Bloody River Blues Read online

  ***

  Philip Lombro had this habit. He would polish his shoes at least twice a day. He kept a big horsehair brush in his desk at work and a smaller pig-bristle brush in his attache case, along with chamois squares. Sometimes he would polish the shoes three, four, five times in a single day. He used Kiwi a lot. His favorite, though, was Meltonian Creme a chaussures.

  He had no obsession over the shoes themselves-he owned only seven pairs-and he did not have a foot fetish. (He was not even sure what a foot fetish was or what somebody with a foot fetish did.) What he liked was shiny shoes and the process of getting them that way. Putting your feet into newly polished shoes was a regal feeling.

  This morning he sat in the office of Lombro & Associates in downtown Maddox and absently ran the brush over his oxblood wing tips.

  The office was in the shadow of a huge redbrick building that had started life as Maddox Omnibus and Carriage Company and had become, through the generations, Maddox Electric Automobile Company, then -the Maddox Clutch Company, and recently the Maddox Machinery Division of Fujitomo Limited.

  Several stiff brush bristles became dislodged from the brush and fell to the floor. Lombro bent down and picked them up, then flicked them into the waste-basket. He wiped his fingers with a spit-moistened Kleenex. Outside the window, a piece of newspaper floated past and vanished. Lombro stared at the sides of the Maddox Omnibus Building. Lombro remembered, from ten years ago, the Reporter photo of a young man who killed himself by jumping off one of the factory's huge smokestacks. Wearing a suit, he had died crumpled in the roof of a delivery truck. It enfolded him like a blanket.

  This was what the Maddox Omnibus and Carriage Company Building signified for him: death. And this thought, in turn, led to Ralph Bales.

  Lombro had met Ralph Bales at the wedding of his sister's daughter. Lombro, never married, regretted that he'd never been a father; nieces and nephews in St. Louis area became surrogate children. He doted, he spoiled them, he took them on outings. He was more astonished than their parents to see them become adults. When his brother-in-law could not pick up the tab for the girl's wedding Lombro himself paid for the function.

  One of the guests had been Ralph Bales and what caught Lombro's attention was that Ralph Bales had brought a gun to the wedding.

  Late in the evening, Lombro, standing at the urinal in the men's John of Orsini's restaurant, was aware of someone entering behind him and going into a stall. He then heard a clunk of something falling and glanced under the door. A hand was quickly retrieving a pistol. Lombro washed his hands quickly and left the men's room. He waited outside, hiding behind a plant, to catch a look at the intruder. A few minutes later Ralph Bales emerged, slicking back his thinning hair with damp hands.

  Lombro didn't know what to do. A friend of a friend on the groom's side, Ralph Bales had been invited, true, so he probably was not a robber. On the other hand, Lombro felt responsible for the safety of his four hundred guests.

  Finally, after an agonizing half hour of indecision, Lombro had walked up to Ralph Bales and, as the children were cutting the cake, struck up a conversation. He learned that Ralph Bales had grown up in St. Louis. He was orphaned young – as Lombro had been – and had made a career of various riverfront jobs. They talked careers, real estate, making money, losing money. Ralph Bales mentioned, vaguely, unions and shipping companies and waterfront services and Teamsters. He lived in a house not far from Lambert Field. He enjoyed working in his garden. Lombro did, too, he said, though he hated the sun.

  Ralph Bales said he loved the sun. Lombro was satisfied that the man represented no danger and said good-bye. Ralph Bales touched him on the arm in a special way and offered his card. "You say you're in real estate," he said with ambiguous significance. "If you ever need any security consulting, let me know."

  So the card, Ralph Bales, Consultant, was filed away in Lombro's Rolodex. He thought he might have a need for a consultant at some point.

  A month ago, he had.

  And now, as he put the shoe brush away in his bottom drawer and vacantly watched the papers blowing outside the windows of his office, he foresaw that the transaction that arose out of that wedding might have been the only serious mistake he had ever made in his life.

  "Okay, kind of a problem," Ralph Bales now said.

  Philip Lombro listened, his head immobile, eyes moving slowly around the face of his visitor.

  "He snuck up on us, the cop."

  Lombro said, 'There was nothing you could've done?"

  Ralph Bales was deferential to clients. He didn't roll his eyes or sigh. He said, "No, he came up out of the blue."

  Lombro opened his desk. He pulled out a thin envelope containing $25,000. He handed it to Ralph Bales.

  Ralph Bales said, "Thank you."

  Lombro nodded.

  Neither man seemed grateful, or pleased, by the exchange.

  "How much of a problem is it?" Lombro sounded reasonable. Men like him tend to stay calm when they have problems.

  Ralph Bales chewed on the thin lip that was cut into his round, padded face. "Well, you don't want to shoot a cop.

  Whatever happens, you don't want to do that."

  Lombro's eyes settled on Ralph Bales's naked upper lip. He realized the moustach was gone.

  "I'm not being, you know, cute," Ralph Bales continued. 'The cops don't get mad when you kill a DA witness because witnesses are scum. When the cops get mad is when you shoot a cop."

  "And?"

  "And there's some things we have to do."

  "Such as?"

  "Okay, we've got to find the guy that saw us." "Who?"

  "The guy walked into me when I got out of the car. The one with the beer."

  Lombro lifted one ankle to his other knee and touched his heel absently then rubbed it.

  "He saw me," Ralph Bales said. "And he saw you."

  "They might not find him, the police."

  "No, that's-"

  Lombro continued an argument that seemed to reassure him. "Why would he volunteer? Why would anyone do that?"

  "He might not," Ralph Bales agreed. "But some people are funny. They do weird things."

  Lombro said, "The way you're talking, it sounds like you've decided something."

  "Excuse me, it isn't really a decision. I mean, we don't have a choice, okay?"

  Hit Man Shoots Cop in Back. The newspaper sat prominently on Lombro's desk. Ralph Bales had been wrong. There was no photo of Vince Gaudia's body. Just the shot policeman's wedding picture.

  "I don't like this at all."

  "With all respect, Mr. Lombro, when you-" he looked for words that weren't too incriminating "-take on a project like this there are potential downsides. Okay? Like you buy a building and find out it's got termites or something. It just happens. You can't run away from it."

  'The woman, too. You killed the woman."

  "Stevie tells me that was an accident. Gaudia pushed her in front of him."

  Lombro was nodding. "I don't care much about her. She knew the kind of bastard she was getting involved with."

  Outside the window a blackbird settled on the top of a brick facade. The bird's nervous, glossy head flicked about. It shot into the sky in a gray streak.

  Ralph Bales said, "We did the job for you and there was a glitch. But the fact of the matter is, I don't live here and Stevie Flom don't live here but you do. And so this glitch, it's sort of your problem."

  Lombro considered this speech unemotionally. "What are you proposing?"

  "I can drive out of here now and you can take your chances. Or you can pay me to take care of this guy, too."

  "No, absolutely not."

  "Then…" Ralph Bales let the word float through the room like a puff of cigarette smoke. "There's another option."

  "What? Go on."

  "Maybe I could find him. Threaten him. Scare him a little."

  "Would that work?'

  "It usually does. But I don't want to do it. It's a lot riskier than just, you know
, taking care of him."

  "You want more money. Is that what you're saying?"

  "Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's just a question of risk. Ten thousand and he's gone. Twenty thousand and I find him, put pressure on him."

  "Twenty?"

  "What do you want me to say? Nineteen ninety-five?"

  Lombro did not speak for a moment. He gazed at the newspaper, then closed his eyes and flipped his hand forward in a gesture of frustration. "All right." He looked at Ralph Bales. "But I want your word that you won't hurt him."

  Ralph Bales frowned. "You didn't say you didn't want him hurt."

  "I mean," Lombro said, "you won't kill him, will you?"

  Ralph Bales nodded and, looking straight at Lombro, said, "Of course not. I told you I wouldn't." He had found that when you look somebody in the eye, they will believe anything you tell them.

  ***

  The car cruised past the camper slowly. By the time Pellam was out of the kitchenette and at the window it had turned off of River Road and was gone. He remained at the window, looking out through the blinds, which he now noticed could use a good cleaning.

  Maddox offered no night parking and Pellam was forced to keep the camper in this pathetic trailer park. The owners, Annie and Fred Bell, advertised fifty hookups and during some prior vacation seasons they might all have been used. But that would have been before the cement plant went in next door and gouged out five hundred yards of idyllic riverfront grassland, replacing it with bunkers and steel docks. The Bide-A-Wee trailer park was currently occupied by John Pellam's Winnebago and two clusters of tenters who were obviously-and understandably-tired of the picturesque view of Ochner Cement & Stone and were packing to leave.

  At first Pellam had not much cared about the emptiness. But that was before he was a witness in a murder case. Well, a sort-of witness. Now he wished for a little more anonymity. He looked at his watch. It was only 11:00 A.M. but he had already seen or heard four-no, make that five-cars slow as they cruised past the trailer court. He suspected the occupants were not checking out the Bide-A-Wee for upcoming vacation sojourns in Maddox but were more interested in him.

  Another car now stopped directly in front of the trailer. It was a beat-up old sedan, its fenders attached with gaffer tape.

  The driver was a shadowy form behind a grease-stained window. The condition of the car told him that this was not the cops come a-calling again.

  Pellam, who had been hacking away at the impossible crust of burnt chili, dried his hands and walked to the front of the Winnebago. He opened a map compartment beside the front door. This tiny space did contain maps, probably thirty of them, all limp and seam-torn. It also contained a Colt Peacemaker.45-caliber pistol. It had a steel barrel and rosewood grips. He lifted the gun out and thumbed open the cylinder cover.

  Pellam put the pistol on half-cock, loaded five of the six chambers, then eased the hammer down on the empty slot. He slipped the gun into his waistband, pulled on his bomber jacket and left the camper, striding toward the car.

  Why did everybody in Maddox have somber cars?

  The driver-Pellam did not recognize him-was a man of about forty with a square face, eyes staring evenly at him. Pellam had hoped that he would see Pellam coming to confront him and burn rubber to escape.

  The man shut off the engine and got out.

  Pellam's hand casually went to the zipper of his jacket.

  The intruder was huge. He slammed the door with a loud bang. He kept staring at Pellam. Then he started across the street.

  He had a crew cut and folds of skin hung over his eyes.

  Pellam unzipped his jacket and stood by the roadside. His hand rested on his belt and he rubbed the buckle. With an index finger he touched the wood grip of the gun.

  When the man reached the shoulder of the road, twenty feet away, he stopped. Looking straight into Pellam's eyes, he said, "You need any young men?" Pellam squinted and cocked his head. The man repeated, "Young men?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Look," the man said stiffly, "I know you hear that a lot of folk aren't happy to have you all in town because you're saying things about Maddox in your movie that aren't so nice. Well, you won't hear that from me. I don't feel that way at all."

  "Uh-huh, good."

  "Now," the man continued his recitation, "my boy Larry's seventeen and was most recent in a play. I mean a serious play without music. I Remember Mama. He was good-I'd say that even he wasn't my son-but he'd be top-notch in a movie where you get to say your lines over and over again and they take the best one. I mean top-notch."

  "Well, sir, I don't do any casting."

  "He'll do it real reasonable. You know, just to get his foot in the door, so to speak. Could do manual labor, too, till an acting part comes 'round. He's strapping."

  Pellam shook his head.

  "He's taking classes."

  "Sorry." Pellam zipped up his jacket. "I wish I could help out but I can't."

  The man stood, shoulders drooping and face bright red. Behind him was a decrepit house that at one time was a marvel of Victorian excess. It had been abandoned halfway through a futile make-over. He said in a stiff voice, "I've been out of work three years now. Was a deckhand for a inland tow company. I'm about at the end of my rope."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I don't want sympathy. I'd work if there was any work but there ain't. Larry's 'bout the only chance we've got for some income."

  Pellam shook his head. "Wish it were different."

  "Sure." The man stood for a moment longer. "Thanks for your time." He turned silently and walked back to his car. He looked at the camper, then started the engine.

  Pellam watched the car roll away, followed by the bubbling sound of a rust-shot muffler.

  He trudged back to the camper, disarmed himself and hung up his jacket. He returned to the kitchenette.

  A half hour later he was sitting at the tiny table, flipping through his Maddox location file, which was filled with Polaroid snapshots. As Tony Sloan had requested, he'd taken a number of shots of empty houses-nearly every other house in certain parts of town-and he had narrowed the bungalow search down to four: two of them cute and two run-down. He was checking the addresses against a tattered map of Maddox.

  That was when he heard the hesitant footsteps on the gravel walk. Pellam's hands froze on the report.

  Had Larry's dad returned for another audition?

  Pellam stood and walked to the rear of the camper, peering out. No, it was a different car. A dark red sedan.

  The sort the Italian and the WASP detectives would drive.

  It turned out not to be the two cops, however. Without knocking, a dark-complected man in his mid-thirties stepped inside and looked around, orienting himself. He wore a trim, double-breasted charcoal gray suit and reflective blue sunglasses.

  He said, "I know what you're hoping for but give it up. You're not getting out of here." The door swung shut and he slowly pulled his sunglasses off and slipped them into his breast pocket.

  SIX

  Pellam pursed his lips together. He shook his head.

  "What?" the intruder asked.

  "It's 'I know what you're thinking. But it's too late. You're not getting out of here.'"

  "No." The man frowned. "I'm sure." He propped a briefcase on the driver's seat and opened it.

  "Anyway, I've decided to cut the dialogue. Do it in visuals. Want coffee? It's instant."

  A script appeared from the briefcase and the man began thumbing through it. "Aw, no. Pellam. Don't cut it. It's a great line.

  'But give it up.' It's very-what's the word?-anachronistic. Oh, you're right." He read the script carefully. "The line's gone."

  "Take a pew," Pellam said and put the kettle on the flame.

  Marty Weller easily settled his lanky frame into the dining banquette. A yoga practitioner, he possessed the sort of physique that could comfortably handle a camper environment. He had an airbrushed tan and muscles in places where only a Nautilus ma
chine could put them. Where his trimmed eyebrows ended above his nose there appeared California creases-two short, vertical furrows, the result of a lifetime of squinting. Tea. Herbal." He tapped the script. "I must have been thinking of the first draft. Or the second. Or one of them. You rewrite a hell of a lot, John." "Lipton?"

  Weller looked about, as if he might spot a box of Celestial Seasonings chamomile hidden nearby. "Okay," he said with reservation. Then: "Honey?"

  "Domino."

  "Well, this is middle America." Weller smiled slyly and asked,

  "So?"

  "Yes?"

  "You know what I'm asking. What's the scoop? On Sloan."

  Independent producer Marty Weller was as much a gossip sponge as anyone in Hollywood-though he was not sufficiently powerful to use much of the gossip he absorbed. He had done a string of offbeat films that were lukewarm hits. This opened doors for him but did not automatically get his pictures made. Still, gossip about Tony Sloan, while not particularly useful to Weller, was platinum gossip. One wanted it the same way one wanted Taittinger or beluga.

  Yet Weller's presence here in small-town Missouri now reminded Pellam of L.A. protocol and, cognizant of his obscenely large fee, he recalled the rule: Assume anything you say, even in strictest confidence, will immediately be transmitted to the Hollywood Reporter and attributed to you. Pellam gave Weller a diluted version of the film's production woes.

  "Word is he's cindering in the upper atmosphere,3 Weller said with a frown that did nothing to mask his delight.

  Pellam shrugged. "Okay, Marty, don't keep me in suspense. Go or no go?"

  Weller picked up the battered black-covered script he had just misquoted. The title was Central Standard Time. "We're close, John. Damn close. I've got maybe eighty percent of the financing in place." He fell silent for a minute and riffled the pages. In his former Me- which in Hollywood meant only a few years ago- Pellam had both written and directed independent films. Central Standard Time had been the film he'd been working on when his career had been derailed in a big way.

  No one had been interested in the property until immaculately tanned Marty Weller had appeared on Pellam s doorstep and told him, with as much sincerity as a Hollywood producer could muster, that he was going to get Pellam's "vision" turned into a dark art-house classic.