Shallow Graves

6

"Mr. Pellam."

Pellam smiled and shook the man's hand, glancing around him.

The scene was something out of a really bad movie-one that Alan Lefkowitz wouldn't have come close to. He was in a little, close-smelling town-government office. A lumber yard calendar on the wall, a dead plant in a drought-struck flower pot, a few yellowing files, a map dated 1964. The smell of bitter old coffee, papers, musty cardboard.

And at the desk: a local pol-looking just like Oral Roberts-with a tight grin he no way in the world meant.

"You're the mayor, that correct?"

"Hank Moorhouse." Silver hair, baby-blue suit, shiny pale green shirt and striped brown and yellow tie. Jowls and chicken skin. His eyes were bloodshot. "Mayor and town magistrate. First, let me say how sorry we are about what happened to your friend. Is there anything I can do?"

Pellam discreetly studied Moorhouse's Sunday-go-to-meeting outfit. "I'd like to see the coroner's report on my friend's death. The deputy-"

And damn if the man wasn't nodding and looking over his desk. He pulled a file out from underneath a stack of papers. "Sure thing, sir. Here you go."

Pellam opened it. On top of the report were pictures of Marty's body-taken at the scene of the fire and during the autopsy. It was like a jolt of electricity seeing those photos. He closed his eyes for a moment then glanced at Moorhouse's impassive face and shuffled the glossy pictures to the back. He read the short, badly typed report.

The cause of death was shock and loss of blood due to massive burns. There was evidence of some alcohol in the blood stream but no drugs.

"How do you figure he was killed doing drugs if the coroner didn't find any in his system?"

Moorhouse sniffed a cautious laugh. "Oh, well, that's easy. Pretty clear he was killed before he had a chance to smoke anything."

Pellam handed the file back. "I'd like to see the police report, if it's possible."

"Sorry. That's not public-"

"-record material."

Moorhouse said, "Nosir. That's correct."

"Did you consider the possibility he was murdered?"

"That's not my job, sir. The sheriff and the coroner make that determination. Tom-he's the sheriff-he's out of town for a day or so. And as for the coroner, well, what does that tell you?" Moorhouse tapped the file. "County doc seemed to think it was pretty straightforward."

Pellam asked, "What about the permits?"

Moorhouse swivelled back in his green leatherette chair. "Don't need to see me about that. Town clerk can issue them."

"He can?"

"Yep. Deer'll cost you twenty-five. Bear's protected. Geese-"

Pellam smiled. "I understand you decided not to issue obstruction permits to my movie company."

"Oh, that. True."

"Why?"

Moorhouse pulled an inch of Scotch Magic tape off a dispenser, rolled it up and began chewing it. "Your friend, if he'd got himself killed in a car crash or racing out into the street to rescue a little girl we'd put banners up and welcome your outfit to town. But the boy was smoking crack-"

"He wasn't smoking crack. He never did crack. I traveled with him for months."

"Well, we found crack vials-pot there too."

"I doubt it was his."

"Somebody walked up and dropped a foil-wrapped package full of hash in a burning car?"

"If the police found it there then, yes, that's exactly what happened."

"What'd you be suggesting, sir?"

This man, like the town deputies, was getting some serious mileage out of "sir." The word seemed to have a different meaning every time he said it.

"He couldn't have had any with him."

"And why would you be so sure?"

"I just am."

"Yessir, well, doesn't really matter. It's in our discretion to issue permits or not. We chose not to. Nothing more needs to be said. We're a self-sufficient community."

Pellam blinked, wondering what on earth that meant.

"I'm saying we don't need your movie here, sir. We don't need your Hollywood money."

"I'm not suggesting you do."

Moorhouse held his hands up. "So. That's it. There's nothing more to be said."

"I guess not."

Moorhouse's wattles stretched as he broke into a shallow smile. He opened his desk. "Now, we've got a ticket for you… Ha, that'd be an airline ticket. Not parking."

"Oh, I'm not leaving."

"You're not…"

"Leaving."

"Uh-huh. I see."

Pellam said, "Real pretty around here. The leaves and everything."

"We do get tourists rrom around the world."

Pellam said, "I can understand why."

"So, you're just going to look at some leaves for a while?"

"Well, see without those permits I'm out of a job. So may as well take a bit of a vacation."

"Vacation." The Scotch tape got chewed and the eyebrows moved a fraction of an inch closer. "That's wonderful. I'm glad our little burg made an impression on you. Uhm, one thing I'd mention, for your benefit. You've got that camper of yours. Which you can't park on the town streets two to six a.m. You'll get yourself a ticket, you do." The grin tightened. "That's parking. Not airline. Ha."

"And I'll bet that's enforced pretty well."

"Tom and his boys do their best."

Pellam walked to the door. He stopped. "The car?"

"Car, sir?"

Damn, gotta learn how to say that. Sir, sir, sir, sir … It seemed very Zen. Like a mantra.

"The car Marty was in. The one that burned. You still have it in custody, don't you?"

"Believe it's been sold."

"In two days?"

"Sold for scrap."

"But how?"

"Selling a car's easy, sir."

"I mean, there'll be lawsuits, won't there? There'll be some kind of investigation."

"The police investigation ended with the coroner's report. You curious, you'll have to ask the rental place."

"Obliged for your help…" Pellam opened the door. He turned back and nodded. "Sir."

Meg Torrens listened to the familiar squeak of her chair as she sat back. It was the oldest chair in an old office, a teacher's dark oak chair with an elaborate spring mechanism underneath a carved seat that matched no posterior she'd ever seen.

"Wex," Meg said, "I can promise you, they aren't going to go with less than R-1. This is Cleary P &Z you're talking about."

Wexell Ambler sat across from her and looked unhappily at the survey in front of him.

The midmorning lull was in full swing at Dutchess County Realty. In residential real estate evenings and Saturdays were the hectic times though that was an adjective Meg doubted could ever legitimately describe business in Cleary (No, Mr Pellam, you are one hundred percent on point there: people aren't busy in Cleary. Never have been, never will be). The small office, littered with three desks and unmatched chairs, scarred bookcases, an eclectic assortment of lamps, which were always illuminated because the window awning had been frozen in the down position for a year. The room was decorated with one yellowing ficus tree, some primitive paintings of houses one broker's daughter had done in grade school and a huge roll-up map of Cleary and environs, which made the town look more impressive than it ever could in person.

Ambler twisted the survey several ways and studied it. None of the positions cheered him up.

Wex Ambler was a tall man-six four. Lean. In his early fifties. He was thin on top, with a few renegade tufts of fine hair going in different directions. He had a long face and he continually reminded himself to keep his chin high; otherwise his neck flesh became a small wattle. He played golf, he jogged two miles a day and was a member of the town council. He believed (one of the few things he had in common with most of the rest of the local population) that he was the wealthiest man in Cleary. He owned Foxwood, the one apartment complex in town, and was the most successful real estate developer in this part of the county. (Real estate and death of a rich relative being the only ways people in Cleary could come by real money.)

Meg's co-broker of the day, a horsy, blond woman named Doris, was ticking off items on her to-do list with a tiny flick of a mechanical pencil. "Ah, huh," she said with each accomplishment. Meg fired a look of irritation at the self-congratulations-Doris missed it completely-and she turned back to Ambler.

"They're not…" Ambler searched for a word. "Progressive."

Meg laughed, her expression saying: You just figured that out about Cleary?

She knew that Ambler had told a number of people-his ex-wife, his associates, even virtual strangers-that his life goal was not to amass a huge reservoir of money. What he loved was the entrepreneurial process itself. It didn't matter what he did, as long as the challenge was there. The process held more intrigue and excitement than the capital gains did.

Still, he told her now, "The difference to me between three-quarter acre lots and two acres…" He looked up, calculated. "… is about eight million dollars. Total. For all lots."

"But that's pretax," she said seriously, frowning. She was trying to joke.

Ambler wasn't amused. "A variance'll take forever."

Meg said, "It's the best land north of the city. It's-"

"Meg," Doris interrupted her jotting. "There. That's him. Didn't squash him so bad, looks like."

She looked up and watched a thin man in jeans walk down Main Street.

"Is that?…" Meg asked.

"Yup," Doris said.

Ambler's eyes followed him. "Who?"

Doris turned to him with an excited face. "Didn't you hear? The man from the movie company. Meg ran into him in her car." She smiled at Meg and continued to tick away on her list.

But Ambler said, "I know. I heard. I heard you went to his hotel room."

Meg blinked. Doris's head shot up. She stopped ticking.

Ambler shook his head. "I meant his hospital room."

Meg's eyes flared. "I went to see how he was."

Doris said, "You didn't tell me that."

Meg said, "Did you hear about his partner?"

"No," Doris asked.

"The accident?" Meg continued.

"What accident?" Ambler looked at her.

"I don't know much about it. Just that he was smoking dope and it blew up. Killed him."

"My God," Doris said, "the fire in the park?"

"That was it, yeah."

Ambler said nothing. He stared out the windows.

Doris said, "Tough luck, honey. You know, Mr Ambler, last week, after those boys showed up, all Meg was talking about was trying to get an audition…"

"Doris," Meg barked.

Doris said to Ambler, "Meg did some modeling in Manhattan, you know. She was in Vogue and Self a couple times. Woman's Day."

"I think I knew that," Ambler said.

Doris continued, girlishly. "I know you were trying to get an audition, but-"

"Enough!"

"-running him over's a hell of a way to do it."

Meg mouthed Bitch at Doris, who blinked and retreated to her ticks.

Ambler's eyes left hers and he looked out the window, staring across the street. Meg noticed this. She zeroed in on Pellam who stood in front of Marge's, opening a Styrofoam coffee cup.

He said, "What's he doing here?"

Meg answered, "They were looking for places to shoot a movie. He's a location scout."

"No, I mean, why hasn't he left town? If his friend died…"

Doris said, "Well, I talked to Danny, the guy works afternoons at Marge's? He said he heard from Betty in Moorhouse's office that he's staying for a while."

"He is?" Meg and Ambler asked simultaneously.

"That's what Betty told Danny."

"So they're going to do a movie after all?" Ambler said.

Doris said, "Dunno."

Meg stared out the window, sighting on Pellam through the reversed letters. She kept her eyes there and said, "Look, Wex, I hear what you're saying but look at some of the features. It's practically flat; you're going to need zero grading. And clearing? Only a quarter of the whole package is trees and they're shallow-root pine. You don't even have to touch that, unless you build with leaching fields toward the trees."

"I'm not saying I don't want those plots. I'm saying I don't want two-acre zoning. If I had my way I'd want half acre."

She frowned. She said, "Why don't you just do fifty by seventy-fives? Burn out the trees and Lefrack it? Put in cinder block." There was irritation in her voice.

They both realized they'd been negotiating while they were looking out the window. They simultaneously turned to face each other. Ambler stood up. Meg frowned. She wondered if she'd offended him. He said, "I'll have to think about it."

"I've got another developer interested," Doris said.

"Who?"

"Ralph Weinberg."

"Oh. Him," Ambler said. "You'd rather sell to a… to someone like him?"

"His money's as good as anyone's."

Ambler was quiet for a moment. "I can't think about it now. I'm sorry."

TO SLEEP IN A SHALLOW GRAVE / BIG MOUNTAIN STUDIOS

FADE IN:

EXTERIOR DAY, GRAVEYARD, BOLT'S CROSSING, NEW YORK

CREDITS ROLL, as we see VARIOUS ANGLES on the cemetery. Uneven tombstones of granite, chipped and broken, thumbed down by the weather. The grass is anemic, the lighting bland, ghostly, like the bones buried here.

Pellam tossed back the bourbon and bent over his typewriter.

He had stopped by the funeral home to pay for shipping Marty's casket back to L.A. but had found the charges had already been taken care of, courtesy of Alan Lefkowitz. He'd spent a few silent minutes alone with Marty in the back room of the funeral home that had arranged for the shipment. A loading dock, really. He'd wanted to say something. But could think of absolutely no words. He found a Bible in a small chapel near the room where the casket rested. He looked for three or four minutes to find a passage that he liked. Nothing applied. He put the Bible back, touched the smooth, heavy coffin, and returned to the Winnebago.

Outside, it was a windy night, and the camper rocked slightly, reminding him of a boat, though he'd only been on water once or twice in his life. Subterranean noises rose from his stomach. The dinner of ham with fruit sauce he'd eaten at the Cedar Tap wasn't sitting well.

He returned to his typewriter, a small German portable. He hammered away.

… the graveyard is on a plateau. One hill eases down to the cemetery from the crest of the piney woods. On the qther side the land glides down to the river. From that point of stability you go into the town itself. An old cannon is small and over painted, just like the park benches. The storefronts are bleached out and full of antiques no one wants, hardware that no one needs. The town has managed something remarkable-absorbed fatigue and turned it into a fuel that runs a thousand small-town dreams.

ANGLE: A flagpole rung by its wind-blown rope like a bell.

ANGLE: A roaring 4x4 with exhaust bubbling driven by a YOUNG MAN, who grins at a TEENAGE GIRL. He's your perfect citizen of Cleary: snotty, confident, comforting as long as you share his race and ancestry. We FOLLOW the truck to-

LONG ANGLE: A motorcycle coming toward us, a man in his thirties driving slowly. There's something ominous about him. He-

The car door outside the Winnebago startled him. He'd seen the lights through the curtain, but, absorbed in writing, hadn't noticed they weren't continuing around the curve and disappearing.

"Hey, Pellam, you in there? I saw the light." A woman's voice.

He opened the door.

"Hi there," he said and let Janine in.

"I was just passing by… You know." She laughed and set a shopping bag on the table. She surveyed the rooms. "Reminds me of-know what?-an airplane."

What was that smell? It entered with her. He thought of newly mown grass. He looked outside then shut the door and locked it.

"This is luxury," he said. "At the studio they call these honey wagons."

"Why's that?"

"There are several theories," he said. "None of which I really ought to go into."

"Look, I heard about your friend. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you."

"What happened?"

Pellam believed that grief, like joy, was best explained simply. "Car accident."

"That's so sad. Terrible." She looked like she meant it and he wondered if she was going to start crying. He really hoped she wouldn't. She said, "What I was saying the other day, about Cleary? You read about car crashes every week in the Leader?" She surveyed him and nodded toward his thigh (scary about these small-town rumors-man, they spread fast). "How're you?"

"Right muscle. Wrong leg. I'll be okay."

The sorrow in her voice was gone; he was grateful that she'd expressed it but hadn't overdone the emotion.

"I'll give it a massage. I studied Rolfing."

"Maybe later. It's a bit tender right now."

She studied the camper carefully. Her eyes lingered on the one decoration: A New York Film Festival poster of Abel Ganz's Napoleon. She kept giving faint little laughs, as each new thing she noticed surprised her.

"I heard they aren't going to do the movie here."

"True."

"But you're staying?"

"True also. I got fired."

"No! Why?"

"It's Hollywood."

"What a downer." She didn't look real down, though. She touched his arm. "I'm sorry about the movie but I'm glad about you."

He didn't respond.

She waited a few seconds then let go and looked around again. "Don't you get claustrophobic?"

"It's not bad."

"I'm not disturbing you?" Though as she said it she was sitting down in the small dining alcove, making herself at home.

There are times to say, Yes, you are, and times to say, No, when asked that question.

He said, "No, not at all."

"I brought you some dessert."

"Dessert?"

"I remember you liked dessert. The cake at Marge's? When you picked me up? On Monday?" Her eyebrows raised with every sentence.

"I remember, yeah."

Picked her up?

"Terrible cake," he added.

"Could've warned you. My desserts aren't terrible."

She unloaded the bag. Carefully wrapped in foil was a small package. Next came a thermos, two mugs, a jar of honey.

"Tea. Herbal tea. Rosehips and lemon grass. It's very relaxing." She opened the foil. "And brownies."

"Ah, brownies." Pellam looked at them closely. Then he grinned. "Wait. Are those…? They aren't really, are they?"

"Uh-huh. They're a little bitter but, hey, so's peyote, right? They're worth it, though. Man, I'll tell you… It's not as strong as a Thai stick, but then again you won't wake up with a cough. You have a plate?"

He dug into the cabinet. "Plastic."

"Shame on you. Disposable? What'd nature ever do to you?" Janine cut the brownies-she'd also brought a knife. He tried one. It tasted bitter and left bits of soggy vegetation in his mouth. The tea was awful but you needed it to wash the grass down.

"Honey?" She held up a jar.

"No." He sipped the weed water. He glanced at the bottle of whisky. Was tempted. But he figured that Janine might feel that making liquor was an unnatural thing to do to plants.

"Really great," he said. She'd already finished her piece of brownie. He chewed down the rest of his.

She looked at what he was typing. "You mind?" She pulled it forward and read intently. After a few minutes she gave another of her breathy, surprised laughs. "This is fantastic. It's like poetry. Is this the way they write scripts?"

"It's the way I write scripts."

"I didn't know you were a writer."

"I write scripts that nobody reads, just like…" He stopped himself. He was going to say, the way you sell houses that nobody buys. Good line, wrong woman. "… everybody else in Hollywood."

"I hear you. But aren't you, like, fired?"

"It's a crazy business out there," he said without explaining further.

She read a few more portions. "Damn, Pellam. Poetry."

"The movie's good but it could be a lot better. Also, Guild scale for script doctoring is obscenely high."

"Know what it reminds me of?"

Renoir? Fellini? David Lynch?

Pellam asked, "Who?"

"Kahlil Gibran."

What? He tried to smile. Wasn't he that romance poet? Pellam hadn't read him but he believed that they used his verses in Hallmark cards.

She looked at him wide-eyed. "I really, really mean that."

"Well, thanks."

"The descriptions are fantastic."

He explained, "I think the setting in a film is another lead character. Setting a scene one place instead of another will produce a totally different movie. Like casting Denzel Washington in a lead versus Wesley Snipes. Same lines, same direction, but a different film."

Kahlil Gibran?

"You write like this, why're you just a location scout?"

"Just?"

"You know what I mean."

He did know what she meant. "I like traveling around. I don't like meetings. I don't like California. I don't own a suit-"

"That sounds like you're reciting catechism."

"In nomine Zanuck, et Goldwyn, et spiritus Warner."

"Ha. There a message in this movie?"

"The advertising department will say it's about betrayal and passion. Mostly, it's a love story, I guess."

She squinted and licked honey off her reddish finger. "You guess?"

"Love's a funny thing to pin down." Pellam broke off another piece of brownie. No buzz, no tiny people stuffing cotton in the crevices of his brain. He was disappointed.

She was surveying the inside of the camper again. She opened drawers and nodded. "You don't mind, do you?" Fully prepared to keep going, he sensed, if he'd said that he did. But then she came to a cabinet and opened it. Started to pull out a couple of battered scrapbooks.

He was up fast and lifted them, gently and laughing, out of her hands.

"Oops, sorry," she said, "I'm being nosey, huh?"

Pellam smiled and put the books away.

She looked at him for a moment. "You know, I was thinking about this today. You seem awfully familiar. There's something about you… Have I read anything about you?"

"Me?"

Janine shook her head. "Maybe," she said seriously, "it was in a former life."

He'd heard this one before.

Sometimes they said, "You and me, I think we're soul mates."

Sometimes they just said point-blank, "Can I come with you in the camper?"

Sometimes they never said anything but looked at him with hungry, hurting eyes. That was the hardest.

Pellam said, "Past lives, huh? Maybe you were a pioneer woman and I was a cowboy." He told her the Wild Bill Hickok story.

"Holy shit, that's terrific, Pellam, a gunslinger."

"His name-I always have to set this straight-was James Butler Hickok. Not William." He blinked and looked at the brownie. It seemed to be floating in the air. He broke off another piece and ate it. "Anyway, he was a…" His mind stopped working for a moment. He retrieved the end of his sentence. "… relative. I mean, an ancestor." He added, "On my mother's side."

Janine's eyes danced with enthusiasm. She maneuvered her taut hips out of the booth and stood up. Where was she going? There weren't many options in the camper. She asked, "He was the one with the wild west show? With Annie Oakley?"

"No, no, no-that was Buffalo Bill. William Cody. Wild Bill was a gunfighter. Fast draw and all that. Just like in the movies. Buffalo Bill hired him for a while to be in the show but he wasn't a very good entertainer. He was good at shooting people. That was about it. So maybe you knew Wild Bill in a former life."

"Oh, but your former lives aren't the same as your ancestors. But maybe you were a sheriff that Wild Bill killed and you came back-"

"He didn't kill sheriffs. He was a scout and a federal marshal."

"Okay, then an Indian warrior he killed. Or a cattle rustler. Maybe I was a squaw. And we've met a couple of times in the past…"

Pellam lost this train of thought completely. She had disappeared into the back of the camper. He heard her voice, muffled. "This is very comfortable." Pellam heard the bedside light click on. "Cozy, you know."

"I guess." He was moving unsteadily toward her. He said, "Maybe I was the lover of the wife of the cattle rustler…" Pellam stopped speaking.

Janine was lounging back. Pellam found he was staring at her breasts. She noticed his eyes and he said quickly, "Nice pin. You make it?" He pointed to a round moon face necklace made of sterling silver. It had a coy feminine face.

She leaned forward and held it out to him. He tried to focus on it. "It's a bestseller at my store." Then she frowned.

"What's the matter?"

"Well, here I bring you brownies and tea, and you don't even ask me to get comfortable."

He clicked the bedside light out. The moonlight came in through the blinds and the cold illumination was almost as bright as the lamp. "Sorry. What can I do to make amends?"

"You can start by helping me off with my boots." She lifted her leg, and he took her calf, taut in the tight denim, in his left hand and gripped the heel of her boot. He looked down.

They were cowboy boots.