“No shiny boards,” the cameraman said. “Get it off foam!”
“Foam! Foam!” shouted the gaffer.
Perkins and I stood at the edge of the location and watched and listened. It was a crazy scene—thirty minutes out of the city, up a desolate road and into the high desert, where the fake Old Tucson, along with 120 people and seven big trucks, were all baking in the sun. All the Kodak and Coca-Cola signs had been taken down, and the crew had refurbished all the exteriors, which now looked authentic—or close enough. The mountains loomed dramatically in the immediate background.
A dozen extras were milling around outside the fake saloon. I understood now why Tom Franklin had been so unhappy, especially with the women. They didn’t look like world-weary saloon girls. They looked like college kids dressed up in petticoats for one of those souvenir photos. This was not going to be a terrific scene.
Over on one of the benches, Clete Williams was sitting next to one of the dressed-up saloon girls.
“Let’s lose that ten-K,” the cameraman said. “You’re gonna be too hot.”
“Wanna gobo it off?”
“Just lose it.”
“Lose the ten-K!”
In front of the camera, Franklin, “the Jet-Propelled Elf,” was lining up Sally. I remembered that this was Sally’s first day of work. I looked over and saw Charles Mann standing to one side, chewing his fingernails. He seemed very nervous.
Sally wasn’t nervous at all. She was wearing a strapless corset with a plunging neckline, along with a skirt that probably wasn’t historically accurate, because it barely covered her ass.
“Now, Sally,” Franklin was saying, “when I say action, you come out of the saloon and just look up. But the important thing is that you don’t look at the camera. You look to the right side of it, where Clete will be. And then you give your line, ‘Wait.’”
“Wait,” Sally said, nodding. “Wait, wait.”
“Just once.”
“What?”
“Just one ‘wait.’”
“I know. I was practicing,” Sally said. “Wait.”
“Let’s rehearse it once,” Franklin said. “And remember: When you come out, you have to hit these little tape marks at your feet. Otherwise, you won’t be in focus.”
“Wait,” Sally said. “Wait.”
“The girl will go far,” Perkins said dryly. We walked over to Mann. “How is she doing?”
“What?”
“Sally, how is she doing?”
“Oh, Sally. She’s doing fine, I think.”
“You seem concerned.”
“No, no,” Mann said. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Wait, wait, wait... wait, wait,” Sally said.
Down the dirt street, I saw a police car pull up, and Chief Corey lumbered out. I touched Perkins’s sleeve. He saw the cop, too, and nodded.
* * *
“No mystery here,” Corey said, looking at his notebook, squinting in the sun. “Doc Weston did the autopsy and came out with this. Time of death is set between four to four thirty a.m. Cause of death is skull fracture and cerebral contusion”—he stumbled over the word—“and associated causes of respiratory depression are high narcotic content of blood and liver and high alcohol content of blood and liver.”
“You have exact figures?”
