He eyed Pellam carefully. "Hold up there, sir."

"I'd like to see Officer Buffett."

"You're the witness." The cop's stony face remained immobile; his eyes painted Pellam up and down.

"I just want to see how he's doing."

"Open your jacket."

"I-"

"You want to see him, open your jacket." Pellam opened his jacket. The cop frisked him roughly and motioned toward

Buffett's room.

On the TV was a game show. The sound was low; everything but the loudest applause was inaudible. The reception wasn't very good and there was a thick band of distortion through the center of the screen. The host and the contestants were smiling a lot. Buffett wasn't.

"How you doing?" Pellam asked and identified himself.

"I remember you."

Pellam walked to a gray chair. He stood as if deciding whether or not to sit. "I brought you this." He put a book, a recent best-seller, on the table. "It's a mystery. I don't know if you like them." Buffett kept staring at him.

Pellam cleared his throat. The silence filled in again. He said, "I didn't know if you'd like a bottle. What d'you drink anyway? Beer?"

"I got shot in the back."

"I heard. How you feeling?"

"How do you think I feel?"

Silence again. Pellam decided there wasn't going to be any lighthearted banter and joshing. He stood back from the chair and crossed his arms. "Look. I'm sorry about what happened. But I'd like to ask a favor. Your buddies in the police department, a couple detectives particularly, are giving me a pretty hard time. You know, following me. They think I saw this guy who was in the car-"

Buffett, eyes on the TV screen, blurted, "Well, you did."

"I didn't see him," Pellam said evenly. "I know you think I did. But I didn't."

Buffett kept staring at the tube. His eyes were dark, agitated. He licked the corner of his mouth with the tip of his tongue.

This made him seem like a cornered animal. "How could you help but? He was in the front seat."

"There was glare."

"The hell there was glare."

Pellam's face flushed. "You think I'm covering up something? I'm not. I described the guy who bumped into me."

"Oh, that's mighty brave of you. I saw him. We don't need his description. Anyway, he's rabbited. He was just the hired gun and he's back in Miami or Chicago by now."

"Do you think they paid me off?"

"I think you're like everybody else. You don't want to get involved."

Pellam sighed. "I better be going."

"I think when you look in the front seat of a car, you fucking see somebody. I think'when you move your mouth, you're talking to somebody!"

"I wasn't-"

"You saw him! I saw you look right into his face."

"If you saw so damn much why the hell didn't you see him?"

"How much did they pay you?"

"I didn't-"

"Listen, mister," Buffett blurted viciously, "you're gonna have cops on your ass every minute of the day! They're going to stay on you. They're not going to let you crap until you tell-"

Pellam waved his hand in frustration and walked to the door.

"You son of a bitch!" Buffetts face was livid, tendons rose in his neck, and flecks of spittle popped from his lips. His voice choked and for a moment Pellam feared he was having a heart attack. When he saw that Buffett was simply speechless with rage he himself stormed out of the door.

And walked squarely into a young woman as she entered.

"Sorry," he muttered.

She blinked and stepped aside timidly. "Oh, I'm sorry."

The woman was thin, blond, late twenties, dressed unflashy, like an executive secretary, looking shy and embarrassed.

Pellam assumed she was the cop's wife and thought he was lucky to be married to someone so pretty. He also thought she was going to have to put up with pure hell for a long, long time.

She said, "I'm looking for Dr. Albertson."

Pellam shook his head, shrugged and walked past her.

In the hall he heard Buffett shouting to him, "Sure, so just leave. Just like that! Go ahead, you son of a bitch!"

The voice faded as he proceeded down the corridor. The cop on guard said something, too, something Pellam didn't hear, though from the snide smile on his face, he guessed it was no friendlier than the cop's farewell. Then he was at the elevator, kneading his hands and feeling his jaws clench with anger. He punched the down button seven times before he realized it had lit up and the car was on its way.

A woman's voice startled him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to barge in."

He glanced back and saw the blond woman walk up, looking at the floor indicator.

Pellam's mouth tightened. "No problem."

"He looks familiar." She glanced back up the corridor.

"Who?"

"Well, your friend. The man in the room you were just in."

"Don't you know him?"

She explained that she didn't. She was looking for her mother's doctor and the nurse had sent her there. She nodded toward the room. "Who is he?"

Pellam said, "He's the cop, the one that got shot."

"Oh, sure! The Post-Dispatch. They ran his picture. What's his name?"

"Donnie Buffett."

"He's your friend?"

Pellam waved his hand. "What you heard back there… I don't think you'd call him much of a friend."

The elevator arrived. They both stepped in. Behind them stood a man in a dressing gown, his hand grasping a tall IV bag on wheels like a chrome hat rack.

"The doctors left for lunch already." She grimaced. "I was supposed to meet him here about Mother. Now I've got to come back in an hour."

"Your mother's a patient?"

"Hysterectomy. She's fine. Well, she's complaining nonstop but that means she's fine."

The elevator, slowly filling with her fruity perfume, arrived on the ground floor.

"So," he said as they walked outside into the cool air of the spacious lobby.

"Well."

"My name's John Pellam."

She took his hand. "Nina Sassower."

They walked out the front door of the hospital and Nina surveyed the street. She had a great profile; the lines of her face were… What came to mind? Unencumbered.

Then he smiled ruefully to himself. Unencumbered. Too much movie talk, too much artistic vision. No, she's sensuous, she's pretty. She's sexy.

Pellam looked at his watch. He had a lot to do and not much time to do it in-getting the insurance binders for the bungalows, running his daily check on the dozens of shooting permits to make sure they hadn't expired during this elongated filming schedule, calling his bank in Sherman Oaks about the mortgage to finance his own film, Central Standard Time, seeing what other markers he had that he might call in-and all the while dodging cops.

What he did, though, was none of these things. Instead he asked, "You interested in lunch?"

And, as it turned out, she was.

At three that afternoon Pellam was in the camper, about to ride to the set, when his phone buzzed. He snagged it and propped it between his shoulder and his cocked head as he pulled on his leather jacket. '"Lo?"

"Dinner tomorrow."

"Okay. Is that you, Marty?"

"Here's the deal. You ready?… Telorian."

Pellam did not speak for a moment. "Are you sure?" "Ugh. Am I sure?" Weller repeated sarcastically. Ahmed Telorian. The fifty-year-old Armenian-Iranian investor (after the hostage thing he began calling himself "Persian") had grown to love

American movies as much as he loved making millions from electronic component sales. Telorian and his wife had bought, gutted, and renovated an old theater in Westwood. They had turned it into a cult stronghold, in which they showed oddball films, many of them film noir, John Pellam's forte.