Way Down on the High Lonely (3 page)

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 put 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.

She invited him over to the house. She had to admit that she cried when she saw Cody wrap himself around Harley’s neck. Harley was as gentle and sweet with that boy as he’d ever been, and she retreated into the kitchen while father and son got to know each other again.

The visits were just at the house for a while, always with Anne within earshot. Harley stayed for supper a few times and once or twice spent the whole evening watching videos of old westerns with them.
The Searchers, Shane
… it was after
The Magnificent Seven
that she agreed to let him resume the weekend visits.

The first one was in May. Harley picked Cody up at seven on Friday night and said they were just going to spend the weekend at his place down in Venice. That was three months ago, and she hadn’t seen her son since.

“During these three months,” Neal asked, “what have you done?”

“Harley was supposed to have brought Cody back that Sunday night around seven. About eight o’clock, I guess, I started calling his place. No answer. Around ten I went over there and leaned on the doorbell. Nobody home, no lights on, no TV, no stereo. I called the police, who told me that I needed to go to the sheriff’s department. I went to the sheriff’s department and they told me that they’d check his last known address, which they did, and he wasn’t there. They’d put a warrant out for him but couldn’t give custodial cases much priority, because it wasn’t a ‘real kidnapping.’ I got my lawyer out of bed at around two in the morning and he told me he’d start filing papers. As far as I know, he’s still filing them.

“But we can’t find Harley to serve him the papers. We’ve gone through social service agencies, private investigators, a couple of dozen police and sheriff’s departments. Then my lawyer said he’d found a new detective agency that specialized in custody cases. They were a lot better at finding creative expenses than they were at finding my son. Finally I called Ethan. I heard that he didn’t feel—how shall I say this—constrained by the narrowest limits of the law.

“How do you know Mr. Kitteredge?” Neal asked.

“His bank put up money for a couple of my films,” she answered.

Natch, thought Neal.

“I’d heard rumors that he offered certain services for his best customers,” Anne continued. “You live by rumors in this town, so I checked it out. He told me I’d be hearing from somebody. It couldn’t have been twenty minutes when your Mr. Levine called. I’m sure you know the rest.”

Neal was about to tell her not to be so sure when Graham interjected, “Your attorney should keep up his efforts, though, Ms. Kelley.”

“At his hourly, I’m sure he will,” Anne answered. “What happens now?”

“We start looking for your son and you take your eleven-thirty,” Neal answered as he got out of his chair.

“I love my little boy, Mr. Carey.”

“I’m sure you do, Ms. Kelley.”

“I’m not a bad mother.”

“Nobody said you were.”

“You were thinking it.”

Neal stepped over to the window and looked out at the studio lot, where the 1920s gangsters were heading to the cafeteria to beat the early lunch crowd.

“No,” he said, “I was thinking that you’re used to getting the story rewritten when you don’t like it the way it is. But this time it’s not a movie, it’s your son, and it’s not a story, it’s all too real. I’m thinking what a bitch these custody cases are, because while the law is on your side, it’s really on the sidelines. What it basically says is that once you get your child back, you can keep him. And while you’re handcuffed by the law, your husband does any goddamn thing he wants. And I was thinking about how frustrated, angry, and scared you must be.”

Anne drained the rest of her soda and lit another cigarette. It was a nice try, but it didn’t stop the tears from coming to her eyes. “I’m terrified,” she said. “I know Harley would never intentionally hurt Cody, but now … with what you’ve found out about these people …”

What people, Graham?

“… I’m afraid that I’ll never see my little boy again.”

“We’ll get him back,” Neal said. He was surprised to hear himself say it, surprised at the commitment in his voice.

“We’ll call you the minute we know anything,” Graham said as he stepped to the door.

“I’ll leave word that you’re to be put right through,” Anne answered.

Jim Collier hustled to shake their hands.

“A real pleasure to meet you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Neal said.

“I do know the difference between movies and real life,” Anne said to Neal.

“Yeah? Well, maybe you can teach it to me sometime.”

On the way out they passed Anne’s eleven-thirty, two nervous screenwriters clutching a couple of notebooks and a pile of dreams.

“So what have we found out about ‘these people,’ Graham? And what people are we talking about?” Neal asked when they got back in the limo. It was as much an accusation as a question.

“Well, we found out what accounted for Harley’s cleaning up his act.