Bloody River Blues

SIX

Pellam pursed his lips together. He shook his head.

"What?" the intruder asked.

"It's 'I know what you're thinking. But it's too late. You're not getting out of here.'"

"No." The man frowned. "I'm sure." He propped a briefcase on the driver's seat and opened it.

"Anyway, I've decided to cut the dialogue. Do it in visuals. Want coffee? It's instant."

A script appeared from the briefcase and the man began thumbing through it. "Aw, no. Pellam. Don't cut it. It's a great line.

'But give it up.' It's very-what's the word?-anachronistic. Oh, you're right." He read the script carefully. "The line's gone."

"Take a pew," Pellam said and put the kettle on the flame.

Marty Weller easily settled his lanky frame into the dining banquette. A yoga practitioner, he possessed the sort of physique that could comfortably handle a camper environment. He had an airbrushed tan and muscles in places where only a Nautilus machine could put them. Where his trimmed eyebrows ended above his nose there appeared California creases-two short, vertical furrows, the result of a lifetime of squinting. Tea. Herbal." He tapped the script. "I must have been thinking of the first draft. Or the second. Or one of them. You rewrite a hell of a lot, John." "Lipton?"

Weller looked about, as if he might spot a box of Celestial Seasonings chamomile hidden nearby. "Okay," he said with reservation. Then: "Honey?"

"Domino."

"Well, this is middle America." Weller smiled slyly and asked,

"So?"

"Yes?"

"You know what I'm asking. What's the scoop? On Sloan."

Independent producer Marty Weller was as much a gossip sponge as anyone in Hollywood-though he was not sufficiently powerful to use much of the gossip he absorbed. He had done a string of offbeat films that were lukewarm hits. This opened doors for him but did not automatically get his pictures made. Still, gossip about Tony Sloan, while not particularly useful to Weller, was platinum gossip. One wanted it the same way one wanted Taittinger or beluga.

Yet Weller's presence here in small-town Missouri now reminded Pellam of L.A. protocol and, cognizant of his obscenely large fee, he recalled the rule: Assume anything you say, even in strictest confidence, will immediately be transmitted to the Hollywood Reporter and attributed to you. Pellam gave Weller a diluted version of the film's production woes.

"Word is he's cindering in the upper atmosphere,³ Weller said with a frown that did nothing to mask his delight.

Pellam shrugged. "Okay, Marty, don't keep me in suspense. Go or no go?"

Weller picked up the battered black-covered script he had just misquoted. The title was Central Standard Time. "We're close, John. Damn close. I've got maybe eighty percent of the financing in place." He fell silent for a minute and riffled the pages. In his former Me- which in Hollywood meant only a few years ago- Pellam had both written and directed independent films. Central Standard Time had been the film he'd been working on when his career had been derailed in a big way.

No one had been interested in the property until immaculately tanned Marty Weller had appeared on Pellam s doorstep and told him, with as much sincerity as a Hollywood producer could muster, that he was going to get Pellam's "vision" turned into a dark art-house classic.

Finally, he said delicately, 'There were some questions about what happened before." He looked up uncomfortably.

"You were actually in production?"

"We were two weeks into principal photography."

Weller did not look up but intently read what happened to be the blank back cover of the script. "When he got sick, you mean."

Got sick. Pellam said, That's right."

Tommy Bernstein-the leading man in Central Standard and Pellam's best friend-had not "gotten sick" at all but had died of a cocaine-induced heart attack during principal photography, which had brought the production to a halt and Pellam's life as he'd lived it to a shattering conclusion.

Weller was flipping through the script and sending a stale breeze up into the air. "Somebody… I'm just explaining why it's taking so long. This is bullshit, I know. But somebody talked about a jinx."

Pellam laughed. "Like the Exorcist stories, that old crap?"

"People are more superstitious about money than about their lives. More producers fly on Friday the thirteenth than write checks, you better believe it."

"Well, nothing I can do about that."

"And you directing, that's still carved in stone?"

Pellam noted that the cautious tone in the man's voice was not going away. He said firmly, "Yep."

"The thing is, John… Well, you've been out of the loop for a long time."

"I direct or they don't get property. It's a deal-breaker."

"And they're saying if they don't get to pick the director, leads, and DP, we don't get the money. They'll-"

"Mexican standoff."

'They'll let you coproduce. I think they'll even go gross points since you wrote it."

"Producing means nothing to me-"

"It means a shitload of money is what it means. Look, John, the budget is seven million." He tapped the script. "It's got 'film noir cult classic' written all over it. We're going to shoot in black and white, for God's sake. This is going to make money.

It cannot not make money-"

"Marty," Pellam said patiently.

Weller's momentarily wide eyes shrank to a more sober size. "Forgive me, I know not who I bullshit. Okay, think about this alternative: Can you get up two hundred, two twenty?"

"What if I can?"

"We cut back to four million, finance it ourselves, shoot with unknowns, and pucker up at the sight of every distributor's backside. You can direct."

Pellam realized the teakettle was filling the small kitchen with steam. He made himself coffee and Weller a cup of tea, while he was mentally adding a second mortgage on his house, selling his old Porsche and adding in the fee for Missouri River Blues.

"One twenty, one fifty, maybe I can do."

Weller performed his own calculations. "I'd have to make some phone calls but I think if you come in with that, we can get it done. For that, you can direct but you don't get points. You'd work for scale and maybe have to kick some back."

"I want this film made. I've never wanted to get rich."

"You always were a crazy sonofabitch, Pellam." Weller sipped the hot tea, holding it inches above the table and lowering his mouth to the rim. "I should tell you one thing, though. Never rains but it pours. Paramount's interested in a property I optioned last year. Terrorist hijacking thing. Cliche, cliche", cliche, I know. Mea culpa. Budgeted at forty-five. It's not going to happen but I've still got to go to London to meet with some people about it."

"What if it does happen?"

"I want to do your film, John." For a moment the passion beneath the silken tan seemed real. In his obscure way Weller was explaining that he would rather be a producer who was a cult artist and rich than one who was commercial and excessively rich.

Hollywood, Pellam knew, is a crucible of trade-offs.

"Next step?" he asked. He took a sip of coffee then poured it out. His gut was wound up. Not often is one offered the opportunity to direct his own picture and to go hopelessly into debt at the same time.

"I leave tomorrow night for London. Let me get on the horn now and see what I can do. But I give you my word, if we can work it, I'm doing Central Standard. It'll be a bitch, but I'd tell Paramount so long, bye-bye. I don't care how many effing zeros they wave in my face. Does that shock you, John? Does it?"

It did, but Pellam said, "No, Marty, it impresses me."

The bungalows wouldn't work. The interiors were too small for a Panaflex and lights'and actors all at the same time. Sloan had wanted a complicated tracking shot where the camera on a doorway dolly starts in the yard and follows a character's point of view into the living room. But he finally agreed with Pellam and the key grip that the scene would have to be edited together. They would shoot the exteriors of the bungalows (the most decrepit of the four) and the interiors in the parlor and living room of a two-story colonial next door.

Pellam left Tony Sloan barking instructions to the gaunt key grip, whose resilient humor from the first several weeks of shooting had vanished completely under the weight of tasks like this one: completing in six hours a setup that would normally take two days. Pellam hopped back on his cycle and drove to the bank that held the deeds on both houses. The banker, wearing a pastel green suit, had carefully read the standard location release and signed it, accepting the six-hundred dollar check with an air of embarrassment.

"Most money them houses've made in two years."

"Times're rough round here, looks like."

"Yessir, that they have been. I just wish this recession would hurry up and get done. We'll get through it, though."

Pellam returned to the bike and fired it up. As he drove through town he noticed a car following, keeping the same distance behind. Two people in the front seat, he believed. Pellam made two unnecessary turns. The car took the same route. He braked the cycle to a stop and pretended to look into a storefront window of dusty antiques while the driver of the car stopped and pretended to look at a map. Eyes still scanning the window of the store, Pellam suddenly popped the bike into first and squealed away from the stop, turning down a narrow walkway between two deserted buildings, a space just wide enough to leave about an inch on either side of the handlebar grips. He could touch neither the front brake nor clutch without leaving knuckle skin on brick.

When he emerged from the alley he braked to a fast stop and saw the car was skidding to a halt at the far end of the alley. Pellam made a sharp turn down a one-way street and aimed toward a strip of brown river. After he had driven for a block he felt a strong sense of deja vu and slowed, dropping down into first gear. The car was nowhere around him and, guided by instinct, he turned right and parked. He was on Third Street, next to a series of low factories and warehouses.

From here he could see what had at one time probably been Maddoxs budding riverfront scene. Now it contained only empty storefronts, uninspired antique stores, bars and Callaghan's Steak House.

This was also the place where Donnie Buffett had been shot. Pellam noticed something beside his booted foot. Bloodstains, he believed, though they may have been nothing more than antifreeze or chocolate milk.

"I'll keep an eye on them, you want to get a bag or something. "

"Yeah?"

"Sure."

"Thanks."

Pellam parked the bike and found a phone booth. The phone worked, which surprised him. Upon calling directory assistance, he also was surprised to learn that the address he sought was only a block away.

Pellam did not care for the smell of the place.

Something about antiseptics, that sweet cheap-perfume smell of chilly stuff that gets dabbed on your skin before they cut or stick.

Also the design was depressing: aluminum, bright vinyl, linoleum. For some reason, orange was very popular. Orange and purple. Pellam had been in old hospitals, where you really got a sense of Medicine-dark woodwork and brass and pale green. As if somebody were discovering anesthetic or penicillin behind one of the gold-stenciled doors.

Maddox General was like life and death in Kmart.

Pellam signed in. The nurse pointed him down the hallway. Pellam walked past a cop stationed at the head of the corridor.

He eyed Pellam carefully. "Hold up there, sir."

"I'd like to see Officer Buffett."

"You're the witness." The cop's stony face remained immobile; his eyes painted Pellam up and down.

"I just want to see how he's doing."

"Open your jacket."

"I-"

"You want to see him, open your jacket." Pellam opened his jacket. The cop frisked him roughly and motioned toward

Buffett's room.

On the TV was a game show. The sound was low; everything but the loudest applause was inaudible. The reception wasn't very good and there was a thick band of distortion through the center of the screen. The host and the contestants were smiling a lot. Buffett wasn't.

"How you doing?" Pellam asked and identified himself.

"I remember you."

Pellam walked to a gray chair. He stood as if deciding whether or not to sit. "I brought you this." He put a book, a recent best-seller, on the table. "It's a mystery. I don't know if you like them." Buffett kept staring at him.

Pellam cleared his throat. The silence filled in again. He said, "I didn't know if you'd like a bottle. What d'you drink anyway? Beer?"

"I got shot in the back."

"I heard. How you feeling?"

"How do you think I feel?"

Silence again. Pellam decided there wasn't going to be any lighthearted banter and joshing. He stood back from the chair and crossed his arms. "Look. I'm sorry about what happened. But I'd like to ask a favor. Your buddies in the police department, a couple detectives particularly, are giving me a pretty hard time. You know, following me. They think I saw this guy who was in the car-"

Buffett, eyes on the TV screen, blurted, "Well, you did."

"I didn't see him," Pellam said evenly. "I know you think I did. But I didn't."

Buffett kept staring at the tube. His eyes were dark, agitated. He licked the corner of his mouth with the tip of his tongue.

This made him seem like a cornered animal. "How could you help but? He was in the front seat."

"There was glare."

"The hell there was glare."

Pellam's face flushed. "You think I'm covering up something? I'm not. I described the guy who bumped into me."

"Oh, that's mighty brave of you. I saw him. We don't need his description. Anyway, he's rabbited. He was just the hired gun and he's back in Miami or Chicago by now."

"Do you think they paid me off?"

"I think you're like everybody else. You don't want to get involved."

Pellam sighed. "I better be going."

"I think when you look in the front seat of a car, you fucking see somebody. I think'when you move your mouth, you're talking to somebody!"

"I wasn't-"

"You saw him! I saw you look right into his face."

"If you saw so damn much why the hell didn't you see him?"

"How much did they pay you?"

"I didn't-"

"Listen, mister," Buffett blurted viciously, "you're gonna have cops on your ass every minute of the day! They're going to stay on you. They're not going to let you crap until you tell-"

Pellam waved his hand in frustration and walked to the door.

"You son of a bitch!" Buffetts face was livid, tendons rose in his neck, and flecks of spittle popped from his lips. His voice choked and for a moment Pellam feared he was having a heart attack. When he saw that Buffett was simply speechless with rage he himself stormed out of the door.

And walked squarely into a young woman as she entered.

"Sorry," he muttered.

She blinked and stepped aside timidly. "Oh, I'm sorry."

The woman was thin, blond, late twenties, dressed unflashy, like an executive secretary, looking shy and embarrassed.

Pellam assumed she was the cop's wife and thought he was lucky to be married to someone so pretty. He also thought she was going to have to put up with pure hell for a long, long time.

She said, "I'm looking for Dr. Albertson."

Pellam shook his head, shrugged and walked past her.

In the hall he heard Buffett shouting to him, "Sure, so just leave. Just like that! Go ahead, you son of a bitch!"

The voice faded as he proceeded down the corridor. The cop on guard said something, too, something Pellam didn't hear, though from the snide smile on his face, he guessed it was no friendlier than the cop's farewell. Then he was at the elevator, kneading his hands and feeling his jaws clench with anger. He punched the down button seven times before he realized it had lit up and the car was on its way.

A woman's voice startled him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to barge in."

He glanced back and saw the blond woman walk up, looking at the floor indicator.

Pellam's mouth tightened. "No problem."

"He looks familiar." She glanced back up the corridor.

"Who?"

"Well, your friend. The man in the room you were just in."

"Don't you know him?"

She explained that she didn't. She was looking for her mother's doctor and the nurse had sent her there. She nodded toward the room. "Who is he?"

Pellam said, "He's the cop, the one that got shot."

"Oh, sure! The Post-Dispatch. They ran his picture. What's his name?"

"Donnie Buffett."

"He's your friend?"

Pellam waved his hand. "What you heard back there… I don't think you'd call him much of a friend."

The elevator arrived. They both stepped in. Behind them stood a man in a dressing gown, his hand grasping a tall IV bag on wheels like a chrome hat rack.

"The doctors left for lunch already." She grimaced. "I was supposed to meet him here about Mother. Now I've got to come back in an hour."

"Your mother's a patient?"

"Hysterectomy. She's fine. Well, she's complaining nonstop but that means she's fine."

The elevator, slowly filling with her fruity perfume, arrived on the ground floor.

"So," he said as they walked outside into the cool air of the spacious lobby.

"Well."

"My name's John Pellam."

She took his hand. "Nina Sassower."

They walked out the front door of the hospital and Nina surveyed the street. She had a great profile; the lines of her face were… What came to mind? Unencumbered.

Then he smiled ruefully to himself. Unencumbered. Too much movie talk, too much artistic vision. No, she's sensuous, she's pretty. She's sexy.

Pellam looked at his watch. He had a lot to do and not much time to do it in-getting the insurance binders for the bungalows, running his daily check on the dozens of shooting permits to make sure they hadn't expired during this elongated filming schedule, calling his bank in Sherman Oaks about the mortgage to finance his own film, Central Standard Time, seeing what other markers he had that he might call in-and all the while dodging cops.

What he did, though, was none of these things. Instead he asked, "You interested in lunch?"

And, as it turned out, she was.

At three that afternoon Pellam was in the camper, about to ride to the set, when his phone buzzed. He snagged it and propped it between his shoulder and his cocked head as he pulled on his leather jacket. '"Lo?"

"Dinner tomorrow."

"Okay. Is that you, Marty?"

"Here's the deal. You ready?… Telorian."

Pellam did not speak for a moment. "Are you sure?" "Ugh. Am I sure?" Weller repeated sarcastically. Ahmed Telorian. The fifty-year-old Armenian-Iranian investor (after the hostage thing he began calling himself "Persian") had grown to love

American movies as much as he loved making millions from electronic component sales. Telorian and his wife had bought, gutted, and renovated an old theater in Westwood. They had turned it into a cult stronghold, in which they showed oddball films, many of them film noir, John Pellam's forte.

Telorian and Pellam had spent an evening together several years ago, drinking and talking about Claire Trevor and Gloria Grahame and Robert Mitchum and Ed Dmytryk. They argued vocally and with white knuckles around their thick glasses of ouzo.

The reason for that meeting several years ago was Telorian's other avocation-producer of low-budget films. He had read Pellam's Central Standard Time and was interested in optioning it. This happened to be at a time when Pellam had not wished to have anything to do with film companies, except location scouting. A generous offer of option money was rejected and Telorian had huffed away from the meeting. Pellam had not thought about him since then. He now felt his pulse increase a few tempos as he asked, "He's in Maddox?"

More likely to see Elvis hustling for a table at the Hard Rock Cafe.

"He happened to be in Chicago. My secretary tracked him down. You kind of blew him off a few years ago, he says."

"I blew everybody off a few years ago."

"It's not like he's taking it personally. Not too personally. He still thinks Central Standard can be a hit. He's got to be home day after tomorrow but I got him to agree to stop over in St. Louis to talk to you."

"What does he feel about me directing?"

"Not a problem. He just wants to know how you'd do it. Times aren't as flush as they used to be. He's interested in hits.

He doesn't mind a grainy film. But it has to be hit grainy film. Got it?"

"When's his plane get in?"

"Whenever he tells his pilot to land. Meet us at eight at the Waterfront Sheraton. Lobby bar. You know where it is?"

"I can find it."

"About forty, fifty minutes from Maddox."

"He's got the treatment? The script?" Pellam asked.

"He's got everything. All you need to bring is as much Tony Sloan gossip as you can dig up."

In the floral-wallpapered entryway was a white Formica table. On it rested a Lucite pitcher filled with plastic flowers. To the left, through an arched doorway, was a parlor. The furniture in the rooms was mostly 1950s chain store-kidney-shaped tables, blond wood chairs, wing-backs and love seats upholstered in beige, a lot of plastic. Plastic everywhere. In the corner of the parlor was a young woman in a white blouse and black pedal pushers, struggling through a Chopin Etude. A young, muscular man in brown slacks and yellow short-sleeved shirt leaned against the piano, smiling at her and nodding slowly.

"When I first saw you, you know, it was the night of the dance. It was-"

"I remember." She stopped playing and looked up.

"It was hot as a in-line block. You were across the room under that Japanese lantern."

"That lantern, it was the one that was busted."

"Sure, it was busted and the bulb shone through that paper and covered you in light. That's when I knowed you was the girl for me." He put his hand on hers.

A heavyset man appeared slowly in the doorway. He lifted a Thompson submachine gun. The couple turned to him. Their smiles vanished,

"No!" The woman screamed. The man started forward toward the assailant. The gun began its fierce rattling. Pictures, vases, lamps exploded, black holes popped into the wall, bloody wounds appeared on the bodies of the couple as they reached toward each other. As the magazine in the submachine gun emptied and a throbbing silence returned, the couple slowly spiraled to the floor, their slick, bloody hands groping for each other's. Their fingers touched. The bodies lay still.

None of the fifteen or so sweaty people standing in the room around the immobile, bloody bodies said a single word. No one moved. Most of them were not even staring at the couple but were looking instead at the bearded man in jeans and green T-shirt who leaned against a reflector stand, his red eyes dancing pensively around the room. Tony Sloan paced over the spent machine-gun cartridges. He was shaking his head.

The man in brown sat up, wiped blood off his nose, and said, "Come on, Tony. It works."

"Cut," came the shout from behind the camera.

The bloody actress jumped to her feet and slapped her sticky palms on her hips. "Oh, Christ," she muttered viciously.

Sloan stepped closer to the carnage, surveying it. He spat out "It doesn't work.'"

The machine gunner pulled cotton out of his ears and said, "What's he say?"

The actress grimaced. "He says it doesn't work."

The killer shrugged.

Sloan motioned to Danny the script writer and the assistant director, a young blond woman in her early thirties. The three of them huddled in the corner of the room, while wardrobe and grips spread out onto the set, cleaning up. "We gotta shoot it outside," Sloan said.

The assistant director's golden ponytail swaggered as she nodded vigorous approval.

"Outside?" Danny sighed. According to the Writer's Guild contract, he was paid a great deal of money every time he revised Missouri River Blues. The fun of making that money, however, had long ago worn off.

"It's not, you know, dynamic enough," Sloan mused. "We need a sense of motion. They should be moving. I think it's important that they move."

Danny pulled his earplugs out. "If you remember the book and if you remember the shooting script, they escaped. I didn't kill them in the first place."

The director said, "No, no, no, I don't mean that. They've got to die. I just think they should get killed outside. You know, like it suggests they're that much closer to freedom. Remember Ross's fear."

"Fear of the lock-down," the assistant director recited, shaking her stern blond ponytail. It was impossible to tell if she was speaking with reverence or sarcasm.

Danny wound his own ponytail, the color of a raven's wings, around stubby fingers, then touched from his cheek a fleck of red cardboard from the blank machine-gun shells. He looked as exhausted as Sloan. 'Tell me what you want, Tony. You want them dead, I'll make them dead. You want them dead outside, I'll make them dead outside. Just tell me."

The director shouted, "Pellam? Shit, did he leave?"

Pellam, who had not been wearing earplugs but had been sitting on the front hall stairs thirty feet away from the shooting, stood up and walked into the living room. He dodged bits of pottery and glass and stepped over two arms assistants in protective gear who were removing several of the explosive gunshot-impact squibs that had failed to detonate.

Sloan asked him, "What about a road?"

"Why do you want a road?"

"I'd like them to die on a road," Sloan said. "Or at least near a road."

The actress in pedal pushers said, "I don't want to get shot again. It's loud and it's messy and I don't like it."

"You've got to die," Sloan said. "Quit complaining about it."

With a bloody finger she pointed to the cartridge of film the assistant photographer was pulling off the Panaflex camera.

"I'm dead. It's in the can."

The director stared at the ground. "What I'd like is to find a road going through woods. No, a field. A big field. Maybe beside a school or something. Ross and Dehlia are planning one last heist. But it's an ambush. The Pinkerton guys stand up in the window suddenly, out of the blue-"

Pellam began to say something.

"Will you stop with that Bonnie and Clyde shit already, Pellam?" Sloan snapped. "This'll be different.

Everybody thinks they're going to get shot-I mean, the audience is thinking Bonnie and Clyde. They're thinking they've seen this before. But uh-uh. Here, the lads get away. Maybe the guns don't go off and-"

Danny said, "Neither of the guns go off? There are two agents."

"Well, one gun jams and the other guy misses."

"So now you want them to live?" Danny asked brightly.

"No, no, no. I want them to escape then get killed, maybe in a freak accident. I've got it! They drive into a train."

The actress said, "If I don't get shot again I don't mind."

Pellam said, "Somebody else did a train crash ending. Who was it? That's very seventies. Elliott Gould might've driven a car into a train once. Or Donald Sutherland. Sugarland Express" He wondered why he was getting so riled. Missouri River Blues wasn't his movie.

The stoolie from the studio, a young man with curly hair not tied in a ponytail, lit a cigarette and said to no one in particular, "You know what it costs to rent a train?"

Sloan started to speak, then reconsidered. He said, "I could go with a tractor-trailer maybe."

Pellam said, "Why don't you rename the film and call it Daughter of Bonnie and Son of Clyde?"

Danny slapped Pellam's palm, five high.

The director ignored them. "Daniel, rewrite it and let's get John a copy. I want it to look like they're going to get blasted but then something happens and they escape and there's a freak accident."

Exasperated, Danny said, "What? What happens? Tell me. Give me a clue."

The director said, "Surprise me. I want it like Man can't touch them, but Fate can. Fate or nature, or some shit." Pellam asked, "You want any particular land of road?"

"A road…" His eyes began to fly again. "I want it near the river and I want a big field on one side. I want the car to careen into the river."

The river. Pellam grimaced. It was often impossible to get permits for scenes like that nowadays-no one wanted gas and oil and random car parts filling up their bodies of water. Many of the car crash setups were guerrilla shots-without a permit, in and out before the authorities found out, the evidence left at the bottom of the river or lake. Pellam guessed that if Sloan insisted on launching Ross's Packard into the Missouri River, it would have to be a guerrilla shot.

Sloan said, "I'm going to look at rushes." He hurried toward the door. Before he could leave, though, the sound of arguing voices rose from the hallway. A security guard was backed onto the set by two tall men in light gray suits. They walked steadily toward him, speaking low and pleasantly but insistently. One of the men looked at Pellam. He said-to his partner, "That's him." They turned from the flustered, red-faced guard and strode onto the set.

"Hey, hey, hey," Sloan said. "What is this?"

"John Pellam?"

Before Pellam could answer, Sloan said impatiently, 'This is a closed set. You'll have to leave."

One said in a high, contrite voice, "I'm sorry for the" intrusion. This won't take a moment." He turned to Pellam.

"You're John Pellam?"

"That's right."

Sloan looked at Pellam with a mixture of perplexity and anger in his face. "John, who are these guys? What's going on here?"

Like the cops the day before, these men ignored Sloan and said to Pellam, "We're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation." IDs appeared.

And like the day before, when the cops had shown up, everyone on the set stopped working and turned to watch.

"I'm Special Agent Monroe and this is Special Agent Bracken. Would you mind stepping outside with us? We'd like to ask you a few questions." The agents ignored the bloody actress. Perhaps they had seen a lot of machine-gunned bodies in their day.

"About what?"

"A crime you may have been a witness to. If you have a few minutes now?"

"I really don't."

'Yessir," Bracken said. Monroe, with his razor-cut hair and tidy mustache, looked like an FBI agent. Bracken was scruffy and had a wrinkled suit. He looked like a thug. Maybe he worked undercover. "It won't take long."

"He's very busy," Sloan said. "We're all very busy."

Bracken spoke to Pellam, as if he had uttered this protest. "Well, sir, the thing is, if you continue not to cooperate we'll have to take you to St. Louis and-"

Sloan strode over to them. "I don't know what this is all about, but you can't just walk in here. Go get a warrant or something. John, what the hell is going on here? What are they talking about?"

"Well, we can get a warrant, sir. But that'll be to arrest Mr. Pellam here- "

"For what?"

"Contempt and obstruction of justice. Now, if that's how you'd like us to proceed…"

"Jesus," Sloan whined, closing his eyes. He sounded more upset than Pellam. "Talk to them, John." He waved his hand fiercely as if scaring away a bee. "This is not a problem I want. You understand me?"

"Maybe if we could just step outside, Mr. Pellam," Monroe said. "It shouldn't take long."

Sloan lifted impatient eyebrows at Pellam and told the agents, "He'd be happy to."