by Brad Smith
“Robb coming down?” Levi asked.
“I doubt it,” Sam said. “He’s going over tomorrow’s shot list.” She knew Robb was probably sleeping, but she wouldn’t tell Levi that. Sam would go over the shot list later, when she finally went up to the room, and she’d tell Robb in the morning what he needed to get that day.
“Where the hell’s he staying?” Levi asked.
“Who?”
“Red Hawk.”
“Here, I assume,” Sam said. “The limo’s in the parking lot, and I saw his driver get on the elevator earlier.”
“When do we get the money?”
“We got it,” Sam said.
“What?”
“He paid the first draw, twenty-five percent. It’s in the bank.”
Levi sat fuming, making no attempt to hide it.
“What?” Sam demanded.
“I assumed I’d be handling it. That’s my job, Sam.”
Sam shrugged. “He gave me a shopping bag with a million and a half in it. What was I going to do—carry it around for a day or two?”
Levi shook his head, as if in disbelief. “When’s the second draw?”
“Halfway through shooting, so six weeks or so.”
“Shit,” Levi said.
Sam gave him a long look. “What’s your problem with this? We got the money.”
“I assumed I’d be handling it,” he said again. “Jesus Christ. What the fuck’s he talking to Olivia about?”
“He’s probably asking her if George Clooney is a good kisser.”
“You think this is funny?”
“I think it’s funnier than you do,” Sam said. She laughed and downed a shot. “But then, I don’t have a crush on Olivia Burns.”
“I don’t have a crush on Olivia Burns.”
“Sure you do,” Sam said. “So does Robb. Shit, I’d probably do her myself if the opportunity presented itself.” She indicated to the bartender to bring another round. “You need to get your head out of your ass, Levi. We make the movie first and let everything fall wherever it falls. Ronnie Red Hawk has a piece of the film, whether you like it or not.”
Sam watched as Levi finished his drink and pushed the empty glass away. While he waited for the bartender to bring the refill, he looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar, running his fingers through his hair, pushing a strand here or there. Maybe he was still stressing over the fact that he personally hadn’t been paid the money from Ronnie Red Hawk or maybe he was thinking of how far he’d traveled from the days when he was Larry Bronowski from downtown Detroit, before he had golden locks and bulging triceps and a cool name.
As she watched, though, Sam saw his expression change and she realized he was no longer looking at his own reflection but at something behind them. She turned to see a huge man at a corner table—a Samoan, it appeared. The man, who was reading a menu, had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.
“Who’s the giant?” Sam asked.
“How would I know?” Levi demanded.
“I thought maybe he was crew,” Sam said. “He looks like a Samoan, so he’s not an actor—not one of ours anyway. We wouldn’t slide a Samoan in a film about 1840s America, would we?”
Levi shook his head irritably, dismissing the matter. He continued to watch the big man in the mirror, though. He was in a bit of a mood tonight, Sam thought. She had seen him like this before and she had to wonder why he wouldn’t just stay upstairs in his room when he was so prickly.
Tommy Alamosa came into the bar, and with him was one of the girls from craft services. Her name was Nikki, Sam remembered. She was tall and curvy, maybe twenty-two, which was roughly a third of Tommy’s age. But right in his wheelhouse, Sam thought. Nikki had a hippie-ish quality to her; she rarely wore a bra and always had any number of items hanging from her hair—trinkets and beads and bangles. Sort of like a distaff version of Keith Richards, but about fifty years younger and hot. Tommy was catnip to women. Nikki might be the first woman on the crew he would sleep with, but Sam doubted she would be the last. Sam herself had had a fast and furious fling with Tommy the previous year while shooting Monkey Sex. They’d done some Ecstasy and fucked a couple of times in his hotel room. It had been fun and Sam, who turned forty that month, was flattered that Tommy had been interested in her, however briefly. Forty was way out of his age range.
“You guys want a drink?” Sam asked as the two approached.
“We’re just passing through,” Tommy said. “They’re calling for rain Wednesday. We can shoot the schoolhouse interiors if we have to. I put it on the schedule in case. We’ll need the schoolmarm and the rest of the kids.”
“All right,” Sam said. “How’s it going, Nikki?”
“Cool.”
Cool, Sam thought. Ah, she remembered those days when everything was cool. When there was nothing to do on a Monday night but to hook up with a charming guy like Tommy Alamosa and smoke some dope and fuck each other’s brains out. She remembered those days and missed them. She especially missed them when the alternative was hanging out in a hotel bar listening to Levi whine.
Maybe he was reading her thoughts because he began again.
“Olivia’s in the restaurant with our Indian friend,” Levi announced to Tommy.
Tommy laughed. “Is she now?”
“Another guy thinks it’s funny,” Levi said.
“Isn’t it, like, incorrect to say Indian?” Nikki asked.
“Oh, our Native American partner,” Levi said. “Fucking guy’s whiter than rice but we have to treat him like he’s Geronimo’s great-grandson.”
Tommy ignored Levi’s bitching and turned to Sam. “Anyway, I thought I’d give you a heads-up on the weather situation, in case we need to change the call sheet. Nikki and I are going for a walk. We’ll leave you two to your dissertation on the history of the Native peoples.”
“Fuck you, Tommy,” Levi said.
Nikki laughed as she and Tommy walked away.
“What’s she laughing at?” Levi demanded.
Sam turned to him. “The fact that she’s about to take your suggestion literally?”
• • •
Virgil used Mary Nelson’s horse trailer to transport the yearling bull to New Hartford. He’d brought the bull up from the summer pasture before meeting Claire for dinner and left him in the barnyard overnight so the animal would be ready for loading first thing in the morning. Virgil was on the road shortly after daybreak. With the rising sun at his back, he headed north-west on the winding two-lane stretch that was Route 145. They were calling for temperatures in the nineties again, with clouds arriving late in the day, in advance of a storm front that promised rain for much of Wednesday. But promises, Virgil knew, could be broken, especially when it came to the matter of rain this particular summer.
He was watching the weather because he was due on the movie set Wednesday morning. The scene called for Bob and Nelly to pull a single furrow plow back and forth across a meadow that was tucked in some poplar trees a half mile from the pioneer village. The meadow was a picnic area but apparently the production company had persuaded the owners of Fairfield Village to allow them to tear it up with plowshares. Virgil assumed that meant the production company had made it worthwhile to the owners financially. He could see how that might happen; they’d basically done the same thing with Virgil.
Before leaving the set on Monday he’d mentioned to Tommy Alamosa that he didn’t know how the team of Percherons would take to pulling a plow. Mary Nelson had mentioned to Virgil that she thought they’d been used in plowing competitions in the past, but he had no idea if that was true.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tommy had said. “A guy with a tractor has already plowed half the field. If the team doesn’t work out, we’ll fake it, shoot them from the far side of the field by a little rise, have them walk just outside the plowed ground. You won’t be able to tell. It’ll actually make a nice long shot, the farmer behind the horses with the forest in the background. Later we’ll cut in
some shots of the wife watching from the porch of the log cabin, which is actually twenty miles from here. We can’t get too close anyway because you’re going to be standing in for Daniel again. The horse thing.”
The horse thing. Virgil wasn’t sure why they would hire a guy to shoot scenes with horses when the guy had a pathological fear of them. But he wasn’t going to dwell on it; the windfall was going to help Virgil out with his taxes and that was all he needed to know. As for shooting on Wednesday, he doubted it would happen, if the rain came as expected. The truth was that Virgil needed the rain more than the day’s wages.
Outside of Cobleskill he took Route 28 heading west, passing within a few miles of Cooperstown. Virgil had always intended to stop at the baseball hall of fame but had never gotten around to it. Maybe he’d finally do it later today, on the drive home when the trailer was empty. He wondered if the hall had any artifacts from the Toledo Mud Hens, his old team. The franchise had been around, in one form or another, since the late 1800s.
The farmer who was buying the bull was named Louie Batten. He’d driven down to look at the animal a couple weeks ago, and at that time had told Virgil that the asking price—two thousand dollars—was too high. A week later he’d called and offered fifteen hundred and eventually Virgil sold the bull for eighteen, with the condition that he deliver the animal. Batten had given Virgil directions over the phone and he found the place today without any trouble.
The farm, on a gravel side road eight miles south of New Hartford, looked run-down, with an ancient wooden barn missing half its plank siding, and an Insulbrick house that was just as mean. Twenty or so rangy Hereford cows were fenced in a sun-baked front field, picking at whatever meager pasture was there.
Virgil drove over to a gate that led to the field and parked. As he shut off the ignition, the barn door opened and a scrawny kid of thirteen or fourteen emerged, dragging a bale of straw by the twine. The kid wore dirty jeans and a faded red T-shirt with a flying dirt bike stenciled across the front. He was no bigger than a sapling and it took all his strength to hoist the bale up over the top of the fence and toss it into the field. The kid turned and hustled back into the barn without giving Virgil a glance.
Wondering why the kid would be carrying bedding to a herd in the middle of summer, Virgil got out of the truck. As he did he heard the creak of a screen door and turned to see Batten standing on the sagging porch of the house, a bottle of Coke in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other. He was a big man, sloppy in his appearance, with small eyes and a scar that ran diagonally from the bridge of his nose to his jawline. Coming down the steps, he stuffed what remained of the sandwich in his mouth. He wore stained twill pants and a green John Deere T-shirt, stretched tightly across his big belly. The sleeves of the shirt had been cut off, revealing large, fleshy arms with fading tattoos on each bicep.
“You made it, eh?” he asked pointlessly.
Before Virgil could reply, the kid came out of the barn again, dragging another straw bale. Batten turned a bad eye on him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.
The kid stopped, his thin forearms quivering with the effort of holding up the bale. He dropped his eyes to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was apologetic, uncertain. “Feeding ’em, like you said.”
Batten walked over and roughly jerked the bale out of the kid’s hands. “Feeding ’em this?” he snapped. “This is straw, you moron. Cows eat hay. You don’t know the difference between hay and straw?”
The kid stared at the ground. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Batten said. “I’m sorry I hired a fucking moron.”
The kid glanced at Virgil, then quickly away. His face was as red as his threadbare T-shirt. He had some cringe in him, for sure, but he’d been trying.
“Get the hay,” Batten told him, “before I stuff that bale of straw down your throat, you useless little shit.” He watched the kid scurry back into the barn before turning to Virgil. “Fucking kids,” he said.
Virgil, his eyes on the door where the kid had disappeared, made no reply. It had nothing to do with him. Approaching the trailer, Batten didn’t offer his hand and Virgil didn’t want it anyway. Drinking from the bottle of Coke, Batten walked around to the tailgate and had a look inside.
“This is the bull?” he asked.
“That’s the bull,” Virgil said. What the hell did it look like—a barn swallow?
“I thought he was bigger than that,” Batten said.
“No, he’s exactly that big,” Virgil said. “Same size he was two weeks ago when you saw him.”
“Shit,” Batten said. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“I just figured he was bigger than that. I like a big bull.”
Virgil didn’t say anything more. Batten took another drink from the bottle, finishing it before tossing the empty onto the lawn. He belched loudly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Well, shit, what the hell to do,” he said.
Virgil didn’t like the way the conversation was going. They had a deal. He was about to remind Batten of that fact when the kid emerged from the barn again, this time dragging a hay bale along in the dirt. Batten looked over.
“See?” he said. “You’re not too stupid to learn.”
The kid never looked their way as he hauled the bale to the field. The hay was heavier than the straw, and after realizing he didn’t have enough strength to lift it over the fence, the kid opened the gate and pushed the bale inside before pulling the twine from it. The herd, presumably weary of tugging at the jimsonweed in the field, approached right away and began picking at the hay. Batten turned back to Virgil.
“You drove all this way,” he said. “It’s not really what I want but I’ll give you what I offered you first off. Fifteen hundred. I just gotta hope he turns out to be a half-decent bull.”
Virgil could see the play now. He’d driven four hours, investing his time and gasoline, not to mention the wear and tear on the truck and trailer. Batten was wagering that Virgil, rather than haul the animal back home, would settle for the fifteen hundred.
“Well?” Batten persisted.
“Fuck you,” Virgil said.
“What did you say?”
“I said fuck you. We agreed on a price. I’ll turn that bull loose in the Catskills before I’d sell him to you for a nickel less.”
“You’d better watch that lip,” Batten snapped. He stepped closer. “You won’t get the fifteen hundred and I’ll knock your goddamn teeth out to boot.”
To Virgil’s way of thinking, the last comment represented a threat to his personal well-being, but he wouldn’t rise to the bait. When he was younger, he might have. Now he would cut his losses, head for home.
However, as he turned to leave, he saw the skinny kid by the fence watching him. There seemed to be a question in the kid’s eyes. Virgil didn’t know what the question was, but he had an inkling. So he asked Batten to repeat the threat and when Batten did, Virgil hit him in the jaw as hard as he could with his right fist. Batten fell backward against the trailer and then slid to a sitting position on the ground. He groaned and then blinked several times, and he seemed close to losing the sandwich he’d just ingested. Virgil left him there and got into the truck and started for home.
With the bull in the trailer in the heat of the day, he decided not to stop off at Cooperstown. The hall of fame would have to wait. He got a bucket of water when he stopped for gas and watched as the bull drank it thirstily. Virgil decided that the animal was better off with him than with Batten anyway. Virgil would find another buyer.
It was late afternoon when he pulled in the yard at home. He drove the truck to the pasture field at the back of the farm where his beef cattle passed the summer, and unloaded the bull there beside a couple dozen young steers. His heifers were in another field, up near the barn.
Parking the truck by the house, he left the trailer hooked o
n for the time being. If the weatherman proved wrong, he’d be hauling Bob and Nelly to the film set at Fairfield Village in the morning. He walked to the end of the lane to pick up the mail and looked through it on the way back to the house. There was another bill from the county reminding him of his tax situation. With the deal for the bull falling through, he was even more grateful for the movie work.
In the kitchen, he grabbed a beer from the fridge and was taking a drink when the telephone rang. He reached for it and heard Claire’s voice.
“You really need to get a cell phone,” she said right off.
“Actually, I don’t.”
“You heard from the movie people?”
“No,” Virgil said. He glanced at the reminder from the county and tossed it on the table. “Should I have?”
“Probably.”
“Why? Where are you anyway—Rochester?”
“I’m back in Kingston,” Claire told him. “Investigating a suspicious death. Some kids found a body floating in Rondout Creek.”
Virgil paused, trying to make the connection. “And what’s that got to do with the movie people?”
“Everything.”
“All right,” he said, already dreading the answer. “Whose body is it?”
“Olivia Burns.”
NINE
For the time being at least, virtually all the suspects were either with the production company or on the periphery of the film shoot, so that’s where Claire began. The term “suspects” was not entirely accurate, as the presence of foul play had not been established. All that was known for certain was that Olivia Burns had been found early Tuesday morning floating in a shallow eddy of Rondout Creek, wearing a nylon tracksuit and sporting a lump on her left temple. Cause of death was unknown at this point.
Since most of the film crew was staying at the Hampton Inn, that’s where Claire set up late Tuesday morning, taking over a small boardroom off the main lobby. When she arrived at the hotel a little before noon, Joe Brady was already there. Investigating a suspicious death was not a pleasant task; investigating a suspicious death with Joe Brady also on the case was akin to having a root canal without anesthesia.
