Bloody River Blues

splashed at pilings. From the speakers of a candy red excursion boat, a paddle-wheeler, came brassy jazz. Ralph Bales had been reading when Stevie Flom walked up to him. Reading and leaning up against the scabby railing, really lost in the paper.
    Stevie Flom was cold and he was not interested in what was in the paper. He hadn’t slept well the night before, turning over and over, listening to the wind rock the single tree outside his bedroom window. He’d stared at the tree for a long time. When he had gone to bed there were seventeen leaves on it. When he had wakened there were eight. His wife had slept with a smile on her face and that pissed him off.
    Then she woke up cheerful and happy and that pissed him off too.
    What it was he was supposed to know about was this airplane that took off vertically, then the wings twisted forward and it flew like a normal plane. “That is a great idea.” Ralph Bales pointed at an abandoned dock beside the river. “See, it could land there. You wouldn’t have to go out to Lambert. That’s the biggest pain in traveling, getting to the airports, you ask me.”
    Stevie Flom didn’t travel much. Reno, of course. Then he and some of the guys had gone to a casino in Puerto Rico once. He’d taken the wife to Aruba, which was nothing but sand and wind and as hot as an engine block. He wondered why Ralph Bales traveled so much he had to worry about getting to the airport.
    “I wish I had a piece of that.”
    “Yeah,” Stevie Flom said, and he looked at the picture of the airplane, which, after a moment of reflection, he decided was a pretty good idea. He thought that with the money he was going to make from Lombro, he would take the wife on another vacation. Or maybe one of the girlfriends. He’d have to decide which one.
    “I’ve got the go-ahead,” Ralph Bales said. He turned the paper to the front page, where there were no airplanes or other clever ideas at all.
    “You got . . . Oh, to take care of the guy in the camper. The beer guy! Why’d it take so long?”
    “Lombro was nervous. I don’t know, he’s a—”
    “Weird dude is what he is.”
    “Yeah. Weird. He’s upped your share to ten.”
    “Ten thousand? ”
    “Of course, thousand. What do you think?”
    “Well, why?” Stevie grinned deep creases into his baby-skin cheeks.
    “Why? Excuse me, you want me to call him up and give it back?”
    “I’m just curious.”
    “Curious. He’s curious,” Ralph Bales whispered. “You’ve got to make it look like an accident.”
    “Accident? Why?”
    “Because it’s got to. That’s why the extra money. I was thinking, maybe something with that motorcycle of his.”
    “He’s got a cycle?”
    “That yellow Yamaha. He keeps it on the back of his camper.”
    “Sure,” Stevie said. “A cycle accident. That’s easy.”
    Like he did it every day.
    STEVIE FLOM THOUGHT : Maddox is an easy place to steal a car but a tough place to drive one around once you’d boosted it.
    The cops didn’t have much else to do but check out hot cars and the place was hardly big enough to get lost in the camouflage of heavy traffic. He was eyeballedby two cops as he made his law-abiding way out of town. Stevie was also unhappy that this particular Dodge’s former owner was a rent-a-car company, which meant that the forty-eight thousand miles on it were hard miles, careless, heavy-foot miles. The damn thing rattled and clanked and there was a hiss coming from the AC even though it was off.
    But it moved pretty fast and he was able to keep up with the cycle though the beer guy drove like a son of a bitch. Stevie worried that if the Yamaha started lane-hopping he could kiss the man’s ass good-bye. He goosed the accelerator and closed on the cycle.
    He may have had a lemon car but Stevie was lucky in one respect. He had arrived at the Bide-A-Wee trailer park just as the guy walked out of the camper and jumped on the Yamaha. He’d even glanced at Stevie’s car but just briefly, not even looking in the driver’s seat. Stevie drove past. In the rearview mirror he watched the man kick-start the Yamaha. Stevie made a slow U-turn and followed.
    Now, on the expressway, the beer man changed lanes, shot forward, braked hard, then settled into the express lane, about twenty miles over the limit. Stevie, hands sweating, managed to keep with him and soon they were cruising smoothly toward St. Louis.
    As he tapped his gold pinkie ring on the steering wheel, Stevie was thinking about