Shallow Graves

acquaintance—E Block, West Wing, San Quentin, California—who went to church every day.)
    Ambler kept talking like a crazy person on the street, furious. Flecks of spittle in the corner of his mouth. The muzzle of the gun rose and fell like surf.
    But Pellam wasn’t paying much attention to Ambler’s mania or the moral purity of Dutchess County.
    He was thinking about the carving knife.
    His feet rested themselves under the sensually curved chair.
    Pressing the balls of his feet against the tile. The knife, the knife, the knife.
    He felt the tension, like blued spring steel, building in his calves.
    The knife . . .
    He kept his eyes calm, staring right into Ambler’s. That was the giveaway in a fight. You could always tell when a man was about to swing or go for a weapon—his eyes. He’d learned that from another acquaintance (D Block, North Wing). Pellam looked at Ambler and kept his eyes very still.
    He rocked forward. The chair swung back and then forward, his weight moved with it.
    The knife.
    On your mark.
    Goddamn, shotguns were loud.
    Get set.
    Blood on the tiles? No, sir, there’d be blood on the ceiling, the walls, the fancy granite countertop. . . .
    Go.
    Ambler’s harsh voice asked, “What did you tell her?”
    Pellam froze, stopped rocking. “Who?”
    Ambler’s feverish eyes danced out the window for a moment, as a car drove past. It continued on.
    Pellam rocked back. His quaking legs relaxed. Shotguns didn’t so much shoot you as obliterate you.
    Ambler continued. “That you’d make her a star?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Ambler said, “She told you she’d been a model, didn’t she? And you promised to get her jobs. Promised to take her out to California. ‘Leave this backwater little town. Leave your son’? And then you seduced her, didn’t you? You promised her a job and you fucked her.”
    “I don’t—”
    “She’s just fodder for you, isn’t she?”
    “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
    His first thought was: Janine. But then he asked cautiously, “Meg?”
    Ambler nodded.
    Him? He’s the one?
    Meg, come on . . . This guy?
    Ambler muttered sarcastically, “Oh, she’d be ingood hands with you. . . . Jesus. You gave Sam that fucking heroin or whatever it was and practically killed him. . . .”
    The surprise in Pellam’s eyes must have seemed genuine. Ambler stopped talking.
    “I didn’t give Sam that stuff.”
    Ambler frowned. Finally he said, “You seduced her, didn’t you?”
    “Nothing happened between us. We talked. We had dinner.”
    Ambler looked at him for a moment, a lover’s examination of a possible rival. How they hang on every flutter of eyelash, every syllable.
    Pellam said, “She’s a captivating person.”
    Ambler said, “Too good for you.”
    “That’s probably true.”
    Ambler said, “I love her.”
    “That’s why you did it?” Pellam asked. “Why you had me set up? Because you thought I was taking her away from you?”
    “Yes! And here you come to threaten me, beat me up. To tell me to stop seeing her—”
    Pellam said, “I didn’t even know you were seeing her.”
    “Then what’re you doing here tonight?”
    Pellam looked at Ambler’s face carefully, judging. Tommy Bernstein had said there were times when a man has to make a leap. He meant it philosophically, muttering something about a leap of faith, though when he said it he was drunk and poised to leap off the second story of his Beverly Hills house into the swimming pool that Liberace had supposedly done something scandalous in.
    Pellam said, “I’m going to show you something.”
    “What?”
    “I’m going to reach into my pocket, okay? I just want to show you something.”
    Pellam’s hand disappeared into his pocket and it returned with the two shell casings.
    “What are those?”
    “These are the shells from the shots that killed my partner. Whoever did that is the same person who’s been selling the drugs that Sam got. I assumed it was the same person who had me beat up.”
    “And you thought it was me?” Ambler’s face was horrified. Pellam slowly rocked forward, off the balls of his feet. He’d forgotten about the knife. Ambler said, “I’m a Christian.”
    Pellam laughed. “Well, you vandalized our camper, right? You planted the drugs in Marty’s car and you called the sheriff and said he was selling stuff, right?”
    Ambler didn’t answer for a moment. “The day you and your friend came to town I was with Meg.