Bloody River Blues

and his cocked head as he pulled on his leather jacket. “ ’Lo?”
    “Dinner tomorrow.”
    “Okay. Is that you, Marty?”
    “Here’s the deal. You ready? . . . Telorian.”
    Pellam did not speak for a moment. “Are you sure?”
    “Ugh. Am I sure?” Weller repeated sarcastically.
    Ahmed Telorian. The fifty-year-old Armenian-Iranian investor (after the hostage thing he began calling himself “Persian”) had grown to love American movies as much as he loved making millions from electronic component sales. Telorian and his wife had bought, gutted, and renovated an old theater in Westwood. They had turned it into a cult stronghold, in which they showed oddball films, many of them film noir, John Pellam’s forte.
    Telorian and Pellam had spent an evening together several years ago, drinking and talking about ClaireTrevor and Gloria Grahame and Robert Mitchum and Ed Dmytryk. They argued vocally and with white knuckles around their thick glasses of ouzo.
    The reason for that meeting several years ago was Telorian’s other avocation—producer of low-budget films. He had read Pellam’s Central Standard Time and was interested in optioning it. This happened to be at a time when Pellam had not wished to have anything to do with film companies, except location scouting. A generous offer of option money was rejected and Telorian had huffed away from the meeting. Pellam had not thought about him since then. He now felt his pulse increase a few tempos as he asked, “He’s in Maddox?”
    More likely to see Elvis hustling for a table at the Hard Rock Cafe.
    “He happened to be in Chicago. My secretary tracked him down. You kind of blew him off a few years ago, he says.”
    “I blew everybody off a few years ago.”
    “It’s not like he’s taking it personally. Not too personally. He still thinks Central Standard can be a hit. He’s got to be home day after tomorrow but I got him to agree to stop over in St. Louis to talk to you.”
    “What does he feel about me directing?”
    “Not a problem. He just wants to know how you’d do it. Times aren’t as flush as they used to be. He’s interested in hits. He doesn’t mind a grainy film. But it has to be hit grainy film. Got it?”
    “When’s his plane get in?”
    “Whenever he tells his pilot to land. Meet us at eight at the Waterfront Sheraton. Lobby bar. You know where it is?”
    “I can find it.”
    “About forty, fifty minutes from Maddox.”
    “He’s got the treatment? The script?” Pellam asked.
    “He’s got everything. All you need to bring is as much Tony Sloan gossip as you can dig up.”
    IN THE FLORAL-WALLPAPERED entryway was a white Formica table. On it rested a Lucite pitcher filled with plastic flowers. To the left, through an arched doorway, was a parlor. The furniture in the rooms was mostly 1950s chain store—kidney-shaped tables, blond wood chairs, wing-backs and love seats upholstered in beige, a lot of plastic. Plastic everywhere. In the corner of the parlor was a young woman in a white blouse and black pedal pushers, struggling through a Chopin étude. A young, muscular man in brown slacks and yellow short-sleeved shirt leaned against the piano, smiling at her and nodding slowly.
    “When I first saw you, you know, it was the night of the dance. It was—”
    “I remember.” She stopped playing and looked up.
    “It was hot as a in-line block. You were across the room under that Japanese lantern.”
    “That lantern, it was the one that was busted.”
    “Sure, it was busted and the bulb shone through that paper and covered you in light. That’s when I knowed you was the girl for me.” He put his hand on hers.
    A heavyset man appeared slowly in the doorway. He lifted a Thompson submachine gun. The couple turned to him. Their smiles vanished.
    “No!” the woman screamed. The man started forward toward the assailant. The gun began its fierce rattling. Pictures, vases, lamps exploded, black holes popped into the wall, bloody wounds appeared on the bodies of the couple as they reached toward each other. As the magazine in the submachine gun emptied and a throbbing silence returned, the couple slowly spiraled to the floor, their slick, bloody hands groping for each other’s. Their fingers touched. The bodies lay still.
    None of the fifteen or so sweaty people standing in the room around the immobile, bloody bodies said a single word. No one moved. Most of them were not even staring at the couple but were looking instead at