Bloody River Blues

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, lifted a hand briefly, then lay still.
    Lombro’s Lincoln started away, accelerating with a sharp, gassy roar.
    Silence for a moment.
    Ralph Bales took a step toward Gaudia.
    “Freeze!”
    The scream came from only five feet away. Bales almost vomited in shock and the way his heart surged he wondered if he was having a heart attack.
    “I mean you , mister!”
    Ralph Bales’s hand lowered, the gun pointed down. His breath flowed in and out in staccato bursts. He swallowed.
    “Drop the weapon!” The voice crackled with a barely controlled hysteria.
    “I’m dropping it.” Ralph Bales did. He squinted as the gun fell. It didn’t go off.
    “Lie down on the ground!” The cop was crouching, holding his gun aimed straight at Ralph Bales’s head.
    “Okay!” Ralph Bales said. “Don’t do anything. I’m lying down.”
    “Now!”
    “I’m doing it now! I’m lying down now!” Ralph Bales got on his knees then lay forward on his stomach. He smelled grease and dog piss.
    The cop circled around him, kicking the Ruger away and talking into his walkie-talkie. “This’s Buffett. I’m in downtown Maddox, I’ve got a 10-13. Shots fired and two down. Need an ambulance and backup at—”
    The Maddox police and fire central radio dispatcher did not find out exactly where Donnie Buffett needed the backup and ambulance—at least not at that moment. The cop’s message ended abruptly when Stevie Flom stepped out of the alleyway and emptied the clip of the Beretta into his back.
    Buffett grunted, dropped to his knees, and tried to reach behind him. He fell forward.
    Ralph Bales climbed to his feet, picked up the Ruger. He walked over to the unconscious cop and pointed the big gun at his head. He cocked it.
    Slowly the heavy blue muzzle nestled itself in the cop’s damp hair. Ralph Bales covered his eyes with his left hand. His heart beat eight times. His hand tensed. It relaxed. He stepped back and turned away from the cop, settling on one head shot for Gaudia and one for the blonde.
    Then, as if they were a couple of basketball fans eager for some beers after the game, Ralph Bales and Stevie Flom walked briskly to a stolen black Trans Am with a sporty red racing stripe on the side. Stevie fired up the engine. Ralph Bales sat down in the comfortable bucket seat. He lifted his blunt index finger to his upper lip and smelled sour gunpowder and primer smoke. As they drove slowly to the river Ralph Bales watched the aura of lights rising up from St. Louis, to