Authors: Suzanne Brockmann
Infamous
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS SERIES
The Unsung Hero
The Defiant Hero
Over the Edge
Out of Control
Into the Night
Gone Too Far
Flashpoint
Hot Target
Breaking Point
Into the Storm
Force of Nature
All Through the Night
Into the Fire
Dark of Night
Hot Pursuit
CLASSIC ROMANCES
Heartthrob
Bodyguard
Forbidden
Time Enough for Love
Stand-in Groom
Otherwise Engaged
The Kissing Game
Kiss and Tell
Body Language
Freedom’s Price
Ladies’ Man
To the cast of
Looking for Billy Haines:
Jason T. Gaffney, Jason Michael Butler,
David Covington, David Craven,
Joseph Cullinane, Apolonia Davalos,
Brandon Davidson,
Annie Kerins, Sarah Ripper, and Eric Ruben;
and to the audiences who looked for, and found him.
ontents
rologue
Everyone’s heard the story about Marshal Silas Quinn and the infamous gunfight at the Red Rock Saloon.
A travelogue to the American Southwest says it better than I ever could:
Like the sinking of the
Titanic
or the Great Chicago Fire, like the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War or the age-old feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, the legend of the violent showdown between Marshal Quinn and the Kelly Gang in Jubilation, Arizona, in 1898 is known to every schoolchild across this great land
.
It is the quintessential story that defines the heroic struggle of good men to tame the wild lawlessness of the Old American West, and although it has been told and retold dozens of times, the drama and tragedy never get old
.
Says who?
I’d always kind of hoped that the interest in this tale would finally just fade away, but here it is, the year of our Lord 2010, and some Hollywood types are making yet another motion picture about the hoopla. This one’s called
Quinn
, like the man is Cher.
Anyway, kids, here we go again. Someone obviously believes that the countless films already made—both silent and talkies—aren’t already overkill. I’ve always treated ’em as comedies, and gotten a good chuckle from the lot.
And then there were the dime novel versions of the story. I used to read ’em aloud to my great-grandson, the pair of us laughing like damn fools at the melodrama.
“Unhand her, I say, you egregious villain, you contemptible dastard, you odious blackguard!” Quinn roared
.
We’d try our damnedest, but with that mouthful of fifty-cent words, it was hard to keep a good roar going. Of course, we weren’t Silas Quinn,
the lionhearted and valiant savior, friend to widows and orphans, a knight in shining armor on his dauntless white steed
.
But then again, Silas Quinn wasn’t Silas Quinn either.
At least not the honorable, well-educated version of the man from the legend, with his powerful vocabulary. The Quinn I knew had never bothered to learn to read. His favorite adjective started with an
F
and was far overused. His preferred name-calling noun wasn’t even close to
dastard
or
blackguard
. It started with a
C
and ended with a
sucker
.
Which is not the type of historical correction that a man wants to tell a wide-eyed six-year-old. Particularly one whose mother cooked me dinner every night.
So we kind of skipped over that part as we compared the truth to the fiction.
The legend was what it was, or so I tried to teach the boy, same as I taught his grandfather, and father, and all of his many aunts and uncles and cousins before him. It didn’t harm us. We had, without a doubt, gotten the last laugh.
It was there, that chuckle of appreciation, at every sunrise, every sunset, and every time I sat out on the front porch of my house, lost in my memories of lying in the arms of the woman I loved.…
But I digress.
I should probably repeat the legend here—in case it’s been awhile and you need a brief refresher in the whats, the whys, and the wherefores.
Here it is, in a nutshell, again taken directly from that travelogue:
In 1898, Marshal Silas Quinn rode into the silver-mining town of Jubilation, looking to bring law and order to that wild but prospering corner of the Arizona Territory. He did so quickly, eager to send for his beautiful young wife, Melody, having decided that Jubilation would be a good place for them to call home
.
But he sent for her too soon. Not long after her stagecoach rolled into town, the Kelly Gang arrived, too, accompanied by the notorious gunslinger and gambler, Jamie “the Kid” Gallagher
.
Tension in Jubilation soon hit the boiling point, and Marshal Quinn courageously went up against the outlaws in the Red Rock Saloon. Outgunned seven to one, Quinn single-handedly killed five of the vicious gang members and sent two men running for the border
.
But Kid Gallagher was among the survivors, much to Jubilation’s misfortune. To avenge Bo Kelly’s death—not because they were friends, but because Kelly owed him money—Gallagher kidnapped Melody, and left town with both the marshal’s wife and the entire contents of the Jubilation Bank and Trust
.
Desperate to save the woman he loved, Silas Quinn raced after them, but arrived too late. Melody was already dead at the Kid’s vicious hand. Overcome with rage and grief, Quinn shot the outlaw, who died without telling a soul where he’d hidden the fortune he’d stolen
.
Marshal Silas Quinn quietly lived out the remainder of his days in Jubilation, making the town safe for all who lived there. He prospered and remarried in 1899. His second wife, Agatha, bore him a daughter, but he died from what historians believe was a burst appendix shortly before the child turned six
.
His final words were of his beautiful Melody, and some think that, in truth, he died of a broken heart
.
And okay. All right.
Some
of that is true.
The town’s name
was
Jubilation, and it was in the Arizona
territory. And Silas Quinn
did
die—praise be to Jesus—some years after his second wife bore him a daughter. And yes, his first wife, Melody,
was
uncommonly beautiful, I’ll grant you that, too.
But that nickname, “Kid”? Pure fiction.
Matter of fact, the entire legend’s a crock of carefully manufactured horseshit. It’s about as historically accurate as the Three Little Pigs, with its oversimplification of good versus evil.
And I should know, because I was there.
I’m the big, bad wolf.
That’s right, my name is Jamie Gallagher—no “Kid,” I never was a “Kid.” In fact, I barely had a childhood. And while I’ll hold to that truth that the legend never hurt any of us, enough is enough.
It’s about damn time that I climb out of this pig’s stewpot that I’ve let myself be jammed in, and help my great-grandson, A.J., set the story straight.
hapter
O
ne
Jubilation, Arizona
Present day
The son of a bitch was going to make her lie.
Sons of bitches, Alison Carter corrected herself, because her adorable new friend Hugh was part of this hideous charade. In fact, it was rapidly becoming crystal clear that this—her impending lie—was the young production assistant’s reason for bringing her here, to this undetermined level of hell. Oh, it looked like the dusty street outside of movie star Trace Marcus’s huge trailer, but it was definitely hell.
The morning sky was clear and so blue it hurt Alison’s eyes. It was barely 8:30, and the desert sun was already much too hot on the back of her neck.
“Who is she?” Trace’s wife demanded through her tears, her mascara making black streaks down what had once been a ridiculously pretty face. Now she just looked ridiculous, the plastic surgery she’d had leaving her looking perpetually surprised as she confronted her philandering husband. “I want to know—I
deserve
to know!”
“I hate you,” Alison murmured to Hugh, who, with his tastefully messed red hair, hazel eyes, and athletically trim body, remained adorable despite his dragging her into this.
“Trace needs to be in makeup in twenty minutes,” he murmured back as he pulled her closer to this snake pit of domestic non-bliss. “Ninety-seven thousand dollars an hour …”
That was his default answer to almost anything—his recitation of the enormous amount of money it was costing director Henry Logan’s production company to bring this movie
—Quinn
—to the big screen.
And it was true that if an actor were late to the set, money would, indeed, pour from the company’s veins as dozens of crew members stood around, uselessly waiting for the star to undiva his or her ass and get down to work.
So far, it had happened four different times, courtesy of Trace Marcus.
“Who is she, Tracey?” Marcus’s wife asked him again. His creepy and ever-present personal assistant, Skip, mumbled something in his low-talker’s voice that Alison couldn’t hear, but the wife could and she snapped, “Shut up, Skippy, I wasn’t asking
you.”
Alison couldn’t remember Mrs. Marcus’s name, but she, like her husband, had been a huge star back when she was in her late teens, early twenties.
Which really wasn’t
that
long ago.
Trace had started celebrating his thirty-third birthday last night. Thirty-three, and he was in desperate need of a comeback, which playing Silas Quinn was designed to provide.
No doubt about it, this was a crazy, crazy business Alison was dipping her toe into here. And she’d always thought the academic world was a little nuts.
But here she was, standing in the dust beneath the blistering hot sun, ready to provide an alibi for a man who wasn’t just a crazy actor, but was also a card-carrying moron. It was his freaking birthday. Today. A degree in rocket science wasn’t needed to theorize that since it was his birthday, it was highly likely that his loving wife was going to show up here on location, to surprise him with a visit.
Instead Trace had surprised her. Eleanor. That was her name. Although it really shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise for Eleanor to find her husband’s trailer rocking, not after ten long years spent married to the man. He was a dog. Surely she knew that by now. He couldn’t keep his pants zipped to save his life; forget about saving his marriage.
The day Trace had arrived on set, not five minutes after stepping into the much smaller trailer, which was Alison’s new office, he’d hit on her—and she’d been so startled she’d laughed in his face.
Which was a mistake, because he now avoided her like the swine flu.
As the official historical consultant for this film, as the author of the latest definitive book about the shoot-out at the Red Rock Saloon, Alison had a wealth of information about the details of Silas Quinn’s life. She had a file with newspaper clippings and rare photos. Pictures of Quinn with Melody, taken shortly after their wedding. Pictures of the deceptively pleasant-looking Kid Gallagher gambling in San Francisco. Pictures Trace should want to see as he worked to bring Quinn back to life in this big-budget, high-profile movie.