Bloody River Blues

Pellam’s girlfriend and then Pellam himself to “help” Pellam remember about Crimmins and vanished shortly afterward. Nor did Nelson know that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with Tony Sloan’s federal firearm notices. Nelson therefore didn’t know that Pellam had some very good motives for jerking leashes. “Cold feet, I suspect,” the U.S. Attorney suggested.
    “What about the first option? That Crimmins got to him?”
    Peterson shook his head. “Even Crimmins wouldn’t be that stupid. Hell. The press’ll play it like we’ve got hairy palms.”
    “What do you want to do?” Nelson gazed down at the press release.
    “What’s your assessment of the case against Crimminswithout Pellam’s testimony? I’m speaking of the Gaudia hit.”
    Nelson thought for a minute. Peterson made a cat’s cradle with a rubber band and studied his protégé, whose squinting eyes and pursed lips only partially revealed the lavish anxiety he felt. “I’d say probable cause if we want to arrest him. But we won’t get an indictment.” Nelson cleared his throat.
    “And the original indictment, the RICO charges, without Gaudia’s testimony?”
    He said, “Acquittal. Sixty-forty.” Nelson’s grimace was the equivalent of hunkering down in a bunker before a bomb detonated.
    But Peterson’s sole reaction was to press his teeth together. His breath hissed out from between them and then he chewed on his tongue in rapt contemplation. He slowly concluded that there was as much danger for him in the Crimmins case as there was potential to score one for the good guys.
    It was time for the whole thing to go away.
    He told this to Nelson and added, “Call Crimmins’s lawyer. See if we can plead him away for a few years.”
    Nelson quickly responded, “Will do,” and noted coolly that this order was tantamount to scuttling two years of work. “What about Pellam? There’s still somebody out there looking to hurt him. Should we get Bracken or Monroe on it? I mean, the guy could be in trouble.”
    Peterson wound up a toy Donald Duck, which walked for ten inches, hit an indictment, then marched in place until the spring wound down. “It’s Pellam’s problem now. He’s on his own.”
    SHE DROVE QUICKLY , racing along Main Street in Maddox, past the empty storefronts, the darkened real estate brokerages, the Goodwill Store. The car spun up a wake of bleached, dull leaves.
    Nina had driven from Cranston to the Federal Building in St. Louis. She hadn’t been able to find Pellam though his camper had been parked in a lot across the street. It had been empty. Where, she wondered, had he gone? She paced in panic up and down the sidewalk. She suddenly believed she knew. She had leapt into the car and sped back to Maddox.
    Now, driving along deserted Main Street, she was not so sure she had guessed correctly. The emptiness seemed to laugh at her. Where the hell is he?
    As she skidded around a curve beside abandoned grain elevators, images jumbled in her mind. Pellam standing in the field beside the brown Missouri, aiming his Polaroid. Nina herself applying makeup to a petite blond actress wearing a yellow sundress riddled with bullet holes. Pellam lying in bed next to Nina herself. The huge kick of the Colt automatic that jarred her arm from wrist to shoulder every time she fired it.
    “YOU KNOW SOMETHING?” Ralph Bales asked the question in a normal volume, though it echoed loudly through the empty factory, not far from the Missouri River. He looked around quickly, startled by the sound of his own words returning.
    The beer man did not apparently want to know anything. Ralph Bales continued, “I don’t even know your name.”
    Introductions were not, however, made. The manprodded him farther inside with the barrel of the cowboy gun.
    Despite the muzzle at his back, though, Ralph Bales did not feel in danger. Maybe it was how the man was holding the gun—without desperation, more like a bottle of beer than a weapon. Maybe it was his eyes, which were no longer as eerily serene as they had been. They seemed more purposeful, as if the man just wanted to talk.
    In the rear of the warehouse was a small cul-desac beneath a balcony. It was very dark here, lit only by indirect light filtering in from the huge arched windows, covered with grime and dust. The floor was dusty, too, but much of that had been disturbed by footprints. Directly in front of a Bee Gees poster was a wood-and-canvas director’s chair.
    Ralph Bales