The Big Bamboo (35 page)

“Wait. What’s this?” Mel noticed something in his “in” basket. An overnight article Betty had dropped off from the studio’s clipping service.

“What is it?” asked Ian.

“Oh, my God! The
Tattletale
. They found out about the contract!”

“How’d it get out?”

“Who cares? We’re dead!”

“You-know-who could show up at our door any minute!”

“We have to leave town!”

A knock at the door.

The brothers screamed.

Betty came in. “You all right?”

“What is it?”

“This just came for you.” She handed Ian a small brown package. “The courier said you needed to open it right away. Seemed a little strange.”

Ian gave her a curious look as he peeled strips of packing tape.

“There’s no return address,” said Mel.

Ian tore open a cardboard flap. “Audiocassette?”

A piece of paper fell out of the box and fluttered to the floor. Mel picked it up. “It’s a note.” He started reading out loud, then stopped. “Betty, you can go now. We’re fine.”

She didn’t think so, but left anyway.

“What’s it say?” asked Ian.

“That a duplicate of the tape is on its way right now to the police.”

The brothers ran across the office to the shelves with the stereo equipment. They inserted the cassette and hit play. They listened.

“Holy shit! It’s our meeting at the Polo Lounge! It’s got everything!”

“That son of a bitch recorded us! The murder! The coverup!”

Mel grabbed the briefcase by the handle. “We definitely have to leave town!”

Detective Reamsnyder rushed over to his partner’s desk, waving a cassette tape. “You’re not going to believe this.”

A vintage mustard Citroën circa
Day of the Jackal
screeched away from the Vistamax administration building and raced across the studio, toward the entrance.

A uniformed man with a clipboard came out of the guard booth. He recognized the approaching vehicle and stepped forward with a smile. He dove out of the way.

The car never slowed, smashing the orange crossing arm to splinters and scattering Ally mourners. It made a skidding right on Olive and picked up the freeway.

Ian hyperventilated and grabbed his heart. “We’re dead for sure!”

“Shut up! I’m trying to think!” Mel cut the steering wheel.

They bounded down an exit ramp, scraping the guardrail, and sped south on Highland. “Anyone back there?”

Ian turned around. “So far, so good.”

Mel glanced at the lane next to them. “Holy God in heaven!”

“Pull over,” yelled Serge.

“Speed up!” yelled Ian.

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

“He’s going to hit us!”

Serge smacked their rear fender in the traditional destabilizing maneuver. Mel spun out and violently jumped the curb at the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl.

The Sebring whipped around and parked on the far side of the stalled Citroën. Serge was out of the car in a flash. Ian went to lock his door, but Serge was quicker.

“Come with me! We don’t have any time!”

The Glicks threw up their hands. “Don’t kill us!”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Serge pointed up the road with his gun. “They are!”

The brothers turned. Two speeding limos. The first overshot the Bowl entrance and tore up the grass, skidding to a stop. The second went even farther and had to make a fishtailing U-turn.

Serge jerked Ian from the car. “Move it!” Mel grabbed the briefcase and jumped out the driver’s door. They dove in the Sebring, on the opposite side of the Citroën from the first limo. Asians in black overcoats jumped out and formed a firing-squad line. Machine guns raked the French roadster. The Sebring shot out from behind and made a squealing left back into traffic.

The Asians piled back into their limo and sideswiped the Alabama gang accelerating out of their U-turn. Both vehicles recovered and shot up an entrance ramp.

Serge glanced in the rearview at two accelerating vehicles weaving through traffic. “Good. Thought I’d lost them.” He turned around and faced the Glicks. “So, how do you want this to end?”

White and woozy.

Serge turned to his side. “What about you, Coleman?”

“Hadn’t given it much thought.”

“We could always pick an ending from a favorite movie,” said Serge. “Got one you like?”

“What about the wood chipper in
Fargo
?” said Coleman. “That was pretty funny.”

Serge kept an eye on the gaining limos filling his rearview. “I was thinking
Magnolia
. Let’s catch some frogs.”

Babcock and Reamsnyder were in one of the bigger offices. Their captain had heard enough. He hit the stop button on the tape deck. “So they were in on it all along.”

“Didn’t plan the murder,” said Reamsnyder. “But they were accessories.”

“And covered it up,” said Babcock.

“Approved planting that evidence in the trunk.”

The captain nodded. “Bring ’em in. And get public affairs moving. This is going to be a nightmare.”

The detectives stood to leave.

“Sir,” said Babcock. “The kid we arrested.”

“Damn.” The captain closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes. “Release him. And a press conference inside the hour. The works. I want his exoneration to get no less publicity than his arrest. Do everything to restore his good name…. Poor kid…”

“You got it.”

The departing detectives were almost trampled by a breathless lieutenant running in the door. “Sir, the Glick brothers!…”

“We know,” said the captain. “We just listened to the tape.”

“Tape?”

“Yeah, tape. What are
you
talking about.”

“Just got the call. Uniforms working a location at the Hollywood Bowl.”

Serge smacked the steering wheel.

Coleman popped a beer. “What’s the matter?”

“You see frogs all the fucking time, except when you need them. Now I don’t have an ending.”

“I got an ending,” said Coleman.

“What is it?”

“A long time ago me and the heads went to the midnight showing of
2001: A Space Odyssey
. Ever heard of it?”

“I’m familiar.”

“We were baked! At the end, this astronaut is flying through space and we’re groovin’ on all these psychedelic shapes zipping by, and suddenly we all go: Holy shit! The end of the universe is some old dude’s room!”

“Yeah?”

“There’s your ending.”

“What? Some guy’s room? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The stoners will get it.”

Serge sighed and looked up at the mirror. “Got an ending back there? You’re in movies.”

Quiet sobs.

“They’re no help,” said Serge. “I…wait, that’s it. The ending.”

He pulled into the lane for the 405 and turned south. They exited below the airport and headed for the ocean. Serge picked up Palos Verdes Boulevard and drove along the coast. Coleman looked out the window at a seaside bluff. “Where are we going?”

“It’s the Big W, I tell ya!”

“The what?”

“A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World!”

“I loved that movie,” said Coleman. “Everyone ends up at these crossed palm trees.”

Serge drove another half mile. He turned left around a last bend and pointed with excitement: “It’s the
Big…I?
”

“There’s only one tree left,” said Coleman. “Where’d the others go?”

Serge stopped the car and stared, slack-jawed.

Backseat screaming: “The limos are coming! The limos are coming!”

“Must have been taken out by some storms,” said Coleman.

“Or a blight.”

“Go! Drive!” yelled Mel. “They’re almost here!”

“Now I’m depressed.” Serge listlessly put the car back in gear.

“They’re hanging out the windows with machine guns!”

The Chrysler slowly pulled away without urgency, bullets pinging off the trunk. The Glicks balled themselves up on the floor.

“Don’t worry,” said Coleman. “You’ll think of another ending.”

“No, I won’t.”

He drove aimlessly across the city, losing the will to live, not caring about the gunfire or the screaming in the backseat. They headed inland, store signs switching from English to Asian. Heavy traffic, pedestrians, sidewalk commerce.

Coleman watched a row of seafood stands go by. “Why don’t we just stop and end it here?”

“Forget it, Coleman. It’s Chinatown.”

Two detectives in an unmarked sedan arrived at the
Big I,
followed by five squad cars with all the lights going.

“Nobody’s here,” said Reamsnyder.

“Isn’t this where we got the reports?”

Reamsnyder nodded. “Let me find out what’s going on.” The radio crackled just as he picked up the microphone. A quick exchange with the dispatcher. “Ten-four. We’re rolling.”

Babcock gave his partner an odd look. “Chinatown?”

“They must be heading back to the studio.”

“Where are we going?” asked Coleman.

“No idea,” said Serge. “I have to figure out—…Wait, that’s it!”

“What?”

“My big ending. We’re heading back to the studio.”

Vigil people scattered again. Guards came out to look, then dove back in their booth as a speeding convertible with Mel and Ian in the rear seat flew through the entrance. The Chrysler bottomed out on every speed bump as it raced across the studio on narrow, one-car-wide lanes between the sets. A caveman dropped his club and pasted himself against a wall. The convertible disappeared around the corner of soundstage 27.

The guards were sticking their heads out of the booth, looking in the direction of the Chrysler, when two limos zoomed by in quick succession.

Serge zigzagged across the studio, swerving to avoid more extras diving out of the way. Revolutionary War soldiers, angels losing their halos, the abominable snowman. Passageways grew tighter and tighter until the Chrysler came to a set of steel pylons blocking the street. Serge spun toward the backseat. “What’s the deal?”

“Cars can’t go any farther,” said Ian.

“Have to use golf carts,” said Mel.

Serge jumped out of the convertible. “To the golf carts!”

They ran a hundred feet. A row of electric carts sat in numbered slots next to stage 14.

“Hey!” yelled a man with a clipboard. “You can’t take that—Oh, Ian, Mel, sorry, didn’t recognize…”

They sped off with a quiet whir.

The man with the clipboard heard a screech. A limo skidded up to the pylons. A half dozen men poured out and ran for the carts, cocking machine guns. The clipboard man backed up against a Coke machine.

“Which way did they go?”

He pointed.

The Japanese sped off.

Another screech. Another limo. Six southerners commandeered a third cart.

Serge looked back. The Japanese were gaining.

“Watch out!” yelled Coleman.

They crashed through a giant pane of trick glass two men were carrying across Broadway.

“Mel! Which way?”

“Left.”

Serge took the corner on two wheels. He looked back again. “They’re still there.” Another cart shot out of a service alley. “Yikes!” Serge swerved to avoid the rednecks, who raced parallel down the road, aiming weapons.

“Serge…”

“Not now, Coleman.”

“Vegetable cart!”

Crash.

Both vehicles fought to maintain traction on squished zucchini, diverting on opposite sides of a fork at the Taj Mahal.

Detective Babcock honked his horn. Reamsnyder flashed a badge out the window at the vigil people. “Move it! Now!”

The crowd parted. An unmarked sedan and five squad cars raced onto the Vistamax lot.

Serge looked back at the still-gaining Japanese. “We have to dump this thing.” He steered straight for the soundstage that formed a dead end at the end of the street. It was the largest stage on the lot, number 19, where cast members strolled in and out of the enormous, open hangar doors. They noticed Serge’s cart just in time and jumped out of the way.

Inside number 19, Werner B. Potemkin sat atop a canvas director’s chair, raising a megaphone.

“Annnnnnnd…action!”

A golf cart flew through the entrance, sailing completely over a set of metal stairs leading down to the concrete stage floor. The cart overturned and skidded on its side. Serge climbed out and pulled the others from the wreckage. “Hurry!…”

“Cut!”
yelled Potemkin.

“I’ll try,” said his first assistant.

“What do you mean, ‘You’ll try’?”

“The scene’s so complex, all kinds of valves and circuitry need to be reversed.” He grabbed a walkie-talkie. “I’ll call Charlie…”

Another cart blew through the entrance for another crash landing. A half dozen Asians crawled out with machine guns.

Serge pointed. “To the chariot.” They jumped aboard and Serge cracked a whip. “He-yaw!” Horses began galloping. X-wing star fighters buzzed over their heads. Flames exploded from flash pots. “If we can just make it to those doors on the other side…”

The doors on the other side opened. Southerners and guns poured in.

Serge jerked back on the reins. “Whoa!” He turned the chariot around. A second chariot full of Japanese raced toward them. Serge pulled back on the reins again.

“We’re trapped,” said Coleman. “What’ll we do?”

Serge looked around quickly. “That ladder on the side of the set!” He jumped down from the chariot and took off.

“Don’t leave us!” yelled Mel.

Serge ran back to the chariot.

“Thank God!” said Ian.

Serge grinned. “Almost forgot the briefcase.” He grabbed it and took off again, joining Coleman, who was already scampering up a set of vertical metal rungs to the catwalk in front of a massive control panel. The panel’s technician was on a walkie-talkie with the first assistant director. He saw them coming up the ladder—especially Serge’s shiny .45—and fled out the fire escape at the end of the steel walkway.

From below: “Stop or we’ll shoot!”

Serge looked down: Japanese aiming guns at them.