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Back The Empress File Save as PDF
Chapters (20)
  1. Prologue
  2. CHAPTER 1
  3. CHAPTER 2
  4. CHAPTER 3
  5. CHAPTER 4
  6. CHAPTER 5
  7. CHAPTER 6
  8. CHAPTER 7
  9. CHAPTER 8
  10. CHAPTER 9
  11. CHAPTER 10
  12. CHAPTER 11
  13. CHAPTER 12
  14. CHAPTER 13
  15. CHAPTER 14
  16. CHAPTER 15
  17. CHAPTER 16
  18. CHAPTER 17
  19. CHAPTER 18
  20. CHAPTER 19

He was driving easily, one-handed. “We needed somebody who knows about politics, about information, and about security. Bobby says you’ve done a lot of computer work for politicians, that you’re good at planning, and you know about security.”

“So you want me to figure out how to get these cops? Why don’t you find an NAACP lawyer, get the kid exhumed, and file a federal suit?”

“Because we don’t want the cops,” John said. “Fuck the cops.”

“What do you want?”

“We want the machine. In fact, we want the town,” he said, his voice gone low and tight. “That’s what we want you to do, Kidd. We want you to take down the whole fuckin’ town.”

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

We were driving down the river in the long twilight of the summer solstice, a pale witches’ moon hung in front of us. Every few minutes we’d go through a raft of river air, cool, damp, smelling of mud and dead carp and decaying vegetation. I watched the moon ghosting through the evening clouds as John laid it out, simply and clearly. They wanted me to destroy the town’s political machine, any way I could do it, and leave it in the hands of their friends. Then I asked him another hard question, and he answered that one, too.

When he stopped talking, I cranked back the car seat and closed my eyes, half in contemplation, half in dream.

A long time ago I’d been an idealist of sorts. Somewhere along the line-Vietnam is the conventional answer, but I’m not even sure that’s right anymore - the idealism scraped off. After I’d asked him the first hard question, “What do you want me to do?,” I’d asked the second: “Why should I do it?” Why should I take any risks for a dead kid I never knew?

“Revenge,” John said. He hadn’t hesitated. He and Bobby had seen the questions coming and had rehearsed the answers. “Bobby said he was one of you - computer freaks.”

“That’s not enough,” I said. “Good people die all the time.”

“Friendship,” said John, checking the second item on a mental list. “Bobby’s your friend, and he needs your help. He’ll do something whether you’re there or not. He really doesn’t know how. He could fuck himself up.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t put my ass on the line for something as thin as that. Bobby’s a friend, but only on the wires. If he wanted me to do some computer code, illegal code, that’d be one thing-“

“Money,” John interrupted. “Lots of it. The town is papered with corruption cash. You could probably figure out a way to grab some of it. And since nobody can talk about where they got it

there’d be no comebacks.”