Dishonorable Intentions (24 page)

T
irov stayed the night in the hospital, since the doctor insisted, and checked himself out the next morning. He drove out to the set and went to his trailer to pick up his script. He was surprised to find the door unlocked, and when he opened it, he found the place turned upside down. The drawers of his desk had been emptied onto the floor and clothes were everywhere.

The AD appeared in the doorway. “It's the same all over the lot,” he said. “Every trailer and set has been searched. That detective had a warrant.”

“Are we shooting yet?”

“We're having to put the saloon back together, using photographs to place everything correctly. We're about an hour away from starting.”

“Tell the snake wrangler I want to see him. Now.”

“Right.” The AD trotted off toward the parking lot.

—

T
he snake wrangler was not amused to receive Tirov's invitation. He locked his truck and stalked off toward where the trailers were parked.

Tirov had made some progress straightening his trailer when the snake wrangler knocked on the open door. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes. Are you missing any snakes?”

“Well, yeah. First of all, there's the six-foot rattler I loaned—pardon me, sold to you. Then there's another four-footer that's missing.”

“Somebody put that one in my bed at the hotel. You have anything to do with that?”

“I did not. I found the back door to my truck unlocked yesterday, though, and Lizzie was missing.”

“Who's Lizzie?”

“My four-foot rattler, the female. Did you get bit?”

“I did, spent the night in the hospital. You tell the security company I want a twenty-four-hour guard on your truck.”

“Is Lizzie okay?”

“How the hell would I know? I put her—it—on the terrace of my room before the ambulance got there. You might check with the hotel. And don't you bill me for this one.”

“Which hotel?”

“La Fonda, suite 500. You seen anybody hanging around your truck?”

“Nope. The crew don't park where I am. All I ever see is the folks getting on and off the tour bus.”

“All right, get out of here.”

The snake wrangler went gladly. He got out his cell phone, called La Fonda and asked for the manager.

“Yes?”

“My name is Simmons. I'm the animal wrangler on the movie being shot out at Bonanza Creek. I'm told you've got one of my snakes there.”

“Describe it.”

“Four-foot, diamondback rattler, female.”

“We've got one answering to that description, though I can't vouch for the gender. We haven't known what the hell to do with it.”

“I'll be there in half an hour and take her off your hands.”

“We'd appreciate that. It's in a burlap bag inside a cardboard box. It bit one of our guests, and I wouldn't be surprised if he sued you. His name is Tirov.”

“Yeah, I just had a conversation with him. Somebody who doesn't like him stole the rattler from my truck.”

“From what I know of him, there's nobody who
does
like him. My staff were rooting for the rattlesnake.”

“I know how they feel. I'll be there in half an hour.”

“Can you check the suite for any more snakes?”

“I'm only missing the one.”

“Thank God for that.” The manager hung up.

—

B
oris Tirov was seething, but he didn't know who to be angry at. The sonofabitch had entered his home, drugged him, and threatened him. Then there was the call after he was shot: Had the guy followed him to Santa Fe from L.A.? Whoever he was, he was working for Barrington; he knew that much.

Tirov went to the set and found them nearly ready to shoot. The director approached. “Boris, I can't work like this.”

“Like what?”

“You getting shot, the police tearing up my trailer and my sets.”

“You think I have anything to say about that?” Boris demanded.

“I guess not.”

“Then get your ass in gear and fulfill your contract.”

The man went back to work.

A man approached him, an extra in costume. “Mr. Tirov?”

“Yeah?”

“My name's Tom Baxter. I—”

“Are you the guy who called in sick?”

“Yessir. I figured you wouldn't want me infecting anybody else.”

“You have any idea who pretended to be you?”

“No, sir, I don't. Wouldn't nobody I know do something like that.”

“Then go back to work and leave me alone.”

“Yessir.”

Tirov turned away. “I'm going to have to end this once and for all,” he said aloud.

“Sir?”

Tirov turned to find the extra still standing there. “I said, go back to work!”

“Yessir!” The extra fled.

Tirov sat down in his chair and began to contemplate the end of Stone Barrington. It made him feel better.

D
uring a break, while the first scene in two days was being shot, the film's publicist approached Tirov.

“Boris,” she said, “I have a request from the
Santa Fe New Mexican
to interview you. I recommend you give the interview, as it will be good local publicity.”

Tirov sighed. “When?”

“She's outside. What about now?”

“Where outside?”

“On the front porch. I got her some lemonade.”

“All right,” Boris said, heaving himself to his feet. He had discarded the sling as his wound improved, and he checked himself out in the mirror behind the bar before going outside. He walked out to the front porch and found a very attractive young woman sitting in one of the chairs, sipping from a glass of lemonade. “Good morning,” he said to her. “I'm Boris Tirov.”

“Good morning, Mr. Tirov, I'm Christy Mayson,
Santa Fe New Mexican
. Would you like some lemonade?”

Boris sat down. “Don't mind if I do,” he said.

She filled another glass from the pitcher on the table and handed it to him.

“What would you like to know?” he asked. His eyes wandered down to her body and up again.

“Tell me what attracted you to this story,” she said.

“Well, I read the novel.” This was a lie; Tirov never read anything longer than a single-page synopsis. “And I liked the story.”

“How would you describe the story?”

“Without giving away too much, I'd say it's an adult Western, rather than a family one.”

“So you expect an R rating?”

“We're working on that. The ratings people have asked for a little toning down here and there—nudity and violence, some of the language. It's my view that the old West has had too much of a cleaning up. The real West was a violent place, and the inhabitants were a profane bunch.”

“How about the women?”

“In a town like the one in our movie, most of the women were whores.”

“No wives, no families?”

“Perhaps those belonging to the local merchants. The rest were for rent by the hour, or less.”

“And do you feel it necessary to your story to portray them that way?”

“I like realism. How about you?”

“Within limits. I don't see the necessity of making a film that takes the lowest view of all its characters, especially the women.”

“Ah, a feminist, huh?”

“Of course.”

“What do you mean, ‘of course'?”

“What woman isn't a feminist these days? Don't you favor equal pay for equal work?”

“There's no equality in the movie business. There's only who draws the audiences in, and that's usually the male stars, especially in Westerns. Can you remember a Western where a woman was the star?”

“One or two.”

“Do you remember what the grosses were?”

“No.”

“I can tell you, they bit the dust, first week out. In the movie business we learn from our mistakes.”

“What about your female star in this picture, Helen Beatty?”

“She plays a whore.”

“Does she get the same salary as Brad Goshen?”

“Of course not, haven't you been listening?”

“Does she appear on fewer pages of the script than Mr. Goshen?”

“I take it you've read the script—you tell me.”

“She has two more pages than Goshen.”

“You sure about that?”

“I can count, Mr. Tirov.”

“Call me Boris, Christy,” he said, looking her up and down again.

“I prefer Mr. Tirov and Ms. Mayson, if you don't mind.”

Tirov shrugged. “Why would I mind?”

“Mr. Tirov, you have a reputation in the film community of being obstreperous—”

“What's that? My English is not perfect.”

“Surly and aggressive, especially with women. Does that help?”

“Who said that about me?”

“Every single person I've talked to who knows you or has worked with you, and that's probably a couple of dozen. I try to do my homework.”

Boris felt his temperature rising. “Then you've been talking to the wrong people.”

“Whom should I talk to? Give me some names, and I'll call them. I want to be fair.”

“I won't have you bothering my friends.”

“You don't seem to have many,” she replied.

“Why would you say that?”

“Is it true that there have been two attempts on your life during this shoot? And your shoot is only a couple of days old?”

“Nonsense.”

“Well, you've been shot and had a rattlesnake put in your bed. Do you consider those friendly acts?”

“I don't know where you get this stuff.”

“From the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office and the staff of your hotel. Are they lying?”

“The gunshot was an accident while shooting a gunfight scene.”

“But great care is taken, is it not, to load all the weapons on your set with blank cartridges?”

“Somebody made a mistake.”

“And how about the snake in your bed? It didn't make its own way into La Fonda.”

“A prank gone wrong.”

“Isn't it true that the snake came from that wrangler's truck over there?” She pointed.

“I don't know where it came from.”

“Do you have any objection to my talking to your former wife, Gala Wilde? I understand she lives in Santa Fe.”

“That would be an invasion of her privacy and mine.”

“I've been hearing rumors of a very large rattlesnake being put in her bedroom, and someone seems to have gone out of his way to attract a bear to her property.”

“What is all this about snakes and bears? I thought you came here to talk about my movie.”

“I just want to hear your side of these stories,” she said. “I thought you'd welcome the opportunity to set the record straight.”

Tirov got to his feet, upsetting the table holding the lemonade. “Let me set you straight, you fucking little bitch. This
so-called interview is at an end, and if you print any of this stuff I'll sue your paper. You tell your editor that.” He stalked back into the saloon.

The publicist came running out. “Christy? What happened?”

“He didn't seem to want to answer my questions,” she replied, brushing the lemonade off her skirt. “Thanks, I've got everything I need.” She set off for the parking lot and her car.

C
hristy Mayson got back to her desk to find a note from her editor: “See me.” She glanced in his direction and found him away from his desk, so she put her notebook beside her computer, got a blank page on her screen, and started her story.

TWO ATTEMPTS ON LIFE OF MOVIE PRODUCER

Christy could type as fast as she could think, and she did so now. In twenty minutes she had a seven-hundred-word piece. She reread it quickly, made a few minor corrections, typed in her boss's e-mail address, and pressed the Send button.

“Didn't you get my note?”

She looked up to find him standing in her doorway. “I did, but you weren't at your desk when I got in, so I wrote my piece.
Just sent it to you.” She pressed the Print button and handed him the hard copy. “There you go.”

Her editor, whose name was Chuck Ellis, glanced at the headline. “Holy shit! This was supposed to be a piece designed to get the tourists out to the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch!”

“Please finish reading it.”

He did so. “You know, I had a call from the tourist office an hour ago. They were worried about something exactly like this.”

“Don't worry, the tourists will be flocking to the ranch when they read that.”

“What are your sources for all of this?”

“The Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office, members of the cast and crew of the movie, employees of La Fonda, the snake wrangler, and for the part about the rattlesnake in Gala Wilde's bedroom, a source who prefers to remain anonymous. And the quotes from Boris Tirov are, word for word, from my notes. And I recorded them.” She held up a tiny digital recorder and pressed a button. “Let me set you straight, you fucking little bitch,” Tirov was saying. “It's a solid piece,” she said.

“I don't like using anonymous sources.”

“Who does? But when it's a choice between getting a front-page story while keeping someone's name out of it and not getting the story at all, which way do you come down?”

He threw up his hands.

“I come down on the front page,” she said. “Every time.”

“Okay, okay, we'll run it tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks, Chuck. Stop by anytime.” He had been stopping by her place in the evenings a couple of times a week for the past six months, and she wanted him to know that he could continue to do so.

—

T
he following morning, breakfast was delivered to Boris Tirov's suite at seven
AM
, and the tray set on his lap as he sat up in bed. The Santa Fe paper was placed on the tray with the headline in plain view, upper right-hand corner of the front page. He grabbed the paper and read it, continued on page 3, then he threw it across the room, spilling his orange juice in the effort. Tirov began screaming in Russian.

—

S
tone Barrington, Gala Wilde, and Billy Barnett sat at the breakfast table while Stone read the
New Mexican
piece aloud. Gala's face was buried in her hands. “Oh, God,” she said, “Boris is going to explode now.”

“Tell me,” Stone said, “is the anonymous source anyone in this room?”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Billy said, buttering his English muffin.

“I'm going to have to go around armed, now,” Stone said.

“I think, perhaps, my work here is done,” Billy said.

“You mean you're just going to light the fuse, then fly back to L.A.?”

“I'll stay on, if that's what you want, but I think my boss back at Centurion, who happens to be your son, would like me back soon. He expects to use his airplane this weekend, to fly up to their place in Carmel.”

“Give me one more day, if you can.”

“All right. How do you want to handle this?”

“I will place myself entirely in your hands, Billy. What would you like me to do?”

“I'd like you to have dinner and go to bed,” Billy replied.

“Without you?”

“I may be feeling a bit dyspeptic this evening.”

“Tell you what, why don't we send Gala over to her sister's for dinner tonight, then you and I can sort of hang around here.”

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” Billy said. “Why don't you both go over to the Eagle place and have dinner? I think it would be much better if you were not here this evening—and could prove it.”

“I can't believe what I'm hearing,” Gala said.

“Gala,” Stone replied, “I'd be grateful if you would remember that you're not hearing anything at all.”

“Suddenly, I'm deaf?”

“Perhaps you'd like to be in another room while Billy and I have this discussion.”

“I think I'm going to go and have a long soak in a hot tub.”

“What a good idea,” Stone said.

After breakfast, Stone drove out to the airport, asked which hangar his airplane was in, then drove to it. He unlocked the forward luggage compartment, removed a small leather case, and tossed it into the car.

Back at Gala's house, he went to the study, unlocked the little case and removed a startlingly small .45 pistol, reduced from 39 ounces to 21 by its maker, Terry Tussey. He threaded the holster and a magazine case onto his belt, shoved another magazine into the pistol, and holstered it. He reflected that he should have felt safer, but he didn't.