It was the moment when one of them would say, "Four weeks" and they would shake hands, remotely, on the compromise.

Tony Sloan said, "You find me locations in two weeks and I'll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars."

Pellam felt heat flow from his black hair down into his throat. He believed his skin was flushed. "Well-"

'Thirty-five."

Thirty-five thousand?

"I'm a desperate man, Pellam. I'm not going to bullshit you."

After a pause, Pellam asked, 'Tony, tell me, does a Texas Ranger track them down in the end and machine-gun them to death?"

"It is a goddamn different movie, Pellam."

"Deal. Express Mail the script to me care of Kansas City GPO."

Four days later, Pellam drove over the city limits into Maddox, Missouri, braked the Winnebago to a stop, and knew he'd just earned himself some big money.

MISSOURI RIVER BLUES

SCENE 34-EXTERIOR EVENING, STREET IN FRONT OF BANK

MEDIUM ANGLE ON Ross and Dehlia, dressed up as if they were "out for an innocent stroll" They are supposed to be casing the job, but Ross is introspective. He stops.

ANGLE ON REAL ESTATE OFFICE, ROSS'S POV

CU OF LISTING SHEETS OF ONE-FAMILY HOUSES

ANGLE ON Ross's face

ANGLE on Dehlia's face, looking at him:

TWO SHOT OF both of them.

ROSS

There was a time when I needed to be an outlaw. But it's different now. (CLOSE ON his face.) Since you and me've been on the road together, lover, it's all different. Now I've got you and I want to be part of the world we've been looking in on. Looking in on from the outside for a long, long time.

The bank-robbing lovers in the film come upon a small midwestem river town filled with abandoned factories and characters whose lives have been ruined by rampant capitalism. They decide to make one last heist then follow the lead of all the returning World War II veterans: buy a house in the 'burbs and raise babies.

More than even minimal or essential movies, Pellam loved good movies. He was not convinced that Missouri River Blues was a good movie. The script contained a number of time bombs-long speeches, shoot-outs, car chases and stylish camera directions. But a script is merely a promise. What Sloan would make of it, nobody, perhaps not even Sloan himself, could know at this point.

It was not Pellams job, in any case, to career-counsel visionaries. He did what he'd been hired to do. He read the script ten times, got a sense of what it was about, did his outline of the scenes, blocked them out, consolidating similar ones to minimize travel between locations. Then he clocked seven hundred miles on the Winnebago as he threaded through Maddox and environs, shot sixty packs of Polaroids, met with the mayor and the city's insurance company, then wrote up his report and shipped it off.

Within a day Sloan and the director of photography flew to St. Louis and drove north, where Sloan approved most of the locations. They jetted back that night to finish casting.

For the next week Pellam helped the key grip with site preparation and deciding what cranes and other equipment would be needed for the shooting. Sloan and the cast and crew had arrived in a swirl of frenzied excitement. Grip trucks, camera cranes, Winnebagos, location vans. This movie was bigger news in Maddox than FDR and William Jennings Bryan combined.

As on most sets, the atmosphere was boisterous in the first few days of shooting. Pellam had had some fun. Because scouts are often first on the scene, newly arrived personnel ask them for tips on places to eat and things to see. A young hotshot actor, playing one of Ross's gangsters, asked Pellam bluntly where he could get laid and how much would it cost.

Pellam thought for a bit, then remembered an ad he had seen not long after he arrived in Maddox. "It'll be cheap but you've got to drive a ways." He gave the actor elaborate directions that sent him ten miles into the boonies. He returned an hour later, fuming, and stormed onto the set, where Pellam and the crew greeted him with high-pitched squeals and calls of soo-eee!

Pellam had sent him to the St. Charles County Hog and Ham Museum.

But that had been a month ago, and now the time for jokes was over. Missouri River Blues was badly over-schedule and vastly overbudget. The producer from the studio financing the film had sent a representative- Sloan referred to him, openly, as "the stoolie"-to goose things along. The problem, in Pellam's view, was that while Sloan could entice performances from characters fighting to the death with lasers or changing themselves into charges of electricity he did not know what he wanted in less apocalyptic scenes: love, betrayal, friendship, longing… So the introspective scenes were gradually replaced by more shoot-outs and chases and extreme close-ups of guns being loaded and dynamite bombs being assembled and armored truck locks being picked or blown apart.

And all the while Sloan shot more and more film. He averaged ten thousand feet a day-almost two hours worth of film from which to distill out about two minutes of real screen time.

"It's an asshole picture," the lean, balding key grip complained to Pellam. Meaning the movie was not being made here, as it was filmed, but would be cut and pasted together at the back end of the whole process- in the editing room. Desperate

Tony was shooting as much footage as he possibly could, out of which he would hammer together his movie. ("Hitchcock didn't work that way," the grip whispered.)

After principal photography started Pellam thought that he would have plenty of time on his own. The bulk of a location manager's work would normally be finished at this stage. He had merely to oversee paying site rentals on schedule and keep track of permits and insurance binders. But more and more frequently he found himself waiting for calls from an increasingly anxious Sloan-such as this morning, which summons now had him racing at seventy miles an hour through the bleak and abandoned streets of Maddox, Missouri, which might have been a businessman's nightmare but was at least a motorcyclist's dream.

FOUR

Pellam put a twelve-foot skid mark from the curb to the catering table on the set of Missouri River Blues and hopped off the Yamaha only to find the dusty Ford Taurus braking to a stop six inches from his thigh.

Pellam shrugged and Stile emerged from the Ford out of sorts. He had lost the race because he had stopped for a red light that Pellam had ignored.

"Didn't know we weren't playing by the rules," Stile grumbled, wandering off toward wardrobe. "I'll gitcha next time."

Pellam walked to the scaffolding that rose above that mornings setup.

Tony Sloan was a hawkish man, muscular, very lean in the face, which was why he sported a black beard. He was wearing blue jeans and a faded green T-shirt. His black hair, dusted with gray, was pulled back in a short ponytail. Occasionally he talked frantically. Other times, not at all. His eyes, perhaps reflecting his thoughts, would either dart about or lift slowly and hover before descending momentarily onto the face of the person he was speaking with.

These eyes now landed hungrily on Pellam.

"John, gotta get that phone fixed. Listen, I've been rethinking the ending. I want them to get that house, you know." He fidgeted with his beeper.

"Ross and Dehlia?"

"I've got an image of what they should have. I can see it. You find me one? A fifties sort of house. You know, a bungalow maybe." Sloans gaze rose, did a few slow circles, and returned to Pellam, who was trying to recall the most recent ending for the film.