Bloody River Blues

the two large splats of bright red blood. As far as the handcuffs allowed, he pulled his shirt apart. There were huge reddish welts where the bullets had struck him but the skin was not broken. Fragments of white wax were bonded to the cloth which was stained with dark but fake blood.
    Ralph Bales began to cry again, but they were tears from hysterical laughter. “You son of a bitch, you goddamn . . .”
    That was when a shadow appeared on the floor beside the men.
    The heads of both the men snapped sideways. They saw sensible pumps, a woman’s pants, a denim jacket. Nina Sassower’s pale, pretty face.
    And the gun in her hand.
    “Nina!” Pellam called.
    Ralph Bales began to relax.
    Pellam said, “What are you doing here?”
    Her voice was distant, as if she were speaking through layers of silk or gauze. “I thought you’d come here.” It was the same factory they’d found earlier, where she’d been attacked by the birthmark man.
    “You should leave. What’s that gun for? This’s got nothing to do with you.”
    She stepped closer, looking gaunt and pale. Her skin was matte and her eyes were two dark dots. She looked at them both and her eyes quickly settled on Ralph Bales’s wounds. “Oh, God, Pellam . . .”
    He told her they were fake bullets, then squinted as he noticed her concerned eyes gazing at the man in the chair. “Do you know him?” he asked.
    She turned to him. “I’m sorry, Pellam.”
    “What do you—?” He started toward her.
    She quickly lifted the big Colt toward his chest. “No. Stay where you are.”
    “Nina!”
    “Put it on the floor. Your gun, put it down.”
    Pellam did. Then he laughed bitterly. “It was all planned, wasn’t it?”
    “It was all planned,” she whispered.
    “You picked me up at the hospital, you had me get you a job so you’d be close by . . . Who are you working for? Lombro? Or Crimmins? Peterson? Who?”
    “I’m sorry, Pellam. I’m so sorry.”
    Ralph Bales said, “Did Phil send you? Oh, man . . .” He moaned in relief. “Come on, honey. Get me out of here.”
    Nina squinted, almost closing her eyes. Pellam knew what this meant. He leapt to the floor as the three jarring explosions from Nina’s automatic filled the room. Windows rattled, and dust from the tin ceiling floated down around the three of them like gray snow. The shadows of startled pigeons zipped across the windows.

Chapter 24
    PELLAM SLOWLY STOOD , dizzy from both the fall and the pounding to his ears from the gunshots.
    Reluctantly he looked across the room.
    Ralph Bales had taken all three rounds in the chest. The chair had not toppled backwards but had turned forty-five degrees sideways under the impact. The man sat motionless, head down, facing the windows as if he were dozing in the weak sunlight.
    Nina carefully unchambered the next round and extracted the clip. The empty gun, the slide locked back, went into her purse. She then stooped and began to collect the spent cartridges from the floor with impatient but fastidious care as if she were picking up socks from her bedroom carpet before vacuuming.
    Pellam quickly uncuffed Ralph Bales’s wrists, pocketed the cuffs, and wiped the chair free from fingerprints. He then hurried Nina outside and into the car. His fear of impending police was unwarranted, however; the gunshots had not been heard or, if so, had perhaps been attributed to the final scenes of Missouri River Blues. They drove to a nearby park on the riverbank.
    “You know where I got the gun?” Nina whispered. “My father kept it in his upstairs desk drawer of our house.” She wiped her tearful eyes.
    “Oh, you should have seen that desk,” Nina continued. “It was a rolltop. Oak, I guess. Dark, with those thin yellow streaks in it. You unlocked it with a brass key that always needed polishing. There was such a wonderful sound when the lock turned. Then you’d lift up the top and there were dozens of these little compartments, lined with green felt. Some of the compartments had . . . Some of them had . . .”
    She cried for a moment. Pellam made no gesture of comforting her.
    “Some of the pigeonholes had little doors with knobs on them. We would go searching for secret compartments. We looked up under drawers, we tapped the back with hammers, listening for hollow spots. We found the gun when we were children, but we didn’t think much of it. It had been years since I thought of the desk. Then last week I remembered it. I remembered