Back at the boat we counted the cash from Hill's safe. Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars, with bills that went back more than ten years. Ballem's coins made the total take much higher. There were sixty-five of them, sealed individually and certified by a numismatic rating service. She called a friend in Las Vegas and got a price: another two hundred thousand, and that might be low.

She was most interested in the stamps.

"Stamps are money if they're not too rare. You don't want a one-of-a-kind, where everybody in the world would notice the sale. But if you get stamps that are worth a few thousand dollars each – investor kind of stamps, like those coins are investor kind of coins – they're just like money. They're money everywhere. Fuckin' Bolivia, Bangkok, Saudi Arabia – there's always somebody who'll buy. Especially these – British issues."

"What if these are one of a kind?" I asked, paging through the book. "What if they're worth too much?"

"Fuck, I don't know," she said. "We throw them away, I guess."

She didn't know any stamp freaks but was hot to peg the values. I called Bobby.

Need number of philatelic data base

Hold.

Three minutes later he came back. He knew only one that was on-line twenty-four hours. He gave me numbers, code names, and patched me into an anonymous telephone line out of Memphis. The first stamp was worth thirty-five hundred dollars if it was perfect. To me it looked perfect. The second stamp was worth forty-two hundred dollars if it was perfect. It looked perfect, too. They all looked perfect.

"A hundred and forty stamps. Say, thirty-five hundred to four thousand each."

"Another half million," I said.

"All right," she said, satisfied. "And I've got a friend who can handle it all."

"What about the diamonds?"

"Another friend. He can sell them, but it'll take a while. We'll get fifty percent of face."

"I wonder about Dessusdelit. I don't think we touched her."

"Maybe we'll get another chance."

"Maybe."

LuEllen was examining the Cassatt lithograph, a sweet child from another age. "I don't know about the art."

"That's the problem," I said. "There's a worldwide registry of stolen art, out in New York."

"Dump them?"

"I won't do that," I said, shaking my head. "Let me think about it. I'll stick them in a safe-deposit box for now."

She nodded, looked at the loot scattered around us.

"This was a good job. Really good. I mean, it was great." She stepped over next to me, like a cat approaching a sardine. "A little tense maybe."

I got up and took a turn around the cabin, walking away from her. "So we're rich again," I said.

"I don't give a fuck about the money," she said. "I like the way I feel."

I looked at her for a while, then got down a couple of tall glasses, two bottles of diet tonic water, a jug of Tanqueray, and a lime. "I was afraid it was getting like that," I said as I cut up the lime.

"Why afraid?"

I passed her a drink and tried mine. It was tart. Very tart. " 'Cause addicts always get caught."

CHAPTER 6

Before bed LuEllen made two calls from a public phone, and the next morning we did some running around in a rental car. We dropped the gold coins at a dumpy motel near the airport, the diamonds at a bar downtown. She wouldn't let me come inside at either place.

"No need for you to show your face," she said.

She came back from the motel with an expensive black leather briefcase. I opened it and found cash.

"A hundred and twenty-seven thousand," she said. "On the low side, I think, but it was take it or leave it."

We did better than expected with the diamonds. Just after noon we left about a half million dollars in a safe-deposit box in downtown Memphis. The stamps, with Ballem's prints, went in another box at another bank.

"Satisfied?" I asked.

"Mmm," she said. "Tell you the truth, it's the best I did, for money. But the rest of it."

"We owe people now," I said. "We'll do it and get out. Lay low for a while. Mexico. The Caribbean. There won't be any taxes on this money."

"I'll teach you about offshore banks," she promised.

We left that evening for Longstreet, running the Fanny down the river.

To wreck the Longstreet machine, we had to wipe out a majority of the council – three people – at one stroke.

By state law a city council could replace members who died or resigned. If we got only one or two of the machine's councilmen, the rest of the council could legally appoint replacements. They'd simply appoint other members of the machine. But if we could take out three, the council could no longer legally act; it needed at least three members for a quorum.

If it couldn't get a quorum, the replacements would be appointed by the governor.

The governor, as it happened, had already served two terms in the statehouse and was barred from succeeding himself. Not ready to retire, he was looking at a race for a U.S. Senate seat. He had a shot at it, too, as long as the black wing of the Democratic party didn't raise too much hell. The black caucus had been complaining that it wasn't getting enough goodies in return for the votes it delivered, and there were noises that sounded like the beginnings of a revolt. If the blacks bolted and the party fractured, the governor would be retired whether he liked it or not.

And right there was the crux of a deal.

Marvel and Harold would talk to the leaders of the black caucus. They, in turn, would talk with the governor's hatchet man. If the governor agreed to act on Marvel's request to clean up Longstreet, the black caucus would back off.

When I outlined the idea to Marvel at the hotel meeting, she first thought it over and shook her head.

"It's an idea," she said, taking a lick of the ice cream. "But no matter how much he wanted to help us – help himself – the governor couldn't appoint a black majority to the council. That'd kill him for sure. The black caucus has got some clout, but there's a country boy caucus, too. They've got more clout than the black caucus, and they wouldn't stand for that shit."

"The governor doesn't have to appoint a black majority," I said. "Suppose we take out three white council members, leaving the Reverend Dodge and this Lucius Bell, the guy you say might be honest. OK?"

"OK," she said, nodding.

"So the governor appoints the replacements: one of our people and two more machine members. They can be the worst rednecks in the state, we don't care. But they have to be from our list, the list of people we can control-"

"That we got dirt on," Marvel chipped in.

"That's right. When the council is legally functioning again, we take out those two. We either sic the state cops on them, or the IRS, or just go right straight to them, show them the evidence, force them out-"

"Blackmail," said Harold.

"Right. Push those two off the council. That still leaves three: our appointee, the reverend, and Bell. Three council members is a quorum. Three members can appoint replacements. You've got the reverend by the balls, for diddling these little girls, plus our new guy."

"And those three appoint the two new members. That gives us four to one," Marvel said, sitting up straight, the ice cream forgotten.

"With four to one, we've got the votes to redraw the election districts," I said. "We gerrymander it just like the machine did, but in our favor."

Marvel stared at Harold. "It could work," she blurted.

It could work, but everything had to go right. Longstreet was six hours down the river. We did two hours that night and anchored behind the point of a sandbar. I hadn't shaved since we left St. Paul, and the beard was coming on.

"There're too many white whiskers in it," LuEllen said. "Writers have white beards; painters are supposed to have black. I've never seen a movie where the painter had a white beard."