Usher had hoped the Emmy nomination would vault him into a shot at directing a feature film, and after waiting for two years he’d finally gotten the call. With this new movie Usher could advance his career. But after reading the script he’d realized the story line was just a little shy of the necessary ingredients for a successful feature film. He was determined to make it better.
In his apartment he sat at the dining table and looked at the digital photographs his cinematographer had taken of the smelter. The best location for the new scenes was next to the delivery dock by the rail spur, where ore cars and some heavy equipment were parked at the siding. From that vantage point the smelter and smokestack would form a perfect backdrop against the mountains.
Besides offering excellent visuals, the site provided easy access, which minimized the logistics of moving the equipment, livestock, and cast and crew to the location.
He thought about Alfred Hitchcock’s famous crack that actors should be treated like cattle, and snickered. Hitchcock had never made a Western, or he would have had his chance.
Pleased with his decision, Usher began mapping out the scenes. He was deeply engrossed in the process when Johnny Jordan knocked at the open door and entered, looking piqued.
“I don’t like this change you’re proposing, Malcolm,” he said.
Usher glanced at his wristwatch. “You took your time getting here.”
Johnny turned a chair around and straddled it. “And I’ve been talking to some people who don’t like it either.”
“Let me guess,” Usher said. “Could that be your rodeo stars?”
Johnny nodded. “They hired on to do a cattle drive and a rodeo, not to be part of some dumb melee at the damn copper smelter.”
Usher removed his reading glasses. “No, they signed on as actors, which means they do what the director tells them to do. If they don’t like it, I’ve got stuntmen who can do the job just as well for a lot less money. In fact, Corry McKowen, my stunt coordinator, rode the pro circuit for five years. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind getting a costarring credit on his resume.”
“Corry was a lightweight on the circuit.”
“Maybe so, but he’s no lightweight as a stuntman. Tell me now if you want to pull your cowboys off the film. Believe me, it’s no big deal to replace actors who walk before shooting starts.”
“I didn’t say that,” Johnny said, his brow creased with worry.
Usher held back a smile. Jordan might know a lot about rodeoing, but he didn’t know squat about moviemaking. “Then work with me, Johnny. This could be the best damn Western fight scene in a film since John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara brawled with the homesteaders in McLintock! over forty years ago.”
“That was a good movie,” Johnny said grudgingly.
“Let’s write the scenes together so that your boys get to show off their stuff in front of the cameras,” Usher said.
Johnny nodded and edged his chair close to the table.
The apartment Kerney was to share with Johnny had two small bedrooms separated by a bath, a galley kitchen with an adjacent dining nook, and a living room furnished with a couch, one easy chair, a couple of end tables with lamps, and a wall-mounted television set. The groundskeeper who had been watering the lawn when Kerney arrived had told him the building had originally been used to provide temporary housing for visiting company employees and executives from the home office.
Johnny wasn’t around, so Kerney dumped his travel bag in one of the bedrooms and went to the mercantile store to grab some dinner. A large motor home parked by the entrance had a sign painted on it that read:
WESTERN SCENE CATERERS PURVEYORS OF FINE FOOD TO THE FILM INDUSTRY
Inside the store, rows of cafeteria tables and chairs had been set up, and a buffet meal was available at a serving table filled with warming trays of food, drink urns, dinnerware, and utensils. Kerney chose the vegetarian entree and joined two men at one of the tables, who introduced themselves as Buzzy and Gus.
In their early fifties, both men had an easy style about them that made Kerney feel comfortable and welcome. Over dinner he learned a good bit about the complexities of photographing a motion picture.
Gus, the key grip, explained that his job was to set up diffusion screens and large shades to modify light for the cameras, operate camera dollies and cranes, and mount cameras on vehicles and airplanes. Buzzy, the gaffer, supervised the lighting for each scene and ran the crew responsible for setting up the lamps and generating the power.
Kerney asked them if Usher’s decision to change the ending of the screenplay was common practice.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Gus said with chuckle. “Any good director puts his own stamp on a film. There will be dialogue rewrites, camera-angle changes, scenes that get dropped, altered, or added-the list goes on and on.”
“We’ll have most of it sorted out at a final production meeting once we’ve visited all the locations,” Buzzy said. “That’s when we’ll know basically what stays and what goes.”
“Don’t the producers have a say?” Kerney asked.
“Not creatively,” Gus replied. “Charlie Zwick will have his hands full dealing with production delays, weather changes, sick or ill-tempered actors, continuity problems, staying within the budget-you name it.”
“Fortunately, Charlie and Malcolm have worked together before,” Buzzy said, “so it should go smoothly.”
After dinner with Gus and Buzzy, Kerney took a stroll through the empty, silent streets of Playas, past rows of dark, vacant houses. As daylight faded, streetlights in the dormant town flickered on, casting eerie shadows through an occasional dead tree. It felt almost otherworldly, as though some invisible catastrophe had annihilated the population of the town, leaving behind the houses as a mute testimony to the disaster.
He turned the corner on a residential street near a shuttered building that had once served as the town library, and caught sight of a roadrunner scooting around the rear end of a Motor Transportation Division patrol car parked in front of an occupied house.
Part of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, the MTD primarily enforced federal and state safety statutes of commercial motor vehicles, including hazardous-material and drug-interdiction inspections. Although its officers had full police powers, most of the agency’s resources were allocated to traffic safety, commercial vehicle over-the-road compliance, and drug trafficking.
Farther on Kerney passed another occupied house with a Hidalgo County sheriff’s squad car parked outside. He was on the tail end of his walk, heading down the hill in the direction of the town center, when his cell phone rang.
“I’ve got information on that license plate,” Flavio Sapian said after Kerney answered. “The vehicle is registered to Jerome Mendoza.”
“Tell me about Mr. Mendoza,” Kerney said.
“It’s interesting stuff. Mendoza is an MTD officer assigned to the Lordsburg Port of Entry. Single, age twenty-eight, he’s got a home address listed in Playas.”
“I just passed by his house,” Kerney said. “What’s his connection to the smelter?”
“Unknown. I’m going to call his supervisor after we hang up.”
“I suggest you hold off on that,” Kerney said. “If Mendoza is involved in any wrongdoing, you’d be giving him a heads-up.”
“Why wait?” Sapian asked. “As it stands, I have no evidence that proves a crime was committed, nor can I actually put Mendoza at the scene of the accident.”
“I understand that,” Kerney said. “But for now you might want to treat him as a person of interest, until you have a few more facts.”
“Such as?”
“The victim’s identity, for starters,” Kerney said. “What if it turns up that Mendoza knew the victim? You’d look pretty foolish if you didn’t have that information before approaching him. When will you know something?”