Way Down on the High Lonely nc-3

by Don Winslow

  “I don’t need any clothes,” Neal said. “I’m going to stay in this robe, in this room, for the next couple of months, eating and reading newspapers.”

  “You got about an hour,” Graham said. “We have an eleven o’clock meeting.”

  “Let’s meet on the terrace. I’ll bring the iced tea.”

  “I don’t think so,” Graham answered. “We’re going to Hollywood.”

  “They’re remaking Rumpelstiltskin and you got the part?”

  “We’re going to meet Mommy.”

  Neal looked up long enough to grab a blueberry muffin.

  “What happened to Thurman Munson?” he asked, pointing at the Yankees’ batting order.

  “Will you hurry up and get dressed?” Graham said. “The limo will be here in less than an hour.”

  “The limo?”

  “Short for limousine,” Graham explained.

  “We are going to Hollywood, aren’t we?”

  Neal felt a little stiff in his new clothes-khaki slacks, blue shirt, olive jacket, and cordovan loafers. He also felt a little stiff sitting in the backseat of the stretch limo, Joe Graham beside him and a fully stocked bar, a television, and the back of the uniformed driver in the front seat.

  Neal found a club soda, filled a glass with ice, and sipped at it as he watched the scenery on Sunset Boulevard. “I’m into consumption these days,” he explained.

  “I can see that.”

  “You look good, Dad,” Neal said.

  Graham glared at him.

  Graham did look good, though, Neal thought, although somewhat awkward in a blue blazer, white shirt, gray slacks, and those black leather shoes with the little pinholes in them. A big change from his usual plaid jacket, chartreuse trousers, and striped tie.

  “Levine made me go shopping with him at Barneys,” Graham explained grumpily.

  “I like the look,” Neal said.

  “You also like English poets,” Graham accused. True.

  The limo pulled onto a side street and up to the gate of a film studio. Neal looked at the crazy quilt combination of nineteenth-century building facades, Quonset huts, and enormous movie billboards on the other side of the gate.

  “I’ve seen movies about this,” he said.

  The security guard at the gate approached the driver’s window.

  “They have a meeting at Wishbone with Anne Kelley,” the driver said with no discernible effort at courtesy.

  The guard gave him a placard for the windshield and opened the gate.

  “Building Twenty-eight,” he said.

  “No kidding,” the driver snapped, then steered the limo through the narrow streets of the studio, edging past a group of young men dressed as 1920s gangsters and a small platoon of harried production assistants carrying clipboards. He eased the big car into a slot marked guests-limo across from a big Quonset hut and opened the back door.

  “Wishbone Studios, right through that door.”

  “Oh boy,” Neal said.

  The driver rewarded him with a wry smile. He had delivered any number of cocky screenwriters to this door and picked them up half an hour later when they weren’t so cocky, when that Oscar-winning screenplay in the briefcase had turned to just another pile of paper. If they didn’t hit the limo bar on the way in, they’d sure enough hit it on the way out.

  Neal saw the big Hollywood sign on a hill behind the studio. It seemed less real than it did on television or in the movies, but maybe that was the idea. He followed Joe Graham into Building 28.

  He’d expected the polished, plush setting of the stereotypical Hollywood mogul, but he didn’t get it. Wishbone Studios was stripped for speed. A utilitarian metal desk defined the edge of a small reception area. Posters of Wishbone’s latest films decorated the walls, which were colored in cheap blue industrial paint. The yellow carpet was worn with frenzied foot traffic. A small couch, a couple of chairs, and a coffee table littered with trade papers were set across from the desk to form a waiting area. On the other side of the reception room an open door revealed a small kitchen, where a Braun coffee maker struggled to meet the energy needs of the chronically undercaffeinated.

  Graham went up to the desk.

  “Joseph Graham and Neal Carey to see Anne Kelley.”

  The receptionist looked like she belonged in a suntan oil commercial but was remarkably cheerful about sitting behind her desk. She checked her log book.

  “Right, you’re her eleven. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  She got on the phone. Never releasing the dazzling smile she had fixed on Graham, she said, “Jim, Anne’s eleven is here.”

  “Please have a seat. Someone will be here in just a moment,” she said to Graham. Graham sat down across from Neal, who already had plopped himself down on the sofa and was looking over a copy of Film Weekly.

  “Joseph?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, Joseph.”

  A tall, thin young man came hustling down the corridor into the reception room. Open white shirt, jeans, immaculate tennis shoes. California blond hair, big smile.

  “I’m Jim Collier, Anne’s assistant.”

  He offered his hand to Graham, blinking for only a second at the sight of his artificial arm.

  “I’m Joe Graham, this is Neal Carey.”

  “Neal, hi, welcome. Come on down the hall. Anne is ready for you.”

  Terrific, Neal thought. But am I ready for her?

  They walked down to the end of the narrow hallway and into a room labeled simply kelley.

  Anne Kelley sat behind a big desk that was stacked high with scripts and books. The office floor was likewise covered with piles of papers, books, magazines, and film reels. The ubiquitous coffee table was covered with papers, as were the chairs and the sofa. Ashtrays seemed to be everywhere, and they were all overflowing. Neal wasn’t at all sure that a good search of this room would not turn up the missing Cody McCall.

  Anne Kelley was on the phone, and she didn’t look happy. Her long face was drawn further down in a frown. Her short hair was not quite blond, not quite silver, not quite brown, not quite combed or brushed. She wore a silk shirt under a denim jacket. A cigarette in the comer of her mouth puffed like a smokestack from a factory.

  “I don’t care,” she was saying into the phone. “I don’t care… . So let her… Fine. We’ll get somebody else.”

  She hung up the phone, took a drag on the cigarette, and then snuffed it out.

  “Could you be a real lifesaver and get me a Diet Pepsi?” she said to Collier. “You guys want anything?”

  An oxygen tank, thought Neal.

  A vacuum cleaner, thought Graham.

  They shook their heads.

  Jim Collier sprang up to get the soda. Anne came around from the desk and shook hands with Neal and Graham.

  “I’m Anne Kelley, head of Creative.”

  Nice work if you can get it, thought Neal.

  Anne dropped into a chair across the coffee table from them. “You don’t mind if we don’t start until the Diet Pepsi comes, do you?”

  Lady, I don’t mind if we don’t start at all, Neal thought.

  “Take your time,” Graham said.

  Jim came back with the soda, opened it, handed it to Anne, and took a chair in the corner. He flipped open a pad and had his pencil poised, ready to take notes.

  In case Anne said something creative? Neal wondered.

  Anne took a long gulp out of the can, sighed with relief, then turned her attention to Neal and Graham.

  “So pitch,” she said.

  Graham looked at Neal and shrugged.

  “So give me the ball,” Neal said to Anne.

  Jim coughed rhetorically. “Anne, these are the detectives.”

  Anne Kelley blushed. “Oh, shit. Shit! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I thought you were writers, pitching a project!”

  Something the cat dragged in.

  “I’m Anne Kelley,” she repeated. “Cody’s mother.”

  “And
head of Creative,” Neal said.

  “You’re the guys that Ethan Kitteredge sent,” she continued. “You’re going to find Cody.”

  “We’re going to try,” Graham said.

  “Ethan said that you’re very, very good.”

  “Probably just very good,” Neal said as Graham gave him a dirty look, “but maybe not very, very good.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Anne said. “I didn’t mean to mistake you for writers.”

  “That’s all right,” Graham said charitably.

  “So where do we start?” Anne asked.

  Jim started to write.

  “Hold on, Boswell,” Neal said. “No notes.”

  “Jim memorializes all my meetings.”

  Memorializes? Neal thought. “That’s nice,” he said, “but notes have a funny way of showing up in funny places, like newspapers.”

  Anne stiffened. “I trust Jim implicitly.”

  Neal looked over at Jim. “No offense. I’m sure you’d never deliberately betray the queen here-”

  “Neal, shut up,” Graham said.

  “-but unless you have a shredder, or unless you take your notes on single pages on a hard surface, it’s better not to take them. I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve made-unfortunately-going through someone’s trash, or sneaking into someone’s office to look at the impressions left on a notepad or a desk blotter-”

  “Neal…” Graham warned.

  “Well, you taught me all this stuff, Graham,” Neal answered. He turned back to Jim. “Besides, you don’t need notes. I need the notes, and I keep them in my head. You want anything ‘memorialized,’ give me a call and I’ll recite it to you, okay?”

  Jim closed the notepad.

  So much for burnout, thought Graham.

  “You’re being rather hostile,” Anne Kelley said to Neal.

  “Right, which is what your ex-husband will think about me when I find him. Now, do you want to throw a little tea party, or do you want your kid back?”

  “I want my kid back.”

  Neal sat back in the sofa.

  “So pitch,” he said.

  Harley McCall was a cowboy. They met on a film shoot in Nevada. He was working as a wrangler-a horse handler-on the movie she was producing, one of the last of a brief resurgence of westerns.

  He was tall, lanky, and bowlegged and spoke with a slow drawl that she found charming, especially contrasted with the affected inflections of the Hollywood men she’d been seeing. His dirty blond hair had natural streaks in it, his mustache was bronze, and his tan stopped at the level of his rolled-up sleeves, a tan he got from working outdoors, not frying himself in oil on a Malibu beach or poolside at the Beverly.

  He ate chicken-fried steaks, eggs and bacon, and wicked hot burritos, and never-ever-queried the waiter about where the sun-dried tomatoes were grown. He liked his beer cold and his women warm, and he touched a warm spot in her all right, a warmth as soft and fine as a summer afternoon.

  They’d walked out on the desert one night, away from the horrid little motel that was their location headquarters, away from the director, and the actors, the crew, and the business types, out onto the open desert under the stars and she’d seduced him there… or maybe he’d seduced her into seducing him… but she wanted him-badly-so she took him.

  The sex was fantastic-that was never their problem-and she felt that he’d changed her life, turned her into the natural woman they all seem to sing about. He brought desert flowers to her trailer, took her out on long rides, called her “ma’am” everywhere except in bed, and one afternoon they’d jumped into his pickup and rode to Vegas, went to one of those tacky chapels, and actually got married.

  She got pregnant right away, maybe that very night. They wrapped the shoot, and she headed back to LA with a film in the can, a baby in her belly, and a brand-new husband in tow. Queen Anne, happy at last.

  They would have named the baby Shane, after their favorite movie, but that seemed a bit much, so they settled for something almost as good. Cody was a golden child, with his dad’s rugged good looks and his mother’s soft beauty, and they were both crazy in love with him.

  The movie came out a little later and was a hit, and they bought the place in Malibu.

  But somehow the film came to be known as the last great western, a nostalgic farewell to a classic genre, and in that weird Hollywood way, everyone was saying it because that’s what everyone was saying. Pretty soon the only horses in the movies were the ones pulling carriages through Central Park, and Harley McCall found himself with a lot of time on his hands.

  There just wasn’t a lot for a cowboy to do in Malibu.

  For a while they thought he could be a big help at Wishbone, a fresh eye, an honest voice, that sort of thing. But he picked the dumbest projects-unfilmable books, remakes of old flops, stories that were pitched by writers he went out for beers with… it didn’t work out.

  And she discovered, to her immense sorrow, that West Hollywood was a lot different from the West, and all the qualities that she’d found so fresh and exciting out on the desert became old and grating at the lawn parties, studio meetings, and premieres. And if “Harley doesn’t say a lot” was something she had originally said with a measure of pride, she found herself saying it as an apology more and more, especially as Harley’s reticence changed from quiet confidence to sullen despair.

  There just wasn’t a lot for a cowboy to do in Malibu.

  But what there was, he found. He started drinking his cold beers for breakfast. He found that a joint or two made the afternoon pass in a pleasant torpor, and that high-stake poker games gave him his balls back, win or lose. Mostly it was lose.

  And he found the women. None of her friends, thank God, or her competitors, but the would-be starlets and country-western singers who found him witty and handsome and who were content with afternoons.

  She heard about them, of course-Los Angeles is a small big town-and she felt surprised and a little ashamed that she was relieved. She didn’t find him witty, his handsomeness didn’t travel well, as they say, and she was too busy in the afternoons to try to think of things for him to do.

  He was good with the baby, though, always that. Always sweet with his little cowboy. Worried about him growing up “in this atmosphere,” as he always called it, to her annoyance. Worried about his values. Talked about how they should get a little ranch somewhere, go there summers, teach the boy to ride and rope, let him breathe some fresh air for a change. All while Harley was drinking more and smoking more dope.

  He got disgusted with himself, finally. Woke up one morning, put the cork in the bottle, gave his stash away to a local surf bum, told the dollies adios, and asked her to leave with him. Sell this play toy house on the beach, get that ranch, do some honest work, and live a real life.

  She told him that her life was quite real, thank you very much, but if he felt that’s what he had to do, he had better go do it. The marriage was pretty much over by that point anyway.

  What wasn’t over-what’s never over-was the fact that Harley McCall had a child, a son, whom he loved more than he loved anything. More than the open prairie, more than the blue sky, more than his freedom. And so the greatest joy of his life was also its tragedy-he was shackled to the hated LA by a chain of love, by the every-other-weekend and one-month-in-the-summer visitation the judge had awarded him, like it was some kind of game show, which it kind of was.

  Ironically, now that they weren’t married anymore, Anne could reach down the status ladder and find him some work. She got him a gig as a stunt cowboy for one of the studio’s tours. So, twenty-five times a week, real-life cowboy Harley McCall put on a black hat and vest, stood behind the railings of a saloon facade, fired his blank six-shooter at the sheriff, got shot, and tumbled down onto the grain sacks of a wagon conveniently parked below. All to the delight of the tourists watching from a grandstand.

  It was boring, humiliating, low-paying work, but it paid the rent on a little bungalow in Venice and pu
t gas in the pickup for the every-other-weekend drive to Malibu to pick up his son.

  He tried to stick it out, he really did, but then one day he got shot by the sheriff, grabbed his chest with one hand, teetered at the edge of the balcony, and lifted the middle finger of his right hand in a pointed gesture at the sheriff. He managed to hold it there about halfway down to the grain sacks, but the tourists in the grandstands were not impressed, and he got fired.

  It was one cruddy job after another after that, each shorter lived than the last. His cowboy sweetness turned as stale and bitter as the gas fumes that hung over the Sunset Strip. He started getting edgy and then mean. He quit more jobs than he was fired from, each time taking away another resentment along with his last day’s pay. He took offense at almost anything, adding more and more items to the lengthening list of things he “just wouldn’t take from any man.”

  It was a wonder Harley could even stand up straight, he was carrying so many grudges. Film producers, film critics, studio executives, executives in general, landlords, bankers, bill collectors, cops, grocery store owners, bar owners, women, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, Koreans, whores, kikes, niggers, spies, and gooks-they had all combined to make his life hell and keep him from raising his son the way a man should raise his son.

  He went back to the bottle, and it treated him the way a wife treats a philandering husband-it took him back in and punished him on a daily basis. He started to become a character on Venice Boulevard, a sidewalk cowboy with a three-day stubble on his face and an incoherent diatribe spurting out of his mouth. He got himself tattooed one bad night, got one of those nifty “Don’t Tread on Me” numbers with the flag and the snake on his left forearm.

  But Anne Kelley trod on him hard when he showed up drunk one Friday night. She told him that there was no way eighteen-month-old Cody was getting into that truck. Harley tried to kick the door down and then succeeded in smashing a window before the cops got there. They whaled the shit out of him, he got thirty days for disturbing the police, and Anne got a court order preventing him from taking Cody for the month that summer.

  Harley disappeared. Anne didn’t know where he went or what happened to him, but about six months later she got a call from him. He sounded calm and composed. Gentle, like his old self. He asked if he could come over and talk to her. She met him at the office and it was like meeting a chastened version of the man she’d first met. He was clean, neat, and almost painfully sober. He apologized for having been such a jackass, explained that he’d cleaned himself up, got himself a job maintaining center pivot irrigation systems in East Orange County, and asked if he could see little Cody.