Bloody River Blues

"Dark Lincoln. It was parked across the street. I didn't get tag numbers or make." Buffett coughed. "I want some water."

Hagedorn went into the John and got a glass.

He handed it to Buffett, who hesitated then said, "I might puke."

Gia

Buffett didn't puke, though, and he handed the empty glass back to Hagedorn with triumph. "Best thing I ever had in my mouth."

The men laughed; there was no need to say aloud any of the three punch lines that materialized simultaneously in three different minds.

Gia

"No, he drove off by himself. Maybe it was somebody who had to ID the hit."

"Naw," Gia

Buffett said, 'Well, maybe it was the guy who hired baldy."

"Some big fish? I wonder. Do

"No, but I saw a guy who did."

"There's a witness?"

Buffett told them about the beer incident. 'This guy was talking to the driver, saying something."

"Fantastic." Hagedorn smiled.

Gia

Buffett was about to give them a description, and that's what did it. The Word came back to him. The magic Word.

Buffett beamed. He whispered, "Pellam."

'Tell him?" Gia

"His name's Pellam." The smile on Buffett's face glistened and grew.

"You got his name?" Gia

"Du

"We'll find him," Gia

The smile slipped off Buffett s face as he tried to shift his leg and found he was unable to. The sheet, he guessed, was rucked in too tightly. He absently pulled at the bedclothes and smacked his thigh. "Gotta get the circulation going. I've been on my butt too long."

"We're go

"One thing," Buffett said, "you know witnesses. When it's a hit like this? He's go

Gia

Apparently some trouble with the chili.

The beer and whiskey were gone completely, but the whole pot of chili was pretty much untouched.

Da

"What'd you do to the chili?" Da

The chili?

Stile slipped Labatt's bottles into another bag and twirled his bushy mustache. Although Pellam was descended-so the family story went-from a real gun-slinger, Pellam thought Stile was a dead ringer for the ancestor in question, Wild Bill Hickok. Stile was lanky and had a droopy Vietnam vet mustache the shade of his dark blond hair. He reflected, "I remember this western I worked on one time… I forget whose. I was falling off a cliff. I think it was an eighty-foot cliff… and the compressor broke, so they couldn't inflate the air bag as much as the unit director wanted to."

"Hm," Pellam muttered, and stepped into the kitchenette to look at the chili. He'd eaten two bowls, piled with onions and slices of American cheese. Seemed okay to him.

"No," Stile reflected. "It was a hundred-and-thirty-foot cliff."

Bored again, Da

Stile: "Man, there we were in the middle of this desert, in a very Native American frame of mind, you know what I'm saying?"

What's wrong with the chili?

Pellam tried another spoonful. Yup, burned. It reminded him of Scotch, the smokiness. But there wasn't anything wrong with it. It could have been intended, as if he had tried a new recipe. If it tasted like mesquite, for instance, nobody would have said anything, except maybe "Damn good chili, Pellam."

He piled dishes in the tiny sink, rinsed some of them in the dribble of the water from the faucet.

"Anyway, when I landed I went down so far, my belt loops made an impression in the mud beneath the bag."

"Uh. That happens sometimes," Da

To air out the camper Pellam opened the front door. Chili smoke was only part of it. The lawyer from St. Louis had been lighting one cigarette after another. Pellam had noticed that midwesterners did not seem to know this habit was bad for you.

Da

"To Live and Die in L.A.," Stile whispered reverently. "Awesome scene. The jump from the bridge."

Pellam, still at the front door, squinted. He saw a large, boxy shadow in the grass not far from where the camper was parked. What was it? He squinted, which didn't help. He remembered seeing that area in the daylight-it was a field full of crabgrass and weeds. What would be sitting in the middle of a lousy field this time of night? Fu

… a car.

It accelerated fast, spraying dirt and stones, nosing quickly out of the grass, grinding the undercarriage as it went over the sharp drop to the highway.

Probably lovers, Pellam thought. Necking. He could not remember the last time he necked. Did people still do it? Probably in the Midwest they did. Pellam lived in Los Angeles and nobody he'd ever dated there necked.

It was only when he turned back to the camper that he realized that the car had not turned on its lights until it was far down River Road; because of this, the license plate was not illuminated until it was too far away to be read. Odd…

"Wish I'd seen it," Da

"Was just a car," Pellam muttered, glancing toward the disappearing taillights.

The other two stared at him.

"I meant," Da

"Oh."

Da

"You don't have to."

"Not a problem."

He washed everything but the chili pot.

"Man, black-bottom chili. You're on your own there, buddy."

"I got diverted on my way back from the store."

Stile asked, "How long you in this hellhole of a town for?"

"Till shootings done. Tony's reshooting every other scene."

"He does that, yup. Well, if we're here next week, come over to the Quality I

Stile had been in town three weeks and had already burned out the transmission of his rental car. Rental companies should ask for occupation and not rent their vehicles to stuntmen.

Pellam walked him to the door. "When you got here, d'you see a car parked over there?"

"Where? There? That's just a mess of weeds, Pellam. Why'd anybody park there?"