Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery (14 page)

“Not very happy at all.”

Stevie was a punk and rarely gave a shit who was happy and who was not, except that this particular unhappy person owed him a lot of money.

“So it’s my fault?” Stevie said, his voice shrill. The table rocked as he leaned forward and he whispered, “What, I was supposed to let a cop take you out?”

Ralph Bales held a finger to his lips. “
I’m
not complaining. Lombro isn’t, you know, rational. He thought you should’ve shot the cop in the leg or something so they wouldn’t be so concerned about it. Not the back.”

“Yeah, right, shot him in the leg. Like it’s night and I’ve got a pussy gun and I shoot him in the leg
and he feels a little bee sting and turns around and explodes my head with hollow points. Bullshit. I mean, bullshit!”

The men did not know each other well. They moved in different circles. Ralph Bales was older, fifteen years. He was well connected on the riverfront and probably could have been more of a mover except he ran into some trouble in Chicago, working for the Giancana family. Some money that was supposed to find its way from Cicero up to Oak Park had not made that short journey. Ralph Bales remained alive to pay it back, out of his salary, but his name was suspect in Chicago ever after. So he returned broke to his hometown of St. Louis and found his way into riverfront services and cargo and trucking and finally became a consultant.

Ralph Bales had in fact been doing some security consulting when he met Stevie Flom. A mutual friend needed some partners to help some expensive Scotch fall off a truck and to move the cases after they touched down. The job went smoothly, though Ralph Bales had been irritated by arrogant Stevie. He found, however, that another person resided inside the young man—Desperate Stevie, who had worked up such incredibly large debts giving his money to casinos and to poker players and to the skirts he humped (nightly, it seemed) that he would do whatever he was told to, provided he was paid for it.

“It’s my fault, you’re saying. Suddenly it’s all
my
fault!”

“You’re not listening,” Ralph Bales said. “I’m just telling you.”

The weather was cold and wet but Stevie wore a sleeveless tank top. He had good muscles; he liked to show them off.

“We’ve got to handle Lombro—”

“
Handle
him,” Stevie exploded again, though the detonations were softer because he was lifting his coffee to his lips. “What the hell does that mean?”

“First, what it means is we don’t get paid.”

“Don’t get paid?” Back to the high decibels. “Lombro was in the audience too! He should’ve been looking out for heat, he shoulda honked the horn or something. Fuck!”

Several parents, worried about their chubby offspring, glanced ominously toward the table.

Ralph Bales leaned forward. “Look . . .”

“ ‘Listen, look.’ You sound like a crossing guard.”

“This man is nobody to fool around with.”

“Well,
you
look. I’m out five thousand dollars. Which—I’ve been asking around, all right?—and I find is pretty on the low side for a hit.”

Ralph Bales had told Stevie that Lombro was paying them ten thousand—not twenty-five—to split between them. He looked at the young man with steely eyes. “Who’ve you been talking to?” he asked in a menacing voice.

Stevie stopped exploding. He looked down at his cup and poured more cream into it. “Nobody. I mean, I was just asking around, you know. But I didn’t mention anything specific.”

Ralph Bales sighed. “Jesus. Don’t say anything to anyone ever. Anything. Anyone. Ever. Lombro has connections you wouldn’t believe.”

“Deals . . . connections.” Stevie rolled his eyes. He was speaking softly now, though. The look in Ralph Bales’s eyes had spooked him.

“Okay, here’s the arrangement. We take care of the witness and Lombro’ll pay us everything, plus twenty-five percent.”

“Well, why didn’t you just finish it the other day? By the river? We could’ve waited.”

“Okay, think about it,” Ralph Bales said slowly.

“Well . . .”

“Think about it.”

Stevie was too cool and too much of a punk to show admiration, but his smile blossomed. “I get it. You wanted to, like, goose Lombro for more money.”

“
You
just, you know, go ahead and
do
things,” Ralph Bales lectured. “I thought it out.”

“Twenty-five percent?” Stevie tried to figure the numbers. What was one quarter of five thousand? Fifty percent is twenty-five hundred. Then half of that? He got lost.

Ralph Bales said, “Means you walk away with close to seven thousand bucks. Not bad for two days’ work.”

Close to seven?
Stevie smiled. He didn’t want to but he grinned.

Ralph Bales smiled, too. “Hey, does your buddy Ralph take care of you right? Okay?”

Stevie said, “I guess it’s all right. When?”

“When what?”

“When do we do it?”

“Well, I was thinking about that. I think we ought to wait a day or two. Make Lombro think that we’re earning the money. I’ll call him from time to time and
tell him we’re close. Like, we’ve almost found him but we aren’t sure.”

Another grin of near admiration on Stevie’s face, aimed down into the beige coffee. Then it faded and Stevie said, “But what if, you know, the asshole decides to talk to the fucking cops, what if—”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” A shadow loomed over them. A large man, his gray hair close-cropped, muscular shoulders in a starched plaid shirt, gazed somberly at the men. He looked exactly like an undercover detective. Ralph Bales’s doughy face burned and he felt the exact spot where his Colt rested on his hip. His hand eased toward it as he scanned the three or four dozen families surrounding them. His heart began to pound and it pounded faster when he saw Stevie Flom looking up at the man with a belligerent grin on his face.

Oh, man . . .

Grim-faced, the man said, “Like to ask you a question.”

“Would you now?” Stevie tossed the words at the tall figure. “What’d that be?”

Don’t do anything stupid, Stevie. . . .

“I got my children over there.” He nodded toward a nearby table. “Would you mind watching your language a bit. I don’t know where you’re from but we don’t talk that way around here.”

Stevie’s grin vanished and his eyes flared. His hand disappeared under the table, where he undoubtedly had his .25.

Oh, Jesus, Lord . . .

Ralph Bales’s face popped out in sweat. He leaned forward suddenly, reaching for Stevie’s arm.

But the young man’s hand emerged with his napkin. He wiped his mouth carefully and said, “I’m mighty sorry, mister. Been a hard day. Terrible trouble on the job.”

“That’s all right now. For myself, I don’t care. It’s the kids I was thinking of.”

He turned away. To his back Stevie commanded, “Wait.”

The man turned.

Stevie paused a moment, then said, “My friend, he’ll apologize to you, too.” Grinning, he looked at Ralph Bales, who held Stevie’s eyes for a minute, then said to the gray-haired man, “Accept my apologies.”

“Surely do.”

THE SWING OF
the car door. The reflection of a streetlight hitting him in the face. The momentum of the case of beer as he tried to grab it. The heavy crash of glass on glass. The grimacing face of the half-bald guy, saying, “Fuck you.” Bending down and looking in the car, seeing himself in the window of the car, the beer hemorrhaging at his feet . . . The Lincoln pulling away.

That’s what Pellam told the detectives.

One thing he couldn’t tell them was the one thing that could have gotten him sprung instantly and on the way to the meeting with Marty Weller and their potential partner—the description of the driver of the Lincoln.

How far away was the Sheraton? Pellam wondered. How long would it take to get there? Forty minutes, he seemed to recall. Not that it would matter at this point. The time was now nine-thirty.

He sat in a small room in the Maddox police department. Across an unsteady table were the two detectives. This tiny room, like the rest of the office, stank of age: old wood, Lysol, mold, sour paint. The walls were sickly green, and shaded incandescent bulbs hung down from the cloudy, grimy ceiling on black wires. In the main office of the station were a dozen desks. Only two of them were occupied, and only three others showed any signs that they were used.

The drive to police headquarters seemed to take forever. Pellam now decided he shouldn’t have told them about his meeting; he was sure the cops had intentionally driven ten miles out of their way to take him to the station and make sure he’d be late.

When he’d been led in, cuffed and scowling, the four cops in the room looked up with eight resentful eyes. The Italian detective had crouched down in front of a cabinet, opened the doors and begun pulling things out, a Sears catalog, empty flowerpots, a shotgun in a plastic bag, stacks of memos. “Nope. Can’t find it. Charlie, where’s that Breathalyzer got to?”

“Dunno.”

They had searched for a few minutes more, but it was a halfhearted exploration and they couldn’t locate the machine. “We’re going to have to get one from the Highway Patrol. Shouldn’t take more’n an hour. You’ll have to wait here till we do.”

When they’d said that, the time had been 8:05.

“It is absolutely vital I get to my meeting,” Pellam had growled.

“Well, when people get arrested they don’t always get what they want.”

“I. Am. Not. Drunk. Book me or release me.”

This had prompted them to take Pellam into the tiny canister of a room where he now sat. They asked, as long as they had some time, what did he remember about the Gaudia hit. They told him he could make a phone call if he’d give them one fact—just one—about the man in the Lincoln.

“This is a setup.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it, it’s all completely legal,” the WASP said indifferently. “So why don’t you just put on your thinking cap?”

He gave them the story one more time and then said, “I want to see my lawyer.”

“That’s it? That’s what you told us before.”

“My lawyer,” he said.

“You aren’t being charged with anything. We can’t charge you with anything until you take the Breathalyzer test. You just—”

“I want a lawyer.”

“You just’ll have to wait.” The Italian cop was angry at Pellam’s impatience.

The WASP cop looked like he had an idea. “Maybe as long as he’s here, he could do that picture.”

“I don’t know,” Pellam offered. “I’m probably too drunk.”

“Ha. Give it a shot, why don’t you?”

He tried to do an Identikit composite of the man who had knocked into him. As he spoke, he gazed blankly at the words on the Suspect Description form.
Hair, kinky, afro, fade, cornrows, caesar, processed, scar, tattoo words only, tattoo unknown type, limp, pimpled, pocked, harelip, left-handed, bushy eyebrows,
muscular, stocking cap, cowboy hat, applejack, turban . . .

No one was impressed with his composite drawing and the cops decided he was still being recalcitrant.

The
H
cop said, “You know, nobody’s come forward. You’re the only one who can help.”

Pellam was trying to remember their names. Who was the
H
cop?
Hilbert, Hanson, Hearst?

“. . . we’ve done a tag check—”

“Tag?” Pellam asked.

The Italian cop, the
G
cop, said, “License plates on other cars in the vicinity that night.”

“Oh. Your supervisor? I want to see him right now.”

The WASP continued, “. . . and it came up zip. We’ve got no other witnesses.”

Hellman, Harrison?

The
G
cop asked somberly if Pellam knew how many people were killed annually by drunk drivers. Pellam didn’t know if he was supposed to answer or not.

Hagedorn!
That was it. Now he just had the
G
cop to worry about.
Giovanni?

Pellam said wearily, “Let me talk to my lawyer.”

“You can’t talk to a lawyer,” the
G
cop said.

“I have a right. It’s in the Constitution. Confront my accusers.” Which Pellam regretted immediately. He sounded prissy and obnoxious—like the bald, spineless CIA director Tony Sloan had cast as the villain in his first movie. The cops looked at each other, then back to him. They seemed to be rolling their eyes, although their pupils didn’t move from his face.

The
G
cop said, “That’s only if you’re the defendant.”

“If I’m not a defendant then what am I doing here?”

“Not very much,” the
G
detective said bitterly. “Not very much at all.”

Pellam slammed his open palm on the desktop. It hit with a sound that surprised even him. The cops blinked but neither of them moved. “Are you going to arrest me for standing nearby a motor vehicle and having a sip of beer or not? If you can’t find the killer . . .” Pellam felt his heart sprinting. “
You
can’t find any leads, so you’re blaming
me
.”

“Hey—”

Through clenched teeth Pellam said, “You go to your boss and you say, ‘It’d be open and shut, except there’s this witness who hasn’t got the balls to help us. He’s a GFY.’ Whatever the hell that is.”

Hagedorn said, “Is somebody paying you off?”

The Italian cop said, “That’s a crime, sir. A serious crime. And you’ll do hard time for that.”

Pellam knew about
good cop, bad cop
from some films he’d worked on. This was a variation:
bad cop, really bad cop.

Another officer, a young uniform, stuck his head in the door. “Can’t find that Breathalyzer anywhere. Sorry. And MHP don’t have one to spare.”

“Well, this is your lucky day, Pellam.”

“I’ve spent three hours in this hellhole. That’s not lucky.”

“Well, sir, you could’ve been in our lockup all these three hours, which is a lot less pleasant than here.”

Pellam walked past them into the main room. He asked the desk officer, “Was there a guy here? Tall, blond hair, mustache?”

“Yeah, but he left. Sorry.”