Bindle's voice got even lower. "The drugs?"
Marmelstein shook his head. "That was funneled back here through his contacts in the Patriconne Family in Rhode Island. There's been nothing since the raid. I don't know if it's shut off completely or if the Patriconnes are just laying low."
"That shouldn't matter," Hank Bindle said. "No matter how much we spend, we'll make it back on The Movie. Look at Titanic's world gross in relation to cost. After all, we're going to be the only movie out next summer."
Bruce Marmelstein's sick look intensified. "About that," he said uncertainly. "There were a lot of other productions going on away from here when the invasion started. They're still going on. East Coast facilities are taking up the slack. All the other major studios have promised they won't let this alter their summer-release schedules one bit."
Hank Bindle began to get the same queasy feeling as his longtime partner.
"We're not going to be alone?" he gasped. His voice was small.
Marmelstein shook his head. "There are at least two probable blockbusters set to open before Memorial Day. We've got to make The Movie deliver the goods. Otherwise forget The Avengers or Batman and Robin, we are going to have the most expensive bomb in the history of movies to our names."
Hank Bindle's head was spinning. His stomach clenched madly. He grabbed the shoulder of his partner for support. When he looked at Marmelstein, his eyes were watering.
Bindle looked for a moment as if he wished to speak. But he suddenly twisted away, doubling up at the waist. With a loud heaving noise he vomited up the veal Parmesan lunch he'd had flown in special from his favorite Venice restaurant on one of the new Taurus jets.
"I don't know any other way to make a living!" Bindle said desperately through the retching. Wheeling, he grabbed for his partner, gripping Marmelstein's arms so tightly he could feel bone. "What will I do?"
"You?" Bruce Marmelstein whimpered. "I can't go back to styling hair. My scissors are hanging on the wall at Planet Hollywood."
"So what can we do?" Bindle asked.
"I don't know," Marmelstein said. He was nearly crying. "Maybe we should think like executives think. I mean, what would the President do in our shoes?"
A thought suddenly occurred to both of them. Their panicked eyes locked.
"Scapegoat," they said in unison.
"Ian?" Bindle asked.
"Not for two and a half billion."
Bindle snapped his fingers. "Koala was supposed to direct this white elephant. We can say it was all him." His eyes were filled with eager hope.
Thinking aloud, Marmelstein took up the thread. "He is the middleman between the studio and the sultan. If we can get him to sign the okays for the money I've gotten from Ebla, we could pin this whole disaster on him."
Hank Bindle knew the problem they were presented with. How could they possibly get Mr. Koala to sign away more than two billion dollars of Sultan Omay sin-Khalam's personal wealth? "Blackmail?" Bindle suggested.
"We don't have anything on him."
"Bribe?"
"With what?"
"Oh, yeah,"
"Besides, he's a millionaire or something already."
The solution came in a sudden instant. "Kidnap him and torture him until he signs?"
"Bingo." Bruce Marmelstein smiled, as if they'd just decided on the proper shade of mauve for their office.
"And afterward?" Bindle asked.
Their mutual conclusion was obvious. It was the only alternative, considering the corner they'd painted themselves and their studio into. But unbeknownst to Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein, their obvious conclusion would spark a crisis in the Mideast and create a near disaster in their own backyard.
"Kill him," Bindle and Marmelstein concluded happily.
Behind them, their animatronic camel chugged to life. Smoke poured from its mechanical bottom.
Chapter 23
Tom Roberts was this close to bolting from this halfassed production. He didn't need these headaches. Tom was sitting alone in his trailer on the Taurus lot. Empty wine bottles and marijuana roaches littered the table in the small kitchen. His moon face was resting morosely in his hands as he considered what he'd gotten himself into.
Tom had been nominated for Academy Awards for both Dead Guy Strolling and for starring in the prison film The Hairlip Salvation. His career didn't need a bona fide disaster like Taurus Studios' The Movie. The problem was, he and his agent had bought into Bindle and Marmelstein's early hype that The Movie would be the only movie out next summer. He'd signed on before any of them had thought the whole project through clearly. Now he and his common-law wife, Susan Saranrap, were hopelessly entangled in a project that seemed destined for the discount-bargain basket of video stores across America. Assuming this bomb even made it to video.
He wondered if this would be the movie that sank his career. Hollywood was more forgiving now than it had once been when it came to disasters. After all George Clooney could still find work, for God's sake. He might survive this great gobbling turkey of a film. Then again he might not.
He couldn't risk it. If he lost his movie career, all he'd have to look forward to day after day was his common-law wife and the ten screaming brats they'd had together before menopause had driven into her like a runaway concrete truck.
He had to get out.
Tom lifted his head from his hands. Through boozy eyes he took in the interior of the trailer. He'd have to get off the Taurus lot somehow. But how? There were Arabs everywhere.
And once he got off, what would he do? There were more Arabs out in the streets. Not as many as were clustered around the studio, but still enough to make slipping away unseen difficult.
As he scanned the junk lying around the room, his bleary eyes settled on a piece of wardrobe that he'd tossed aside. His assistants hadn't put it away yet. It was the robe he was supposed to wear in his starring role in the as yet unscripted movie.
Looking at the rumpled cloth, an idea suddenly occurred to him. An event rare indeed.
Tom got uncertainly to his feet, knocking the bottles and joints to the floor in the process. Staggering, he pushed away from the table and over to the robe.
FOR THE THIRD TIME Remo entered the Taurus lot. The guard at the booth waved him through. By this point the old man recognized Remo.
He parked his rented car in the space marked Hank Bindle: Park Here And You'll Never Park In This Town Again and headed for the door.
When he pulled the building's main door open, Susan Saranrap nearly barreled into him as she stormed outside. She stopped short, eyeing Remo accusingly. She seemed suddenly to remember him from before.
"Are you an assistant to Bindle and Marmelstein?" she demanded without so much as a hello.
"Me?" Remo asked, surprised. "No, I have my sanity."
Huge, furious eyes glanced around the parking lot. "Well, do you know where they are?"
"They're not in their office?"
"No," she said. "And that faggot Ian has no idea where they're hiding. Neither do any of the workmen." She groaned loudly. "You know, I might quit this movie and go off and have another baby," she threatened, blowing a clump of stringy hair from her haggard face.
"Are you insane?" Remo asked. "You're 150 years old."
Susan appeared shocked. "I'm only thirty-eight," she insisted hotly.
"You were already thirty-eight back when Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton owned this town," Remo replied.
She sucked in an angry hiss of air. "You think you're so smart?" she challenged. "I can have an embryo implanted." She jutted out her chin. There were wrinkles on it.
"Yeah, I heard they can do that now." Remo nodded. "Why not see if they'll stick in a brain while they're at it?"
He sidestepped the spluttering actress and went inside.