Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery (27 page)

“There. Stolen.”

“Most hit-and-runs involve stolen cars. That’s why they’re hit-and-runs.”

Pellam leaned forward again. “Look, I know it was the guy with the mark on his face. He must’ve seen me go to Peterson’s office after Nina was attacked.”

“I’ll have Gianno and Hagedorn look into it. They—”

Pellam exploded, “Look into it? Look
into
it? All they do is hassle
me
. You don’t understand. I’m going out that door in five minutes and I’m going to find the
guy who killed my friend and I’m going to get him. If you won’t help then the hell with you!”

“Look, Pellam, if he did it then the guy’s a pro. He’s not going to let you just arrest him. You, by yourself, no backup? Are you crazy? Are you ready to waste him if you have to? You ever shot anybody before?” Buffett shook his head with a condescending smile.

Pellam unzipped his jacket and pulled the Colt Peacemaker from his belt. The grin left the patrolman’s mouth and his uneasy eyes followed the gun as it went back into the waistband.

“One thing you might want to remember,” Pellam said quietly. “The guy with the mark on his face? He’s probably the partner of the man I saw get out of the Lincoln and that makes him the one who shot
you
.”

No, Buffett hadn’t thought about that. But he did now for a long moment. He said slowly, “I’m a cop. I can’t help you kill someone. I don’t care who it is.”

“I’m not going to kill him. I’m going to arrest him.”

Buffett’s tongue gingerly touched the corner of his lips. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“How do I make a citizen’s arrest? Do I have to get him to confess? Can I just arrest him, like in the movies? Do I have to read him his rights?”

Buffett the cop considered. “Well, you don’t have probable cause. The truck driver didn’t get a look at the guy driving the Dodge. The procedure our guys’d use is to find a suspect, then bring him in and interview him. Not arrest him. Just talk to him. He doesn’t get a lawyer for that but he can get up and walk out any time he wants.”

“Just talk to him?”

“Try to find inconsistencies. Maybe he’ll mention people who’re supposed to be alibis, but we can squeeze them and get them to turn. It’s a hell of a lot of work, Pellam. You don’t just arrest somebody.”

“What if I had a tape recorder with me and got him to say something in it?”

“You can tape yourself talking to somebody without a court order. That’s okay. But it’s a little risky, isn’t it?”

“It’ll be admissible and everything?”

“Probably.”

Pellam shrugged. He walked to the door and stopped. “What you told them. I appreciate it.”

“How do you mean?”

“What you told the detectives, about believing me.”

Buffett shrugged. Pellam noticed him rub his eyes in a resigned way. He seemed as tired as the wilting flowers that littered the radiator cover of the room. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I guess. My wife came for a visit.” He opened his mouth and was suddenly overwhelmed by the volume of things he wanted to say; they rushed forward. But just before he spoke, the torrent dried up instantly, and he asked, “Hand me the
TV Guide,
would you?” Buffett motioned across the room. “Son of a bitch orderly left it on the dresser. What good’s it doing me over there? I mean, some people, they just don’t think.”

A KNOCK ON
the half-open door woke Donnie Buffett. He was dozing and he awoke from a dream he could not remember but that left a residue of longing. “Yeah?” he muttered. “Hello?”

The door pushed wider open and a blond woman’s face appeared, her head tilted sideways. The face, which he did not recognize immediately, was delicate and pretty. She stepped into the doorway. The lope of her walk, combined with the delicacy and prettiness, made her sexy. This in turn depressed Buffett even more than Pellam’s visit.

“Hi. You’re not asleep?”

Hearing her voice, he remembered her name. “Nina, right? Pellam’s friend?”

As if she now had permission she entered the room. She wore a tight-fitting brown silk dress. A beige raincoat was over her arm. Donnie Buffett commanded himself to look at neither her abundant breasts nor her sleek, pale legs but only at her face.

“You’re Donnie.”

“You just missed him.” He smoothed his hair and stroked his two days’ growth of beard with forked fingers. “Did I?” She grimaced and Buffett wondered
why he had thought even momentarily that she had come to visit him. She asked, “When did he leave?”

Buffett looked at his watch, surprised. He thought he had slept for hours. “Thirty, forty minutes ago.”

“That’s John. Hard to pin him down. Oh hey! Nice roses. The ones I get never open up.”

“There’s this stuff in a packet that comes with them. You put it in the water.”

“They smell nice, too. You don’t know where he’s gone off to?”

If you only knew, lady.

“Sure don’t, no. Look, take some flowers. You want the roses, take them.” But she shook her head. He remembered that he’d tried this once before. Nobody liked hospital flowers. He figured people thought they were bad luck.

“Pellam told me about what happened to you in that factory downtown. That’s a tough neighborhood. You okay?”

She nodded but said nothing, as if the memory were too troubling; Buffett was sorry he’d brought up the attack. But he felt compelled to add, “Maybe you should, I don’t know, leave town or something, until they find who did it.”

“I could do that. I was thinking I would.”

What she did at the moment, though, was straighten a disordered pile of magazines on the bedside table until the corners were perfectly aligned.

Buffett’s eyes returned to the TV. Watching sports increased his depression but he had developed a taste for bad afternoon movies, provided the sound was off. Hearing the dialogue spoiled the experience. He had fallen asleep watching a silent, bad movie about the
hijacking of a ship. He wanted either to go back to sleep or to watch his movie. He was becoming irritated with her. “I thought visiting hours are over.”

“I smiled at the cop outside and he told the nurses to let me in.”

Buffett grunted but he tried to make it a pleasant grunt.

She walked further into the room. He did not like her putting her raincoat over the back of the chair. This meant she intended to stay. She kept looking at him. He felt like a freak. Why wouldn’t she leave?

“How are
you
feeling?” she asked.

“Great. I’m great.” On the screen the ship hijackers were chasing the good guys around the decks. Or maybe it was the good guys who were doing the chasing.

“You don’t sound real great.”

He looked back at her. “I get kind of groggy sometimes. Just sitting here.”

Her eyes flicked to his hand. “You’re married, right?”

“Yep.”

“Your wife visits you every day?”

“Sure.”
She’s a great little trouper.
“Brings me cookies. You want a cookie?”

“No, thank you. Any kids?”

“Nope. Sour cream dip? I think it’s onion. I don’t remember.”

Nina was not going away. Why was she forcing him to have a conversation with her? Why was her mouth curled into a tiny little smile when there was nothing to smile about?

Buffett said, “You’ve got a relative here, right?”

She nodded. “My mother. I was just visiting her. I got bored and left. Is that bad of me?” She asked this in a pouty way—the schoolgirl routine that she seemed to have perfected—and he understood he was supposed to tell her that it was not bad of her, which he did, though not very sincerely. Buffett watched the silent machine guns firing at fleeing sailors, who called silently for help. A number of them got gunned down. Several were shot in the back.

“Well,” she said, no longer smiling. “You’re sure Mister Quiet.”

Commandos were coming to save the ship.

“I guess I’m watching TV.”

“With the sound off?”

He clicked the off switch. He’d denied himself the treat of the commandos’ rescue and now she’d sense his resentment and leave.

But, no, she was walking around the room in a very leisurely way, straightening his magazines. Then she started on the vases.

“I think I’m becoming a curmudgeon,” he said by way of apology. “What is that exactly?”

“Got me. An old fart, I guess.” She began to throw out the dead flowers. “I’d think the nurses’d take better care of them.”

“They’re pretty busy. Everybody’s busy.”

Except me. I sit on my ass all day long. I can tell you all about fabric softener, breakfast cereal, and tampons. I could learn how to hijack ships if you’d leave me the hell alone.

She washed the vases in the bathroom and left them upside down to dry on the top of the toilet. Buffett took grudging pleasure in watching her. The glass
was immaculate. Some women are good at this, he thought. Give them a dirty bar of Ivory and a cheap paper towel and they’d make anything spotless. Penny had been this way.

Penny
is
this way, he corrected.

Nina walked to a low dresser across the room. Nothing more to wash. No more silent hijackers or Monistat commercials. No more crazy location scouts.

No more nothin’.

“Well, I’m pretty tired,” Buffett said, and yawned a fake but large yawn. “I think I’d like to get some sleep.”

“Naw,” Nina said, picking up a deck of cards from the dresser. “Don’t you think you’d really like to play gin rummy?”

JOHN PELLAM, HIS
bomber jacket covering Samuel Colt’s deadly brainchild, walked with the oblivion of landed gentry through the streets of Maddox, Missouri.

He kicked at a tuft of tall grass springing from a perfect hole in the middle of a cracked sidewalk slab. He continued on. There was no traffic here, foot or auto, along this row of buildings. The tallest structure on the block—a three-story factory—may have bustled in its heyday but the building now mocked its past; the roof had collapsed long ago and the old green sign on the facade read
FINERY,
the
RE
ironically worn down by some trick of erosion.

Looking behind him, looking down alleys, looking more often in the reflections of windows than at the sidewalk where he planted his brown Noconas, Pellam saw no one following.

He turned from this part of town and ambled
down Third—past the spot where Donnie Buffett had been shot. Here, too, he lingered. The rains had washed away the blood he’d seen, if it had been blood, and the cobblestones were everywhere clean. This is one advantage of ghost towns—fewer residents to toss litter on the streets. Pellam, unzipping his jacket slightly, paced back and forth. He wandered several blocks to the alley through which he had eluded the sedan several days before. All deserted.

Tony Sloan and the film company—still without their precious machine guns—were filming the few remaining scenes. Sloan was also, Pellam guessed, spending many hours on the phone arranging for extensions of the financing. Pellam himself avoided the set. Sloan wouldn’t speak to him. Besides, he had friends there and he wanted to keep what was about to happen as far removed from them as he could.

He lingered outside the camper at the Bide-A-Wee. He walked slowly around, then through, the old factory where Nina had been attacked. He wandered among the gray, corrugated metal Quonset huts, uninhabited, it seemed, since World War II. He walked along sidewalks of stores selling dusty office supplies and medical supplies. He found himself scanning the street in a window’s reflection for a long moment and realized he had been staring intently at thick mannequins wearing heavy girdles, chastely muted by an amber plastic sunscreen, and the store clerk had been studying
him
with amused curiosity.

Where is he? Where is Stile’s killer?

Pellam walked to the river and watched the sunset from a disintegrating bench in the scrubby remains of Maddox Municipal Park. The ambitions of the entire
town were expressed in a small store behind him. The wood sign that proclaimed the owner’s name was illegibly faded, but on the facade itself was a larger message, sloppily hand-painted:
Scrap Metal Bought. All Kinds. All Grades. Cash NOW!

After a dinner of a hamburger and a beer, Pellam wandered the streets again, streets he shared only with the few people meandering between the Jolly Rogue and Callaghan’s, and with packs of scrawny dogs with wild eyes but hopeful prances that sadly suggested domesticated puppyhoods.

At midnight he sat again in the park, with a beer he did not drink, watching the moon’s stippled reflection in the water, smelling the cold, marshy air and an oily smell from some distant factory or refinery.

When is he going to find me?

Yet nothing found him that night but sleep, and Pellam woke on the bench at 4:00
A.M.
, astonished at first at the extent of his exhaustion, then at his carelessness, and finally at his extraordinary good luck at escaping unharmed. He returned to the camper, sore and chilled, his hands shivering and the only warm aspect about him the wood grip of the Colt pressing hard against his belly.

DR. WENDY LOOKED
good.

Breezy. That was the way she walked. Breezy. What did they say in high school? There was a word. What was it?

Bopping.

Right. And you had to snap your fingers when you said it. Bopping.
Yeah, you see that girl? You see the way she bopped into the lunchroom?

“Yo, Dr. Wendy.”

“Morning, Donnie.”

He wondered if she sailed. He pictured her in a white bikini, with thin straps. She would have a small mound of a belly—he remembered the leather near-miniskirt—but that was okay. He wondered if she owned a boat. No, probably not; she spent all her money on clothes and weird earrings. But her boyfriend might have one.

He wondered if she spent every Sunday on his boat. He wondered what it would be like to be married to her.

He wondered if she ever went out with patients. Donnie Buffett decided he was going to ask her on a date.

She swung the door shut and did her cigarette routine. “I wanted to come right by. We’ve got the results, Donnie. The sexual response tests.”