“Speed!”
“Speed!”
“Speed!”
“Then... action!” Franklin shouted, looking at Tim.
Tim pressed his buttons. The dummy’s chest exploded, spurting blood. And the nitrogen ram yanked the cable.
What happened next is vivid in my mind. Even though it happened so fast, I can still see every bit of it, like I was a slow-motion camera myself. The dummy was lifted off the ground, lifted way too high. It was flung about fifteen feet into the air, and it slammed against the top of the window frame, mostly missing the glass except for the feet, and then it was yanked inside the storefront with such force that the whole phony storefront came crashing down. The entire set was destroyed.
“Holy Christ,” Franklin said.
The storefront collapsed in a heap of timber and dust. We all just stood there, watching in disbelief. The camera crew forgot to turn their cameras off, and the grinding sound continued until the film ran out, and then they hastily turned them off. There was a long silence. Nobody moved toward the destroyed set.
Until suddenly Chadney shouted, “You son of a bitch!” and flung himself on Mann. He began to punch him, taking him to the ground, where Chadney continued to hit Mann over and over again.
Mann was screaming, “Get off me, you crazy bastard! Get off me!”
We were all in such a state of shock that we didn’t do anything for a moment, and then Perkins finally said, “Better break that up,” and a couple of the grips went over and pulled Chadney off Mann. Chadney was struggling to get free, and the whole time he kept saying, “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!” and Mann was just lying there, coughing in the dust of the street, with blood dripping from his nose and mouth, and finally he got up on one elbow and stared at Chadney without saying a word.
The other stuntmen had gone into the demolished storefront to check the nitrogen ram. One of them came back out. “The settings were changed,” he said.
“What?” Franklin said.
“The settings on the ram were changed. Somebody increased the throw and kicked up the pressure from three hundred to five hundred pounds. That’s why it happened.”
Chadney struggled even harder at this news. “That son of a bitch!” he shouted. “I knew it! I knew it!”
Franklin asked, as calmly as he could, “Who changed the settings?”
There was a long silence, until finally Perkins gave us all the answer: “It was Charles Mann.”
“You’re lying,” Mann said as he struggled to get back on his feet.
Perkins took a roll of film from his pocket. “Before the stunt,” he said, “I was sitting on that rooftop over there”—he pointed to the building next to the store—“with a camera.”
Perkins stepped closer to Mann and raised the roll of film to his face, as if daring him to try to take it.
“The camera never lies,” Perkins said. “It was you.”
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
It kept getting stranger. The next thing I knew, I was riding back from location in one of the limousines, and with me were Greenblatt, Perkins, and Mann. Nobody else. Even Robinson went in the other limo. And we were going to the airport.
I didn’t know why I was asked to come. But Greenblatt told me to get in the limousine. The trip started and Mann said, “No way, no way you can stick that on me, no way.” And as we pulled out, Greenblatt told Perkins to explain everything.
“Perhaps it is best to work backward,” Perkins said. “Mr. Mann was trying to kill the stuntman.”
“You’ll never stick me with that,” Mann said.
“We can easily stick you with that, if it comes to a legal procedure. We have thirty-six photographs taken at high speed with a motorized Nikon and a five-hundred-millimeter telephoto lens that shows detail extremely well. It shows you adjusting both the throw and the pressure settings on the nitrogen ram. It shows the rest of the company out in the street, preparing for the shot.”
“I was just checking. I didn’t touch anything.”
“You have motive,” Perkins said. “Chadney will probably testify to that.”
“What was the motive?” Greenblatt said.
