Bloody River Blues

TWENTY

Pellam kept staring at the ID.

Buffett said, "It's over the line. Peterson wouldn't do that."

"It's true."

"Peterson wouldn't do it. He wouldn't dare."

"He was making it look like Crimmins was threatening Nina and me so I'd testify against him. How else can you explain it?"

BufFett shook his head. "He's the U.S. Attorney." 'This was the guy that threatened Nina. There's no doubt about it."

"Impossible."

"She described him perfectly."

"A U.S. Attorney is not going to send an agent to assault somebody. Maybe the guy is working for Crimmins. Or was.

A rogue agent. On the take, you know."

"No, it's Peterson."

"He'd be crazy. Peterson, I mean. Too much risk."

Pellam lifted his palm. "He is crazy. You know he tried blackmailing me to get me to testify?"

"Blackmail?"

Pellam took a long moment to hook a thumb through a belt loop. "I did some time."

"Time?" BufFett did not understand.

"San Quentin," Pellam said, volunteering nothing more. Buffett stared for a moment, and said nothing. Pellam continued,

"He was threatening to tell the film company."

Buffett took a breath to speak, then he paused. Finally he said that he just didn't know.

"My friend. This guy killed my friend."

"No," Buffett said emphatically. "If he's a rogue agent on a private job for Peterson, murders too over the line. Peterson's on some kind of moral crusade to put Crimmins away, okay. But murder, no way."

"Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he was following the bike to scare me. He misjudged or something."

Buffett conceded that was possible. "What did you do with the body?"

Pellam thought for a minute, as if he'd locked away the memory in a hidden part of his mind. "His car was outside, in the alley across the street. What did I do? I wrapped him up in some garbage bags and put him in the trunk. I drove it to the parking lot by the bus station. There were a lot of cars there. I don't think anybody'll notice it for a while. Oh, I wore gloves."

"You had to do it. You didn't have any choice."

"Jesus," Pellam whispered, shaking his head, numb.

"Where's the gun?"

"I put it next to him. If anybody found him they might think he'd killed himself."

"Pellam, that's not the way people kill themselves."

"I wasn't thinking too clearly."

"Did you wipe off the gun?"

"Yeah. For fingerprints, you mean? Yeah."

"It was a revolver, so you'll have traces of powder on your hands, but you aren't going to be picked up in the next twenty-four hours on this. When the guy doesn't check in, Peterson'll know something's wrong, assuming he does-did- work for Peterson. But what's he going to say? He'll have to deny everything. I think you're pretty safe."

"I…"

A nurse entered the room. She smiled at Donnie. She had a tray with a small container of ice cream and two cookies.

She gave him two pills in a cup.

"Snack time," she said.

Buffett smiled back. "What are these?" he asked. "The pills."

"Sedatives. Usual."

He took the pills. "Ativan? Half a milligram?"

She called him "Doctor" as she said goodnight.

"I always ask. They make mistakes sometimes. About the pills, I mean. You ever in the hospital, always ask."

Pellam took a kleenex from Buffett's dresser and was carefully wiping the agent's-ID case.

He said to Pellam, "You want some ice cream?'

"Uh-uh. I don't like ice cream."

"You sure?" Buffett opened the ice cream and began to eat it. He stopped and set down the spoon. "Pellam, you did what

I would've done."

"Yeah."

Buffett picked up the spoon again. "You know, there's something else." Pellam took a cookie from the tray and ate it. The cop continued, "Let's assume you're right and this guy, the one you shot, was working for Peterson."

"Uh-huh."

'Then the one who's looking for you, the one who killed your friend, he's still out there."

"I guess he is." Pellam had not thought about this. "But what can I do about it?"

"Dusting off your passport might be a good idea."

Nina, on the other end of the phone, said, "I'd like to see you tonight."

She sounded seductive. Pellam was not in the mood to seduce or be seduced. He was sitting on a banquette three feet from where the carpet had been stained with an FBI agents blood. He had used Clorox to scrub it. This had worked pretty well but the camper smelled fiercely of bleach.

"I called three times and you never answered."

"I don't have a machine in the camper," he said, although he did. He often did not turn it on.

"There's all kinds of talk around the set about you. Mr. Sloan's been saying some things that aren't real nice. He's talking about suing you. I'm real sorry about your friend, John. I don't remember him, but I think I met him once. He seemed real nice."

"He was."

"So you want to be alone tonight?"

"Something like that."

"I don't think it's good for you."

"What's not good?"

"To be alone. Come over. Cranston's only twenty minutes away." Her voice was a breathy singsong.

"It's just not a good time."

"Okay, if that's what you want." Melodious became brittle.

Oh not now please.

"Are you trying to tell me something?" she asked.

Brother.

"No, no, it's just, this thing with me being the witness and all."

"What about it?" she asked testily, and obviously wanted an answer. It seemed patently unfair to have to argue like this with someone you were not sleeping with.

"It's taking up a lot of my time."

"It's probably not taking up time tonight."

"Well, it is. There've been some complications."

"Complications? I thought you were a simple kind of guy." She was being playful now.

Perhaps their fight was over.

"I don't know…" He kept picturing the way the FBI agent fell, surprised, spiraling down. That was it. Just a fall. Then he was dead, just like that.

Please, he heard Nina saying. She had to see him. "Please, John."

The man had just lain there, and Pellam had walked into the kitchen and dug under the sink for garbage bags in which to wrap up the body.

"Its only twenty minutes?" he heard himself asking.

Because his brother was a union carpenter and had taken him on dozens of jobs, Stevie Flom appreciated good woodwork. He took pleasure in the way joints and studs met and how crown molding fit perfectly in the corners of ceilings. Tonight he wandered through the dark basement of a ramshackle Victorian house by the riverfront and checked out the handiwork.

Not bad, not bad at all.

Though he wondered why anybody would renovate a house here, where the only views were of a cement plant, a trailer camp on its last legs, and Pelican Island.

Stevie looked at the structural work again. He approved of the wooden studs, instead of the metal ones most builders used. That meant the wall was going to be nice and solid. He looked at the wiring. Electricity was one thing he wanted to learn about. He was good with hydraulics and mechanics but the idea of electricity was land of weird.

The concrete floor, he observed, was not in good shape. A lot of cracks and places where it had crumbled. He saw evidence of standing water. That was one thing his brother had told him to look for in basements.

Evidence of standing water.

Stevie wished he had something to read. He thought of his old man, who kept newspapers and Time magazines piled up n the basement at home-stacks and stacks-with a few Playboys hidden between them, their places marked with twigs.

But here-nothing but the boiler instructions encased in plastic. His brother had once returned with three hundred bucks he had found in an old book while doing some work in Alton. This place was nothing but old basement.

With evidence of water damage.

He was dying for a cigarette but he knew he shouldn't smoke. The ash would be evidence. He had seen that on Magnum PI one time. Evidence of a killer. Or was it a Matlock rerun?

So he just walked to a half window and gazed outside, across the street to the empty trailer court.

Wondering when the hell was the beer guy's Winnebago going to return.

He put his head against Nina's hair and inhaled.

He liked the smell. Animal-musky and sweaty and perfumed. He breathed in again and woke her up.

"Hm?' she asked.

"Go to sleep," Pellam whispered.

"I was asleep."

"Go back to sleep."

"Hm."

Regardless of Pellam's mood and inclination several hours ago, a seduction it had been.

Cranston, just off the expressway, was a town much smaller than Maddox and more affluent and ginger-bready. A riverfront tourist trap, the town was filled with shops selling antiques and gadgets and Cute Things. Nina apparently did much shopping there; her apartment was filled with gingham pillows, needlepoints of children holding hands, plaques of geese dressed in colonial garb, wooden hearts and stuffed animals and silk flowers.

Pellam hated it all. He had hoped the bedroom might be less cute, but of course, it was just the same. Worse, in fact, because Nina's hobby was photography. No, not even. Snapshooting. The bedroom contained her collection of photos-fifty, sixty, a hundred Of them, all in precious little Lucite and pewter and china frames, lining the radiator cover and windowsill and bedside table. Pellam was afraid to turn around-abruptly. They made love under the eyes of Nina's extended family, and during one particularly energetic moment, a round frame fell to the floor, bounced several times, and rolled for a long time in an exorbitantly distracting way.

Oh, yes, a seduction.

But an odd one.

She had greeted him at the door wearing a white T-shirt and short, tight, dark gray skirt sans stockings. Barefoot. She reminded him of Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl. They had ordered out Hunan beef and cold noodles in sesame paste and eaten while they watched a bad TV show. Nina had loved it. A murder mystery. Pellam watched her lips moving as she whispered to herself, reciting the clues and trying to figure out who the killer was. He sat closer and put his arm around her.

She rubbed her head against his as she announced that the victim's brother-in-law had done it.

She had been wrong. Then, instantly, she was tired of mass media. Just as the Midnight Movie came on, Nina turned off the TV, hiked her skirt up, and sat on his lap. He got an unabashed view of sensible white panties and she began kissing him. Her arms lashed around his shoulders and in a frenzy she pressed her mouth to his, shoving her tongue into him, rocking her hips desperately.

He tasted Chinese food as much as he tasted Nina and because he was so startled by the assault it took a minute or two to pick up the pace.

"The thing is," she whispered. "I have something to say."

He responded by taking off her T-shirt. Her bra was shimmery and silver and very transparent and it halfheartedly supported large breasts that she kept playing against his chest.

"What?" he whispered.

She kissed him. "It's important." Her breasts battered him again, and he bent toward one. "Listen to me," she whispered insistently. But it was a breathless insistence, and he did not. Instead he kissed her for a full minute.

"No, I mean it." She slapped the back of his hand as it probed.

Pellam lifted his head, startled. They lay half-reclining, half-naked, pressed against each other. He gave her his attention but she did not speak immediately. He reflected that there is nothing more ridiculous than two people in the posture of lovemaking when they are not making love.

"I don't want you to stay over," she said.

Pellam was looking for hooks and eyelets.

This's what you want to tell me? Just explain it to me as you go along.

"I'm ovulating," she said as if it were a trade secret.

"I'll be careful."

She blinked and pressed her mouth to his for a long moment. When they could both breathe again she said, "Well, of course you have to use a condom. But what I'm saying is don't make too much out of this. I'm not really in control. It's just hormones."

"I don't care what it is." He meant this sincerely. His hand danced along sparkles of the mesh bra.

She leaned away and pressed a finger to his lips. "You have to promise me you won't stay tonight."

He whispered, "You're beautiful."

"Shhhh." She frowned. "Just promise."

What was the question? "Okay, sure. But you're still beautiful."

"No, I'm not."

"Can I stay for a few minutes, at least?" She kissed him again. "Just not all night." She rubbed against him. She smiled girlishly and he believed whatever had so enigmatically interrupted the moment was past.

Now, an hour later, lying in the huge bed (huge to him; he was used to Winnebago bunks), smelling the animal scent of her scalp, Pellam felt better. There were times when there ought to be nothing but this, being as close as you can to another human being, overlapping skin, mixed sweat, lying in silence and scents.

He found himself aroused again. His hand slid down her belly and touched the curled pale hair that reminded him of the fine hairs at her temple.

She swatted his hand again-this time with more energy than he thought necessary.

"Are you all right?" Pellam had whispered this same question at other moments like this. The query did not have its literal meaning, of course, but was intended as an emergency exit that allowed other words-whatever she wanted or needed to say-to escape. Nina whispered, "I have to tell you something." "Hormones," Pellam said, to be light about it. "It's all right.

I understand." He kissed her hair. She moved away from him.

"You want me to leave?" he asked, already offended.

"Well, yes, I do. Not this minute, though."

"You're beautiful," he said, trying to recapture some romance.

"Stop saying that." The curtness in her voice seemed not so much irritation as distraction, as if she was considering how to express a complicated thought and was running through variations before she spoke. When she did speak, finally, sitting up and pulling the sheet around her, the message was not as tricky as he had anticipated. She said, "Your friend, Donnie. The cop? I just wanted you to know that I slept with him the other night."

When Stevie Flom heard the sticky sound of the campers slowing tires on damp asphalt he stood up fast and notched the back of his hand on a bolt.

"Damn," he whispered, and sucked the small wound. He tasted blood and rust and he wondered if he ought to get a tetanus shot. But then he figured that if the cops looked around this building after they found the body, they might see some blood on the bolt and search all the hospitals for people who'd gotten shots. He was proud that he'd thought of this.

For the third time that night he checked the Beretta. He pulled the slide back slightly; there was one round in the chamber and the clip was full. They were small bullets. Just.22 longs, not even the full-size long rifles. But they had advantages. For one thing, you needed no silencer. Another advantage-the gun was so small and the recoil so slight that you could group rapid-fire shots real close.

Tricks of the trade.

Stevie watched the Winnebago rock to a stop in the trailer park. The man stepped outside and hooked up the hose and plugged a large electrical cord into a junction box. He returned to the camper.

Stevie then made his way out of the structurally sound basement that contained evidence of water damage. He cocked the gun and slipped the safety off. He started across River Road.