On an oil-stained desk, which looked as if Tortilli had rescued it from an abandoned factory, lay a dozen scripts. When Remo opened one, he found that the margins were filled with notes. The others he checked were in the same condition: all loaded with crazy pencil marks. He was about to turn from the desk when one of the script covers caught his eye. Surprised, he picked it up. He was skimming through it when Tortilli returned.

  “We’re in business now,” the director enthused, waving a mint-condition 1970s Josie and the Pussycats binder.

  “What the hell is this?” Remo asked, holding up the script.

  “Huh? Oh, I do script-doctor work sometimes. Blood Water, The Lockup. Strictly uncredited. Million bucks for a week’s work. Those are the latest. I get ’em all the time.”

  Remo looked at the cover of the script in his hand. “You’re doing the rewrite on a TeeVeeFatties screenplay?”

  Tortilli nodded. “Yeah, man. That’s a great one. Originally it was all magic clouds and happy sunshine. In mine Tipsy gets cheesed off at Poopsy-Woopsy for using his scooter, so he beats him to death with a bag of frozen TeeVeeFattie muffins.”

  “Unbelievable.” Remo tossed the script back on the desk.

  “Yeah,” Tortilli agreed. “The violence and drugs were always, like, there in TeeVeeFattie Land, man. I just brought them to the surface.” Notebook in hand, he went over to his Starship Enterprise telephone.

  While the director looked up numbers and dialed, Remo leaned against the door, arms crossed.

  “Do you have to try so hard all the time?” Remo asked.

  “I have an image,” Tortilli explained. “Unfortunately, I don’t know where it ends and I begin anymore.” He straightened. “Hi, Bug?” He said into the phone. “Quint. How ya doin’?”

  After a few minutes of questioning, Tortilli gave up. The director had learned nothing. The next three calls proved fruitless, as well. He got lucky on the fifth.

  “Where?” Tortilli asked excitedly. He fished a Mork and Mindy pencil from his polyester pocket. Though he was poised to jot the address on his notepad, he didn’t have to. “I know the place,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah, I heard about it. One of them cut off his head shaving, right? Ouch. Break out the Bactine.”

  Covering the receiver, Tortilli snickered softly. Pulling himself together, he returned to the phone.

  “I’m all set,” he said, clearing his throat. “Remind me to make you a star. Later.” Hanging up, he looked expectantly to Remo. “I think we’ve got something. The guy I called knows a guy who claims another guy was bragging he was in on the box murder. You know, the one with the torso.”

  “I heard,” Remo said flatly.

  “On the phone? You mean you can hear both sides of a phone conversation?”

  “It’s hard to hear anything over your suit,” Remo said dryly. He pulled the door open. “Let’s go.”

  Jogging to keep up, Quintly Tortilli hurried after Remo into the hallway. As he shut the door, he flicked off the lights, drowning the garish decor in blessed darkness.

  . . .

  Seattle’s despairing youth had early on established the Dregs as the city’s premier grunge bar. For a time, the pervasive gloom and hopelessness of its clientele was money in the bank. But then disaster struck. Resurgent optimism suddenly began to sweep the nation. One morning, the bar’s owners woke up to find hope and enthusiasm saturating the popular culture. The change seemed to come overnight.

  The morose lyrics set to mournful tunes that had made Seattle the rage of the music scene only a few short years before were replaced by the upbeat sounds of the Backstreet Boys and Dixie Chicks.

  With grunge fading and alternative poised to die a sudden death, the Dregs had become the last bulwark for the music that had made the city famous.

  When Remo Williams walked through the front door, it was as if a pop-culture time machine had taken him back six years. He scanned the sea of plaid shirts, torn denim pants and goatees that filled the bar.

  “Looks like a beatnik lumberjack convention,” he grumbled.

  A few of the nearest slackers looked his way, some suspicious of his T-shirt and chinos. But when a second figure popped in behind him, they instantly relaxed.

  Quintly Tortilli. The Hollywood genius was a frequent visitor to the Dregs. Accompanied by the young director of Penny Dreadful, the stranger couldn’t be all bad.

  “Isn’t this place great?” Tortilli yelled to Remo over the blaring sound system. Tables wobbled from the pounding bass. Ragged figures moped around the dance floor.

  Remo nodded to the crowd. “Stick a two-by-four up their asses and I could get them all work scaring crows.”

  “Yeah,” Tortilli agreed. “The ripped-jeans-and-flannel thing is still only a couple years retro. But if it holds on long enough, it’ll come back into style.” He sized up Remo. “Actually, if you don’t mind, Remo, maybe you should think about updating your look. Don’t take this as criticism—I’m saying this as a friend—but, I mean, how long have you been doing the whole T-shirt-chinos thing? Retro’s one thing, but maybe you should think about keeping up with the times, man.”

  “Look, dingbat, it’s bad enough I’m stuck with you and that Teflon jumpsuit you’re wearing without listening to your cockeyed fashion tips,” Remo growled. “Hurry up.”

  According to Tortilli’s source, the man they were looking for was someone the director knew—if only vaguely. As he turned to the packed bar, his dull eyes narrowed. He looked from pasty face to pasty face.

  “I don’t think I see him,” Tortilli said in a disappointed tone.

  “Your pal seemed sure he’d be here,” Remo insisted. As he spoke, he rotated his thick wrists impatiently.

  Quintly was still glancing from face to face. “You really could hear him, couldn’t you?” He grinned, impressed. “You know, we should really talk about me writing your life—” He stopped dead. “Got him,” Tortilli announced abruptly.

  With laserlike precision, Remo honed in on the director’s line of sight.

  The man was a burly slacker in red flannel. He sat alone at a cheap plastic table on the other side of the bar.

  “I don’t know, man. He’s kinda big.” Tortilli frowned. “You might have trouble wasting this one. Whaddaya think?”

  When he turned, he found that he was talking to empty air. Quintly glanced back across the room. It took him a minute to spot Remo’s white T-shirt. When he finally found it, he was surprised that Remo was already halfway across the bar. He was gliding through the dense throng like a silent spirit. Though people crushed in all around him, he seemed no more substantial than air.

  Tortilli shook his head, impressed.

  “How much for your life story, man?” he said in wonder. He ordered a rum punch from a passing waitress and quickly found a seat of his own, settling in to watch the floor show.

  . . .

  In the counterculture environment of poseurs and criminal wanna-bes, Chester Gecko was the real deal. All 211 pounds of him.

  In an age where nearly every high-school student got a diploma and a pat on the head, regardless of academic achievement or lack thereof, Chester had failed to meet even the basic, lax requirements for graduation. Twice forced to repeat his senior year at Bremerton’s Coriolis High School, he was finally thrown out after his geometry teacher made the mistake of asking him to demonstrate the use of a protractor in front of the class. It was eight years later, and the woman still used makeup to mask the scars on her cheek.

  Chester had been in trouble with the law nearly all his life, but thanks to a criminal justice system that sometimes seemed even more hesitant to deal with unruly elements than the public education system, he had yet to do any major time. It was actually a shame, really, for Chester was the type of individual who would have been happier in prison than he was in civilized society.

  Whenever he stopped in the Dregs, people instinctively knew to steer clear of Chester Gecko. He was easy enough to avoid; a burly, slouching figure with ratlike eyes, Chester drew more flies than friends. He generally sat alone at his table, practically daring someone to approach. And in five years, no one ever had.

  Until this day.

  Chester was sullenly sucking at his beer when he saw the skinny guy show up with Quintly Tortilli.

  Chester didn’t like Tortilli anymore. Mr. Bigshot didn’t answer his mail. Besides, he’d seen the director in the Dregs before, so it was easy enough to lose interest.

  He glanced away for a second. When he looked back, the stranger with Tortilli had disappeared.

  Just like that. Vanished. As if the floor had opened up and swallowed him whole. Chester assumed he’d ducked back out the front door. But when he returned his bored attention to the dance floor, he saw something that made his stomach twitch. A few yards away, Tortilli’s companion was melting out of the crowd.

  That was the only way Chester could describe it—melting. It was as if he didn’t exist one moment and in the next had congealed into human shape.

  Chester blinked. And in that infinitesimally brief instant when his eyes were closed, the stranger materialized in the chair across from his.

  Chester jumped, startled. He quickly recovered.

  “Get lost,” he grumbled, forcing a gruff edge to cover his surprise. With a flick of his neck, he shifted his dirty brown bangs from his forehead. He took a swig from the half-full beer bottle clutched in his big hand.

  Across the table, Remo nodded. “After I’ve killed you,” he promised. “Now, there’s an easy—”

  “What?” Chester Gecko snarled, slamming his bottle to the table.

  “Hmm?” Remo asked.

  “What did you just say?” Chester demanded.

  Remo frowned, confused. “About what?”

  “Did you just threaten me?”

  “Oh, that. Yes.” That settled, Remo continued. “Now, there’s an easy way and a hard way to do this.”

  “Go pound sand,” Chester growled. Stuffing his bottle back in his mouth, he took a mighty swig.

  “I see we’ve opted for latter,” Remo mused, nodding.

  And as Chester pulled the bottle from between his lips, Remo’s hand shot forward.

  Too fast for Chester Gecko to follow, the flat of Remo’s palm swatted the base of the bottle, propelling it forward.

  It skipped out of Chester’s hand, launching back into his stunned face. As Remo’s hand withdrew, Chester suddenly felt a great tugging just below his eyes, as if something were pulling on his nose. When he reached for the source, he found his beer bottle dangling from the tip. It hung in front of his slack mouth.

  He snorted in pain. Beer stung his nostrils. He gagged, spitting out the liquid.

  “I’d gobba kill you,” Chester choked. But when he looked up, Remo’s eyes were cold. Frighteningly so.

  “Bet you I can fit your whole head in there,” Remo said evenly.

  The confidence he displayed was casual and absolute. And in an instant of sharp realization, Chester Gecko knew that this thin stranger with the incredibly thick wrists was not joking.

  Chester held up his hands. “Dno,” he pleaded. The bottle on his face clacked against his front teeth. He yelped in pain, grabbing at his mouth.

  “Okay, let’s establish the ground rules,” Remo said. Reaching over, he gave the bottle a twist. The pain was so great, Chester couldn’t even scream. His eyes watered as his bottle-encased nose took on the shape of a flesh-colored corkscrew.

  “Those are the ground rules,” Remo said, releasing the bottle. “Understand?”

  Chester nodded desperately. The dangling bottle swatted his chin with each frantic bob of his head. Remo’s expression hardened. “Who hired you to butcher that girl?” he asked.

  Chester felt his breath catch. Yet he dared not lie.

  “I don gno,” he admitted. “Phone caw. Don gnow who he wath.” He fumbled to twist the bottle back to its starting point.

  Remo frowned. Another phone call. The same method that had been used to hire Leaf Randolph.

  “How’d you get paid?” he pressed.

  “Potht offith boxth,” Chester said. Blood streamed from his encased nostrils, dribbling into the bottom of the bottle. The golden liquid was taking on a thick black hue. This time, Remo remembered the question he had forgotten to ask at Leaf’s apartment. “How much?”

  “Pive hunred thouthanth.”

  Remo thought he had misheard. He made Chester repeat the amount. He found that he wasn’t wrong. Chester Gecko had been paid five hundred thousand dollars to butcher a woman and stuff her torso into an orange crate.

  It was a lot of money. An insanely Hollywood amount.

  Remo’s thoughts instantly turned to Cabbagehead’s wealthy backers. That much money would have been chump change to any one of those men.

  Chester had told him everything of value. He just had one question left.

  “You know who killed that family in Maryland?” he asked.

  Chester shook his head. “Wathn’t uth,” he promised.

  “Who’s the rest of ‘us’?” Remo asked.

  Even as Remo spoke, Chester’s fearful eyes darted over Remo’s shoulder to the front door. For an instant, a glimmer of hope sprang alive in their black depths.

  Remo squashed it immediately.

  “Three guys. Three guns. Just came in the front door,” Remo supplied without turning. “Are they ‘us’?”

  Chester’s shoulders slumped. He nodded.

  As he did so, his dangling beer bottle banged somberly against the table’s damp plastic surface.

  “Okay, let’s take it outside,” Remo said thinly.

  Rising to his feet, he grabbed Chester’s bottle in one hand. He was pulling the grunting killer to his feet when he heard a familiar determined crinkling of artificial fabric hustling toward him.

  “Remo,” Quintly Tortilli urged, bounding up beside him. He was glancing over his shoulder to the main entrance.

  “I see them,” Remo said, voice level.

  “They hang with him,” Tortilli insisted, pointing a pinkie and index finger at Chester. “I seen the dudes in here before. Maybe we better fly?”

  Tortilli was more skittish than usual—even by Quintly Tortilli standards. Gone was all of his earlier bravado. Dropped in the middle of a real life-and-death scene, the director’s natural instinct for self-preservation had kicked in.

  Remo nodded tightly. Tugging Chester by the bottle, he led them to the rear exit. He waited long enough to be sure the trio of armed men had seen them before ducking outside.

  The rear door of the bar spilled into a cluttered alley. A mountain of garbage bags was heaped against the grimy brick wall. Swinging Chester by the bottle, Remo tossed the thug onto the trash heap.

  “I think they saw us,” Quintly Tortilli whined. He bounced from foot to foot a few yards down the alley from Remo. His body language screamed “Retreat.”

  “They didn’t…” Remo began.

  Tortilli’s shoulders relaxed.

  “…until I waved them over.”

  “You what?” the director asked, fear flooding his darting eyes. “You’re kidding, man, right?”

  Remo held up a finger. “Hold that thought.”

  He hadn’t even lowered his hand before the rusted door burst open. The three hoods he’d waved to from across the bar spilled into the alley.

  “Guns!” Quintly Tortilli shrieked. He became a flash of purple polyester as he dived behind a cluster of trash bags.

  All three weapons were drawn before the thugs had even bounded out the door. Although they twisted alertly, none of the men had expected their target to be standing a foot from the door. Before they knew it, Remo was among them.

  He danced down the line, swatting guns from outstretched hands. At the same time, his flying feet sought brittle kneecaps. Guns skipped merrily away along the soggy alley floor, accompanied by the sound of popping patellas.

  When the men fell, screaming, Remo was already pivoting on one leg. A single sweeping heel punished three foreheads. All three men dropped face-first to the ground. As the life sighed out of them, Remo turned to Chester Gecko.

  Chester was attempting to sit up on the pile of heaped trash, blood-filled bottle still dangling from his nose.

  “That was the preview,” Remo said icily. “Time for the feature presentation.”

  Chester tried to scurry backward up the garbage mountain. Bags tore open beneath his kicking heels, spilling their rotting contents into water-filled potholes.

  “Wait!” he cried. “I gnow more!”

  When Remo paused, Chester sensed his opportunity. But before he could speak, they were both distracted by a shrill sound issuing from beside the garbage mound.

  “Whoa, you are heavy duty,” Quintly Tortilli whistled.

  Sensing the end of the battle, the director had just come crawling into view. His eyes darted from the trio of bodies near the door back to Remo. “I am going to option your story,” he stated with firm insistence.

  “Put a sock in it, Kubrick,” Remo snarled. He returned his attention to Chester Gecko. “Spill it,” he demanded.

  “Da one we did wath juth a little job,” Chester insisted. He was panting in fear. “I gnow thome guyth who dot hired to pland a bunch ob bombth. Dey were hired to blow up a whole thtudio.”

  Remo glanced at Quintly Tortilli. The director’s balled-fist face was drawn into a puzzled frown.

  “Cabbagehead?” Remo asked Chester.

  The hood shook his head. “Thmall botatos. Dith ib a Hollywood thtudio. Ith going down today. We arranged da bomb thupplieth.” When he nodded to his dead friends, his expression weakened.

  “Where’d you hear this?” Tortilli asked.

  “Da guy who dold me already dot paid.” Chester shrugged.

  Remo’s stomach had twisted into a cold knot the instant Hollywood was mentioned. “What studio?” he said hollowly.

  Chester sniffled. He winced as he inadvertently sucked a noseful of bloody beer back into his mouth.