"I'm beat, honey," he muttered, pretending to doze.

"You should sleep," Penny said. She touched his hand.

"Uh-huh." Buffett almost opened his eyes and looked at her. But he chose not to. He felt momentarily guilty about this deception.

I'm a lucky man. Lucky lucky lucky. I didn't get shot in the brain. I didn't get shot in the heart. I didn't get shot in the neck. I can still smell.

And he could hear her voice in a detached little whisper, "You sleep now, honey. I'm going home." He heard paper crinkle. "These are the instructions for the candle."

Donnie Buffett breathed deeply like a man asleep. And in less than a minute this lie became the truth and he was dreaming that he was skiing down a panoramic mountain of huge white cliffs rising into an infinitely blue sky.

Halfway to St. Louis, Stevie saw his chance. He gunned the engine and the car sluggishly responded, movmg ahead of a lumbering truck.

He eased up right behind the Yamaha. A dirt bike, it looked like, with the high fenders that doubled as mudguards and the long shocks that would take the potholes and shitty city streets easily. The rack was cockeyed. Stevie studied the yellow fenders and the silver bars and the red helmet and the leather jacket of the driver and then started looking for an exit ramp.

He saw one a half mile ahead and glanced in the rearview mirror, at what loomed behind him. It was a White semi. Not the trailer, just the tractor, the sort with the ten forward gears and a steering wheel wide as a tire. The truck would have air brakes and little weight, but at sixty it'd skid for a hundred fifty feet.

A quarter mile away.

Stevie Flom started signaling.

He accelerated until he was three feet from the beer man, who was hunched forward, sunlight flaring off his helmet. The truck driver was holding back, seeing Stevie's turn signal but maybe a little confused because the Dodge was not slowing.

A hundred yards.

Stevie eased into the left side of the lane.

The truck driver must have figured the signal was a mistake and had accelerated again, driving up to within two car lengths of Stevie. On the right, the exit ramp blossomed outward.

Stevie floored the pedal and looked to his right, then cut the wheel hard.

His left front bumper goosed the rear wheel of the Yamaha right out from underneath him.

A mad flurry of motion from the bike-a panicked glance over his shoulder as the Yamaha began to lie down. The horn and the gutsy squeal of the trucks brakes filling the air. The man's left boot slamming down onto the highway in an automatic way, hopeless. Reaching up, pitching forward, flying over the twisted handlebars.

Sparks sailing off the gas tank of the cycle. The beer man, his mouth open in a shout that Stevie could not hear, hands outward, began to tumble on the concrete at fifty miles an hour, the fiberglass of the helmet shredding.

Stevie skidded the Dodge into the off ramp, just missing a yellow plastic collision barrel as he braked to twenty-five. He was too busy controlling the skid to see exactly what happened on the expressway. Then he was at the bottom of the ramp. He heard the squealing of tires and horns. Then he caught the end of a yellow light and made a leisurely turn onto a grimy, cobble-stoned street of body shops and empty warehouses and shabby bungalows, not far from the Mississippi River.

EIGHTEEN

The service was in a boxy building in downtown Maddox.

Beth Israel Memorial Chapel.

Pellam hadn't known that Stile was Jewish. They had talked about many things, from women to whiskey to real estate, but religion was in that category of topics where their conversation did not go-for instance, why Stile remained in his profession and never sought to do second-unit directing, as so many stuntmen do. Or why Pellam stopped directing after Tommy Bernstein died.

Pellam had spoken to Stiles cousin in San Diego- his closest living relative-and he had learned that Stile had been raised Reform Jewish. Calls were made, and a service arranged.

The body was en route to southern California and 168 people now stood in a dark building in a shabby part of a dark

Missouri town that had long ago lost whatever allure, or novelty, it might have had for them. From the outfits, this seemed more like a fashion show than a service: No one had brought funeral clothing, of course, but this was a Hollywood crew so there was plenty of black, albeit in the form of minidresses and spandex and baggy suits. Adding to the surrealness were the yarmulkes perching on the men's heads.

The stunt coordinator, Stiles boss, was a tough sixty-five-year-old with blurred tattoos on his forearms, now covered by the sleeves of a wrinkled gray suit. He had fallen off horses at John Ford's direction and crashed through windows at Sam Peckinpahs and he was now crying like an infant. A lot of other people cried too. Nobody had disliked Stile, the man who fell from 130-foot cliffs and who walked through fire.

Pellam had no idea what to say, not to anyone. Stile had died because of him. The Yamaha had been the property of the Missouri River Blues Partnership and when Pellam had turned over the location forms and files to Stile, according to Sloans orders, Pellam had added, 'Take the Yamaha, too, if you want it. Tony's gonna make me give it back sooner or later." Stile thanked him, left the rental car at the campground for Pellam's use, and burned rubber away to the interstate. He had a date in St. Louis with Hank the lawyer about location releases for the infamous final shoot-out scene in Missouri River Blues.

What could Pellam say?

He put his arm around the shoulders of one of the young actresses and let her cry. Pellam smelled bitter hair spray and cigarette smoke. She wasn't hysterical. She trembled. Pellam didn't cry. He went to a pew and sat next to several other crew members, older men, gaffers. A rabbi-or maybe just the funeral director- walked to the front of the room. He began talking. Pellam did not pay attention to the words; they were not, for him at least, important. The purpose of the ritual had nothing to do with Stile, not now. It was not the sermon but the interval it occupied-this hour in a woody, mute room with a respectful velvet hat on your head-that was the point: a block of time reserved solely for death.

Pellam heard the drone of the speakers words, a soft baritone.

He wished he knew how to pray.

He decided he would suggest that Sloan dedicate Missouri River Blues to Stile, a film that had turned out to be not the product of artistic vision at all but simply one hell of a stuntman s movie.

No, not suggest. Whatever else there was between Sloan and him, Pellam would insist on the dedication. It was something he could do.

But it wasn't enough.

What Stevie Flom was going to say: First, you didn't describe the guy very well. Second, the guy walked out of the camper and got on the cycle. Third, you should've done it yourself…

He got as far as "First-" before Ralph Bales grabbed his Members Only black jacket by the lapels and slammed the terrified Stevie into the wall of Harry's Bar.

"Gentlemen." The bartender wagged a finger but in a lethargic way. This was a dingy, Lysol-scented place overlooking one of the less picturesque refineries in Wood River, Illinois. It was that sort of bar, where the management would let two men-two white men, not too drunk or strung-out-go at it. Up to a point.

Ralph Bales looked from the frightened eyes of Stevie Flom to the cool eyes of the bartender and let go. He had been right on the borderline but now decided not to break his partners nose. Stevie slumped and ran his fingers through his razor-cut hair. "Aw, Ralph, come on."