The Empress File

where the blonde waited with folded arms.
    “Goddamn, this country is goin’ to hell in a handbasket,” one of the cowboys said, taking a hit from his beer bottle. He looked me up and down, taking in my artist’s getup and beard. “Somebody’s gone and taught the fuckin’ hippies how to fight.”

T HE NEXT MORNING Marvel asked if we could meet her at the farm home of a friend, out in the country, well away from the river and the prying eyes of Longstreet.
    “It’s safe and quicker than Greenville, and nobody will see your car,” she said. “Half an hour?”
    “I’ll be there.”
    LuEllen again decided to stay with the boat, away from new faces.
    “You gonna be here when I get back?” I asked.
    “Of course,” she said gravely. “I’m not leaving until we find some way to grease Hill and St. Thomas.”
    M ARVEL ’ S FRIEND ’ S NAME was Matron Carter, a plain, cheerful woman with short hair and good moves. She was shooting basketballs at a netless hoop hung on the side of a swaybacked, free-standinggarage when I pulled into her yard. Marvel’s car was around back, next to a vacant chicken coop. A rusty forties-style power mower appeared to be permanently parked in knee-high grass under lilac bushes at the edge of the yard, and a pear tree and a half dozen aging apple trees marched in military file down the edge of an overgrown field.
    “They’re waiting for you inside,” the woman said, dribbling the ball as she talked. She faked one way, turned the other, and popped a fifteen-foot jump shot.
    “Nice shot,” I said.
    “Do it for a living,” she answered, running down the ball. Marvel told me later that she was a gym teacher at Longstreet High School and coached the girls’ basketball teams.
    The house was tired but comfortable. I went through the back door, through a kitchen, and into a small living room, where Marvel and John were sprawled on a broken-down couch.
    “Harold’s dead,” Marvel said. She stopped me in my tracks.
    “You found him?”
    “We found his car. At Wal-Mart,” she said wearily. “And he’s gone. I can feel it. The motherfuckers took him someplace and killed him.”
    Tears started running down her face, and Johnsaid quietly, “They go back to when they were babies. They were raised together.”
    “Jesus Christ,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. I was gripped by the temptation to tell them the truth but instead blurted, “We need the FBI in here.”
    “I don’t,” John said sharply. “I’ve had some problems with those boys. And we’ve still got to take this town. That’s the main thing.”
    “Maybe Harold is OK. Maybe he had to take off for some reason,” I said fatuously. I wandered over to a window and looked out. Matron Carter was pumping a wrought-iron water pump and drinking from the spout as the water surged out of the ground. In the dappled sunlight in the yard she looked beautiful, not plain. “Maybe they scared him and he took off for Greenville or Helena.”
    “And left his car at Wal-Mart?” John asked.
    Marvel, turning in John’s arms, shook her head. “No. He’s dead. I can feel him… gone.”
    There wasn’t much more to say. Marvel insisted that we keep the takeover rolling.
    “Matron will be the second appointee to the council if we bring this off,” Marvel said. She’d be the third.
    “Can she do that? If she lives out here, outside the city…”
    “This is her folks’ place. They’re gone, dead,and nobody lives here anymore. Matron lives in town.”
    “OK. You can name who you want, that’s your call. I’m more worried about John and your contacts at the capitol—”
    “Don’t worry about that. I talked to an old friend of Harold’s, one of the black caucus guys. I told him Harold was missing and that it was connected to our deal. This guy is smart; he knows something’s going on, and he’s helping. I’ll take the fucking books to the governor’s man and bring back so many cops it’ll look like a convention. And one way or another, on my mama’s grave, we’ll find Harold.”
    “Then we’ve got to set up John’s part,” I said. “We’ve got to get the bridge scam going. Get the rumors started.”
    “I’ll start now, from here, on the phone,” Marvel promised. “Two hours from now everybody in town’ll know there’s a rich drug dealer down here snapping up land for the bridge.…”
    “The more I think about it, the more this sounds like bullshit,” John said. “The goddamn