The Empress File

pin-striped suit and the car and the hair—why’n the hell would they believe some strange nigger from Memphis?”
    “Same reason there are a million con men working the world and making money,” I said. “Greed. You’re going to offer them something for almost nothing; they’ll have to show you somemoney, but that’s it. They don’t have to give it to you, just show it. They don’t have to put up a cent until the bridge is coming in. By that time, the profit’ll be guaranteed.”
    “A wonderful thing, greed,” Marvel said. “Where would we be without it?”
    John rubbed her head. “Fuckin’ Commie,” he said.
    W HEN I GOT BACK to the boat, LuEllen was slumped in a deck chair with two bottles of beer and a glass, looking glum. A crumpled newspaper lay at her feet.
    “Get a beer,” she called as I came aboard.
    I got one, climbed up on top, and sank into the chair beside her.
    “Pretty bad?” she asked.
    “Pretty bad,” I said.
    “Is John gonna do his act?”
    “Yeah.”
    She squinted up at the city beyond the levee, the brick buildings, the peaks of Victorian mansions beyond. “The place looks like a museum,” she said. “It’s hard to believe this is all happening.… Look what I found.”
    She handed me the newspaper, folded to an editorial. The headline said LONGSTREET , AN ISLAND OF PEACE .
    “Makes you giggle, huh?” she asked sourly, tipping her bottle up.
    T HE L ONGSTREET RUMOR mill was as efficient as Marvel had said it was. She made her calls and sat back, while John drove around town, made several trips out to the supposed bridge property, and talked to an engineer about soil and perc tests. Bobby phoned again on a voice line.
    “I just got a call on our phone cutout about the bridge,” he said. “Archibald Ballem.”
    “The attorney.”
    “Right.”
    “Did he buy it?” I asked.
    “Yeah, I think so. I got pissed and refused to answer questions. I wanted to know where he got his information and told him the whole thing was secret. I warned him that spreading the information might damage the prospects for construction. He tried to cool me off. I don’t think he’ll be calling back.”
    “Keep monitoring the number anyway,” I said.
    I CALLED J OHN with the news. “They’ll be coming,” I said. “Be ready.”
    John got a second call two hours later. Archibald Ballem, a local attorney, wanted to talk to him and to bring along a couple of business associates. I thought it would be Dessusdelit and maybe St. Thomas. It was St. Thomas all right, but Ballem opted for muscle instead of brains; Hill was with them.
    “They all sat real close to me,” John said later. “You could feel the threat. They were pushing, and they talked about it in advance.”
    The meeting, John said, started with the politely inadvertent racism that southerners fall into when they want something from a black: talk about basketball, break dancing, and hip-hop. St. Thomas liked it all, to hear him tell it.
    After the chitchat Ballem put the question, What about the bridge? John asked, “What bridge?”
    Ballem said, “We’re all businessmen here and civic leaders. Mr. St. Thomas is one of our prominent city councilmen, and I’m the city attorney, and Mr. Hill is a city department head.…”
    That got them down to it. Permits would be no problem. Zoning could be arranged. All for the future financial progress of the city of Longstreet. “Would there be any space for more investors, Mr., ah, Johnson?”
    There might be… but I’ll have to talk to my friend in Memphis.
…
    “They bought it all right,” John said. He was with Marvel and Brooking Davis, and I could hear them talking in the background. “They were so hungry they were drooling on my fuckin’ wing tips.”
    “OK. So do a little back and forth. If they don’t call you, you call them to check on things. Talkabout a Delaware company. They know about Delaware companies.”
    “I already started hinting about money. Let them know that they won’t get in cheap, that the project’s too big.…”
    “Anything about Harold?” I asked.
    “No, and there’s something else… let me put Marvel on.”
    She took the phone and said, “Something else, I can’t stand it. There’s a rumor that Harold went off to Memphis with Sherrie. I don’t believe it for a second.”
    “Is she missing? Sherrie?” I was afraid the fraud was audible in my voice. If it was, she didn’t hear it.
    “Can’t find her,” Marvel said. “I was