Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery

by Jeffery Deaver

  Stevie Flom was cold and he was not interested in what was in the paper. He hadn’t slept well the night before, turning over and over, listening to the wind rock the single tree outside his bedroom window. He’d stared at the tree for a long time. When he had gone to bed there were seventeen leaves on it. When he had wakened there were eight. His wife had slept with a smile on her face and that pissed him off.

  Then she woke up cheerful and happy and that pissed him off too.

  What it was he was supposed to know about was this airplane that took off vertically, then the wings twisted forward and it flew like a normal plane. “That is a great idea.” Ralph Bales pointed at an abandoned dock beside the river. “See, it could land there. You wouldn’t have to go out to Lambert. That’s the biggest pain in traveling, getting to the airports, you ask me.”

  Stevie Flom didn’t travel much. Reno, of course. Then he and some of the guys had gone to a casino in Puerto Rico once. He’d taken the wife to Aruba, which was nothing but sand and wind and as hot as an engine block. He wondered why Ralph Bales traveled so much he had to worry about getting to the airport.

  “I wish I had a piece of that.”

  “Yeah,” Stevie Flom said, and he looked at the picture of the airplane, which, after a moment of reflection, he decided was a pretty good idea. He thought that with the money he was going to make from Lombro, he would take the wife on another vacation. Or maybe one of the girlfriends. He’d have to decide which one.

  “I’ve got the go-ahead,” Ralph Bales said. He turned the paper to the front page, where there were no airplanes or other clever ideas at all.

  “You got . . . Oh, to take care of the guy in the camper. The beer guy! Why’d it take so long?”

  “Lombro was nervous. I don’t know, he’s a—”

  “Weird dude is what he is.”

  “Yeah. Weird. He’s upped your share to ten.”

  “Ten thousand?”

  “Of course, thousand. What do you think?”

  “Well, why?” Stevie grinned deep creases into his baby-skin cheeks.

  “Why? Excuse me, you want me to call him up and give it back?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Curious. He’s curious,” Ralph Bales whispered. “You’ve got to make it look like an accident.”

  “Accident? Why?”

  “Because it’s got to. That’s why the extra money. I was thinking, maybe something with that motorcycle of his.”

  “He’s got a cycle?”

  “That yellow Yamaha. He keeps it on the back of his camper.”

  “Sure,” Stevie said. “A cycle accident. That’s easy.”

  Like he did it every day.

  STEVIE FLOM THOUGHT: Maddox is an easy place to steal a car but a tough place to drive one around once you’d boosted it.

  The cops didn’t have much else to do but check out hot cars and the place was hardly big enough to get lost in the camouflage of heavy traffic. He was eyeballed by two cops as he made his law-abiding way out of town. Stevie was also unhappy that this particular Dodge’s former owner was a rent-a-car company, which meant that the forty-eight thousand miles on it were hard miles, careless, heavy-foot miles. The damn thing rattled and clanked and there was a hiss coming from the AC even though it was off.

  But it moved pretty fast and he was able to keep up with the cycle though the beer guy drove like a son of a bitch. Stevie worried that if the Yamaha started lane-hopping he could kiss the man’s ass good-bye. He goosed the accelerator and closed on the cycle.

  He may have had a lemon car but Stevie was lucky in one respect. He had arrived at the Bide-A-Wee trailer park just as the guy walked out of the camper and jumped on the Yamaha. He’d even glanced at Stevie’s car but just briefly, not even looking in the driver’s seat. Stevie drove past. In the rearview mirror he watched the man kick-start the Yamaha. Stevie made a slow U-turn and followed.

  Now, on the expressway, the beer man changed lanes, shot forward, braked hard, then settled into the express lane, about twenty miles over the limit. Stevie, hands sweating, managed to keep with him and soon they were cruising smoothly toward St. Louis.

  As he tapped his gold pinkie ring on the steering wheel, Stevie was thinking about his father. He had a limited, but severe, repertoire of images of the old man and he realized now that some of them matched this fellow on the bike. Lean, mid-thirties, leather jacket, cycle. This thought put him in another bad mood, and, agitated, Stevie leaned forward to turn on the radio. It was a digital model and he couldn’t figure out how to set the station for the boss sound, We Rock St. Louis all the hits all the time. The old radios, you just twisted the dial to where you wanted it, then pulled the button out and shoved it back in. All this electronic stuff. Crap!

  He kicked it hard with his boot heel and cracked the housing. It kept playing something classical. He kicked it again and plastic snapped and the speaker went silent except for a hiss.

  Stevie Flom stopped worrying about music and concentrated on the motorcycle.

  DONNIE BUFFETT DID not see her right away. He opened his eyes and was afraid to move his head. He thought it might make him vomit, the motion. He had been on pills for a flare-up of pain in his shoulder—the gunshot wound—and they made him nauseated.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Penny, honey . . .” He lifted his hand out toward her, and—this was the weird thing—she grabbed it in both hands and kissed his fingers, then rubbed them against her cheek.

  He looked at her as though he had not seen her for months, as though he had never before seen her. Dark, thick hair, a narrow face, pretty. Good figure, bad posture, shoulders forward, to conceal large breasts of which she was self-conscious. She wore clothes he knew she owned and had worn before but which weren’t familiar to him: a gray suit, an orange blouse, light-colored nylons.

  Buffett wished they had a child, someone for Penny to be with. Someone whom Penny would have to be strong for. She had strength somewhere in her, he believed, but she needed someone, or something, to bring it out.

  She handed him a shopping bag. She had baked him some cookies (what he had told Pellam was true; she was a hell of a cook) and brought another bag of Ruffles potato chips and a container of Sour King French onion dip. A Reader’s Digest, some crossword puzzle books.

  Donnie Buffett had never done a crossword puzzle in his life.

  She bent down and kissed him, brother-sister, on the cheek. He smelled her perfume. Buffett wondered, If you got shot in the neck do you lose your sense of smell?

  But, of course, he hadn’t been shot in the neck. He had just been shot in the back. Luckily. He could still smell like a sonofabitch.

  He looked at the crossword book. “Thanks, hon.”

  “I’ve marked these for you.” She opened the Reader’s Digest for him. “My Battle with Leukemia.” There was another. “Live Your Life 365 Days a Year.”

  Another article was from Higher Self magazine, entitled “Joy: Go for It.”

  Buffett looked at the food, and Penny said, “I don’t know if you can eat those things.”

  “Sure. It’s not like I had my appendix out or anything.”

  She nodded earnestly.

  Buffett’s hair was a mess. It fell across his forehead. He was always pushing the dark strands off his face. He did this now and his arm went out of control. It crashed into the metal headboard of the bed.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  Penny’s pretty face was shocked. “The nurse,” she said, alarmed, standing up abruptly, looking for the call button.

  “I’m okay. It’s nothing. The pills I’m taking.”

  “The nurse!”

  “Penny.”

  Neither moved for a moment. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop saying that. Why are you saying that?”

  He opened the potato chips and ate a couple, to show her that he liked them. He could not bring himself to eat the dip. Then he ate a cookie. They were good. He ate another o
ne. The sweetness reminded him of his Last Supper, the doughnut and coffee Pellam had brought him. He picked up the bag she had brought, intending to set it on the floor beside the bed. He felt the candle inside the bag. He took it out. “Penny . . .”

  “I know what you think but it can’t hurt. And you’ve got oil, too.”

  “Oil.”

  She stood and took the bag from him. “It’s wish oil.”

  “Wish oil.”

  “What it is, you pour some in the bathtub—”

  “Well, I can’t take a bath.” He was exasperated. “How can I take a bath?”

  She stared at him, tears welling. “I don’t think you have to put it in a bath. I mean, if it works in the bath it’d work just as well dabbing it on you, wouldn’t it?” She added, “I know it works. You keep wishing that you’ll get well. Put the oil on you, then wish and wish and wish. I meditated for an hour and seven minutes last night . . .”

  The Terror hears this and rolls upright. It starts to prowl through Donnie Buffett’s guts.

  Sweat pops onto his forehead.

  Bleeding Christ, is it restless! Dodging around inside him, playing with the pain in his legs, slipping up to his heart, dancing over his crotch. (Can’t get south of there, can you, you shit?)

  The Terror. . . .

  He fights it down. He presses his nails into the palm of his left hand. He concentrates on the pain, willing it to become a wave of agony. This ironically numbs the Terror. Its prowling slows and it grows tired. Buffett begins to calm. Penny does not seem to notice her husband’s absence and continues to talk about shopping and her parents and a consciousness-raising group she’s been attending.

  The Terror finally falls asleep.

  Buffett took a deep breath and calmed down, then interrupted her to say, “I’d like you to meet my doctor.”

  Penny blinked.

  Buffett continued, “Dr. Weiser. She’s the best in the city.”

  “You know how I feel about doctors. You need more than—”

  “But I do need a doctor, honey,” he said. “Come on, please. Just meet her.”

  “Okay,” she said cheerfully, eyes sparkling, “I’d like that. I promise I won’t lecture her on . . .”

  What was she going to say? On the right way to practice medicine? Holism? Spiritualism?

  Penny did not continue her thought but instead crossed her heart like a coy schoolgirl. “Promise.” She nodded broadly, acknowledging, though she probably didn’t know it, her excessive sincerity.

  There were some moments when Penny appeared completely normal. Her hair would be shiny clean and curled nicely, her face—from the right angle—was soft, her collar turned up, covering the dark bones of her shoulders. Her hands would be folded; the torn cuticles and ragged ripped nails were out of view. A dancing light would be in her eyes—a little mystified, a little shy. It was charming.

  At those times, Donnie Buffett remembered the woman he had fallen in love with.

  He listened to her tell him about how she and her friends were going to be chanting for him.

  “Chanting,” Donnie Buffett said, and was suddenly tired. Exhausted. He closed his eyes and suddenly all he wanted was to fall back to sleep. The sleep in which he dreamed of pain flowing through muscles that now felt no pain. Fatigue wrapped around him sensuously and squeezed tight like a college girl making desperate love.

  “I’m beat, honey,” he muttered, pretending to doze.

  “You should sleep,” Penny said. She touched his hand.

  “Uh-huh.” Buffett almost opened his eyes and looked at her. But he chose not to. He felt momentarily guilty about this deception.

  I’m a lucky man. Lucky lucky lucky. I didn’t get shot in the brain. I didn’t get shot in the heart. I didn’t get shot in the neck. I can still smell.

  And he could hear her voice in a detached little whisper, “You sleep now, honey. I’m going home.” He heard paper crinkle. “These are the instructions for the candle.”

  Donnie Buffett breathed deeply like a man asleep. And in less than a minute this lie became the truth and he was dreaming that he was skiing down a panoramic mountain of huge white cliffs rising into an infinitely blue sky.

  HALFWAY TO ST. Louis, Stevie saw his chance. He gunned the engine and the car sluggishly responded, moving ahead of a lumbering truck.

  He eased up right behind the Yamaha. A dirt bike, it looked like, with the high fenders that doubled as mudguards and the long shocks that would take the potholes and shitty city streets easily. The rack was cockeyed. Stevie studied the yellow fenders and the silver bars and the red helmet and the leather jacket of the driver and then started looking for an exit ramp.

  He saw one a half mile ahead and glanced in the rearview mirror, at what loomed behind him. It was a White semi. Not the trailer, just the tractor, the sort with the ten forward gears and a steering wheel wide as a tire. The truck would have air brakes and little weight, but at sixty it’d skid for a hundred fifty feet.

  A quarter mile away.

  Stevie Flom started signaling.

  He accelerated until he was three feet from the beer man, who was hunched forward, sunlight flaring off his helmet. The truck driver was holding back, seeing Stevie’s turn signal but maybe a little confused because the Dodge was not slowing.

  A hundred yards.

  Stevie eased into the left side of the lane.

  The truck driver must have figured the signal was a mistake and had accelerated again, driving up to within two car lengths of Stevie. On the right, the exit ramp blossomed outward.

  Stevie floored the pedal and looked to his right, then cut the wheel hard.

  His left front bumper goosed the rear wheel of the Yamaha right out from underneath him.

  A mad flurry of motion from the bike—a panicked glance over his shoulder as the Yamaha began to lie down. The horn and the gutsy squeal of the truck’s brakes filling the air. The man’s left boot slamming down onto the highway in an automatic way, hopeless. Reaching up, pitching forward, flying over the twisted handlebars.

  Sparks sailing off the gas tank of the cycle. The beer man, his mouth open in a shout that Stevie could not hear, hands outward, began to tumble on the concrete at fifty miles an hour, the fiberglass of the helmet shredding.

  Stevie skidded the Dodge into the off ramp, just missing a yellow plastic collision barrel as he braked to twenty-five. He was too busy controlling the skid to see exactly what happened on the expressway. Then he was at the bottom of the ramp. He heard the squealing of tires and horns. Then he caught the end of a yellow light and made a leisurely turn onto a grimy, cobblestoned street of body shops and empty warehouses and shabby bungalows, not far from the Mississippi River.

  Chapter 18

  THE SERVICE WAS in a boxy building in downtown Maddox.

  Beth Israel Memorial Chapel.

  Pellam hadn’t known that Stile was Jewish. They had talked about many things, from women to whiskey to real estate, but religion was in that category of topics where their conversation did not go—for instance, why Stile remained in his profession and never sought to do second-unit directing, as so many stuntmen do. Or why Pellam stopped directing after Tommy Bernstein died.

  Pellam had spoken to Stile’s cousin in San Diego—his closest living relative—and he had learned that Stile had been raised Reform Jewish. Calls were made, and a service arranged.

  The body was en route to southern California and 168 people now stood in a dark building in a shabby part of a dark Missouri town that had long ago lost whatever allure, or novelty, it might have had for them. From the outfits, this seemed more like a fashion show than a service: No one had brought funeral clothing, of course, but this was a Hollywood crew so there was plenty of black, albeit in the form of minidresses and spandex and baggy suits. Adding to the surrealness were the yarmulkes perching on the men’s heads.

  The stunt coordinator, Stile’s boss, was a tough sixty-five-year-old with blurred tattoos on his forearms, now covere
d by the sleeves of a wrinkled gray suit. He had fallen off horses at John Ford’s direction and crashed through windows at Sam Peckinpah’s and he was now crying like an infant. A lot of other people cried too. Nobody had disliked Stile, the man who fell from 130-foot cliffs and who walked through fire.

  Pellam had no idea what to say, not to anyone. Stile had died because of him. The Yamaha had been the property of the Missouri River Blues Partnership and when Pellam had turned over the location forms and files to Stile, according to Sloan’s orders, Pellam had added, “Take the Yamaha, too, if you want it. Tony’s gonna make me give it back sooner or later.” Stile thanked him, left the rental car at the campground for Pellam’s use, and burned rubber away to the interstate. He had a date in St. Louis with Hank the lawyer about location releases for the infamous final shootout scene in Missouri River Blues.

  What could Pellam say?

  He put his arm around the shoulders of one of the young actresses and let her cry. Pellam smelled bitter hair spray and cigarette smoke. She wasn’t hysterical. She trembled. Pellam didn’t cry. He went to a pew and sat next to several other crew members, older men, gaffers. A rabbi—or maybe just the funeral director—walked to the front of the room. He began talking. Pellam did not pay attention to the words; they were not, for him at least, important. The purpose of the ritual had nothing to do with Stile, not now. It was not the sermon but the interval it occupied—this hour in a woody, mute room with a respectful velvet hat on your head—that was the point: a block of time reserved solely for death.

  Pellam heard the drone of the speaker’s words, a soft baritone.

  He wished he knew how to pray.

  He decided he would suggest that Sloan dedicate Missouri River Blues to Stile, a film that had turned out to be not the product of artistic vision at all but simply one hell of a stuntman’s movie.

  No, not suggest. Whatever else there was between Sloan and him, Pellam would insist on the dedication. It was something he could do.