The Empress File

control, just in case. If there’s a problem, turn on a light. If everything’s OK, get out. I’ll see you back here.”
    “And we leave tomorrow morning.”
    “As soon as I get the car back.”
    The meeting was scheduled for seven-thirty. I left the boat fifteen minutes early, expecting a mob at the City Hall. When I pulled into the lot across the street, there was already a crowd on the sidewalk. Neither Hill nor Ballem seemed to be around, but I waited, watching, until people began drifting inside.
    The city council chamber was a small semicircular auditorium with seats for perhaps fifty people. Folding chairs had been brought in, and thirty lucky spectators were occupying them. Another dozen people were standing against the wall. The air-conditioning couldn’t keep up. The temperature inside must have been in the nineties, and the sweating townspeople used stacks of agendas from the last meeting to fan themselves. Nobody was giving up a seat.
    Marvel and Matron Carter, the basketball coach who’d be the fifth council member, were sitting together near the front. John was absent; still a little nervous about showing his face, he was waiting at Marvel’s.
    The word about Dessusdelit had gotten around, and it was the major topic of conversation as we waited for the council to show. The wait went on for ten minutes, fifteen. Then Bell came in through a side door, looking harassed,and said to a long groan that the meeting would be delayed until eight o’clock.
    I stepped outside, relieved to be in the relatively cool hallway, and walked down to a pay phone and called LuEllen.
    “Wait,” I said. “I haven’t seen either Ballem or Hill, and they’ve delayed the meeting. I don’t know what’s going on.”
    “I’ll wait,” she said.
    At ten after eight Bell reappeared, apologized again, said the meeting had been delayed another twenty minutes, and suggested that the townspeople adjourn to the sidewalk.
    “You all are starting to parboil,” he said. Then he looked out into the crowd, searching the faces, and stopped when he got to mine.
    “The artist fellow back there? Mr. Kidd? Could you come down here and talk to me for a minute? And Miz Atkins? Could you come down here, too?”
    A buzz went through the crowd, and I thought about walking out the back, down to the boat, and leaving for St. Paul. I could dump the car in the used-car lot where I’d rented it, with a couple of hundred bucks under the seat.… But there was no way out, with everybody watching. Marvel had walked down as soon as Bell called her name, and I picked my way down the center aisle, trying to look puzzled.
    “Come down this way,” Bell said to me. He letMarvel go first, and I tagged along behind, until we were in the hall, and then he led the way to the council offices. Ballem was there, looking frightened. Hill was with him, wild with rage but holding it in. St. Thomas was standing down the hall with Rebeck. The chief of police was there, with four or five men I didn’t recognize.
    “Motherfucker,” Hill said, standing up when Marvel and I came in. “What’re you and this bitch up to?”
    “You watch your mouth, Duane,” Bell said. His voice was like a knife, and I suddenly understood why Bell had done so well in the big-time farming business. He was not a man to fool with.
    “I don’t know what’s happening,” I said to everybody in general. “What in the hell am I doing here?”
    We were in the narrow hallway outside the tiny council offices, the only place there was enough space for us all.
    “Duane, here, says you and Miz Atkins are involved in some kind of conspiracy to drag the city down,” Bell said. “He said all the weird happenings here the last few days are because of you.”
    “Duane’s a fruitcake,” I said. Hill started up, and I braced my feet, but Bell put his hand on Hill’s shoulder and shoved him back down. “The first time I ever saw him was on the day I came to town. He came up and hassled me on old Mrs. Trent’s yard, where I was painting. Mrs. Trentcame out and ran him off—says she knew him from the days he used to shoplift out of her stores—”
    “I never,” Hill said.
    “There’s a police record in juvenile court,” I said. “That’s what Miz Trent says anyway. Then the next time I saw him, I was down at the Holiday Inn, and he came after my ass; I still don’t know why. You were there, Mr. Bell. He called my woman friend a… four-letter word you don’t normally use