by Brad Smith
“She likes to slum,” Levi said.
“What?” Sam asked.
“She was just in the barn with the hired hand,” he said. “I don’t know what was going on but use your imagination.”
“That fucking guy,” Robb said, slurping the ice cream.
“Who cares what she does?” Sam asked. “As long as she shows up on time and knows her lines, I don’t care if she screws the horses.”
“Wouldn’t put it past her,” Levi said. “I think she’s a little slut.”
“This isn’t high school,” Sam said.
“You know damn well she’s doing Big Chief Red Hawk,” Levi said. “And now the horse wrangler?”
“I hate that fucking guy,” Robb said. “The sooner we shoot those horses out, the better. I’ll find an excuse to fire him in front of the crew. He thinks he’s so fucking smart. I have boots smarter than him.”
“There was something going on between him and Kari in that barn,” Levi insisted.
“You’ve really got it in for her tonight,” Sam said. “You sure something didn’t happen between the two of you?”
“Shit,” Levi said, draining the beer. “I don’t even talk to her. I got enough to do, trying to keep the money flowing on this thing. Besides, my standards are a little higher than that. I don’t waste my time on starlets.”
Sam went to the cupboard and retrieved a bottle of tequila she’d opened earlier. The day after they’d agreed to cast Kari Karson as Martha, Ronnie Red Hawk had sent over a case of his private stock, just up from Mexico, or so he claimed. Sam poured herself a shot and then turned to look at the two men, her back against the cupboard. She did the shot, making a face as the liquor went down. She reminded herself to tell craft services to bring in some limes.
“Where are we at?” she asked.
“We start the cabin interiors tomorrow,” Levi said.
“Just Kari and Georgia then?”
“For tomorrow. Daniel’s back the next day. The yard scene, where he buys it.”
“When do we shoot the attack?” Robb said, his interest piqued. He finished his ice cream and sat up on the couch. Sam moved over to gather his empty bowl and the spoon.
“There’s no attack,” Levi reminded him. “He’s out in the yard drawing a bucket of water and takes an arrow through the chest.”
Robb looked pointedly at Sam.
“We were thinking that scene might need jazzing up a little,” Sam said, looking at Levi. “We don’t want to miss an opportunity here. Something along the lines of Daniel takes the arrow and staggers back to the cabin, then he and the mother and daughter fight off the raiding party. In the end, of course, Daniel succumbs to his wounds. Cue the violins.”
“In the book, the women aren’t even there,” Levi said. “They’re at the church thing.”
“This isn’t the book,” Robb said. “Think about it—it’s more powerful if he dies in their arms, with arrows flying. The husband, the father. And then they’re forced to fight off the savage hordes.”
“How would two women manage to do that?” Levi asked. “Fight off the hordes, I mean.”
Robb wasn’t listening, though. He was looking at Sam. “What if they rape her? Maybe they catch Kari in the barn and they rape her.” He became inspired now. “Yes! And the husband buys it coming to her rescue. That’s it. We could make it really graphic. Man, I’d love to shoot that.”
Even Sam was hedging now. “Maybe,” she said doubtfully.
“Call Stuart. Tell him to write it.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, refusing to look Levi’s way. “He can rough it out, see what we think.”
“Now we’re talking,” Robb said. “I’m ready to shoot some action. Chopping firewood doesn’t do it for me.”
“You ever shot anything like that before?” Levi asked. “A rape scene?”
“Sure he has,” Sam interjected. She reached for the bottle of tequila. “He’s shot everything. Okay?”
Levi turned to her for a moment and shrugged; he knew by now she would invent whatever history she needed to for her husband.
“Okay,” he said, and he left.
SIXTEEN
Virgil was back at the cabin in the hills by first light with the horses in tow. Driving up the winding road in the half darkness, he’d been thinking there’d be nobody there when he arrived. He would unload the horses and head for home and his waiting wheat crop. He had a long day ahead of him.
But Tommy Alamosa was sitting on the front porch of the cabin when Virgil wheeled the truck and horse trailer into the yard. Tommy had a cup of coffee on his knee and was pulling on a joint as Virgil got out of the truck.
“Good morning,” Tommy said as he exhaled.
Crossing the yard, Virgil smelled wood smoke and looked up to see a thin fume curling from the cabin’s chimney. There was a mist hanging over the meadow, the air damp with the dew, and the smoke was barely visible against it. Virgil indicated the cabin.
“You spend the night?”
“I did,” Tommy said. He offered the joint in Virgil’s direction and when Virgil declined he carefully extinguished it on the sole of his shoe before tucking it into his shirt pocket. “Sometimes I need a break from certain people.”
“Not naming names.”
“No, sir,” Tommy said. “I got coffee on inside. I fired up the old stove.”
“I had a cup,” Virgil said. “I’ll unload the horses and head back.” He looked at the sky again. “The weatherman says it’s going to be a good day for combining. Of course, he’s wrong about half the time.”
“Then why listen to him?”
“He’s right the other half.”
Virgil opened the wooden gate to the pasture and turned the horses out into the field, where they began at once to graze, keeping close to the fence. Tommy walked over and leaned on the top rail as Virgil came back through the gate and closed it behind him.
“You need to move them,” Virgil said, “just throw a little grain in a pail. They’ll follow you.”
“We’re shooting all interiors anyway,” Tommy said. “The only time they’ll be in the shot will be out the window. We’ll just let them wander and if they need to be moved, I’ll take care of it. You coming back tonight for them?”
Virgil, watching Bob and Nelly tugging at the grass, nodded.
“So you’ll be combining wheat all day?” Tommy asked.
Virgil nodded again.
Tommy sighed, as if envious. “Trade you jobs for the day?”
“Not a chance,” Virgil said.
He left the horse trailer in the field where the production trailers were parked and headed for home. The sun was just rising and he drove into it, descending toward the broad valley of the Hudson. The road was winding and steep in places and he had to keep his speed to forty miles an hour for the most part.
The eastern sky, as he drove, was hazy behind the rising sun, but there was no real cloud cover. He estimated he would need two days of dry weather to get his wheat off. It hadn’t rained in a month, but of course all that meant was that it was overdue. It occurred to Virgil that he’d chosen two professions in his life—baseball player and farmer—that required him to depend a lot on the weather. Which meant he’d devoted a good portion of his time to worrying about something he had no control over. And here he was worrying about it again, even while concluding that it made no sense.
He’d been surprised to find Tommy Alamosa sitting on the porch at dawn. Staying at the cabin, without power or amenities, wasn’t something he’d expect from Tommy. But then Virgil barely knew the man. It certainly wasn’t an alien concept to Virgil, getting away from people. And when he considered the ones Tommy had in all likelihood been referring to, it made even more sense. But Virgil was still a little uncertain about Tommy, especially in light of what Nikki had told him about the night Olivia Burns had been killed. There was more to Tommy Alamosa than met the eye, but then that was true about everyone.
Arriving back at
the farm, he put all thoughts of the movie business out of his mind. When running a combine, any number of things could go wrong during the course of the day, and thinking about something other than the job at hand was tempting fate. As fate would have it, though, Virgil’s day passed without a hitch. The combine, in mothballs since the previous year, ran perfectly. The wheat ran nearly forty bushels to the acre; the heads were large and ripe in spite of the drought. The heavy dews each morning contributed to that. By day’s end he’d managed to harvest more than half of the thirty-acre field.
So he was feeling pretty good as he headed back west to pick up the horses. And it made him feel even better when he remembered that he’d made another five hundred dollars that day, just by grazing Bob and Nelly in some rich guy’s meadow in the hills. He’d soon have enough to pay off his taxes, and maybe start looking for some new equipment. His seed drill, for instance, was held together with duct tape, wire, and reckless hope.
It was nearly seven o’clock when he arrived back at the movie set. He was hoping they were finished with the horses for the day; he wanted to get them loaded and back home. He was also hoping they wouldn’t be needed the following day, but if they were, he would deliver them. It would mean another five hundred in Virgil’s pocket.
As he pulled up to the set some members of the crew were milling about by the trailers, but there was no camera in view, so he assumed they were finished shooting. He’d been hoping he could load up and get out of there without having to talk to anybody.
But then, getting out of the truck, he saw Kari Karson in the entranceway to the barn, just a few feet from where she’d practically tackled him twenty-four hours earlier. She was wearing torn jeans and a loose-fitting man’s shirt, her black hair brushed back and tied at the nape of her neck. She was standing, her head down and her hands thrust deep in the pockets of the jeans, and she was talking to someone.
That someone was Claire.
Virgil stopped short when he saw her. She was standing sideways to him and now she turned toward him. She gave him a long look.
“Hello,” she said.
“This is Virgil,” Kari said. Her voice was unsteady.
“I know who it is,” Claire said.
Virgil looked from Claire to Kari. Realizing he’d interrupted something, he nodded to them and started for the team.
“I’m just here for the horses,” he said, indicating Bob and Nelly, grazing in the meadow not more than a hundred feet from where he’d left them twelve hours earlier.
The two women continued to talk, out of earshot, as Virgil went about his business. By the time the loading was done, Kari was walking slowly away, heading for the trailers, where a couple of passenger vans were waiting. A few crew members were still there as well, piling things in the vehicles. Virgil walked over to Claire, who was standing in the doorway to the barn, watching him.
“What was that about?” he asked.
Claire looked at her notebook before flipping it closed. “I just got back from the Running Dog Casino. They found a dead girl in one of the suites. A woman named Nicole Huntsman.”
“Foul play?”
“Not sure at this point.”
“So why were you talking to Kari?”
“It was her suite,” Claire said. “The two women were BFFs, as the kids say.”
Virgil raised his eyebrows.
“Best friends,” Claire explained.
“What happened?”
“It’s a little mysterious but it looks like an overdose, for the time being anyway. A quantity of heroin in the room, and a hypodermic needle on the floor beside the tub.”
“What makes an overdose mysterious?”
“I’m not sure that it is,” Claire said. “But Kari Karson just told me she’d known this girl for five years and had never seen her touch a needle. And Kari claims she never saw any needles in the suite.”
“What about the heroin?”
“She’s kind of vague about that. The suite’s in her name and technically she could be looking at a possession charge. With her track record, and in the middle of making a movie to boot. She says, though, that Nicole might have had drugs in her possession. She herself is clean, she says, but I have a feeling she’d be real nervous if someone asked her to pee in a cup.”
She started to say something else but they were interrupted by an electrician from the crew, who entered the barn lugging a coil of cable over his shoulder. Claire stepped out of his way, watching silently across the broad meadow, her brow furrowed in thought, as she waited for him to deposit the wire in the corner and leave.
“You’re not buying the overdose theory,” Virgil said.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, still looking away.
“You’re squinting with your left eye, like you do when you get stuck on a crossword.”
Smiling, she turned to him now, as another crew member approached, this one carrying a plastic tote. “You say you’re heading for home?”
“I am.”
“If I follow you, will you buy me a beer?”
“You got a deal.”
• • •
They sat in Virgil’s kitchen at the scarred harvest table. When she had come in, Claire had removed her badge and her Glock from her belt and put them on the kitchen counter. She was wearing a skirt and now she sat stretched out in the wooden pressed-back chair with her legs crossed, her feet on the chair beside her. Virgil never got tired of looking at her legs.
“So what makes you think it’s something else?” he asked as he put down two bottles of Bud and sat across from her.
“I probably wouldn’t think that,” she said, “if Ronnie Red Hawk wasn’t looming large on the scene. There’s obviously a theory out there that Ronnie might have been involved in Olivia Burns’s death. And if he was, it was for one reason—to get her out of the way. Right?”
“That would be the theory.”
“Okay,” Claire said, taking a long drink of the cold beer. “What if Ronnie had reason to want Nicole Huntsman out of the way as well?”
Virgil thought about it a moment. “Because she was cramping his style with Kari Karson.”
“Yeah.”
Virgil paused. “Seems a little thin.”
“I might agree with you,” Claire said. “Except I drove up to Watertown yesterday, trying to find out a little about Ronnie Red Hawk before he became Ronnie Red Hawk. And I ended up talking to a retired cop named Sully who knew Ronnie pretty well back in the day. He had a bunch of interesting stories about Ronnie, more about his attitude than his criminal career, which was pretty run-of-the-mill. Dealing hash, jacking cars. But there was something he told me that really resonated today.”
“What was that?”
Claire had another drink and placed the bottle on the table. “Ronnie did his stretch in Attica for the stolen car ring. The boss man was some guy with rich oil contacts in North Africa.”
“An Algerian,” Virgil said.
Claire hesitated. “How’d you know that?”
“Buddy Townes.”
Claire shook her head. “I keep forgetting about your curious nature, Mr. Cain. Maybe you and Buddy should start a detective agency. Get yourselves a cool car and a theme song.”
“My liver couldn’t handle it.”
“Anyway,” Claire said, then she paused. “You got anything to snack on?”
“Pretzels.”
“Sure.”
Virgil went into a cupboard above the fridge and found the pretzels, dumped them in a bowl, and set them on the table before sitting again. Claire grabbed a couple and then continued.
“So Ronnie and the boys were stealing high-end rides and selling them to the Algerian, and he was transporting them on cargo ships out of Montreal to Africa. We’re talking Mercedes, Porsches, Bimmers—no Chevy Malibus or Dodge Neons. It was a small operation but a going concern. But here’s the thing—the guy who first brought Ronnie in on this was a meth head named Syracuse Sid.”
“Syrac
use Sid?”
Claire was munching on a pretzel and she swallowed before she replied. “His first name was Sidney and he hailed from Syracuse. I’m guessing he didn’t invest much time in picking a nickname. But he was the big frog in this little pond. Summer of 2002, they stole a lot of cars from rich cottagers in the Adirondacks. They’d watch a place until they saw everybody heading out in the family boat for the day, then they’d hit the cottage first, find the car keys inside, and jack the vehicle without having to rip the dash apart or smash the ignition all to shit. Which saved the Algerian kingpin a lot of money in repairs.”
“How would they get the cars to Montreal?”
“The assumption was that the family would be out on the lake for a couple of hours minimum, and usually more like three or four. So they kept within a range of an hour or so of the border crossing at Wolfe Island. Cross on the ferry before the theft was reported and take the thruway into Quebec, and down to Montreal. All in all, it was a pretty lucrative deal except for one thing: Ronnie was the second-string quarterback, which meant he wasn’t making near the money Sid was. And when the maybe-father Levack wasn’t smacking Ronnie’s mother around, he was hammering into Ronnie that he should never settle for being the understudy in anything.”
“So Syracuse Sid was in the way,” Virgil said.
“Not for long,” Claire said. “They found him in the trailer park where he lived. Lying in bed in his trailer, been dead a couple days. This is where the story gets a little too familiar. It looked like an OD at first. There was a large quantity of meth on hand. But the toxicology report came back suspicious. So they tested the meth itself.”
“And?”
“Shit was laced with Warfarin.”
“Rat poison,” Virgil said. “Which, I assume, isn’t a standard ingredient in meth.”
“No, but it’s a good way to kill somebody without being in the room with them. In fact, it turned out that Ronnie was conveniently in Albany for the weekend. And he had hotel bills and restaurant receipts to prove it. Which is suspicious in itself—not many car thieves are that scrupulous about their deductibles. In the end, nobody was ever charged with anything and I have the feeling the local cops didn’t pursue it all that strenuously. The general consensus was that Syracuse Sid was not an individual destined for a long life anyway.”
