Misery Bay (28 page)

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Sean.”

“Sean, pleased to meet you. My name is Alex McKnight. I’m a private investigator, and for the past few days I’ve been working directly with the FBI.”

Another exaggeration, but I had to keep him hooked.

“I understand that an agent came to visit you guys. When was that, a couple of days ago now?”

“Yeah, some guy named Davies.”

“What did he ask you?”

The kid looked away and shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”

“It’s okay. Just tell me what happened.”

“He talked to CC first.”

“Who’s CC?”

“My grandfather. He doesn’t like me calling him Grandpa or whatever. He says it makes him feel too old.”

“Clyde C. Wiley. CC. I get it. Although I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize you were his grandson.”

“Don’t you see the resemblance?” He sounded disappointed.

“I can’t picture your grandfather in my mind, I’m sorry. But I’m sure the resemblance is there.”

“You
should
know him,” he said. “He’s one of the best actors who ever lived.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but you were saying … he was actually here when the agent came?”

“Yeah, he was here that day. This agent guy took him into one of the back rooms and asked him some questions. I didn’t know what was going on yet. When he came out, he asked me if he could ask me some questions, too. CC had a real funny look on his face, so I knew something was up. When this FBI guy got me alone, he asked me how much time CC had been spending in the studio. So right away, I figured, uh oh, this isn’t good. The old man’s about to go down again.”

“Go down for what?”

“For the usual. Possession of a controlled substance. Or whatever. Gun charge, maybe. Either way, I had to make a snap call, so I told this guy that CC had been living on the set, then in front of the console, cutting the movie. I got kind of worried because I wasn’t sure this guy was buying it, or hell, I don’t know, if that was even the same story he was getting from CC and my father.”

“Your father…”

“You met him yesterday. Conrad Wiley.”

“CC’s son. Okay, now I’m getting it. It’s a real family business, eh?”

“The last couple of years, yeah. It wasn’t always that way, believe me.”

“Okay, but keep going. You were spinning this little tale for the FBI agent.”

“I panicked, all right? I could see everything going down the tubes. The movie, the whole film company. Everything he came back here to build. After all those years, finally getting back together with his family…”

“You were looking out for your grandfather. Or at least you thought so. I understand.”

“CC means the world to me. No matter what else happens, you’ve got to believe that. Whatever he’s done over the years, he’s the greatest man I ever met.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking maybe that doesn’t say much for your father. Or else you need to get out of town a little more. “So I take it this agent was getting the same message from everybody?”

“Well, yeah, he was. CC told him he was too busy working on the movie to be off doing anything else. My father told him that. I told him that. It’s like we all agreed on the same story, without even having to talk about it beforehand.”

“They didn’t talk to anybody else?”

“Well, when we’re actually shooting, there might be like thirty people around…”

“All in that one building?”

“Coming and going, yeah. Grips and sound guys and pretty much anybody who wants to be a part of making a movie. CC loves having a lot of young people around, giving them something to work on, you know, showing them how to make their own movies someday. He says he’s trying to give people something he never had himself. Anyway, I think the agent said he’d try to track down a few of them, at least.”

“I don’t imagine any of them would be eager to drop a dime on your grandfather,” I said. “But you said those people are only around when you’re shooting?”

“Yeah, since we’ve been in post, it’s pretty much just the three of us now.”

“Okay, I get it. So the agent leaves and all three of you are congratulating yourselves on the snow job.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “It was more like we were all surprised as hell to find out what the agent was really here for. Apparently, some people in the UP ended up getting murdered or something. We were all like, damn, what the hell is that about?”

“CC was really surprised?”

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Of course, you just said he was a great actor. But never mind. Let’s get to the punch line. I didn’t see your grandfather go into the office today. How much time has he really been spending there?”

“He’s been there. Believe me, he’s been there. I mean, this is his movie, right? When we were shooting, he was on the set pretty much constantly. I could tell it was really wearing him out.”

“When exactly were you shooting?”

“We wrapped right before Christmas.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling an important piece of the puzzle fitting into place. “So as of New Year’s Day or so, what did you say, you’re in ‘post’ now?”

“Postproduction, yeah.”

“But it’s April. How long does that part take?”

“Post can run longer than the actual shooting. There’s a million things to do with the editing and the sound, then the color correction and—”

“I get it,” I said. “So how much time has he spent working on that?”

“Still a lot, but he’s been taking some time off now and then. Like I said, the shooting really got to him.”

“Taking some time off, meaning what? A few days at a time?”

“No, maybe like he’ll work for five days straight and then go home for a couple of days. Show up the next Monday. That kind of thing.”

“But meanwhile, you’re here all the time.”

“Me and my dad, yeah. We’re the ones who’re practically living here now. We actually have some mattresses in the back in case we run really late.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a life.”

“I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else,” he said. “My mom thinks I should’ve stayed with her and finished college, but come on. Where else am I gonna get a chance to work on a real movie like this?”

“Okay, I get it,” I said. “But when CC goes away and then comes back a couple days later … will he say where he’s been?”

“No. I mean, he’s just home resting. So he’ll come back and work some more, tell us what we should do next. Then he’ll go home again.”

I leaned back against the hard plastic booth. After so many hours sitting in the truck, my back was killing me. I had bigger things on my mind now than a sore back.

“You look like a decent kid,” I said to him. “I know you were only trying to do what you thought was best, but it wasn’t the brightest move in the world.”

“Am I gonna be in serious trouble for this?”

“I don’t think so. If it comes to it, I’ll vouch for you.”

That didn’t seem to make him feel any better. He sat there rubbing his hands together, looking out the window like he was still thinking about making a run for it.

“Tell me more about your grandfather,” I said. “What’s he really like?”

“That’s what this whole movie is about,” the kid said. “Him growing up here, and everything that happened. You ever see
Eight Mile
?”

“Was that another movie?”

“Yeah, that was Eminem. You heard of him, right?”

“He’s the white rapper,” I said. “From Detroit. That’s about all I know. I confess I don’t have any of his records.”

“You sound like CC now. ‘Records.’ But anyway, Eminem made this movie about his own life, how he grew up in Detroit. I guess Eight Mile is an important street down there.”

“It’s the northern border.” I didn’t want to sidetrack him, but just hearing that name took me way back. Eight Mile Road, the line dividing Detroit from the suburbs. You cross that street and you go from one world to another.

“That movie was kind of a rags-to-riches story. But CC, his story was more like rags to insanity, to more rags to more insanity, to riches back to insanity again. It’s just called
Bad Axe
. What do you think?”

“Sounds perfect. But what do you mean by insanity?”

“Well, he grew up right here in town, and apparently his mother and father … my great-grandparents, I mean … I never met them but I guess I didn’t miss much. They were both absolutely batshit crazy. Like seriously delusional, psychotic, pretty much whatever you want to come up with. This was back in the old days, when they didn’t take your kids away just because you were abusing them all the time. I guess he was hiding from them like every day, running away from home and getting dragged back there. The house is right over there on King Street. We even filmed there in the actual house, which must have been kinda weird for CC. If it was, he didn’t show it. Anyway, he says it was the movie theater that saved him.”

“The one right down the street?”

“That very one. He used to sneak into the movies all the time. Actually, the man who owned the place knew he was sneaking in and let him keep doing it. We filmed that scene, too. When CC came back from Hollywood, he bought the theater and fixed it up. Now he’s trying to make this movie about growing up in the town and he’s even talking about starting up a film festival here. Like they’ve got up in Traverse City. The Bad Axe Film Festival. Not bad, eh?”

“So when CC got arrested and went to prison,” I said. “Did you film that scene, too?”

“Yeah, but that happened a lot later. When he was eighteen he finally escaped and ran off to California. Some guy saw him on his bike and liked the way he looked, and asked him if he wanted to be in the movies. I think CC told him to go jump in the ocean or something, but the guy was legit and that’s how CC ended up doing
Road Hogs
. That was his very first movie, if you can believe it. Nowadays they’d never cast an unknown as the lead in a big film. I mean, you don’t have a big name attached—”

“I don’t mean to cut you off,” I said, “but getting back to that arrest…”

“That was one of many arrests, actually. He got busted out there for marijuana. This was back before anybody could walk into one of those clinics and get it legally. Anyway, he ended up doing jail time and getting himself all messed up. You gotta remember, he came from a family of crazy people. Like he says all the time, it’s in his blood. I’ve got bad blood, he says. I just can’t help it sometimes. Which means maybe I’ve got some bad blood, too.”

“So he’s been arrested more than once, you say?”

“A few times, yeah. After he got bounced out of Hollywood, started making those low-budget horror films on his own. He was always his own worst enemy, but like he says, the movies were always there for him. They always kept him coming back from the edge of madness.”

Now we’re getting to it, I thought.

“So, this last arrest. It was about ten years ago.”

“About that, yeah.”

“It was up north here. He was coming down from the UP…”

“That was a tough couple of days, when we were filming that scene. He doesn’t like to talk about it much, so you can imagine. I mean, it was really hard to relive it. I could tell it took a lot out of him.”

“He played the part himself?”

“We had another actor playing the young CC, but the later years … yeah, a little makeup and he can still pass for sixty.”

“Okay, so this scene with his daughter…”

“They let us use a holding cell over at the county jail. He had to take himself back to that day, when he found out. I swear he just about broke his hand on the wall all over again. And it wasn’t even real this time.”

“Maybe it’s
always
real,” I said. “No matter how many years have gone by.”

“I was just a kid back then.” He looked down at his hands. He was taking deep breaths now. Still scared, and now with this other family business … he was really starting to sweat.

“Don’t bring it up with my grandfather,” he said. “Okay? That’s the one thing I have to ask you. He’s relived it enough.”

“Okay, I got it. Just tell me, where is he right now?”

“I don’t know. He’s probably at his house. Like I said before, just resting.”

“Can you take me there?”

“My father would kill me if I did that.”

“Can you just tell me where the house is?”

“My father would find out I told you. And he’d still kill me.”

“Your father’s a little crazy, too, I take it?”

“He’s one-quarter crazy. That’s the official amount, he says. Just ask him.”

“So that means you’re what, one-eighth crazy?”

“That sounds about right.”

I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Okay, well, I don’t want to get you into any more trouble. Maybe I’ll just go talk to your father. Conrad, you said his name is?”

“Yeah, but he goes by Connie. He hates it when anybody calls him Conrad.”