Martin told Mr Capelli, ‘Give me the phone book.’
‘Sure,’ said Mr Capelli, ‘but what’s the problem?’
Flicking quickly through the pages, Martin found the number of CBS Television News. ‘I thought I heard Nancy Bergen say a particular number, that’s all. It rang a bell.’
He picked up the phone and dialed CBS. The switchboard took endless minutes to answer, and then endless more minutes to connect him with the news desk.
‘Chuck Pressler,’ announced a laconic voice.
‘Oh, hi, sorry to bother you,’ said Martin. ‘I was watching Nancy Bergen’s report on the
Sweet Chariot
premiere. She mentioned how many thousands of people were going to be watching the first screening simultaneously. Do you have that figure there? I missed it.’
There was some shuffling around, and then the laconic voice said, ‘I don’t have that information here, right now. Nancy’s going to be back later tonight, around eleven o’clock. You could try calling her then. Or tomorrow morning maybe.’
Martin put down the phone and dialed 20th Century-Fox. This time there was no answer at all. ‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘Come on, Ramone, let’s get down there and ask Nancy Bergen for ourselves.’
They left Mr Capelli and Alison at the apartment and jogged down La Brea in the sweltering evening heat. When they reached the intersection with Hollywood Boulevard, they found that it was already crowded with thousands of fans and sightseers, and that there were police trestles all around the Chinese Theater. Inch by inch, sweating, alternately elbowing and apologizing, they forced their way through to the front of the lines, as close as they could to the CBS outside-broadcast truck. It took them almost ten minutes to get there, and when they did they found two cops standing right between them and the CBS crew.
Martin glimpsed Nancy Bergen, with her brushed blond hair and her shiny cerise evening dress, and shouted out, ‘Ms Bergen! Ms Bergen!’
The girl standing next to him scowled and said, ‘That was right in my goddamned ear, you freak.’
Martin ignored her, and cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, ‘Ms Bergen! Over here!’
At last, catching the sound of her name amid the bustle, Nancy Bergen turned around and frowned toward the crowd. Several of them waved, and she smiled and waved back. The noise around the theater was already tremendous: talking and laughing and shuffling of feet, and even when Martin bellowed, ‘Ms Bergen!’ one more time, she turned away because she obviously hadn’t heard him.
Martin checked his watch. There were fewer than eleven minutes to go before the premiere. The first guests were already arriving, and there was a long line of shining limousines all the way up Hollywood Boulevard. With a cheer from the crowd, the klieg lights were switched on and stalked around the night sky on brilliant stilts.
Ramone said, ‘Why is this so
important
, man? I’m getting my feet jumped on here.’
‘Listen,’ Martin told him, ‘I want you to create a diversion so that I can get under the police trestle and across to the television truck.’
‘Create a diversion? How the hell do I create a diversion?’
‘Well, go farther down the line there and try to push your way through.’
‘Oh, that’s great, and get myself arrested?’
‘Pretend you’re sick, then. Pretend you’re just about to have a heart attack.’
‘That’s right, and get myself carried off to the hospital.’
‘Well, think of
something
, for God’s sake. I have to talk to Nancy Bergen, and I have to talk to her now!’
Ramone rubbed sweat from the back of his neck and nodded, ‘Okay. But you’d better have a damned awesome reason for doing this,
amigo
.’
‘Have faith, will you?’ Martin told him.
Ramone jostled his way through the spectators who were crowding the police trestles until he was twenty or thirty feet away. He bobbed his head up and down a few times and then turned toward Martin and made a circle between finger and thumb,
Watch this, buddy
. Then he suddenly started flailing his arms and shouting out, ‘
Thief! Thief! You stole my wallet! Thief!
’
Everybody around him backed away. Either he was crazy and he was going to attack them, or else he wasn’t crazy and somebody was going to be accused of taking his wallet, and either alternative was about as attractive as catching AIDS.
At first, the two police officers didn’t see him, they were too busy standing in camera shot and trying to look groomed and tough, but then two or three girls stumbled and fell because of the commotion that Ramone was causing, and they hurried down the police line to see what was happening. Martin immediately ducked under the trestle, dodged around the back of the CBS truck, and approached Nancy Bergen from behind. She was listening to her producer talking to her over her earphone, and saying, ‘Yes, Farley; okay, Farley; but they won’t be arriving for at least five minutes.’
As soon as she had finished, Martin tapped her politely on the shoulder.
‘Ms Bergen?’
She stared at him blankly. That hostile don’t-bother-me stare that he had seen on so many faces of so many TV personalities when the grubby public came a little too close.
‘Listen, you don’t know me, Ms Bergen, my name’s Martin Williams.’
‘You’re right,’ she said, marching back toward the television truck. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘Ms Bergen, I’m a screenwriter, I wrote most of the
Sweet Chariot
screenplay. Actually, I updated it from the original. They probably haven’t given me credit on the screen, but –’
‘– but now you’re angry as all hell and you’re going to sue. Well, believe me, Mr Wilson, it happens all the time, and if I were you I’d save your money. The only people who make money out of law are lawyers. I’ve been there, I know.’
‘Ms Bergen, I’m not complaining about that. But there’s a whole lot more to this production than meets the eye.’
Nancy Bergen’s red-haired personal assistant came up with a glass of Perrier water, a clipboard, and a lit cigarette in an aluminum-foil ashtray. Nancy swallowed two mouthfuls of water, propped the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, and began to scribble notes on the clipboard. ‘Do you have something to tell me, Mr Wilson? Otherwise I’m going to have to say
hasta luego
, you know?’
‘Do you mind if I ask you a question first?’
Nancy Bergen continued to scribble, ignoring him.
Martin said, ‘You mentioned that x-thousand people were going to be watching this premiere simultaneously all over the world.’
Nancy Bergen stopped scribbling, handed the clipboard back to her assistant, dropped her cigarette back in its ashtray, blew out smoke, and said, ‘One hundred forty-four thousand, why?’
Martin took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to sound like some kind of religious nut when I tell you this.’
‘Then don’t tell me. Hank, do you have that radio mike ready?’
‘It’s ready, Nance,’ said a thin, shaven-headed man in a sweaty T-shirt.
But Martin said, ‘One hundred forty-four thousand, that’s the exact number in the Book of Revelation, the exact number of innocents who follow the Lamb – the exact number of people who have to be sacrificed so that Satan can come alive again.’
Nancy Bergen beckoned one of the CBS sound men. ‘Harvey, will you escort Mr Wilson back to the barriers for me?’
Martin insisted, ‘Ms Bergen, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying here. That boy Pip Young isn’t Pip Young at all.’
‘Mr Wilson, I already know that. His real name is something Lejeune. Now, please, I’m going tonto here as it is.’
‘Ms Bergen, Pip Young is Boofuls! The real Boofuls! The real murdered Boofuls, come back to life!’
A big blond man with biceps like Virginia hams and a sweatband around his forehead laid his hand on Martin’s shoulder and whistled through ruined nasal cavities, ‘Come on, man, let’s be friendly here, hunh?’
‘Boofuls was possessed!’ Martin shouted. ‘That was why his grandmother killed him! Boofuls was possessed by Satan! But he escaped! He went into the mirror! But now he’s back and everyone who sees this movie is going to die! Ms Bergen! Listen! One hundred forty-four thousand innocent people are going to die!’
Nancy Bergen was already out of earshot, preparing her first star interview. A gleaming black Fleetwood had just pulled into the curb, and the door was opened so that Geraldine Grosset could step out onto the sidewalk in a clinging white dress splashed with diamanté. The crowds roared and whistled and screamed, and the klieg lights crisscrossed the evening sky as if it were wartime.
Martin struggled and kicked, but the big blond man twisted his arm around behind his back and hop-skip-jumped him back to the barrier. ‘Ms Bergen!’ Martin screamed at the top of his voice. ‘He’s bringing back Satan, Ms Bergen! He’s bringing him back
tonight
!’
Several of the crowd turned to stare at Martin pityingly. The big blond man lifted him clear over the police trestle, said, ‘Pardon me, lady,’ to a woman who was pressed up against the barrier close by, and set Martin down onto the ground.
‘Now, you listen, friend, you stay there, otherwise I swear to God you will never walk again.’
Martin was sweating and shaking and all fired up. All the same, he nodded and said, ‘Okay, okay,’ and rubbed his twisted wrist, and tried to look as if he had been effectively warned off. The big blond man returned to the CBS truck, glancing fiercely back at Martin from time to time, but all Martin did was smile and nod, okay, already, I’m behaving.
Ramone came pushing his way back through the crowd to join him. ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Did you get what you wanted?’
Martin took hold of his arm. ‘It’s true, it’s one hundred forty-four thousand.’
‘You’ve lost me, man.’
‘That’s why they’re holding all of these premieres all at once, all over the world. That’s why they’ve never showed the movie to anybody before. There’s something in the movie – I don’t know, something in the way it’s made, something in the screenplay, some subliminal message, maybe. All of those people who see it tonight are going to be killed.’
‘You’re putting me on. One hundred forty-four thousand? What the hell for?’
‘Because tonight is the night, trust me. Tonight is the night that is prophesied in the Revelation. The night that Satan comes back to life, the real dragon, for real, and if you and I don’t do anything about it the sun isn’t going to come up again tomorrow, nor ever.’
Ramone stared at him. For the first time, Martin could see that his friend didn’t believe him. And for the first time he could hear the sound of his own voice and he sounded as if he were raving.
All around them, the screaming and the applauding of the crowd sounded like a thunderous landslide as a sapphire-white limousine appeared, bringing Pip Young, a.k.a. Lejeune, a.k.a. Boofuls.
‘Ramone,’ said Martin, ‘you and I have been friends for a very long time.’
Ramone nodded. He looked exhausted, battered, almost sad.
‘Believe me, Ramone, you’ve seen the mirror for yourself. These terrible things haven’t been happening for nothing. They’ve been happening for a
reason
, Ramone, and the reason is it’s
time
. It’s time for Satan to come back to earth, it’s time for the dragon. It’s all in the Bible, in the Revelation, but what it says in the Revelation is that Satan’s going to come back and then be defeated for good. That’s why he’s used Boofuls. Boofuls has made damn sure that he doesn’t get defeated. He’s going to come back if we let him and this time he intends to stay.’
Ramone lowered his head. ‘I don’t know, man. I used to believe in Satan when I was a little kid.’
Boofuls emerged from his limousine and stood alone for a moment on the crimson-carpeted sidewalk. He was wearing a white suit with silver-sequined lapels, and his hair was shining and curly. Close behind him came Miss Redd, pale-faced, with scarlet lips, in her sweeping black cape.
As Boofuls walked up toward the theater entrance, the crowd let out an extraordinary moan of delight, and two girls in glittery cocktail-waitress costumes came tottering up on stiletto heels to present him with cellophane-covered bouquets. Boofuls accepted the flowers gravely, then passed them back to Miss Redd, who in turn passed them back to the chauffeur.
Martin tugged at Ramone’s sleeve. ‘Right now, I don’t care whether you believe in him or not. I want you to help me, that’s all.
I
believe in it, and that’ll be good enough for the two of us.’
‘So what are you planning on doing?’
‘I don’t have any idea. But the first thing we have to do is get ourselves into this premiere, and see what Boofuls is planning to do.’
Ramone said, ‘You and me, in sweaty old T-shirts, we’re going to get into the most glamoroso premiere of the decade?’
Martin looked down at himself. ‘I guess you’re right. Damn it. Maybe we can sneak into the back.’
‘Do you see those cops?’ said Ramone. ‘How the hell are we going to get past those cops?’
‘Mandrake gestures hypnotically,’ replied Martin bitterly. ‘Instantly, our heroes are clad in immaculate tuxedos.’
‘Hold up just one moment,’ Ramone told him. He dug into his back pants pocket and produced his keys. ‘I believe our problems are ov-ah.’