Dessusdelit left around ten-thirty. At noon the state attorney general’s auditors hit the town like the great flood of ‘27. They came in a convoy, six plain brown government cars and three state police cruisers. LuEllen and I were eating cheeseburgers at Humdinger’s when they went by.

“The cavalry,” LuEllen muttered over her chicken noodle soup.

“Too late for Harold,” I said. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“That hardware store we hit last night. I saw some really big magnets in there.”

John had taken the BMW back to Memphis the night before and dropped it at the dealership where he’d rented it. After catching a couple of hours of sleep, he drove back to Longstreet in his own car. He was hiding out at Marvel’s, a non-person, cleanly shaved, what little hair he had cropped to a stubble, carefully wearing faded jeans, old T-shirts, and ragged tennis shoes. He looked nothing like the slick Mr. Johnson from Memphis. If anybody made that connection, we were sunk.

Just after nightfall LuEllen and I turned a corner downtown, John’s Chevy stopped beside us, and we climbed in back.

“Is Marvel back?”

“No, but she should be anytime now. She’s stopping at a friend’s place - the cleaning lady at the City Hall, Becka Clay. Becka was there this afternoon when the state police came in.”

“What happened with the governor? Marvel took a long time.”

“The usual bullshit. He wouldn’t deal directly, but he had to approve every little detail, so his hatchet man was running back and forth like a trolley car. By the way, when I talked to her on the phone, she said you wanted Hill and Ballem appointed to the city council, along with our man?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the change?”

“We figure if Harold is dead, Hill did it,” I said. “If Hill and Ballem are appointed along with our guy, then we tip the state cops to the computer out at animal control. They’ll go in, grab the computer, find the books, and this time they’ll include Ballem and Hill. Marvel can supply the state people with the code words I fixed in the machine

And as soon as the state guys go in, Hill and Ballem both get anonymous calls. A woman, I think. Somebody who can do a white-southern-lady accent. She calls them up, says she knows Hill killed Harold and says she doesn’t want to turn in a white man for killing a colored, but she doesn’t want killers running the city either. So they have a choice: Quit or burn. They’ll know that the cops have the books, so their council seats are probably gone anyway. When the woman calls

why would they fight it? They’ll go.”

John grinned. He liked it. “A little racist judo,” he said. Then he frowned. ” ‘Course, if Hill didn’t do it, he’s gonna freak out.”