The Empress File

polyester tie. He looked like a magazine salesman assigned to the proletariat.
    “Marvel, Harold,” John said. “You know Kidd. That’s LuEllen on the bed.”
    “LuEllen what?” Marvel asked, looking her over.
    “Uh, just LuEllen,” John said.
    Marvel nodded. “All right,” she said, and turned to me. “Did you figure something out?”
    I’d told them bits and pieces on the telephone but saved the overall proposal for the Memphis meeting. If they turned me down, I’d take the
Fanny
to New Orleans with no regrets. Because whether or not they wanted the whole thing, they were going to get at least part of it…
    “I think we can take them,” I said.
    Marvel walked over to the countertop that held the sink and dumped the bag. A two-quart carton of strawberry ice cream tumbled out with a box of plastic spoons. She picked up one of the half dozen hotel water glasses that were stacked on the counter, pulled off its cellophane wrapper, and opened the ice cream.
    “How we gonna do it?” asked Marvel as she dished the strawberry into the first of the glasses.
    “With superstition,” I said. “Superstition, an old-time con game, and a little help from the governor.”
    We talked for two hours. When we were done, Marvel shook her head. “That’s the most cynical thing I ever heard,” she said. She got up and took a turn around the room. “Do something like that… how do you square it with any kind of ethical position?”
    Harold was smiling in a nasty sort of way. “Fuck ethics,” he said. “I like it.”
    Marvel looked at him in surprise, then took another turn around the room before she finally nodded.
    “All right. I guess we’re in. When do you start?”
    I glanced at LuEllen and told them the first lie.

W E ’ D BE IN Memphis for a couple of days, getting some equipment and taking care of last-minute personal business, I said. Marvel suggested that we eat dinner together that night, but LuEllen vetoed the idea.
    “We can’t be seen with you,” she said. “Even this meeting is risky. We’re talking about felonies. If there’s ever a trial, I don’t want to be tied to you guys by a waitress or a bellhop or a maître d’ or anybody else.”
    “That’s kind of pessimistic,” Marvel said.
    “I’m a pro,” LuEllen answered. “I’ve never been arrested on the job because I try to think of everything in advance. If they ever do get me, I want them to have as little as possible.”
    The decision to attack the town had been a mood elevator. LuEllen’s comments sobered them up, and by six o’clock they were gone. The minute they were out the door, LuEllen made a call.Five minutes later we were standing on a curb along the riverfront.
    “We’re running late,” I said. “If they don’t show soon…”
    “They will. These guys are good.”
    “Better be,” I said. I was getting cranked and turned away. Below us a string of barges was pushing upriver, driven by a tow called the
Elvis Doherty.
The pilot sat in his glass cage, smoking a pipe, reading what looked like one of those fat beach novels that come out every June. At the tow’s stern an American flag, grimy with stains from the diesel smoke, hung limply off a mast between the boat’s twin stacks. I was watching the tow, thinking that it would make a very bad Norman Rockwell painting. LuEllen was watching the street.
    “Oh, ye of little faith,” she muttered. I turned in time to see a blue Continental turning a corner a block away, followed by a coffee brown Chrysler. Neither was a year old. LuEllen held up a hand, as though she were flagging a taxi, and the two cars slid smoothly to the curb.
    “Take the Ford,” she said. She picked up a black nylon suitcase that she’d carried up from the
Fanny
and headed for the Chrysler. I stepped into the street as the driver got out of the Continental, the car still turning over with a deep, un-Continental-like rumble. The driver, a heavyset, red-faced guy with no neck, a Hawaiian shirt,and zebra-striped shorts, peeled off a pair of leather driving gloves.
    “Go easy on the gas till you’re used to it,” he said laconically. “It’s clean inside.”
    That said, he walked around the back of the car, joined the driver of the Chrysler, and they strolled away down the sidewalk. LuEllen waved and got into the Chrysler. I climbed into the Continental, pulled on my own driving gloves, and spent a minute figuring out where the car’s controls were. Then I shifted into drive and