Clea's Moon

by Edward Wright

  “You helped a lot,” he said. “You pointed him out.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Horn,” she said. “I feel responsible, asking you to—”

  “Don’t feel bad,” he said thickly through his bruised lips. “Wasn’t your fault.”

  “You need to see a doctor. Your shirt’s all bloody.”

  “No, I don’t. This looks worse than it is. When I was bull-riding a long time ago, I broke a few bones. Nothing that bad happened to me tonight. I’m going to be real sore tomorrow, that’s all.”

  “At least we found Tommy.”

  “Turn right on Broadway.” He sighed. “Yeah. Lot of good it did. I need to know where the man lives. And I still don’t.” He closed his eyes. “I’m no closer to Clea. But at least I feel like I know this Tommy now. Maybe I’ll be more ready for him next time.”

  They rode in silence for many blocks. Finally she stopped in front of her house.

  “Thanks, Addie. I can take it the rest of the way.” She got out and he slid over. “I’m not going to be in touch with you for a while. This was a little too dangerous tonight.” He pointed to his shirt. “For both of us. But I appreciate your help.”

  “All right,” she said. With the street light behind her, she seemed suddenly older, as if she’d grown into her glamorous outfit in the course of the night. He remembered the sight of her from across the room, laughing as she raised her whisky sour amid the smoke and the jazz.

  “Good night,” he said to her.

  Yawning, she plucked the gardenia from her waist. “Look at this,” she said with a frown. “It’s already turning brown.” She dropped it on the street. “Good night, Mr. Horn.”

  “Addie,” he said, pulling away from the curb, “after all the fun we’ve had tonight, I think you can call me John Ray.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The next morning, Horn filled the tub with hot water and lay there for a long time, trying to soak the soreness out of his muscles. He found ugly varicolored bruises on his ribs, shoulders, and kidneys—the last no doubt left by his adversary’s departing kicks. While shaving, he inspected his swollen face. “You ought to be in pictures,” he said to his reflection through swollen lips. The worst was the cut near his right eyebrow left by the sap. Now finished bleeding, it presented a dark, crusty scab. A stitch or two might help, but he didn’t want to take the time to find a doctor. Instead, he placed a tightly-folded rectangle of gauze over the cut and sealed it with multiple layers of adhesive tape. Then he took a look at his shirt. The stain on the collar, and the smaller spots farther down, had darkened and stiffened. He briefly considered following the Creole’s advice, then decided it was too late and tossed the shirt into the fireplace.

  He had found and lost Tommy Dell and gotten a beating. Not a good scorecard for a night’s work. And there was something else. Facing those two men in the alley, he had felt something stirring in him, and he knew it was the fear he had encountered in the mountains below the old monastery, the kind of bone-chilling dread that disables the mind and paralyzes the limbs. There had not been enough time in the alley for the fear to take him over, just enough time for him to recognize it. This old enemy, whose face he’d last seen years before, had returned. Wherever he went now, down streets and alleys, around corners, through doorways, he knew he might find it waiting for him.

  He was surprised to find his stomach rumbling, then remembered that he’d had little to eat the day before. He fried up some bacon and scrambled three eggs and later, still hungry, used a slice of nearly stale bread to sop up a little of the bacon grease. Then he carried his coffee cup out to the rocker. The morning was still cool, and only an occasional birdcall broke the canyon’s silence.

  A couple of thoughts fought for space in his mind. First, Clea was with Tommy Dell, or whatever his name was. He knew Horn was looking for her and was ready to go to great lengths to make sure she wasn’t found. The second thing had to do with the man who worked him over last night, the man with the unusual fighting skills. It wasn’t the way he worked with his fists, which was merely competent. It was the graceful way he absorbed punches and rolled to his feet. Some kind of athlete, Horn thought. Like a tumbler, a gymnast, an acrobat.

  A stunt man.

  That was it. Over the years, Horn had watched dozens of stunt men work, some of them the best in Hollywood. Risking death or dismemberment in staging their “gags,” or stunts, they needed the balance of a gymnast, the recovery skills of a tumbler, the fist work of a street fighter. They were in peak physical condition. They knew how to fight effectively and convincingly for the camera, but more important, how to fight without themselves getting hurt. How to hit the ground rolling.

  The man he fought last night had worked in the movies, he was willing to bet—possibly still did. Knowing that he was no closer to running the elusive Tommy Dell to ground, Horn thought he just might know how to find his companion.

  The telephone interrupted his thoughts. “Paul Fairbrass,” the voice said without preamble. “I forgot to give you a phone number. Do you have a pencil?”

  Horn wrote the number down. “This is my work number at the plant in Long Beach,” Fairbrass went on. “You can reach Sykes here too. It’s best if you don’t call me at home. As I mentioned, I don’t want to disturb Iris.”

  “I don’t either. I found Tommy.”

  “What?”

  “And lost him. It’s a long story, but he’s got somebody working with him.”

  “Did anything happen?”

  “I got a little careless. I’ll spare you the details. But you and Sykes were right about him. He’s dangerous. And something else: He knows I’m looking for Clea.”

  “How could he know that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone told him.”

  Fairbrass was silent for a moment. “Well, it couldn’t have been me.”

  “I’m not blaming anybody. I’m just getting more worried about her. Are the police still looking for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay on them. Tell them you heard Tommy sometimes hangs out at a place on Central Avenue called the Dixie Belle and maybe some other places down there too. I hope they find him, because I’m not sure I feel qualified to go up against this guy and his friend.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be afraid.”

  Horn felt his original dislike of Paul Fairbrass returning.

  “Then you were wrong.”

  * * *

  He parked the Ford on Gower just south of Sunset, walked back to the intersection, and looked around. Up and down the street, standing in knots of two and three, leaning or sitting on cars, were men in western clothing—hats, boots, dungarees, bandannas.

  This was “Gower Gulch.” During the silent era, a studio had stood at the northwest corner of Sunset and Gower. Later, other small studios sprang up in the neighborhood, some lasting only a few years. Somehow, the intersection became a hangout for cowboy actors between jobs. They were not stars. Some were not really cowboys but could wear the clothes and stay in the saddle well enough to work as extras. Others were the real thing, who could ride and rope expertly and work either in front of the camera or behind the scenes as a wrangler.

  On Gower Gulch they socialized, drank coffee or something stronger, and swapped tales. Some even found work, when a harried low-budget producer would drive up, point to a few of the most authentic-looking, and say, “You with the hat, you with the fancy vest, you with the big belt, you with the lariat. . . .”

  Of the two dozen or so on the sidewalk, Horn saw only one familiar face. He started over, then stopped and decided to watch Tuck Brown for a while. The man was medium height, lean and leathery, somewhere in his mid-forties. He wore a big hat low on his face, a plain shirt, and dungarees rolled high up over worn boots. With his gloved right hand poised over the sidewalk, he made the f
ree end of a lariat do a little dance, first jumping into a wide slipknot, then back out to hang loose, then back into the knot, then out again. Through it all he stood quite still, gazing off down the street, working the rope as gracefully as if he were an orchestra conductor leading his musicians through a measured, elegant waltz.

  Horn laughed out loud, then walked over. Tuck Brown looked up. “Well, I’ll be damned to perdition,” he said. “John Ray Horn.”

  “Hey there, Tuck.”

  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You doing all right?”

  “Just fine.” Horn was sure Brown knew all about his troubles, but he also knew the man wasn’t the sort to bring up the subject—or even mention his bruised face. He pointed at the lariat, now hanging loose. “You haven’t lost your touch.”

  “Thank you, sir. Did I ever tell you I learned this by watching Will Rogers? He came to Kansas City once, did a stage show. I swear, that man could rope. . . .”

  “He was the best.”

  A man wearing a shirt with horses embroidered on it walked over. “I don’t think there’s any work for you here,” he said to Horn.

  “I’m not looking for work,” Horn said.

  “Good thing, too,” the man said. He seemed ready to add something when Brown broke in.

  “Don’t mind him,” he said to Horn, staring into the other man’s face. “We two, we worked on a Hopalong Cassidy movie once. Never even learned this old boy’s name, but he got his boot caught in the stirrup during his dismount once, almost broke his fool neck. After that, everybody in the chow line called him Little Hoppy.”

  The other man stared at Horn for a second more and walked away.

  “Like I said—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Horn said. “Could I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” Brown began making the lariat dance again.

  “I need to find a stunt man. I know what he looks like, but I don’t know his name.”

  “Cowboy type?”

  “No. I mean, he could be. But my guess is, he works all kinds of stunts.”

  “Studio?”

  “I don’t know which one.”

  “Well, that’s a tall order,” Brown said. “Stunt men, if they’re any good, they don’t hang out here much, ‘cause they can get work easier than cowboys. Fact of it is, almost anybody can get work easier these days. Cowboy movies are dying. You know that, don’t you? Oh, they’re still making ‘em, especially over at Republic and Medallion, your old outfit. But there’s less and less every year. It was the war, I think. Nobody’s interested in cowboys any more, just musicals. Or these gangster movies, where it’s so danged dark you can’t see who’s who.”

  “I know. So what are you going to do?”

  “The missus wants me to invest in this dry cleaner’s out in Van Nuys.”

  Horn smiled. “I can’t see you doing that, Tuck. You’d miss the smell of horseshit.”

  “You bet I would.” He speeded up the rhythm of the lariat. “Do you miss it?”

  “Sometimes. Listen. . . .”

  “Oh, the guy you’re looking for. Sorry, I get to rambling. Well, here’s an idea. The stunt men have their own association now, kind of a union, but it’s strictly local and pretty informal. There’s, oh, dozens of ‘em working. I got a couple of friends belong. The one who tries to keep track of the membership list is Maggie O’Dare.” He looked away from Horn for a moment. “You remember Maggie, don’t you?” he asked casually.

  “Yes, sure I do.”

  “I know you been out of touch. Well, she’s not in the business any more. Got a little horse ranch out in the north Valley, where it’s unincorporated. She gives riding lessons, rents out to the studios, that kind of stuff. It’s called the O Bar D. Haven’t seen her for a while, but we did Bandit Girl together, and it was fun. Say hi for me.”

  “Thanks, Tuck.”

  * * *

  In the year or so since he’d gotten out, Horn had found few reasons to drive over the hill into the San Fernando Valley, the place where he’d once lived and worked. He made the drive now, taking the broad new Cahuenga Pass Parkway, gunning the car’s engine northward up the grade toward the top of the pass. When the road leveled off, he saw the Valley spread out before him, and he made an involuntary noise. He was still not used to the sight.

  The Valley was taking on the look of a city. Flatter, perhaps, with no skyscrapers and more space between the buildings, but nonetheless a city in the making. A network of neat streets laid out in a grid, filled with well-ordered little lots each containing a one-story house. Only when he looked off into the distance did Horn see the land open up to resemble the Valley he once knew, an expanse of open land, of farms and ranches and groves of trees. He could imagine that the sea of houses was washing slowly and steadily to the north, lapping up the open land.

  It was the way Mad Crow had described it, soon after Horn had gotten out of prison. The Valley, the Indian said sadly, was turning into a giant bedroom, just a place where people go when they finish working over the hill in the big city.

  As he guided his car along the downslope of the pass, he saw just another California city in the making—houses, stores, schools, churches. It all looked unbearably settled, tamed. . . civilized. He cursed softly.

  Medallion Studios, his old workplace, was only a few miles away, but he was not headed there. He turned left on Ventura Boulevard and drove for half an hour, paralleling the low range of the Santa Monica Mountains that hid Hollywood and the rest of L.A. Then he swung north, and little by little the houses began thinning out. After twenty minutes, orchards and ranches began to appear on either side of the road, and soon the rising bulk of two mountain ranges stood out clearly, the Santa Susanas to the left, the San Gabriels up ahead. He was almost in the foothills now, and the ranchland began to roll, dotted with big rock outcrops.

  Up to the left was the Santa Susana Pass, cutting its way through the mountains. He had ridden there, sometimes spending an entire day on Raincloud, climbing higher and higher until there were no houses and all he could see was green and brown and sky. Miles to the northeast, up in the high desert, was the Devil’s Punchbowl, where he and Mad Crow would go hunting deer and coyote in the winter, the ground lightly dusted with snow. And somewhere up ahead was Vasquez Rocks, where a Mexican bandit had hid out from the law a hundred years ago. It was up there in the rocks that he and the Indian had ridden against Three-Finger Teale and his outfit. A bad day, that one. He remembered the heat and the smell of gunsmoke. . . .

  Horn shook his head, feeling foolish. That was a movie. Carbine Justice. No, wait. Hell’s Rockpile. That was it. Not him, but Sierra Lane. Not a real memory, just a movie.

  He stopped once to ask directions at an isolated gas station emblazoned with garish signs advertising everything from engine oil to cigarettes to baby powder. Before long, he spotted the sign for the O Bar D Ranch. He turned up a dirt road toward a group of buildings and parked in front of the one that most resembled a residence. It had the rough look of a bunkhouse to which someone had added a coat of paint and a row of flowering plants all along the front of the house.

  No one answered his knock on the door, so he walked around to the rear. Beyond a fence he saw a man exercising a horse on a long lead. Farther out in the pasture, two riders, going at a walk, followed a trail along a fence. The big door to the stables stood open. He entered, struck at once by the cool air and by the smell, at once loamy and ammoniac, a rich mixture of manure and urine and hay and fodder and oiled leather and big animals. It was a smell he had missed.

  He walked along, making out the shapes of horses in the darkened stalls and hearing their whuffling and snorting sounds. As his vision adjusted, a woman came out of one of the far stalls and headed his way, a bridle slung over her shoulder.

  She saw him. “Something I can—?” she
began, then broke off as she drew close enough to recognize him.

  “Hello, Maggie.”

  She took her time looking him up and down, then finally answered. “Hello, John Ray.”

  “Long time.”

  “I’ll say. You been all right?”

  “Pretty much. I heard about your ranch.” They walked out of the stables, and he gestured toward the pasture. “Is this all yours?”

  “Yep. Or will be when I finish paying for it.”

  “I’m impressed.” In the bright sunlight, he took a good look at her. If Iris seemed almost the same after three years, time had worked more changes on Maggie. Folks who had followed the career of Margaret O’Dare, queen of the Medallion serials, might not have recognized her right away. She wore a shapeless plaid work shirt and baggy jeans. Her dark auburn hair, which always flowed free in her movies, was pulled back tightly into a ponytail to keep it out of the way. Without makeup over her fair skin, the freckles showed plainly on her nose and cheeks. Her features seemed softer, less angular, and fine lines now framed her eyes. She was no longer the young woman he’d first met more than ten years earlier at Medallion, when she was doing stunt work and he was on his way to becoming Sierra Lane.

  Yet she still had the same long-legged horsewoman’s build, hips a little on the narrow side. Her lips were still full, her eyes still clear, and the lines around them looked natural and earned. He had no trouble liking this face as much as he’d liked the other.

  “Tuck Brown says hi. I found him on Gower Gulch, and he put me on to you. He’s still doing rope tricks.”

  She smiled. “You want a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  He sat on a sofa covered with Indian blankets in the small front room of the main house while she made coffee in the tiny kitchen. “What happened to you?” she asked over the clatter of pots. “Your face.”