Bloody River Blues

TWENTY-FIVE

"There's a man to see you, sir. He says his name is Pellam."

"Pellam? Do I know him?" Philip Lombro said, running a chamois over his Bally shoes.

"He knows you, sir."

"I'm busy. Take his card."

Lombro sat back in his leather chair and stared at the floor. Dense clouds passing by outside would cast diffuse shadows on the green carpeting then a moment later the harsh sunlight would return.

The intercom clicked. again and startled him. The electric voice said, "He says it has to do with the late Mr. Bales."

Lombro cleared his throat. "Send him in."

Pellam walked into the office. He looked around at the somber burgundy and navy books-business books, lawyer books. The desk. The pattern of cloud shadows on the verdant carpet. The view out the window, the smooth deco designs on the old brick building across the street.

Pellam sat down, uninvited, in the chair directly opposite Lombro's. "Your hit man is dead."

Lombro swallowed and folded the square of chamois carefully. Yes. It was him. The one with the case of beer, the man who'd seen him. "You're the witness."

"The witness." Pellam said the word slowly, tasting it, letting the sibilant draw out over his teeth.

"Mr. James?"

"No, it's Pellam."

Lombro shook his head at this, confused. Then he said cautiously, "You cheated me."

Pellam frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"You took my money and you still went to the U.S. Attorney. I heard the news conference."

"What money?"

"The fifty thousand? The money Ralph gave you…"

The voice faded and Pellam obvioulsy came to the conclusion that was setting prominently into Lombro's mind. They shared rueful smiles.

Lombro said, "I see."

"The quality of your hired help leaves a little bit to be desired."

"So it seems. He's dead, you say?"

"An accident."

"I see. Are you here to loll me?" This he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

"No," Pellam said.

"I swear I forbade Ralph to hurt you. All he was going to do was pay you to-"

"But, he came to the Federal Building yesterday with a gun. You knew that."

Lombro's mouth closed and he touched some strands of silver hair at his temple.

"I want to know why you had Gaudia killed."

"Are you a policeman?"

"No."

"But you have a microphone on you."

Pellam took off his jacket and turned out the pockets of his shirt and jeans. Lombro, eyes fixed on the grip of the Colt in

Pellam's waistband, took the bomber jacket and felt through the pockets.

"I just want to know," Pellam said sincerely.

Lombro crossed his legs and gripped his ankle with his right hand, rubbing his fingers along it. He did not sort through his thoughts. This was a story he had planned to tell for some time. Perhaps to his prosecutor. "I love my nieces like daughters.

I've never been married. Never had children. Have you?"

Pellam didn't answer.

"One niece of mine was eighteen. She was a sweet, sweet girl. But she was somewhat heavy, unsure of herself. She was going to school and working part-time as a waitress in a restaurant that Vincent Gaudia would sometimes eat in. Gaudia was a generous man with money. He would give her twenty-dollar tips. Then it was a fifty-dollar tip. And after that it was the promise of a hundred-dollar tip. I suppose you can guess what happened.

"They spent a few nights together, and then Gaudia simply forgot that she existed. But the poor child believed she'd fallen in love with him. I tried to convince her otherwise but she was inconsolable. He refused to take her calls and answer her letters. Finally she went to his home. It was late at night, after she got off work at the restaurant. She left his house at two in the morning, and on the way home, drove through red light. Her car was hit by a truck and she was lolled. She had been drinking and had had sex just an hour before. The evidence indicated the sex was of a sort I choose not to describe."

"One of the two thousand," Pellam mused.

"I'm sorry?"

"I've heard Gaudia had his share of women. She was a conquest."

"Just so."

"The police said the accident was her fault but, of course, it wasn't. It was Vincent Gaudia's. He seduced my niece. It's as if he murdered her. This is what Gaudia did to my family and when my brother refused to do anything about his daughter's death, I decided to."

"Old World revenge."

"If you will."

"You knew that Bales or his partner killed the woman who was with Gaudia too. They shot that cop. And a friend of mine."

Lombro shook his head. There was alarm and sorrow in his face. "This has all gone so wrong. So wrong! I should have done the manly thing. I should have lolled him myself and taken the consequences. I'm not a coward. I just didn't understand how these things worked. Have you called the police?"

"Not yet, no," Pellam said. He looked around the office, at the paneling, the prints on the walls. He asked, "What're you worth?"

"Pardon?"

"Money, you know. How much do you have?"

"I don't really know."

"A million?" Pellam suggested.

Lombro smiled. "More than that. Why are you asking?"

Pellam said, "What does that mean? 'More than that.'"

"I don't exactly know," Lombro said stridently.

"You're in the real estate business?"

Lombro reached toward his knee and picked a piece of lint from his slacks. "And I've been in that line long enough to understand when an offer is about to be made."

"You know," Pellam said, "they have this service in some states. It's called the crime victims' reparation fund or something like that. You ever hear about it?"

"No."

"When someone's mugged or raped they get some money. Somebody gets killed, the family gets it."

"And you're suggesting I pay you something." Pellam hesitated, then he laughed. "Yep. Exactly."

"How much?" Lombro opened his drawer. Then, perhaps deciding a check might not be the way to handle something like this, closed it again.

"I'm thinking mostly of the policeman that got shot."

"Whatever. How much did you have in mind?"

"He's paralyzed, the cop. He'll never walk again. Life's going to be pretty expensive for him. Housekeepers, special cars.

And by the way, I got fired thanks to you."

Lombro looked up from his shoes, which he now planted on the carpeting? "I am being very honest when I tell you that I didn't want you hurt and that I didn't want anyone to die except Gaudia. I hope you agree I had a… well, an honorable motive for doing what I did. I don't think you'll hurt me."

"No," Pellam said, "I don't have any intention of hurting you."

"You can, of course, go to the police and tell them what happened. But what it really comes down to is my word against your word. I've been involved in plenty of litigation. Lawyers call cases like this a liar's match. Who believes whom? I think I stand as good a chance of being believed as you do. I'm influential in this town. I'm one of the few businessmen still able to pay taxes, which I do in great abundance. I'm well known in the assessors office and in city hall, too. So, although I sympathize with you and your friend, you don't really have much leverage. I'd consider ten thousand for each of you."

"Nope, that's not enough." Pellam took a small cloth square from his pocket and dropped it on the desk. "Take a look." Lombro unfolded the handkerchief and looked at the business-card case inside. He opened it up, shrugged, and dropped it back on the handkerchief. Pellam scooped the case up and put it in his pocket.

"And who," Lombro asked, "is Special Agent Gilbert?'

"He's the man buried in the foundation of one of the buildings you're putting up. A project outside of St. Louis. Foxwood.

I get a kick out of those names for condominiums. Stonehenge. Windcrest. Do people really-"

"What? There's no one buried in-"

"And sad to say, he'd been shot with a gun that's buried in your yard at home."

"Impossible. I don't own a gun."

"I didn't say you own a gun. I just said the gun was buried on your property."

'This is nonsense."

Lombro's silver face flushed and his eyes darted. A distinguished man made common. A powerful man, impotent. "Your policeman friend. Is he helping-" Lombro stared at Pellam's jacket pocket. He whispered, "And I just put my fingerprints on his ID card, Didn't I?"

"Not to say they'd convict you. But Agent Gilbert was involved in the Gaudia murder. He threatened me and my friend."

Pellam added, "And I'd feel obligated to being a personal acquaintance of the U.S. Attorney. I'd feel it was my duty."

Philip Lombro looked out the window at the brick of the building across the way. He glanced down, licked his finger, and lifted a fleck of paper or dust off the heel of one of his shoes, black cherry, tasseled Ballys, polished like dark mirrors. Pellam started to speak but didn't. He paused, staring at the shoes, frowning as if he'd seen them somewhere before but was unable to remember exactly where.

Tony Sloan was still not, in general, speaking to Pellam using the strongest language Pellam had ever heard him but he made an exception to explain that because the machine guns had been released and the ending of the film was successfully in the can, half of Pellam's fee would be released. The rest Sloan was retaining to help defray the cost of the delay.

"You want to play it that way, Tony, then I'll see you in court."

Sloan had shrugged and taken up the vow of silence again, returning to the editing van, where close to five hundred thousand feet of film and an extremely discouraged editor, awaited the arrival of the director's artistic vision.

Pellam had gone directly downstairs to Marriott's Huck Finn Room to crash the wrap party.

There he drank Sloan's champagne and ate the catfish tidbits and hush puppies while he chatted with the cast and crew, all of them exhausted from the trials of the final days of the shooting that they did not know, or care, if he was still an untouchable.

He looked over the crowd. He saw the make-up artists in the corner. Nina Sassower was not among them.

Pellam wandered over to Stace Stacey, as exhausted as anyone but still retaining his unflappable good spirits. Pellam handed over the unused wax bullets and the empty.45 casings Stace had loaned him. Pellam nodded at them. "Wouldn't mention this."

Stace pocketed the munitions and touched his lips with a forefinger.

Pellam told him about Sloans holding back his fee. Now on his third or fourth cuba libre Stace was pretty loose.

'Trying to squeeze you, is he? That man is a hundred percent son of a bitch," the arms master said, using the strongest language Pellam had ever heard him utter.

"But you'll work with him again."

"Oh, you betcha. And you'll be in line right behind me."

"Probably," Pellam said.

A woman appeared in the doorway of the banquet room. Pellam recognized her as one of Sloans secretaries. She urgently waved a slip of paper at him. He wondered if Sloan had changed his mind and was reluctantly releasing the rest of the money. Not that it truly mattered. Fifty thousand dollars had just been transferred from Philip Lombro's investment company into Pellam's account at a bank in Sherman Oaks.

"You got this fax, John. It's from Marty Weller in Budapest."

And was apparently just about to be transferred out again, to finance Central Standard Time.

She handed it to him and headed back toward a cluster of actors but got no farther than Stace Stacey, who encircled her waist and rose on tiptoe to whisper something in her ear. She giggled.

Pellam unfolded the fax. It took a whole page of producer-babble for Marty Weller to break the news to him that Tri-Star was going to be picking up Paramount's fallen standard and financing the terrorist script, which Weller would be producing in lieu of Central Standard Time. The Hungarians were going to Tri-Star with him. They asked Weller to say hello to Pellam, whom they felt they knew already and whom they had dubbed the American Auteur. They hoped that perhaps in the future they all might work together on a "clever-scripted, hey knock-em-dead cult film noir project."

Pellam folded the paper and slipped it into his back pocket. He lifted another champagne off a passing tray. He closed his eyes and rubbed the cold flute over his forehead.

Stace returned a moment later. He was without the secretary but the expression on the arms master's face was not that of a rejected man. He smiled agreeably and said to Pellam, Tomorrow morning, let's you and me go shooting, what do you say? We'll take the Charter Arms and the Dan Wesson and shoot up some cans. Maybe they even have rattlesnakes around here."

Pellam opened his mouth to make excuses, but then he said, "As long as I don't have to get up too early, Stace."

"Oh, no, sir. Film's over. We're on vacation now."

The basketball court on Leonard Street in Maddox is closed most of the time. It's part of a school playground but because of budget cutbacks, the Department of Education can't afford to keep it open when school's not in session, and the gate is locked at 5:00 P.M. Not that it matters much; the local kids have pried apart enough chain link gate to slip through for pickup games any time they want.

The court is asphalt. There's a lot of graffiti on the brick walls surrounding it-names of kids and gangs and some of those flashy, three-dimensional block letters and drawings that the talented punks do. But the asphalt itself is clean as black marble in a church. Nobody messes with foul lines.

Tonight, a mild, humid night in December, two men are at the fence. The opening in the gate would be big enough for them to pass through if one of the men weren't in a wheelchair. It's a small chair, gunmetal blue and sporty, with wheels tilted; at the top, they're closer together than at the bottom. The man who is standing looks around and takes a geared, carbon-tempered bolt cutter from a large, cylindrical canvas sports bag. He props one long handle on his hip and, using both hands on the other handle, severs one side of a link of chain, then the other.

They enter the court. The man in the chair speeds forward under the thrusts of his powerful arms, which are dark with hair.

Pellam says, "Go easy with an old man, huh?"

It takes a while for Donnie Buffett to get used to dribbling but he's played good offense for years and knows how to keep the ball away from his body while controlling it. He does have a problem, though, because he can only coast in for a shot.

If he uses his arm to move forward, he goes in circles. What he does is, he sets the ball on his lap and speeds in for the lay-up.

Pellam whistles loudly through his teeth and cries, "Traveling."

"So what're you back in town for?" Buffett asks him after sinking the shot. "That Missouri River movie?"

"Nope. That's in post production now. July release date. I'm suing the director for my fee and credit."

"That's a hassle."

"Goes with the territory. I just came back to do some scouring for another script."

"What's this one called?"

"Central Standard Time."

"Sounds boring. Who's going to be in it? You should cast Geena Davis. I really like her. Or Shelley Long. You ever watch Cheers?"

"Nobody's in it. Nobody's even making it yet. When I was here I saw some locations that looked pretty good. I wanted to check them out this time of year. That's when the story takes place. Winter."

"That's pretty wild. Two movies in one year. Maybe Maddox'll be the new Hollywood."

"Hollywood started out as a desert," Pellam tells him.

"How long you here for?"

"A week or two. Then I'm heading on to my mothers place, upstate New York, for the holidays."

Buffett usually makes his shots, which Pellam finds extremely frustrating. Pellam has been watching the Lakers all season.

He tries to fly up to the basket and stuff the ball in, but he comes nowhere close. He is a terrible player. The Nokona cowboy boots don't help much.

Buffett gets the rebound away from Pellam and sinks another.

"Hell with this," Pellam says. "Let's see a slam-dunk."

They play for a half hour and take a break for beer.

In response to a question Buffett tells Pellam he isn't seeing Nina anymore. "That's over with. It was just a fluke thing. I never knew what to make of her. She was moody a lot. It was like she had some big secret or something."

"I picked that up, too." Pellam wipes his mouth with his sleeve and thinks they're crazy to be drinking beer in December.

And crazy to be playing basketball now, too.

"Did I tell you?" Buffett asks.

"What?"

"Penny's moved out. We're getting a divorce."

"You're going to what?"

"A divorce. Get one."

"God," Pellam says.

"Well-"

"I think that's awful."

Buffett looks away, inordinately embarrassed, and swallows a lot of beer. "It happens."

"Did she find out about Nina?"

"No. She still doesn't know."

Pellam shakes his head and starts to wave his arm at Buffett's legs but changes the motion to encompass the entire court.

"All this and she decides to leave you?"

"No, Pellam. Uh-uh. I'm the one getting the divorce. It's my idea. She's going to live with her parents."

"Oh." This, too, Pellam thinks is crazy. He looks at Buffett for a moment. "All this and you leave her?"

"Yep."

"Why?'

"You were over to the house. You really have to ask?"

"But you'll be living by yourself? A time like this?"

Buffett shrugs. "I guess, yeah."

Pellam gives him a more-power-to-you shrug and practices dribbling. The ball gets away from him. He hops in front and stops it, then asks, "You see Dr. Wendy lately?'

Th'other day."

"So?"

"Nothing new. Same old prognosis."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No."

They drink beer for a few minutes, talking about the Knicks and the Lakers. Then Buffett says, 'They've tried these new drugs on me. They don't have any effect."

"You gonna kill yourself?"

"I don't think so. Someday maybe." Buffett is neither joking nor serious when he says this.

"I just thought of something. You play poker?'

Buffett laughs at the idiocy of the question. "Of course I play poker."

"You like chili?'

"No. I hate chili."

A breeze comes up and it's too cold to sit still and drink beer so they head back toward the basket and begin to play again. Pellam comes up fast and gets the ball away from Buffett. He dribbles fiercely and lobs a long one, a three-pointer, which he knows isn't going to go in, but it hits the rim, reverberates back»and forth madly and finally drops through the rusty metal hoop into Buffett's waiting hands.