“Ain’t it a beauty?” Mad Crow said. “I found it in the prop room over at the studio, and I got ‘em to give it to me. Of all the ones we did together, this is the only time they ran a decent picture of me.”
“It’s a good one,” Horn said. “You look very noble.”
“Noble red man, that’s me. White man speak truth.”
A young woman entered, wearing a gaudy satin shirt, boots and a fringed skirt, and placed two bottles of beer, still flecked with ice from the cooler, on the desk. “Thanks, sugar,” Mad Crow said as she left. He popped the two caps on the scarred edge of his desk, passed one to Horn, and raised his bottle. “Here’s to Sierra Lane, the gol-dangedest cowpoke who ever busted up a saloon.” He took a long pull on the bottle and belched noisily. “You got any of your old posters?”
“No,” Horn said. He was picking absent-mindedly at the label on the bottle with his thumbnail.
“The kid got to you, didn’t he?”
When Horn didn’t answer, Mad Crow went on: “Tell you what, I won’t give you anything to do with widows or orphans, okay? Just hard-core gamblers, tough guys, bad apples. Then you can keep your conscience clear.”
The Indian finished his beer and dropped the bottle into a wastebasket with a loud clatter. “Two guys who never finished high school,” he said, his voice softening a little. “We sure fooled ‘em, didn’t we? We had it pretty good for a while. Nobody ever seemed to notice neither one of us could act worth a hoot.” He shook his head, remembering, and laughed. “We just went around dispensing justice in the old west, by God. The cowboy and his faithful Indian—”
“It was all crap, and you know it.”
“Who says? Cecil B. De-fucking Mille? Okay, we turned out a lot of forgettable movies, for anybody who had a quarter in his pocket. But the kids liked us. And along the way, we had a few laughs, we made a few bucks.”
“Guess I should have saved some of them,” Horn said. “Wouldn’t be working for you, picking up greasy money off the pavement.”
“Please, a little less gratitude. You’re embarrassing me. I didn’t see anybody else standing in line to offer you a job. Not after Bernie Rome put out the word and you couldn’t get a job at any studio in town, even mucking out their stables. Look,” he went on when Horn didn’t respond. “Who cares? We’re saddle pals again, and I say to hell with all of ‘em.”
“Saddle pals. Right.” Horn got up. “I appreciate the work, Indian. I do. Every now and then, I just get a little tired of it, you know?”
“Wait a minute.” Mad Crow reached in a drawer. “I almost forgot. You got a call today.” He handed him a slip of paper.
“Mutual 3224,” Horn read aloud. “Scotty?”
“Yep. I didn’t tell him I knew where you were, just said I’d pass it on if I ever ran into you.”
Horn crumpled up the paper and dropped it into the wastebasket alongside the empty bottle.
“Not going to call him?” When Horn didn’t answer, he said: “I thought you all were good friends. What ever happened to Horn and Bullard, the terrors of the Sunset Strip?”
“I don’t know,” Horn said, making sure he sounded as if he didn’t care. “I’ve lost touch with the guy.”
“He was at the trial, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right. Bought me a drink just before I went upstate, wrote me a couple of letters, and that was it. Last I heard from him was almost three years ago. I suppose when Iris dumped me, he had to pick sides, and he’d known her longer. Or maybe it was just that Scotty’s old man wouldn’t have approved of him hanging out with a jailbird. Bad for business. Bad for the family image.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to worry about Daddy’s opinion any more,” Mad Crow said with a snort. “You heard, right?”
“I saw it in the paper. Big funeral. They said it took an hour to clear all the cars out of Forest Lawn afterward.”
“So your old buddy’s a rich guy now.”
Horn shrugged. “Good for him.” He turned to leave.
“Why not give him a call? You can use every friend you’ve got.”
“Go to hell,” Horn said pleasantly as he closed the door behind him.
“Happy trails, amigo,” Mad Crow called loudly after him. “Keep in touch.”
CHAPTER TWO
Normally, Horn would have headed home to fix some dinner, but he was newly flush and felt like eating out. He drove downtown to Cole’s Buffet, in the basement of the Pacific Electric Building on Sixth. Down the stairs off the sidewalk, the place was cool and dimly lit. The counterman made him a roast beef sandwich with a side of potato salad and drew him a draft beer. Horn settled into a table near the back.
Cole’s was one of the places where he still felt at home. Those places seemed to be vanishing, the way things dissolve in one of those long, slow fadeouts on the screen and you know the movie is over. Horn had spent little time in the city during the past few years. First had been the war, and not long after that came prison. Now he was back, but from time to time he was troubled by small, unsettling surprises—the sight of a new building where there had been grass and trees, or a vacant lot where a hotel once had stood. Los Angeles, the city that had welcomed him in his youth with sunshine and promise, was beginning to present a different face to him, a little like an ex-girlfriend who had changed, who now preferred other men.
As he ate, he felt a mixture of shame and anger. Shame over the work he did, anger at everyone—Buddy Taro for being a fool, the boy for recognizing him. Anger even at the Indian, one of the few friends he had left, for putting him in the position of accepting charity, for handing him a job that made him feel low and mean. He went for another beer, to soften the edges of his anger. He had to be careful about the feeling. Sometimes, anger could fester and erupt in rage. It was rage that had put him in Cold Creek for two years.
The beer made him feel better, and he felt something soften in him. After a while he went over to the pay phone in the corner, paged through the phone book to find Scott Bullard’s number at work, and dialed it.
“Scotty, it’s John Ray.”
“Hey, my friend. Thanks for calling me. Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“I suppose it has. Sorry about your father.”
“I appreciate that. At least it was quick—his heart. The old man wouldn’t have wanted to stick around with some long illness. He told me that, back when we were still talking.” Although Scotty spoke quickly, as always, with the words tumbling over one another, he sounded tired and distracted. “It’s almost as if he picked the way he wanted to go. Just like he arranged everything else.”
“I guess so,” Horn said. “You needed something?”
“Look, I, uh. . . .” Scotty stopped, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “Yeah, I need to talk to you. Where are you right now?”
“Cole’s. On my second beer.”
“Mind if I come by and try to catch up?”
* * *
Horn nursed the second draft while he waited. The place was getting busier as the nearby office buildings emptied for the day, and he idly watched the countermen as they sliced rare roast beef off the bone, dipped the bread into the juice, and slid the sandwiches across to the customers. Nice to have a useful trade, he thought. Man comes in off the job hungry, his starched collar wilting in the heat, and this guy in a white apron hands him a juicy French dip with a glistening kosher dill on the side and a mug of cold beer to wash it all down. Now there’s a service that’s appreciated. Me? I take people’s grocery money.
He thought about Scotty, trying to focus on the good times. Years earlier, the two had eased into a solid friendship. Each had something to offer the other. Horn had introduced his friend to the slower rhythms of a ranch and had invited him onto movie sets while some of his “oaters” were being shot. He showed him how to use a
rifle and took him coyote hunting a few times up in the San Gabriels. For his part, Scotty, as the son of one of Los Angeles’ biggest land developers, had showed Horn the joy of irresponsibility—and how intensely two young men could carouse when financed by Bullard Senior’s money.
Even after Horn and Iris were married, she never seemed to mind when he and Scotty went off somewhere. She had worked for the Bullard company as a secretary and known the family—it was Scotty who had introduced her to Horn—and, like most people, seemed to genuinely enjoy Scotty’s company. She and Horn would sometimes go on double dates with Scotty and his current girlfriend, who might be a file clerk with the family firm, a department store model, or a debutante from back East. Scotty was undiscriminating when it came to women. He liked them all, and they returned the affection.
When Horn began his two-year stretch upstate and Scotty let things lapse after a couple of letters, Horn reluctantly wrote the other man off as the kind of friend he didn’t need. Then came the letter from Iris, giving him someone else to write off. . . .
The street door opened, and Scotty stepped inside with his usual quick, fluid movement. He waved to an acquaintance standing at the counter, patted another on the back, then looked around, spotted Horn, and came over.
“John Ray Horn,” he said with mock seriousness, sticking out his hand as he sat down.
“Scott Bullard, Esquire,” Horn replied, taking it.
Scotty looked much the same. Lithe build, sharp features, sandy hair with a pronounced widow’s peak. The ever-present slight grin was in place, except now it looked strained. He was wearing a well-cut tropical-weight gray suit, apparently having come over directly from the family offices. The only difference Horn noticed was the circles under the other man’s eyes. Guess that’s what losing a father does to some people, Horn thought. Wonder if it’ll do that to me.
“You doing all right?” Scotty asked, looking at Horn searchingly, taking in his clothes, the slightly tousled hair, the one-day stubble, the overall look of a man for whom good grooming had ceased to be a priority. “Someone told me you’re working with Joseph now.”
“For him,” Horn grunted. “It’s not much, but I didn’t find many top-drawer jobs waiting for me when I got back. You want a beer?”
“Maybe later. What about the studio?”
Horn laughed. “What do you think?”
“What about another studio?”
Horn shifted impatiently in his chair. “I’ve got a felony on my record. I’m what they call blacklisted. Might as well be a goddamn Red or something.”
“I’m sorry,” Scotty said. “Look—”
“Hey, Bullard, if you’re about to offer me a job, save it. You’re a little late, anyway, know what I mean?”
The other man nodded, looking down at the table. Horn said, “So I guess you’re the big dog at Bullard Development now.”
Scotty shook his head. “The old man was too smart for that. He knew I wasn’t the one to carry the company banner. Just to make sure I didn’t tear down everything he worked to build—” His voice rose dramatically in mimicry of Arthur Bullard’s oratory. “Anyway, he set up a trust fund for me. My dear old mom and the board of directors are going to be running the company, which is fine with me.” He leaned back in his chair and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “I think I disappointed him from the day I first poked my head out into the world. Even though I wanted him to be proud of me, I never wanted to go into his business. He thinks all I ever wanted to do was spend his money.”
“Well,” Horn said, “you had a real talent in that department.”
“I did indeed,” Scotty chuckled. “I think he had this secret hope that I’d mature, buckle down at the office, get married, and sire a lot of Bullard grandchildren to carry on the line. But none of that ever happened. Then, when the war came and I wound up 4-F, I think that finished me for him. Not only was I a disappointment in every other department, now I wasn’t even good enough to die for my country.”
“Not your fault you were 4-F,” Horn said.
“You couldn’t tell him that,” Scotty replied, shaking his head. “I saw you and a bunch of others come back from the war, and I was jealous of you. When you wouldn’t even talk about what you’d done, that somehow made me feel even worse.”
Horn regarded him uneasily. Once Scotty had sat down, what energy he had left since his father’s funeral seemed to drain out of him, and his voice and gestures were growing slower. Scotty had always been able to throw himself into everything—a new car, a new girl, even a conversation. It was one of the things that made him likable. But his heart wasn’t in this conversation. He took long breaths, and his eyes flitted around the room, rarely meeting Horn’s.
“We didn’t have much to say to each other in the last few years,” Scotty went on. “Oh, I made a good show of it, so he could tell his friends at his club how he was grooming me to take over things some day. I’d show up for work, shuffle papers for a few hours, and go home without ever seeing him. . . .” Scotty stared at Horn for a few seconds. “What the hell. Enough of this. Have you seen Iris?”
“No.”
“Or Clea?”
“Nope. Not since I went up.”
“That was almost three years ago.”
“I know it was three years ago,” Horn said, more loudly than he intended. “I went in married, came out divorced. Why do I need to see either one of them?”
“Well, I know Clea was special to you. . . .” Scotty trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
“Just let it go, all right?” Horn leaned forward impatiently. “Come on, Bullard. If you’re not going to get a beer, at least you can tell me what you wanted to see me about.”
Scotty nodded slowly, as if he’d been waiting for those words. “Can we get out of here? I want to show you something.”
* * *
Horn stood at the window looking down at the street twelve stories below. Beneath a cloudless, ink-dark sky, Spring Street danced with the lights of cars and the quick movements of the last workers exiting the office buildings on their way home. The heavy, wide-paned windows were thrown up, and the evening air was beginning to cool the room. He and Scotty were in Arthur Bullard’s office on the top floor of the Braly Building, where Bullard Development occupied the top two floors. Except for the occasional cleaning woman, most of the other offices were dark and unoccupied. The room where they stood was lit only by a study lamp atop the desk in one corner.
“Some view, huh?” he heard Scotty say behind him. “My office is on the other side, looking east out toward the rail yards.” Scotty nudged him and handed him a glass. Horn guessed it contained Bullard Senior’s favorite scotch, and a sniff confirmed it. He sipped appreciatively.
“But I like my view too,” Scotty went on. “Did you know this was the first skyscraper around here? It’s still pretty goddam impressive.”
Although Horn had visited Iris at work in the building a few times before they were married, he had never been in this office. The place was a statement of power, with richly paneled walls and plush leather furniture. He walked around the large oak desk to study a row of framed photos on the wall, squinting to make out the figures in the dim light. He saw Scotty’s father standing with the mayor, the archbishop, the governor, the occasional movie studio chief, and groups of friends on hunting and skiing trips. Although Horn had little interest in business or government, he nevertheless recognized some of the men known as the oligarchs of Los Angeles. They were the big businessmen who, earlier in the century, had sensed the city’s coming greatness and, by methods both legal and questionable, had accumulated enough of the vital pieces on the board—oil, rails, water, real estate—to ensure their fortunes. Arthur Bullard had been one of the last surviving oligarchs, and now he too was gone.
Scotty sat down in his father’s old chair and gestured for Horn to sit
across from him.
“How’s the view from behind the big desk?” Horn asked.
“Pretty grand. But I don’t plan on getting used to it. Where are you living these days?”
Horn told him, explaining how to find his place, and wrote down the phone number on Arthur Bullard’s monogrammed notepad.
“So. . . .” Scotty cleared his throat, looking vaguely ill at ease. “I guess I should have written you more. Maybe driven up there a few times.”
“You probably had more important things.”
“I don’t know about that. Did you get along all right?”
“Sure. I made a few friends, tried not to make too many enemies—although that’s not easy in a place like that. Kept my head down, my nose clean, you know. I even learned a little bit of a trade, tooling leather and working metal. I made this belt I’m wearing. Started on a saddle, but then my time ran out.”
Scotty’s mind appeared to be elsewhere. “Maybe this isn’t much of a reason,” he said. “But I heard people say you really tried to kill that guy.”
“Maybe I did.”
Scotty grinned ruefully. “And then I heard a few others say maybe he deserved it.”
“Maybe he did.”
“All right, here it is: My father had some things to say about you. You can imagine what they were. I tried to avoid being Daddy’s good little boy most of the time, but this was one time I guess I listened to him. He said you had gone crazy and were dangerous. I admit, I was a little scared of you, scared of what my old friend had turned into. Make sense?”
“No.”
“I know it doesn’t, but that’s the reason you didn’t hear from me after that first couple of letters. I feel bad about it. If you’ve got any hard feelings, take a poke at me, and we’ll call it even.” He glanced down at Horn’s oversized right hand cupped around his glass, the knuckles whitened with old callouses. “Maybe that’s not a good idea. Why don’t you just call me some names?”
Clea's Moon Page 2
