecessary complications."
Smith had to struggle to get out every word. They obviously did not sit well with the older man's rock-ribbed New England soul.
For a long time, Remo had told himself that he didn't like Smith. His employer was cheap, coldhearted and had the personality of a moldy cod. But for more years than he sometimes cared to remember, Smith had been a major part of his life. The CURE director had even saved Remo's life on a number of occasions. Like it or not, Remo had come to a reluctant conclusion a long time ago: Smith mattered to him.
And now, thanks to the time in which they now lived, the man whose conduct as head of CURE had always been above reproach was being pressured into disregarding one of the basic founding tenets of the agency he had built.
Remo wasn't particularly fond of any President, but he'd decided early on that the current occupant of the White House was a political bottom feeder. He hadn't thought he could like the man any less. Until now.
Remo decided not to press the issue.
"Let me know if you find anything," he said after an awkward moment of silence.
"I will," Smith said, a hint of relief evident in his lemony tone, as if he'd expected Remo to argue the point. "If I learn anything from the phone records, I will call you at Bindle and Marmelstein's office."
Wordlessly, Remo dropped the phone back in its cradle.