The Empress File

There was another set of controls on the upper deck, along with mounts for a couple of chairs, a bench seat, and a sunbathing well with removable privacy panels.
    “All right, I admit it,” I said finally. “It’s perfect. Where do we sign?”
    The agent was a stocky woman who wore what appeared to be a wrought-iron girdle. She asked a lot of questions, took some bank references, andtwo days later showed us a contract. She also showed us her husband, a grizzled cigar-smoking river rat named Fred. We spent the next three days pushing the
Fanny
up and down the St. Croix under Fred’s watchful eye.
    On the third day we nosed out into the Mississippi, took it through Lock and Dam No. 2 at Hastings, and fooled around in the current below St. Paul.
    “I guess you can handle her,” Fred grudgingly allowed at the end of the day. We were standing on the dock, and he handed me the keys. “When are you leaving?”
    “Couple of days.”
    “Good luck. You take care in that Chain-of-Rocks Canal.” He glanced at LuEllen on the upper deck. “And try not to wear out them mirrors.”
    T HE PHONE LINES were burning up. John to Bobby to me to Marvel, out into her network, and back to John. I was piling up detail. Names. Leverage. John called that night. He was in Longstreet.
    “We’ve got the Reverend Mr. Dodge by the balls. And we got him separate from the rest of the council.”
    “How’d you do it?” We’d decided to keep Dodge on the council while we dumped the restof it. Since he was tied to the machine, that might not be easy.
    “Remember how Marvel said he’s been trying to get into her pants since she was a kid? She got to thinking, maybe he’s been doing that with other kids.… And he has. We got two, so far, young girls. Marvel’s gonna have a talk with him.”
    “Don’t push him too hard,” I warned. “Don’t ask too much. He’s a Baptist, and if he thinks he’s a sinner, he might decide a public confession is the only way to go. That’d fuck us, along with him.”
    “She’ll handle it,” John said confidently.
    “All right. I hope you’re staying out of sight,” I said.
    “I’m down here only a couple of hours at a time and only at night,” he said. “We never go anyplace in town.”
    “It’s gotta be that way,” I said. “Have you got your costume?”
    “Yeah. And the motherfuckin’ hairpiece looks great, man. I look like Fred Hampton. How about you guys?”
    We were getting it together. A crystal for LuEllen, dangling from a gold chain. Her tools, and a small but outrageously expensive Leitz photo enlarger, some basic darkroom gear, and her Nikon F4. She sometimes takes photographsof places and things that she wouldn’t want a photo lab to get curious about.
    W E ’ D FALLEN BACK in bed together, though it took a while. After my spasm of honesty on the morning I drew her sleeping, she’d been walking circles around me. I let it go. There was something new in our relationship, but I wasn’t sure what it was or if I wanted it.
    Three days before we left, LuEllen made a quiet trip down to Longstreet, flying into Memphis, then rolling down the river road in a rented car. She was carrying a fairly expensive piece of electronic equipment from a friend on the West Coast. She got back late that night and checked back onto the couch.
    Then, the day before we left, I hauled a carload of personal stuff and computer printouts down to the boat and stowed it. With nothing much left to do, we rented a movie—
Jeremiah Johnson
with Robert Redford—and sat on my couch with a bowl of popcorn between us. About the time the Indians started hunting Jeremiah around the mountains, she picked up the bowl, moved it to the other side, said, “Fuck it,” and plopped her ass down beside me.
    I couldn’t think of anything to say, and she said, “Don’t say anything clever.”
    So I didn’t. We sat on the couch, watched the end of the movie, and then fell to necking likekids. Later we moved into the bedroom. LuEllen usually made love the way she wore clothes: like a cowgirl. Lots of enthusiasm, not much finesse. This time she seemed small. Fragile. When we went to sleep, I had my arm around her, and when I woke, eight hours later, we were still like that. She felt too good to move, but the little man in the back of my head was getting nervous: What the fuck is going on here, Kidd?
    W E LEFT in the early afternoon, still not talking much. LuEllen took the
Fanny
out, while I got a gin and tonic