The Empress File

numbers, code names, and patched me into an anonymous telephone line out of Memphis. The first stamp was worth thirty-five hundred dollars if it was perfect. To me it looked perfect. The second stamp was worth forty-twohundred dollars if it was perfect. It looked perfect, too. They all looked perfect.
    “A hundred and forty stamps. Say, thirty-five hundred to four thousand each…”
    “Another half million,” I said.
    “All right,” she said, satisfied. “And I’ve got a friend who can handle it all.”
    “What about the diamonds?”
    “Another friend. He can sell them, but it’ll take a while. We’ll get fifty percent of face.”
    “I wonder about Dessusdelit. I don’t think we touched her.”
    “Maybe we’ll get another chance.”
    “Maybe.”
    LuEllen was examining the Cassatt lithograph, a sweet child from another age. “I don’t know about the art.”
    “That’s the problem,” I said. “There’s a worldwide registry of stolen art, out in New York.”
    “Dump them?”
    “I won’t do that,” I said, shaking my head. “Let me think about it. I’ll stick them in a safe-deposit box for now.”
    She nodded, looked at the loot scattered around us.
    “This was a good job. Really good. I mean, it was great.” She stepped over next to me, like a cat approaching a sardine. “A little tense maybe.”
    I got up and took a turn around the cabin,walking away from her. “So we’re rich again,” I said.
    “I don’t give a fuck about the money,” she said. “I like the way I feel.”
    I looked at her for a while, then got down a couple of tall glasses, two bottles of diet tonic water, a jug of Tanqueray, and a lime. “I was afraid it was getting like that,” I said as I cut up the lime.
    “Why afraid?”
    I passed her a drink and tried mine. It was tart. Very tart. “’Cause addicts always get caught.”

B EFORE BED L U E LLEN made two calls from a public phone, and the next morning we did some running around in a rental car. We dropped the gold coins at a dumpy motel near the airport, the diamonds at a bar downtown. She wouldn’t let me come inside at either place.
    “No need for you to show your face,” she said.
    She came back from the motel with an expensive black leather briefcase. I opened it and found cash.
    “A hundred and twenty-seven thousand,” she said. “On the low side, I think, but it was take it or leave it.”
    We did better than expected with the diamonds. Just after noon we left about a half million dollars in a safe-deposit box in downtown Memphis. The stamps, with Ballem’s prints, went in another box at another bank.
    “Satisfied?” I asked.
    “Mmm,” she said. “Tell you the truth, it’s the best I did, for money. But the rest of it…”
    “We owe people now,” I said. “We’ll do it and get out. Lay low for a while. Mexico. The Caribbean. There won’t be any taxes on this money.…”
    “I’ll teach you about offshore banks,” she promised.
    We left that evening for Longstreet, running the
Fanny
down the river.
    T O WRECK the Longstreet machine, we had to wipe out a majority of the council—three people—at one stroke.
    By state law a city council could replace members who died or resigned. If we got only one or two of the machine’s councilmen, the rest of the council could legally appoint replacements. They’d simply appoint other members of the machine. But if we could take out three, the council could no longer legally act; it needed at least three members for a quorum.
    If it couldn’t get a quorum, the replacements would be appointed by the governor.
    The governor, as it happened, had already served two terms in the statehouse and was barred from succeeding himself. Not ready to retire, he was looking at a race for a U.S. Senate seat. He had a shot at it, too, as long as the black wing of the Democratic party didn’t raise toomuch hell. The black caucus had been complaining that it wasn’t getting enough goodies in return for the votes it delivered, and there were noises that sounded like the beginnings of a revolt. If the blacks bolted and the party fractured, the governor would be retired whether he liked it or not.…
    And right there was the crux of a deal.
    Marvel and Harold would talk to the leaders of the black caucus. They, in turn, would talk with the governor’s hatchet man. If the governor agreed to act on Marvel’s request to clean up Longstreet, the black caucus would back off.…
    When I outlined the idea to