Bloody River Blues

said anything, except maybe “Damn good chili, Pellam.”
    He piled dishes in the tiny sink, rinsed some of them in the dribble of the water from the faucet.
    “Anyway, when I landed I went down so far, my belt loops made an impression in the mud beneath the bag.”
    “Uh. That happens sometimes,” Danny said lethargically.
    To air out the camper Pellam opened the front door. Chili smoke was only part of it. The lawyer from St. Louis had been lighting one cigarette after another. Pellam had noticed that midwesterners did not seem to know this habit was bad for you.
    Danny and Stile argued about who had the riskierjob—Stile falling off high cliffs or Danny having to pitch his stories to producers and development people. Stile said that was an old joke, and tried to convince Danny to go base-jumping with him sometime.
    “To Live and Die in L.A.,” Stile whispered reverently. “Awesome scene. The jump from the bridge.”
    Pellam, still at the front door, squinted. He saw a large, boxy shadow in the grass not far from where the camper was parked. What was it? He squinted, which didn’t help. He remembered seeing that area in the daylight—it was a field full of crabgrass and weeds. What would be sitting in the middle of a lousy field this time of night? Funny, the shadow looked just like . . .
    The shadow began to murmur.
    . . . a car.
    It accelerated fast, spraying dirt and stones, nosing quickly out of the grass, grinding the undercarriage as it went over the sharp drop to the highway.
    Probably lovers, Pellam thought. Necking. He could not remember the last time he necked. Did people still do it? Probably in the Midwest they did. Pellam lived in Los Angeles and nobody he’d ever dated there necked.
    It was only when he turned back to the camper that he realized that the car had not turned on its lights until it was far down River Road; because of this, the license plate was not illuminated until it was too far away to be read. Odd . . .
    “Wish I’d seen it,” Danny said emphatically.
    “Was just a car,” Pellam muttered, glancing toward the disappearing taillights.
    The other two stared at him.
    “I meant,” Danny said, “the base jump off that bridge.”
    “Oh.”
    Danny thanked Pellam for the game and the company but not the chili. After he left, Stile stepped into the kitchenette and began doing the dishes.
    “You don’t have to.”
    “Not a problem.”
    He washed everything but the chili pot.
    “Man, black-bottom chili. You’re on your own there, buddy.”
    “I got diverted on my way back from the store.”
    Stile asked, “How long you in this hellhole of a town for?”
    “Till shooting’s done. Tony’s reshooting every other scene.”
    “He does that, yup. Well, if we’re here next week, come over to the Quality Inn for a game. I’ve got a hotplate there and I’ll whip up Philly cheese steaks. With onions. By the by, I’m getting the Hertz tomorrow. You can have your bike back then.”
    Stile had been in town three weeks and had already burned out the transmission of his rental car. Rental companies should ask for occupation and not rent their vehicles to stuntmen.
    Pellam walked him to the door. “When you got here, d’you see a car parked over there?”
    “Where? There? That’s just a mess of weeds, Pellam. Why’d anybody park there?”
    Stile stepped outside, inhaled the air. He whistled a Stevie Wonder tune through his gunslinger mustache as he walked in long strides to the batteredYamaha with the rack dangling precariously from the back fender.
    “WAS IT HIM? ”
    “I couldn’t tell.”
    “He get a look at the car?”
    “If I couldn’t tell it was him how could I tell if he got a look at the car? And if you cracked that transmission case, boy, you’re paying for it. You hear me?” Ralph Bales was speaking to Stevie Flom. They had abandoned the Pontiac and were in Ralph Bales’s Cadillac, Stevie driving.
    Flom was twenty-five years old. He was north Italian blond and had gorgeous muscles and baby-smooth skin. His round face had never once been disfigured by a pimple. He had slept with 338 women. He was a cargo handler on the riverfront though he took a lot of sick days and for real money he ran numbers and did odd jobs for men who had the sort of odd jobs few people were willing to do. He was married and had three girlfriends. He made about sixty thousand a year and lost about thirty thousand of it in Reno and at poker games in East St. Louis and