Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery Read online

  He ran his hand along her pale cheek. “Put your hands under you.”

  She did not understand and he repeated the words calmly. When she still did not comprehend this instruction, he illustrated, lifting up her hips and shoving her hands beneath her buttocks. Maybe he wanted her hands pinned so she could not scratch him.

  He bent down, kneeling, and put his mouth next to her ear. Nina twisted her head away, wincing and expecting to be kissed. She felt the heat of his breath.

  “Please,” she cried, “don’t.”

  “I have a message for your friend.”

  She did not hear this. “Please.”

  “Listen! . . . Are you listening?”

  She nodded, crying again.

  “Mr. Crimmins knows that your friend saw him in the car that night. You tell him that if he testifies, I’ll come back. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “What—?”

  “Did you hear me?”

  Nina said, “Mr. Crimmins . . .”

  “And if I come back—” he touched her cheek again “—you’re not going to like it.”

  Nina’s body was racked with sobbing.

  He said, “Don’t move for a half hour. Stay right where you are.” He stood up. She heard no footsteps, nor did she hear the rattle of the chain on the front door. Because of this she believed he was still there, watching her, perhaps hidden in the shadows only ten feet away. She stared at the distant square of greasy glass, lit by the sun and the thin auras encircling it, the rings of red light that her tears created.

  HE FOUND HER sitting curled up, outside the factory, staring down at the branch-cracked sidewalk at her feet. “Nina?”

  She did not look up. Not for a moment. When she did it was with eyes full of tears. He sensed she had been assembling herself—forcing herself to be placid.

  “John . . .” Her voice broke with sobbing. She was shivering.

  “What is it?” He crouched next to her.

  Her arms hugged him hard and she was shaking hysterically. “There was a man.”

  Pellam stiffened. He took her by the shoulders. “What happened?”

  Sobbing again. He had to wait. He wanted to shake it out of her, force her to tell him. But he waited.

  Nina pulled away and roughly wiped her ear—where the attacker’s mouth had been—as if scraping the skin clean. “He didn’t . . . do anything. He just knocked me down.”

  “Let’s call the cops.” Pellam started to stand.

  “He said . . . He told me to tell you something.”

  “Me?”

  “He said he worked for the man you saw, the man in the Lincoln. And if you tell the police he’d come back and . . . Crimmins, he said the name was.”

  His hands began to quiver in rage, then his neck. He couldn’t control it. Then his jaw and head, shaking uncontrollably. He blinked. His eyes watered with the fury. His jaw suddenly cramped and he realized his teeth were jammed together.

  “John—”

  “Let’s call the police.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “What? We have to.”

  “No, John. Please. He didn’t hurt me. Not really. But I’m scared of him. He said he’d come back.” She looked at him with frightened, wet, round eyes. “Please. Just take me home.”

  Pellam looked around the field and brush surrounding the factory. He thought back to the dark car that had cruised past while they were on the street. All his enemies in this town were faceless. Where were they? Pellam thought momentarily of his distant ancestor Wild Bill, who fought it out with gunfighters face-to-face and no more than a dozen feet apart (except, of course, for the last one, the one who shot him in the back).

  “This guy, what did he look like?” Pellam asked.

  She described him as best she could, the hair, the youthfulness, the pink glasses. She thought for a moment and described his pants and jacket. She could not remember his shoes or shirt.

  “There’s something else about him . . .”

  “What?” Pellam helped her to her feet.

  “He had a red mark on his cheek. Like a big birthmark. It looked like that red spot on Jupiter.” She touched her own cheek.

  “Jupiter.”

  “The planet,” Nina said. “Will you please take me home now?”

  “I DON’T NEED a goddamn appointment.”

  Pellam shoved the door open. It swung into a bookshelf. A precariously balanced volume tumbled to the bare floor with the sound of a gunshot.

  He stopped. Four people gazed at him. Three were astonished. U.S. Attorney Ronald Peterson looked calmly at Pellam as he walked farther into the room. The others, two men and a woman, were young. Their eyes danced between the intruder and Peterson. Pellam ignored them and said, “I want to talk to you. Now.”

  “Ten minutes. You mind?” Peterson asked his coterie.

  Even if they had, he was obviously their boss, and the only debate they were presented was whether it was better protocol to take their files or leave them. The papers remained where they were and the youngsters walked silently out of the room.

  Pellam put his hands on the cluttered desk, knocking aside a windup set of dentures. He leaned forward. “I want protection for myself, my friends, and for everybody with the film company. A friend of mine was just attacked. I want an agent at her apartment now! She lives in Cranston, on—”

  “Have a seat, Mr. Pellam.”

  Pellam remained standing, glancing from the windup toy collection into the man’s serene olive pits of eyes. The U.S. Attorney motioned to a chair. “Please.”

  Pellam sat down.

  “You say she was attacked, this friend of yours?”

  Pellam told him about the factory and the man with the birthmark.

  “Crimmins.” Peterson’s troubled eyes scanned the colorful foliage outside his window. He spat out, “That son of a bitch.”

  “Your agents told me he’d hired some hit man in Chicago or Detroit or something. This’s him. This is the guy. I want protection.”

  “Protection?”

  “Agents,” Pellam exploded. “You know, bodyguards.”

  “U.S. Marshals? That’s a lot of taxpayers’ money to devote to protecting someone.”

  “You’ve got this witness protection . . .”

  “Ah, the key word. Witness.”

  Pellam said, “Look, you’re playing a game. You know his name. Crimmins. Go arrest him.”

  Peterson said, “I’m confused. If you didn’t see him, why would he threaten you?”

  “Well, he doesn’t know I didn’t see anything. Why are you hesitating? You want Crimmins. He’s just threatened me and assaulted my friend. Go arrest him.”

  “The attack that you say—”

  Pellam was on his feet. “I say? . . . My friend—”

  Peterson held up a hand. “Excuse me. My mistake. I apologize. Please—have a seat.”

  Pellam sat down.

  The U.S. Attorney said, “What exactly do you want?”

  “I want protection. I keep saying that.”

  “I suppose we could put one man on it for a while. But what happened to your friend isn’t a federal crime. It’s an assault. There’s no federal jurisdiction—”

  “You mean it’s not a crime to threaten a federal witness?” His voice faded in reverse proportion to Peterson’s smile.

  “We come back to that again. See what I’m saying? You’re not a witness. No jurisdiction. There’s nothing we can do.”

  Pellam’s voice was soft. “That’s the kind of technicality you people like to use.”

  Peterson paused a moment, maybe wondering which category the you people described. “The point is, even if we got a conviction for this attack, the best we could do is put him away for a year, tops. He’d be out and after you again twice as mad. Or after your friend.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Peterson pressed an intercom button. A middle-aged woman in a white blouse and tan skirt appeared in the doorway. “Yessir?�
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  “Bring me the Crimmins file, please.”

  “All of it, Mr. Peterson?”

  “No, sorry. Just the background file. The first Redweld.” He looked at Pellam. “You really don’t know who Peter Crimmins is? Well, let me tell you. Second-generation Russian. Ukrainian, I mean. I suppose we have to be careful with that nowadays. He made a lot of money in the trucking business and we know that he’s built up a huge money-laundering operation. It was some people that work for him got into a battle with a Jamaican street gang in East St. Louis.”

  Pellam pictured the windup toys strolling off the edge of the desk and some young assistant attorney scurrying to retrieve them from the floor. “What exactly—”

  “Twelve people were killed.” Peterson frowned but did not seem to be particularly shocked or mournful.

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “‘Massacre.’ That’s what the Post-Dispatch said. Not exactly hyperbole. Seven of them were bystanders.”

  “Tough luck in an election year.”

  Peterson was immobile for a moment. He lifted a very white finger to his earlobe and stroked it absently three times. When he spoke his voice was temperate. “The office of U.S. Attorney is an appointed position.”

  Pellam gazed at him skeptically.

  “I have no aspirations to be mayor of this city. Or governor of the state or senator. I have yet to understand why anyone would want to be a representative.”

  The secretary appeared and set a large, battered red-brown file folder on Peterson’s desk. The U.S. Attorney opened the file and pulled out a number of stacks of papers and clippings. He upended one stack on his lap and began flipping through it, squinting.

  The pictures spun out, flying like Frisbees. Pellam glanced at them. He was surprised they were in color. For some reason he had assumed police photographers used black-and-white film. He was surprised at how bright the blood was. He had seen bodies before; blood in real life seemed darker.

  “Those were ten-year-old boys. Though it’s hard to tell after what happened to them.”

  Pellam picked up the glossy photos and tossed them back to Peterson. One fell on the floor. The U.S. Attorney picked it up and stared at it. “Two years ago, we were very close to indicting Peter Crimmins on several racketeering counts. We had a material witness. A young woman, a secretary, who could implicate Crimmins. There was a freak accident. Somehow a pot of boiling water fell off the stove. Third-degree burns on her groin and thighs. She said she was cooking.” Peterson’s voice rose into an eerie wail. “Third-degree burns. Her skin was like cooked steak!” The eyes glowed. “But you know what was odd, what was very odd? The accident happened at midnight.” Peterson lifted his palms. “My wife doesn’t cook at midnight. Do you know anybody who cooks at midnight?”

  Pellam was silent. Peterson’s head bobbled with rage. Slowly he calmed. He took a Kleenex and wiped his face. “The woman recanted her testimony before trial.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that Crimmins is a bad man who has a track record of scaring witnesses.”

  “Mr. Pellam, there is no doubt in my mind that he was the person who killed Vince Gaudia. He had the motive. He has ties to men fully capable of for-hire murder. He has ordered people threatened, beaten and killed in the past. Look what he did to your girlfriend. The fact is that the RICO charges I’ve got against Crimmins are nothing without Gaudia. He’ll get three or four years at the most.” Pellam saw more sweat on the dome of Peterson’s head. He saw the finger and thumb rubbing together compulsively, trembling.

  Pellam’s voice was patient and tired. “I can’t help you.”

  Peterson came back to earth. He opened another file folder and, preoccupied, dug inside.

  Pellam asked, “What about protecting Nina?”

  “I think she’d be safer if she left town. There isn’t much we can do.”

  “I know some reporters,” Pellam said ominously. “They might be interested in this story. You refusing to protect people unless they testify for you.”

  Peterson slipped an utterly good-natured smile into position on his egg-shaped face. “Oh, I don’t think that’d be a very good story.”

  “You never know.”

  Peterson lifted several pieces of paper out of the file. “The problem with reporters,” he said, flipping through the sheets, “is that they like the lowest denominators of any situation. This witness story of yours isn’t really a grabber.”

  Pellam waved an arm in frustration and started toward the door.

  “This story,” the U.S. Attorney said with a smile, “would be much better.”

  The bulletin left Peterson’s hand and floated down to the desk. The California bear seal was in the upper left-hand corner and in the center of the white, wrinkled sheet were two photos and several brief paragraphs.

  The photos weren’t of Peter Crimmins or of live gangsters or dead bystanders but were of John Pellam himself.

  He looked exhausted, puffy-eyed, unshaven. They showed him from two angles—straight on and in profile. Beneath them were words in slightly uneven lines, suggesting that they were typed by a cheap typewriter. Among these words were Pellam’s name, vital statistics, the date the photo was taken and the names of several Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies. At the bottom of the bulletin was this information: Charged with: murder, manslaughter, sale/possession of controlled substances.

  Chapter 15

  “DOES YOUR BOSS know you did time?”

  Pellam lowered his hand from the doorknob. He returned to Peterson’s desk and sat down. He stared at the picture.

  Turn your head . . . We want a profile. Turn your head . . . Him? Yeah, he’s the one killed that actor. Yep, sure is.”

  Peterson said cheerfully, “You know, I seem to remember something of surety law. Wouldn’t your film company’s bond get lifted if an ex-felon was on the payroll? Especially with a drug charge?”

  “I was acquitted on the drug and murder charges.”

  “Don’t quibble, Mr. Pellam. The victim died because you delivered two ounces of cocaine to him, didn’t you? This Tommy Bernstein, the young man in question.”

  The best friend in question.

  Pellam reached forward and touched the photo of himself.

  “Put this here jumpsuit on, then we cuff you and take you downstairs. You hassle us, we hassle you and we got batons and you don’t, you know what I’m saying? Now, move.”

  The reason that he had not been able to attend Tommy’s memorial service was that he was in a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department holding cell, pending arraignment.

  Pellam, staring at his own gaunt image, was long past feeling the need to explain, to shake his head with a grim, tight mouth and tell how Tommy had begged him for the stuff, crying. Please, just this once, John, help me, help me, help me. I can’t work without it. I see the cameras, man, and I freeze. I mean, I fucking freeze. You gotta help me . . . Tommy Bernstein, lovable madman and brilliant actor, leaning on Pellam’s shoulder, tears in thick streaks shooting down his doughy face, pathetic and looking just like the child that, in the core of his soul, he was and would always be—the child that Pellam should have recognized.

  No, he wouldn’t explain this to the sour, cold man he now sat in front of. He said only, “It was a long time ago.”

  Peterson regarded him coolly. “An ex-felon is an ex-felon. You can’t ever take that away.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  Peterson repeated, “Does your boss know?”

  “No.”

  “It’s purely a civil matter. I don’t have any legal duty to tell him. But I do feel a certain sense of moral obligation. He would fire you in an instant, I imagine.”

  “I imagine he would. And if I say that I saw Crimmins in the car you’ll forget to mention it.”

  “You’ve had some conversations with a Marty Weller in the past week.”

  “Marty? How do you know about Marty?”

  “Some conver
sations about a movie project you’re putting together?” Pellam was silent, and Peterson continued, “Following those conversations, you started looking for some money. Your bank in Sherman Oaks, some car dealer who wasn’t interested in an apparently less-than-perfect Porsche you happen to own . . .”

  “You tapped my phone illegally.”

  “Not at all. We talk to people. That’s all. We introduce ourselves and we ask questions. Most people usually cooperate.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “That you can’t afford to have all your finances frozen for six, seven months by federal court orders.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I think.”

  Anger sputtered into Pellam’s face. He stood up and leaned forward, his eyes wild and uncontrolled, his right fist balled. Papers and toys cascaded to the floor.

  They remained locked in a gaze for a long moment, while Peterson mastered his fear, and Pellam, his anger. Pellam was close to hitting the man.

  Peterson whispered, “Please. I say this for your sake. I don’t think you want to add to your list of woes at the moment, do you really?”

  Pellam finally stood upright and walked not to the door but to the window. For a long moment, as if he were debating something furiously, he looked out over an expanse of green. St. Louis was a very verdant place, even in October. The important aspects of his life in jeopardy, Pellam noticed small details. Like the colors of foliage and the shape of trees. He nodded suddenly, but whatever decision he came to, he kept to himself, and walked out of Peterson’s office without saying a word.

  THE RIBBED BALL rolled along the small grass rectangle.

  “You lose,” the old man told Peter Crimmins, who smiled and nodded to the other players and then stepped over the black-painted railing. He stood in a small park in a suburb of St. Louis, squinting toward a huge complex of redbrick apartments. He wondered how much money it cost to build the place. He had never been in real estate. He considered it too Jewish. But he had lately been thinking about building something. He wanted some legacy and he thought he would like to sink some of his vast funds into something that would be named after him.

  Joshua stood nearby, leaning against a lamp pole with the tough serenity of middle-aged bouncers and Secret Service agents. A broad-featured woman in a blue denim cowboy suit talked into a public phone and gestured wildly. Her fat fingers mauled a cigarette.