Nothing But Trouble

by Michael McGarrity

  Kerney introduced himself to the receptionist, a young woman with light brown hair and plucked eyebrows, and asked if someone could tell him about a movie to be filmed in the Bootheel later in the year.

  Somewhat taken aback by Kerney’s uniform, the young woman cautiously asked why he was interested. Kerney told her he’d been approached to serve as a technical advisor on the project, and the receptionist passed him on to the director, a middle-aged woman named Vikki Morrison.

  Trim and energetic, Morrison had short blond fluffy hair and high cheekbones. Her office walls were filled with framed, autographed photos of movie stars and posters of films shot in the state. A director’s chair at the side of her desk carried the name of one of Santa Fe’s best-known resident film celebrities. A bookshelf held a display of various shooting scripts signed by cast members, along with a carefully arranged display of copies of a book, 100 Years of Filmmaking in New Mexico.

  Kerney explained his personal relationship with Johnny Jordan and asked about the movie project in the Bootheel. Morrison told him that Johnny had been a driving force behind getting the film shot in the state. He’d brokered a deal to use the nearly abandoned mining town of Playas as the production headquarters. In addition to serving as a movie set, the town would house the cast and crew during filming in the area.

  Kerney knew about the town through a recent article in a law-enforcement bulletin. Built in the 1970s, Playas had once been a company town of over a thousand people. But when the nearby copper-smelting operations were shut down, it became a virtual modern-day ghost town containing over 250 homes, 25 apartments, a bank building, post office, fire station, churches, community center, air strip, and other amenities. Recently, the town had been bought with Homeland Security funds and was in the process of being transformed into a national antiterrorism training center.

  Morrison explained that Johnny had been active in securing part of the financing for the movie through a low-interest state loan. He’d just finished negotiating the final details of a contract that guaranteed the state a percentage of the profits from the film.

  Kerney asked Morrison to tell him about the role of a technical advisor.

  “Well,” Morrison said, “it all depends on the project, the cast, and the crew. In some cases it can be a demanding, frustrating role, or it can be an enjoyable, low-key experience.”

  “I’m not looking to take on something that winds up being a heavy burden.”

  Morrison smiled. “I can certainly understand that. You should have an opportunity to meet with the producers and key personnel before filming actually begins. If what you learn isn’t to your liking, you can always opt out of the project.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Kerney said. He thanked Morrison for her time and left with a copy of 100 Years of Filmmaking in New Mexico, which she insisted he should have.

  Johnny Jordan lived and worked in a late-nineteenth-century brick building in downtown Denver that had originally been a warehouse. The developer who renovated it had added a two-story penthouse with a wall of glass that looked out at the Rocky Mountains. It featured a large balcony, a media room, four bedrooms, two home offices, and a huge living room adjacent to the kitchen and dining area. This was where Johnny and his wife, Madeline, a partner in a law firm that specialized in corporate mergers and hostile takeovers, lived. Madeline retained sole ownership, having bought the property prior to their marriage.

  Johnny loved living there, loved waking up to the city views and the distant mountains, and especially loved that it hadn’t cost him a penny.

  He didn’t expect Madeline to be home, and she wasn’t. Johnny always timed his trips out of town with other women to coincide with his wife’s travel schedule. It reduced the odds of discovery. This week she was in Toronto, heading up a team of lawyers negotiating the merger of two multinational lumber companies.

  Johnny cared about Madeline, maybe even loved her every once in a while when she wasn’t obsessing about her career. But like every other woman he’d been seriously drawn to and married over the years—Madeline was wife number four—she now bored him.

  With all his wives he’d been faithful until the boredom set in. Then he went fishing for fresh talent. At the end of his second marriage he’d tried to figure out why he became so easily disconnected from women he thought he loved. After pondering it he’d decided most women were like well-presented but uninteresting meals: nice to look at but no fun to feast on time and time again.

  When his third wife left him, Johnny had struggled briefly with the question of why he kept getting married. The only thing he could figure out was that he was too damned impulsive. With Madeline he’d thought he had chosen more wisely. In her early forties when he’d met her, she was stunning to look at, had a great sense of humor, and was extraordinary in bed. He liked the fact that she was mature, sophisticated, and successful. He dated her for a year, seeing no other women during that time, before popping the question.

  After the marriage she’d held him at the banquet table far longer than any of his other wives. But that had all gone south a year ago.

  In his office Johnny stuffed a copy of the screenplay in an envelope for Kerney, filled out the airbill form, and phoned to have it picked up. Then he called his lawyer and left a message about his DWI arrest in Santa Fe. Finished with the small stuff, he dialed the private office number of Bill Esty, vice president in charge of programming at a cable sports network in New York.

  “Is it wrapped up?” Esty asked.

  “The film office is drafting the final contract. We can move ahead.”

  “Johnny, we still have some issues to clear off the table.”

  “What issues?” Johnny demanded. “I’ve got a movie deal in the bag that will feature two ex-national pro rodeo stars, two up-and-coming Hispanic cowboys from the circuit, and a screenplay with a humdinger of a gut-busting rodeo in it.”

  “We know all that,” Esty said slowly, “but it’s been suggested that rodeo may already be nearing its saturation point. Bull riding is on cable almost every night and the numbers aren’t moving.”

  “Rodeo is more than bull riding,” Johnny said, “and right now everyone is presenting it in the same old way. Like we’ve been saying, this is a chance to do for rodeo what the X Games did for skateboarders and snowboarders. We can take this sport to the next level on your network.”

  “If I didn’t think there was a chance of that, we’d have stopped talking a while ago. But I don’t have a completely open field here.”

  “This movie is going to generate a wave of interest in rodeoing and cowboys. Do you really want to be standing on the sidelines when I produce the first rodeo Super Bowl? I’ve got the talent already tied up, sponsors interested, and an agreement in the works with two pro rodeo associations.”

  “Now that I know you have the full funding,” Esty said, “I’ll talk to the Spanish-language television people in Florida and Mexico City about taking the next step and formally bidding on a share of the rights.”

  “Why have they been dragging their heels?”

  “It’s human nature in the television business,” Espy replied. “No one wants to go out on a limb with a project that doesn’t already have the market’s seal of approval. But they loved the footage of your Hispanic cowboys, Lovato and Maestas. Now that the production financing is nailed down, I don’t think it will take too long to bring them on board.”

  Johnny had put every dime he had into developing the movie. He’d get a producer’s fee for the film and an agent’s fee for the cowboys who had appearances in the movie, but he was out advances against the rodeo stars he’d signed up for the new circuit. Unless he could get corporate sponsorships and seal the deal with Esty, his super rodeo circuit would be dead in the water and he’d be bankrupt.

  “When do you expect a response?” he asked.

  “No telling,” Esty replied. “But I’d like to see us finalize contract negotiations by this summer. If it all falls into place, we can s
tart preproduction right away, and you’ll have a contract.”

  Johnny heard footsteps in the hallway. “Okay, I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up to find Madeline staring at him from the doorway with a frosty look on her face. Five three with dancer’s legs and pert little breasts, she was built just the way Johnny liked them. Her jaw was set and she didn’t look at all happy to see him.

  “You’re back early,” he said with a grin. “I didn’t expect you home until tomorrow.”

  “I got home last night, just in time to find a woman named Brenda slipping a note to you in our mailbox.”

  “Who?” Johnny asked.

  “Brenda,” Madeline repeated, handing Johnny the opened letter.

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “No, she left before I could approach her. But I read her little note. She wants you to call her when you get home because she was worried about you in Santa Fe. Did you really tell her that your father had a stroke?”

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” Johnny said, scanning the note, knowing that he’d been busted.

  Madeline scoffed. “From what Brenda wrote, she appears to be smitten with you, Johnny. Those earrings you gave her made quite an impression.”

  “I can explain everything,” Johnny said.

  Madeline stepped to his desk and dropped a business card on the table in front of him. “No, you can’t. The movers will be here in the morning to pack up all your personal possessions and get you out of my house. Here’s their card. After you check into a hotel for the night, I suggest you start apartment hunting.”

  “Can’t we talk this out?”

  “We just have,” Madeline said, her hand outstretched. “Give me your house key.”

  Johnny smiled sadly, looked crestfallen, spread his arms wide in a gesture of supplication. “Look, sweetie pie, I’m sorry. I screwed up. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn right it won’t. Pack an overnight bag, leave my house, and don’t speak to me again.”

  He dropped the key in Madeline’s hand and watched as she turned on her heel and left. He checked his wallet for cash, pulled out his last bank statements of his personal accounts, and studied his balances. He could rent a place and get by for a month or two before he would be forced to use his credit cards to cover his business and living expenses.

  The thought struck him that maybe Brenda would put him up. She had an extra bedroom he could use as an office. That way he could cut his overhead in half and save a chunk of money. He worked on a story to tell her as he dialed the phone.

  “Hey, sweetie pie,” he said when she picked up, “I got your note.”

  The following morning the script Johnny had promised arrived, and Kerney spent his lunch break at his desk reading it. The story was a good one, with some interesting plot twists. The climax to the film occurred during a working cowboy rodeo held at the end of the cattle drive, which turned into a free-for-all after the cops showed up to arrest the rancher and his friends for trespassing on government property. Although set in present time, it had the feel of a classic Hollywood Western.

  He put the screenplay away. Tonight, Sara, his career-army wife, would be flying in with their son, Patrick, for a long weekend break from her current Pentagon assignment, which was scheduled to end in the fall. For the past two months they’d been debating how to spend the thirty days of leave Sara would take before her next posting. Mostly she’d talked about just wanting to settle in at their Santa Fe ranch to nest and relax. Would she consider giving up a large portion of her vacation time so that Kerney could work on a movie?

  Last night he’d called Dale Jennings to get his take on Johnny’s offer. Dale told him that Barbara and the girls were excited about it, the money was too good to pass up, and it would be fun to see firsthand how movies got made.

  Dale’s enthusiasm had made Kerney think more positively about signing on. But in the end it would be Sara’s decision to make.

  A worried-looking patrol commander who knocked on his open office door made Kerney postpone any further thoughts about the movie. He smiled, wrapped up his half-eaten sandwich, dropped it in the waste basket, and invited the officer to enter.

  Usually a good traveler, Patrick was restless on the flight to Albuquerque. Sara tried, without success, to distract him with a picture book and the toys she’d brought along, a set of small plastic barnyard animals that ordinarily kept him occupied for hours. Today the book and toys held no attraction. He squirmed in his seat, kicked his feet, twirled his favorite toy animal in his hand, and repeatedly asked when he would see his daddy.

  Patrick’s question made Sara’s heart sink. Her son had reached the age where he needed a full-time father in his life, and her long-distance marriage to Kerney made that impossible.

  At the terminal Patrick spotted Kerney waiting near the escalators behind the passenger screening area and ran full tilt to him, his face breaking into a big smile. Kerney scooped him up and hugged Sara with his free arm. On the drive to Santa Fe, Patrick’s fidgetiness vanished. He sat calmly in his toddler car seat and soon fell asleep.

  They talked quietly about their workweeks. By design Sara avoided two issues that were troubling her: Patrick’s need for a full-time father and her next duty assignment. She’d just been told that she would be posted as a deputy military attaché to the U.S. embassy in Turkey. The assignment came with the promise of a fast-track promotion. If she turned it down, her climb up the ladder would stall and she’d never get to wear the eagles of a full bird colonel.

  “Did you know that the first movie made in New Mexico was filmed in 1898?” Kerney asked.

  “You always have such interesting bits of trivia to share,” Sara replied, grateful that Kerney was making small talk. “Tell me more.”

  “It was made by the Edison Company and ran less than a minute,” Kerney said. “In 1912 D. W. Griffith filmed A Pueblo Legend with Mary Pickford at the Isleta Pueblo south of Albuquerque, and later Tom Mix, the early cowboy movie star, made twenty-five movies up in Las Vegas.”

  “Where did you learn all this?” Sara asked.

  “In a book I’m reading on New Mexico filmmaking.”

  “Why the sudden interest in movies?”

  Kerney slowed to let a semitruck pass. “I’ve been asked to serve as a technical advisor on a movie to be shot here starting in September.”

  “Is it a shoot-’em-up or a cop caper?” Sara asked.

  “A bit of both.”

  “How did this happen to land in your lap?”

  “By way of an old boyhood acquaintance,” Kerney replied.

  He gave Sara the lowdown on Johnny Jordan and the movie. He told her that Dale Jennings had signed on to be a wrangler and planned to bring Barbara and the girls with him. The more he talked about the idea the more animated he became, particularly when he described the cattle drive and the rodeo that would be filmed in the Bootheel. He was grinning from ear to ear when he finished.

  “You sound like you want to do it.”

  “Not without you and Patrick,” Kerney said as he signaled his turn off the highway onto the ranch road.

  “Let’s talk about it some more.”

  Soon the ranch house came into view. Tucked into a saddleback ridge, it looked out on the Galisteo Basin, with the Ortiz and Sandia Mountains in the distance. Sara sighed as the car climbed the long hill. It was paradise, and the thought of spending a month at the ranch before heading off to Turkey was more than appealing to her. But the movie idea did sound like it could be a fun adventure, and Kerney was clearly drawn to it.

  “There’s one more thing,” Kerney said as he pulled to a stop outside the house.

  Sara gazed at the pasture and the horse barn across the field from the house. Four geldings were in the paddock, their heads up, ears forward, alerted by the sound of the car. To the west the sun was low, behind a thin bank of clouds, spreading a pink glow over the Jemez Mountains.

  “What’s that?” she asked as she got out of
the car and slipped on her jacket to cut the chill of the April wind.

  “The mayor told me privately that he doesn’t plan to run for reelection next March. That means I’ll probably be out of a job in less than a year.”

  Sara held back a smile as she unstrapped Patrick from the toddler seat and woke him up. Was it possible that both of her major concerns could be resolved within a matter of months? Would he be willing to resign his position before the municipal election and go with her on her next duty assignment? They could arrange for a caretaker to look after the ranch in their absence.

  Kerney was a rich man by way of an unexpected inheritance several years back from an old family friend. He served as police chief not for the money, but because it had been the job he’d always wanted. Now that it would be ending, they could finally start living as a family, see a bit of the world together. Nothing would make Sara happier.

  Kerney popped open the trunk and took out the luggage. “Did you hear what I said?”

  Sara nodded, took Patrick out of his seat, put him on the ground, and bundled him into his warm coat. “Are you ready to retire?”

  “It’s about that time,” Kerney said, looking stoical.

  Patrick scooted away in the direction of the geldings in the paddock. “Can I go riding now?” he called. “With Daddy?”

  Sara caught up to him and took him by the hand. “In the morning, young man.”

  “Can I give the horses some biscuits?” Patrick pleaded, trying to tug Sara along.

  “Yes, you can.” She turned back toward Kerney as Patrick led her away. “Watching how a film gets made and getting to play cowboy might be fun.”

  Kerney smiled. “That’s what I think.”

  “You come see the horses, too, Daddy,” Patrick called over his shoulder.