The Empress File

or killed by one of the river dogs. I’ll feel rotten about it, and so will LuEllen. She always worked solo and moves around too much to have a pet. But she and the cat get along famously, LuEllen lying on the couch, the cat on her stomach, both of them sound asleep in good fellowship. And I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind, that old tom making a run for it, Hill and his asshole friend shooting him down.…
    The sun was still hanging up in the hot, hazy sky when we drove out to the Wal-Mart on the edge of town, bought the green gum boots, and tossed them into the trunk. We ate at the Holiday Inn, stopped in the bar, and eventually ducked back to John’s room. He was alone.
    “I set you up,” I said. “Told Dessusdelit that her future involves a black knight on a white horse, bringing welcome change.”
    “The Beemer’s white, and I sure as shit am black,” he said. He stepped over to the credenza, picked up a film cartridge, and flipped it to LuEllen. “Hope these are good.”
    “I’ll look at them tonight.” She glanced at her watch and turned to me. “We better get going. It’ll be dark in half an hour.”
    “So tomorrow—”
    “I’ll talk to Brown about the land option,” John said. “I hope Bobby’s ready.”
    “I just talked to him. He’s all ready. Is Marvel ready to move?”
    “Harold’s got the capitol crowd fixed. He told them that some heavy-duty crime is going down, that big money is being stolen, that something could happen this weekend. If he comes up with enough specifics, the attorney general will send in the state bureau of investigation.”
    “On a Saturday? For sure?”
    “Any day of the week, any time of day, on six hours’ notice.”
    “Can we trust them?”
    “I think so. Crime is just crime, and most of the time they probably couldn’t give a shit. But this is politics. This is a deal.”
    W E PULLED OUT of the dock just as the sun was disappearing over the highest of the old Victorian mansions up on the hill. The marina manager was leaving as we unhooked, and stopped by.
    “Midnight cruise?”
    “Little ro-mance maybe,” LuEllen told him, rolling her eyes at me.
    “Well, good luck with that.” The managerlaughed, and he watched as we backed away, into the current.
    We took our time going downriver, floating, easy. LuEllen stayed below, in the head, processing the film. I let the boat slip below the animal control complex, riding downriver for a dozen miles or more.
    I could live out there on the Mississippi, I think, if I weren’t eaten by the worm of Art. I could live there for the names alone. Longstreet was the only big town between Helena, Arkansas, and Greenville, Mississippi. Just in that stretch of 120 miles, from Helena to Greenville, you roll through Montezuma Bend, Horseshoe Cutoff, Kangaroo Point, Jug Harris Towhead, Scrubgrass Bend, Ashbrook Neck, and a few other places where you’d like to hop off the boat and look around.
    The last of day’s light was dying in the sky when I brought the boat around, took it back up-river, and eventually warped it against the revetment wall below the animal control complex. I killed the engine and the lights, dropped onto the main deck, and hopped ashore with the bow and stern lines. LuEllen came up, carrying the boots, as I finished tying off.
    “Better take some repellent,” she said, tossing me a spray can. “The mosquitoes’ll be fierce.”
    “How’d the pictures come out?” I asked as Isprayed my hands and rubbed my face and the back of my neck.
    “Not sure,” she said, frowning a bit. “Three frames look good. On the fourth, her thumb might be in the way. I can’t tell on the wet neg, I didn’t want to take the chance of scratching it. But holding it up to the light… we could have a problem.”
    “Goddamn it,” I said.
    LuEllen shrugged. “If we’ve got three digits and she’s only blocking the fourth, it just means it’ll take a little longer to get in. We might have to try a dozen combinations, but we’ll get it.”
    “When can you print?”
    “Tonight, when we get back. I can’t do it on the river because of the engine vibrations.”
    T HE NIGHT WAS still warm, but we wore dark long-sleeved shirts and jeans and the gum boots instead of shoes. I carried my portable in its black nylon case, and LuEllen had a daypack over her shoulder. We walked without talking, LuEllen using her miniature flashlight sparingly as we moved through the darkness. At the bottom of the hill