Bloody River Blues

on. He shut the set off. “I should probably get some sleep. I’m still in shock. No, really. Spinal shock, it’s called. Not like, ha, normal shock. Sleeping’s a good thing.”
    The script in Pellam’s mind now called for the cop to ask what he had come here to ask: Could Buffett please call up his detective buddies and ask them to stop ruining his life.
    But he couldn’t ask. Pellam wondered what stopped him. He believed it was not the fact that Pellam was going to leave in a moment with a pretty woman beside him and go back to his job. Nor was it Buffett’s face, which no longer looked so healthy as Pellam had thought—mouth hanging loose, eyes darting, filled with a fear that he perhaps thought he was concealing.
    No, what stopped Pellam was simply that he stood and Buffett lay.
    As simple as that.
    “We better be going,” Pellam said. “Just wanted to stop by.”
    “Yeah.” Buffett nodded. “Good seeing you.”
    “What do you read?” Pellam asked. “I’ll bring you a magazine next time I stop by.”
    “I don’t read. I don’t like to read.” The mystery that Pellam had brought on the first visit sat prominently unopened under the bedside table.
    “You got any hobbies?”
    “Yeah, I got hobbies.”
    “What?”
    Buffett looked from the square of the TV screen to the box where Pellam had pitched the hypodermic needle. “Basketball, softball, jogging, and hockey. Those’re my hobbies.”
    AT THE MAIN desk of the hospital, downstairs, Pellam remembered that he had met Nina when she was visiting her mother. He now asked if she wanted to see the woman.
    She shook her head. “I visited her this morning. Twice a day is a little much. She can be a dear, but . . .” They stepped outside. The day had grown overcast and chill. She asked, “Your parents both alive?”
    “Just my mother. She lives in upstate New York. I don’t see her that often. We run out of things to talk about after three days.”
    Nina took a scarf from her pocket, a long one covered with blotches of brilliant green and yellow. She began to tie it around her neck. He watched the flimsy cloth cover the pale skin at her throat.
    She said, “I’m really enjoying that job you got me. Everybody’s really nice.”
    “Making movies is fun at a certain level. You get much higher up than location work or makeup and it’s a pain in the ass.”
    “The only yucky part is special effects. All that fake blood and those gunshot wounds.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “Why does Mr. Sloan make such violent movies?”
    “Because many, many people pay money to watch them.”
    “Why,” she asked, “are you looking around so much?”
    “Am I?”
    “Yeah. It’s like you think somebody’s following you.”
    “Naw. Always working. Looking for locations. In fact, that’s where we’re going right now. Find a big field. I need the help of a local.”
    “I’m not a local, remember. I’m from Cranston.”
    “You’re more local than I am.”
    “Is that the reason you want me to come along?” A faint smile on her frosted pink lips.
    “Well, scouting isn’t as easy as it looks. I sense you’re a natural at it.”
    “Me?”
    “I need a big field next to the river. And a road running through it. How would you go about finding one?”
    “Well, I don’t know. I guess I’d just drive along a road beside the river until I found a field.”
    “See what I mean. You’re a born location scout.”
    They both laughed.
    “All right. But I have to be back at seven. I’ve got a call then. See, I can talk movie. Call . Oh, I didn’t want to ask on the set but what’s the difference between a gaffer and a grip?”
    “The most-asked question in the movie business. Gaffer’s an electrician and lighting guy. Grips areworkmen who do rigging and other nonelectrical work.”
    They approached her car.
    “Another question.”
    Pellam preempted her. “The best boy is the key grip’s first assistant.”
    “No,” Nina said, tossing him the keys. “I was going to ask if you knew any casting couch stories.”
    PETER CRIMMINS WAS a member of the Ukrainian Social Club in St. Louis.
    He could easily have afforded to join the elite Metropolitan Club or, although he was a bar-sinister Christian, the Covington Hills Country Club. Yet this was the only social organization he belonged to. The club was in a shabby, two-story building, greasy-windowed and grimy, nestled between vacant lots filled with saplings strangled by kudzu. The