Bloody River Blues

so elaborate, there had been no time to rig the guns themselves to fire the squibs. The young assistants—two men and a woman—would use their judgment in deciding where the machine-gun bullets would land and push the corresponding buttons.
    Stace said, “Ready.”
    “Okay,” the unit director shouted. “Everybody in position.”
    Dehlia sprawled out of the open door of a muddy Packard.
    The Pinkerton agents piled into the armored truck and it backed down the road.
    The parishioners walked into the church.
    Ross’s soon-to-be-dead fellow gangsters checked the harnesses and cables that would jerk them backward as they were shot by the agents.
    The director of photography and the camera operator climbed into the Chapman crane’s twin seats and rose twenty feet into the air. Sloan released his own death grip on the boom and wandered over to the unit director.
    “Pep talk,” Stace wryly whispered to his assistants.
    Sloan lifted his megaphone. His voice crackled, “Could I have everybody’s attention please? Quiet please! I’d just like to say one thing. This next eight minutes is costing me a quarter of a million dollars. Don’t fuck up.”
    Pep talk . . .
    He returned to his place beside the crane.
    The unit director nodded to the senior gaffer. The lights clicked on, replacing the mute aura of overcast sunlight with a wash of light that seemed to bleach the colors out of the scene but that would translate into natural sunlight by the time Technicolor was through with the film. The temperature on the set immediately rose five degrees and kept going.
    “Cameras rolling.”
    Assistants stepped in front of each camera and snapped clappers.
    “Action!” the unit director shouted.
    The bulky gray armored truck eased along the dirt road, passing the church, then slowing as it neared the Packard. It stopped. Dehlia lifted her head, stained with the phony blood, and motioned for help. The driver and the front-seat guard hesitated. They mouthed words to themselves, they spoke into the back of the truck. The front doors slowly opened. The guards stepped out onto the road. Ross lit a smoke bomb and ran, crouching, toward the back of the truck.
    “Now!” the driver shouted, pulling a machine gun from the front seat.
    The back doors of the armored truck burst open.
    Parishioners stepped from the church, smiling and nodding. The two guards began firing at Ross and the other gangsters, who were approaching from a stand of trees. Tree branches snapped, dirt puffed up, signs were riddled, the side of the truck was dotted with bullet holes, bodies of gangsters flew backwards. Churchgoers littered the ground.
    “Go, go, go!” Tony Sloan was mouthing. “Beautiful.”
    Dehlia was trying to start the Packard. Ross was covering her and retreating. The other gangsters fell back. The preacher came out onto the steps. He was brandishing a Bible; a guard accidentally gunned him down . . .
    “Stone cold beautiful,” Sloan whispered.
    It was into the middle of this battle—directly between the warring factions—that two modern navybluesedans and a white Ford Econoline van skidded to a halt. Men in suits climbed out leisurely, examining the set with some amusement.
    Sloan’s mouth opened in astonishment. Everyone began talking at once—many of them shouting because of their earplugs.
    “Jesus Christ,” Sloan shouted. No one had any trouble hearing this. “Who the hell are you?”
    The unit director was too shocked to order the cameras shut off. Finally the assistant director, holding her ponytail in a death grip, woke out of her stunned silence and shouted, “Cut. Cut! Save the lights.”
    The huge lamps clicked off.
    The assistant whose job it was to keep the road closed ran onto the set. Sloan pierced her with a glance of hatred. “They came right at me,” she sobbed. “They wouldn’t stop.”
    A tall, gray-haired man climbed from the first sedan, looking around. When he saw the director he stepped toward him.
    “What,” Sloan said, “in God’s name are you doing? Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” His face was crimson.
    An ID card appeared. “I’m Agent McIntyre. You in charge?”
    “Who are you?”
    “We’re agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Department of the Treasury. We’ve been informed by the U.S. Attorney in St. Louis that you’re in possession of unregistered automatic weapons and we’re here to confiscate them.”
    “You can’t do