“He’s a technician,” John said, letting the grin die. “If you called somebody to fix your telephone, you wouldn’t care if the repairman was white as long as he fixed your phone.”

“I’d rather he be black, even to fix the phone,” Marvel said.

John said, “Right on, sister,” and gave her a sarcastic black power salute.

Marvel waved him off. “OK.” Then she looked at me and asked, “Why don’t you say something?”

” ‘Cause you’re pissing me off.” It came with an edge, and Marvel glanced away, embarrassed. She’d been rude to a guest, a cardinal sin anywhere in the South.

“I try to be civil,” she said. “But I can’t help wondering what outsiders can do

“

“The town is corrupt,” I said. “John says it’s in the hands of a voting minority. If that’s right, there may be some way to take it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. I have to know about the place to figure that out. I have to know about the people who run it. What they’re up to.”

“We can tell you that, all right,” Marvel said. She was looking straight at me with those incredible liquid eyes, and I thought of the Empress card in the tarot. “Anything you want to know. The question is, If you wreck the machine, who runs things afterward?”

I shrugged. “Not me.”

“I’ve got a job and an

organization

in Memphis,” John said. “I don’t have any interest in moving in.”

She pursed her lips. “I heard about your organization. Bunch of old lame-ass ex-Panthers, is what I hear.”

“Maybe our asses are lame, but they’re not getting kicked by a bunch of Delta peckerwoods,” John snarled. I was thinking uh-oh. They were knocking sparks off each other, in the angry, confrontational way that tends to lead directly to the bedroom. Harold felt it, too, and was looking back and forth between them.

“How about this?” Marvel suggested, turning to me. “You figure something out. A plan. If we don’t like it, we can get out anytime.”

John looked at me, and I shook my head. “We can’t have key people bail out at a critical moment. That could kill us.”

“How do we handle it?” he asked.

“We lay out a proposal,” I said, turning to Marvel. “If you like it, you’re in. If you don’t, we go home. But you tell us up front.”

She thought about it for a moment, then said, “I’ve got to talk with Harold.” She led the thick man into a back room and shut the door.