Slow Fade Read online

“I came in from Hong Kong,” Walker said, trying to remember if they knew each other.

  “Whatever.” The man’s head disappeared and reemerged like an inquisitive seal. “But I don’t envy you that project. Detroit in the summer is not my cup of tea, although I seriously doubt if the old bastard will ever get to it.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Walker asked, sure now that he had been mistaken for somebody else.

  “I suppose he’s just run out of whatever primitive fuel his motor requires; rage, fear — who knows? But don’t misunderstand, I’ll definitely shed a tear, perhaps two, if he drops dead and not just because it’ll cost me more than a few quid if he doesn’t finish this current shoot. As it is, he’s three million over with all the usual demented nonsense going on. . . . But I love him like a brother, or perhaps a half-brother.”

  Walker got up and went into the house. No one was around and he walked upstairs and entered his father’s room. It hadn’t changed in over thirty years: piles of scripts on his mahogany desk, the overflowing floor-to-ceiling bookcase, the huge bed framed with elephant tusks, the two Modigliani nudes and the map of Venice on the wall, his hand-tooled guns resting in their Chippendale glass case. The only evidence of the new señora was a floppy straw hat on the seat of a wicker armchair.

  He walked down the hall and entered his own room. Everything had changed. Gone were the original drawings of the sets of three Busby Berkeley films his father had given him on his thirteenth birthday; the framed picture of his now dead mother standing next to her Cessna, looking like Amelia Earhart in a flying outfit, his father peering dimly out of the cockpit; and his books and all the rest of the list he was incapable of recalling. They were all gone. Replaced by bare white walls, an austere single bed, a simple desk made from oak planks, two straight-backed unpainted wooden chairs, an old captain’s chest, and a round hand-stitched rug. He picked up a photograph on the desk showing a small girl of eight or nine, a puppy in her arms, standing in front of a man and woman, all of them dressed in woolen pants, heavy boots, and parkas. The man’s Indian face, severe and unsmiling, stared straight at the camera, while the woman, pale and white-haired, gazed at the top of her daughter’s head with a wistful smile. Behind them smoke drifted out of a tar-paper shack, a mountainous pile of wood off to one side.

  He walked next door to his sister’s room. It, too, had been stripped of its past and made into a library-TV room. All except for her books, which were still in their wall-to-ceiling bookcases, and one framed photograph over the new white couch. He studied the photograph as if looking for clues. His sister, blond and pale and fragile, stood next to him on a tennis court. They wore immaculate white shorts and T-shirts, holding their racquets out to the side as if ready to receive a volley from across the net. They were both smiling — his sister less so, but she had always been more reluctant when it came to games and social activities. He must have been sixteen and she, of course, two years younger. There was nothing in her face to suggest any inner turbulence, nothing more than a pretty Beverly Hills teenager smiling for the camera.

  Walker lay down on the couch and closed his eyes, immediately falling into an exhausted sleep.

  The next morning he missed his plane to Santa Fe even though the maid woke him and the driver waited outside in the limousine. Taking a later flight gave him time to have the maid cut his hair and pick out some clothes for him on Rodeo Drive while he remained in bed. When he finally landed in Santa Fe his appearance had changed considerably. Although still gaunt and ravaged, he looked, at first sight, like a mannequin in a store window, with his new Adidas sneakers, French jeans, and brightly checkered sport shirt.

  The film’s publicity director drove him west into the desert through a crimson evening streaked with purple flares. It was dark when they reached the set, a collection of trailers and trucks parked off to the side of a dirt road winding down near a small river. His father would be shooting all night and was busy at the moment with his first setup. Walker waited in his trailer, pouring himself a large shot of tequila and watching television for the first time in two years. An hour later his father arrived, a tall, wiry man with a white beard and blue, red-rimmed eyes.

  At first Wesley Hardin didn’t see his son lying in the rear of the trailer watching TV without the sound, involved as he was in a heated discussion with the producer.

  “I don’t care who the fuck he is,” Wesley was saying, turning to face the producer as the man came in the door after him. “He won’t see the rest of the rushes until I’m ready to show them and he won’t pull the plug. He’s in too deep.”

  “You didn’t hear him this morning on the phone. I did. He was screaming. The whole studio knew about you urinating on the screen at dailies last night. It will be in the trades tomorrow.”

  “The camera was out of focus for the fourth straight day. I had to fire my focus puller and my operator, two men I’ve worked with for ten years.”

  “You’re five million over, Wesley,” the producer said evenly. “No one cares about excuses when you’re five million over.”

  “Is that why you’re flying to L.A. tonight to sabotage me?”

  “I’m keeping the studio off your back, which necessarily involves not telling you everything.”

  “That must be why you didn’t tell me about the memo you sent them yesterday on my age, drinking habits, and all-around perversity.”

  “You are an obnoxious man,” the producer yelled suddenly. “An unholy cocksucker of the first rank.”

  The producer’s impulsive attack was unexpected and left Wesley’s lower lip quivering with rage. As he reached for the tequila bottle, he saw Walker watching him from the rear of the trailer.

  “Betrayal, cowardice, deceit,” he muttered, breaking the bottle over the edge of the kitchenette’s Formica counter and advancing toward the producer, who quickly retreated out the door.

  As Wesley turned to face his son, Walker was struck by the collapse in his father’s once taut face, how the entire head seemed to hang by an invisible hinge, as if even the weight of gravity was enough to make it sag forward. Otherwise, Wesley Hardin looked the same as he always did, for he never changed his outfit on location: faded jeans, a white shirt, hand-tooled cowboy boots, and a fold-up Panama hat.

  “You look terrible,” his father said, advancing toward him and letting the tequila bottle drop to the floor.

  “You don’t seem in top shape yourself,” Walker said, tentatively meeting his awkward embrace and smelling the brittle decay and booze on his father’s skin and the cool shadow of something more.

  “Are they going to can you?” Walker asked, reaching for something to say.

  “They probably should although they don’t have the balls. But the whole rotten project is out of control.”

  They sat awkwardly facing each other over the trailer’s kitchen table, Wesley opening up another bottle of tequila and pouring them both drinks.

  “You could have come back once or twice,” Wesley said, his mouth twisting into an odd little grin. “That’s a line I had this kid say to Wayne once, in Bitter Creek. You remember? The kid was so nervous to have a line with the Duke he couldn’t say it without stammering, and I had to fire him.”

  “ ‘I came back,’ ” Walker said. “That’s more than I thought I’d ever do. That’s what the Duke said. I was an extra on that one.”

  Wesley sighed, his hand shaking underneath the table. “I thought you’d be here a few days ago,” he said abruptly.

  “I arrived in L.A. last night. One of your production assistants met me.”

  “How was the welcome home party?”

  “I didn’t appreciate it.”

  Wesley poured himself another shot of tequila and downed it before he forced himself to look directly at Walker. “Do you have any news about your sister?”

  “No. Not really. Not past a certain point.”

  “What do you mean, point? What point?”

  “The point where you don’t know what anyth
ing means any more and it’s every man for himself. I don’t know. I never saw her over there. I heard plenty about her. But so did you. You read that detective’s report, didn’t you?”

  “What else did you hear?” Wesley asked warily.

  “Various things.” He looked away from his father, not able to pursue it any more. “There are people around who might know what happened. I might be able to get to one of them.”

  Wesley’s tone was raw and impatient. “When?”

  “When I get to one of them. Certainly not before.”

  “Will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Get to one of them?”

  “If I get around to it. I guess so.”

  “You guess so? That’s not good enough.”

  “Good enough?” Walker asked, feeling a curtain come down between them with terrifying swiftness. “What do you know about good enough?”

  There was a knock on the door followed by the assistant director’s blond head.

  “We’re ready to roll, Boss, any time you are.”

  Wesley rose, relieved to be summoned. “Hang around, or I’ll see you at the hotel tomorrow for lunch. We’re shooting all night and we’ll probably try to get a magic-hour shot. They’re after me like a pack of wolves so I won’t have much time. But we’ll talk on the ride back or something. We go to Mexico in a few days for three weeks, and the whole business should be finished in less than two months.”

  “I don’t have any plans,” Walker said.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. Do you have money?”

  “Your lawyer gave me a few grand in L.A.”

  Wesley paused as he went out the door. “I’m married again. You might like this one. She’s from Labrador. Her grandfather knew your grandfather.”

  Walker went back to the rear of the trailer and lay down, falling immediately asleep. He woke before dawn. The trailer was empty and he stepped outside into the cool night air keeping away from the dazzling arc lights and fog machines and walking toward the area that had been staked off for the horses.

  A thin woman in tan corduroy pants and red flannel shirt was saddling a horse, one of the wranglers looking on. She moved with relaxed assurance, tightening up the cinch and swinging her long frame into the saddle. Her long black hair hung behind her in two knotted braids, and as she turned her face Walker knew that she was his father’s new wife. She had the same level look to her blue eyes as the girl in the photograph.

  “You’re Walker,” she said, gazing down on him. “I’m Evelyn. Do you want to take a ride?”

  He nodded. She looked no older than he, somewhere in her early thirties, with the broad cheekbones of the Inuit as well as the blue eyes and thin nose of the Scotch. His father had married a breed. He must have finally gone home and that’s where he must have met her.

  The wrangler brought him a saddled horse and he rode after her as she trotted down the dirt road and out along the banks of a slowly moving river. She urged her horse into a gallop as the sun broke over the horizon and it was in trying to keep up with her that Walker lost control, his horse running flat out across the desert until the collision with A.D.

  AND THAT was what Walker recalled, not exactly in that narrative form, of course, but in that general sequence, until finally, toward dawn, A.D. woke again.

  “I’m here,” A.D. said. “Who’s there?”

  “Walker.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Walker. Because of you being such an asshole, I’m pinned here with no eyes, no gig, and not too much hope.”

  “What would give you hope?”

  “A deal.”

  “You’ll get a deal.”

  “Is there some kind of watch on me?” A.D. asked, suddenly nervous that Walker was just sitting there staring at him. “Am I in worse shape than they’ve told me?”

  “You’re the same,” Walker said. “I’m just sitting here wondering if you have any pain pills.”

  “I take all they give me.”

  “How many years have you been on the road?” Walker asked.

  “Too many. I’ve been through it all on the road.”

  They were silent and once again Walker watched an obscure night give way to an equally obscure dawn.

  “Did anyone from the band ask for me?” A.D. asked.

  “The nurse told me someone came by to say they had checked out.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” A.D. asked. “Aside from being your father’s off-the-curb son.”

  A.D. was experiencing an almost overwhelming wave of fury, an emotion which, while it expressed itself, made Walker feel strangely relieved.

  “I’ve been on the road myself, one way or the other,” Walker replied, “and I probably know less than you about what comes next.”

  “Does that mean there’s no deal?” A.D. asked.

  “Something might be arranged,” Walker said. “To fit our needs. One way or the other.”

  Having approached that decision, he eased himself out of his chair and slowly shuffled out of the room.

  LATER that day, Wesley Hardin and his wife, Evelyn, arrived at the door of Walker’s hospital room. Evelyn opened the door, gasping at the way Walker’s head tilted to one side, one arm hanging over the bed. There was such intense suffering in his face, as if his open mouth had crystallized into a silent scream, that she waited until she saw him breathe before she shut the door.

  “He’s asleep,” she whispered.

  “We’ll try the other guy,” Wesley said.

  They moved down the hall and entered A.D.’s room.

  “A.D. Ballou?” Wesley asked. “I’m Wesley Hardin and next to me is my wife, Evelyn, who was riding with my son when your horse got away from you. We’re all concerned about your accident.”

  “If I was you I’d be concerned, too,” A.D. said. “I’m asking for full compensation. I was attached to my left eye, more even, than my right, being as how I’m left-handed.”

  “I can understand your feelings and, hell, I sympathize with you,” Wesley said. “But unfortunately you’re not in a great position to ask for damages. You rode past two clearly marked No Trespassing signs and avoided the signals of a guard stationed at the edge of the mesa. Not only that, but a substantial amount of nose candy was found in your jacket pocket, a charge which we have, for the moment, been able to have suspended. Despite all this, however, we are, in good faith, willing to cover your hospital bill as well as your travel expenses back to wherever it is you want to go.”

  “Good faith doesn’t play with me,” A.D. said.

  Wesley pulled up a chair near the head of the bed and leaned forward. He was tired and his day had been bad and he didn’t want to be there.

  “Look here, Mr. Ballou,” he said with an equal mixture of intimacy and weariness, “I’m putting it to you straight. We have to work this out now or not at all. Making a film is like being on a fast train. Once off you can hardly ever get back on again. I’m flying to Mexico tonight never to return to this little candy-assed town.”

  “Now is okay with me,” said A.D., who was having trouble listening.

  “Good,” Wesley said. “I talked to Walker on the phone today. He’s sleeping, which is just as well because what I want to say concerns the two of us as much as it does him. He says you’ve written songs and other stuff as well, including screenplays.”

  A.D. realized the ball had been thrown to him, that Walker had somehow set something up, and he did the only thing he could to keep the ball in play: he lied.

  “I’ve written a few,” he said, inventing himself on the spot. “My uncle wrote screenplays. We did The Big Deal together.”

  “Whatever,” Wesley said, staying very much on his fast train. “I know that you and Walker have talked and that you’ve found common ground together and common ground is a precious thing when you’re standing on quicksand.”

  “Amen,” A.D. said.

  Wesley stood up and walked over to the window, trying to form an idea, or perhaps it was a hook,
in any case something to wrap around A.D. and maneuver him into whatever angle he might come up with. Wesley was a master at impromptu story conference, being well known in the industry for turning almost certain defeats into spectacular commitments from the money people, but as he turned to face the bed he found himself not so much making a pitch to A.D. as awkwardly revealing Walker’s back story.

  “Two or three years ago, God, I don’t even remember exactly, but Walker had just gotten married and his sister, Clementine, had gone off to India to study the sitar or some such instrument. When no one heard from her for six months Walker and his wife decided to go over there and look for her. I was working and ending a rotten marriage and not paying much attention to him or anyone else, including Clementine. Although I did make a few high-level calls, one to the Canadian prime minister and the other to a senator, and they both said they would put professionals on the case. It relieved me and I didn’t think any more about it. I was even pleased she was off on an adventure and had made some kind of a break from L.A . . . .”

  He walked over to Evelyn, standing beside her and nervously twisting his fingers into the thick strands of her black hair.

  “I guess in those days Walker was a little confused. He was drifting around, trying to promote an all-girl rock-’n’-roll band and developing a few scripts. I had given him a job as assistant producer on a film and when he consistently failed to show up I had to fire him. . . .”

  “You don’t have to get into this right now,” Evelyn said.

  “I want to get into it right now,” Wesley insisted. “Did you know that his wife died over there?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I found out this morning. From his doctor.”

  “Listen,” A.D. said, having managed to grasp only the bare drift of Wesley’s tale. “All I know is that I’m blind in one eye on account of one of your Indians and I want to get paid off for the loss. It’s that simple.”

  “I encourage you to sue the pricks,” Wesley said, not breaking stride, even relieved to be forced away from the story. “Not only that, but I will give you the name of a lawyer who is an expert on such matters. But of course it’ll take more than a few years to see any money at all — that is, if you’re lucky, which I surely hope you are.”