After hours of cruising up and down the riverbanks of the Wide Missouri and the Big Muddy, Pellam at last found the field that would be the site of Ross and Dehlia's catastrophic last heist.

Driving and stopping, then driving on, he had been close to giving up hope. State parks, private yards, railroad easements, pastoral grass rolling toward the water, boggy grassland, long stretches of revetments of crushed gray and black rock.

Nothing that would work for the film.

Sitting on the campers dashboard was a note from the key grip, pleading for a location within twenty-four hours, and sitting in the seat beside him was the reclining figure of Nina Sassower. Pellam, forcing himself to ignore both, had turned a bend, driven through a stand of dense oak and maple and braked the camper to a squealing halt. '

"I think this is it."

The field was a lush five acres defined by dense rows of trees, just starting to color-some leaves would have to be spray-painted or draped with green netting. (The film was set in June.) A church facade would have to be constructed.

(Sloans wish to have the shoot-out involve schoolchildren had given way to his slightly more tasteful burst of inspiration- the innocent victims would be churchgoers.) But those were the only necessary modifications.

The grass was high. An asphalt road stretched timidly between the field and the riverbank, which was a ten-foot-high stone incline that dipped into the soupy water of the Missouri River.

He stepped outside and took two dozen Polaroids, then returned to the cab. He started the campers engine and sped back toward town.

"Why," Nina asked with curiosity, "is that field any different than the other ones? Because there's less junk?"

"Uhm," he began and decided he couldn't explain.

"I mean, it is a nice field and all," she said quickly, perhaps taking his silence as disappointment at her reaction.

Pellam noticed that Nina's interest in film had grown considerably. Perhaps this was due to her employment. She was by all reports an excellent makeup artist. Perhaps it was also due to her reading Pellam s copy of the final revised shooting script for Missouri River Blues. It looked like a student's end-of-term notebook, stuffed with smudged, limp sheets- all different colors, indicating the various drafts of Danny's rewrites. It required diligent shuffling to proceed from start to finish. But the script had held her interest all afternoon.

And, more than that, had even brought her to tears.

Driving in silence, heading back to Maddox, Pellam glanced at her again, noting her damp eyes.

She closed the script. "I'm sorry. It's so sad."

John Pellam had not cried for a long time and he could not remember the last time he had cried watching a movie. Nina looked ahead, unseeing, at the road. "I lost a relative not too long ago."

Pellam muttered condolences. "Who was it?" he asked.

Lost in thought, she had not heard his question and he repeated it.

"An aunt. She was elderly, but… A car accident."

Her voice faded.

Danny's new ending was a slow-motion angle of Ross's Packard tumbling into the river.

"After she died, I had this urge… no, not an urge, this need to put what I felt into words."

People tended to share things with Pellam and to confess secrets to him. It happened everywhere he went, it happened at the unlikeliest of times. He supposed this was because he was always just passing through. They could unburden themselves and then he would vanish, their confidences safe.

"I looked through some of my books and I found a poem. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. It's funny about poetry back then, isn't it? I mean, it was all stiff and formal, but I could understand it."

"It's a nice poem." Pellam knew the poet was Dylan Thomas. He couldn't remember a word of the poem. "

Pellam let the traffic -lights guide him. He was lost, but he figured that the stoplights would be denser closer to downtown Maddox, where he could get his bearings. He steered toward the red and green and yellow.

"Did you read it at her funeral?" "Yes. I was surprised, it went well. Real well. I thought I'd cry and spoil it. But I didn't. Have you ever done that? Read something at a funeral?"

Pellam thought back to the most recent memorial service he might have been a featured speaker at. It had been seven years ago in Santa Monica. The deceased had been his closest friend the actor Tommy Bernstein. Pellam had not attended the service.

She didn't say anything more and they drove in silence for ten minutes, then cruised into downtown Maddox. He parked, with the engine still running, near Tony Sloan's trailer, Sloan would be at the three-monitor Kem editing machine now, reviewing work prints. He would not tolerate being disturbed. Pellam left the Polaroids and a brief location report with Sloan's poor, jittery, ponytailed assistant director and returned to the camper. They drove along Main Street and parked beside a small grocery store. Wishing to change the relentlessly somber mood, he said suddenly, "Watermelon. Let's get some watermelon."

"In October?"

"Sometimes you just get this craving. Come on."

Inside a small grocery store he bought a plastic container of chunks of watermelon.

"It's not real red," she said.

Pellam asked the salesgirl, "Where do you get watermelon in October?"

"Oh, from up north."

Pellam said to Nina, "It's Eskimo watermelon."

"Farmers' Market," the girl said, pointing in a direction he assumed must be north.

Pellam asked for two forks and napkins.

Outside, they walked up the street spitting seeds into their hands and sticking them into the dirt in the big concrete planters along the street.

"Next year," Nina said, "we'll have to come back and harvest the crop."

Pellam didn't really think about Nina in terms of next year.

A dark car cruised past slowly and Pellam had the vague impression of eyes staring at him. The fork stopped halfway to his mouth and he watched the car as it sped up and continued on.

They wandered out of downtown.

Nina stopped and stared in the window of a store that sold shoes encrusted with costume jewelry- stones, glitter, fake gold. Why on earth would anyone in Maddox buy a pair of shoes like this?

"Wicked Witch of the North," he said.

Nina said, "It was the West."

Maybe she does like movies after all.

"Oh," Pellam said. "I only like the tornado scene."

"When I was a little girl, I used to think it was 'wicker' witch. We had a wicker patio set. I wouldn't sit in it. I thought it,

I don't know, was made out of witches."

Pellam smiled. She took his arm and brushed her cheek against his shoulder.

"I finally outgrew it. I' still don't like wicker, though. You get splinters in your butt."

He said, "You look good when you smile."

Which seemed to be just the words to deflate it. But she brought a facsimile back to her mouth and said, 'Thank you."

That was when they found the factory.

Pellam noticed a redbrick building set back a long ways from the road. The grounds were filled with overgrown trees, brush, and rampant kudzu so thick you could only see the top of the tall, square building. It had high, gracefully arched windows decorated with iron grillwork. The setting sun was visible through them and lit the interior with broad shafts of ruddy illumination.

Pellam started up the path. Nina followed.

The Maddox Machinery and Die Company had been abandoned for years. The building had an odd regalness about it, something castlelike, complete with parapets and a dip in the surrounding ground that was probably a collapsed septic system but could pass for a moat. The bottom six or seven feet of the outer walls were marked with halfhearted graffiti, and the metal door was thickly posted with several generations of No Trespassing signs. Metal Art Deco designs, in the shape of lilies and vines and the company's name were set in concrete around the door.