"Oh, this is terrible. Then what was that camera crew doing here shooting you with highspeed film?"
"I don't know. I honestly don't know." Remo looked at the dust on the horizon. The crews were long gone now, but perhaps the networks had accidentally gotten a shot of those cameramen who were interested in Remo. There had been cameramen too when the President had been attacked. He could have been killed anytime, but only when there were cameras present was he attacked. "Do you remember anything else about those men with the high-speed cameras?" asked Remo. He moved the actress away from the guards. Off in the distance, he heard sirens. Police must have been notified.
"Certainly," she said. "I wanted to buy some footage even though it wasn't my best side. It was Wonder Film, Palo Alto. I know them. They're reputable. They would never be involved in a shooting. They won't even film soft porn."
"Wonder Films? Sounds like a porn shop to me," said Remo.
"No. William and Ethel Wonder. They've been in the business for years. Totally reliable, totally honest. They almost went bankrupt a half-dozen times."
"Maybe they needed the money?"
"No. They can't be bought. Not everyone wants to deal with them. You know how eerie it is to know that the person you're dealing with has some things that he won't do for money. It makes my skin crawl."
"Thank you and good-bye," said Remo, glancing at the police cruisers racing down the dirt prairie road like the cavalry.
"Where are you going?" said Kim. "Cops don't pay for a personal appearance."
"I've got business. Good-bye."
"Well, so do I. I want that footage. Are you going there?" she asked.
"If I find it, I'll get it for you," Remo said.
"You wouldn't know what you're looking for. Besides, if there are going to be people shooting, I want a man around. Especially one with a nice face. What's your name?"
"Remo."
Kim Kiley squeezed his cheeks with her fingers as if she had the face of a baby in her hands. "You really shouldn't waste that face, Remo."
"William Wonder?" said Remo. "Wonder. That's a funny name."
"And Remo isn't?"
Ethel Wonder didn't like what was going on. Even if William had never told her, she would have known it was his crazy family.
"It's not crazy, Ethel. Do I call it crazy when your family takes an infant boy and cuts off part of his pecker?"
"We've been doing it for thousands of years, William. It's a tradition."
"Well, so have we," said William Wonder. The film was being flown back to Palo Alto from the Pakeeta reservation outside Billings, Montana, by private jet. Wonder had the processing ready and refused to work on any other film until that arrived. The developing system had to be at the ready. He looked at his watch.
"I never heard of your traditions," Ethel said. "Nobody I know has ever heard of your traditions either."
"We like to keep to ourselves."
"And your family meetings. I swear. A zoo."
"We went to one family meeting."
"I remember. The western United States. Who takes a family and divides up the world?" asked Ethel Wonder. She was a plump middle-aged woman who wore too-heavy makeup and a permanent frown. Sometimes she would smile when something really amused her but nothing had amused her since the television show Howdy Doody.
"Howdy Doody, that was real humor," she said.
William's family was not real humor. It wasn't even a real family. There wasn't any warmth and many of them didn't even share the same name, and they were all different races and religions. A writer had once said that relatives were like people you met in an elevator. You had no choice about them. William's family was exactly like people you met in an elevator. Strangers. Of course, if you ran into financial difficulty, they would help you out. They did that well.
Of course, Ethel had always made sure she paid back the loans, with interest. She didn't like that bunch. The only good thing about them was that they didn't meet often. Maybe once every fifteen or twenty years. She was not quite sure what went on there, but whatever did, she was not a part of it.
She loved William because in every other matter, he was a man she could respect. His word was iron; his life frugal and honest. And he didn't watch silly television shows.
But then his family got involved in their business and they were doing crazy things. They had their best photographer shoot a presidential press conference at high speed. The kind of high speed you would use to stop a bullet in flight.
"Listen, William," Ethel had said. "I know the President can talk fast, but faster than a speeding bullet?"
"Ethel, it's family," William had answered. And that was supposed to settle things. The film was jetted back from Washington, processed and then jetted right out of Palo Alto again to a destination that had been kept from her.
And now again. All the development equipment was idle waiting for the film from Montana and Ethel told William..
"Crazy. I think I am going to burn that film when it comes in and tell your family to go swim in a sewer."
"Ethel, please," William said. There was sudden fear in his eyes.
"All right, all right, let's not do this again though," she said. She couldn't remember when she had seen him that frightened.
The film came from the airport by motorcycle and the cyclist waited. She went into the developing area to help her husband, who had dismissed his entire staff for the day, just as he had after the presidential press conference.
This film, too, had an attempted killing. And it too had a strange focus. When they had shot the presidential film, the object was not the President but a broad general area around him, including the reporters.
This time, there was another attempted death. By gun. They were shooting at a man in a dark T-shirt, but they didn't hurt him. It looked like a dance he did, as though he flowed with the air. He would move and then the bullet would be by him. She knew it was a bullet because it made that sort of fuzzy line a bullet would make.
Then there were no more bullets and the ground seemed to shake. Someone had set off an explosion out of range of the camera. She could see the shock waves flapping at the black T-shirt.
And then there was no more film. William examined it once more, then put it in the can and gave it to the cyclist.
"Crazy," said Ethel.
Then Kim Kiley and the man in the film came to the studio. It couldn't have been more than three hours after the cyclist left.
"Uh-oh," said Ethel. She looked to William. "It's all right," he whispered.
"What's all right?"
"Everything," he said.
And then she heard William lie. She had never heard him lie like that before. Yes, the film was being processed right now. Could they wait a few moments and have a cup of tea with him and his wife, Ethel?
William, who would set foot in the kitchen only if he were passing out from hunger, made the tea himself.