Warren Murphy: Fade to Black

Leaf had fallen to his knees. Tears welled up in his bleary eyes. He knew that he was minutes away from death. And in those moments that he now knew would be his very last on Earth, Leaf had another realization-in its intensity much like the one he'd had back in his parents' garage so many years ago.

Life was worth living. "Please," he begged, sniffling.

Remo ignored him. "The girls in Florida..." Leaf sucked in an involuntary mouthful of air. Guilt flooded his fearful eyes.

"The ones you mutilated and hung from a tree," Remo persisted. "Give me the who, how and why."

Given the surroundings, Remo expected to hear that they'd been influenced by the Cabbagehead movie that depicted a similar scene. Since Quintly Tortilli had said that this group was involved only in the Florida murders, Remo assumed that Leaf and his cohorts were part of some larger gang that got off on mimicking the violence depicted in the low-budget films. But Leaf Randolph's response surprised him.

"We were paid."

Remo blinked. "Paid?" he said.

"Yeah." Leaf nodded. "This guy called me on the phone one night. Told me what we should do and where we should do it." He glanced at his dead compatriots. His frightened eyes grew sick. He closed them, hoping full disclosure would buy him some of Remo's promised mercy points.

Remo's thoughts were beyond Leaf and his companions. He was right back to his own suggestion to Smith that this was a scheme to enrich Cabbagehead's backers.

"You recognize his voice?" he pressed.

"No. He said he knew about me, is all."

"If he paid you, how'd you get the money?"

"He mailed it here."

Remo glanced around. The place was a shambles. Empty fast-food wrappers and dirty laundry were spread everywhere, interspersed with a multitude of used needles.

"I don't suppose you filed the envelope?" Remo asked.

Leaf bit his lip. "That was weeks ago. I tossed it somewhere. But my mom's come to clean once since then. I guess it could still be here." Leaf hugged himself for warmth. "Weird about that Cabbagehead flick that came out after. It was like seeing myself on screen."

Remo turned back to him. "You didn't know about the movie beforehand?" he said.

Leaf shook his head. "No way. When those other ones happened-like that family in Maryland-I thought, wow." He tipped his head. "You think someone got paid there, too?"

As he leaned his head to one side in a questioning pose, Leaf's exposed neck was too tempting an invitation to refuse. Remo dropped his hand against the drug addict's throat.

A short, meaty buzz, and Leaf's head thudded to the floor. His body joined it a split second later.

Hands on hips, Remo surveyed the grisly scene, a troubled frown across his dark features.

There hadn't been a lone group of killers. In spite of Tortilli's source, Remo assumed this would be the case. But now this seemed too organized to be the work of any of the dolts he'd seen at Cabbagehead. Something was going on here. Something that somehow seemed bigger than either he or Smith had originally suspected.

Turning on his heel, he headed back up the mossy stairs to the backyard. On the flickering television, the warm pastel colors of Tipsy and Doh reflected against the dull plastic surfaces of the many scattered syringes.

AS REMO REACHED the sidewalk out front, a thought occurred to him.

"Dammit," he muttered suddenly.

"What's wrong?"

Quintly Tortilli was standing next to Remo's car, a cigarette hanging desperately from his lips.

"I probably should have asked how much they got paid," Remo said. "Oh, well. Let's go." He rounded the car.

Tortilli stayed on the sidewalk.

"You did more than talk, didn't you?" he said knowingly over the roof of the car, an excited gleam in his eye. "You kacked them, didn't you?"

Remo popped the driver's-side door. "Remo leaving," he warned. "Is bad director coming, too?"

"No way, man," Quintly Tortilli said, shaking his head excitedly. "You've got real-live dead bodies piled back there and you expect me to leave? I only get to see fake violence in my line of work. This is like a fu-" He caught himself. "It's like a dream come true."

Flinging his cigarette to the mud, Tortilli spun away from the car. He fairly danced down the street, a gangly figure in a soaking-wet leisure suit.

As Tortilli disappeared around the alley beside Leaf Randolph's tenement, Remo climbed behind the wheel.

For a moment, he considered waiting for Quintly Tortilli. After all, the director had already given him a lead. And this was a dangerous neighborhood. On the other hand, Remo would be doing the entire moviegoing public a favor if he abandoned Tortilli and allowed the natural savagery of an area like this to take its course.

In the end, it was no contest.

"That movie was really bad," Remo said in justification.

He turned the key in the ignition.

Remo drove off into the mist, abandoning the young auteur to the mercy of the mean streets he loved so dearly.

Chapter 6

Polly Schien didn't like the way the men looked at her.

There were a lot of them. All dressed in the same bland gray jumpsuits with the same logo on the back-GlassCo Security Windows of New Jersey, Inc. For most of the past week, it seemed as if the offices of Barney and Winthrop had been taken over by the men in GlassCo gray.

Polly had decided on day one that she could have done without them. This tired thought flitted through her brain for what seemed like the hundredth time as yet another one of the workers passed her desk.

The black stubble around his mouth cracked into a leer as he glanced at her chest. Even though she'd been wearing turtleneck sweaters the past few days, she still felt naked.

Polly used one hand to gather the wool more tightly at her neck. It was a move she was all too familiar with.

"Do you mind?" she demanded angrily.

"Not at all. Just gimme a time."

The comment brought a rough cackle from the other jumpsuited men nearby. Polly's coworkers-especially the women, but even some of the men of Barney and Winthrop-looked on in mute sympathy.

It wasn't a very nice atmosphere. The window people were horrible. Gross. Totally unprofessional. The only one that seemed like a human being was their supervisor.

He was English. Polly always had a thing for Englishmen. If an American male had had the same pasty skin, unmuscled body, overbite, big nose and awkward hunch as the GlassCo supervisor, Polly wouldn't have given him the time of day. But on this man the whole package somehow seemed regal.

It was the accent, of course. Polly knew it was her one true weakness. In Polly Schien's mind, all you had to do was slap a British accent on a man who was a hillbilly in every other discernible way and suddenly Jethro Bodine became Prince Charles. But she couldn't think about that right now.

The rude GlassCo worker wasn't leaving her alone. He was still standing beside her desk, holding a tube of that special caulking he and his coworkers had been using to further cement the windows in place. For what reason, Polly had no idea. None of the windows on the thirty-second floor of the Regency Building in Midtown Manhattan so much as rattled, let alone popped out of their frames.

"What time do you get off?" The man leered.

Beyond him, near the huge gleaming panes of glass that overlooked the busiest city in the world, some of the nearest GlassCo men on ladders paused at their work. They, too, held tubes of the same caulking. They rested them on the top tiers of the collapsible steps as they watched the drama at the desk below. Farther down the line of windows, bright midmorning sun beat in on other similarly dressed workers, still busy at their pointless task.

"Leave me alone," Polly said, annoyed. The scruffy man had made advances before, but this day he seemed particularly aggressive. She had already considered a sexual-harassment suit, but dismissed the idea. The guy looked like he drank everything he ever made. Going after GlassCo itself was out of the question. She dared not risk upsetting you-know-who.