The Empress File

CHAPTER 11

It was all coming together. Smoothly. Too smoothly, LuEllen said. She was born and raised in Minnesota and was automatically suspicious of pleasantness. No matter how nice the summer is, winter always comes.

With the printouts of the Longstreet books in hand, I called John and Marvel. We agreed to drive to Greenville, where we could meet in a motel without dodging the Longstreet locals.

LuEllen stayed with the boat. There'd be new people in Greenville, and she was paranoid about her face becoming known. At two o'clock Marvel let me into her room at the Sea-B Motel. John was there with Harold and a man I hadn't met before.

"This is Brooking Davis," Marvel said, nodding at the stranger. Davis was a slender, bird-boned man with a square chin, a dark mustache, and the liquid eyes of an Arab. "He's a lawyer and does appraisal work for the county assessor's office. Brooking will be our first appointment on the council. If Harold and I don't know where the bodies are buried, Brooking will."

"Well, we found you some grave sites," I said, handing over the printouts. "It looks simple enough, but I don't know how it breaks down."

Davis had two boxes full of city budgets, memos, and reports. He unloaded them on a credenza, and Marvel and Harold pulled chairs up to the bed. In two minutes the three of them were in deep discussion, comparing numbers on printouts with expenditures and collections in the city reports.

"How'd it go with Brown?" I asked John.

John smiled. "He was a little surprised when I turned out to be black, looking like I did – and driving that BMW – but we're all set," he said. He stepped over to a black nylon briefcase, unzipped it, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. "I gave him a cashier's check for a thousand dollars for a thirteen-week option on six hundred acres, at nine hundred and twenty dollars an acre. He was asking a thousand, but I dickered a little. I still paid too much, though. I wanted to seem anxious but like I was trying to hide it. And I wanted him talking around town about how he stuck it to the city boy."

"Does he seem like the sort to do that?" I asked. "I hope."

"Actually, no," John said with a grin. "He seemed like a pretty decent guy. But the real estate dealer was an asshole. She'll talk. She asked me what I wanted the land for. I told them my heritage was in cotton farming and I was thinking of going back to it. She had to stick her hankie in her mouth to keep from laughing. I was wearing the wing tips. They figure I'm a crack dealer from Memphis."

"OK," I said. "So the word'll be around."

From the bed, Marvel was saying, "If Outhouse is the bar payments, what's Suburb?'"

"Sounds like they're getting it," John said.

It took three hours to nail down the printouts. Davis, who'd seemed frail when I first met him, was as intense as Marvel or Harold, and they often deferred to him. But not always. There was one heated argument over a series of entries on recreational fees. The entries might have exposed the Reverend Dodge, and Marvel didn't want to take the risk. Davis, who apparently hated Dodge, did. Marvel won.

John whispered: "That woman can talk the bark off a tree."

"How's your. uh, relationship?"

John glanced covertly at Marvel, then looked back at me. "I'm trying as hard as I can, man. Sometimes I think she's about to haul my butt back to the bedroom, but then. I mean, Jesus, this is takin' longer than it has with any woman I ever met."

"Is she real, or is she teasing?"

"She's real, I think."

"Then that's probably a good sign," I said. "All the time."

"You think so?"

We both looked at Marvel and realized that everybody in the room was looking at us. We'd been whispering in a way that immediately attracts attention.

"Uh, we didn't want to bother you, talking," John said.

"Uh-huh," said Marvel.

"Here's the situation," Marvel said, a half hour after her argument with Davis. She rolled off the bed and whacked a rolled-up copy of the printout against her thigh. "This is good stuff. It lays out the kickbacks and the payoffs, how much and where it went, but everything is done by code numbers. We know who the code numbers represent, but we couldn't prove it immediately."

"If the IRS gets it, they could check bank deposits."

"Sure," said Davis, "but that would take some time. If things drag out, we might not be able to get all of them out of the office simultaneously."

"Not even if they steal a hundred thousand bucks?" John asked.

"That'd do it, but that's an extra risk, and we don't know if that whole crazy con game with the bridge is going to work," Marvel said. "We were talking back in Memphis about blackmailing them out of office."

"Not the first three," I said. "Only the governor's redneck appointments."

"Why not try it now?" Marvel asked. "The bridge idea has always seemed kind of. shaky. If we can get around using it, we'd expose John to less risk, you and LuEllen to less risk, and we might get to the same place."

I thought about it for a moment. If we could blackmail them out of office, there would be less exposure. And LuEllen was worried already. I looked at John. "What do you think?"

"Sounds OK to me," he said. He turned to Marvel. "How would we do it?"

"Harold will call Dessusdelit, tell her he's got to see her, that it's important," Marvel said. "She knows him, she knows he wouldn't bullshit. He'll go over to her house and lay the books on her. Tell her that all he wants is her resignation. Hers and St. Thomas's and Rebeck's. They quit, and he loses the books."

"Can you pull it off?" I asked Harold.

"I don't know," he said pensively. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at Marvel, and I realized he would do about anything she wanted him to. "It's worth a try, I guess. Dessusdelit's a politician, and she used to sell real estate. She's been cutting deals all her life. Maybe she'll figure she can cool out the books and come back later. She won't know the rest of it – the part about us taking over the town."

I glanced at John again, then turned to Marvel.

"OK with me," I said. "But it's your call."

"Let's try it," she said with satisfaction. "If it doesn't work, John can still try the bridge scam, you and LuEllen can still hit City Hall, and we can still go to the governor. But if it does work, we avoid all that trouble."

"That's a lot to do before Friday," I said. "If we're going to work the bridge scam, it has to be on Friday, so we've got to move."

"We'll be back home before supper," Marvel said. "Harold can call Dessusdelit tonight. Maybe even go over tonight. And just in case, I'll start calling around and put the word out about John. Smart Memphis dope dealer just bought some land, and there's something happening with the bridge. It'll get back to the mayor and her crowd tonight, same time as Harold."

"Good. And if Harold can't convince Dessusdelit and the others to quit, we'll need some help next week, after the state cops come in. We'll need a half dozen people with white-southerner accents, to call the paper and the TV station, demanding that the council resign."

"That's fixed," Harold said simply. He was wearing his brown suit again and sweating lightly despite the air-conditioning.

"What about the interim rednecks?" I asked.

"We've got two names, Marvin Lesse and Bill Armistead. Both are pretty wimpy, and we've got them by the balls on some illegal cement sales. We'll get them appointed, and when it's time to push them off. well, they'll go," Marvel said.

"We hope," added Davis.

We all looked at each other for a minute; then Marvel said, "It's scary," and John said, "Let's do it."

The program was complex.

Marvel would finish translating the books, stripping out the portions that applied specifically to Dessusdelit, St. Thomas, and Rebeck. Harold would show only those portions to Dessusdelit.

If Harold couldn't deal, we'd work the bridge scam.

The scam was a variation of the old pigeon drop routine. I figured if the pigeon drop worked a million times on Miami Beach, it ought to work once in Longstreet.

But instead of dropping an envelope of money on the sidewalk, we were dropping a bridge.

The bridge that Longstreet no longer had but desperately needed.

Marvel would plant the rumor that the state Department of Transportation was recommending construction of a toll bridge. But the bridge wouldn't come into the downtown area for engineering and cost reasons. Instead, it would cross the river just north of town, coming down on the Brown property.

The property John now held an option on. A property that would quickly sprout gas stations, fast-food joints, convenience stores, and maybe a small shopping center.

That kind of information is routinely held secret by state departments of transportation so that land prices aren't inflated before condemnation proceedings begin. The state DOT's engineering office would be the only place that could confirm Marvel's rumor.

Bobby was monitoring the Longstreet phone exchanges, checking lines out of the city offices, and at the homes of the most prominent members of the machine, scanning for the DOT's number in the state capital. When the number was dialed, a phone would ring at Bobby's place. An "engineer" would answer. No information could be released, he would say; studies were still under way. But where did you get that information? That information is restricted.

In other words, Yes, that's right, we're putting in the bridge.

It was a marvelous opportunity for a well-run machine, one we were sure it wouldn't overlook. Whoever controlled the land at the base of the bridge would make a lot of money. And that was. Brown. No? Some black dude from Memphis?

When John was contacted by a member of the machine, he would hint that he was working for a bigger Man in Memphis and couldn't act on his own. He'd be the reluctant bride, but he'd get back to them, quickly. When he got back, he'd say the Man would welcome participation, especially since it could grease the council votes needed on zoning matters around the bridge. But votes wouldn't be enough; the Man would also need money from the machine.

There'd be some back and forth, but Friday afternoon, after talking to the Man in Memphis, he'd tell the machine that he needed to see some cash. Right then. Before he went back. They didn't have to give it to him; that would make them too suspicious. They only had to show it to him. Show him that they could get it. A hundred thousand. He was leaving for Memphis in an hour.

There was only one place they'd be able to get that much cash that quickly. The float. The float and the city's cash account at the bank. We'd work it so they had to take the money out of the bank but wouldn't be able to return it the same day.

St. Thomas, who ran the loan-sharking business, kept his stash at the City Hall, in the city clerk's safe. We figured they'd put the hundred thousand in the same place, for safekeeping until the banks reopened Monday.

If we could get the cash out, Marvel would be at the capitol. When we called, she'd go straight in to see the governor's hatchet man. He'd turn out the cops and accountants, and by Saturday night the council would be trying to explain what had happened to a hundred thousand dollars in cash – and why it'd been taken out of the bank in the first place.

Marvel and her friends would have delivered the doctored printout detailing Longstreet corruption and would also be singing a quiet chorus in the background. A hundred thousand? Probably dope, she'd say. Cocaine and crack. Run through the fire department. And with Marvel providing the details, there'd be enough meat on that bone to interest the state.

"I worry about you, Harold," I said as we were leaving. "It all sounds good in theory, but these guys. you don't run a machine like Longstreet's without being tough. They might not roll over so easy."

"I grew up in Longstreet," Harold said with an unhappy grin. "I know how it works. I can take care of myself. And Marvel thinks-"

"Yeah. Well. Good luck."

Back in Longstreet, LuEllen and I climbed up on top of the Fanny's cabin with gin and tonics, to watch the sun go down, and I told her about the change of plans.

"I don't like it," she said. "I'm getting spooked. In the bad old days, if I got spooked, I called off whatever I was doing. Walked away. I figured there might be a reason for being spooked, something unconscious. If Harold can blackmail Dessusdelit and St. Thomas and Rebeck off the council, more power to him. We won't have to hit City Hall."

A small boat's bow light appeared downriver and cut an arc through the darkness as it came into the marina. A commercial catfisherman in a fat green jon boat. His wife was waiting up the levee with their station wagon and a stack of drywall buckets for the catch.

"I don't know," I said, finishing the drink. I crunched the ice cube between my teeth and sucked on the pieces. "It doesn't feel right."

We sat for a couple more minutes in silence; then LuEllen scraped her chair back and stood up. "Mosquitoes coming out," she said.

As I looked out at the river, in the hot, humid night, with the water burbling under the hull and the sound of car radio rock 'n' roll floating down the levee wall, it was hard to remember that winter always comes.