“Bizarre shit,” John said as soon as the door was shut. “Did you hear about Dessusdelit?”

“What about her?”

“She’s dead. The cops think it was suicide. Last night.”

LuEllen stared at me, deadpan.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Do you know anything else?”

“They found her in bed, wearing a pink nightgown. She took a bunch of pills and whiskey, I guess. There was a note, but I don’t know what it said. The cops are talking to Ballem, I know that.”

“What about the meeting tonight?”

“That’s still on, as far as I know, but I thought you needed to hear about Dessusdelit, and I was afraid to call on the phone. Quite a few people know she was seeing you, getting her cards read

“

“You think the cops are coming here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the note said.”

“Jesus.”

“Time to go,” LuEllen said when John left.

“We can’t now,” I said. “If the cops want to talk to us, we’ve got to be here. If we take off and they come looking for us

“

“What a fuckin’ mess. We did another one,” LuEllen said.

“How’re you gonna know?” I said. “Assholes aren’t supposed to kill themselves.”

“We’ve got to clean the boat out,” she said. “If they go through it, they’ll find my tools.”

We decided to go out on the river.

“That was an artist guy from Memphis, haven’t seen him in years,” I told the manager as we cast off. “He’s always going up and down the river collecting stuff for his sculpture.”

“Oh, yeah? He does river stuff?”

“Yeah, out of water-worn glass and old bottles and driftwood and shit,” I said.

“I’d like to see some of that,” he said, and he sounded as if he did. When we were out of the marina, I turned upstream. LuEllen wanted to keep on going to St. Paul.

“Hill’s fucked,” she argued. “We send some pictures to the cops and forget it. Toss the gun overboard.”

“The photos might not be enough if the cops don’t know where they come from. A good defense attorney might be able to keep them out of evidence. And we can’t tell them where we got them, unless we want people looking at our backgrounds

But if they find the gun out at animal control

that’d seal it up tight.”

“I’m getting scared, Kidd. We’re walking the edge, with Hill and the cops and everybody.”

“I know. One more night, and we’re out of here.”