Jeffery Deaver - Bloody River Blues

One of these faces, though, was not grotesque. It was a girl's face, a young girl's. She was beautiful. Her features did not melt. Her eyes simply looked toward him. Lombro was powerless to touch her or speak. He was merely observing; you don't participate in dreams like this.

Then the girl's face suddenly grew so terribly sad that Lombro became completely awake, pierced by an urge to cry, and he sat up abruptly.

This was the hardest part of living alone, Philip Lombro knew. Waking from dreams by yourself.

Pellam was up at seven-thirty. He had slept in a location van-one of the big Winnebagos used for makeup. He rose silently and walked into the bathroom, where he took a tepid-water shower. Then he brushed his teeth with his fingers and a spoonful of Arm & Hammer. He felt groggy and hoped he would find something energizing in the medicine cabinet-diet pills, NoDoz. But there was nothing other than a prescription drug he had never heard of. The label warned against operating machinery or driving a car while taking the medicine.

It would be coffee or nothing.

Pellam dressed in the bathroom, the cloth of his shirt and jeans darkened by the water he had failed to towel off. He brushed his damp hair and forwent the noisy blow dryer. He was here as a spy or, at best, refugee, and wanted his presence kept secret. Slipping outside, he hurried down the front steps and shivered in the cool fall air. There was a rich, loamy scent of water, which he knew would be the river though he could not see it from here.

At the curb he paused to let pass a powder blue car, slowing as it passed the trailer. On the side was a sign. Out of Work 117 days. The number 17 was on a separate piece of cardboard, freshly taped over the previous day's record. "I do odd jobs," the man called but he drove on before Pellam could say a word.

Ralph Bales found his heart was beating like the wings of a panicked sparrow.

He looked at his wrists, focusing on the veins, surprised that they were not vibrating with blood. His hands returned to the steering wheel. Ralph Bales was waiting downtown-in a stolen Chevy-outside the Federal Building on Mission, waiting for John Pellam to arrive. And the reason his heart was beating so fast was that this was a terrible site for a hit.

On the way here, he had passed a car wash whose name was World O' Wash. The phrase kept going through his mind, and all he could think of was World O' Cops. FBI, Treasury agents, federal marshals and city cops and probably Missouri Bureau of Investigation agents all over the place-them, plus court security guards who had never fired a piece except to get their tickets and had been waiting for years to draw first blood in the line of duty.

World O' Cops.

Inside the entryway of the building were two white-shirted guards, big men, with large, square heads crowned with fade cuts. Secretaries and clerks and lawyers in running shoes over their dress socks or stockings were streaming into the office. Everyone looked young and eager.

There were several entrances to the Federal Building but Ralph Bales was parked in front of what seemed to be the main one. He supposed there would be a service door or two. He could see a driveway that seemed reserved for garbage pickups.

That would be a good place to sneak a witness in. But he had no partner- Stevie still had not shown-and all he could do was cover the main entrance. '

He had arrived early, thinking the beer man would get here well before nine thirty for security reasons. For an hour Ralph

Bales sat in the car, the engine running. He moved it only once, when a meter maid waddled by. She held her citation book out like a gun, threateningly. He did not let her get close enough to see his face. He pulled away slowly, did an around-the-block and by the time he got back-maybe three minutes later-she was gone. He parked again in front of the building.

It was now nine-fifty.

He watched the mist in the air, the sunlight flashing off the tall arch; he smelled the burnt metallic air laced with exhaust. The factories on the east side of the Mississippi were busy this morning. His heart fluttering… Maybe it was the caffeine in the coffee. He glanced down. He had left the cup in the car, the cardboard carton, blue and white, with pictures of Greek gods or Olympic athletes or something. A cup with his fingerprints all over it. Careless.

He reached down and picked it up, crumpling the cardboard and slipping it into his pocket.

It was then that the trash basket-one of those big, filthy orange things-went through his back window.

Jesus Mother Holy …

Not exactly through the window. Even cheap American cars had strong glass. The bottom rim of the basket pushed the window in a couple inches, and the glass turned opaque with frost from the fractures. The basket rolled off the car and onto the street.

"Son of a-"

When he turned back to pull the door handle up, there was a gun muzzle in his face, and the man's other hand was shutting the engine off.

He understood. Ralph Bales knew exactly what had happened.

"Put your gun in the back," the beer man said. "On the floor."

Ralph Bales said, "I don't have a-"

The man's voice terrified him with its serenity. "Put your gun on the back floor of the car."

"Okay, whatever you want."

"Put your-"

"I heard you," Ralph Bales said, "I'm going to do it."

"Now."

"Okay."

This reminded Ralph Bales of when the cop caught him just after the Gaudia hit. Only today there'd be no Stevie Flom acting like a madman and stepping out of an alleyway to save him. With a sudden sickening feeling, he had a good idea about what had happened to Stevie Flom.

He dropped the Colt in the back. The man opened the back door and scooped it up. He sat in the backseat and pressed the muzzle of his gun, an old one, against his ear. "Turn all your pockets inside out."

What if the meter maid shows up now? Christ, this guy could panic and shoot them both.

"I don't have anything, I mean, like a weapon or-"

"All your pockets."

Ralph Bales did, dropping the contents on the seat. The beer man prodded the money and the wallet and the crumpled cup and the Swiss Army knife. "Okay, put it back in your pockets. Except the knife. Leave the knife."

Ralph Bales laughed. "The knife? You're kidding."

He was not kidding. Ralph Bales did what he was told.

The man put his seat belt on. "Drive to Maddox. Now."

"But-"

"Drive."

Bales reached for the shoulder strap.

"No belt." He rested the gun against the back of Ralph Bales s neck. "This is a single-action gun. You know what that means?"

"You have to cock it before you can pull the trigger," Ralph Bales said like a student answering a teachers question.

"I have it cocked. It goes off real easy."

"Okay, listen. If we hit a bump…"

"Then I'd drive real slow if I were you."

The dream was wonderful.

She was beautiful.

Nina Sassower believed that although men came on to her-and did so quite frequently-they did so only because of the size of her breasts and her thin legs. She believed they tolerated her face, which she saw as pointed and narrow and pinched.

But in the dream, something had happened. Perhaps she had had an operation, maybe she had just been mistaken all her life. She did not know what had changed. But the person she was in the dream was tall and willowy and had sharp, intelligent, beautiful eyes.

The image didn't last long. It shifted into something else, a street she couldn't identify. Then other people began milling around and the dream ended.

She woke up.

For perhaps two seconds she felt the afterglow of the dream.

She sat up straight, looked at the clock, and spat out, "Oh, no! Son of a bitch!"