Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [131]
Kerney explained his personal relationship with Johnny Jordan and asked about the movie project in the Bootheel. Morrison told him that Johnny had been a driving force behind getting the film shot in the state. He’d brokered a deal to use the nearly abandoned mining town of Playas as the production headquarters. In addition to serving as a movie set, the town would house the cast and crew during filming in the area.
Kerney knew about the town through a recent article in a law enforcement bulletin. Built in the 1970s, Playas had once been a company town of over a thousand people. But when the nearby copper-smelting operations were shut down in 1999, it became a virtual modern-day ghost town containing over 250 homes, twenty-five apartments, a bank building, a post office, a fire station, churches, a community center, an air strip, and other amenities. Now the town had been bought with Homeland Security funds and was in the first stages of being transformed into a national antiterrorism training center.
Morrison further explained that Johnny had also been active in securing part of the financing for the movie through a low-interest state loan, and had just finished negotiating the final details of a contract that guaranteed the state a percentage of the profits from the film.
Pleased to learn that Johnny’s proposition was on the up-and-up, he asked Morrison what she could tell him about the role of a technical advisor.
“Well,” Morrison said, “it all depends on the project, the cast, and the crew. In some cases it can be a frustrating role, or it can be quite an enjoyable experience.”
“Johnny said it would be a working vacation for me. I’m not looking to take on something that winds up being a heavy burden.”
Morrison smiled. “I can certainly understand that. You should have an opportunity to meet with the producers and key personnel before filming actually begins. If what you learn isn’t to your liking, you can always opt out of the project. In fact, given your responsibilities as police chief, I suggest you might want to have a release clause written into your contract in case a situation requires your return to Santa Fe.”
Kerney thanked Morrison for her time, and left with a copy of 100 Years of Filmmaking in New Mexico , which she insisted he should have.
Johnny Jordan lived and worked in a late-nineteenth-century brick building in downtown Denver that had originally been a warehouse. The developer who renovated it had added a two-story penthouse with a wall of glass that looked out at the Rocky Mountains. It featured a large balcony, a media room, four bedrooms, two home offices, and a huge living room adjacent to the kitchen and dining area. This was where Johnny and his wife, Madeline, a partner in a law firm that specialized in corporate mergers and hostile takeovers, lived. Madeline had sole ownership, having bought the property prior to their marriage.
Johnny loved living there, loved waking up to the city views and the distant mountains, and especially loved that it hadn’t cost him a penny.
He didn’t expect Madeline to be home, and she wasn’t. Johnny always timed his trips out of town with other women to coincide with his wife’s travel schedule. It reduced the odds of discovery. This week, she was in Toronto heading up a team of lawyers negotiating the merger of two multinational lumber companies.
Johnny cared about Madeline, maybe even loved her every once in a while when she wasn’t obsessing about her career. But like every other woman he’d been seriously drawn to and married over the years—Madeline was wife number four—she now bored him.
With all his wives, he’d been faithful until the boredom set in. Then he went fishing for fresh talent. At the end of his second marriage, he’d tried to figure out why he became so easily disconnected from women he thought he loved. After pondering it, he’d decided most women were like well-presented but uninteresting meals: nice to look at but no fun to feast on,