a motel in New Braunfels, cartons of cigarettes, bags of hamburgers and bottles of Scotch ever to hand, not to mention Sally Ann, he roughed out a script. Devil Women of Mars. And it had, by God, everything. Scenes of small- town American life. Long shots of empty Arizona sky. Suspense. A message. Cleavage. Butts pushed up intriguingly by high-heel silver boots. When Billy drove out of New Braunfels that Monday, hungover in a borrowed car since he’d sold the Cad to get money for equipment rental, Sally Ann snoozing beside him, he was a new man. Everyone on his route, El Paso, Las Cruces, Midland Odessa, Midlothian, Cockrel Hill, Duncanville, signed up for Devil Women of Mars. That next weekend, in an abandoned aircraft hangar outside Fort Worth, they shot the thing.
“It holds up, even now,” Sammy Cash said. “I’m the guy who fills the gas tank when the kids pull into the Spur station. I see this thing in the back of the pickup and start backing away. Audience never sees it, all they have to go on is my reaction. The gas nozzle falls out. One of the kids goes to light a cigarette. I was in the first one he made, I was in the last one. He is a genius, you know.”
Billy started cranking them out like no one had seen. He’d take a motel room for the weekend and emerge with a script, shoot the thing Monday through Wednesday, edit it that night and the next day, have it to the processors by late Thursday, out in the world the following week. Science fiction, horror, crime movies, prison films, teen exploitation. Sally Ann never appeared onscreen, nor remained long in Billy’s life, after Devil Women of Mars. Most of the actors were amateurs, lured away from college and community-theatre productions or from porn films for a day or two, Sammy Cash (real name Gordie Ratliff) being the exception. He’d had small parts in several low- end Hollywood movies and proudly carried a Screen Actors Guild card. But when the guild found out he’d appeared in a nonunion film and busted him, he decided right then and there that their gentlemen’s agreement was over. Never paid the fine, never looked back. And never again used any other name than Sammy Cash.
“It was as though the experience liberated him,” Billy Roark said. “Before, he’d been a good journeyman, always dependable, you knew he’d show up on time, stay however long he was needed, get the job done. But then Sammy just… flowered. Soon everyone wanted him. Film after film-all of my own, those of half a dozen other filmmakers as well-he was brilliant, stone brilliant. Whatever the part.
All but imperceptibly at first, though, things began changing. TV became a six-hundred-pound linebacker flattening the opposition, providing, free and in one’s own home, what B and lesser movies could provide only cheaply. Locally owned movie houses disappeared or were bought up by chains who in turn found themselves forced to bid high on upcoming Hollywood product and then, scrambling to meet expenses, to block bookings in every possible theatre. Meanwhile, costs of film, equipment rental and essential facilities such as editing studios increased astronomically. A few filmmakers held on. Till the bitter end.
“And by our toenails,” Billy Roark said. “Those days won’t ever come again.” He looked up. “Did we ever get you drinks? No? We really should do that. I’m afraid we’re a bit out of practice vis-a-vis entertaining.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about all that,” Sammy Cash said. “Rarely thinks much about it anymore.”
The sadness in his companion’s eyes belied him even before Billy spoke.
“I hated them for taking it all away from me. Taking away my life, really.”
“Billy. Please,” Sammy Cash said.
“There was talk about The Giving being my swan song, some kind of ultimate homage to the great art of film. Piss on that. What I was giving them, all of them-Hollywood, the studios, newcomer merchants who went about buying up everything in sight-was the finger. Fuckers didn’t even have enough sense to know it. Swallow this, I was telling them. Take this wad of crap and stuff it right back up where it came from.”
“It’s all right, Billy. All that’s long in the past. We’re fine now, aren’t we? We have a good life.” Sammy Cash looked from Lonnie’s face to mine. “Don’t you think you’ve upset him enough?”
“We never liked one another much, Gordie,” Henry Lee said, “and you probably don’t believe this, but I’ve always appreciated what you’ve done for my brother, your devotion to him.”
Then, turning to Lonnie and me: “After Billy’s troubles-”
“Troubles?” I said.
“A breakdown. He was in the hospital for almost a year. When he came out, I bought this house for him, set everything up so he’d be safe the rest of his life, never want for anything.”
“Your brother cares for you a lot,” the sheriff said. “So does Sammy.”
Billy nodded.
“Did you ever meet a man by the name of Carl Hazelwood, Billy?” I asked.
No response this time. I thought of all those movies about submarines cutting engines and playing dead, hoping to stay off sonar.
“He’d been trying to get in touch with you. Carl’s a great fan of yours, Billy. Maybe your top fan. He understood what you were doing, what you’d accomplished. He wanted desperately to talk to you about the films you made, tell you how important they’d been to him.”
“I-” Billy began. Even the drink was dry when he tried for refuge there. Foundering, lost, he looked about. At Sammy’s face. Out the window. At these familiar walls.
“Others did everything they could to keep him away from you, Billy. But he wasn’t going to be stopped. It was that important to him. You were that important to him.”
Lonnie’s gaze turned to Henry Lee.
“You knew about this all along.”
He nodded. “Boy showed up at my door one night. Hadn’t bathed for a month or two. Mumbling and twitching. Said he was looking for the man who’d made The Giving. What was I supposed to do? What would you do? I had to protect Billy. I told him-Carl Hazelwood, as we later learned-that I didn’t know any such person. Told him to go away. Okay, sorry to have bothered you, sir, he said. But he didn’t go away. Far from it. I’d catch glimpses of him scuttling behind the garage, slipping off into the woods.”
“He’d seen more than enough movies to know about stakeouts,” Lonnie said. “And despite your disavowals, he knew you were connected with Billy, if not precisely what the relationship was. Knew he had only to keep watch.”
“And go through my mail.”
“That’s how he found his way to Billy.”
“Enough,” Sammy Cash said. “ Enough, goddamn it.”
“Did you talk to Carl Hazelwood, Billy?”
His eyes wandered about, settled on Sammy, who shook his head. Billy nodded. “Nice young man.”
“Yes. Yes, he was.”
“Told me people were still watching my films, still talking about them. I had no idea. He only came that one time. I asked him to dinner the next night, insisted on cooking, though Sammy usually does all that. Baked bass, a salad of couscous and goat cheese. Put out the good china, chilled two bottles of white. We waited almost two hours, but he never showed.”
Billy’s eyes came up and went from face to face.
“Sammy-”
“I’m sorry,” Sammy Cash said. He held a handgun. “This has to be over now. Billy’s suffered enough.”
“What you have there’s a twenty-two,” Lonnie said. “Shoot someone with that, you’re likely to make them mad.” He stood and, hand extended, stepped forward. The gun barked. Bubbles of blood spotted his lips.
“Son of a bitch,” Lonnie said.
Chapter Thirty-six
The second shot had struck Billy square in the neck-transecting his trachea, though we didn’t know that at the time. I don’t think Sammy Cash even intended to fire. When he saw what he’d done, not knowing even the half of it, his hand fell onto his lap and he sat immobile, tears in his eyes like chandeliers in empty ballrooms. For the moment Lonnie seemed okay, down but not out. I’d pulled Billy from the chair onto the floor, felt for a carotid. Thinking with amazement how much blood a body holds, how much blood it gives up, and how quickly. Billy wasn’t breathing. Pinching his nose, hyperextending his neck, I stacked in three quick breaths and checked again. Still no pulse, no respiration. I began compressions. When next I looked up, Lonnie had been there by me, counting. He’d do the breaths, turn aside to spit blood or cough as I did compressions. Three, four minutes in, he folded, gasping.
