Bloody River Blues

looked back at her. “I get kind of groggy sometimes. Just sitting here.”
    Her eyes flicked to his hand. “You’re married, right?”
    “Yep.”
    “Your wife visits you every day?”
    “Sure.” She’s a great little trouper. “Brings me cookies. You want a cookie?”
    “No, thank you. Any kids?”
    “Nope. Sour cream dip? I think it’s onion. I don’t remember.”
    Nina was not going away. Why was she forcing him to have a conversation with her? Why was her mouth curled into a tiny little smile when there was nothing to smile about?
    Buffett said, “You’ve got a relative here, right?”
    She nodded. “My mother. I was just visiting her. I got bored and left. Is that bad of me?” She asked this in a pouty way—the schoolgirl routine that she seemed to have perfected—and he understood he was supposed to tell her that it was not bad of her, which he did, though not very sincerely. Buffett watched the silent machine guns firing at fleeing sailors, who called silently for help. A number of them got gunned down. Several were shot in the back.
    “Well,” she said, no longer smiling. “You’re sure Mister Quiet.”
    Commandos were coming to save the ship.
    “I guess I’m watching TV.”
    “With the sound off?”
    He clicked the off switch. He’d denied himself the treat of the commandos’ rescue and now she’d sense his resentment and leave.
    But, no, she was walking around the room in a very leisurely way, straightening his magazines. Then she started on the vases.
    “I think I’m becoming a curmudgeon,” he said by way of apology. “What is that exactly?”
    “Got me. An old fart, I guess.” She began to throw out the dead flowers. “I’d think the nurses’d take better care of them.”
    “They’re pretty busy. Everybody’s busy.”
    Except me. I sit on my ass all day long. I can tell you all about fabric softener, breakfast cereal, and tampons. I could learn how to hijack ships if you’d leave me the hell alone.
    She washed the vases in the bathroom and left them upside down to dry on the top of the toilet. Buffett took grudging pleasure in watching her. The glasswas immaculate. Some women are good at this, he thought. Give them a dirty bar of Ivory and a cheap paper towel and they’d make anything spotless. Penny had been this way.
    Penny is this way, he corrected.
    Nina walked to a low dresser across the room. Nothing more to wash. No more silent hijackers or Monistat commercials. No more crazy location scouts.
    No more nothin’.
    “Well, I’m pretty tired,” Buffett said, and yawned a fake but large yawn. “I think I’d like to get some sleep.”
    “Naw,” Nina said, picking up a deck of cards from the dresser. “Don’t you think you’d really like to play gin rummy?”
    JOHN PELLAM, HIS bomber jacket covering Samuel Colt’s deadly brainchild, walked with the oblivion of landed gentry through the streets of Maddox, Missouri.
    He kicked at a tuft of tall grass springing from a perfect hole in the middle of a cracked sidewalk slab. He continued on. There was no traffic here, foot or auto, along this row of buildings. The tallest structure on the block—a three-story factory—may have bustled in its heyday but the building now mocked its past; the roof had collapsed long ago and the old green sign on the facade read FINERY, the RE ironically worn down by some trick of erosion.
    Looking behind him, looking down alleys, looking more often in the reflections of windows than at the sidewalk where he planted his brown Noconas, Pellam saw no one following.
    He turned from this part of town and ambleddown Third—past the spot where Donnie Buffett had been shot. Here, too, he lingered. The rains had washed away the blood he’d seen, if it had been blood, and the cobblestones were everywhere clean. This is one advantage of ghost towns—fewer residents to toss litter on the streets. Pellam, unzipping his jacket slightly, paced back and forth. He wandered several blocks to the alley through which he had eluded the sedan several days before. All deserted.
    Tony Sloan and the film company—still without their precious machine guns—were filming the few remaining scenes. Sloan was also, Pellam guessed, spending many hours on the phone arranging for extensions of the financing. Pellam himself avoided the set. Sloan wouldn’t speak to him. Besides, he had friends there and he wanted to keep what was about to happen as far removed from them as he could.
    He lingered