Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery (31 page)

No. Don’t do this to me. Please. Don’t . . .

She looks down at him, at the terror on his face.

I want to go to sleep. I want to—

But she is bending forward, a slight smile on her face. He is enveloped in her perfume, strawberry and spice, and she is kissing him, her mouth firm against his. He feels her tongue, just its tip against his lips, then through them. She is kissing him hungrily.

He is trembling.

She backs away.

She is wearing a large silver sparkly bra, garter belt and stockings, and white panties. All white, all lacy and glistening in the low light.

“Look,” Donnie Buffett says and he is sweating. “Don’t—”

“Shhhh.” She bends forward and kisses him again. He feels the pressure of her breasts under the silky cloth. She knows he feels it and rubs against him as she kisses him. Her tongue slips farther into his mouth. He doesn’t know what to do. He kisses her back.

Wondering if he’ll feel anything, if he’ll feel that twisty-warm sense, but then no, he doesn’t. And then he wants her to go away, wanting that more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life . . .

She backs off again, still smiling. He is terrified and begs her to leave. “The thing is, with this accident . . . Like I was saying. You . . .”

She turns her back to him, ignoring him. He hears her whisper, “Help me.”

His arms slump. “I’m sorry . . .”

“Please,” she whispers. “For me? I want it for
me.”

Somehow this changes everything. He lifts his hands and undoes the hook of her bra and she is backing into him, forcing his hands to encircle her breasts and grip them. Her neck is inches from his mouth. He lowers his mouth to it and is caught in an avalanche of her hair. He tastes it. He smells strawberry. When she rubs against him it is as though they are underwater and their bodies are sliding past each other on the current. He turns her around in his arms and kisses her hard.

She slides off the bed and stands in front of him as she slips her panties down. He sees the blond fuzz. This hair, too, fascinates him; it is so fine you can’t really see the hair, it’s more a blur of focus where her legs come together. She begins to touch herself, running her hands over her body, taking handfuls of her head hair and spreading them around her flesh.

Then she hops up on the bed again, puts one leg on either side of his head, and bends forward, kissing his chest and stomach as she pushes the blankets aside.
He is muttering no no no, but the way it is working out, his mouth being where it is, she can’t hear his words anyway and he gives up talking and all he can do is think, hell, let’s do it do it do it . . .

This—a memory, not a fantasy—was prominently in Donnie Buffett’s mind when he opened his eyes and saw John Pellam standing in the doorway of his hospital room.

Buffett blinked then he cleared his throat. “Hey, chief. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Hello, Donnie.” Pellam walked into the room. His boots made a particularly loud noise.

Oh, Christ. He knows.

“Listen, John . . .” Buffett looked up at the blank TV screen, then at the row of flowers. His face felt suddenly thick and hot, as if filled with steam.
Oh, man, here’s the guy bought me beer and has treated me like a real person, he’s the first one in the whole world after the accident to tell me to go to hell, no kid gloves, no bullshit, and what do I do? I fuck his woman. Oh, man. Oh, man . . .

“John, listen, I was going to tell you.”

Pellam was grinning. This made Buffett feel a thousand times worse.

“It wasn’t like I planned it. I know I was ragging you about the casting couch thing but it’s not like I said to her, ‘Oh, poor me, I can’t get it up.’ It wasn’t a trick or anything.”

That
did
work, though, come to think of it.

“It’s all right, Donnie.”

“I’m not saying she came on to me. I’d never say that to avoid taking my own lumps, you know? But she was easy to talk to and I was feeling really bad.
She hugged me and . . . It just sort of happened. I really
was
going to tell you. Really, man. But last time you were in, you were so, you know, upset about your friend . . .”

“She isn’t for me,” Pellam told him.

“No, no, she likes you. I know she does.”
Wait. Would this make him feel better or worse?
“What happened . . .”

“Donnie, I’ve got no claim on her.”

“I talked you up afterwards.” He said this cautiously.

Pellam was sitting down in the chair. “I wouldn’t’ve come by today if I was mad.”

Buffett could think of nothing to do but extend his hand. They shook solemnly, and Pellam seemed amused by this formal gesture of apology. “I need some help, Donnie.”

“Anything. You name it. My buddies still hassling you? I’ll get them off your case, John. Don’t worry. I’ll call the mayor if I have to.”

Pellam looked over the untouched dinner tray. Donnie followed his eyes. He asked, “Break bread?”

“Haven’t eaten in a day.”

“Help yourself.”

It wasn’t bread, it was soup, rice, and red Jell-O. Pellam ate the soup, Buffett, the rice. They split the saltines and divided the Jell-O into two bowls.

“You know, don’t you,” Buffett said, “Jell-O really sucks?”

“Uh-huh.” But Pellam seemed hungry. And with milk poured over it the Jell-O was not bad, though Pellam didn’t get much milk; he had the fork and Buffett had the spoon.

One cube slipped away from Buffett and he chased it off the tray and onto the sheet and blanket. “Shit.” He cocked his middle finger against his thumb and flicked the cube into the wall. It left a pink wound on the wall and splatted on the floor. The men laughed.

Pellam told Buffett about an old record of his uncle’s, a comedy record from the fifties. Who was the guy? Del Close, he thought. It was called
How to Speak Hip.
There was this routine, he explained, about a man who gets hung up on Jell-O. He keeps eating these bowls of Jell-O and ordering more. Going from restaurant to restaurant. Everybody’s staring at him. What flavor was it? Strawberry, he thought. Or raspberry. “It’s to teach you the expression ‘hung up on.’ You know, like beat talk was a foreign language.” Pellam said that he had listened to the record a hundred times when he was a kid. He loved the Jell-O routine.

Buffett smiled politely, waiting for the punch line, but apparently there was none.

“You have to sort of hear it,” Pellam said. “And be in the mood.”

“No, it was funny,” Buffett said quickly. Today, at least, he was Pellam’s toady.

But Pellam seemed to have lost his taste for humor—as well as for Jell-O and for conversation. He wiped his face. He nodded to the bedside table and said, “I guess I better do it. Let me see that phone for a minute, would you?”

THE U.S. ATTORNEY
was in court when the call came in.

The secretary buzzed Nelson’s office and asked, “There’s a man on three. He says it’s important. When will Mr. Peterson be back?”

“Take a message, darling,” Nelson snapped. He returned to a lengthy set of interrogatories.

“It’s a Mr. Pellam and he says—”

Click.

“Mr. Pellam, Mr.
Pellam
. How are you? This is Mr. Peterson’s assistant, Nelson Stroud. Is there something I can do for you?”

“I want to talk to Peterson.”

“Is this about the Crimmins situation?”

Pellam said that it was.

“Well, is there anything
I
can help you with?”

“Where is he?”

“Mr. Peterson? He’s in court. He won’t be back for several hours.”

“Oh.” There was a long silence. Nelson gripped the phone hard and believed that if he breathed too loud, he would blow away the fragile phone connection.

“You’re a lawyer?”

“Assistant U.S. Attorney for the—”

“Okay. I want a meeting.”

Bingo!

“Fine, absolutely fine. You name a time, you name a place. Whatever.”

“Your office, I’d like it to be in your office.”

“Sure, that’s fine. Tomorrow? Tomorrow morning?”

“Sure, tomorrow morning. Only . . .”

“What is it?”

“Only there’s a problem. I need some assurance from you.”

“Assurance, assurance, of course.” Nelson’s hands were vibrating. This was the big time, this was negotiating with vital witnesses, and he was terrified. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

“I want some guarantee that I won’t be prosecuted,” Pellam said.

“Why would you be prosecuted?”

There was a pause. “Because I lied when I told you I hadn’t seen Peter Crimmins in the Lincoln.”

THE PRESS CONFERENCE
that evening was short.

The reporters had hoped for something hot—perhaps Peterson’s announcement that he was resigning to run for the Senate or that he was handling some big corporate whistle-blower case or that the Justice Department would dish up something photogenic for the newshounds—like a good drug bust, the sort where the FBI and DEA lay out all the Uzis and Brownings in the front of the table and all the plastic bags of smack or coke in the back and declaim about the progress in the war on organized crime.

But all they got was Peterson standing at a chipped podium emblazoned with a U.S. Department of Justice seal, droning on and on and on . . .

He spoke to them in the vast monotone that marked his delivery at all of his press conferences. “I’m pleased to announce that a witness in the Vincent Gaudia killing has come forward and agreed to testify before the grand jury. This is an individual whom my office identified immediately after the killing and who had serious, and understandable, concerns about his safety, and who expressed those concerns, but who has now come forward
in exchange for my agreeing not to prosecute for obstruction of justice.”

Which was a jaw-cracker of a sentence and left the reporters thinking up fast paraphrases.

When asked if this was a reliable witness, Peterson said, “He looked into the front seat of the car driven by the man we are certain is responsible for the killing. He was no more than three feet away. He assures me he can make a positive ID.”

A reporter shouted, “Has Peter Crimmins been identified as the man in that car?”

But Peterson knew the game of reporter dodge; he was not going to give the defense lawyers a chance to claim prejudice. He said, “All I can say at this time is that the witness will be giving us a formal statement at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. We anticipate an arrest within twenty-four hours of that.”

Peterson then deflected a number of questions about the killing and talked about several drug busts and other recent prosecution victories of the U.S. Attorney’s office recently.

“I heard rumors,” a woman reporter called in an abrasive voice, “that you arrested Tony Sloan, the movie director who’s currently shooting a film in Maddox.”

Peterson glared into the video camera lights. “That is
absolutely
untrue. The movie company brought a large number of automatic weapons into the district. Both FBI and BATF agents from the Treasury Department observed what appeared to be an irregularity in the firearm permits and we just wanted to keep an eye on them to make sure they
didn’t fall into the wrong hands. We did not at any time contemplate criminal action against Mr. Sloan and the film company. The local police in Maddox, I understand, took it upon themselves, for some reason, to make an arrest. Our findings are that the permits are in order and I’m releasing the weapons presently.”

“Are you saying that the Maddox police arrested Mr. Sloan improperly?”

“I won’t comment on the judgment of fellow law enforcement agencies. The arrest was a Maddox Police Department decision. Ask them about it.”

There were several other
no comment
s. Finally a very preoccupied Ronald Peterson wandered off the stage, leaving the press corps to call their desks or tape their intros. Most of the TV reporters were far more interested in the Tony Sloan angle than the Gaudia killing and decided to run some clips from
Circuit Man
in the segment about Sloan’s arrest.

But hard news is hard news and everybody wrote up at least a news bite about the witness for ten o’clock. Vince Gaudia was, after all, Maddox’s only honest-to-God hit for as long as anyone could remember.

AS IT TURNED
out, Ralph Bales was playing darts and did not happen to hear the story. Philip Lombro, however, did. And by nine that evening was on the phone.

“He cheated us,” Lombro said. “He took the money and he cheated us! He’s going to testify!” His voice was high. Some of this was indignation and some of it was anger. But most of his agitation came from disgust
with himself that this whole thing had gotten wildly out of hand.

“Looks that way,” Ralph Bales said. “He’s meeting Peterson tomorrow?”

“At nine-thirty.”

After a lengthy silence, in which he heard the sound of male laughter in the background, Lombro said, “What exactly are you going to do?”

“Okay, I think you’ve gotta agree we don’t have much choice.”

Lombro sighed deeply. He did not agree with anything that Ralph Bales said or thought. But the whole matter had moved beyond him now. He realized he was being asked a question and said, “What?”

“I said, you haven’t by any chance heard from a guy named Stevie Flom, have you?”

“Who?”

“A guy working with me.”

“No. I don’t even know him. Why would I?”

“No reason. I haven’t heard from him.”

“Why would he call
me?
”

“I mentioned I worked for you once. It’s not important. Anyway, about our situation—”

“Just finish this thing,” Lombro said desperately. “Finish it.”

“You want me to . . .”

“Do what you have to” were Lombro’s closing words but they had hardly the energy to carry forty miles to the other end of the phone line.