The Empress File

CHAPTER 13

The next morning Marvel asked if we could meet her at the farm home of a friend, out in the country, well away from the river and the prying eyes of Longstreet.

"It's safe and quicker than Greenville, and nobody will see your car," she said. "Half an hour?"

"I'll be there."

LuEllen again decided to stay with the boat, away from new faces.

"You gonna be here when I get back?" I asked.

"Of course," she said gravely. "I'm not leaving until we find some way to grease Hill and St. Thomas."

Marvel's friend's name was Matron Carter, a plain, cheerful woman with short hair and good moves. She was shooting basketballs at a netless hoop hung on the side of a swaybacked, free-standing garage when I pulled into her yard. Marvel's car was around back, next to a vacant chicken coop. A rusty forties-style power mower appeared to be permanently parked in knee-high grass under lilac bushes at the edge of the yard, and a pear tree and a half dozen aging apple trees marched in military file down the edge of an overgrown field.

"They're waiting for you inside," the woman said, dribbling the ball as she talked. She faked one way, turned the other, and popped a fifteen-foot jump shot.

"Nice shot," I said.

"Do it for a living," she answered, running down the ball. Marvel told me later that she was a gym teacher at Longstreet High School and coached the girls' basketball teams.

The house was tired but comfortable. I went through the back door, through a kitchen, and into a small living room, where Marvel and John were sprawled on a broken-down couch.

"Harold's dead," Marvel said. She stopped me in my tracks.

"You found him?"

"We found his car. At Wal-Mart," she said wearily. "And he's gone. I can feel it. The motherfuckers took him someplace and killed him."

Tears started running down her face, and John said quietly, "They go back to when they were babies. They were raised together."

"Jesus Christ," I said, running my fingers through my hair. I was gripped by the temptation to tell them the truth but instead blurted, "We need the FBI in here."

"I don't," John said sharply. "I've had some problems with those boys. And we've still got to take this town. That's the main thing."

"Maybe Harold is OK. Maybe he had to take off for some reason," I said fatuously. I wandered over to a window and looked out. Matron Carter was pumping a wrought-iron water pump and drinking from the spout as the water surged out of the ground. In the dappled sunlight in the yard she looked beautiful, not plain. "Maybe they scared him and he took off for Greenville or Helena."

"And left his car at Wal-Mart?" John asked.

Marvel, turning in John's arms, shook her head. "No. He's dead. I can feel him. gone."

There wasn't much more to say. Marvel insisted that we keep the takeover rolling.

"Matron will be the second appointee to the council if we bring this off," Marvel said. She'd be the third.

"Can she do that? If she lives out here, outside the city."

"This is her folks' place. They're gone, dead, and nobody lives here anymore. Matron lives in town."

"OK. You can name who you want, that's your call. I'm more worried about John and your contacts at the capitol-"

"Don't worry about that. I talked to an old friend of Harold's, one of the black caucus guys. I told him Harold was missing and that it was connected to our deal. This guy is smart; he knows something's going on, and he's helping. I'll take the fucking books to the governor's man and bring back so many cops it'll look like a convention. And one way or another, on my mama's grave, we'll find Harold."

"Then we've got to set up John's part," I said. "We've got to get the bridge scam going. Get the rumors started."

"I'll start now, from here, on the phone," Marvel promised. "Two hours from now everybody in town'll know there's a rich drug dealer down here snapping up land for the bridge."

"The more I think about it, the more this sounds like bullshit," John said. "The goddamn pin-striped suit and the car and the hair – why'n the hell would they believe some strange nigger from Memphis?"

"Same reason there are a million con men working the world and making money," I said. "Greed. You're going to offer them something for almost nothing; they'll have to show you some money, but that's it. They don't have to give it to you, just show it. They don't have to put up a cent until the bridge is coming in. By that time, the profit'll be guaranteed."

"A wonderful thing, greed," Marvel said. "Where would we be without it?"

John rubbed her head. "Fuckin' Commie," he said.

When I got back to the boat, LuEllen was slumped in a deck chair with two bottles of beer and a glass, looking glum. A crumpled newspaper lay at her feet.

"Get a beer," she called as I came- aboard.

I got one, climbed up on top, and sank into the chair beside her.

"Pretty bad?" she asked.

"Pretty bad," I said.

"Is John gonna do his act?"

"Yeah."

She squinted up at the city beyond the levee, the brick buildings, the peaks of Victorian mansions beyond. "The place looks like a museum," she said. "It's hard to believe this is all happening. Look what I found."

She handed me the newspaper, folded to an editorial. The headline said LONGSTREET, AN ISLAND OF PEACE.

"Makes you giggle, huh?" she asked sourly, tipping her bottle up.

The Longstreet rumor mill was as efficient as Marvel had said it was. She made her calls and sat back, while John drove around town, made several trips out to the supposed bridge property, and talked to an engineer about soil and perc tests. Bobby phoned again on a voice line.

"I just got a call on our phone cutout about the bridge," he said. "Archibald Ballem."

"The attorney."

"Right."

"Did he buy it?" I asked.

"Yeah, I think so. I got pissed and refused to answer questions. I wanted to know where he got his information and told him the whole thing was secret. I warned him that spreading the information might damage the prospects for construction. He tried to cool me off. I don't think he'll be calling back."

"Keep monitoring the number anyway," I said.

I called John with the news. "They'll be coming," I said. "Be ready."

John got a second call two hours later. Archibald Ballem, a local attorney, wanted to talk to him and to bring along a couple of business associates. I thought it would be Dessusdelit and maybe St. Thomas. It was St. Thomas all right, but Ballem opted for muscle instead of brains; Hill was with them.

"They all sat real close to me," John said later. "You could feel the threat. They were pushing, and they talked about it in advance."

The meeting, John said, started with the politely inadvertent racism that southerners fall into when they want something from a black: talk about basketball, break dancing, and hip-hop. St. Thomas liked it all, to hear him tell it.

After the chitchat Ballem put the question, What about the bridge? John asked, "What bridge?"

Ballem said, "We're all businessmen here and civic leaders. Mr. St. Thomas is one of our prominent city councilmen, and I'm the city attorney, and Mr. Hill is a city department head."

That got them down to it. Permits would be no problem. Zoning could be arranged. All for the future financial progress of the city of Longstreet. "Would there be any space for more investors, Mr., ah, Johnson?"

There might be. but I'll have to talk to my friend in Memphis.

"They bought it all right," John said. He was with Marvel and Brooking Davis, and I could hear them talking in the background. "They were so hungry they were drooling on my fuckin' wing tips."

"OK. So do a little back and forth. If they don't call you, you call them to check on things. Talk about a Delaware company. They know about Delaware companies."

"I already started hinting about money. Let them know that they won't get in cheap, that the project's too big."

"Anything about Harold?" I asked.

"No, and there's something else. let me put Marvel on."

She took the phone and said, "Something else, I can't stand it. There's a rumor that Harold went off to Memphis with Sherrie. I don't believe it for a second."

"Is she missing? Sherrie?" I was afraid the fraud was audible in my voice. If it was, she didn't hear it.

"Can't find her," Marvel said. "I was supposed to warn her against going to work, but I was with John, and shit. I forgot. Fuck me, I forgot." There was a tone of finality in her voice, with an undertone of bitter anger.

"Jesus, forgot?" And now Sherrie was dead. I wanted to shout at her but I couldn't. "There's no chance that they did go off?" I was floundering, trying to react the right way, when I didn't feel any of it. I had already reacted to the murders the moment that I saw them and this, now, was just playacting, deceiving a woman I liked.

"No!" She almost shouted it. "What do you think they are?"

"Marvel, I don't know what to tell you. I didn't see this coming."

"Neither did I." She sighed. "We should have known. We're playing with fire."

"Keep hoping," I suggested. "Maybe. I don't know. Look: Let me talk to John again."

John came back on the phone. "Yeah?"

"Listen, if something was done to Harold and the woman. This Hill guy, the guy who came to see you with Ballem, is the town muscle. He's nuts, I think – a psycho. You can take care of yourself, but there's Marvel now, and her friends. People in town must know she was tight with Harold."

"I've got some people coming down from Memphis," John said. "Don't worry about us, and don't worry about what Duane Hill might do. If he gives us any shit, Duane'll need a new head."

John talked to Ballem again the next morning, and this time Dessusdelit sat in.

"Like a crow," John said. "She sat there with her head bobbing up and down, like she was pecking on me."

John had parked the white BMW on the street outside the lawyer's office, where everybody might have a chance to look it over. In his time as an underground activist in Memphis, he'd picked up the language of municipal development; the three of them, John said, had an intense discussion of tax increment financing. When he left, Ballem was seeking references to TI financing in the state statutes.

They were excited, he said, but something else, too.

"This Dessusdelit woman, man, she looks fucked up. I mean, she looked a little crazy. Are you sure she's all right?"

"She always seemed wrapped a little too tight, if anything," I said.

"Not now," John said. "She looked frazzled."

John went to Memphis, more for show than anything, and returned to the Holiday Inn Friday morning, as Marvel was leaving for the capital. LuEllen sat in the Coffee Klatch Caf‚ across from the City Hall, watching the City Hall and prowling the adjacent stores. I was on the boat alone when Dessusdelit showed up. John was right: She seemed to be coming undone and asked if I was in the mind to do a reading.

"Guess I could," I said. "LuEllen's not here, she's up in town shopping-"

"I simply would like to see what the cards say." She was on the dock, and I was on top of the cabin, looking down. She was gray-faced, haggard. In the cabin I got out the deck, shuffled the cards, and pushed them across at her. She shuffled a dozen times, pushed them back.

"Cut?"

She hesitated, nibbling her lip, and finally cut.

The cards rolled out, and as happens in most tarot readings, there was no clear, dramatic direction. What the cards said was more subtle than that. The Five of Pentacles – sometimes interpreted as a poverty card – popped up, and her sharp intake of breath indicated that she knew what it was.

"Remember that everything is relative, and the cards have a hard time dealing with relativity," I told her. "I could roll the Five of Pentacles for a Rockefeller, and it might mean that he'd be cut back to his last billion."

"It's so much different from the last time," she said in a small voice, seeming almost lost.

The last card to come up was one of the major arcana, the High Priestess. I was startled but kept my face straight and started picking the spread apart.

"There's a secret," I concluded, tapping the High Priestess. "I don't know whether you have a secret or somebody has a secret they're hiding from you. But if the secret comes out, there'll be terrible problems. You can see how that influence in the High Priestess cuts right back to the Five of Pentacles, the loss card, the poverty card."

She was becoming increasingly agitated, clutching a wadded Kleenex in her fist, her knuckles white as marble.

"Is it going to come out?"

I shrugged. "I can't see that."

"Can we do another spread?"

I shook my head. "If you do too many, the influences tend to get mixed up. If you'd like a really good reading."

"Yes?"

"Focus on a question. You don't even have to tell me what it is. But focus, spend the day and the night thinking about it, and come back tomorrow morning. Then we'll take out the cards, and we'll see if we can do something more definitive."

Her head jerked in assent. "Tomorrow," she said, getting up.

"Sure. But focus. We need that psychic energy."

"And you think we'll get something definitive."

"Uh, wait a minute." I scratched my chin. "Look, you've been awful nice to us, and I'm sure LuEllen wouldn't mind."

I got the crystal ball in its velvet sleeve and handed it to her. "Spend some time tonight, staring into it. Use it to focus; remember what the cards did to the crystal the last time? That can work in reverse. Focus tonight, and tomorrow we'll read."

"If you think LuEllen wouldn't mind."

"Not at all," I said as I held the door for her, "and I'm sure it'll give us a much clearer look with the cards." As sure as a stacked deck could make it.

LuEllen was coming down the levee wall as Dessusdelit left, and they stopped and talked for a second before Dessusdelit went on.

"You loaned her the ball?" LuEllen asked as she stepped off the dock onto the boat.

"She's coming back tomorrow for a reading," I said. "I wanted an explanation for what the cards are going to do."

"She's shook up," LuEllen said. We both looked after the mayor. "Maybe she's got a conscience."

"I think she's mostly scared. The last time she was here, she had all this opportunity showing up. We just did a spread and got some very peculiar cards. Not nearly so happy."

"How'd you manage that?" LuEllen asked.

"I didn't. They just came up," I said uneasily. The cards sometimes make you nervous even if you don't believe in them. I changed the subject. "What'd you figure out?"

"We're in luck," LuEllen said. "That hardware store next to the City Hall has aluminum extension ladders."

"Say what?"

John called. When he returned from Memphis, he'd phoned Ballem and said he'd talked to the Man. The Man didn't mind some discreet, well-placed partners, but they wouldn't get in for free, even with the clout they could provide from City Hall.

The Man wanted a two-hundred-thousand-dollar investment, cash money: no checks, no stamps. And John had to see a piece of the money now. Half. A hundred thousand.

"I told them that my friend was used to dealing in cash, that it was a personal peculiarity," John drawled, still in character. "And I told them that he'd spent so many years dealing with bullshit artists he now insisted that one of his people actually see some cash up front, before any deals were made."

"They bought it?"

"Yeah. They think it's weird, but they figure I'm a dealer, which kind of explains some of it, in their eyes. We're meeting at the City Hall, quarter after nine. Ballem will be at the door to let me in."

"Why so late?"

"So it'll be dark. I asked, and they said they'd just as soon not have a lot of noticeable people getting together with me. And there was a hint there, you know, that I'd better stay in line. That there'd be a half dozen of them, and they wouldn't let in anybody but me."

"All right. Take a good look at whatever they're carrying the money in. Try to figure out if they'll leave it in the safe."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll do all that. Marvel called from the capital; she's all set. She's talked to the governor's man, and he'll see her anytime up to midnight. She'll go as soon as we call her."

"You be careful, man."

"Yeah. You, too."

At nine o'clock LuEllen went back to the sleeping cabin and clattered around. After a minute she made a low, groaning sound and I stepped back. She was leaning against the cabin way, her eyes closed, her head cocked back.

"Not a fuckin' word," she said.

She did two more hits in the next half hour, while we waited. She was flying when John called.

"They had it, and it's in the safe, just like we figured. The safe was already open a crack. The city clerk was there, Wells, with Ballem and Dessusdelit and Hill."

"St. Thomas wasn't there?"

"No. Just those four. I went up the block to the Mobil station to use the telephone, and all four of them came out together, so they're gone. The money's in a bank bag, and they weren't carrying it when they came out."

"We'll take it from here then," I said.

"Good luck."

LuEllen is a great burglar for a lot of reasons, but the most important reason is her will to act. LuEllen can do outrageous things because she has the will to do them.

"I wouldn't take you, except I don't know what I'll have to go through inside. I might need some muscle to handle a ladder or get up on the roof," she told me as she selected the tools she'd take along.

"I'd worry," I said.

"I know." She pecked me on the cheek, checked her tools one last time, and we went.

The City Hall was effectively two and a half stories tall. The basement had windows at ground level, and the first floor was up a short flight of steps. The main doors were standard steel and glass jobs. LuEllen could open them any number of ways, but she'd be doing it in full view of the street, and illegal entry isn't always the quietest activity. That was out.

The back of the City Hall was also the entrance to the police department. There were eight cops on duty on Friday night, three pairs in squad cars, and manning the desk and a holding cell. We wouldn't be going in from that side.

The City Hall was on a corner, with only one side flanked by another building. That building was the hardware store, and it was a half story shorter than the City Hall. The two were separated by a ten-foot-wide strip of grass. A tree stood on the front lawn, its canopy blocking a front view of the roofline between the buildings.

The hardware store had a deep doorway at street level. The lock would be easy, LuEllen said. It was loose enough that we might be able to pry back the jamb and slip in without breaking it. Neither the hardware store nor the building across the street had second-floor apartments.

"I 'scoped them out," she said as we headed downtown. "The second floor across the street is a storage loft for a plumber, so nobody'll be watching from there. The second floor on the hardware store is a stockroom and an office. I don't know exactly where the roof access is, but there has to be one."

It was a hot night. We dumped the car on a side street two blocks from the City Hall and walked down the dark street, our arms touching, looking for other walkers. Nobody.

"Coming up," she said as we got close. She passed me a pair of flesh-colored latex gloves, the disposable kind intended to prevent dishpan hands. I pulled them on, and she dipped into her shoulder bag and took out a pipe, keeping it against the leg away from the street. There was a steel pry bar inside it. The pipe could be used as an extension, for more leverage.

"You're sure this'll work?" A great time to ask, I thought as the words came out.

"It should," she said. She slowed to look in the window of an office equipment store and then into the hardware store. The store was dark. With a last glance around, we stepped into the doorway like lovers looking for a moment of privacy. She slipped the bar between the lock plate and the jamb, pulled the pipe out for leverage, and pressed. "Push the door."

I pushed the door with the heel of my hand, and the door hit the lock.

"Again," she said. She pressed her weight against the pipe, and I pushed again, hard. The doorjamb scraped and popped open. We were in. "Hello?" LuEllen called. "Is anybody here?"

Not a sound, which was good. If anyone had answered, I'd have had a heart attack. LuEllen shut the door, grabbed the front of my shirt, and led me down the aisles of the dark store, all the way to the back.

"Stairs," she muttered. She stepped into the stairwell, flicked on a pocket light, and led the way up. On the first floor there had been a little light, coming through the windows from the street. Except for the flash, the second floor was dark as a coal sack. At the top of the stairs we turned left, toward the back, and stopped at a green door that looked as though it were painted in place.

"Gotta be it," she said. She tried the knob, found it unlocked, and pulled the door open. A short, steep flight of stairs led to a roof hatch. There were stacks of advertising booklets and old newspapers on the steps, covered with dust, and we stepped carefully around them as we went up. The hatch was secured by two simple hooks. She flipped them off, pushed the hatch up an inch or so, scanned the rooftop, then shoved it all the way off and we climbed through.

"Keep low," she said. We crept across the tarpaper and gravel roof to the parapet. The City Hall was ten feet away, and the top was eight to ten feet above us. The windows facing us were dark. LuEllen crawled along the parapet, looking at the buildings opposite, checking lines of sight.

"What do you think?" I whispered when she came back.

"We can do it, but if there's anybody on one of these other buildings, cooling off, we could be fucked," she whispered back. "No help for that, though. Let's get the ladder."

We went back down to the first floor and found an aluminum extension ladder. I carried it to the base of the stairs while LuEllen found a package of nylon anchor rope. Then I took one end of the ladder, and she took the other, and we went back up.

"What's the rope for?" I asked.

"We're pretty exposed. If somebody comes after us, there's the outside chance that we could tie the rope around one of the chimneys and go over the offside of the building and run."

"Yeah. Right."

"Hey. I've never done time-"

"OK."

On the roof we sat quietly, listening for voices and looking for lights on adjacent buildings. All we heard were the different hums of the streetlights and a thousand air conditioners. All we saw was a car roll past, its windows up. We wouldn't be visible from the street; the tree covered us on the front side. We would be visible from a cop car rolling down the alley.

After ten minutes we'd heard nothing, and LuEllen touched my arm. "Let's go." We unfolded the ladder, propped it against the top of the City Hall. LuEllen sat on the hardware store roof, her heels against the bottom rung of the ladder; she'd hold it in place while I crossed. After a last look down the alley, checking against police cars, I crossed. It was about as difficult as climbing a ladder to wash a window, as long as I didn't look down.

I hopped onto the roof of the City Hall, treading lightly, and braced the ladder while LuEllen crossed. She moved like a cat, covering the gap in two or three seconds. I pulled the ladder across and laid it flat on the roof. We waited another minute, listening. Nothing. LuEllen crossed to the chimney, wrapped the rope around it, tied it, and left it lying in a heap. If we needed it, it would be ready.

Unlike the hardware store, the City Hall had a full-size door at the top, its housing sticking out of the roof like a wedge. LuEllen tried the knob, found it locked, and dug in her bag.

"Problem?"

"Naw, it's one of those old warded pieces of shit." She used what looked like two lengths of clothes hanger wire and opened it in fifteen seconds. The stairs were built in a steep spiral, narrow and dark.

"Wait until I call," she muttered. Wooden steps creak; they always creak, it's another of the basic laws of nature. She went down them slowly, her feet spread to the far edges of each step. There wasn't a sound. At the bottom she listened again, opened the door, peeked out, and called me down. I went down as quietly as I could; in my ears it sounded as if I'd stumbled through the cymbal section of the New York Philharmonic.

"We're in some kind of closet," she said. She had pushed the door open about three or four inches; a filing cabinet blocked it from opening farther. Worse, the filing cabinet was jammed against another wall. I reached through, grabbed the top of the cabinet, and tried to pull it farther into the closet. It wouldn't budge.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Take the door off," she said. She found the pry bar in her sack and pulled the pins from the two hinges. We had to do some dancing, but eventually we got the door off and enough out of the way that I could boost her up on top of the file cabinet. The door to the closet was also locked.

"Pain in the ass," she whispered as she worked on it. "If we want to close them all again." She was working blind on the closet lock, reaching down from the top of the file. After a couple of curse words the bolt slipped, and she eased the door open.

"Whoa," she said.

"What?"

She turned back and shone the light on her own face. She was grinning.

"We're inside the clerk's office," she whispered.

"You want me to come?"

"No point."

She climbed down off the cabinet into the clerk's office. I pushed myself up on top of the cabinet, craning my neck until I could see. She went straight to the safe, sat for a moment, listening and watching the glass doors to the outer building, then stood, flicked on the light, and started working the combination dial. She hit on the third try, and the heavy door swung open. She spent a moment pulling drawers, dropped a white canvas sack behind her, pushed the door shut, twirled the dial, and came back to the closet. It took as long to lock the closet door as it had to open it. It took only a minute to put the stairway door back on and another minute to lock the door at the top.

"Got it," she breathed at me. "Jesus, stealing is better than fucking, you know?"

"Thanks," I said dryly.

"You know what I mean." Her voice sounded full, awash with adrenaline or some kind of special burglar hormone. We listened for another minute, heard nothing but LuEllen's breathing. Then she retrieved the rope; we recrossed the ladder and took it back into the store, hooking the hatch behind us.

"This is the worst," she said when we were at the front of the store. "This is where we really could get caught again."

"I haven't seen any cocaine," I said. The thought had just popped into my head, from nowhere.

"I thought I'd try it this way, doesn't feel too bad."

"So."

"I still want it."

"That's the way it is, I guess." I slipped two fingers under her belt buckle and pulled her up against me. "You're more interesting without the coke."

She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the lips, and it went on for a bit.

"This is goofy," she said, pulling away. "This is how you get caught. You forget for a minute."

We'd be going back out into the street blind. A car rolled by. We were ready to go when the lights from a second one showed. It passed, and we went. Outside, she used the pry bar to slip the lock in place, dropped the bar in her shoulder sack, and we were on the sidewalk.

I put my arms around her, and she pressed her head against my shoulder. Lovers, again, walking in the moonlight. We stopped once on the street before we turned down toward the car, to kiss and, incidentally, to drop the latex gloves in a brand-new Longstreet storm sewer.

John was waiting for the call.

"You going?" he asked.

"Just got back," I said. I looked at LuEllen, who was stacking packets of twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen table. "It was smooth as silk."

"Jesus Christ, I'm starting to think Bobby was right about you guys," John said. "I'll call Marvel. I'll send her in."

"I'll call her," I said. "There've been some changes. I think I've figured out how it'll go, all the way to the end."