River’s End

Francisco to Marin County and now stood at the rail while it glided over water made choppy by the wind. He found the architecture of the prison odd and somehow very Californian, but doubted the inmates had much appreciation for the structure’s aesthetics.
    It had taken him only hours to clear through channels for permission to visit. It made Noah wonder if Tanner had connections on the inside that had helped smooth the way.
    Didn’t matter, Noah decided while the wind cut through his hair like jagged shards of glass. The results were what counted.
    He’d taken a day to read through his files on the MacBride murder, to study, refresh his memory, to consider. He knew the man he would meet as well as anyone from the outside was able to, he imagined.
    At least he knew the man Tanner had been.
    A hardworking, talented actor with an impressive string of ‘ccessful movies under his belt by the time he’d met Julie cBride, his co-star in Summer Thunder. He’d also, by all counts, had an impressive string of females associated with name before he’d married. It had been a first marriage for both of them, though he’d been seriously involved with Lydia Coring, a very hot property during the seventies. The gossip columns had had a field day with their stormy and very public breakup once he’d set his sights on Julie.
    He’d enjoyed his fame, his money and his women. And had continued to enjoy the first two after his marriage. There’d been no other women after Julie. Or, Noah mused, he’d been very, very discreet.
    Insiders called him difficult, temperamental, then had begun to use terms like “explosive temper,” “unreasonable demands” when his two films after Summer Thunder had tanked at the box office.
    He’d begun to show up late and unprepared for shooting, had fired his personal assistant, then his agent.
    It became one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets that he was using, and using heavy.
    So he’d become obsessive about his wife, delusional about the people around him, focused on Lucas Manning as his nemesis and, in the end, violent. In 1975, he’d been the top box-office actor in the country. By 1980, he’d become an inmate in San Quentin. It was a long way to fall in a short amount of time. The careless spread of staggering wealth and fame, the easy access to the most beautiful women in the world, the scrambling of maitre d’s to provide the best tables, the A-list for parties, the cheers of fans. How would it feel to have that sliding through your fingers’? Noah wondered. Add arrogance, ego, mix it with cocaine, a little freebasing, jealousy over an up-and-coming box-office rival and a shattered marriage, and you had a perfect formula for disaster.
    It would be interesting to see what the last twenty years had added, or taken away, from Sam Tanner.
    He was back in his rental car when the ferry docked, and anxious to get on with it. Though he hoped to be done with ttv initial interview in time to get back to the airport and catch f evening flight home, he’d tossed a few things in a bag just case he decided to stay over.
    He hadn’t mentioned the trip to anyone.
    As he waited his turn, he drummed his fingers on the wheel to the Spice Girls and inexplicably thought of Olivia MacBride.
    Oddly, the image that came to his mind was of a tall, gangly girl with pale hair and tanned arms. Of sad eyes as they’d sat on a riverbank watching beavers splash. He had done his research, but had found nothing public on her since her childhood. A few speculations now and then in the press, a recap story, the reprint of that stunning photo of her grief when she’d been four—that was all the mass media could manage. Her family had pulled the walls up, he thought, and she’d stayed behind them. Just as her father had stayed behind the thick sand-colored walls of his prison. It was an angle he intended to pursue.
    When the time came, he’d do whatever it took to convince her to speak with him again, to cooperate with the book. He could only hope that after six years her bitterness toward him would have lost its edge. That the sensible—and wonderfully sweet—science student he’d spent such a lovely few days with would see the value and the purpose of what he meant to do.
    Beyond that, he couldn’t think of what it would be like to see her again. So he tucked her away in his mind and concentrated on today.
    He drove his rental car down the road toward the prison, passed an old pier and a pumping