Bloody River Blues

mister,” the WASP cop said ominously to Stile.
    “—being arrested.”
    “For what?”
    “For bullshit,” Pellam called. He looked at his watch. It was six-twenty. “Look, I have a very important meeting at eight. I can’t—”
    “Quiet.”
    “No, look, I’ve got to meet a man in St. Louis—”
    They roughly dragged him to the squad car and, with a furry Italian hand on his head, pushed him inside.
    Pellam called, “Stile, you gotta make a call for me. You gotta call Marty—”
    “All right, that’s enough out of you.” The door slammed shut. Pellam kicked the front seat furiously.
    “He’s a hairsbreadth away from resisting,” the Italian cop said to nobody.
    “Where’s the station?” Stile asked. “I’m coming down there.”
    The cops climbed into the front seat. One of them said, “It’s in the phone book. Look it up.”
    They drove off leisurely, leaving Stile with a strip of beef jerky in one hand and five cans of beer in the other.

Chapter 9
    “LISTEN,” SAID RALPH Bales.
    Stevie Flom was listening.
    “Okay, the man is not happy.”
    They sat in a chain restaurant on Big Bend Boulevard in St. Louis. Stevie drank decaf. Ralph Bales was drinking tea, bleached by two wedges of lemon. It was All You Can Eat Don’t Be Shy Spaghetti Night. Around them, fat families sat hunched over mounds of food.
    “Not very happy at all.”
    Stevie was a punk and rarely gave a shit who was happy and who was not, except that this particular unhappy person owed him a lot of money.
    “So it’s my fault?” Stevie said, his voice shrill. The table rocked as he leaned forward and he whispered, “What, I was supposed to let a cop take you out?”
    Ralph Bales held a finger to his lips. “ I’m not complaining. Lombro isn’t, you know, rational. He thought you should’ve shot the cop in the leg or something so they wouldn’t be so concerned about it. Not the back.”
    “Yeah, right, shot him in the leg. Like it’s night and I’ve got a pussy gun and I shoot him in the legand he feels a little bee sting and turns around and explodes my head with hollow points. Bullshit. I mean, bullshit!”
    The men did not know each other well. They moved in different circles. Ralph Bales was older, fifteen years. He was well connected on the riverfront and probably could have been more of a mover except he ran into some trouble in Chicago, working for the Giancana family. Some money that was supposed to find its way from Cicero up to Oak Park had not made that short journey. Ralph Bales remained alive to pay it back, out of his salary, but his name was suspect in Chicago ever after. So he returned broke to his hometown of St. Louis and found his way into riverfront services and cargo and trucking and finally became a consultant.
    Ralph Bales had in fact been doing some security consulting when he met Stevie Flom. A mutual friend needed some partners to help some expensive Scotch fall off a truck and to move the cases after they touched down. The job went smoothly, though Ralph Bales had been irritated by arrogant Stevie. He found, however, that another person resided inside the young man—Desperate Stevie, who had worked up such incredibly large debts giving his money to casinos and to poker players and to the skirts he humped (nightly, it seemed) that he would do whatever he was told to, provided he was paid for it.
    “It’s my fault, you’re saying. Suddenly it’s all my fault!”
    “You’re not listening,” Ralph Bales said. “I’m just telling you.”
    The weather was cold and wet but Stevie wore a sleeveless tank top. He had good muscles; he liked to show them off.
    “We’ve got to handle Lombro—”
    “ Handle him,” Stevie exploded again, though the detonations were softer because he was lifting his coffee to his lips. “What the hell does that mean?”
    “First, what it means is we don’t get paid.”
    “Don’t get paid?” Back to the high decibels. “Lombro was in the audience too! He should’ve been looking out for heat, he shoulda honked the horn or something. Fuck!”
    Several parents, worried about their chubby offspring, glanced ominously toward the table.
    Ralph Bales leaned forward. “Look . . .”
    “ ‘Listen, look.’ You sound like a crossing guard.”
    “This man is nobody to fool around with.”
    “Well, you look. I’m out five thousand dollars. Which—I’ve been asking around, all right?—and I find is pretty on the low side for a hit.”
    Ralph Bales