Sloan walked directly to the counter, where sat a bottle of bourbon. He poured two glasses. "You were at the shoot?"

"Got there late. But I heard. Some problem with the guns?"

Sloan gave him a brief account of the events that culminated in bis handcuffing.

"My God," Pellam whispered. "Stace is a very but-toned-up guy. I can't imagine he made a mistake like that." Sloan was strangely pensive. His eyes did not flit around the camper. They were sedate. They were almost sad.

The director inhaled the whiskey fumes and drank down half the glass. "Okay, John, no bullshit. Just tell me. Did you see that guy?"

Pellam thought he meant the cop who arrested him. "I told you, I got there late. I-"

"The man in the Lincoln is what I'm talking about."

"Is that why you're here?"' Pellam laughed. "You ve been talking to… who? The detectives in Maddox." No, of course not, he thought. "Peterson. You've been talking to Peterson."

"John, they can close down production for three days. If that happens the studio or Completion Bond's going to take over.

This movie might not get done."

"If I'd seen him I would've told somebody. I would've told everybody. Look, Tony, this's extortion. On Tuesday Peterson'll say, sorry, we made a mistake. Call the studios legal department. Call Hank."

"John, what's this about the money?"

"Money?"

"I hear you're trying to put something together with Marty Weller, you're looking for some bucks."

"I am. That has nothing to do with you or anybody else here."

"Somebody paying you so you won't testify, John?"

Pellam lowered his head slightly and eased a long breath of whiskey-scented air into his lungs. "I think maybe you and I don't have much more to talk about."

"No," Sloan leaned forward, pointing a nubby finger at Pellam. "We got one thing more to talk about. You tell Peterson that it was this Peter Crimmins in the Lincoln. I don't care whether you saw him or not. I know he was in the car and I don't even know who the fuck he is!"

"Sorry, Tony."

"How much is he paying you?"

"I'll ask you to leave now."

"You want to stay on this job and get your fee, you'll tell Peterson what he wants to know."

"That's money you owe me."

"If I can't wrap this picture in three days there won't be any money for anybody."

"That's not my fault. I did my job. Sell one of your Ferraris and pay me."

Sloan set the glass down on the camper's tiny counter. He seemed calm but the tendons in his neck were bulging and pronounced just beneath his dark beard. His teeth were set. "Oh, I got your number, Pellam," he said viciously. "I asked around about you. You and your artsy films, you and your Cahier du Cinema, you and your buddies sitting around and talking about Cannes and auteur theory. You make your jokes, you make the crew giggle. Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch. But just tell me, Pellam, how many of those crew people are you paying? How many of their kids are you putting through college? How many people came to see your runs, and how many come to see mine?"

Pellam's last film as director, Central Standard Time, was never finished. It would have starred Tommy Bernstein, who died of a massive, cocaine-induced heart attack on the set during the second week of principal photography. The film Pellam had directed just prior to that had won a Palme d'Or at Cannes but was seen by North Americans only in New York, Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles, and in those cities with video stores that indulged in cult films. What Tony Sloan was saying now was absolutely correct.

Pellam said evenly, "I won't tell Peterson I saw who was in the car."

"Then you're fired. Clear out. Get the paperwork and any equipment of the company's to Stile. He's taking over as location manager."

"I'll sue you, Tony. I don't want to but I will."

"If this film doesn't wrap, Pellam, I'm coming after you for my fee. That's a million seven. And even if I lose you'll piss away a half million in lawyers' fees alone. You don't respect who I am, Pellam, okay, but you got no right to cut my legs out from underneath me."

"Did you know this?" Ralph Bales asked.

Stevie Flom looked at the offered page of the Maddox Reporter and could not figure out what he was supposed to know.

"I read the Post-Dispatch mostly."

"Okay, it was in the Post-Dispatch, too, I'll bet. See, it's the Associated Press. That means a lot of papers get it."

They were on the riverfront in St. Louis, the silvery arch towering over them and looking lofty and weird at the same time, like a huge toy. In front of them, unhealthy-looking water! bUish and milky, splashed at pilings. From the speakers of a candy red excursion boat, a paddle-wheeler, came brassy jazz. Ralph Bales had been reading when Stevie Flom walked up to him. Reading and leaning up against the scabby railing, really lost in the paper.

Stevie Flom was cold and he was not interested in what was in the paper. He hadn't slept well the night before, turning over and over, listening to the wirttl rock the single tree outside his bedroom window. He'd stared at the tree for a long time.

When he had gone to bed there were seventeen leaves on it. When he had wakened there were eight. His wife had slept with a smile on her face and that pissed him off.

Then she woke up cheerful and happy and that pissed him off too.

What it was he was supposed to know about was this airplane that took off vertically, then the wings twisted forward and it flew like a normal plane. "That is a great idea." Ralph Bales pointed at an abandoned dock beside the river. "See, it could land there. You wouldn't have to go out to Lambert. That's the biggest pain in traveling, getting to the airports, you ask me."

Stevie Flom didn't travel much. Reno, of course. Then he and some of the guys had gone to a casino in Puerto Rico once.

He'd taken the wife to Aruba, which was nothing but sand and wind and as hot as an engine block. He wondered why Ralph Bales traveled so much he had to worry about getting to the airport.

"I wish I had a piece of that."

"Yeah," Stevie Flom said, and he looked at the picture of the airplane, which, after a moment of reflection, he decided was a pretty good idea. He thought that with the money he was going to make from Lombro, he would take the wife on another vacation. Or maybe one of the girlfriends. He'd have to decide which one.

"I've got the go-ahead," Ralph Bales said. He turned the paper to the front page, where there were no airplanes or other clever ideas at all.

"You got… Oh, to take care of the guy in the camper. The beer guy! Why'd it take so long?"

"Lombro was nervous. I don't know, he's a -"

"Weird dude is what he is."

"Yeah. Weird. He's upped your share to ten."

Ten thousand?"

"Of course, thousand. What do you think?"

"Well, why?' Stevie grinned deep creases into his baby-skin cheeks.

"Why? Excuse me, you want me to call him up and give it back?"

"I'm just curious."

"Curious. He's curious," Ralph Bales whispered. "You've got to make it look like an accident."

"Accident? Why?"

"Because it's got to. That's why the extra money. I was thinking, maybe something with that motorcycle of his."

"He's got a cycle?"

"That yellow Yamaha. He keeps it on the back of his camper."

"Sure," Stevie said. "A cycle accident. That's easy."

Lake he did it every day.

Stevie Flom thought: Maddox is an easy place to steal a car but a tough place to drive one around once you'd boosted it.

The cops didn't have much else to do but check out hot cars and the place was hardly big enough to get lost in the camouflage of heavy traffic. He was eyeballed by two cops as he made his law-abiding way out of town. Stevie was also unhappy that this particular Dodge's former owner was a rent-a-car company, which meant that the forty-eight thousand miles on it were hard miles, careless, heavy-foot miles. The damn thing rattled and clanked and there was a hiss coming from the AC even though it was off.