Bloody River Blues

gave the actor elaborate directions that sent him ten miles into the boonies. He returned an hour later, fuming, and stormed onto the set, where Pellam and the crew greeted him with high-pitched squeals and calls of soo-eee!
    Pellam had sent him to the St. Charles County Hog and Ham Museum.
    But that had been a month ago, and now the time for jokes was over. Missouri River Blues was badly over schedule and vastly over budget. The producer from the studio financing the film had sent a representative—Sloan referred to him, openly, as “the stoolie”—to goose things along. The problem, in Pellam’s view, was that while Sloan could entice performances from characters fighting to the death with lasers or changing themselves into charges of electricity, he did not, despite his aspirations to art, know what he wanted in less apocalyptic scenes: love, betrayal, friendship, longing . . . So the introspective scenes were gradually replaced by more shoot-outs and chases and extreme close-ups of guns being loaded and dynamite bombs being assembled and armored truck locks being picked or blown apart.
    And all the while Sloan shot more and more film. He averaged ten thousand feet a day—almost two hours worth of film from which to distill out about two minutes of real screen time.
    “It’s an asshole picture,” the lean, balding key grip complained to Pellam. Meaning the movie was not being made here, as it was filmed, but would be cut and pasted together at the back end of the whole process—in the editing room. Desperate Tony was shooting as much footage as he possibly could, out of which he would hammer together his movie. (“Hitchcock didn’t work that way,” the grip whispered.)
    After principal photography started Pellam thought that he would have plenty of time on his own. The bulk of a location manager’s work would normallybe finished at this stage. He had merely to oversee paying site rentals on schedule and keep track of permits and insurance binders. But more and more frequently he found himself waiting for calls from an increasingly anxious Sloan—such as this morning, which summons now had him racing at seventy miles an hour through the bleak and abandoned streets of Maddox, Missouri, which might have been a businessman’s nightmare but was at least a motorcyclist’s dream.

Chapter 4
    PELLAM PUT A twelve-foot skid mark from the curb to the catering table on the set of Missouri River Blues and hopped off the Yamaha only to find the dusty Ford Taurus braking to a stop six inches from his thigh.
    Pellam shrugged and Stile emerged from the Ford out of sorts. He had lost the race because he had stopped for a red light that Pellam had ignored.
    “Didn’t know we weren’t playing by the rules,” Stile grumbled, wandering off toward wardrobe. “I’ll gitcha next time.”
    Pellam walked to the scaffolding that rose above that morning’s setup.
    Tony Sloan was a hawkish man, muscular, very lean in the face, which was why he sported a black beard. He was wearing blue jeans and a faded green T-shirt. His black hair, dusted with gray, was pulled back in a short ponytail. Occasionally he talked frantically. Other times, not at all. His eyes, perhaps reflecting his thoughts, would either dart about or lift slowly and hover before descending momentarily onto the face of the person he was speaking with.
    These eyes now landed hungrily on Pellam.
    “John, gotta get that phone fixed. Listen, I’ve been rethinking the ending. I want them to get that house, you know.” He fidgeted with his beeper.
    “Ross and Dehlia?”
    “I’ve got an image of what they should have. I can see it. You find me one? A fifties sort of house. You know, a bungalow maybe.” Sloan’s gaze rose, did a few slow circles, and returned to Pellam, who was trying to recall the most recent ending for the film.
    “That’s instead of what?”
    “The bus depot,” Sloan answered. “We don’t need the bus depot anymore.”
    “Okay. That’s easy. You want a house. You want to do interiors there?”
    “I don’t want to, no.” Sloan’s voice was exasperated. “Why would I want to?”
    “I didn’t mean want to, Tony. I meant are you going to?”
    The eyes rose. “I want to build a set. On a soundstage. I don’t want to have to cram all the damn equipment into a twelve-by-fourteen-foot living room. But I don’t have any choice.”
    “You want a bungalow with a twelve-by-fourteen living room.”
    “Well, I want bigger. If