"Well, I thank you," Dessusdelit said. She found her purse, and we went back out into the sunshine, with LuEllen trailing behind.

"If you're really interested." I said.

"I am," she said promptly.

"I read best in the morning. Frankly, I like to. have my beer, you know, and alcohol seems to interfere with the necessary connections."

"I thought you didn't believe in the magical interpretations," she said in amusement.

"Well." I shrugged. "You got me, I guess."

"Come down tomorrow," LuEllen said. "About ten o'clock. Kidd can do a reading, and we can do the ball again. And then maybe you can tell me where the best shopping is."

"I'll be happy to," Dessusdelit said. She looked at me again. "The Empress."

"Just a taste," I said.

LuEllen and I watched her step off the end of the dock and start up the levee.

"How'd you do that?" LuEllen asked, shading her eyes as she watched Dessusdelit disappear over the top of the wall. "Produce the Empress card?"

"I didn't," I said.

Later, while I put the computer back up, LuEllen went out to a grocery store and ran into Lucius Bell in the fresh produce department. He was the councilman who owned my painting.

"He wants us to come over tonight," LuEllen said as she unloaded her bags into the refrigerator. "After dinner. For bourbon and branch, whatever that is."

"Water," I said.

"Whatever." She closed the refrigerator door and stretched like a cat, as she tends to do when she's feeling sexy. "That boy could develop a serious case of the hots for me."

"And would it be reciprocated?"

"Could be," she said, grinning. "He has the nicest eyes, good shoulders."

"Probably wears nylons and lipstick when there's nobody around. Does strange things with carp."

"Not my Lucius," she said in a southern simper.

"Why, God?" I asked, appealing to the ceiling. "Why women? Wasn't the fuckin' bubonic plague enough? Wasn't the H-bomb-"

We were kidding. On the way over to Bell's, though, I noticed she was wearing her Obsession.

I'd done Sunrise, Josie Harry Bar Light 719.5 five years before, in about twenty minutes, sitting awkwardly on a sandbar a few feet from a rented pontoon boat. I've done a lot of traveling on the river over the years, though never before in the style of the Fanny. It had always been in little fourteen-foot bass boats and rented pontoons and even canoes.

Josie Harry was one of the good ones. I spotted it, hung on a white wall between two built-in book cabinets, as soon as I walked into Bell's dining room.

"Wonderful," I said. "Who did the framing for you? The gallery?"

"No, I had it done here in town," he said.

"You found a good framer," I said. "It looks fine."

I went over it inch by inch. After a minute or two LuEllen and Bell wandered back to the sitting room, chatting. They liked each other, all right, but I didn't expect any trouble. LuEllen had a penchant for variety but only when her security wasn't at stake. She would never let sex step on that.

"Satisfied? That I haven't done anything embarrassing to it?" Bell asked when I finally joined them. He did have an engaging way about him, not diminished by the fact that he owned one of my paintings and was taking good care of it.

"I'm more than satisfied; I'm delighted," I said, looking back at the painting. "It's got a good spot, good light, protection. That's what it's made for."

"I had an offer for it. An old lawyer guy here in town. Five hundred over what I paid."

"Tell him to get his own," I said.

He nodded. "I did, and he said he would. Don't know if he has, but he gets down to N'Orleans often enough."

So we sat and talked, passing pleasantries about the river until I mentioned the bridge. He suddenly got serious.

"Those peckerwoods – pardon the language, LuEllen, but I get mad thinking about it – up in the legislatures, they won't help us. See, the people across the river say, 'Hell, if we build a bridge into Longstreet, the people on our side will just go over there to spend their paychecks.' The people on this side say, 'Why should we pay the whole cost of a bridge?' So they dicker back and forth, and nothing gets done. It's killing me, is what it's doing."

"How's that?" LuEllen asked. She was picking up some of the southern rhythm of his speech.

"I'm a farmer. Most of my land is over there on the other side. Before the bridge got knocked down, I'd haul my beans to the elevators over here and ship it downriver. When the bridge went, we had to haul the beans out by road, and it's forty miles down to the nearest elevator on the other side. That's an eighty-mile round trip for my trucks, what used to be a five-mile round trip. The cost of gas, the wear and tear. That's why I got myself elected to the city council. They weren't getting anywhere with the bridge – crooked sons of guns probably looking for a cut somewhere. So I got myself elected, thinking I could push it harder. But shoot, I'm not getting anywhere either," he said. He finished his bourbon in a single gulp and got up to pour himself another.

"So what happens if you don't get a bridge? I mean, to you personally?" LuEllen asked.

He shrugged. "It used to be that in a good year I made a lot of money. In an average year I'd make a little, and in a bad year I'd find some way to break even. Now, in a good year I make a little, and in an average year I maybe break even, and maybe not. In a bad year I lose my shirt. I can't go on farming like that. Not for long. I've had a run of good years here, and they've had some drought problems up North, and that's helped the markets. But a bad year is always just around the corner, and they tend to come in groups."

"You couldn't build a barge landing on the other side?" I asked.

"Naw, not for miles, not the way the levees run. Nothin' but swamp behind them, no roads. Be more expensive than truckin' it out."

He was still brooding about it when we left.

"Nice guy," LuEllen said. "With major problems."

"But it's a help," I said. "We maybe couldn't pull this off without the bridge problem."

"Doesn't make me feel any better about it," she said as she got in the car.

After a moment of silence I said, "Well, you like him."

"Yeah." And after another moment of silence she asked, "Does that bother you?"

"A little bit."

"It never bothered you before," she said.

"That was before."

More silence, then: "Kidd, you're making me nervous. I mean, like really nervous."

CHAPTER 10

The computer alarm was beeping when we got home, and I phoned Bobby.

Found on-line.

Where?

Animal control.

Dogcatcher?

Number is right; old 300-baud carrier.

Thanx; will check. Could you monitor line, look for access code?

Yes. Will call.

I dialed Marvel's house and got John.

"You ready?" I asked,

"All set. I'll go in as soon as the place opens and wait. Mary Wells parks her car in that lot sideways across the street. If you can get a window seat in that Coffee Klatch Caf‚, 'round about eight-fifty you'll see her go in the lot. Red Ford. She usually gets there between nine-oh-five and nine-fifteen. You can meet her in the street and walk up with her. I'll be ready."

"Marvel says the map books cost twelve dollars?"

"Yeah. Have a twenty ready; maybe a fifty would be better," John said. "I think she'd open the box anyway, but with a fifty it'd be a sure thing."

"All right. And you've got the focus figured out and all that."

"I've been working with it, and I'll check it again before I go in to make sure it's turned on, that it's on silent mode, that the radio's attached. It'll be peeking out of the briefcase."

"The briefcase handles."

"Yeah, we thought of that. They'll be out of the way. We've got them taped. And I'll go out to talk to this Brown dude as soon as we're out of the place."