Bloody River Blues

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 sca

Where is he? Where is Stiles 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 di

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, Do

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. Do

She swung the door shut and did her cigarette routine. "I wanted to come right by. We've got the results, Do

"Okay, I'm sitting down-as if I had an option." His smile faded and his brow creased with concern. "What's the verdict?"

"You're reflex incomplete."

He had forgotten what this meant, but the way she said it, the significant tone and smile of minor triumph, he guessed it was good news.

"… nearly one hundred percent of these patients can have erections, either reflexogenic or psychogenic. Not all of them, but a good percentage, can ejaculate. There will be a lowered sperm count but all that means is if you want to have children, you'll have to try harder."

Weiser shook his hand as if they'd just completed a business deal.

"Well, there you go," Buffett said happily, and began to sob.

The cop's eyes flooded with tears and his breath shook out of his body in spasms. His face swelled with a huge pressure.

He tried to speak but was unable to.

What's happening to me?

Weiser said nothing.

Buffett was choking on tears, he was drowning in them. They were going to kill him, drain away his life like spurting blood.

Was he going crazy? Had it finally happened? What stage of recovery is hysteria, sweetheart? Crying harder than when he was a kid, harder than when he broke his nose, harder than when his mother died… He could… not… breathe… He struggled to control the jag. Finally he did. The air sucked in deeply and he relaxed. "I…" Another attack struck. He buried his face in wads of Kleenex. "I…" He substituted a pillow for the tissue and cried some more. Gradually the tears ceased.

"Can I get you anything?" Weiser asked.

He shook his head, gasping.

He didn't want her to see him this way. The beautiful, breezy doctor with the spaghetti-strap bikini and the twenty-foot sailboat. The doctor with the boyfriend and her twelve-year-old daughter. But he was out of control, gasping for breath and crying like a swatted newborn.

She asked if he wanted to be by himself and he shook his head and threw his arm over his face. After a few minutes he began laughing softly. "I'm a nut case," he wheezed.

"You don't have any idea the kind of stress you're going through."

Buffett felt no Terror and no Depression but instead a roaring mania. "I don't know why I'm crying, I don't know why," he whispered as the sobbing began again. "I don't know why…"

Weiser did not offer any explanation. She sat for a moment, watching him, then stood, opened the window, and lit another cigarette.

Afternoon in Maddox, Missouri.

Pellam had spent hours wandering around again, playing bait. He walked through antique stores, up and down the streets, had a beer at each of three interchangeable taverns, walked some more, looking from behind his Ray-Bans for the man who was looking for him.

As he walked, he stayed apart from the crowd, he wandered slowly, he put his back toward several alleys and many cruising cars.

Pellam decided he had gotten very good at making himself a target.

At 5:00, after eight hours on his feet, he found himself in the crowded farmers' market off River Road. The dusty parking lot was filled with stalls where farmers- traditional ones as well as past and present hippies-from Missouri and southern Illinois sold cheese and veggies and muffins and apples and-sure enough- northern watermelon. Pellam looked at the bleak gaiety of the place with its faded ba

A half hour later, Pellam decided it was time to return to the camper. He bought a bottle of wine, some cheese, crunchy Dutch pretzels, and two plums.

He clumsily discarded his boots and jacket when he entered the Wi

He had an urge to see Nina but he dared not, for fear of imperiling her again. This happened so often in his life-wanting, then pursuing, regardless of the danger. Oh, John Pellam did not like this aspect of himself- how he welcomed risks. This nature had led him to be a stuntman for a time, had prodded him to make movies that critics may have loved but that lost big money for many people. He easily forgot that others might get hurt because of him. John Pellam believed in his darker moments that he carried in his heart more of his gun-fighting ancestor than was good for him. And for those around him.