“Houston,” Saul said, sticking a finger in his other ear to block out the noise of pneumatic hammers and power saws.
He was on a construction site trying to get the contractor’s head out of his own ass. The guy was new to the business and didn’t have a clue on how to schedule. Now the contractor was breathing down his neck to finish because his electrical and plumbing guys were supposed to start and the house wasn’t even dried in yet, even though his crew was actually a half-day ahead of the schedule he’d given him.
“Saul, this is Ryan Hayes, with Brand B Pictures.”
“What do you want, Ryan? I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“I want to talk to you about providing location security again.”
Saul smiled. “I’m in the middle of something at the moment. Give me an hour to get this sorted and I’ll call you back,” he said then ended the call.
He then turned back to the contractor. “Let me explain something to you. When I give you a schedule, don’t fucking change it. I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen. I know how long it takes to put the walls up, and I don’t give a shit what your fancy Gnatt chart tells you. So you get your ass on the phone and tell the electrician and the plumber it’s going to be three more days before the rough in is ready. Got it?”
“It shouldn’t take you this long to dry a house in!”
“Says who? You? How many houses have you built?”
“That doesn’t matter! The standard—”
“Fuck what the book says! I’m telling you what it really takes. If you think you can find someone who can do it faster, then knock yourself out, but I’m telling you any reputable framer will tell you the same thing.” He watched the guy as he looked away. “You already found that out didn’t you? This is your fuck-up, not mine, so you straighten it out.”
“Okay, look, I thought you were padding the schedule, and I’m sorry. If I miss my window it’ll be two weeks before I can get on their schedules again. Help me out here!”
Saul softened. “We’re going as fast as we can. I’ll see if the crew wants to work over, but that’s going to cost you more.”
The man shook his head. “No. I’m going to be over budget as it is.”
Saul grinned. “Don’t worry about it. I lost my ass on the first few houses I framed, too. My dad taught me everything I know and I thought I knew all these ways to speed stuff up, to do it faster and cheaper. Turns out there’s usually a reason things are done the way they are. Here’s a bit of advice for your next house: ask the contractor what it’ll take, then listen to him. You’ll sleep better at night.”
The man nodded and Saul shook his hand. As the man pulled out his phone, Saul found his site supervisor.
“Did you get him straightened out?” Bud asked.
“Yeah, I think so. He’s new, so help him out if you can.”
Bud grinned. “We’re doing the best we can. If we don’t have any rain delays, and it doesn’t look like we will, we should be done by early Friday.”
“Is that firm?”
“Pretty firm.”
Saul nodded. That was a day early. “I’ll let him know. If you make it Thursday, buy the guys a beer on me.”
Bud chuckled. “What do we get if we finish Wednesday?”
“A kick in the ass for being lazy all the other times.”
Bud burst into laughter. “I’ll let them know.”
Saul grinned. Bud ran his best crew. If anyone could get it done Thursday, this crew could. He sat down in his truck and started it to get the air conditioning going. He had one more stop to make to look at some rework, then he would call Ryan back. It wouldn’t hurt Ryan to sweat a little.
***
“Ryan, Saul Houston, calling you back.”
“Thank you for calling me back, Saul. Listen, I want to apologize for what happened the other day. I should have given you better instructions. Are you available to provide security again?”
“Yeah. It’ll be two thousand a day.”
“Two thousand! It was only fifteen hundred before!”
“That was before you pissed me off. Now it’s two thousand.”
There was a long pause. “Fine. Two thousand a day,” Ryan said, his voice flat.
“Same agreement as before.”
“Yes, but I want you to leave Angela alone and treat her with a little more respect.”
“I treated her the same respect I treated everyone else, from you all the way down to the guy who picks up trash when you’re done.”
“Okay, then, treat her with more respect.”
“I’m not going to let her push me around, Ryan. If you want some toady for her to shit on, find someone else.”
“Saul, that’s the way it has to be.”
“Then I guess this conversation is done. Good luck with your picture,” Saul said and ended the call. He grinned and debated demanding twenty-five hundred a day if Ryan called back but decided that was being a little too much of an asshole, even for him.
It had been three days since the Pagans had been fired. He’d ridden by the river twice, not stopping, but seeing the crew was still there. Johnny had said they wanted to try to get three scenes in one day, so they must have been having problems if they were still there. Maybe he would ride by later and see if they were still on the river.
He was pulling into his house when his phone rang. “Houston.”
“Can you start today?” Ryan asked softly.
Saul smiled at the sound of defeat in Ryan’s voice. “When?” he asked.
“Now. As soon as you can get here.”
“Where are you?”
“At the river. Johnny said you would know where.”
Saul glanced at the clock in the truck. It was almost eleven. “Have the crew take a break and have them ready to work in two hours. Are you having problems with people on the river?”
“Yeah. People are out there in canoes and kayaks.”
“Then I need two boats. I don’t know where you’ll find them, but we’ll need a way to get out there. Try Southpoint Marine, they may have something you can rent or buy cheap.”
“Okay. I’ll get on it.”
“Call me if you find something and I’ll go get it. And Ryan…”
“What?” Ryan asked when Saul didn’t continue.
“You fire us again, don’t bother calling back.”
Ryan sighed. “Understood.”
***
Saul stopped his truck and he and Dallas stepped out. Most of the Pagans were already there and had started chasing off the troublemakers. Most of those there knew the score and were there as a favor to the club, so they packed up the moment the Pagans showed up and explained the situation to them. There had been a few stragglers who wanted to cause trouble, but as the Pagans began to assert their control, they, too, left.
The only people left were the half-dozen boats floating in the river. Saul, Dallas, and six other brothers slid the two aluminum boats out of the back of Saul’s truck. Southpoint had been delighted to rent them the two boats to have their name included in the credits of the movie…that and the rental for the two boats for two days was half the cost of buying one.
The four men slid the boats in the river and pushed off, two men to a boat, and they began to paddle out to the boats station keeping in the river.
Saul wasn’t the most experienced boat captain as he and Andy cut a weaving path toward the boats while Dallas and Caleb did the same on the other side of the camera.
“You’re going to have to move back,” Saul said as they drifted to a stop beside them.
“You don’t have the authority to order us off the river,” the man said.
“You’re right, I don’t. I just want you to move up the river about two hundred yards. Where you’re sitting you’re in the scene.”
“That’s their problem.”
“It’s going to be your problem if you don’t do what I said. Everyone, I want you to move up the river about two hundred yards.”
“What if we don’t?” the man asked even as a couple of people began to paddle away.
“Then you won’t like what happens next.”
“What are you going to do, tough guy?”
Saul reached over and gave the man a push, rolling his kayak upside down and dumping him in the water. The man tried to right the kayak and Saul pushed him under again with his paddle. When the man came up the second time, Saul waited until he gasped a breath then pushed him down with the paddle again.
The second time he came up, Saul grabbed him and hauled him up straight as the man spluttered. “Any more questions?”
“You fuck!” the man snarled, taking a swing at him with his paddle. Saul blocked it with his own paddle then jabbed him hard in the side with it. The man grunted and winced, covering his ribs. “Fuck! That hurt!”
“It’s going to hurt a lot more if you don’t get your ass out of the shot!”
“I’m going to sue you for this!”
“Really?” Saul rolled the man over again, the kayak much easier to flip than his own wide and stable craft. He kept poking the man under until he had to swim out of the kayak or risk drowning. He popped up beside the boat.
Saul grabbed the man’s boat and began pushing it along out of his reach. “Let’s go,” Saul said as he placed his paddle in the water and began to stroke toward the other boats, grabbing the kayak to keep it moving.
“You fucking asshole!” the man snarled as he swam after them.
When they reached about the halfway point, Saul gave the kayak a hard push to send it on its way. The man was panting hard. “Don’t make me come out here again. I don’t like boats and it will piss me off.”
“Fuck you!” the man panted as he grabbed his boat. Swimming against the current was hard work and he was panting hard as he began to crab around the side to bail the boat out.
Saul slapped the water with his paddle, splashing the man, before they turned their boat toward the shore. They pulled the boat well out of the water, but left it where it was. It was faster for them to walk back than try to paddle.
The Pagans had been on location less than an hour and they were ready to shoot. Dallas and Caleb paddled up to the crew and stepped out. They hadn’t had to dunk anyone, but only because Saul did it first, which made believers out of everyone else.
As they hauled the boat out of the water and carried it behind the cameras, the cast and crew began to clap, all but Angela, who sat under an umbrella and glared at Saul. He ignored her as he grabbed a water out of the cooler and chugged half of it down. Paddling a boat was hard work when you didn’t know what you were doing.
“If we have to go out there again, you go,” Saul said to Dallas as he stepped up. “You obviously know a lot more about boats than I do.”
Dallas laughed. “I used to fish with my dad. Caleb and I were laughing at you and Andy. You two looked like you were drunk the way you were paddling. You paddled twice as far as you had to because you couldn’t go straight.”
Saul grinned at Dallas’s ribbing. You couldn’t be good at everything, and if he was going to suck at something, paddling a boat was a good a choice as any.
He and Dallas had just finished their water when Ryan approached with Bradley on his heels. “I can’t say I approve of your methods, but you’re effective, I’ll give you that.”
“Personally, I thought it was awesome. I wanted to go out there and deal with them myself, but Ryan wouldn’t let me,” Bradley said.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Leave the security to the experts. The last thing I want is to have you get hurt and delay production any more than it already is.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Bradley said with a dismissive wave of his hand, fished a bottle of water out of the cooler, then turned and walked away.
Ryan shook his head. “You’re a bad influence on him. He’s been hounding me to listen to some idea he has about a biker movie, and he thinks he’s some kind of tough guy now.”
Saul chuckled. “I haven’t done anything to encourage him.”
“I didn’t say you have. Before I called you back he confronted some of the troublemakers and I think had his PA not pulled him back he would have taken a swing at one of them. That’s the problem with action hero types. Some of them try to live up to their on-screen image.”
“Bradley?”
Ryan shrugged. “I didn’t think so, but the last few days…Maybe. I know he’s been acting like he was spoiling for a fight. It’s almost like he thinks he has something to prove. Anyway, thanks for getting us moving again.”
“Lock it down!” a voice called before Saul could answer.
“Speed!”
“Action!” Johnny said, and Saul watched Angela run down to the edge of the water and splash out to her knees to pull a very soggy Cora out of the river, falling to her knees on the bank and crying pitifully.