Jeffery Deaver - Shallow Graves

"Oh, I thought it was this weird food you were going to make." To Pellam he said, "Mom makes this totally strange stuff sometimes. All slippery-"

"Sam."

"… and these gross colors."

"Young man, that's enough."

"And her apple butter…" He headed for the porch. "It starts out brownish. Then it gets kind of green."

"Sam-" Meg began good-naturedly.

Pellam asked Meg, "So, how 'bout that ride?"

"Let's go."

Pellam called to Sam, "Don't clean that gun till I get back, young man."

"Yessir. And then it goes all grayish. Yuck…"

Meg dropped him a block away from the camper.

She turned to him but before she could say anything he preempted her. "You don't talk about flower children, I won't talk about apple butter."

She laughed hard. "See you soon." This was a moment when he might've kissed her. But instead he just climbed stiffly out of the tiny car-his wounds still hurt-and walked quickly to the camper.

Inside a light was on. He opened the door. Inside, Janine sat motionless, looking down.

She turned to him. "Bastard."

"I'm sorry I ran into some trouble last night and-"

"Bastard." What she was talking about, though, wasn't his being late but the screenplay of To Sleep in a Shallow Grave. The binder was open and she'd read most of it.

He closed the door.

"This character you've added. That's me, isn't it?"

He sat down slowly.

"Some of it's based on you. Some. It isn't what I feel about you, it's not the way I see you. It's fiction. A story, nothing more than that. Mostly my imagination."

She lowered her head and read, " 'You're living a dream that the past can't justify…' 'It's the remoteness of the past that makes it such a safe place for you to live…' The Age of Aquarius was a long, long time ago…' Janice. Christ, Pellam, you could at least have done a better job changing my name."

"I didn't-"

"You!" She threw the notebook against the wall. The binding snapped. The pages cascaded to the floor. "You're the one living in a dream, not me. You come into people's lives-nobody invited you to Cleary-you come into town with the big fantasy, promising to put people into a movie, promising to take people away from here-"

"I never said that."

She was crying again. Her hair was pasted to her cheeks, she pulled it angrily away. "You didn't have to say it. What the hell did you expect people to think? Here you come, with your van and your camera, studying the town, talking to people, getting to know everyone… Getting to know some of them very well. You don't understand the power you've got. You don't understand how desperate people are. Desperate to get out of places like Cleary. And what do they do? They spill their guts to you and you betray them. Why? In the name of what? What word is sacred to you, Pellam? Art? In the name of Art? Film? Money? How do you justify taking people's lives and making a movie out of them?"

He stood up and reached out for her. She shook his arms away. "You just can't drop into someone's life, take what you want, then leave."

"I'm sorry."

She stood up. Walked to the door then stopped. Waiting for something. Neither of them knew what should come next.

"I thought…" Janine's voice faded and she stepped outside, closing the metal door softly behind her.

Pellam sighed. He picked up the screenplay binder then bent to the floor and gathered the pages, one by one.

Driving down Main Street, Pellam passed a grocery store and parked, bought a bottle of chardonnay and walked back outside. He looked up and down the street for Janine. No sign of her. And what would he tell her if he saw her? There was no answer for that.

He looked up the street at an approaching car, an American GT of some kind, maybe ten years old, its rear end jacked high. It came bubbling down the street. The driver parked in front of the Cedar Tap and gunned the engine into a sexy growl before he shut it off. He got out and walked into the bar. Pellam walked over to the car, looked inside.

He returned to the Winnebago, fired it up and drove slowly out of town. He rolled both windows down and felt the cool air fill the cockpit.

He is driving fast in a fast car. A Porsche. A Hun car, because in L.A. you must have a German car. It's not as easy as that, though. You also have to ignore the fact that a German car is the kind to have and it must seem as if you're the first person on the West Coast to think about owning one. Pellam's is black. He drives it hard, with the passion of someone who loves speed though not necessarily the machinery that allows the car to drive fast. Whenever anybody says, "Shit, the Germans make good cars," he always looks surprised, as if they'd just caught on to his secret.

They are going into the desert, Tommy Bernstein and him.

"Thomaso," Pellam shouts over the huge slipstream. "You're going to lose your hat."

And the man does, reaching up too late to keep the stiff, three-hundred-dollar, curly brimmed cowboy hat from sailing into the hundred-mile-an-hour slip-stream.

"Shit, Pellam, turn around."

Pellam only whoops loudly and speeds up.

Tommy doesn't seem to mind. Somehow, it would be wrong to stop the little black car. There is an urgency, a sense of mission. Tommy shouts something about the hat and illegal aliens. Pellam nods.

The sun is a plate of hot pressure above them. The wind, which makes their ears ache, is hot.

Los Angeles is behind them. Ahead is nothing but desert.

"John, give me some!" Tommy shouts. He repeats this twice before Pellam hears and four times before he chooses to answer.

"Please!" A moaning wail, a sound that the wind takes and instantly makes vanish.

Pellam tosses the salt shaker underhand. The wind plays hell with the trajectory, but Tommy catches it in desperate, fumbling grabs.

"Not funny."

"Improves your reflexes."

Tommy was trying to snort. "Too fast, I can't-"

Pellam hits the clutch and brake. The car skids and fishtails. When they slow to sixty Tommy can snort the coke. He gives the high sign. Pellam accelerates and refuses the offered shaker.

Pellam feels philosophical. He shouts, "You think the desert's minimal, right? Bullshit. It isn't. It's goddamn complex. Complex like a, you know, a crystal. Like the way colors spread under a microscope. Remember those science films in high school?"

"Yeah," Tommy shouts. "About gonads and seeds and ovum." He is grinning like the dirty little boy he likes to portray though he is clearly considering Pellam's comment. In fact he is considering it desperately. Pellam wishes he hadn't spoken.

Tommy suffers from terminally ill confidence. The actor had received one L.A. Film Critics' award and one from Cannes when he'd been courted and seduced by a big studio lot producer. The money was incredible, the movies worse than awful. His most recent, a critic wrote, could be stuffed and served at a Thanksgiving dinner for the population of the country. Tommy was trying to think of ways to redeem himself. "Don't be desperate," Pellam had told him. "This city don't love desperate men."

But Tommy snatched up even that advice like a life preserver.

Pellam drives in silence. A half hour later he notices a small road leading off the highway toward a huge rock eased out of the brush and dirty sand. He makes a fast turn and the car skids to a stop out of sight of the road.

They climb out, stretch, pee against rocks.

Tommy asks, "You bring the Geiger counter?"

"What do we need that for?"

"The fucking Army. They test atom bombs here."

"That's New Mexico."

"Fucking no," Tommy says. "Cruise missiles blasting sheep to hell and gone. I'm scared." He looks around cautiously.

Pellam says, "There're no sheep here."