Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery Read Free

he could not smell cold fall air without being stirred by good memories. Gaudia asked, “What’d you do on Halloween? When you were a kid?”
    She blinked then concentrated on her answer. “Well, we had a lot of fun, you know. I used to dress up mostly like princesses and things like that. I was a witch one year.”
    “A witch? No way. You couldn’t be one if you tried.”
    “Sweetheart . . . And then we’d go for tons of candy. I mean, like tons. I liked Babe Ruths, no, ha ha, Baby Ruths best, and what I’d do sometimes is find a house that was giving them out and keep going back there. One Halloween I got twelve Baby Ruths. I had to be careful. I had a lot of zits when I was a kid.”
    “Kids don’t go much anymore. It’s dangerous. Did you hear about that guy who put needles in apples?”
    “I never liked apples. I only liked candy bars.”
    “Baby Ruths,” Gaudia remembered.
    “Where’re we going? This is a creepy neighborhood.”
    “This is a creepy town. But it’s got the best steak house in the state outside of Kansas City. Callaghan’s. You like steak?”
    “Yeah, I like steak. I like surf and turf.” She added demurely, “But it’s expensive.”
    “I think they’ve got surf and turf there. You want surf and turf, order it. What you want, you can have.”
    RALPH BALES STOOD on the street corner, in the alcove of Missouri National Bank, watching the couple stroll under a dim streetlight, three of the four bulbs burnt out. The girl was glued on to his arm, which probably was more a plus than anything, because if Gaudia was carrying a weapon she’d tie up his shooting hand.
    Philip Lombro’s dark Lincoln Town Car, boxy as an aircraft carrier, exhaust purring, sat across the street. Ralph Bales studied the perfect bodywork, the immaculate chrome. Then he looked at the silhouette of Lombro behind the wheel. That man was crazy. Ralph Bales could not understand his wanting to watch it—watching the act of the shooting itself. He knew some guys who got off on doing people, got off on it in some scary sex way. He sensed, though, that this was something Lombro felt he had to do, not something he wanted to do.
    A voice fluttered over the cool air—Stevie Flom, Ralph Bales’s partner, was doing his schizoid homeless routine. “There’s what it is, I mean, there’s it! I read the papers . . . I read the papers I read them forget what you read forget what you read . . .”
    Then Ralph Bales thought he heard Stevie pull the slide on the Beretta though that might have been his imagination; at moments like this you heard noises, you saw things that were otherwise silent or invisible. His nerves shook like a dragster waiting for the green light. He wished he didn’t get so nervous.
    Tapping, leather soles on concrete. The sound seemed very loud. Tapping and scuffing along the wet, deserted sidewalk.
    Giggling.
    Tapping.
    Light glinted off Gaudia’s feet. Ralph Bales knew Gaudia’s reputation for fashion and figured he would be wearing five-hundred-dollar shoes. Ralph Bales’s shoes were stamped “Man-made uppers” and the men who had made those uppers had been Taiwanese.
    The footsteps, twenty feet away.
    The murmur of the Lincoln’s exhaust.
    The beating of Ralph Bales’s heart.
    Stevie talking like a crazy drunk. Arguing with himself.
    The blonde giggling.
    Then Stevie said, “A quarter, mister. Please?”
    And son of a bitch, if Gaudia wasn’t stopping and stepping forward with a bill.
    Ralph Bales started across the street, holding the Ruger, a huge gun, barrel-heavy in his hand. Then: the woman’s shrill scream and a swing of motion, a blur, as Gaudia swung her around as a shield putting her between him and Stevie’s. One pop, then two. The blonde slumped.
    Gaudia was running. Fast. Getting away.
    Christonthecross . . .
    Ralph Bales lifted the heavy gun and fired twice. He hit Gaudia at least once. He thought it was in the lower neck. The man stumbled onto the sidewalk,