Nathan is living in a small, redbrick house on a narrow road a few miles west of the Radford city limits. His nearest neighbor lives in a double-wide trailer half a mile closer to the state highway. His front lawn is neatly mowed and there are a few shrubs lining the narrow front porch. He's outside playing with his yellow Lab as we arrive and park in the drive behind his shiny new truck.
My ace crew consists of my new assistant, Vanessa, who will be called Gwen on this project, and two freelancers from Roanoke - Slade, the videographer, and his assistant, Cody. Slade bills himself as a filmmaker and works out of his garage. He owns the cameras and equipment, and he looks the part - long hair in a ponytail, jeans with holes in the knees, a couple of gold chains around his neck. Cody is younger and sufficiently grungy. Their fee is $1,000 a day plus expenses, and part of the deal is that they do what they're supposed to do and stay as quiet as possible. I have promised to pay them in cash and I've made no reference to Skelter Films or anything else. It might be a documentary film, or it might be something else. Just do as I say and offer no details to Nathan Cooley.
Vanessa arrived in Radford last night, and we bunked together in a nice hotel where we registered in her name and used a prepaid credit card. She told her boss she had the flu and, under doctor's orders, can't leave the house for several days. She knows nothing about filmmaking, but then neither do I.
After a round of awkward introductions in the driveway, we check out the surroundings. Nathan's backyard is a large open area that slopes up the side of a hill. A herd of whitetail deer scamper over a fence when they see us. I ask Nathan how long it takes to cut his grass, and he says three hours. He points to a tractor shed where a fancy John Deere riding mower is parked. It looks new. He says he's a country boy who prefers the outdoors, likes to hunt and fish and pee off the back porch. Plus, he still thinks of prison and life there with a thousand men surviving in close quarters. No sir, he loves the open spaces. While we walk and talk, Slade and Cody wander aimlessly about, mumbling to each other as they look at the sun and rub their chins.
"I like it here," I say, pointing, taking charge. "I want those hills in the frame."
Slade seems to disagree, but he and Cody nonetheless start hauling gear from their van. The setup takes forever, and to show my artistic temperament, I start barking about the time. Gwen has brought along a small makeup kit, and Nathan reluctantly agrees to a touch-up with powder and a bit of blush. I'm sure it's his first, but he needs to feel like an actor. Gwen is wearing a short skirt and a blouse that's hardly buttoned, and part of her act is to see how easily the boy can be teased. I pretend to look over my notes, but I watch Nathan as he watches Gwen. He loves the attention and teasing.
When the camera, lights, monitor, and sound are almost ready, I take Nathan aside, just the two of us, director and star, to contemplate my vision.
"Okay, Nathan, I want you to be very serious. Think about Gene, his murder at the hands of the federal government. I want you to be somber, no smiles, no fun here, okay?"
"Got it."
"Speak slowly, almost painfully. I'll ask the questions, you look at the camera and just talk. Act naturally. You're a nice-looking guy and I think the camera will like you, but it's important to just be yourself."
"I'll try," he says, and it's obvious Nathan is really looking forward to this.
"One last thing, and I should have mentioned it yesterday. If this film does what we hope, and blows the cover off the DEA, then there could be some retribution, some payback. I don't trust the DEA for one second - a bunch of rogue thugs - and they might do anything. That's why it's important for you to be, shall we say, out of the business."
"I'm clean, man," he says.
"You're not dealing in any way?"
"Hell no. I'm not going back to prison, Reed. That's one reason I moved over here, away from my family. They're still cooking meth and selling it, not me."
"Okay. Just think of Gene."
Cody puts the mike on him and we get situated. We're on a set, in folding chairs with lights and wiring all around us. The camera is over my shoulder, and for a moment I feel like a real kick-ass investigative journalist. I look at Gwen and say, "Did you forget the still shots? Come on, Gwen!"
She jumps as I bark and grabs a camera. I say, "Just a couple of stills, Nathan, so we'll have a clear record of the lighting." He frowns at first, then smiles at Gwen as she snaps away. Finally, after we've been here for an hour, we start filming. I hold a pen with my left hand and scribble on a legal pad.
Malcolm Bannister was right-handed, just in case Nathan might be suspicious, which he does not seem to be.
To loosen him up, I start with all the basics: name, age, employment, education, prison, criminal record, children, no marriages, and so on. A couple of times I tell him to relax, repeat something, we're just having a conversation. His childhood - different homes, schools, life with his big brother, Gene, no father, a rocky relationship with his mother. At this point, he says, "Look, Reed, I'm not going to say bad things about my mother, okay?"
"Of course not, Nathan. That's not at all what I intended." And I quickly change the subject. We get around to the meth culture of his youth. With some hesitation, he finally opens up and paints a depressing picture of a rough adolescence filled with drugs, booze, sex, and violence. By the time he was fifteen, he knew how to cook meth. Two of his cousins were burned alive when a lab blew up in a mobile home. He was sixteen when he first saw the inside of a jail cell. He dropped out of school and life got crazier. At least four of his cousins have served time for drug distribution; two are still locked away. As bad as prison was, it did get him away from the drugs and alcohol. He was sober for the five years he was incarcerated and is now determined to stay away from the meth. Beer is another matter.
We break at noon. The sun is overhead, and Slade is concerned about the brightness of the conditions. He and Cody stroll around, looking for another spot. "How long can you go today, Nathan?" I ask.
"I'm the boss," he says smugly. "I can go in whenever I want."
"Great. So a couple more hours?"
"Why not? How am I doing?"
"Terrific. It took you a few minutes to settle down, but now you're very smooth, very sincere."
Gwen adds, "You're a natural storyteller, Nathan." He likes this. She's back with the makeup routine, wiping perspiration from his forehead, brushing, touching, flirting, revealing. He craves the attention.
We brought sandwiches and soft drinks and eat under the shade of an oak tree next to the toolshed. Slade likes this spot and we decide to move the set. Gwen whispers to Nathan about using the restroom. This makes him uncomfortable, but by now he can hardly keep his eyes off her legs. I walk away and pretend to be on the cell phone, talking to important people in Los Angeles.
Gwen disappears into the back door of the house. She will later report that the house has two bedrooms but only one with furniture, nothing in the den but a sofa, a chair, and a huge HD television, one bathroom in need of a good scrubbing, a kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes and a refrigerator filled with beer and cold cuts. There is an attic with a fold-down staircase. The floors are covered with cheap carpeting. There are three doors - front, back, and garage - and all three are secured with thick dead bolts that have obviously been added recently. There appears to be no alarm system - no keypads or sensors over the windows and doors. In his bedroom closet, there are two rifles and two shotguns. In the closet in the spare bedroom, there is nothing but a pair of muddy hunting boots.
While she is inside, I continue my fake phone chat while I watch Nathan from behind large sunglasses. He keeps his eyes on the back of his house, nervous that she is inside, alone. Slade and Cody are getting the set rewired. When she returns, Nathan relaxes and apologizes for his sloppy housekeeping. She coos and works on his hair. When everything is in place, we plunge into the afternoon session.
He mentions a motorcycle accident when he was fourteen, and I dissect this for half an hour. We delve into his sketchy employment history - bosses, co-workers, duties, wages, dismissals. Back to the drug trade with details about how to cook meth, who taught him, key ingredients, and so on. Romances, girlfriends? He claims to have impregnated a young cousin when he was twenty, but has no idea what happened to the mother or child. He had a serious girl before he went to prison, but she forgot about him. Judging by the way he looks at Gwen, it's obvious this boy is wired.
He's thirty years old, and other than the death of his brother and a prison sentence his life has been unremarkable. After three hours of prodding and poking, I extract anything and everything of interest. He says he needs to get to work.
"We have to visit the place where Gene was killed," I say as Slade turns off the camera and everybody relaxes.
"It's outside of Bluefield, about an hour from here," he says.
"Bluefield, West Virginia?"
"That's right."
"And why were you there?"
"We were making a delivery, but the buyer was an informant."
"I have to see this, Nathan, to walk through it all, to recapture the scene, the violence, the moment, the place where Gene was shot and killed. It was at night, right?"
"Yeah, long after midnight." Gwen is tapping his face with a cloth, removing the makeup. "You're really good on camera," she says softly, and he smiles.
"When can we go there?" I ask.
He shrugs and says, "Whenever. Tomorrow if you want."
Perfect. We agree to meet at his house at 9:00 a.m. and caravan through the mountains into West Virginia, to the remote, abandoned mine site where the Cooley brothers walked into a trap.
We've had a good day with Nathan. He and I got on well as filmmaker and actor, and at times he and Gwen seemed ready to strip and have a go. Late in the afternoon, she and I find our way to Bombay's on Main Street in Radford, next to the college campus, and take a table by the dartboard. It's far too early for the college crowd, though a few rowdies are at the bar enjoying happy-hour discounts. I ask the waitress to inform Nathan Cooley that we are having a drink, and within seconds he appears with a big smile. We invite him to have a seat, which he does, and we start downing beers. Gwen drinks little and manages to sip on a glass of wine while Nathan and I knock back a few pints. Coeds straggle in and the place gets louder. I ask about specials, and there's an oyster po'boy on the chalkboard. We order two and Nathan disappears to yell at the cook. We have dinner and stay until after dark. Not only are we the only blacks in the bar, but we are also the only patrons over the age of twenty-two. Nathan stops by occasionally to check on us, but he's a busy man.