Jeffery Deaver - Bloody River Blues

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.

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 machine 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, 3Weller 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.

Finally, he said delicately, 'There were some questions about what happened before." He looked up uncomfortably.

"You were actually in production?"

"We were two weeks into principal photography."

Weller did not look up but intently read what happened to be the blank back cover of the script. "When he got sick, you mean."

Got sick. Pellam said, That's right."

Tommy Bernstein-the leading man in Central Standard and Pellam's best friend-had not "gotten sick" at all but had died of a cocaine-induced heart attack during principal photography, which had brought the production to a halt and Pellam's life as he'd lived it to a shattering conclusion.

Weller was flipping through the script and sending a stale breeze up into the air. "Somebody… I'm just explaining why it's taking so long. This is bullshit, I know. But somebody talked about a jinx."

Pellam laughed. "Like the Exorcist stories, that old crap?"

"People are more superstitious about money than about their lives. More producers fly on Friday the thirteenth than write checks, you better believe it."