The Empress File

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 moresubtle 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