"So he killed them? Hill did?"

"No doubt about it," Bell said. "We had the photographs, and when the state crime lab checked Arnie's gun, they found it was the same one that was used to kill the black woman. Test bullets matched the ones they took out of her body, and Arnie had powder traces on his hands and face, like you get from firing a gun. And a couple of boys who worked out there said, 'Yeah, it looked like a gun Arnie sometimes shot out there.

"Hill was nuts," I said. "I kept telling people that. I don't know about St. Thomas."

"You were right about Duane, though I didn't see it at the time," Bell admitted. "All the river towns have a Duane Hill somewhere. I knew he was rough, but I didn't know he was insane. Not until they did the autopsy on the black fella."

"Hmmm?"

"They couldn't figure out what killed him at first. After Hill was killed in the vacuum box, the pathologist down at Greenville suddenly had an idea what it might have been. They did some tests, and sure enough, it seems like the black fella had been killed in a vacuum box. Just like a big old German shepherd."

"I love the South," I said, finishing the ice cream on my plate. "Your ways are so quaint."

"Well, I just thought you might like to know how it came out, you having left so soon after, and all."

"It is interesting, in a sort of distant way. I mean, not being from here, and all," I said. Time to change the subject. "Nice bridge you've got there," I said.

The bridge's superstructure was painted with a reddish anti-corrosion paint. You could see the top of it over the park trees, glowing in the setting sun.

"It's the mayor's doing, and it's gonna save my financial butt," Bell said. He looked across the grass at Marvel, standing behind the table with a scoop in her hand. "The empress of ice cream."

"I saw her picture on Time magazine when she got it," I said. "She's a pretty woman. The Red Marvel, they called her."

"Time magazine. We couldn't believe it. The only American town with a Communist mayor."

"She says she's not."

"Yes, yes, she says she's a social democrat. Nobody believes it. Not down here. 'Course, she's got reelection locked up, since she brought in the bridge, and the way the council went and gerrymandered the new election districts. But I don't care, as long as the bridge comes along."

"Time says the state legislators were stumbling over themselves, approving the funding."

"They had a remarkable change of attitude," Bell said dryly. Then he laughed. "Two weeks after we elect her mayor, with the town in an uproar, she drives into the capital, meets with the governor and the old redneck who's the speaker of the house, and they all get their picture taken on the capitol steps, shaking hands on the deal. That stopped a little traffic, I'll tell you."

"It'll be a pretty bridge," I said. "There are lots of pretty bridges over the Mississippi. I'm happy to see you keeping it up. How about you? For reelection?"

"No. I'm gone," he said, shaking his head. "I never did like this peckerwood town anyway. I moved back across the river, where I belong. Besides, it took the folks about fifteen minutes to figure out what I should have done that night: that I should have walked out and prevented a quorum. They figure I made a deal with Marvel."

"Did you?"

He squinted down at me with a small grin. "Yep."

I nearly choked on my last bite of cake, laughing, and Bell stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants. Then he dug into a pocket and took out a computer key. The key, if anyone had bothered to check, would fit the front panel of my North-gate IBM clone. I'd had it in my pocket the night I went into animal control.

"You know what this is?" he asked.

"I don't believe so," I said, taking it from him. "Looks like what, a key to a Coke machine?"

"Maybe," he said, taking it back. "The police found it under St. Thomas, out at animal control, when they picked him up off the floor, dead. It didn't match up with anything of his."

I tried to look puzzled. "Why would I know what it is?"

He shrugged. "It's just kind of a mystery. I've been walking around for a year, asking a lot of people. Nobody recognizes it."

"Me either," I said.

"And it's about time to bury the past," he said. He pitched the key toward a fifty-five-gallon oil drum being used as a trash can. He was no basketball player, and the key bounced off the side, into the sand.

"Never be in the NBA," he said, echoing my thought. "Say hello to Miz LuEllen for me? If you see her?"

"Sure."

He wandered away. I watched him cross the park, speak to Marvel and then to John, then drift over toward the City Hall. He stopped at the corner, looking down toward the river. From there he should be able to see the bridge just fine.

I got seconds on ice cream, served by Marvel herself.

"Tonight, about ten o'clock, at my place?" she said.

"Sure."

I finished the ice cream, watching kids on the slides and the swings, and then strolled down to the river to watch the light die on the bridge. I took a sketch pad with me and got a fair view of the thing, but I doubt I'll ever do a painting. The angles are all wrong.

John was at Marvel's.

"June wedding, up in Memphis," Marvel said. "You're invited. And LuEllen. Bobby's set for best man. On a computer."

"You're looking pretty fuckin' smug," I said to John.

"What can I tell you?" he said. "I'm old, bald, and dumb, and she said she'll marry me."

"Let's not talk about old," I said. "You've got about three weeks on me. Let's talk about somebody else being old."

Marvel said she had been disappointed by the ice cream social. Ninety percent of the kids had been black, she said. They had to do better with the whites.

"We'll do better," John said. "It'll take a while. Maybe we should have another social in the summer."

"Maybe," she said. "I sure do like ice cream."

"How'd you figure the bridge out?" I asked her.

She shook her head and turned away.

"He's got a right," John said softly. "Wasn't no white boys beat him up in Memphis. You know that."

She looked at me, and I shrugged.

"Tell him," John said.

"I bought it," Marvel said. "With the money you took out of the City Hall."

"Bought it?"

"Ain't it wonderful?" John asked.

"I did what had to be done," Marvel said. "I called up my man at the capital, told him in one minute what was happening – how close we were to taking the town – and then I asked if seventy-five thousand dollars in untraceable cash would buy me the bridge. He said if I got it to the right three or four legislators, it'd buy me a bridge and two ferryboats if I wanted them. I said the bridge would be enough, but I had to have a commitment quick. He got a phone number from me, for Bell's office. Then I went and sat there, chewing my nails, and fifteen minutes later, with Bell getting pissed, the phone rings, and the speaker of the house tells Bell he might be able to work some kind of deal on a bridge. Said I 'was a pretty convincing gal,' is what he said."

"And Bell went out and voted against your ticket, but you had the votes," I said.

"That's right."

I looked at John and remembered that he'd said something about Commies and hobby politics. "Doesn't sound like hobby politics to me," I said.

"Woman learns quick," he said.

"What about Darrell Clark and his family? Did you reopen the case?"

"No, no, we didn't," Marvel said, her eyes shifting away from mine. "We were having control problems. We didn't want there to be any more uproar than there already was. Not until we got the election districts redrawn."

"How about now?"

"Well, it's just kind of. awkward," she said.

"Not good politics," I said, "to reopen the case."

"That's right. And Darrell's gone. can't get him back. And there's no money left for the family. That all went." She gestured in the general direction of the state capital.