The Empress File

CHAPTER 7

Ballem had a good eye. The Trent place was a white clapboard Victorian castle with turrets and stunning bay windows. Brick-colored pots of scarlet geraniums were spotted along the railing of a wide front porch. A natural-wood swing hung from chains at the closed end of the porch, and a healthy old bridal wreath hedge grew up from the foundation below. Peonies were spotted around the yard, among the carefully placed oaks, and in back, a grape trellis was already loaded with wide, shiny leaves. The whole thing was surrounded by an antique wrought-iron fence. From the boulevard you could look diagonally across the street and take in the house, the yard, and the sweep of the river below.

I'd rented a three-year-old station wagon from the Chevy dealer and hauled my painting gear up the hill to start working on my reputation. I hadn't expected much; I'd figured on a mildly picturesque view of the city. What I got was more subtle and more difficult, reminiscent of several Winslow Homer paintings of the Caribbean, with the splashes of red geraniums against the white clapboard and the green river valley below.

When I found the right spot, I unloaded a French easel, set it up on the boulevard, and put out my water buckets. Then I sat down in the grass with a sketch pad and began blocking out possibilities. I'd been working for a half hour when an elderly lady in a sweatsuit and Nike running shoes strode out through the porch door, through the gate in the wrought-iron fence, and across the street.

"Painter, huh?" she asked cheerfully.

"Yeah. I suppose you get a few of them," I said. "It's a heck of a view."

"We get a few. Local amateurs," she said. She shaded her eyes and peered down at the sketch pad. I'd made notes on a dozen or so pages, figuring out the moves I'd make when I got the painting going. At the beginning, on a big picture, which I'd decided this might be, I intellectualize the process. After I've figured everything out with a pencil, I go to the paint. Then it usually takes three or four tries before I get it. "Chenille Dessusdelit called and said I might see you. She said you were OK."

"That was nice of her."

"Well, you like to know who's on your street," she said.

"Sure. Look, my name is Kidd, and after I get done with this – it'll take me a few days – I might knock on your door and ask if I can set up someplace in your yard. I'd like to get a better shot at that bridal wreath with the geraniums."

"That'd be fine. I'm Gloriana Trent. I'm home most mornings. If I'm not, go ahead and set up," she said. Then, just as abruptly as she arrived, she said her good-byes and left, striding away with the determined stretch of a speed walker. Too much of the time, when I'm working outdoors, people linger, curious about the painting process. It can drive you crazy, trying to work with somebody looking over your shoulder.

When I was satisfied with my sketches, I got my water jugs out of the car, filled the buckets, and started with the paint. I was so deep into it that I didn't hear the van behind me until the driver warped it against the curb.

"What's this?" the driver asked, climbing out. It was a plain white van. When he slammed the door, I saw the ANIMAL CONTROL sign on the door. This was Hill, the dogcatcher. And he looked like his house: ugly and mean. He was maybe forty, an inch under six feet, deep through the body with a short, thick neck. His face was permanently tightened in a frown, making knobs of his cheeks and chin and nose. He wore his hair in a Korean War crew cut, and his forehead had that flattened, shiny look that you see on bar brawlers. Like Dessusdelit, he wore a stressed-out face, compounded of anger and weariness. We'd taken well over three hundred thousand out of his house.

"Painting," I said. I was sitting on a canvas stool, and he moved in close, looming over me. He stuck out one thick finger and tapped the French easel, making it shiver.

"I can see that," he said. "You got a permit?"

"I didn't know I needed one," I said. "The mayor didn't mention it."

His eyes tightened. "The mayor? You got permission?"

"She sent me up here," I said. "She and Mr. Ballem."

"Huh." He looked skeptical but backed off a step. He was about to say something else when the screen door on the Trent house slammed and Gloriana Trent came striding across the yard.

"Old bitch," the dogcatcher muttered under his breath.

"Duane Hill, you get out of here and leave Mr. Kidd alone," she said. Her voice was pitched up a notch. Under her flinty exterior she was afraid of the man.

"Just goin'," Hill muttered. He looked at me, his lips moving silently, as though he were memorizing my face, glanced resentfully back at Gloriana, got in the van and slowly pulled away. Gloriana watched him go.

"Bluff sort of fellow," I said.

"He's a chrome-plated asshole," Gloriana snapped. She looked back at me. "The people downtown say he has his uses. Sometimes I wonder."

"He's not one of your friends," I said. It wasn't a question.

"No. When he was in third or fourth grade, he used to steal from my husband's store; we own the department and sporting goods stores in town, the family does. I caught him once and sent him on his way. The second time I took him by the ear and dragged him down the street to his parents' house, for all the good that did. The Hills were always. trashy, I suppose. The third time I caught him, I took him down to the police station, and he went to juvenile court. He's not forgotten those trips with his ear stretched out like a rubber band." She smiled. "I like to think his head is lopsided, but I suppose it's wishful thinking."

She had me laughing. "I hope this won't cause you any trouble," I said.

"Oh, no. Duane knows where the lines are drawn. He came to look at you because the way things work here, he's sort of the town-" She groped for a word.

"Dogcatcher," I said.

She looked at me, no longer smiling. "Exactly," she said. "I hear from the rumor mill that he's had some trouble lately. Someone broke into his home."

"Crime is everywhere these days," I said distractedly, in my flattest voice.

"Yes, it is." She looked at the painting on the easel, and the smile came back. "Very nice."

"Not so good," I said. "I'm just getting a feel for it. It's a complicated subject. I'm not really painting the house, you know. I'm painting the light."

"I understand from Chenille that Lucius Bell owns one of your works, bought it in N'Orleans."

"That's what he says."

"He's a nice boy, Lucius," she said. "Grew up poor, put together a very nice farming business. Educated himself."

"Poor but not trashy?"

"Definitely not trashy. Poor and trashy don't have much to do with each other, do they?" she said.

"Not much," I conceded. "Listen, Mrs. Trent, you want a Dos Equis? I got a couple of bottles in a cooler."

"Well." She looked around, as if spotting neighbors peering from behind curtains. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, that would be nice on a hot day. But why don't we sit on my porch?"

We had a nice talk, and then she went back to her air-conditioning, and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the painting. LuEllen was in town, ostensibly shopping but also checking out the City Hall and the city attorney's personal office. About four o'clock the dogcatcher's van crossed the street a block down, slowly, and I could see Hill's face in the driver's side window, looking my way.

There's a myth that bullies can't handle a real fight, that if they get into a real fight, they fold. My experience is just the opposite: Bullies like to fight. They go far out of their way to fight. They are men who look for slights – imagined ones will do nicely – as an excuse. Hill, I thought, was probably one of them. He had that look, the narrow, scarred, righteous eyes of a sociopathic brawler. I hadn't seen the last of him.

A little after five, when the light started to go red, I dumped the water, closed up the easel, and put the painting gear in the Chevy. On the way back to the marina I stopped downtown. Just a look, I thought.

The Longstreet City Hall was kitty-corner from Chickamauga Park, the town square. The square was a busy place; there was a children's play area, with swings, a slide, monkey bars, and a huge sandbox. Metal benches lined the walks, and one or two old men were perched on each of them. The equestrian statue, of old Jim Longstreet himself, was at the center of the square, a major attraction for passing pigeons.

The City Hall looked like most of the other business buildings in town: squat, brick, undistinguished, vaguely moderne. The streets on the front and one side were not particularly busy and were fronted mostly by service stores selling hardware, office equipment, auto parts, and so on. An alley ran down the back of the building, to a small blacktopped parking lot and an entryway with a lighted glass sign that said police. On the fourth side, the side with no street, was a hardware store. The store was separated from the City Hall by a ten-foot-wide strip of grass.

I walked through the square, stopped to look at Longstreet on his big fat horse, then waited for two traffic lights, crossed to the City Hall, and went up the steps. Inside, it was cool and slightly damp, the kind of feel you get with old-fashioned air-conditioning. Following the hand-painted signs, I climbed a flight of stairs to the city clerk's office and asked the woman behind the counter if she had a city or county map. She had both and was happy to give them to me, free. There was a built-in safe at the back of the office, with a black-painted door and gold scrollwork. The combination dial was big as a saucer and right out on front, just as Marvel said it was.

That night LuEllen and I drove the station wagon out to the Holiday Inn, which had the trendiest bar and best dining room in town. It was also the most expensive. Crossing the park ing lot, I noticed a white BMW parked at the corner of the inn, nudged LuEllen with my elbow, and nodded toward it.

"I like the boat better," she said.

Inside the restaurant a dozen couples were scattered around at other booths and tables, peering at each other in the half-light of little red candle bowls. We raised a few eyebrows when we came in, especially since I was carrying a leather shoulder bag. Men's shoulder bags are not a big fashion along the river. But we needed a place where we could meet with John Smith, Marvel, and Harold, and we also needed a reason to go there. Like drinking.

I finished most of a bottle of wine during dinner and could have gotten thoroughly pissed in the bar afterward if I hadn't been dumping most of the drinks into a planter. We were still building the image: If the rented Chevy was often seen in the parking lot, it was just the drunk painter in the bar, or, if not in the bar, then the dining room. If not either, then probably in the can.

I stopped at a phone on the way out, carrying my shoulder bag.

"On the way," I said.

John had a room on the ground floor. We walked out of the bar toward the parking lot, took a left instead of a right, down an empty hallway, and knocked once on a door that opened instantly. John shut it behind us. Marvel was on the bed, cool as always.

"Whoa," I said when I turned around.

"Sharp-dressed man," John said a little awkwardly. He plucked at the seams of his trousers. "How do I look?"

"Like a thirties nigger from Harlem," said Marvel.

"Supposed to look a little like that," John said. He was wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit with pinstripes, a white shirt, a wine-colored power tie, and slightly pointed black wing tips. The jacket's padded shoulders were a hair too wide, the waist a bit too narrow. The piI de r‚sistance, a toupee with long straight hair, sat on top of his head. It fitted him well and had been combed through with an oily dressing until it shone. He looked sharp, like a subtle parody of a banker. Like a gangster.

"Think you can do it?" I asked.

"Yeah. I been in street politics long enough, and Marvel's backed me up with some people who'll say they know my name. People down in the capital."

"OK. How about-"

Marvel interrupted. "Did you rob Dessusdelit and Ballem and Hill?"

I was ready for it. I glanced at LuEllen, my forehead wrinkling, then back to Marvel. "What?"

"Did you hit the mayor and Ballem and Duane Hill's house?" She was watching me closely, but I can tell a lie.

"No. What the hell are you talking about?" Behind me LuEllen was shaking her head.

"Somebody hit their houses, really fucked them up," John said. "Two nights ago. We thought-"

"Not us," I said. "This could complicate things. If the cops are tearing up the town, looking at new people."

"No, no, they're not," Marvel said. "Matter of fact, we've mostly heard rumors. There hasn't been any official police report. A couple of white boys been picked up and squeezed, but that's about it."

"I don't know," I said. "We'll have to watch it. Can you have your people-"

"Sure. We'll stay in touch," Marvel said. She was still suspicious.

I turned back to John. "How about the rest of it?"

"I called this Brown guy, the landowner. He didn't make any bones about the land being for sale. He sounded pretty anxious; he was also curious about why anybody would want it."

"That's an element in a good con job," I said. "Somebody suddenly sees value where nobody else could see it. It makes them wonder what's going on."

"I hope," John said. He had been taking in my costume and now cracked a smile. "You look like you're in a movie, like an artiste. You oughta dab some paint on your shirt."

"We all look like we're in a movie," I said. "We've gotta be careful not to overdo it."

"You see the Beemer out in the parking lot?"

"Yeah."

"Love that car. It turns the head of every goddamned good-looking woman in Memphis-"

"A small exaggeration," Marvel said.

"I didn't know the power of cars on women," John said, a light in his eye. "I really didn't."

"Just drive carefully," LuEllen said. "That thing is costing us a fortune."

"Did you check Ballem's office?" Marvel asked LuEllen.

"Yeah. Going into the building could be tough. The door is right out in the open. People in small towns keep an eye on strangers. Especially at night."

"This help?" Marvel asked. She tossed a key ring with two keys on it to LuEllen. "The brass one's for the building door, and the other one's for the outer office door. Couldn't get one for Ballem's personal office without asking somebody we were afraid to ask."

"This is great," LuEllen said. "Once I'm inside, I can handle his office."

"When are you going to do it?"

I shrugged. LuEllen hated to give away any kind of security. "Sometime this week probably," I said. I picked up my shoulder bag, opened it on the bed, and took out LuEllen's Nikon F4, along with an instruction book.

"The camera's all set up," she said to John as I handed it over with the book. "The film is loaded, and it's on silent mode. You'll have to focus it when you get there and lock in the exposure." She dipped into my bag and took out another piece of gear. "This is the radio control."

John peeled his coat off, and Marvel moved forward on the bed to peer at the camera. "Show me how to do this, exactly," he said. "I don't want to fuck up."