The Empress File

That I haven’t done anything embarrassing to it?” Bell asked when I finally joined them. He did have an engaging way about him,not diminished by the fact that he owned one of my paintings and was taking good care of it.
    “I’m more than satisfied; I’m delighted,” I said, looking back at the painting. “It’s got a good spot, good light, protection. That’s what it’s made for.”
    “I had an offer for it. An old lawyer guy here in town. Five hundred over what I paid.”
    “Tell him to get his own,” I said.
    He nodded. “I did, and he said he would. Don’t know if he has, but he gets down to N’Orleans often enough.”
    So we sat and talked, passing pleasantries about the river until I mentioned the bridge. He suddenly got serious.
    “Those peckerwoods—pardon the language, LuEllen, but I get mad thinking about it—up in the legislatures, they won’t help us. See, the people across the river say, ‘Hell, if we build a bridge into Longstreet, the people on our side will just go over there to spend their paychecks.’ The people on this side say, ‘Why should we pay the whole cost of a bridge?’ So they dicker back and forth, and nothing gets done. It’s killing me, is what it’s doing.”
    “How’s that?” LuEllen asked. She was picking up some of the southern rhythm of his speech.
    “I’m a farmer. Most of my land is over there on the other side. Before the bridge got knocked down, I’d haul my beans to the elevators overhere and ship it downriver. When the bridge went, we had to haul the beans out by road, and it’s forty miles down to the nearest elevator on the other side. That’s an eighty-mile round trip for my trucks, what used to be a five-mile round trip. The cost of gas, the wear and tear… That’s why I got myself elected to the city council. They weren’t getting anywhere with the bridge—crooked sons of guns probably looking for a cut somewhere. So I got myself elected, thinking I could push it harder. But shoot, I’m not getting anywhere either,” he said. He finished his bourbon in a single gulp and got up to pour himself another.
    “So what happens if you don’t get a bridge? I mean, to you personally?” LuEllen asked.
    He shrugged. “It used to be that in a good year I made a lot of money. In an average year I’d make a little, and in a bad year I’d find some way to break even. Now, in a good year I make a little, and in an average year I maybe break even, and maybe not. In a bad year I lose my shirt. I can’t go on farming like that. Not for long. I’ve had a run of good years here, and they’ve had some drought problems up North, and that’s helped the markets. But a bad year is always just around the corner, and they tend to come in groups.”
    “You couldn’t build a barge landing on the other side?” I asked.
    “Naw, not for miles, not the way the levees run. Nothin’ but swamp behind them, no roads. Be more expensive than truckin’ it out.…”
    He was still brooding about it when we left.
    “Nice guy,” LuEllen said. “With major problems.”
    “But it’s a help,” I said. “We maybe couldn’t pull this off without the bridge problem.”
    “Doesn’t make me feel any better about it,” she said as she got in the car.
    After a moment of silence I said, “Well, you like him.”
    “Yeah.” And after another moment of silence she asked, “Does that bother you?”
    “A little bit.”
    “It never bothered you before,” she said.
    “That was before.”
    More silence, then: “Kidd, you’re making me nervous. I mean, like really nervous.”

T HE COMPUTER ALARM was beeping when we got home, and I phoned Bobby.
    Found on-line.
    Where?
    Animal control.
    Dogcatcher?
    Number is right; old 300-baud carrier.
    Thanx; will check. Could you monitor line, look for access code?
    Yes. Will call.
    I dialed Marvel’s house and got John.
    “You ready?” I asked.
    “All set. I’ll go in as soon as the place opens and wait. Mary Wells parks her car in that lot sideways across the street. If you can get a window seat in that Coffee Klatch Café, ’roundabout eight-fifty you’ll see her go in the lot. Red Ford. She usually gets there between nine-oh-five and nine-fifteen. You can meet her in the street and walk up with her. I’ll be ready.”
    “Marvel says the map books cost twelve dollars?”
    “Yeah. Have a twenty ready; maybe a fifty would be better,” John said. “I think she’d open the box anyway, but with a fifty it’d