“Oh,” said Zee. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll still speak to you little people after I’m famous, because I’ll never forget my roots. What was your name again?”
The chief drove away, and we went home.
Not much later, Drew Mondry called and asked me to go to work for him the next day. He mentioned a salary rare on Martha’s Vineyard.
I said I would. The money was reason enough, but I had others.
— 29 —
Cassiopeia Films got down to work the week after Labor Day, when the island was largely emptied of its summer people, most of whom had gone home so the kids could go back to school or who had otherwise used up their vacation time and had taken their August tans back over the sound to America. A slightly higher than average proportion of tourists lingered on this year because of the movie makers. They wanted to watch celebrities and maybe even be lucky enough to be extras. Zee arranged her schedule at the emergency room so she could be home while I was working, and I made sure that I’d have time off to take care of Joshua when the film crew shot her scenes.
There were a lot of people involved in making the movie, and many of them had titles that I never did get straight. Grips did all sorts of handyman work, especially when cameras were being set up. The best ones I saw had strong backs and quick minds. There were also carpenters and painters and set decorators and various wardrobe people, all of whom more or less did what you’d think people with those titles would do. And there were propmen, and there was a special propman called a greensman who only did plants, and since the Skye twins’ horses were going to be in the background of some of the shots on John and Mattie’s farm, there was a wrangler in charge of them. And there were drivers, of which I was one when I wasn’t doing other things, who drove people around, and there were people who turned out to be a stuntman and a stuntwoman for a fight scene I never saw.
No matter what the job, everybody seemed to belong to one union or another, which was in itself something different for largely un-unionized Martha’s Vineyard.
There were doubles for Kevin and Kate and other actors, and there was a fencing master who coached Kevin and the other sword fighters and created a sort of ballet for them to dance while they were supposedly fighting, so no one would get hurt. John Skye, long-ago undergraduate three-weapon man, was fascinated and appalled by the movie combat. On the one hand, he claimed that anybody who actually tried to fight with swords that way would be dead in about thirty seconds, but on the other he had to admit that it looked like a lot more fun than the competitive fencing he’d done in college.
All in all the whole operation seemed like chaos to me. I never did get everybody and everything figured out, and finally stopped trying.
Since there were both interior and exterior scenes to be shot at John and Mattie’s farm, the Skyes were obliged to abandon their house and find quarters elsewhere. In partial thanks for this, Drew Mondry, true to his word, made sure, to the total delight of the twins, that they and their mother got work as extras. The twins’ real problem had been to talk Mattie and John into letting them sacrifice the beginning of school for the sake of their future careers as stars, but somehow the girls, great cajolers, had managed to do that. John himself, on the other hand, could not avoid going to work at Weststock College, but made it back for long weekends.
The lines of eager local would-be extras were so long that the island high school gym was taken over on a Sunday so that the decision makers could, in their to-me-mysterious wisdom, make their choices about which of the local wannabes would actually be hired. The fortunate elect were as joyful as their less successful competitors were blue.
Zee, who had learned that she would be obliged to join the union because of her one line of dialogue, was not required to go through this process, of course, but she thought that I should.
“You really should,” she said to me while making kissy faces at Joshua, who was on her knee smiling up at her. “I think you’d have fun.”
“I don’t see a lot of people in the business who seem to be having lots of fun,” I said. “Fun is a bluefish blitz.”
“You look like somebody who lives on Martha’s Vineyard,” said Zee. “They need people like you for ambiance.”
“Ambiance, schmambiance. One star in the family is enough. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, and I don’t expect that to last much longer.”
“Maybe I should take Joshua down and have him screen-tested. He’s definitely the best baby on the island and maybe in the whole world! Yes, you are, Joshua!” She and her son beamed at each other.
“You can take him down if you want to,” I said, “but if he gets a job, all the other moms will be jealous and think it’s just nepotism.”
“They’re already jealous, aren’t they, Joshua! Because you’re the cutest baby anybody’s ever seen!”
Joshua grinned toothless agreement, and she gave him a big kiss.
Good grief, what a pair.
My principal value was as a local guy who knew how to take people places they wanted to go, and where to find stuff people suddenly discovered they needed. I knew where the hardware stores and the lumberyards were, where catering outfits could be found, who to contact in case some Cassiopeia bigwig wanted to use a piece of property or equipment that hadn’t previously been leased, or in case some emergency came up, as they regularly seemed to do.
I mostly worked for Drew Mondry, but sometimes got loaned out to somebody else who needed wheels or local knowledge. I drove people around to look at the sites Mondry and I had surveyed earlier, picked people up here and delivered them there, and in general made a good salary doing nothing very hard.
I met a lot of people imported from California and grew to like many of them in that casual way you meet and enjoy people you know you won’t be with very long. Most of them were working stiffs who never got in front of a camera or wanted to, and I ended up introducing the beer-drinking component of that group to the Fireside, in Oak Bluffs, where they could have an end-of-the-day brew in casual, to say the least, surroundings. The higher-toned drinkers found their way to the classier watering holes.
One person who was not a working stiff also came to the Fireside. Kate Ballinger didn’t seem like the type who would favor the place, which was rich with the odor of stale beer and the muted fragrance of marijuana, and was the traditional site of the occasional barroom brawls that spiced up Vineyard nightlife. She seemed more the snazzy inn type or the Navigator Room type, but on the second night that some other workers and I were in the Fireside, Kate Ballinger appeared in the door, looked around, and came right over.
The noise of the saloon fell off as eyes followed her across the room. Even Bonzo, who decades before had reputedly blown out a promising mind on bad acid and was rarely excited about anything but fishing and listening to birds, paused, bar rag in hand, and looked at her, wide in both eyes and mouth. Kate Ballinger was the prettiest thing to enter the Fireside since Zee had brought Joshua in to show him off to the regulars.
She smiled and said, “Hi, guys. Mind if I join you?” and sat down beside me at the bar. She looked at the bartender and flicked a finger toward my Sam Adams. “I’ll have what he’s having,” she said.
The bartender pulled himself together and put a bottle and glass in front of her. She poured and sipped.
“Good beer,” she said.
The crew members were the only unimpressed people in the room. They had seen too many movie stars to be awed by another one. They lifted their glasses and bottles and said, “How you doin’?” and “Cheers,” and continued with their talk. Some of them looked with blank faces at her and then at me and only then continued with their talk.
“Good beer,” she said again, taking another sip so small that you knew beer, even a fine one like Sam Adams, was not her usual drink. Then she touched her glass to mine. “Cheers,” she said. “How are things going, J.W.?”
“I’m the last person you should ask,” I said. “I don’t have any idea what’
s going on.”
She laughed. “I could say the same for some of the directors I’ve worked with. How’s that pretty wife of yours?”
“I’ll know in about fifteen minutes,” I said.
“Oh.” She tipped her head to one side, and gave me a smile I recognized from some movie I’d seen her in. “You’re not staying around for another drink or two?”
It had been a seductive smile in the movie and it had worked. Now, in real life, I could understand why it had.
I looked at my glass. It was almost empty. I still felt thirsty.
“I think this will do it for me,” I said. “Zee’ll have a martini and supper waiting for me. I’m about ready for both.”
She arched a brow. “Ah. And when you’re at home and your wife is working, do you have a martini and supper waiting for her?”
“It’s sort of a rule at our place,” I said. “Whoever is home looks after Joshua, does the cooking, and has the martinis waiting in the freezer.”
“I see. And when you’re the one at home, you do all that.”
“Yeah.”
She drew circles with her finger in a bit of spilled beer on the bar between us, and her hand brushed mine. “When I first met your wife out in California, she told me you were quite a guy. I can see why she thinks so.” Her smile was dazzling.
“I plan to keep on fooling her as long as I can,” I said. I finished my beer and slid off the stool.
“You’re really leaving, then? Oh, dear. I can’t charm you into having another drink so we can talk?”
The Scots have a word for it: glamour. It’s a magic spell or charm, an elusive allure. When you cast the glamour, you cast an enchantment. Kate Ballinger could do it, and knew it.
Zee could do it, but didn’t know it. I put her face in front of Kate Ballinger’s. “I have places to go, things to do, and people to see,” I said as lightly as I could, and I walked away.
“See you tomorrow on the set, then,” said Kate Ballinger’s voice.
I raised a hand in reply and went out the door. On Circuit Avenue the air felt clean. I got into the Land Cruiser and went home. Zee met me at the door. She had never looked better. I put my arms around her and gave her a kiss. Finally she pushed herself away and looked up at me, grinning.
“Wow! Maybe I’ll stay home every day!”
“I’ll stay with you.”
She studied me with her great, dark eyes. “The vodka is in the freezer, and the pâté and cheese and crackers are in the fridge. You grab them and I’ll grab the man-child and we’ll meet on the balcony and you can tell me all about your day on the set.”
We went up and sat drinking and looking out over the garden and the far waters, where the last of the evening sailboats were coming in on the falling wind.
I told her about my day, including the part about Kate Ballinger.
“She has her eye on you,” said Zee. “She likes conquests, and she’s had a lot of them.”
“I can believe that last part,” I said.
“You can believe the first part, too,” said Zee in the silky voice she sometimes used when talking about other women.
“I’ve already been conquested,” I said. “By you. That’s enough for me.”
“You probably don’t have much say in this,” said Zee. “Women who seduce men don’t ask their permission first.”
“Is that why you never asked me? No wonder I was so easy.”
She leaned over Joshua. “Is it all right with you if I give your father a kick? No? Well, okay. I won’t.do it this time, but next time he might not be so lucky.”
Joshua blew a bubble. I owed him and he knew it. I decided it would be smart to change the subject, so I asked Zee about her day at home.
“I picked two acorn squash, did a clothes wash, had a chat with Toni Begay, and went shooting with Manny for an hour just before you got home. I put Joshua on his beach chair and put plugs in his ears and mufflers over the plugs and I let him watch, and he didn’t cry at all.”
“Like mother, like son. Gunslinging is in his blood, just like in yours.”
“I don’t know about that, but he was really good. Manny and I are going to be doing a lot of practice in the next few weeks, so it’s good that the noise doesn’t bother him.”
“After this movie business is over, I’ll be home to take care of him, and you won’t need to take him down to the range.”
“Another thing. You got some phone calls. One from Petunia Slocum down at Edgartown Travel, and one from Quinn. You’re supposed to call them back. And Toni Begay told me that Joe wants you to call him. You’re a really popular guy. What’s going on?”
I told her what I knew and what I guessed about Lawrence Ingalls, and about my talk with the chief, and about what I’d asked of Petunia, Quinn, and Joe Begay.
“Well, well,” said nurse Zee, for whom few human foibles were surprises, since she’d dealt with their consequences in more than one hospital.
“Well, well, indeed,” I agreed. “I’ll be interested to hear what they’ve learned, if anything.”
“I’ll get at supper, then,” said Zee, finishing her drink and getting up. “You can make phone calls while I finish the cooking. Come on, Joshua, we’re headed downstairs.”
Petunia seemed most shocked by what she’d learned. Being in the travel business, she had, of course, heard rumors of very private resorts such as Playa de Plata, but until now she hadn’t actually known they existed, or that they catered so particularly to the tastes of their clients.
“Heavens to Betsy,” she said. “Who’d have thunk it? What an innocent little country girl I have been.”
“Maybe you should do some advertising in the Times and the Gazette” I said. “You might end up doing some very profitable business. There are probably a lot of rich, kinky people who come to this island, and they might like to do their travel business with a local, close-mouthed gal like yourself.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” said Petunia, “as soon as I get my eyeballs pushed back in my head.”
Quinn and Joe Begay were not so astonished. Their inquiries had carried them to the same information, but it was not surprising to them. Their work, like Zee’s, had put them in contact with such a variety of human activities that very little shocked them anymore.
“And now what?” asked Joe Begay, as Zee called that supper was ready. “We know that Larry Ingalls liked boys and that he took his vacations in places where he could find them. What else do you need to know?”
“If you can come up with the name of the guy who killed him, that would help.”
He laughed. “There are a lot of retired spooks living on this island. I know some of them. Shall I put out an SOS for bored agents willing to work for nothing?”
“Do that.”
“I’ll give it some thought. But don’t hold your breath, buddy. These guys all worked for Uncle Sam, remember. Fast solutions to problems weren’t their specialty.”
“Nothing is simple anymore. Where’s Holmes when we really need him?”
“I think he’s still keeping bees on the Sussex Downs. But Sherlock is getting a little long in the tooth and may not want to pop over to the Vineyard. We’ll probably have to handle this case ourselves.”
He hung up and I went into supper, where I told Zee what my phone calls had brought me. As I was washing up the dishes, thinking things over, the phone rang again, and Zee answered it in the living room. After a minute, she came back into the kitchen.
“It’s Kevin Turner. He wants to know it we’ll join him for a drink at the Harborview.”
“I think I’ll pass,” I said.
“Kate Ballinger is there, too, he says. She must be barhopping.” Zee raised an eyebrow. “I think I’ll stay passed.”
“Actually, I think he just wants me to join him,” said Zee.
Was my pause as long as it seemed? “It might be fun for you,” I said. “You’ve been home all day. If you’d like to go, go.”
She went
back into the living room and I heard her say thanks, but not tonight. Later, maybe.
She came back into the kitchen. She was whistling. She took my arm and hugged it.
The next morning when I went to work, Drew Mondry had some news for me.
“Kate Ballinger’s decided she needs a private driver. She’s selected you for the job.”
“I thought I was working for you.”
“And I’m working for Cassiopeia Films and Kate’s their star. Who do you think swings the most weight? Sorry, J.W.”
— 30 —
Drew wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sure whether I was happy or not, but unlike Drew, I had some choices.
I thought about all of the money that was being spent on The Treasure Hunters, and how much more was going to be spent.
“How long do you guys expect to be shooting down here?” I asked.
Drew cocked his head to one side. “Two weeks. Maybe three. Why?”
That was longer than I’d been in Vietnam. “What if I don’t want to be Kate’s private chauffeur?”
Drew was uneasy. “I hope you won’t decide that, J.W.”
“What would happen?”
He took a deep breath. “You’d get fired.”
“By you?”
He shrugged and nodded. “I hired you, I’d fire you. I’m sorry. But if I didn’t fire you, they’d fire me, and I can’t afford that.”
“Star power, eh?”
“Yeah. Look, I don’t blame you for being mad—” “I’m not mad,” I said. “Not at you, not at anybody. You don’t owe me anything. You didn’t have to give me this job, and I didn’t have to take it. It was just a deal we both agreed to: you’d give me money and I’d work for you. Now the deal’s over, that’s all.” “I’m glad you feel that way. I—”
I interrupted him. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll drive Kate Ballinger around while she’s here, but it’ll cost you a lot more money than I’m getting now.” I named an extravagant figure, and his eyes widened. “And a couple of other things: I won’t drive her anywhere before seven in the morning or after five in the afternoon unless the shooting schedule makes it necessary} and I wear my own clothes and not those chauffeur clothes I see some of the other drivers wearing. That’s the deal. If you take it, fine. If you don’t, no hard feelings and I’m bound to East Beach to do some bonito fishing.”
A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard Page 22
