Bloody River Blues

of that time he’d been unemployed.
    They were walking through what was left of downtown Maddox. They had finished lunch and were moving, at Pellam’s tacit guidance, away from the park where Tony Sloan was choreographing the murders of two Pinkerton men who stumble on Ross’s hideout; Nina’s narrow eyes darted uncomfortably at the sound of the gunshots. They were make-believe but still troubling. Pellam touched her arm to direct her toward the river.
    Today she wore a bulky orange V-neck sweater. The matching orange skirt was billowy and a brisk wind snapped it like a ship’s sail. Her shoes were tan and she carried a raincoat that was the same shade. An improbable outfit on Santa Monica Boulevard, but in Maddox, Missouri, it was quite becoming.
    When they had put some distance between them and the gunfight, she relaxed. “Before I got laid off, I was a school counselor, grade school.”
    Pellam had taken those tests. His teachers, in the Catskill town where he grew up, were encouraging, but the tests revealed he had relatively little aptitude for any of the listed careers. (Because Pellam liked to read, the counselor suggested, “Book salesman.” Because he liked to go to movies, the man offered, “Usher, then with hard work, theater manager.”)
    “Not a guidance counselor—more of a therapist.”
    “A psychiatrist?”
    “Psychologist. But budget cutbacks . . . Illinois, too. All over the country, I guess.”
    “Surprised they even have schools left in Maddox.”
    “Well, I really live in Cranston, which isn’t as bad off as here. Closer to St. Louis. But we still aren’t doing well. Anyway, I guess if you’re the one laid off, it doesn’t matter if unemployment is one percent or twenty.”
    “Guess not.”
    They looked straight down this broad street and saw the gray slab of river a quarter mile away. Despite a heavy network of overhead power and telephone cables, the street seemed very nineteenth-century—like a deserted frontier town’s. It would look perfectly natural for the road to be filled with muddy mule teams and drovers and ponies and river workers slogging through the muck toward the docks. Pellam noticed a couple of scabby, atmospheric buildings, right out of 1880. “Let me take some snaps. Hold up a second.”
    A battered Polaroid camera unfolded and he took four pictures. He stuffed the undeveloped, moist squares into his shirt, then continued on, Nina beside him.
    “Are those for your movie?”
    “Not the one they’re shooting now. I have a catalog of buildings and places that directors might want. Keeps me from reinventing the wheel every time I get a call.”
    “You work for the studio? Or do you have your own business?”
    “Freelancer. Like most everybody here. Nowadays the studios just finance and distribute. Everybody else is hired as an independent contractor. Used to be different. In the thirties and forties the studios owned your soul—if you had a soul, that is.”
    She didn’t laugh but seemed to be memorizing this lesson in Hollywood enterprise, and so he decided not to make a casting couch joke. Not yet. He turned back to the old buildings and Nina watched him take more pictures.
    They continued up the street.
    “Let’s go in, can we?” Nina nodded at a store. Although Pellam was extremely aware that he owed Sloan a big field, he said sure. They walked into a huge warehouse, filled with scavenged relics from buildings. Nina said she was interested in columns and mantelpieces. They found a couple of scabby wooden columns, stripped down carelessly; you could still see blotches of paint and nicks and the scorch marks from the blowtorch. Nina liked them but thought at four hundred each, they were too pricey. Pellam agreed. He also did not think they would fit into his Californiacontempo bungalow on Beverly Glen. “And dangerous,” he added, “in the camper.”
    She smiled at this, then stopped in front of a dark, flaking mirror, framed in ancient oak. She flicked her hair with her fingers.
    Pellam asked, “Tell me about yourself.”
    She blushed and gazed at a brass coal bucket with a face embossed into it.
    “A cherub,” Pellam commented, not pushing the deflected question.
    “I always thought that was a cigar. Like the kind Clint Eastwood smoked in those Italian westerns.”
    “Isn’t that cheroot?”
    “Could be. I’m always getting things mixed up.”
    After a pause she said in a dogged voice, “So, tell you about myself. Well.” She