Shoot the Dog

by Brad Smith

  “Vaguely,” Virgil said as he tilted his bottle back. “Did you talk to a guy named Ronnie Red Hawk?”

  “Yeah. He was the last person seen with her. Why?”

  “He’s a producer on Frontier Woman.”

  “I know. He thinks he’s going to win an Oscar. What about him?”

  “Word on the movie set is he has a major crush on a woman named Kari Karson,” Virgil said. “You know who that is?”

  “She’s an actress,” Claire said. “She’s always in the tabloids. Been arrested a few times. Quite a few times. What about her?”

  “Red Hawk showed up at the pioneer village today in a limousine about as long as my barn. Kari Karson was in the limo.”

  Claire had a drink of beer while she considered this. “Next you’re going to tell me that he wants Kari Karson to take over the role that belonged to Olivia Burns.”

  “You got it.”

  Claire tapped the mouth of the bottle against her front teeth as she looked out over the farm. “This is where I’m supposed to put two and two together,” she said.

  “Hey, you’re the cop,” Virgil said.

  “It’s pretty obvious,” Claire said after a long moment. “And maybe a little too obvious. But it certainly bears looking into.” She paused. “Jesus, do you really think Ronnie Red Hawk murdered Olivia Burns so he could put Kari Karson in the movie?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “It wouldn’t be his call anyway, would it?” Claire asked. “I mean, there are other producers in the mix. I was told that Red Hawk is a minor producer, which I assume means he’s not calling the shots. Are the others okay with this?”

  “From what I saw today, they’re not even a little bit okay with it,” Virgil said. “I was there when the main producer, this woman named Sam, watched the Karson girl get out of the limo. I thought she was going to have an apoplexy, as we say back in 1840.”

  “Ouch!” Claire exclaimed suddenly, lifting her left foot. “Something bit me.” She examined the bare foot and scratched it before shifting in her chair and placing both feet in Virgil’s lap. He laid his arm across her ankles.

  “They come up with a time of death?” he asked.

  “Best they can say is between midnight and three in the morning,” Claire said.

  “And Red Hawk says he left her when?”

  “About ten o’clock.”

  “Where did he go then?”

  “To his room.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone,” Claire said. “Not much of an alibi, is it?”

  “No,” Virgil said. “What do you know about the guy anyway?”

  “Not nearly as much as I need to know,” Claire said. “Shit, I just got stung again. Can we go inside before I get bit to death?”

  Virgil gathered the empty bottles and they went into the house. Claire decided to have a shower and while she did Virgil sat down on the couch and flipped on the TV to the classics channel. The Adventures of Robin Hood was just starting.

  Claire came down a while later, wearing a robe she kept at the house, just as Alan Hale was knocking Errol Flynn off a log and into a stream. She curled into Virgil on the couch and he put his arm around her.

  “What are you watching?” she asked.

  “Robin Hood.”

  “Which one? They made about a hundred, didn’t they?”

  “The 1938 version, with Errol Flynn. That’s him in the creek. Errol Flynn was the best Robin Hood, hands down.”

  “He always played Errol Flynn,” Claire said.

  “Doesn’t matter. He was the best Robin Hood.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said.

  “Who was better?” Virgil asked. “And don’t say Kevin Costner.”

  She tucked herself in closer to him. “I suppose I have to defer to your expertise on this, now that you’re in the movie business.”

  “I knew that Errol Flynn was the best Robin Hood before I was in the movie business, which I’m barely in anyway.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m too tired to argue with you anyway.”

  “Fall asleep and you’re going to miss the sword fight between Robin and Friar Tuck.”

  “You can tell me about it later,” Claire said sleepily. She closed her eyes but then opened them again. “Sean Connery,” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “He was a good Robin Hood.”

  “He was never Robin Hood. He was James Bond. You don’t know the difference between Robin Hood and James Bond?”

  “Sean Connery was Robin Hood,” Claire told him. “The movie was called Robin and Marian. Audrey Hepburn was Marian and it took place when they were older. Robin came back from the Crusades or someplace and Marian was a nun. The guy from Jaws was in it too.”

  “Richard Dreyfuss?”

  “Not Richard Dreyfuss. The other guy. Shaw. He played the sheriff, I think.”

  “Robert Shaw,” Virgil said. “And Marian was a nun?”

  “Yeah.” Claire pulled her robe tightly around her. “And now that I’ve established that I know something you don’t, I’m going to sleep.”

  Virgil sat quietly for a moment, watching the set. Robin and his men had just discovered Friar Tuck sleeping by a stream while his fishing line bounced.

  “Errol Flynn is still the best Robin Hood,” Virgil said, but Claire, who had nodded off, didn’t hear.

  • • •

  After her initial shock, Sam recovered sufficiently to treat Kari Karson as she would any other visitor to the set. With the emphasis squarely on visitor. Introductions had taken place in the production trailer, where Ronnie Red Hawk had presented the young woman as if she were a member of the royal family.

  Kari’s face was pale, suggesting she hadn’t been outside for weeks, and she wore heavy black mascara and eyeliner. Dressed in black leggings and an artfully torn white T-shirt with the logo of some LA bar displayed in red slashing letters across the front, she came off as friendly and polite and just a bit nervous, shaking hands with Sam and Robb and then Levi, who came hurrying to the trailer from wherever he’d been, probably working his lover-boy routine on one of the wardrobe assistants. Ronnie Red Hawk stood to the side, beaming at what he undoubtedly considered a major casting coup.

  After appraising the situation in the trailer with a heavy sense of foreboding, Sam asked Tommy, who was standing to the side with a look of bemusement on his face that quite frankly infuriated her, to show Kari around the pioneer village.

  She told him to take his time.

  “Please tell me you didn’t offer her the role,” Sam said when they’d gone. There was a pleading in her voice even she had never heard before.

  “Of course I offered her the role,” Ronnie replied.

  “On whose authority?”

  “My authority,” Ronnie said. “I’m the producer.”

  “You’re one of the producers,” Levi reminded him.

  “Do I know you?” Ronnie asked and didn’t wait for an answer. “Hey, this is how I roll. I’m not one of those producers who sits around and talks about what needs to be done. There’s an old saying—when all is said and done, more is said than done. Well, that’s not me.”

  Sam wondered if it would serve any purpose to point out to Ronnie that he’d been a film producer for roughly a week and, as such, it seemed a tad early for him to be holding forth on his philosophies of the job. She decided not to get into it; she had enough to deal with, even without this latest fucking fiasco. What she needed to do was cut him off at the knees and get Kari Karson out of there. But gently, if there was such a way.

  “How old is Kari?” she asked.

  “Twenty-seven,” Ronnie said. “She turned twenty-seven on May fourth.”

  Of course Ronnie knew her birthday, Sam thought.

  “The character is thirty-eight,” Sam said. She realized something. “Have you read the book yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you read the script?”

&nbs
p; “Nope.”

  “Christ,” Levi muttered.

  Sam shot Levi a look. “But you feel comfortable casting the movie?” she said to Ronnie, keeping her voice calm.

  “Absolutely,” Ronnie said, and he crossed the trailer to flop onto the couch there, stretching his long legs out before him. It occurred to Sam that he wasn’t a man to remain on his feet for too long a time. He was wearing navy-blue satin shorts and a golf-style shirt with RED HAWK FILMS embroidered over the left breast. Sam hadn’t noticed the logo before.

  “It just doesn’t work that way,” Levi began.

  “You be quiet,” Ronnie snapped. His voice changed, losing its cordial tone, as he turned his attention to Sam. “You need to think back to the day you came to see me at Running Dog. Wearing your little peasant outfit, that long skirt and that low-cut blouse, giving me a peek at the twins. Carrying your cowboy hat in your hand, which was pretty appropriate because you came there hat in hand, didn’t you? Remember what we talked about that day? Instincts. That’s what we talked about. And you told me you could see that I had great instincts, and that was why you wanted me on your team. Now, you might have said that I had great instincts and six million dollars but you didn’t. You didn’t have to—we both knew the play. Well, the fact of the matter is that I do have incredible instincts and that’s why I offered the part to Kari Karson.”

  Sam was actually happy that the gloves were off. She was sick of the pretense. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the thing. She’s ten years too young, she looks like she just stepped out of a zombie movie, she’s spent more time in a courtroom in the past two years than she has on a movie set, and she’s a fucking tabloid magnet. She couldn’t be more wrong for the part.”

  “She’ll do it for half of what Olivia was getting,” Ronnie said.

  Levi looked at Sam, eyebrows raised.

  “How do you know what we were paying Olivia?” Sam asked.

  “I talked to the accountant,” Ronnie said. “I’m the producer.”

  Things grew quiet then, as if nobody knew what else to say, or even where to look. Ronnie sensed it and he heaved himself to his feet.

  “I’m going to go find Kari,” he said. “You guys need to talk this thing over. When I come back you can tell me if she has the role. If she doesn’t, then me and Kari and my six million dollars are gonna climb into that big black Cadillac and drive off into the sunset.” He smiled. “Just like Thelma and Louise.” He paused. “Well, not exactly like Thelma and Louise. They drove off a cliff. But you get the picture.”

  He walked out. Sam went to the window and watched him lumber to the limo, where he would presumably get a ride to the village just three hundred yards away. She turned to see Robb now slumped on the couch where Ronnie had sat, flipping through People magazine. As was typical, he hadn’t said a word during the meeting.

  “Well?” Sam asked. “Any suggestions?”

  “We’re fucked,” Levi said.

  “I wouldn’t call that a suggestion.”

  Levi sat down in an office chair along the wall. “Is there any chance it could work?” he asked. “What about this—we get her over to makeup and wardrobe, put a wig on her, scrape that goth shit off her face, and put her in costume. See if she can pull it off. Maybe have her read for us to boot.”

  “Ronnie won’t go for it,” Sam said. “He already told her she has the part. We tell her she has to audition and it just undermines him. She might stand for it, but he won’t.”

  “All right,” Levi said sharply. “You want to talk about him? Let’s talk about him—the big redheaded elephant in the room. Come on—it’s pretty fucking obvious now that he killed Olivia to make this happen. Or at least had her killed. Don’t tell me I’m the only one who’s figured that out.”

  “Nobody’s even said it was foul play,” Sam said. “It could have been an accident.”

  “You’re saying you don’t want to talk about it,” Levi said.

  “I don’t even want to think about it,” Sam said. “What does it accomplish? We have to make the movie.”

  “But what if he killed her?” Levi asked.

  Sam shook her head. She was through discussing it.

  “Okay, fuck it,” Levi said. “What do we do about Kari Karson? Robb—are you awake over there? Do you have an opinion on this, Mr. Director?”

  Robb set the magazine aside and looked over. “Did you see her?” he asked. “She’s hot. I had no idea. I mean, she is totally hot.”

  Sam regarded him for a long moment before glancing over at Levi. She sighed.

  TWELVE

  Tommy Alamosa called Virgil later that night to say that he and the Percherons wouldn’t be needed on set the next day. Apparently they had decided to shoot out, as Tommy phrased it, the village interiors over the next couple of days. Tommy also told Virgil that Kari Karson would be taking over the role of Martha Jones.

  If Tommy hadn’t mentioned it, Virgil would have found out soon enough, as the story was the lead on the local TV news the next morning, which he watched while eating a bowl of cornflakes at his kitchen table. Congress was threatening to shut down the government over spending issues, there were ongoing problems in the Persian Gulf, Iran had reportedly tested a nuclear missile, and gasoline was pushing five bucks a gallon. But the lead story was that a much-arrested actress was in the area, filming a movie. Virgil assumed the much-arrested part was what made the story newsworthy.

  After breakfast he carried his coffee outside and made his way over to the machine shed, where he needed to service the combine in readiness for the wheat harvest. After draining his cup, he pulled on overalls and went to work, adjusting the head and greasing the various fittings and changing a universal joint that was getting noisy. As he worked he kept thinking about the situation on the film set.

  Even though he really couldn’t care less about the movie, or most of the people associated with it, it was pretty obvious that there was something sour surrounding the whole production. In general, he would have been in favor of letting the whole bunch of them stew in their own juices, but he’d come to like the no-bullshit Tommy Alamosa, and the little girl, Georgia. Virgil suspected that Tommy could take care of himself, but the kid was—well, just a kid. And her parents were not around to look out for her. Virgil wondered if anybody was, amid the turmoil over there. Whatever the situation, it wasn’t Virgil’s job to worry about her. So why did he?

  When he was finished with the combine, he wiped the grease and grime from his hands, went to the house to change his clothes, then got into his truck and drove to the town of Coeymans, on the west bank of the Hudson.

  Buddy Townes rented a two-bedroom cabin a mile out of town, tucked in a shallow inlet along the shore of the river. The cabin wasn’t much to look at; the roof dipped in the middle and the paint was peeling from the wooden siding in long, feathery strips. Some of the windows were covered with plastic to keep out the winter, although Virgil wondered why they were still sealed up in the summer’s heat. Getting out of his truck out in front of the house, he heard the whine of the air conditioner and that answered his question.

  Buddy’s beater of a Cadillac was parked in the drive. Buddy had been a cop for nearly thirty years, and Virgil suspected he would have a decent pension. The house and car didn’t suggest that, but then Virgil knew that Buddy would dedicate more of his income to liquor and female companionship than transportation and residence. He knocked on the front door of the cabin a couple of times but got no reply. It was after eleven o’clock; even Buddy should be up by now. Virgil walked around the cabin and down the sloping lawn, although lawn was a generous name for a parched patch of ground covered with spiny weeds and little grass, to Buddy’s boathouse and dock. The boathouse was empty, meaning that Buddy was out on the river. No sooner had Virgil arrived at the conclusion than he heard the putt-putt of an outboard motor and turned to see Buddy heading toward him in a small aluminum boat, wearing dirty khaki shorts and no shirt, a stubby cigar clenched in his teeth, his
face tanned and cracked like old shoe leather beneath a filthy white cap of indeterminate years. He smiled when he saw Virgil on the dock, and he was still smiling as he tossed him the rope to tie off while he climbed out of the boat.

  “What the fuck have you got yourself into this time?” he asked.

  “Why would you ask me that?” Virgil said in reply.

  “The only time you come around is when you find trouble,” Buddy said. “My feelings would be hurt, if I had any.”

  They sat on lawn chairs in the shade of the cabin, drinking cold Miller High Life from cans that Buddy retrieved from an old Pepsi cooler he’d had with him in the boat. There were a couple of walleyes, three or four pounds each, in the cooler as well, packed in the ice, and the beer cans had a slippery sheen on them from the fish.

  “What makes you think I know anything about Ronnie Red Hawk?” Buddy asked after relighting the cigar that was by now barely long enough for a match.

  “Because you know everything, Buddy.”

  “I fucking near do.” Buddy gestured around himself, his arms outstretched. “And look where I am. With all my great knowledge, shouldn’t I be a Fortune 500 type?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Fucking right that’s what I want,” Buddy said, and he took a pull off the can and belched. “Ronnie Red Hawk, eh? Well, he was born Ronald McDonald. I’m not shitting you. Or possibly Ronald Levack, depending on whether his mother ever married his father. She kept changing her story on that one, whenever she needed a new surname to start a fresh welfare claim.”

  “And here I thought Red Hawk was his real name.”

  “Like hell you did,” Buddy said. “He grew up around Watertown. He was a fucked-up teenager, no father, his mother tended bar part-time and did crystal meth pretty much fulltime. Little Ronald got arrested a lot, mostly small-time shit. I remember him dealing pot and Oxy to high school kids. After a while he got into jacking cars, Bimmers and Mercedes, high-end stuff, and then selling them to some sketchy fucking Algerian who shipped them to North Africa to sell to rich oil types or local gangsters or whatever. Ronald and his buddies would get maybe four or five grand for a hundred-thousand-dollar car.” Buddy puffed on the cigar but it was dormant again, so he gave up on it and tossed it into the weed-infested flower bed at the back of the cabin. “He ended up doing a stretch in Attica for his troubles.”