The Empress File by John Sandford

Author:John Sandford [Sandford, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101645802
Google: DdTipJz2mKEC
Amazon: B0087ORPFO
Barnesnoble: B0087ORPFO
Goodreads: 16557869
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1991-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

IT WAS ALL coming together. Smoothly. Too smoothly, LuEllen said. She was born and raised in Minnesota and was automatically suspicious of pleasantness. No matter how nice the summer is, winter always comes…

With the printouts of the Longstreet books in hand, I called John and Marvel. We agreed to drive to Greenville, where we could meet in a motel without dodging the Longstreet locals.

LuEllen stayed with the boat. There’d be new people in Greenville, and she was paranoid about her face becoming known. At two o’clock Marvel let me into her room at the Sea-B Motel. John was there with Harold and a man I hadn’t met before.

“This is Brooking Davis,” Marvel said, nodding at the stranger. Davis was a slender, bird-boned man with a square chin, a dark mustache, and the liquid eyes of an Arab. “He’s a lawyer and does appraisal work for the county assessor’s office. Brooking will be our first appointment on the council. If Harold and I don’t know where the bodies are buried, Brooking will.”

“Well, we found you some grave sites,” I said, handing over the printouts. “It looks simple enough, but I don’t know how it breaks down.”

Davis had two boxes full of city budgets, memos, and reports. He unloaded them on a credenza, and Marvel and Harold pulled chairs up to the bed. In two minutes the three of them were in deep discussion, comparing numbers on printouts with expenditures and collections in the city reports.

“How’d it go with Brown?” I asked John.

John smiled. “He was a little surprised when I turned out to be black, looking like I did—and driving that BMW—but we’re all set,” he said. He stepped over to a black nylon briefcase, unzipped it, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I gave him a cashier’s check for a thousand dollars for a thirteen-week option on six hundred acres, at nine hundred and twenty dollars an acre. He was asking a thousand, but I dickered a little. I still paid too much, though. I wanted to seem anxious but like I was trying to hide it. And I wanted him talking around town about how he stuck it to the city boy.”

“Does he seem like the sort to do that?” I asked. “I hope.”

“Actually, no,” John said with a grin. “He seemed like a pretty decent guy. But the real estate dealer was an asshole. She’ll talk. She asked me what I wanted the land for. I told them my heritage was in cotton farming and I was thinking of going back to it. She had to stick her hankie in her mouth to keep from laughing. I was wearing the wing tips. They figure I’m a crack dealer from Memphis.…”

“OK,” I said. “So the word’ll be around.”

From the bed, Marvel was saying, “If Outhouse is the bar payments, what’s Suburb?”

“Sounds like they’re getting it,” John said.

IT TOOK three hours to nail down the printouts. Davis, who’d seemed frail when I first met him, was as intense as Marvel or Harold, and they often deferred to him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.