Warren Murphy: Fade to Black

"Damn," he muttered.

"...the Jaws of Life to get her out the door," Revolta finished. Glancing over, he noted the look on Remo's face. "Oh," he said, looking down at the script. "Does it still end with the big gun battle at LAX? When Quintly mentioned that to me, I told him it reminded me too much of Die Down II."

Remo hadn't even thought to see how the screenplay ended. He was still trying to digest the fact that for much of the day he had been holding a virtual blueprint of the White House siege in his back pocket.

Remo had been ready to blame Bindle and Marmelstein. But now he realized Quintly Tortilli was a better actor than he'd thought. The director had been faking it back in Seattle. And in Hollywood, he'd neglected to mention that the movie that would benefit most from the recent news events Die Down IV-was his.

In an instant, it was all clear. Tortilli was the mastermind.

Remo skipped to the end of the script. He could see nothing of a battle at Los Angeles International Airport.

"It looks like it's on a boat," he said aloud.

"Must have rewritten it again." Revolta nodded.

"Definitely a boat," Remo said, talking more to himself than to the actor. He was riffling through the script. "Terrorists steal a mothballed battleship from Long Beach."

"Isn't that closed?" Revolta said. "Anyway, I don't like it. Too much like Under Siege. Although that was a Die Down I rip-off." He glanced around, annoyed. "Are they going to feed us or what? I haven't eaten since the airport."

Only now were they taxiing for takeoff.

Remo wasn't paying attention to the actor. He was thinking about how Chiun's screenplay ended. It seemed anticlimactic after invading the White House. The theft of a retired battleship was mild compared with what had already gone on. But here it was in Remo's hands.

The Master of Sinanju already suspected that Remo was jealous of his great movie deal. Remo didn't know how Chiun would react when he told him about Quintly Tortilli. And for the first time in a long time, Remo didn't give a damn how all this would affect Chiun's movie. After so many months of lies and secrecy and having to deal with the old Korean's ballooning ego, he wished he could savor the sensation.

His face was grim as he settled back in his seat for the long flight to California.

Chapter 29

Alone in his trailer on the Taurus lot, Quintly Tortilli studied himself in the long door mirror. His garish purple polyester tuxedo with its brazen green ruffled shirt, sequined maroon cummerbund and giant floppy yellow felt bow tie would have embarrassed a circus clown.

To the rose-colored eyes of Quintly Tortilli, the reflection staring back at him could have just stepped off the cover of GQ. It had been a long time since he'd had so much fun dressing up.

Die Down IV was nearly finished.

He'd finished the bulk of the film weeks before, wrapping up work with the principal actors just before flying to Seattle. In Washington, he used the Cabbagehead facilities to edit the Arlen Duggal-directed footage that was flown to him on a daily basis.

There was no doubt about it. In spite of what Bindle and Marmelstein and Duggal thought, although he seemed to take an unconcerned attitude with this film, it was his baby. Quintly Tortilli was in charge of the project from start to finish. And the finish line was in sight.

The special-effects house hired to complete the various miniature, matte and pyrotechnic shots would have their work back in less than a week. Die Down IV would make its pre-Memorial Day release date. And Tortilli would have a hit. Finally.

He'd had a hit before. But Penny Dreadful was more like an indie film that had somehow crossed over. Quintly Tortilli-the genius, the maverick, Hollywood's hottest young director since Stefan Schoenburg-had never been able to duplicate that early success.

In the mid-1990s, he was ubiquitous. He made all the talk-show rounds. He tried his hand at acting and producing. On a whim he'd even directed that episode of the highly rated television hospital drama, OR.

That was when Quintly Tortilli was at the top of his game. But the fire that he thought would never go out soon threatened to be extinguished. And with it, his career.

Without something to promote, the talk-show circuit eventually dried up. His acting was universally panned. The films he produced were all box-office bombs.

Actors could coast for years on just a little box-office success. The young genius of Penny Dreadful found that forgiveness didn't extend to directors.

The truth was Quintly Tortilli needed a hit. Badly. But few respectable offers came in.

As his bank account dwindled, Tortilli found that he needed something even more basic than a hit.

He needed a job. Of course, he always had his script-doctor income, but lately even the paychecks for that were shrinking. A high-profile directing job could pump his asking price back up into the stratosphere. When word came from Taurus Studios that Tortilli was wanted to direct the next Die Down sequel, he had accepted without hesitation.

There were troubles from the start.

First, Lance Wallace didn't want to do it. He claimed he had said everything he wanted to say with his lone-cop character in the first three films. A twenty-two-million-dollar paycheck and gross points changed the actor's tune, but his salary cut seriously into the film's budget.

The script offered Tortilli another challenge. The original Die Down formula had been copied so many times that the new chapter threatened to cover the same ground all over again. Quintly's harshest critics had always claimed he didn't have an original thought in his ego-swelled head. He had to do something different with his comeback film.

To this end, somewhere during their earliest script discussions, Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein had brought Quintly a script by an unknown writer. The Taurus cochairs had insisted that their discovery was absolutely super-talented and that Quintly absolutely had to use his script even if he had to change everything in it to do so. As they sang the praises of their new screenwriter, the two men were sweating visibly.

When Quintly resisted, Bindle and Marmelstein had insisted. Since this was long before the Regency or the failed attempt to destroy Taurus Studios, and the blackmail opportunities they presented, Quintly, unable financially to walk away from the project, had accepted the novice screenwriter's story.

Over the course of the next few months, Tortilli changed so much in the original script that it was unrecognizable.

When the script changes were mentioned to the Taurus cochairs, both Bindle and Marmelstein were afraid that their screenwriter might object.

"You're worried about a writer?" Tortilli had asked.

"We're worried about this writer," Bindle replied.

"But he's a writer," Tortilli argued. "They're just ...well ...writers. No one in this town worries about writers."

"You've never met him," Marmelstein said uneasily.

"And I'm gonna keep it that way," Tortilli said. And he had. All through the rewrites, he avoided the crazy old man. In fact-much to Bindle's and Marmelstein's relief-the writer stayed away straight through the final change in which the stolen-ship ending was jettisoned. When Lance Wallace finished up his work on the film, Tortilli had booked it to Seattle, just in time to avoid meeting Mr. Chiun. He let Arlen Duggal take the heat from the famously ill-tempered screenwriter.

Once in Seattle, Tortilli not only began work on the independent film he was doing for Cabbagehead Productions, but he completed the behind-the-scenes arrangements that would ensure financial solvency for the rest of his life.

Tortilli was just one of the many well-known Hollywood backers of Cabbagehead. He had bought his interest in the studio back in his post-Penny Dreadful heyday, when it seemed the money would never run out.