“The city got some grants and passed special obligation bonds, got bids, and hired a New Orleans contractor. The feds were watching it, so the money was all accounted for. Just by accident, we found out that the contractor was buying his sewer pipe from a pipe broker registered in Delaware. Because of the way Delaware registers its corporations, we couldn’t find out who really owned the pipe broker. We did find out that the broker was buying the pipe from a regular supplier in Louisville, and the supplier shipped the pipe down here by rail. The broker doesn’t seem to do anything except jack up the price between here and Louisville.”

“How much?”

“Ten percent. On a contract worth several million bucks. For doing nothing.”

“The council?” I asked.

“Sure. We never would have found out, except the cleaning lady at the city attorney’s office saw a letter to the contractor from the pipe broker. It was signed by Archie Ballem, the city attorney. We don’t know the details, but we know the council is in there; the council’s the pipe broker. The council must be taking down a hundred thousand a year, just on the pipe.”

I made a note to call Bobby about Delaware and scratched my head.

“What?” asked Marvel.

“These guys are crooks, but they’re also running a pretty complicated business. There’re dozens of people on the payroll. So they must keep books. They must track what’s going where and who gets how much.”

“I don’t know,” Marvel said doubtfully, looking at Harold. He shook his head. “We never considered that possibility.”

“Consider it now. Have your people check around.”

“OK.” We all looked at one another for a moment; then Marvel asked, “Can you do it? Dump them?”

“I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “We need something spectacular, a crime. A big one. This institutional corruption

even if we could get somebody to listen to us, somebody who could do something about it, we’d probably get a slow, long-term, low-priority investigation. It might go on for months or even years

“

“We had one, a few years ago, before Dessusdelit was mayor. It petered out,” Harold said.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “Politics tangles up everything. We need a Watergate. We need a smoking gun, something dramatic. Something that’ll piss people off, that can’t be ignored. Once we get that, we can throw all the other stuff in. Then it’ll count. But first we need the smoking gun.”

Marvel nodded. “Harold and I have been thinking ever since Bobby called. You don’t have to dump the police, or the fire, or public works, or the dogcatcher. You don’t have to get rid of all the bad people. Just get us the council. Once we’re in, we’ll take care of the rest.”