You know how it is when you’ve kicked around the globe too long and scorched your grits too many times with four fingers of Jack in a mug and a beer back, or with any other kind of flak juice that was handy. And if that wasn’t enough, maybe doubling down in the morning with a half-dozen tall glasses of crushed ice and cherries and sliced oranges and vodka to drive the snakes and the spiders back into the basement.

Wow, what a gas. Who thought we’d ever die?

But why get into all that jazz? I’ll tell you why. I’m talking about those moments when you strip your gears, whether you’re chemically loaded or not, and get lost inside the immensity of creation and see too deeply into our ephemerality and our penchant for greed and war and willingness to destroy the Big Blue Marble, and for a brief moment you scare yourself so badly you wonder why you didn’t park your porridge on the ceiling a long time ago.

That kind of moment came to me once when I was standing on a Texas dock in the sunset while the waves rolled below me and thudded as hard as lead against the pilings, an incandescent spray blowing as cool as refrigeration on my clothes and skin, a green-gold light as bright as an acetylene torch in the clouds, the amusement pier ringing with calliope music and the popping of shooting galleries. It was one of the moments when you hang between life and death and ache to hold on to the earth and eternity at the same time, regretting all those days and nights you pitched over the gunwales while you deconstructed your life.

I’m talking about the acknowledgment of mortality, and not the kind that slips up on you in a hospice or on a battlefield filled with the cawing of carrion birds or by way of a drunk driver bouncing over a curb into a playground. I’m talking about seeing the Seventh Seal at work and a string of medieval serfs and liege lords and virginal maidens wending their way across a hilltop to a valley dark as oil, their silhouettes blowing like pieces of carbon in the wind.

The people who have these moments of metaphysical clarity are what I call members of the Three Percent Club, because in my opinion that’s approximately the percentage of people who fry a couple of their lobes and are able to talk about it later. You can pay your dues in lots of ways: on a night trail sprinkled with Chinese toe-poppers and booby-trapped 105 duds; or stacking time on the hard road; or kneeling on a hard floor in a convent with a rosary twisted around your knuckles; or listening to voices in your head that are as loud as megaphones. The surroundings don’t matter. You’re in a black box for the duration, Jason. You literally sweat blood, bud. To say it’s a motherfucker doesn’t come close.

After you’re through with the long night of the soul, or after it’s through with you, you’re never the same. Earthly fears disappear like a great weight removed from a scale. You have no inclination to argue or hold grudges; reticence becomes a way of life; it’s hard to stay awake during an average conversation.

The downside is you’re on your own, the only occupant in a cathedral in which you can hear your heartbeat echoing off the walls.

What does all this have to do with Johnny Shondell? I’ll tell you. He was out of another era, even though he was more symbolic of it than part of it, an era we always want to resurrect, whether we admit it or not. Jesus talked about people who are made different in the womb. I’ll take that a step further. Maybe some people were never in the womb. They arrive inside a golden bubble and somehow become the icon for the rest of us. At least that’s how I thought of Johnny and Isolde. Call it a scam or a sham or the stupidity of the herd, who cares? The only reality you have is the one you believe in. I say eighty-six the rest of it.

Back in that other era, America was still America, for good or bad. Men such as Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were president; we didn’t have the daily arrival of the clown car. People can say that’s just nostalgia talking. They’re wrong. For us in Louisiana it was a time of music and drive-in movies and starry skies and two-lane roads that meandered for miles through meadows and oak trees hung with Spanish moss. If you don’t believe me, ask my friend Clete Purcel. He’ll tell you all about it. I can almost hear him now: “It was deeply copacetic, noble mon. You can take that to the shack, Jack. I wouldn’t give you the slide, Clyde.”

I was scheduled to visit a convict in Huntsville at eleven A.M. But I didn’t show up until four in the afternoon because I idled away the morning in Hermann Park Zoo and also watched some boys play softball. I wasn’t looking forward to my visit with an inmate named Marcel LaForchette, and I was tired of evil and all its manifestations and our attempts to explain its existence. If you’ve ever dealt with evil, the real deal, up close and personal, you know what I mean.

How do you explain the Hillside Strangler or Ted Bundy? Childhood trauma? Maybe. When you read the details of what they did, you feel a sadness and a sense of revulsion that makes you wonder if we all descend from the same tree.

I don’t mean Marcel was a ghoul or he would sexually torture and murder a woman or girl the way Bundy did. Marcel was made out of different clay, I just didn’t know what. He was from the little town of Jeanerette, down the bayou from New Iberia, and came from a background not much different than mine, poor illiterate Cajuns like my mother, who worked in a laundry, and my father, who trapped and fished and racked pipe on the monkey board of an offshore drilling rig.

I graduated high school when I was seventeen. At the same age, in the same year, Marcel started a three-to-five bit in an adult prison for grand auto. When he was still a fish, he was cannibalized and made the punk of a half-dozen degenerates. You know what was oddest about Marcel? He never got tattooed, and this was in an environment where men wear sleeves from the wrist to the armpit as an indicator of their jailhouse mileage.

The other peculiarity about Marcel was his eyes. They were turquoise, the radiance trapped inside them so intense you couldn’t read them. His thoughts could have been ethereal in nature or straight from the Marquis de Sade, but few people wanted to find out. Marcel was a button man. When Marcel pushed the “off” button, the target hit the floor like a sack of early potatoes.

Twenty miles from the pen, on the two-lane back road, I saw a purple Oldsmobile make the curve behind me. I thought I remembered seeing it at the zoo in Houston, but I couldn’t be sure. I pulled in to a roadside park inside a grove of slash pines. The Olds passed me; its windows were tinted, the license plate caked with mud. Then a phenomenon occurred that I had seen twice before: A wide column of tarantulas crossed the road like a stream of wet tar in a creek bed. Years ago the tarantulas had come to the Texas coast on banana boats and spread inland, hence their presence on a state highway far from Galveston. Nonetheless, I wondered if I was watching an omen, one that meant no good would come from my visit with Marcel, a man whom I could have become or perhaps who could have dressed in my skin.

I returned to new Iberia and my shotgun house on East Main, not far from the famed antebellum home called the Shadows. I was living the life of a widower back then, in the days before 9/11, a recluse trying to hide from my most destructive addictions, Jack on the rocks with a beer back and my love affair with the state of Louisiana, also known as the Great Whore of Babylon. For me she has always been the embodiment of every vice on the menu, starting with racetracks and bourré tables and casinos and lakes of gin and vodka and sour mash and hookup joints with a honky-tonk special on every stool aching to get it on in four/four time.

Think I’m giving you a shuck? People of color have a saying: If you’re black on Saturday night, you’ll never want to be white again. The same kind of thinking applies in Louisiana, but on a wider scale and not on a basis of race or the day of the week. The southern half of the state is the cultural equivalent of the Baths of Caracalla; the only difference is the coon-ass accents and the fact the slop chutes never close. I knew a famous country musician who moved to a farmhouse in Carencro to get sober, even surrendering his car keys to his wife. Yeah, I know, with the help of A.A, miracles happen and you can get sober anywhere. That’s what the musician’s wife thought until Mardi Gras kicked into gear and her husband drove the lawn mower eight miles down the highway to Lafayette so he could march in the parade and get soused out of his mind.

I fished in the evening with a cane pole among people of color, and watched the August light drain out of the sky and gather inside the oaks and disappear on the bayou’s surface in a long brassy band that, as a child, I believed was a conduit to infinity. It was a strange way to be, I guess. I had been suspended or fired from three law enforcement agencies, and even though I was relatively young, I felt the tug of the earth at eveningtide and a gnawing hole in my stomach that told me the great mysteries would always remain the great mysteries, and that the war between good and evil was so vast and unknowable in nature and origin that my ephemeral efforts meant absolutely nothing.

The weeks passed without any contact from Marcel LaForchette. Then on a Sunday afternoon, when I was walking in City Park, I saw two men in a purple Oldsmobile pull onto the grass and park under the oaks and get out and remove a golf bag from the trunk. They were stout men in their prime, tanned perhaps as much by chemicals as sun, dressed in sport clothes, the kind of men who probably played college football one or two semesters and later sold debit insurance, ex-jocks you felt sorry for.

Until you looked at the scar tissue in the hairline, or the big hands with too many rings on them, or the white teeth that were too wet, the smile like that of a hungry man staring at a roast.

They teed up on the grass and whocked two balls down the bayou, watching them arch and splash in the distance.

“Excuse me,” I said behind them.

They turned around, resting their clubs, their faces full of sunshine.

“This isn’t a driving range,” I said.

“Didn’t think anyone would mind,” the shorter man said. He had thick lips and hair that was long and hung in ringlets and was as bright as gold, like a professional wrestler’s, his biceps as solid as croquet balls. “Did you think anyone would mind, Timmy?”

“Not unless we hit a fish in the head,” Timmy said.

“A lot of people seem to think Louisiana is a garbage dump,” I said. “We’ve got trash all over the state.”

“Yeah,” the shorter man said. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

“He’s talking about us,” Timmy said. “Right? You’re saying we’re trash?” His brown hair was soft-looking and dry and cut in a 1950s flattop and looked like an upturned shoe brush. His smile never left his face.

“I’m a police officer,” I said. “I’d appreciate y’all not using the bayou as a golf course. That’s all.”

“We’re not troublemakers,” Timmy said. “The opposite. We’re problem solvers.”

The man with gold hair that hung in ringlets licked his lip. “That’s right. We wouldn’t jump you over the hurdles, sir.”

“I look like an old man?” I said.

“A show of respect,” he said.

“You guys like zoos?” I said.

“Yeah,” Timmy said. “You got one here?”

“No, but there’s a nice one in Houston,” I said. “In Hermann Park, off South Main.”

“Without much work, this town could be a zoo,” the shorter man said. “Circle it with some chicken wire, then charge people admission.”

“Yeah, our man here could probably run it,” Timmy said. “What do you say about that, slick?”

The oak tree above us swelled with wind. A white speedboat sliced down the middle of the bayou, its wake washing organic detritus over the cypress knees and bamboo roots that grew like half-buried knuckles along the mudflats. “I think you boys passed me on the highway when I was driving up to Huntsville,” I said. “Tarantulas were crossing the road, hundreds of them. It’s quite a phenomenon to witness.”

The speedboat engine whined in the distance like a Skilsaw cutting through a nail.

“We passed you?” Timmy said. “I think you got us mixed up with somebody else.”

“I’m not real popular these days,” I said. “Why do you want to bird-dog a guy like me?”

“Because Marcel LaForchette is a button man for the Jersey Mob,” said the man with the gold hair. “Because he made the street four days ago. Because you had something to do with getting him out.”

“I don’t have that kind of juice,” I said.

“Call me Ray,” the man with gold hair said. He twisted one of his ringlets around his finger. His eyes were out of alignment, one deeper and higher than the other. “We’re private investigators. LaForchette is an animal. Our client is a man who has reason to worry about a guy who worked with Jimmy the Gent. You know who that is, right?”

“Yeah, Jimmy Burke,” I said. “He’s doing life in New York.”

“He was doing life,” Timmy said. “Now he’s sleeping with the worms. But LaForchette is still around. So why don’t you tell us what you had to say to him in Huntsville?”

“You didn’t start your surveillance of me at Hermann Park Zoo,” I said. “You were at the amusement pier the night before.”

“You think you saw us on an amusement pier?” Ray said.

“Maybe you were looking at me through binoculars. But you saw me talking to Isolde Balangie. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

Ray brushed at his nose and huffed through one nostril. “Sometimes it’s not smart to show you’re smart.”

“I never claimed to be smart,” I said.

“You lose your badge for drinking or being on a pad?” Ray said.

“Call it a sabbatical,” I said.

“So you won’t mind?” he said.

“Mind what?”

“This.” He slid a driver from the golf bag and dropped three balls on the grass. He whocked the balls one after another, then watched the last one splash in the bayou and offered me the club. “I got some more balls in the car. Smack a few. We don’t mean to offend. A young girl is missing. If she isn’t found, some people are gonna be swinging by their colons.”

The only sound was the wind in the trees. Timmy’s eyes lit up as they settled on mine. He nodded as though confirming his friend’s statement, one finger bouncing in the air. “I’ve seen it. Meat hooks. Fucking A, man.”

“Y’all know where I live?” I said.

“Right across the bayou,” Ray said. “A shotgun house. You got four-o’clocks and caladiums around the trees in your yard.”

“Don’t come around,” I said.

“Hold still,” Timmy said. He popped a leaf off my hair with his fingers. “I hear you got a daughter. One in college. I got one, too.”

I stepped back from him. I could feel my hands opening and closing at my sides. “I’m going to walk away now.”

“He’s walking away,” Timmy said.

“Yeah, that’s the way they do it here,” Ray said. “They walk away. They don’t want trouble in Dog Fuck. So they walk away.”

I cut through the shadows of the trees, light-headed, my ears ringing, and walked down the single-lane road that wound through the park. I heard their engine start behind me, then the Oldsmobile inching by, the gravel in the tire treads clicking on the asphalt. Ray was humped behind the wheel, his hands tapping a beat to the music on the radio, and Timmy was in the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette with lavender paper and a gold filter tip, blowing smoke rings like a man at peace with the world.

The Oldsmobile passed a group of black children kicking a big blue rubber ball on the grass. Autumn was just around the corner. The strips of orange fire in the clouds and the shadows in the live oaks and the coolness of the wind and the tannic odor of blackened leaves comprised a perfect ending to the day or, better yet, a perfect entryway into Indian summer and a stay against the coming of winter.

But if the evening was so grand and the riparian scene so tranquil, and the presence of the children such an obvious testimony to the goodness and innocence of man, and if I were indeed above the taunts of misanthropes, why was my thirst as big as the Sahara and my heart wrapped with thorns?

Two nights later, Clete pulled up in front of a line of cottages outside Broussard, midway between Lafayette and New Iberia. Most of the cottages were unoccupied. Fireflies flickered among the live oaks, then disappeared like pieces of burnt string. Balls of electricity rolled through the clouds and burst silently over the Gulf. He could smell rain blowing across the wetlands, like the smell of broken watermelons or freshly mowed hay. It was part of the Louisiana he loved, a hallowed memory he’d taken with him to Vietnam and into which he’d crawled when the rain clicked on his poncho and steel pot at the bottom of a hole or when an offshore battery lit the sky like heat lightning and the shells arched overhead and exploded with a dull thump in the jungle, the air suddenly bright with the smell of wet dirt and leaves and water that had been full of amphibian life.

A purple Oldsmobile was parked in front of the last cottage on the row. Clete tapped lightly on the door. He was wearing a porkpie hat tilted over his brow, his coat open, a lead-weighted blackjack in his right coat pocket, a manila folder rolled in a cone and stuffed in the other.

A bare-chested man with peroxided, coiled hair that hung in his face opened the door. His lips looked made of rubber, his torso a stump tapering to a thirty-inch waist. He wore sharkskin slacks and suspenders and flip-flops. One eye looked punched back in his skull. He took out a comb and began combing his hair, exposing his shaved pits. “What do you want?”

“Ray Haskell?” Clete said.

“Maybe. Who are you?”

“Clete Purcel. I called your office in New Orleans.”

“About what?”

“Dave Robicheaux. Can I come in?”

“Who told you where I was?”

“I asked around the Quarter. I’m a PI. Like you. You got a beer?”

“I look like a liquor store? What’s with you, man?”

“What I just said. Hey, I dig those sharkskin drapes. That’s fifties-style, right? Can I come in or not? It’s about to rain.”

“I’m a little occupied. Get my drift? Make an appointment.”

“Just want to know why you followed my podjo Dave to Huntsville, then dissed him on the bayou with that routine about driving golf balls. See, you diss Dave, you diss me. Diggez-vous on that, noble mon?”

Ray Haskell replaced his comb in his back pocket. “I got a friend due here you don’t want to meet. So I’m gonna do you a favor and close the door. Then I’m going to bolt it and put the night chain on and check on my lady. You reading me on this?”

“Sure,” Clete said. “But I got these printouts and photos of you and a guy named Timothy Riordan. It looks like you’re both former flatfeet now doing scut work for the Shondell family and maybe a few people in Miami. I’m talking about political nutcases who speak Cuban and like to feed body parts to the gators in the glades.”

“You read too many comic books. Regardless of that, we got the message. So I’m saying good night. Tell Robicheaux and tell yourself no foul, no harm. Now get the fuck out of here.”

The bathroom door opened. Clete heard sniffling, then saw a slight, pretty black woman step out into the light of a bed lamp. He had known her when she turned tricks for a pimp named Zipper, who got his name from the scars he left on girls who tried to go independent. Her name was Li’l Face Dautrieve. Her hair was shiny and thick and looked like a wig that was too large for her head. Her eyes and nose and mouth were concentrated in the center of her face, not unlike sprinkles on a cookie. Her upper lip was split and her left eye swollen behind a bloody Kleenex she held against it. One cheek looked like she had swallowed a mouthful of bumblebees.

“This guy did that to you, Li’l Face?” Clete said.

“Ain’t your bidness, Fat Man,” she said. “Don’t be messing in it.”

“You did that, asshole?” Clete said to Ray.

“You’d better beat feet, pal,” Ray said. “If you—”

Clete’s fist was almost the size of a cantaloupe. He drove it into the center of Ray’s face and sent him crashing into a breakfast table and chair. Then he kicked the door shut and picked up the chair and broke it on Ray’s head.

“I ax for it, Fat Man,” Li’l Face said. “I got a baby. He know where I stay at.”

“Why’d he hit you?”

She shook her head.

“Answer me, Li’l Face.”

“He wanted me to do things like Zipper made me do. He tried to put his—”

“I got the picture,” Clete said.

He ripped the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around Ray’s throat, then dragged him squirming and twisting into the bathroom, spittle running from the corners of his mouth. Clete drove his head into the toilet bowl and slammed down the seat, then mounted it and began jumping up and down on it like a giant white ape, crushing Ray’s head into the shape of a football, blood stippling the bowl.

“He’s strangling, Fat Man,” Li’l Face said.

“Get his wallet and take whatever you want, then go home,” Clete said.

She pulled the wallet from Ray’s back pocket. Clete thought he felt a whoosh of air in the room, then he smelled the odor of rain and wet trees. He turned and saw Li’l Face squeeze past a tall man by the bed. She dropped the wallet and ran for the front door. The man pointed a nine-millimeter at Clete’s chest. “Get down.”

“You’re Timothy Riordan,” Clete said. “I got your photo.”

“My friends call me Timmy. You can call me the guy who’s about to print your brains on the wall.”

Clete held up one hand. “I’m coming.” He stepped down, balancing himself. “Things got out of control. We can work this out.”

“You wish, blimpo.”

Clete entered what he sometimes called “the moment.” Someone points a gun at you and lets it wander over your body as arbitrarily as the red dot on a laser sight. Eternity and what it holds or may not hold is one blink away. The round in the chamber will probably tear through your sternum or heart or lungs, carrying bits of you into the wall. The pain will be like a firecracker exploding inside your chest. You will not be blown backward or spin in a circle, as shooting victims are portrayed in motion pictures. You will drop straight to the floor, like a collapsed puppet, and lie in a fetal position and feel your blood pool around you. If you are lucky, your tormentor will not try to increase your pain and fear. All because you made the wrong choice during “the moment.”

So what do you do?

“You’re quite a guy,” Clete said. “I’ve seen your jacket. You worked vice. You were getting freebies up on Airline. You liked to knock around Vietnamese girls. Where’d you get your piece? Off a crippled newsy? You like movies? I do. Humphry Bogart says something like that in The Maltese Falcon.”

Timothy Riordan blinked. Clete grabbed the frame of the nine-millimeter and twisted and simultaneously kicked him in the shin. Then he twisted some more, until Timothy’s face folded in upon itself and a simpering voice rose from his mouth and tears slid from his eyes.

It should have been over. The gun was on the floor. Clete had his blackjack halfway out of his coat pocket. Then it caught on the flap, and in two seconds Timothy had a stiletto in his hand, the blade oiled and rippling with light and streaked with the whisker-like marks of a whetstone. He sank it in Clete’s arm.

Clete felt the blade strike bone. A wave of nausea swept through his body. His loins turned to water; his sphincter started to cave.

He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t work. His fist landed in the middle of Timothy’s face, slinging blood on a lamp shade, probably breaking his nose and front teeth, bouncing him off the wall. Clete pulled the stiletto from his arm and flung it across the room, then stomped Timothy’s head with the flat of his shoe and dragged him to a side window and crashed him headfirst through the venetian blinds and glass. He left him hanging half outside, like a giant clothespin.

Ray was trying to get up from the bathroom floor, propping himself with one arm on the toilet. Clete kicked his feet out from under him. “This has been a lot of fun,” he said. “I really dig your threads. Keep a cool stool. But if you even look at Li’l Face, I’ll pull your teeth, Keith. Or make you real dead, Fred. Have a nice night.”

Clete had a PI office in both New Iberia and the French Quarter. We drove in his pink Caddy to the motor court on East Main where he stayed when he was in New Iberia. If you wonder why we didn’t ask the Balangie family first about Isolde’s safety rather than Shondell, I’ll try to explain. The Balangies were people you didn’t get involved with, not on any level, no more than you would wish to submerge your arm in a saltwater tank loaded with jellyfish.

Governor Huey Long, the prototype for all American demagogues, past and present, literally gave the state of Louisiana to Frank Costello. In turn, Costello gave the management of our statewide vice to an immigrant leg-breaker named Pietro Balangie, who put slot machines in every drugstore, grocery, nightclub, and saloon in South Louisiana. Did anyone object? In South Louisiana? Are you kidding?

Some suspected that Pietro was involved in the murder of John Kennedy. His level of rage toward the Kennedys was legendary, and Robert in particular made life miserable for him. But Pietro was old-school and took his secrets to the grave.

Clete sat on the bed in his cottage and gazed out the window at a dredge boat working its way up the bayou. “Want to take a drive?”

“To see Adonis Balangie?” That was the son of Pietro Balangie. He was also somebody I didn’t want in my life or my head or anywhere in my vicinity.

“We should have slipped the punch with these guys,” Clete said. “But we’re stuck with the situation now. Or at least I am.”

“I’m not?”

“All right, we’re both in it,” he said. “Adonis isn’t such a bad guy. I mean in terms of greaseball standards. He went to college. He doesn’t blow his nose on his napkins or anything like that.”

Did Clete know how to say it?

But secretly, I wondered if I was afraid of Adonis. I don’t mean in a physical way. He bothered me for other reasons. I never knew who Adonis really was. Nobody did. He had qualities. He had been a champion swimmer in high school and college and a paratrooper in the service. Like most mobsters, he was a womanizer, but he never used profanity or was vulgar or lowered himself to the level of his enemies. It was the unreadability of his eyes and his lack of emotion that gave him power. Adonis didn’t rattle.

My call to her at midmorning went immediately to voicemail. I left the following message: “Miss Penelope, regarding your daughter’s situation, my advice is you contact the FBI. You should also contact the state police and the sheriff’s department in New Orleans. I don’t believe I can be of any other service to you.”

I was sitting in the backyard with my cell phone, which I believed symbolized humankind’s latest attempt to control our lives and our fate. But I didn’t feel any control at all. The leaves were turning gold and red in the oak trees, rustling each time the wind scudded across the bayou’s surface. Robins that had just arrived from the north pecked in the grass, and the Teche was flowing at high tide through the pilings of the drawbridge at Burke Street. It was one of those Indian summer days in South Louisiana that is cold and warm simultaneously and makes you feel that the earth will abide forever. But on this day I felt there was a hole in my life I would never fill, an ache that had no source. Death is not a transitory or incremental presence. It swallows you whole.

I went inside and began fixing breakfast. Fifteen minutes later, I heard an automobile turn in to my gravel driveway, the tires clicking. I looked through the window and saw Penelope Balangie behind the wheel of a maroon Ferrari convertible, the top down. She wore black sunglasses and a white silk scarf on her head. I went out the door and walked across the lawn, my unraked leaves crackling under my shoes.

“How did you know where I live?” I said.

“Asked.”

“I left a message. You didn’t retrieve it?”

“No,” she said. “What did you wish to tell me?”

“I appreciate your situation, but I don’t want to have any more to do with it. Call the FBI or a state or parish agency.”

“Adonis says ‘FBI’ stands for ‘Forever Bothering Italians.’ ”

“That’s what most of the wiseguys say. That’s because they’re dumb. And because they’re dumb, and I mean stupid-to-the-core incapable of thought, most of them end up in jail.”

She removed her sunglasses. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her skin was pale and puckered around the eyes. “What made you change your mind?” she said.

“Change my mind about what?”

“You tried to help Isolde. Now you regret it.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Miss Penelope. I talked to her on an amusement pier, then got harassed by a couple of bird dogs who work for Mark Shondell. That’s when Clete Purcel stepped in and got a stiletto stuck in his arm. The same guys slashed all four of his tires after we left your home.”

“You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I thought you’d understand.”

“Understand what? That you gave away your daughter in some kind of political deal with the Shondells?”

“We made peace with them. My family subsidizes charities all over the Third World. Mark Shondell has a chance to do a great deal of good rather than harm.”

“It sounds more like human trafficking.”

She got out of the car as though she’d been slapped. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that.”

“Sorry, I have my own problems. Your husband is a gangster. So were his father and grandfather. I don’t like your husband, and I didn’t like his father or his grandfather. They give your people a bad name. Why don’t y’all wise up?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Robicheaux, but that’s a ridiculous statement.” She stepped closer to me. She seemed small and absolutely determined and unafraid; she looked up at my face. “Your government doesn’t run a gulag of torture chambers? It doesn’t make deals with the Saudis and the junta in Argentina? Stop embarrassing yourself. You have no idea how many people are dependent on us for their survival, both in Italy and in this country. My family has been loyal to the unfortunate for five hundred years.”

Her eyes were burning. I could hear myself breathing. “Take a stroll with me.”

“Where?”

“Down the street. I’ll give you a history lesson.”

We walked down East Main through the tunnel of live oaks that led to the Shadows, a two-story pillared brick home built in the early 1830s, galleried and hung with floor-to-ceiling storm shutters, now a tourist stop surrounded by a piked fence and a bamboo border. We walked onto the grounds, in deep shade, and around back where the lawn sloped down to the bayou. The drawbridge at Burke Street was on our left; people of color were fishing under it, all of them sitting on inverted buckets, as their ancestors had probably sat there 150 years ago. The tide was in, and the tops of the elephant ears on the mudbank were almost underwater, rippling like a green carpet on the current.

“It’s a fine-looking place, isn’t it?” I said. “William Faulkner and Henry Miller were friends of the owner and used to visit here. Tourists love it. But here’s the real story. Three hundred slaves did the work. You see their graves anywhere? They’re fertilizer in a field or under a dry-goods store. The wife of the owner was known as a good person who refused to flee the Yankees in 1863 for fear the black people who were sick would have no one to care for them. But that doesn’t change the fact that slavery was evil.”

“I think that is the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me. You’re saying this about my relationship to Isolde?”

“People aren’t chattel. There’s nothing noble about controlling the lives of other people, Miss Penelope. You’re an intelligent and educated woman. What in the name of suffering God are you and Adonis doing?”

“If I were a man, I would knock you down.”

“The question still stands.”

The wind was wimpling the bayou, bending the cattails, swelling inside the live oaks. She took the scarf from her head and shook out her hair. She tilted up her chin. “I can pay you.”

“Nope.”

“I think Isolde and the Shondell boy may have gone to a recording studio in Alabama. The Rolling Stones recorded there.”

“Then let them have some fun. Get Isolde away from Mark Shondell. He’s the scum of the earth.”

“Do you know how many people have died in the feud between our families?”

“Not interested.”

“I thought better of you.”

“Think what you wish. I don’t like cleaning up other people’s mess. Particularly your husband’s.”

“You keep your mouth off him.”

“Gladly,” I said.

Her eyes were wet. I had thoughts and feelings about her that I don’t want to admit. Tingling in the hands, dryness in the throat, desires that hide in the subconscious. She had a strong and solid figure and clear skin and a bold stare that was both intelligent and principled, and she carried herself like a princess; she was obviously not an ordinary woman and not a follower of fashion and was lovely to look at and yet somehow vulnerable at the same time. For most men, this is a combo that turns into a sure bear trap, but it’s one that’s hard to resist and, let’s face it, often worth the trouble. There was only one problem: She was another man’s wife.

“Why do you have that funny look on your face?” she said.

“I think you’re an admirable lady, Miss Penelope.”

“But you won’t help?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then I’ll walk myself back to my car.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I cupped my hand on her elbow. “The sprinklers are on. I’ll walk you along the slope to my house. Things will work out for you. I’m sure they will.”

Her forearm felt as light as air in my palm as I stepped over the gnarled roots of the bamboo that grew wild along the bayou. I wondered if my gentlemanly conduct was a sham and a way to deceive myself and take me across the wrong Rubicon, a feat that in the past I achieved only by getting drunk.

It was still raining hard when we drove into Mississippi the next morning. The house that Clete’s musician friend had told him about was a sun-faded pink art deco place stuck back in a cove where a desiccated shrimp boat lay on its side in a slough overgrown with vines and palm and persimmon trees. A half-dozen vehicles were parked in the driveway or partially on the grass. I thought I could hear music playing.

Clete parked the Caddy and cut the engine, the rain hitting like drops of lead on the convertible’s top. Out of a clear sky on the southern horizon, jagged bolts of lightning struck the water without making a sound. “Something keeps eating on me,” Clete said.

“We got ourselves in the cook pot,” I said. “What’s new about that?”

“This is different. Everything we’re doing. The way the world looks. Like we’re going in and out of time.”

Somehow I knew what he meant, although the right words wouldn’t form in my mouth and the right image wouldn’t come clear in my mind. The rain, the defused light, the storm debris in the waves, our visits to the homes of the Balangie and Shondell families, vicious deeds out of the past, the rip-sawed bodies packed in an oil barrel, all these things seemed part of a fantasy but one that had become real. Let me put it differently. It was like waking from a bad dream as a child only to find, as the sunlight crept into the room and drove away the shadows, that your nocturnal fears were justified and that the creatures you couldn’t flee in your sleep waited for you in the blooming of the day.

“We’ve seen the worst of the worst, Clete,” I said. “Let’s get on it.”

“I got it.”

“Got what?”

“The feeling I couldn’t explain. When I woke up this morning, it was like I’d walked off a cliff and was standing on air. What’s a dream like that mean?”

“It means take it easy on the flak juice.”

“I wish I had all the answers,” he said. “Like knowing the mind of God. I’d love to get in on that.”

I made a mental note to write that one down.

We ran splashing across the yard to the front door and rang the bell, the wind blowing the rain in our faces. A thin, deeply tanned man in a white linen suit and a black silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar opened the door. His hair was copper-colored and streaked with gray and worn like a matador’s, pulled back in a pigtail; a gold cross and chain gleamed on his chest hair. “What can I do for you fellows?”

“We’re looking for Johnny and Isolde,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder, then back at us. People were drinking at a wet bar, and a couple of long-haired young guys with pipe-cleaner arms covered with all-blue tats were tuning their guitars on a platform. All of them looked half-wrecked. The house had a cathedral ceiling, the blond wood in the walls glowing against the darkness outside.

“Sorry, but who are you?” the man said.

“Friends,” I said.

“This is kind of a private gig, fellows.”

“We’re friends of Adonis Balangie,” I said.

“That’s cool. But that don’t cut no ice here. You got an invitation from one of the musicians?”

“Yeah,” Clete said.

“So who invited you?” the man said. He tried to smile.

“Guy who plays on Bourbon Street,” Clete said.

“The guy with no name on Bourbon?” the man in the white suit said. “Know him well. Come see us another time.”

A girl in a bikini leaned down and sniffed a line off the bar. The man with the pigtail followed my eyes. He started to shut the door.

Then I saw Isolde. She was wearing jeans low on her hips and flowers in her hair and a halter top over her breasts. The roses and orchids tattooed on her shoulder looked real rather than made of ink, as though they had been pressed flat and pasted on her skin. Her mouth opened with surprise when she saw me. She had changed since I’d seen her on the pier in a way I couldn’t explain. Her complexion glowed; her whitish-blond hair seemed thicker, her mouth waiting to be kissed. She walked over to us. “Let him in, Eddy,” she said. “That’s Mr. Robicheaux. He’s a friend of ours.”

“It’s an invitation-only party, baby doll,” Eddy said.

Baby doll?

“Come on, Mr. Robicheaux is one of the gang,” she said.

“What can I say? Come in, fellows. Don’t steal my ashtrays.”

Then we were inside, the door closed behind us. Through the picture windows, I could see the bay striped with foam, electricity dancing on the horizon, which was growing darker by the minute. At the bar, I saw two men who didn’t fit with the others. They wore green cargo pants and black T-shirts emblazoned with crossed white M-16s and military-style boots that were part leather and part canvas. Their stomachs were as flat as boards inside their belt buckles, their heads shaved.

Isolde gripped my upper arm with both hands. “I want to apologize for saying ‘fuck you’ on the pier,” she said.

“I considered it a compliment,” I said. “This is Clete Purcel.”

She touched his arm, too, as though sharing a secret message. I had the feeling Johnny Shondell wouldn’t be delivering Isolde to his uncle’s home. “It’s all so wonderful,” she said.

“What is?” Clete said.

“Everything,” she said. “We recorded an album at Muscle Shoals. I sing on three of the songs. Eddy’s company is going to sell them all over the country. Isn’t that right, Eddy? We’re signing the contract today.”

“Yeah, we better get on that,” Eddy said. “You fellows get yourself a drink.”

“You from the Bronx?” I said, smiling.

“Miami,” he said.

“Nothing for me,” I said.

“Same here,” Clete said.

Eddy circled his fingers around Isolde’s wrist as though he were picking up a dog leash. “Let’s get on it, doll. I got to get back to Fort Lauderdale tonight.”

Johnny Shondell waved at us from the bar, then headed toward us. He was sure a good-looking kid, the kind who seemed to float through a crowd of his peers rather than walk. It was no wonder the girls loved him, but I had a feeling he was a one-woman man. His eyes never left Isolde, even when he was shaking hands with us. Eddy was trying to get his attention. “Johnny, I got a business to run, here. Hey, what am I, a fire hydrant waiting for somebody to piss on? Look at me.”

“I got you covered, Eddy,” Johnny said. “We’re about to play a couple of numbers. Get the marimbas. You can play along.”

“The marimbas can wait,” Eddy said. “These guys can wait. The whole fucking world can wait. But the banks in the Islands do not wait. You hearing me, here?”

“Calm down, Eddy,” Isolde said.

“I’m telling you, I don’t got time for this,” he said.

“Put an ice cube in your mouth,” she said. “It’ll help you think.” Then she saw the look on his face. “You’re adorable, Eddy. Don’t be sensitive.” She kissed him on the cheek. His eyes were lumps of coal focused on nothing, his nostrils dilating.

“You own a record company?” Clete said to him.

“Do I own a record company?” Eddy said. He turned up his palms, as though he couldn’t fathom the question. “My house looks like I drive a bread truck?”

“Johnny, don’t you need a lawyer when you sign contracts?” I said.

“I’m the lawyer,” Eddy said.

“You?” I said.

“I don’t look or talk like a lawyer?” he said.

“Ole Miss?” Clete said.

“I went to law school in the Dominican Republic,” Eddy said.

“Can I use your bathroom?” Clete said.

“Through the hallway,” Eddy said. “Make sure you flush.”

But I knew the bathroom wasn’t on Clete’s mind. He had been glancing at the two men in cargo pants at the bar. He walked down the hallway and into the bathroom, then came back out and stood at the bar next to the two men, studying the bay through a picture window, his back to the men.

Johnny rejoined his musician friends and hung a Gibson Super Jumbo acoustic guitar from his neck, then went into Larry Finnegan’s “Dear One.” The keyboard and the rumble of the drums and the resonance of the Gibson and the four/four beat created a throbbing combination reminiscent of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. When Johnny finished singing, the room went wild. Johnny was way beyond good. He was painted with magic. His voice, his lack of pretense, his obvious love of music for its own sake, and his appreciation of Larry Finnegan’s tribute to the 1950s were like an invitation into a cathedral you never wanted to leave.

Isolde’s eyes were damp. Eddy had gone into the back of the house. Isolde and I were alone.

“You okay?” I said.

“I don’t want it to ever end,” she replied.

“The song?”

“All of it. I don’t want it to end.”

“Why should it end, Isolde?”

“Because we’re not meant to be.”

“Not meant to be? Who’s not meant to be?”

“We’re supposed to live our lives for others. Me and Johnny.”

“This is still the United States,” I said. “You can be whatever you want and tell other people to kiss your foot.”

“I’m scared, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“Call me Dave. Scared of what? Of whom?”

“The people who are going to take it away from us.”

“Nobody is going to take anything away from you. Not if Clete and I have anything to do with it.”

She wasn’t buying it. In the meantime, something had happened at the bar. I should have known it. William Blake called it the canker in the rose.

Cops from both Mississippi and New Iberia were at my house the next day. I denied any knowledge of Clete’s whereabouts. I didn’t have to lie, either. I had told Clete to get lost and not tell me where. A Mississippi plainclothes told me the man who took the worst hits looked like a volleyball wrapped with barbed wire.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Does he have a sheet?”

“He was up on a rape charge in the army. The nurse was afraid to testify.”

“How about the other guy?”

“Pretty much a wannabe. A couple of domestic-abuse charges. He went to a phony merc school in the Everglades.”

We were standing in my front yard, the trees aglow with red and gold leaves. “Anything else?” I said.

“I grew up in Mississippi. My father was in the Klan. He was uneducated and poor and thought they could offer him a better life.”

I kept my face empty and gazed at some children riding their bicycles over the concrete sidewalk that was cracked and peaked by the huge oak roots in front of my house.

“My father was at the liberation of Dachau,” the plainclothes said. “When he came back home, he burned his robes in the backyard. You know where I’d like to be in weather like this?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Palm Beach. I hear the kingfish are running night and day. A couple of weeks in a place like that and a man could forget all his troubles.”

Four days later, Clete called me on my cell phone. “Where are you?” I said.

“Down by Cocodrie. Anybody been around?”

“What do you think?”

“How bad is it going to be?”

“Just stay off the radar awhile,” I said.

“I checked out the guy with the house in Bay St. Louis. His name is Eddy Firpo. He screws every musician he gets his hands on.”

“Forget about Eddy Firpo. Just stay out of town. Here as well as New Orleans.”

“What’s going on with the Balangie girl?” Clete asked.

“How should I know?”

“That’s where all this stuff started.”

“It started because you sent four people to the hospital,” I said, and immediately regretted my words.

“You’re right,” he said.

“No, I’m not. I should have stayed away from Marcel LaForchette. I should have forgotten my conversation on the pier with Isolde Balangie and never made contact with her family or Mark Shondell.”

“You’re a cop, Dave. Whether you’ve got your shield or not. What were we supposed to do? Leave a seventeen-year-old girl on the auction block? I feel like we’re in the Middle Ages.”

“There was a detective here from Bay St. Louis. He said the kingfish were running in Palm Beach and that’s where he’d be for a couple of weeks if he had his druthers. I think he was telling me to tell you to cool it and you’ll be all right.”

“They’re going to cold-case it?”

“That’s my guess.”

He was silent. I thought I had lost the connection. “You there?” I said.

“Don’t get mad at me, but I got to say this: You’re not having the wrong kind of thoughts, are you?”

“Thoughts about what?” I asked.

“I saw the look on your face when Penelope Balangie came out of the chapel with a rosary in her hand.”

“We’ve already been through this, Clete. Give it a rest.”

“You saw a woman with a rainbow around her. Get real, Streak. She’s Adonis’s wife. She knows Adonis has ordered people killed or done it himself, but she probably gets it on with him every other night anyway. Look at that image in your head and tell me you want to get mixed up with a broad like that.”

“You’re all wrong,” I said.

“Do you know why we drink? So we can do the things our conscience won’t let us do when we’re sober.”

If you’re a souse, try to refute a statement like that.

I’ve always believed that normalcy is highly overrated and not to be confused with virtue. With that in mind, I can say in a charitable way that Father Julian Hebert (pronounced a-bear) was the most eccentric Catholic priest I’ve ever known. He went by his first name and never wore a Roman collar or a black suit, and he encouraged people to call him by his first name and not his title, which was hard for most Cajuns to do. He was socially tone-deaf and often a disaster at public gatherings. Last and most important, he had no filter between his brain and his vocal cords.

His mother was Irish and his father hard-core coon-ass. Clete Purcel called him “Goody Two-shoes Meets Chuck Norris.” With his incongruous athletic physique and short blond hair and egg-shaped face and baby-blue eyes and complexion that resembled the skin of a pinkish-white balloon, he floated around the community and anchored himself in various venues where, without speaking a word, he made everyone either uncomfortable, puzzled, afraid, or willing to throttle him. These venues included dog- and cockfights, drive-through daiquiri windows, cage fights, strip bars, porn theaters, and casinos that gave free drinks around the clock to pensioners and functionally illiterate people who often lost everything they owned.

On a national Sunday-morning television show, when the other guests were discussing homosexual, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and restroom issues as though there were no other terms for human beings and no other noteworthy subjects on earth, Julian said, “How about we just drop it? Who cares how people use their equipment? In your world, I’d probably have to introduce myself as a premature ejaculator. At least if I had a love life. Anyway, give it an effing break, will you?”

Whenever the bishop sent him a letter of reprimand or correction, Father Julian would report back that he had taken care of the problem. He always told the truth. He took care of the problem by dropping the letter in the wastebasket, not even bothering to wad it up.

He went bowling by himself at three A.M. in an all-night bowling alley in Lafayette and line-danced at a nightclub. He gave most of his money away and was arrested twice at Fort Benning in the protest against the School of the Americas. His tiny church down the bayou was the poorest in the diocese, and his parishioners were mostly people of color. The only toilet in the building was always stopping up with either roots or mud that seeped into the drainpipe whenever it rained. But Julian never lost faith and was beloved by his parishioners. His greatest oddity was his similarity to Clete Purcel. He recognized virtue in others but did not see it in himself.

The morning after I spoke to Marcel LaForchette, I drove to Jeanerette and parked by Father Julian’s cottage and knocked on the door. The sky was blue, a crusty sliver of moon still visible above the trees, the sugarcane bending in the fields. Down by the bayou was a cemetery with crypts that were green with lichen and scattered down the slope like huge decayed teeth. I wanted to wander by the water and let go of all my troubles and try to remember the admonition that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. I wanted to throw bread crumbs on the edge of the lily pads and watch the bream and sunfish rise to the surface like wobbling green and gold air sacs of sunshine. I wanted these simple pleasures and a world free of death, a place where evil men do not break in and steal. Maybe that was the world Father Julian sought, too, I thought. Maybe that’s why I was a cop. If so, both of us were probably headed for a huge disappointment.

You might wonder why I sought out the counsel of an iconoclast like Julian Hebert. There were several reasons. He was originally from New Iberia and knew Marcel LaForchette, but he had also known the Balangie family in New Orleans and supposedly attended Pietro Balangie on his deathbed. In fact, there was a legend about it. Julian congratulated the old man for owning up to his sins, then said, “There’s one other thing we should think about, Pietro. Maybe you can reach out to a few of your enemies and ask their forgiveness.”

“I can’t do that, Father,” Pietro said.

“Why not?” Julian asked.

“I killed them all,” Pietro replied.

But I’d heard the same story told about Frank Costello, so maybe this was another urban legend lending a degree of humor to the evil that can dwell in the human heart. Regardless, my recount is probably an attempt to hide the real reason for my visit to Julian’s cottage. I was still bothered by Marcel LaForchette’s tale about the power outage at Mark Shondell’s house. I may have had other things on my mind as well, namely, the wife of Adonis Balangie.

Julian and I took a stroll by the graveyard. He was wearing Levi’s and sandals with white socks and a T-shirt that had been washed from purple to lavender, with Mike the Tiger’s head emblazoned on the front.

“Marcel saw lights flashing on Mark Shondell’s face?” he asked.

“That’s what he said.”

“Marcel is a superstitious man.”

“Why would Shondell make a joke about a pagan god? Marcel thought he was talking about Mickey Mouse’s dog.”

An alligator gar was rolling among the lily pads, its armored back slick and serpentine, sliding down into the root system where the bream hid. “Who knows why Mark Shondell does anything?” Julian said.

“You’re not a fan?”

His blue irises were the size of nickels. He picked up a pecan that was still in the husk and tossed it at the gar. “I think you should stay away from Shondell.”

“Do you know something about him that I don’t?”

“I also think you should get your badge back,” he replied.

“You can’t talk to me about him on a personal basis? He confided something to you in the confessional?”

“That’s a laugh.”

I had told him only part of the story about the Shondells and the Balangies, and I didn’t know if I should say more. Why burden a good man with a problem neither of us could solve? Anyway, he beat me to it. “What’s really on your mind, Dave?”

I told him about Isolde being used as a pawn by Adonis and Penelope Balangie.

“They gave away their daughter?” he said.

“That’s the way it looks.”

“Have you reported this?”

“There’s nothing to report. There’s no evidence of a crime.”

“Does Adonis Balangie know?”

“He’s behind it,” I said.

“What about Penelope?”

“I’m not sure. She’s hard to read.”

He was looking at the trees across the bayou. His eyes cut to mine. “In what way?”

“She came to see me in New Iberia. She said she wanted help.”

“You believed her?”

“I’m not sure.”

He stared at the water. The gar was gone. The wind was cold and damp and gusting on the bayou’s surface, shriveling it like old skin. “She’s a beautiful woman.”

“I noticed.”

“They’re murderous people, Dave.”

“The Balangies?”

“They claim to be descendants of Giordano Di Betto. Maybe they are. But Giordano Di Betto was not a killer. He was a victim, tortured and burned alive.”

“Why would Penelope Balangie give her daughter to a lecherous man like Shondell?”

“That’s the question she’ll use to draw you into her life.”

“Say again?”

“When you went to her house with Clete Purcel, did she make an appearance with a rosary?”

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Yep, that’s Penelope,” he said. “Be careful what you touch, Dave. Roses have thorns.”

Clete drove his rental down to the Keys. On the western horizon, trapped under a black lid of storm clouds, was an eye-watering band of blue brilliance and a pinkish-yellow sun that the rain could not diminish and the Gulf of Mexico could not sink. He opened his windows when he drove across Seven Mile Bridge, the salty denseness of the wind like an immersion into a warm pool that could magically restore his youth. For just a moment he felt a sense of comfort so great that he dozed off and hit a rumble strip that jarred his teeth.

He righted the steering wheel and glanced down through the steel grid and saw a patch of color in the water that looked exactly like india ink floating under the surface. He wondered if he was dreaming or witnessing a sign. By the time he reached Key West, the sun was only a spark on the horizon, the moon was rising, and Duval Street was filled with music and celebrants who were innocently happy and hilariously drunk, forming conga lines on the curbs, perhaps certain that death would pass them by or perhaps accepting it for what it was.

In Clete’s mind, for good or bad, Key West had always been a hole in the dimension that took him back to his childhood in old New Orleans. Rick’s Bar was a two-story white frame building with a big veranda and numerous windows and doors, similar to the nineteenth-century residences in the Irish Channel. Clete went inside, sat at the bar, and ordered a vodka Collins and two dozen oysters on the half shell.

The stage was small and bare and framed with different-colored lightbulbs. Johnny Shondell came out from behind a curtain with his Super Jumbo Gibson slung from his shoulder, the belly and neck pointed down. Hardly anyone took notice of him. He was grinning as he bent to the microphone and adjusted it to his height. A thick dark blue cloud of smoke sagged from the ceiling. Clete took a long swallow from his glass, letting the crushed ice and cherries and orange slices and the coldness of the vodka have their way.

Johnny looked up and momentarily seemed to recognize him, then dropped his gaze and began tuning his guitar. The bartender set a napkin and a tiny fork in front of Clete, then went back to the bin and opened an oyster and slid it down the bar trailing ice. “Curbside service,” he said. “I shuck ’em, you chuck ’em.”

“How’s the kid doing with your customers?” Clete asked.

The bartender’s arms were huge and tanned and wrapped with black hair. “It’s Key West. People see UFOs under the water. How do you compete with an act like that?”

Johnny made a chord up on the neck of his Gibson, ran his thumb over the strings, then went into Doc Watson’s “Freight Train Boogie.” The speed of his fingers was stunning. Clete once saw Robbie Robertson and Eric Clapton perform together: It was the only time he had seen anyone faster and more graceful than Johnny. Four other musicians joined Johnny, and he played and sang six traditional numbers in a row. The applause was more courteous than passionate. A man shouted for an Elvis song as though Johnny were a reenactor. Johnny sang “Heartbreak Hotel,” then left the stage and ordered a drink at the end of the bar.

Clete picked up his glass and moved down the bar and sat on the stool next to him. “I really dug your songs,” he said.

Johnny was shaking his head negatively before Clete could continue. “We shouldn’t be talking, Mr. Clete.”

“Eddy Firpo told you I was coming?”

“He’s still in shock from what you did to his house in Bay St. Louis.”

Clete signaled the bartender for another Collins. “Dave Robicheaux and I are trying to do you a solid, kid. How about getting with the program?”

Johnny looked at Clete’s left arm. “You’re out of the sling, huh?”

“Forget about me. You got a lot of talent. You can go somewhere.”

“I’m heading out to Los Angeles with Eddy. I know you don’t like Eddy, but he’s on my side. Now lay off us.”

“Eddy Firpo is not a person. He’s a disease. Time to take off the blinders. You going to see Isolde in L.A.?”

Johnny looked into his drink. “That’s all over.”

“I heard y’all sing together. You remind me of Dale and Grace. Maybe even better.”

“You got to leave this alone, Mr. Clete.”

“If Adonis Balangie or your uncle is behind this, we can do something about it,” Clete said. “This isn’t 1861.”

Johnny looked over his shoulder and scanned the street. “Have you talked to Isolde or seen her?”

“No,” Clete said.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Start telling the truth. Stop covering up for greaseballs. What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Nobody would believe it.”

“I believe it. I look like I just got off the boat with a spear in my hand and a bone in my nose?”

“You said it’s not 1861. You got that right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Try four hundred years earlier.”

Clete finished his first drink and started on the fresh one. He leaned closer to Johnny. “Here’s the truth about the Mob. Most of them skipped toilet training. They smell like salami and hair tonic and BO. They were either lazy or too stupid to hold honest jobs, so they terrorized their fellow immigrants and thought up a bunch of crap about burning pictures of their patron saints and slicing their hands and smearing blood on each other and swearing themselves to secrecy and calling themselves men of honor. You think Adonis Balangie does shit like that? He wouldn’t let those guys lick his toilet.”

“I got to get back to work.”

“I’m not good with words,” Clete said. “Hey, kid, this is what it is. You make other people see the glass rings on the bar, the honky-tonk angels, Dallas at night from a DC-9. Don’t let these bums destroy your life.”

Johnny looked at Clete, then at Clete’s drink, then at Clete again. “You talk pretty good for a guy who—”

“A guy who what?”

“Nothing.”

“A guy who drinks too much? You’re right. My head glows in the dark. At night I don’t have to use a reading lamp,” Clete said. “After you get through here, let’s grab a steak. I knew Louis Prima and Sam Butera when they played at Sharkey Bonano’s Dream Room on Bourbon. My favorite lyric from Louis was ‘I’ll be standing on the corner plastered when they bring your body by.’ ”

“No more sermons, Mr. Clete.”

“Me?” Clete said.

The young clerk at the night desk looked at the badge in Clete’s hand. “That says you’re a private investigator.”

“Right,” Clete said.

“I can’t give out a room number unless you’re a real cop.”

“Thanks for the compliment. Walk me to the room.”

“I can’t do that, either.”

“Call the room.”

The clerk punched in a number on the console of his phone. “No answer,” he said.

“Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.”

“What for?”

“There’s a medical emergency in that room.”

“What if the guest is just asleep?”

“We’ll tell the ambulance to beat it. If there’s any charge, they can bill the motel. Your boss won’t mind.”

The clerk walked Clete to a room at the back of the motel and tapped on the door. When there was no answer, he stuck the key in the lock and twisted the knob and let the door swing open. The television was on, the sound off. Johnny was sitting in a chair, silhouetted against the screen, head on one shoulder. Clete stepped between Johnny and the clerk. “I’ll take it from here,” he said.

“Is he all right?”

“I’ll tell you if he’s not.” He put a ten-dollar bill in the clerk’s shirt pocket. “Thanks for your help.”

After the clerk was gone, Clete shook Johnny by the shoulder. His eyes were half lidded and his mouth hung open. A syringe and the rubber tubing he’d used for a tourniquet lay on the carpet. His skin was pale blue, as though it had been refrigerated.

Clete shook him again, harder. “Wake up,” he said.

Johnny’s head sagged forward. Clete went to the phone. “No,” Johnny said.

Clete replaced the receiver. “Look at me,” he said.

Johnny raised his head and tried to speak. His words were in slow motion and seemed to break like bubbles on his lips.

“How many times a day you shoot up?” Clete said.

Johnny didn’t reply. Clete made sure the curtains were secure, then clicked on the overhead light. He pulled up Johnny’s sleeves and turned up his forearms.

“You’re a pincushion, kid,” he said.

“Not a kid,” Johnny said. “Need to sleep now.”

“Where’s your stash?”

Johnny closed and opened his eyes. “I don’t have any.”

“I’m calling for an ambulance. I need to flush your stash.”

Johnny bent over, then tried to roll himself out of the chair but obviously didn’t have the strength. “Narcan,” he said.

“Where?”

“The suitcase.”

Clete took the suitcase off the baggage stand and dumped it on the bed. He picked through the folded shirts and trousers and underwear and socks and swim trunks and snorkel gear.

“You can’t find it?” Johnny said.

“Yeah, I can’t find it because it’s not there.”

“Must have used it up.”

“I hate dropping the dime on you,” Clete said, “but I don’t want to go to your funeral.”

Johnny looked at Clete as though he were having a dream and Clete was not real. “I’ll go to Raiford.”

“They don’t put people in Raiford for holding.”

“I’m already on probation.”

“Get up!” Clete said.

“No.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital. While you’re there, you’re D, D, and D. Got that?”

“What?”

“Deaf, dumb, and don’t know.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Ready?” Clete said. He worked his arms under Johnny’s and lifted him from the chair. He could smell Johnny’s body odor, the funk in his breath, the cigarette smoke in his hair and clothes. Johnny’s tongue had turned gray. Clete lost his balance, and Johnny hit the floor on the base of his spine.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Clete said. “I’m as fucked up as you are.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a good guy,” Johnny said. “I got to get Isolde back, Mr. Clete.”

Clete went to the phone and rang the desk. “Call an ambulance and tell them you got a code red.”

He found Johnny’s stash of China white on the closet shelf. It was the size of a baseball and double-bagged in a Ziploc. Clete gathered up the syringe and the rubber tubing and a burned spoon he found on the lavatory, wrapped them in a towel and went outside and dropped them in a trash barrel, then walked out on the dock and shook the Ziploc empty over a passing wave. The white granules dissolved like snow on a woodstove. He looked at the horizon and thought he saw the Southern Cross pulsing in the heavens, but he knew it was impossible to see the Cross from this latitude and he wondered if he was becoming delusional. The wind was as warm as a wet kiss on his skin. Inside the hiss of the waves sliding through the pilings, he thought he heard wood knocking against wood, then the sound thinned and stopped when a wave smacked against a piling.

He walked back to Johnny’s room. In the distance he saw the heavy, boxlike shape of an emergency vehicle coming down the two-lane, its flashers floating through the darkness as silently as tracer rounds. Why was the siren off? Why did he seem trapped under a black-green starlit Plexiglas dome, one that could suck the oxygen from his lungs? His father had died a wet-brain. Was it now his turn?

Johnny had fallen on the floor of his room. “Help me get him on the bed,” Clete said.

“Put a pillow under his head and leave him where he is,” Bell said, his eyes roving around the room. “Did you get rid of his works?”

“No,” Clete replied. “Why’d you ask me if I was inside?”

Bell grinned. “You look like you’ve been around. No insult intended. Anyway, I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Purcel. This kid has tracks on both arms. It’s your decision.”

“I’ll take care of him.”

Bell nodded contemplatively. “Tell me the truth. You’ve been up the road?”

“A navy brig and a few local slams. I was in the Crotch.”

“Semper Fi,” Bell said.

“You were in the Corps?”

“Is it Semper Fi or Semper Cry?” Bell said.

“That’s pretty clever. How about cleaning the potato salad out of your mouth?”

Bell went to the front door and opened it partway. “Come here a second, will you?”

“What for?”

“To show you something,” Bell said. He clicked off the light and opened the door wide. The salt air ballooned into the room. “See all that blackness out there? That’s the world, sport. That’s what I serve. I don’t make the rules or get a vote.”

“What are you talking about?” Clete said.

“You’re probably a PI because you were once a cop who got in trouble. Which means you understand how the system works.”

“Tell you what, bub,” Clete said. “I’ll take care of my friend, and you can roll it up and head on down the road. You know, hasta lumbago or whatever.”

“I was First Cav. Know what the Marines used to tell us about our insignia? ‘The horse they couldn’t ride, the line they couldn’t cross, the color that speaks for itself.’ A piece of shit like you is a gift.”

From his right-hand pocket, he pulled a blackjack and swung it across Clete’s temple. Clete went down like a sandbag, his arms at his sides, his jaw locked open, his face bouncing off the floor.

Johnny Shondell set down the fire extinguisher he was carrying and took out a pocketknife and knelt on one knee and sliced the ligatures on Clete’s wrists. The butt of a small semi-automatic protruded from the pocket of his jeans. He looked into Clete’s face. “You all right, Mr. Clete?” he said.

“No,” Clete said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be all right. What happened?”

“I know some of the places they use. So I came here.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

Clete shook his head. “This isn’t real.”

Johnny put his hand under Clete’s big arm and helped him to his feet. “Get all these memories out of your mind. There’s a world around us other people can’t see. You and Mr. Robicheaux found your way into it. That was a mistake. You got to undo the mistake. You hear me, Mr. Clete?”

“I’m not going to put up with this greaseball craziness, Johnny.”

“What day is it?”

Clete had to think. He had flown into Lauderdale on Friday. “Saturday morning.”

“It’s Monday,” Johnny said.

“It can’t be.”

“It is,” Johnny said.

“How’d I lose two days?”

“Maybe they used drugs on you. Maybe they didn’t need drugs. They have powers we don’t understand. The only thing they fear is discovery.”

“What?”

“They’re always out there. They don’t want people to know they exist. There’s good ones and bad ones.”

“Cut that out. What’s this place we’re in?”

“A junkyard.”

Clete started to shiver. The sky was still black, the rain still falling, twisting like drops of crystal. “You got a car?”

“A rental.”

“What about the cop who hit me with a blackjack?”

“I don’t know anything about a cop.”

“He was plainclothes,” Clete said. “He came to your motel room.”

“I don’t remember that,” Johnny said.

“We’re going to hunt down this guy and find out who he’s working for.”

“No, we’re not.”

Clete felt his legs going weak. His head began to spin, as though he were still suspended from the cable. His throat had never been so dry, even after weekend benders. Johnny steadied him with one hand. “My car is over here, Mr. Clete. I’m going to take you back to the hotel.”

Clete looked at the southern horizon. The waves were rolling out of the Straits, dark green and capping and glazed with the moon’s reflection. “What happened to the ship? The one with the masts and oars.”

“You’re not making sense. Oars on a sailboat? That doesn’t sound right.”

“It looked like it was out of medieval times.”

“Don’t think about these things anymore, Mr. Clete. You can’t talk about this to others, either. The more you do, the more people will not believe you. You see any of their faces?”

“Yeah, the cop and the guy in a hood.”

“What’d the guy in the hood look like?” Johnny asked.

“Not human.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Don’t talk about any of this. People will try to put you away. Most people don’t want the truth.”

Clete wiped the rain out of his eyes. His skivvies were translucent, his skin blue. He let Johnny help him to the rental car. For the first time in his life, he believed that madness might be the norm and that his own mind might become his greatest enemy.

That same day, at 6:47 exactly, I returned to my house from Winn-Dixie and saw a Ferrari by the curb, the left rear tire on the rim, Penelope Balangie struggling with the spare. I pulled in behind her. She dropped the tire and dusted off her hands. Her face looked hot, her hair damp on her cheek. “I just discovered you have no Triple A,” she said.

“We’re purists in that regard,” I said. “As few services as possible. Let’s see if I can help.”

It seemed too much of a coincidence that her tire would go completely flat in front of my home. The air loss was the kind you associate with a sliced valve. I squatted down and ran my hand over the casing. A two-inch piece of angle iron, its edges knife-sharp, was embedded in one of the grooves.

“I had to special-order the spare,” she said. “I just noticed it’s smaller than the others. Is that going to be a problem?”

Yeah, it is. In more ways than one.

“There’s a guy in Lafayette who sells used Ferraris,” I said. “You can give him a call.”

“I can’t get service on my cell phone here.”

“Yeah, that’s another problem we have,” I said. “Miss Penelope...”

“What?” she said.

“A very nasty plainclothes named Carroll LeBlanc says you were looking for me at the department. LeBlanc would like to take my skin off. I wish you wouldn’t help him do that.”

“Would you please explain how I’m impairing your career?”

“You’re the wife of a notorious gangster. Your father-in-law may have been involved with the assassination of John Kennedy.”

“These things are not true.”

“The Balangies made their money peddling bananas?”

“There are many things you think you know about me, Mr. Robicheaux. Most of them are wrong.”

“You want me to put on your spare?”

The light was dying in the trees. Down the street, flocks of swallows were descending on the Shadows.

“If you would be so kind,” she said.

Her lipstick was purple, the mole by her mouth sensuous in a way I didn’t understand. I wanted to reach out and touch it.

“After I change your tire, I have to be somewhere else,” I said.

“As you like.”

I saw the disappointment in her face. I did not think it was feigned. “What is it you want to talk to me about?”

“Everything. That is, everything I am and everything I am not. But if you’re busy, I understand.”

She was short, probably not more than twenty-five, her black hair flowing like paint, her skin smooth and dark and free of scars. She wore a white blouse and a pink wool jacket and a skirt that exposed her knees. Her hands were locked on top of her purse; her eyes were bright with fear as she stared into Gideon’s face.

He took a plate of beignets from the refrigerator and set them on the table. “I got these at the Café du Monde. I thought you might like some.”

“I ain’t hungry.”

“I have a bottle of wine, too.”

“The man in the cab needs seventy-five dol’ars. That’s for one hour. More than that, you pay it to me.”

“I see,” Gideon said. “I’ll be right back.”

He draped his raincoat over his head and went through the courtyard and jumped into the front seat of the cab, slamming the door before the driver could react. In seconds, the driver started the cab and drove down the street and turned a corner. Ten minutes later, Gideon returned to the room on foot, out of breath, his face peppered with rain. “Well, we have that out of the way,” he said.

“What out of the way?” she said. “You went somewhere wit’ Beaumont?”

“Sit down,” he said. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“Sarah.”

“You’re pretty.”

“Where you gone wit’ Beaumont?”

“Don’t worry about it. You look frightened. Do I scare you?”

Her face jerked. She fastened her gaze on the wall, the red and purple bedspread, an ancient suitcase on top of it, a belt holding the suitcase together. “What you wanna do?” she said.

“Talk.”

She closed her eyes and opened them again, as though the room were swaying. “What you did wit’ Beaumont?”

“Are you a little obsessive?” he said. She didn’t answer. “He showed me a couple of historical buildings. He seems to know the Quarter.”

“That don’t sound like him. What kind of game you playing?”

“No game,” he said. “Sit down. Please.”

Her brow furrowed. She sat down slowly at a small breakfast table. He removed a shoebox from the dresser and sat down across from her. “How long have you been in the life, Sarah?”

“What you mean ‘the life’? I don’t know nothing about no life. I don’t like what’s going on here. You give Beaumont the seventy-five dol’ars?”

“You have a child? I suspect you do.”

She reached in her bag.

“It’s not a good time to do that,” he said.

“I’m calling Beaumont.”

“I told him you’re in good hands. The most important moment in your life is taking place right now. You need to be aware of that.”

“I ain’t up to this. Beaumont’s all right, ain’t he?”

“A man like that is never all right.”

Her gaze seemed to take apart his face, as though her fear had been replaced by curiosity. “You got freckles under your eyes.”

“You think that’s funny?”

“My li’l boy watches a cartoon about a friendly snake. It’s got freckles under its eyes, like yours.”

“Sarah, you may have depths that have never been plumbed.”

Her mouth formed a cone, but no words came out.

“Forget it,” he said. He removed the lid from the shoebox and emptied the box. Bundles of fifty-dollar bills fell on the table. The bills were crisp and stiff, as though fresh from the mint. He thumbed their edges like decks of cards. “There’s thirty thousand dollars here,” he said. “It’s yours. But you have to change your ways.”

“You’re setting me up for something,” she said. “Maybe a snuff film. I ain’t putting up wit’ it.”

“It’s not a trick.” He was smiling now.

“Why you wanna do this? You don’t know me.”

“Maybe I can come see you sometime. Maybe we can be friends. Maybe I can help you get a job or go to school.”

“If I take that money, I ain’t gonna be around here.”

“Send me a postcard.”

Her eyes swam with confusion.

“That’s a joke. Go wherever you want.”

She picked up one of the bundles, then set it down. “Beaumont’s gonna take over half of this.”

He shook his head slowly.

“Why ain’t he?” she said.

“His circumstances have changed.”

“What happened out there?”

“You really want to know?”

She looked at him uncertainly.

“We talked a minute or two. That’s all,” he said.

Her eyes dropped to the bundles of money. She touched one as though it were a forbidden object. “This ain’t counterfeit?”

“Counterfeiters don’t give away the product of their labor. Show some trust in people, Sarah.”

She let out her breath as though a long day had caught up with her. “People don’t never tell me the troot’, not about anything. Why should you be different?”

“Because I’m a revelator.”

“A what?”

He put the bundles back in the box and replaced the top. He pushed the box toward her. “I’ll call a cab for you.”

“I ain’t taking this money. I ain’t taking this box. I ain’t taking nothing out of this room.”

“You have to take it.”

“No.”

He stood up, towering over her. He opened her purse and shook the bundles into it, then zipped it shut. The purse looked as big and round as a small watermelon. “Do as I say.” He raised a finger in her face when she tried to speak. “Don’t argue, and don’t disappoint me.”

She seemed to shrink, like a flower exposed to intense heat. “I ain’t meant to argue or make you mad.”

“Now go be a good girl.”

“Beaumont tole you where I stay?”

“Maybe.”

“What you done to him?”

He placed his hand on her head. His fingers resembled the tentacles of a small octopus threaded through her hair. “You’re a nice lady. The world has hurt you. I’ve tried to make up for that. It’s that simple.”

She waited a long time before she spoke. “If I walk out of here, you ain’t gonna do nothing to me? You’re sure about that?”

“You’ve done a good deed for me,” he said. “You just don’t know it.”

She looked at him, her eyes out of focus. Then she picked up the purse and put it inside her pink jacket and opened the door and hurried through the courtyard, the soles of her shoes clattering on the sidewalk. The rainwater on her hair looked like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Down the street, two drunks stumbled from the topless bar. “Where you goin’, mama?” one yelled. “I got yo’ candy cane hangin’.”

Both men laughed so hard they could hardly hold each other up, then they followed her, bumping into each other, rounding the corner behind her and disappearing into the dark.

I drove out by the golf course and parked under a tree and waited until the woman named Leslie emerged from the clubhouse and got in her car, an old Honda. She had changed into jeans and a snap-button denim shirt. It started to rain. I followed her up to Metairie into a 1950s subdivision lined with two-bedroom houses, all of them with the same gravel roofs and faux brick walls and lawns that resembled Astroturf.

I waited at the end of the street while she parked in her driveway and went into the house. Before I could pull up, the front door opened again and I saw her give money to a teenage girl under the porch light. The girl got into a car and drove away. I waited until Leslie went back in the house, then I parked in front and stepped across a rain ditch and rang the bell. She opened the door, a sandwich in one hand. “My,” she said.

“Could I talk with you a few minutes?”

“What’s on your mind, cowboy?”

I glanced at my slacks and shoes. “I look like a cowboy?”

“Yeah, one who thinks he’s gonna get an easy ride.”

“Wrong,” I said.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she said.

I felt the rain blowing on my neck. “You look familiar.”

“I used to see you in the Quarter. You were a souse back then.”

“Yeah, I remember now. You were a dancer in a joint on Bourbon.”

“I didn’t dance. I just took it off.”

“I remember,” I said. “Vividly.”

She took a bite out of the sandwich. “Cute, but no can do, sweetie.”

“No can do what?”

“Let you pump me in multiple ways.”

“You cut to it, don’t you?” I said. “Why’d you make a face at me with your finger in your mouth?”

“I like to give limp-dicks a throb or two.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What, you think I’m a comedian?” she said.

“No,” I said. “Where’d you get the scar?” It looked like a flattened worm on her jawbone.

“A pimp named Zipper Clum was in a bad mood.”

“If it’s any consolation, a psychopath took Zipper’s arm off with a machete.”

She combed back her hair with her fingers, her eyes still on mine. Her hair looked sprayed and stiff as wire. “Okay, honey bunny, let’s make it fast. I have a daughter to take care of.”

She let me inside. I sat on the sofa while she went in back. She returned with a young girl in a reclining wheelchair. The girl rested on her side as though she were sleeping. “This is Elizabeth,” Leslie said. “Elizabeth, this is Mr. Robicheaux. He’s a friend of ours.”

“Hello, Miss Elizabeth,” I said.

The girl had her mother’s good looks and eyes that were as innocent and empty as blue water. Leslie turned on the television and inserted a video underneath. SpongeBob sprang to life on the screen. The girl made a mewing sound.

“Come into the kitchen,” Leslie said.

“I never got your last name.”

“Rosenberg.”

The house was old, but all the furniture, rugs, curtains, and appliances seemed new. I sat at the breakfast table. She opened the refrigerator. “I make Elizabeth a snack before bedtime. While I do that, you can tell me why you’re here. Then you leave.”

“You know anything about Adonis’s stepdaughter? Her name is Isolde.”

“I don’t ask him questions about his family.”

“That’s convenient.”

She gave me a look.

“You’re just a tennis partner?” I said.

“You’re about to get yourself invited back out the door.”

She cut a piece of pie and put it on a plate with a spoon, then went into the living room. I knew I probably couldn’t imagine the amount of care she had to give her daughter, which I was sure involved changing diapers and bathing and feeding and dressing her, never having enough asleep, and ultimately accepting exhaustion as a way of life. In other words, I believed Leslie Rosenberg had her own Golgotha. She came back in the kitchen and washed the plate and spoon in the sink.

“I’m not out to nail Adonis, Miss Leslie. I need to find Isolde. I think she’s a victim of human trafficking.”

“What’s with the ‘miss’ routine?”

“It’s a leftover courtesy from a gentler time.”

“A little of that Aunt Jemima stuff goes a long way. Isolde Balangie is a victim of human trafficking? One of the richest teenage girls in New Orleans? Where do you get this stuff?”

I had the feeling Leslie Rosenberg didn’t take prisoners. She sat down across from me. “You see all this? The house, everything that’s in it? It comes from the Balangie family.”

“You work for them?”

“I’m a cashier in one of their restaurants. They’re not white slavers.”

“You and the other two ladies at the tennis courts bear a lot of similarities.”

There was a beat. “You’re saying we’re collectibles?”

“Adonis doesn’t do anything for free.”

“How’d you like a slap across the face, cop or not?”

“I think you’re heck on wheels, Ms. Rosenberg.”

She rolled her fingertips against the heel of one hand. “You’re not going to be a problem, are you?”

“No, ma’am.”

She paused. “Want a piece of pie?”

“Sure,” I said.

She got up and took the pie from the oven and set in on the counter, then sliced it with a knife, her back to me. She had the physicality of a working-class woman, as well as the confidence. She handed me a piece of pie on a plate.

“Did you ever speak at the Work the Steps or Die, Motherfucker meeting?” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” she said.

“ ‘Oh, yeah’ what?”

“I knew that one would catch up with me one day.”

I remembered her in a much more detailed way now. She had been heavier, probably from a jailhouse diet, her hair much longer, partially dyed; she was just beginning the steps of the program. But I remembered her most for her candor. Women speakers are the most honest at A.A. meetings and often give histories about themselves that men do not want to hear, because they fear the same level of honesty will be required of them. Leslie Rosenberg went the extra mile and left nothing out. Had there been a parole officer at the meeting, she could have violated herself back to the Orleans Parish Prison.

She ran away from home at age seventeen and hooked up with three outlaw bikers who gang-raped her on the way to Sturgis. She had an abortion in Memphis and spent three months in jail for soliciting at a truck stop on I-40. The next two stops were Big D and New Orleans and runway gigs with a G-string and pasties, then Acapulco and Vegas with oilmen who could buy Third World countries with their credit cards.

Miami was even more lucrative. She went to work for a former CIA agent turned political operative who set up cameras in hotel rooms and blackmailed corporate executives and Washington insiders. She helped destroy careers and lives and woke up one morning next to the corpse of a married man who died from an overdose in his sleep and whose family she had to face at the police station. One week later, she swallowed half a bottle of downers, turned on the gas in the oven, and stuck her head in. Three weeks later, she slashed her wrists. One month after that, she helped a pimp roll a blind man.

It’s not the kind of personal history you forget.

“Something wrong with the pie?” she asked.

“It’s good. Do you still go to meetings?”

“Mostly to N.A. I was into drugs more than alcohol.”

“Who’s the father of your little girl?”

“The dead guy I woke up with. I think I said that at the meeting.”

She waited for me to speak, but I didn’t.

“You’re wondering why I had one abortion but not another one?” she said. “I figured I owed the guy something. Or his family. Shit if I know. Anyway, I love Elizabeth.”

“Where does the Balangie family come in?” I said.

“I moved back to New Orleans, and Penelope saw me at the clinic where I take Elizabeth. I told her my story. She introduced me to Adonis. That was it.”

“That doesn’t sound like Adonis.”

“Try getting to know him.”

“No strings attached?”

“I’m going to say this only once,” she said, “and that’s because I don’t want you walking out of here with the wrong story. Adonis is a gentleman. He asks. You get my meaning?”

“He asks?”

“Yeah, fill in the blanks.”

“You’re an intelligent woman. There’s something weird going on with the Balangies, and I have a feeling it bothers you.”

She tried to stare me down.

“You ever hear of a guy who has a face like a reptile?” I said.

“No.”

“A guy who enjoys breaking the necks of pimps?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

I was tired and the rain was blowing hard, the banana fronds outside pressing wetly against the glass. I knew I would probably hit high winds around Morgan City. I put on my coat.

“Adonis told me something I didn’t understand,” she said.

I waited.

“He said to watch out for a guy who calls himself a revelator. I asked him what a revelator was. He said a guy with leather wings and a torture chamber for a brain.”

“That’s all he would say?” I asked.

“Then he said he was kidding and tried to shine me on.”

“That’s the Adonis I know,” I said. “A guy who scares people to death, then refuses to explain himself.”

“You don’t know anything about a revelator?”

“Latter-day Saints use the term,” I said. “But I doubt Adonis hangs out with the Mormon Tabernacle crowd. Want my advice, Ms. Rosenberg?”

“Drop the ‘miz’ crap.”

“If Adonis gives away something, it’s for a reason. His father was the same way. The Balangies never forget a debt, an injury, or a favor. But the one they remember the most is the injury. Ask any prostitute from New Orleans to Galveston who tries to go independent.”

“Boy, you’re the light of the world,” she said.

“More like a dead bulb,” I replied. “Good night, Miss Leslie. Excuse me. Leslie. I think you’re probably a fine lady.”

For just a moment her face softened and showed a vulnerability that didn’t go with anything she had told me.

“Hey,” she said.

“What?”

“If you’re in the neighborhood.”

“You mean drop by?”

“Elizabeth likes you.”

I said good night and ran through the rain to my unmarked car just as lightning leaped through the clouds and lit up the entire neighborhood. The tiny boxlike houses trembled like a cardboard replica of Levittown, then the darkness folded over them. It was one of those rare moments when the ephemerality of the human condition becomes inescapable and you want to smash your watch and shed your mortal fastenings and embrace the rain and the wind and rise into the storm and become one with its destructive magnificence.

One week later, Mark Shondell was back in town, perhaps with Isolde or perhaps not. People were afraid to ask. If you have not lived in a small Southern town or city, you will probably find this strange. But the greatest fear in our culture has always been deprivation. It trumps all the other sources of our discontent, including the racism that has been with us since Reconstruction. So maybe it seemed almost appropriate, considering the times in which we find ourselves, that Mark Shondell returned to New Iberia with a former Klan leader and neo-Nazi by the name of Bobby Earl.

I do not mean to impugn Bobby. He had been with us a long time. He was not the problem. We were. He was the aggregate for everything that was wrong in us. Unfortunately, he was a master at making use of his perverse gifts to mesmerize a crowd and validate their barely concealed desire to do great physical injury to Jews and people of color. Women loved him, ignoring the fact that most of his facial features were the product of plastic surgery. Men did, too. He was a womanizer, an LSU graduate, and he attended all their home games. Invariably, he was interviewed in front of Tiger Stadium before the game, exuding an almost rapturous adoration of the Southeastern Conference because it was comprised entirely of Southerners, concluding for the television audience that no matter the numbers on the scoreboard, both teams were victorious. Bobby was a pioneer in the conflation of militarism, football, and evangelical Christianity. I wonder sometimes why his constituency has not raised a statue in his honor.

His lies, his disingenuousness, the way he could create a tragic profile before a camera, like Jefferson Davis gazing upon the ruins of Richmond, were seldom if ever challenged, even by the media, because Bobby Earl was impervious to insult and, in reality, thrived upon it, floating above the fray like a phoenix above the ash.

He wore tailored three-piece gray suits like the one worn by Robert Lee during the surrender at Appomattox, although I doubted that Bobby had any grasp on the meaning of Lee’s last words when the old general suddenly woke on his deathbed and cried out, “Strike the tent and tell Hill he must come up.” I also doubted that Bobby Earl would enjoy marching up the slope at Cemetery Ridge with the boys in butternut, many of them barefoot and emaciated, tearing down fences in ninety-degree heat as they went, while Yankee grapeshot and canister and chain whistled in their midst and air bursts blew off the tops of their best friends’ skulls.

Clete had been in New Orleans for five days. When he returned to New Iberia, I asked him to go to lunch with me at Bon Creole out on Old Spanish Trail. We ordered po’boy sandwiches and shrimp and sausage gumbo and iced tea, and while we waited for our order, I told him everything Johnny had said about the man named Gideon Richetti.

“Johnny says that’s the guy who hung me upside down?” Clete said.

“Yeah, but I came up with blanks,” I said. “There doesn’t seem to be any such guy anywhere. No sheet, no prints, nothing.”

“He travels through time? What the fuck is that?”

“Will you lower your voice?”

“You went through NCIC?” he said.

“Everywhere. The FBI, the state police, the state attorney’s office in Florida, John Walsh.”

“Why him?”

“He finds people nobody else can.”

I could see Clete’s frustration. I was giving him information that was not information while calling to mind one of the worst experiences of his life.

His gaze wandered around the room. There were antlers and deer heads and a marlin mounted on the walls. Then he looked out the window at a black Mercury with tinted windows that had just parked under a live oak. The waiter put our food on the table. Clete went to the window and came back. “If that guy comes in here, I’m calling the health department.”

“What guy?”

“Bobby Earl.”

“Clete, if you get us kicked out of here—”

“Don’t start,” he replied, popping open a napkin on his lap.

“I mean it.”

“The passenger window is down,” he said. “The Balangie girl is in the front seat. They don’t have the decency to bring her inside.”

Bobby Earl and Mark Shondell came through the front door and got in the service line. All faces in the restaurant turned toward them. But in one second, with no change of expression, the same people looked quickly at their food or at their hands or at the deer heads and the marlin on the wall. Mark Shondell looked across the room at us and smiled, but I didn’t acknowledge him. He left the line and came to our table. His tan was darker than the last time I had seen him, his expensive clothes immaculate, not one hair out of place on his head. The jeweled rings on his fingers glinted under the ceiling lights. “It’s nice to see you, Dave,” he said, ignoring Clete.

I didn’t answer.

“Sir, did you hear me?” he said.

“Yeah, I did,” I replied, looking through the window at the Mercury.

“Then what seems to be your problem?”

“Your treatment of Isolde Balangie,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “Her stomach is upset. She didn’t want to come inside.”

“You’re molesting her, you son of a bitch.”

The waiter and waitress and patrons became motionless, as though they were painted on the air. You could not hear a fork or spoon scrape against a plate or saucer.

“How dare you,” he said.

“Get away from our table,” I said.

I doubted that Mark Shondell had ever been called to task in public. A single blue vein was throbbing in his left temple. “You will not speak to me like this.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself any worse than you have,” I said.

“Walk outside with me,” he said.

“No, we’ll end this right here,” I said. I stood up, and with my open hand, I slapped him across the face as hard as I could, so hard his chin hit his shoulder.

“Oh, shit, Dave,” I heard Clete whisper.

I cannot tell you with exactitude what happened next. I felt as though I were standing in the middle of a dream from which I couldn’t wake. The other patrons were staring at their uneaten food. Bobby Earl slipped his arm inside Shondell’s. “Let’s go, Mark,” he said. “It’s all right. He’ll never be your equal.”

He led Shondell outside in the silence.

“How about those Saints?” Clete said to everyone in the room.

No one laughed.

At 4:23 A.M. I was admitted to Iberia General. The diagnosis was food poisoning. I have been wounded four times, twice in Vietnam (the second time by a Bouncing Betty) and twice on the job. I have never experienced any pain, however, as bad as that produced by the botulism that attacked my system that morning. It was the kind of pain that is so bad you cannot remember how bad it was.

By nine A.M. it was gone. My first visitor was Clete Purcel, whom I called as soon as I was able. The second person I called was Carroll LeBlanc, who said, “You didn’t shag that Italian broad again, did you? Hit it and git it, Robo.”

Clete pulled a chair up to the bed, his porkpie hat on his knee. Clete never wore a hat inside a building, never walked in front of a woman through a doorway, and never failed to rise from a chair when he shook hands or when a woman entered a room. “What did you eat?” he asked.

“That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“I thought I told you on the phone.”

“You didn’t tell me anything. You kept saying, ‘We can’t get the slick in. They’re coming through the wire.’ ”

“The guy who hung you up in the Keys called me,” I said. “I saw the galleon out on the bayou.”

Clete was waving off the image before I could finish. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Okay, maybe I was out of my head.”

Clete’s right leg was pumping up and down. “The guy who called, he told you he was Gideon Richetti?”

“I addressed him by that name. He didn’t correct me.”

“Dave, I can’t take this.”

“I hit the deck minutes after his call. My memory is suspect. Nothing I say is reliable. But I’m telling you what I think I heard and saw.”

Why burden an already burdened man? I asked myself. But in truth, I wanted a rational explanation for the phone call, for the voice that rose from the disconnected receiver, for the prison ship that had wended its way out of history and up Bayou Teche. The sound of Richetti’s voice was like spittle in my ear.

“What are we going to do, Streak?” Clete said.

“Take it to them with tongs.”

“You can’t cowboy a guy like Mark Shondell.”

“I didn’t say anything about Shondell.”

“Then who are you talking about?” Clete asked.

Anyone and everyone, I thought.

“What’d you say?” Clete asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Rhetoric is cheap. I don’t know where to start on this.”

“It’s got to be about money,” Clete said.

“Richetti gave thirty grand to a hooker.”

“Yeah, and it probably came from a robbery,” he said. “Maybe he’s trying to buy his way into heaven.”

That wasn’t a bad speculation.

The week went by without incident. Clete came back to New Iberia and spoke little of the unexplainable experiences we had shared. I said nothing about my visit to the home of Leslie Rosenberg. We were deep down in the fall now, hovering on the edge of winter, our two-lane back roads striped with impacted mud from the cane wagons on their way to the mills, the air cold and dense with an odor like brown sugar spilled on a woodstove.

Late Saturday afternoon I drove to Henderson Swamp with my outboard and fished by myself in lily pads that had already stiffened and turned brown on top of the water. The western sun wobbled like a candle flame in the current flowing between the two willow islands where I was anchored. I was surrounded by miles of water, all of it dotted with flooded cypress trees and duck blinds and the remnants of abandoned oil platforms. There was not another boat in sight. I wore a canvas coat and an old fedora tied under my chin with a scarf, but just the same I could not get warm. Years ago I would have had a bottle of brandy in the bottom of the boat. Now I had a 1911 army-issue .45 in a zippered case tucked in my tackle box. Beside it I also had a drop, a five-shot .22 revolver cast from metal that was one cut above scrap.

Why was I carrying a drop? Because ever since Clete and I had gotten involved with the Shondell and Balangie families, we had been confronted with situations and people and aberrant behavior that made no sense, and I believed that before it was over, we would experience much worse and that no one would ever accept the story we told about it. The oath we took, the laws we upheld, the justice system passed down to us by men such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson no longer had application in our lives.

I could feel the temperature dropping. I pulled the anchor and set it on the bow, dripping and muddy and tangled with hyacinth roots, and drove my boat deeper into the swamp. When I cut the engine and slung the anchor off the bow, I saw a shack nestled behind a flooded canebrake, the tin roof streaked with moss and eaten with purple rust. The small gallery was supported by wood posts that were half submerged in the water.

Two children of color were standing on the gallery. Both were barefoot and had blue eyes and light skin. The boy wore overalls that had only one strap, the girl a wash-faded dress that was as thin as Kleenex. A fog bank was puffing out of the willows onto the water.

“Want to buy some worms?” the boy said.

“I’m fishing for sacalait,” I said. I held up my bait bucket. “That’s why I have these shiners.”

The faces of both children seemed hollowed out and lifeless, like apparitions in the mist. The interior of the shack was dark. There was no glass in the windows, no outbuilding on the bank, no boat tied to a post or a tree trunk, no parked vehicle nearby.

“Where’re your folks?” I asked.

“Out yonder,” the girl said.

“Out yonder where?”

She pointed. “Where the fog is at. They gone after a gator.”

“The season is long over,” I replied. “Where do you keep your worms?”

“Behind the shack,” the boy said. “Come see. We got big fat night crawlers.”

The fog was wet on my neck, the breeze pushing the water under the shack’s gallery. “Aren’t y’all cold?”

“No, suh,” the boy said.

“Where do you live?”

“Right here,” he said.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “Tell you what, I’ll take a look at those worms.”

I used the paddle to push my way through the canebrake until the bow of my boat slid onto the bank. The fog was gray and thicker now and contained a smell like carrion or offal thrown on a fire. Behind me, I heard a splash I normally would associate with a gator slapping its tail on the water or a huge gar rolling in the hyacinths. When I looked back at the shack, the children were gone.

I unzipped the .45 and took it from its case and put it in the right-hand pocket of my canvas coat. I put the drop in the left pocket and stepped onto the bank. The footprints of the children were clearly stenciled in the aggregate of mold and dirt and rainwater on the gallery. As soon as I stepped on it, my foot plunged through the boards as though they were rotted cork.

I went around to the rear of the shack. The back door hung by one hinge. The prints of small bare feet led from the front door out the back, then faded like cat whiskers on the ground. However, other prints were dramatically visible and freshly etched by someone wearing at least size-eleven shoes or boots with lug soles. They led up a broken levee into a clutch of willows and disappeared into a canal lined with cattails and blanketed with lichen as thick as paint. But I could see no muddy clouds in the water, no broken reeds, no imprints of a shoe or boot on top of the stenciled tracks of raccoons and possums and nutrias and deer that crisscrossed the mudbank.

I returned to the shack. The ground under my feet was badly eroded by the runoff from the levee. In a glistening pool I saw three small rough-surfaced tan balls that any kid raised on Bayou Teche would recognize. They were called slave marbles. In antebellum times, black children made them from the clay they dug from the bayou and baked in a tin oven. I picked the balls from the dirt and rolled them in my palm. I wondered how much time had passed since a child had touched them. I wondered what his life had been like, the travail and suffering that had probably been his only legacy.

Out in the fog I heard a clunking sound, like wood on wood. I dropped the slave marbles in my left coat pocket, took out my .45 and eased a copper-jacketed hollow-point into the chamber, then walked to the edge of the swamp. I heard the knocking of wood on wood again.

“Who’s out there?” I called. “Tell me who you are!”

My words were lost inside the thickness of the fog, the dripping of trees I could not see.

“I have no doubt that’s you, Gideon!” I called. “I wanted to believe you were a misguided guy trying to do a good deed or two! But only a coward would use children to front for him!”

I heard the labored sound of oars. This time I saw no galleon traveling through time. The bow of a wood boat appeared at the edge of the fog bank, a shadowy figure couched in the middle, the oars resting in the locks. The figure was wearing a hooded raincoat. The boat bumped against a cypress stump and drifted sideways. I held my .45 behind my back. “You’re Gideon?”

“Correct.” He turned his head and I saw his face. It made me swallow.

“What’d you do with those kids?” I said.

“They’re safe.”

“Are you using a voice box of some kind?”

“You’re a stupid man,” he said.

“Probably. Why’d you want to hurt Clete Purcel?”

“Mr. Purcel injures himself.”

“How about you row up on the bank and we talk about it?”

“I’m a revelator,” he said. “You should feel honored. We don’t give our time to everyone.”

I could feel the pulse beating in my right wrist, the cold steel frame in my hand. “Where are you from, Richetti?”

“Address me as Mr. Richetti or as Gideon.”

“Tell me where the children are, partner. I’d owe you a big solid on that.”

“You’re a simpleton, Mr. Robicheaux. You want the children out of the way so you can do as you will.”

I felt like he had stuck a dirty finger inside my brain. “Come a little closer. I can hardly hear you.”

“Idiot,” he said.

“You got that right. I should have capped your sorry ass as soon as I saw you.”

I gripped my .45 with both hands and began firing at the boat’s waterline. There were seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. I could see the flash leaping from the muzzle, hear the spent cartridges splashing in the shallows, hear a round go long and hit a tree trunk. I saw wood fly from his boat and float in the water. But Gideon Richetti showed no reaction, not even when a round went high and whanged off an oar lock.

The slide on the .45 locked open on the empty chamber. Richetti and his boat drifted into the mist. I opened and closed my mouth to clear my hearing. I could hear the sound of his oars thinning among the flooded trees. I could not believe what I had just done. I had fired into a fog bank that could have been occupied by hunters or other fishermen or even the children who wanted to sell me night crawlers.

I got into my boat, my hands shaking, and started the engine and drove into the fog. The aluminum hull screeched against the cypress knees protruding from the water, all of them as hard and shiny as wet stone. I saw no sign of Richetti and his boat. Nor did I see any channels in the lichen that floated between the trees.

I killed the engine and drifted in the silence. The water was black, the sun a smudge of egg yolk on the horizon. Inside that soiled piece of Eden, I saw the worst image I could possibly see under the circumstances. There was a patina of blood on a tupelo stump, and a strip of wash-faded cloth that was as thin as Kleenex.

Clete had just gotten back from New Orleans and asked me to meet him on Sunday morning by the recreation building in City Park. I went to an early Mass at St. Edward’s, then drove across the drawbridge at Burke Street onto the oak-shaded serpentine lane that led to the playground and the swing sets and the jungle gyms in the park.

Clete was sitting at a picnic table, dressed as though for church, his porkpie hat crown down on the table, except he was not headed for church and was drinking from a long-neck, even though it was barely ten A.M. I sat down across from him. There were gin roses in his cheeks.

“Why’d you want to meet me here?” I asked.

“Somebody tried to creep my cottage and my office. I got to do a sweep.”

“Who’d want to bug your cottage and office?”

“For openers, that pus head Shondell.” His fingers were curled around the label on the beer bottle, his gaze unsteady, his knuckles as rough as barnacles.

“Hitting it pretty early today, aren’t you?” I said.

“It’s afternoon somewhere. I think you’re about to go in the skillet, Streak.”

“Not me.”

“Adonis Balangie came to my apartment in the Quarter last night. He had two of his gumballs with him. He said either you get your head on straight or you get disappeared, and disappeared will be the least of it.”

“Straight about what?”

“Getting into the wrong bread box. I’m not talking about Penelope Balangie, either.”

“So who are you talking about?” I said, trying not to clear my throat before speaking.

He took a piece of notepaper from his shirt pocket and looked at it. “Leslie Rosenberg, who evidently is his regular punch. He says you not only got it on with her, but you told her to quit the job he gave her. You know this broad?”

“She’s not a broad.”

“Excuse me. Did you pork this lady who probably graduated from Sophie Newcomb?”

“I’m not going to talk to you on this level.”

“Answer my question, Dave.”

“I don’t know. I was at her house. It was raining. I had some kind of blackout.”

“That’s convenient. I got to try that the next time I get caught milking through the fence.”

“Maybe I did.”

“Got it on?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember the rain and a voice that said, ‘I’ve waited for you a long time. I was born to be with you.’ ”

“Don’t do this to me, Dave. One of us has got to stay sane.”

“Then the voice said, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ ”

He looked at me, an alcoholic shine in his eyes. “You mean like—”

“Yeah, a climax.”

“I hope she took snapshots. You can send them to Adonis. You know how to do it, big mon.”

“I don’t care about any of this, Clete. I may have shot a child in Henderson Swamp.”

I told him everything. His face drained. His voice sounded like a bucket of rust. His eyes were damp. “That guy Richetti is real, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he is,” I said.

“I’m going to bring this shit to an end.”

“It’s not that easy. You know it, too,” I said.

“What if I just take Mark Shondell off at the neck? What if I put his head on a spike?”

“You’re serious?”

“You weren’t hung upside down from a wrecker hook,” he said. “I can’t get that out of my head.”

“We don’t know that Richetti is working for Shondell.”

“Mark Shondell is putting the blocks to a teenage girl everybody has deserted, including her mother and stepfather. I say we cap him. I also say we cap anybody who gets in our way, starting with Adonis Balangie. In the meantime, you stay away from his punch, what’s-her-name?”

“You shouldn’t drink for the rest of the day. Let’s hammer down some bacon and eggs.”

He threw me his cell phone. “Call Victor’s. They’ll deliver. I need something from the car.” He went to his Caddy and came back with another beer. He twisted off the cap and sat down. “You’re not going to say anything?” he said.

“It wouldn’t do any good.”

“Dave, something political is going on with Shondell and Bobby Earl. Like Father Julian said. Maybe it’s like Hitler going into the Rhineland in 1936. Nobody stood up to him, so he decided to take Czechoslovakia and then Poland.”

“This is New Iberia.”

“Tell Huey Long that. Do you realize you just told me that maybe you shot a little girl? That we’re sitting here talking about it? We should have already shoved a twelve-gauge up Shondell’s ass.”

“I’m with you in whatever you want to do,” I said.

“Talk to the Jewish broad. Find out what’s going on. And keep your flopper on lockdown.”

“You’re talking about Leslie Rosenberg?”

His eyes went out of focus. Or maybe he deliberately crossed them. “Duh! What did you tell her that made her quit her job with Adonis?”

“I told her she deserved a better life.”

“Then you got it on?”

“I don’t remember.”

“No clue, huh?” he said. “What was the status of your pole when you got home?”

“Will you—”

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

I waited for him to start taking me apart again. Instead he poured his beer on the grass and set the bottle on the picnic table and stared at it. “Dave, we’ve got to get to the bottom of the business at Henderson Swamp. This isn’t us. There’s got to be an explanation. I’m about to have an aneurism here.”

I walked away and got in my truck and drove home, the steel grid on the drawbridge rattling under my tires.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I thought about the late afternoon when I’d stood on the dock not far from the amusement pier and watched the waves swell in the sunset and boom on the beach and fill the air with a spray that was like the healing power of water from a baptismal font. Considering the present gravity of my situation, these were probably foolish thoughts to muse upon. But what recourse did I have in my dealings with either wicked men or unseen forces whose origins I didn’t want to think about?

Clete and I had the same problem. Telling others what we had seen or what we knew about the man named Gideon served only one purpose: Our listeners wanted to flee our presence. In effect, we were collaborating with the enemy and destroying ourselves. Somehow we had to turn our situation around.

Stonewall Jackson was an eccentric and improbable military figure, homely and unkempt, simplistic and doctrinaire. He paused to pray before an attack, giving the enemy more time to prepare, and galloped in battle with his right hand in the air because he believed there was an imbalance of blood in his body. He was also one of the greatest tacticians in the history of warfare. His most quoted tactical advice is “Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy.”

This was the opposite of everything Clete and I had done in our confrontations with the Shondell and Balangie families. It was not entirely our fault. The events I have described so far were frightening because they seemed born from a separate dimension and, more disturbing, they had no connection to the world as we know it or the physical sciences on which we daily rely to explain our origins. It was like waking up one day and speculating that the spirits haunting the massive forests of pre-Christian Europe were indeed real and the Druids who hung ornaments on trees to seek their favor were not superstitious after all.

I feared for Clete more than for myself. The pain of his childhood, his memories of an accidental killing in Vietnam, the loss of his career as a detective were the invisible crown of thorns that sat always on his forehead. He already had enough weight on his shoulders without having to hump my pack.

Tuesday morning I went into Carroll LeBlanc’s office and told him I was going to New Orleans.

“To do what?” he said.

“Investigate the dismemberment of the two guys in the barrel.”

“That’s Vermilion Parish’s case.”

“That’s where they were dumped,” I said. “The homicide started here.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Cut it out, Carroll. Mark Shondell had somebody put a meat saw to those poor bastards, and you know it.”

He had both feet on his desk. He picked up the yellow legal tablet from his blotter and stared at it. “I just got a call from Dana Magelli. He said Isolde Balangie showed up in a homeless shelter on Airline Highway, stoned out of her head.”

“Where is she now?”

“At her house. With Penelope and Adonis Balangie.”

I thought about the implications of that simple statement. LeBlanc caught it. “Yeah, exactly,” he said. “Mark Shondell just got his nose rubbed in it. You’re not going to New Orleans about the two guys in the barrel, are you?”

“No.”

“So why are you going?”

“A woman named Leslie Rosenberg.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“You know her?”

“She was a stripper on Bourbon,” he said. “I heard she hooked up with Adonis Balangie.”

“Past tense,” I said.

He let his feet drop to the floor. “What does Leslie Rosenberg have to do with anything?”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said.

“Try.”

“Mark Shondell wants her disemboweled.”

He rubbed his face.

“What is it?” I said.

“That spot where you found the slave marbles? I heard that was part of a barracoon owned by the Shondell family. You know, one of those slave pens? I heard awful things got done there.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“Probably coincidence?” he said, his face lowered, one hand twitching on his thigh.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Like hell,” he replied.

I drove to the home of Leslie Rosenberg in Metairie and made a fateful decision that had nothing to do with my job as a detective. Or perhaps she had already made the decision for me by quitting her job as a cashier, telling Adonis Balangie she wouldn’t be seeing him again, and notifying the bank that she would no longer be making payments on the home for which he had made the down payment.

As she told me these things in her living room, I wondered if I had actually influenced her decision or if she was a player in a drama whose complexities I could only guess at. No one contends with the raison d’être of deathbed conversions, but seldom do people change their entire lives and give up all they own and put themselves and their loved ones — in this case a severely handicapped child — at the mercy of the storm.

“You’re sure you’re doing the right thing?” I asked her.

“You’re the one who said to fuck all my worries.”

“That’s why I seldom take my own advice.”

“I’m moving into a shelter. I need to pack.”

“Do you have any relatives in the area?”

“The last people I need to see are my relatives.”

“Could I use your phone?”

“Do it before service is cut off. I put the disconnect order in this morning.”

I went into the hallway and called New Iberia. Elizabeth was watching me from her wheelchair. When I got off the call, she smiled at me. “It’s nice to see you,” I said. I had never seen eyes as clear and blue. It was like staring into infinity. “Would you like to go to New Iberia?” I said. Her cheeks were pink, her hair gold like her mother’s but with a red tint in it. “I bet you’d like it,” I said, and winked at her.

I went back into the living room. I could see Leslie through a bedroom door, pulling the sheets and covers off the bed and stuffing them in a big cardboard box. She was wearing jeans and a tight beige sweater that looked wash-faded and utilitarian. “The shelter is short on linens,” she said.

“I just talked with some Catholic nuns in New Iberia,” I said. “They have a cottage waiting for you. They’ll give you a job at their center. They help people get a second start.”

“What about Elizabeth?”

“I think she’ll find many kind people there.”

“I’ve never been to New Iberia.”

“It’s a grand place.”

“In what way?”

“We only let the best people in,” I said.

I stepped inside. “What happened?”

“Marcel went crazy and came through the door and terrified all the personnel,” Julian said. “The sisters called me and thought I could settle him down. Fat chance.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Gone. The sisters went after him. But I don’t think there’s an answer for Marcel. At least I don’t have one.”

“Bad message from a man of the cloth,” I said.

“He’s either afflicted, or what he told the sisters and me is true.”

“Told y’all what?” I said.

“This man Gideon gave him a thousand dollars to leave New Iberia. Marcel tried to give the money to the Center. He’s afraid of it.”

“How did Gideon know Marcel needed to get out of town?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The implications of all this business about a green man in a cowl are more than I want to deal with.”

“What’s our choice?” I said.

“The biggest frailty in our makeup is our willingness to engage evil, Dave. It’s always a trap. When you engage it, it becomes part of you. That’s the only way I can think about this.”

“How do you not engage it?” I said. “Heinrich Himmler viewed the inmates in the camps before they were sent to the gas chamber. They had to look into his face through the wire. I can’t imagine what that would be like.” I saw the hurt in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Julian.”

“Marcel said Gideon pressed the money into his palm. When Marcel tried to resist, Gideon grabbed Marcel’s wrist and forced the money on him.”

I waited. “What’s the rest of it?”

“There was an abrasion around Marcel’s wrist. With pustules in it, like tiny pearls.”

“I’m not buying in to this, Julian.”

“I’m telling you what I saw.”

“Marcel must be working a con of some kind,” I said.

“Don’t be surprised if your best thinking gets you nowhere.”

“There’s another possibility,” I said.

“What?”

“Maybe Adonis Balangie is making a move on the Shondell family,” I said. “Maybe all this other stuff is theater. Maybe Penelope Balangie is as greedy as he is.” I swallowed when I put Penelope in the same category as Adonis.

“You may be correct about Adonis, but you’re mistaken about Penelope,” Julian said. “Her problem is she thinks a good cause justifies any means. Did she catch your eye?”

“Pardon?”

“You heard me,” he said.

“She’s attractive, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said.

“What you mean is she’s beautiful and not easy to forget in the middle of the night.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said dishonestly.

“You’re right. I sometimes convince myself that my weaknesses are the weaknesses of everyone.”

How had I gotten into this? Here was a man dedicated to God who got credit for nothing and blamed for everything and often lived under the authority of dictatorial men who could make life miserable for a diocesan priest. Now he had me to put up with.

“You’re the absolute best of everything that’s good in Christianity, Father Julian,” I said. “Anyone who says otherwise should have his butt kicked around the block.”

I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.

“Julian?” I said.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not important. You are. And so is Clete Purcel and also Marcel LaForchette. One thing, however: I do not fear the green man.”

“You don’t?”

“The real evil in our community is Mark Shondell.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“In one fashion or another, the man in the cowl seems to be a historical figure, a wandering soul, perhaps. He tried to help the prostitute and Marcel. Mark Shondell is homegrown and revered in our culture, a man who has the stench of an incinerator on him.”

I walked back to the cruiser. Leslie was sound asleep. Elizabeth peeked at me from under the quilt, her blue eyes as clear as water. They reminded me of the eyes of the mixed-blood children I had encountered in Henderson Swamp. I woke up Leslie and moved her and her daughter into the Center, then drove to the department on East Main, my head throbbing.

The coroner, paramedics, uniformed deputies, and Carroll LeBlanc and another detective did not finish their work until almost two A.M. Most of the time I sat in the kitchen, watching each person methodically do his job so there would be no doubt about the integrity of the investigation. The blood on my hair and face was photographed before I was allowed to wash it off. I also had to give up my shirt in case it contained powder burns. I knew the questions that would be asked of me, but I did not fear them. The questions I had to ask myself were another matter.

Could I have twisted the pistol from Marcel’s hand when he pressed the muzzle under his chin? Maybe. What if I had distracted him and lied and told him my father had spoken fondly of him? What if I had told him I had some juice in Baton Rouge and could get him a pardon so he could work as a PI?

But the greater concern I had, the one that left me feeling empty and weak at heart and unable to think, was my attitude when I’d visited Marcel in Huntsville Prison. I’d treated him as I would have a gerbil, a genetic accident, a slug lifted from under a rock, at best a spiritually impaired man whose soul had been stolen at age seventeen. I’d treated him with the dignity I would have shown a germ.

How is it I never thought he could be my half brother? Did I deliberately ignore the possibility because I didn’t want to share my father, who was the only person in my life after my mother deserted us? The answer was probably yes.

“We’re pretty much done here,” LeBlanc said. He was wearing a sport coat and slacks and a tie. He screwed a filter-tip cigarette in his mouth. “Mind if I light up?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“No problem.” He dropped his cigarette back in the pack, then scratched his cheek. “LaForchette had his piece inside the raincoat?”

“Yep.”

“You thought he was gonna smoke you?”

“For a moment or two.”

“What’d he say before he went out?”

“He said ‘I ain’t.’ ”

“I ain’t what?”

“When I visited him in Huntsville, he said he’d like to be a PI in New Iberia. I made a joke about him working at a car wash. Then I told him I was only kidding. So now he was proving he didn’t kid. Big triumph, huh?”

“Then he shot himself? For no reason you know about?”

“The guy had a miserable life.”

LeBlanc wrote in his notepad. “Took his secrets to the grave?” he said, not looking up. “Why is it I don’t believe you, Robo?”

“He said there was an open hit on him.”

“Ordered by who?”

“Probably Mark Shondell or Adonis Balangie or both of them,” I said.

“You have evidence of that?”

“No.”

LeBlanc huffed something out of his nose, his eyes receded deep inside the thickness of his skin as though he lived inside a husk. “You keep giving me about half the story, Robo. I can’t say as I like it.”

“The man came here and killed himself in my living room. I’ll live with this the rest of my life. Now get off my back, Carroll.”

“Has this got something to do with the voodoo guy or whatever he is at Henderson Swamp?”

“Could be.”

He closed his notebook. “I was afraid you’d say that. Here’s what’s going in my report: LaForchette was born to lose and wanted an audience when he shuffled off to wherever guys like him go. Merry Christmas.”

“He thought I was his half brother and I got all the breaks.”

“Is that true?”

“Probably.”

“Go take a shower. You look like you just got out of Auschwitz.”

“Why do you use that as a comparison?” I said.

“What, that’s not politically correct?”

“Just don’t do it.”

“Got to tell you this, Dave,” he said, “you’re one crazy son of a bitch. Whatever you suffer from, I hope it’s not contagious.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use profanity in my house.”

Penelope Balangie didn’t knock on the door. She clicked on the glass with her nails as though afraid she would wake me up. I took the chain off the door and opened it. She was holding a lemon meringue pie in a covered pie pan. “I thought you’d need something to eat.”

“Where’d you get the pie?”

“At the bakery.”

I looked at my watch. It was 6:23 A.M. “The bakery is closed.”

“I woke them up.”

“You know what happened here?” I said.

“The whole city knows.”

Behind her, the fog was so thick I could hardly see the yard or trees or streetlamps. “Come in.”

I had thrown out the rug Marcel died on and had cleaned the blood from the floor. I had also showered and shaved and changed clothes, and hoped I did not look like I felt. She walked past me into the kitchen and began making coffee without asking permission.

“I don’t know if you should be here, Miss Penelope,” I said.

She was no longer wearing the lavender suit and pillbox hat but a baby-blue cashmere suit with a white blouse and white hose, which meant she had come to New Iberia with luggage. “Sit down,” she said.

“Kind of you to ask me,” I replied, and remained standing.

“The man who died here? He was the one the killers were after?”

“He may have been my half brother. At least that’s what he said before he shot himself.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“You have to forgive me, but I don’t understand you. In fact, nothing about you makes sense.”

She took the plastic cover off the pie and got cups from the cabinet. “No one will believe my story. Nor will they believe yours or Mr. Purcel’s. That means we’re members of a very lonely club.”

“So tell me the story.”

“Maybe later. Eat first. Please. I want to explain something you’re probably experiencing now or will experience later.”

“Oh, really?”

“Don’t be sarcastic.” She placed her hand on my chest. I could feel my heart beating against it. I sat down.

“Start eating,” she said.

I didn’t argue.

“People who commit suicide in a dramatic fashion often have an agenda and are involved in a fantasy that leads to their death. They’re filled with rage and seek revenge against those who have hurt them. They slash their wrists or jump from buildings or fire bullets into their brain. In their fantasy, they witness the discovery of their body by people they hate. In that way, they leave behind a legacy of guilt and sorrow. Don’t let this happen to you, Mr. Robicheaux.”

I put a teaspoon of pie in my mouth and drank from the coffee cup she had placed by my elbow. But neither would go down. I choked and held a napkin to my mouth. She was standing behind me now. She spread her hand across my back. It felt as warm as an iron on cloth. “You’re shaking,” she said.

“I have malaria.”

“From where?”

“Vietnam or the Philippines. Who cares where you get it?”

“After all these years?”

“Give it a break, Ms. Balangie,” I said.

“You’re one of us now.”

I stopped trying to eat. “One of what?”

“The people who have to see into the other world, the one we try to deny in modern times.”

“Sorry, I’m not up to listening to any more craziness, Italian or otherwise.”

“Did the man who died see Gideon Richetti?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What does that tell you?”

“The price of knowing the Balangie and Shondell families is too expensive.”

“Your wife died recently?”

“I’ve lost two wives.”

“I didn’t know.”

My hand was trembling on the teaspoon. “You need to leave.”

“Walk me to the door.”

“You can find your way.”

“No. Get up.”

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and rose from the table. I looked straight into her eyes.

“Well?” she said.

“You’re a big girl. You need an escort to leave someone’s house?”

“I want you to do just that. I mean, escort me.”

My eyes lingered on hers. I felt a longing I couldn’t explain, as though I had never smelled a woman, or kissed one, or slept with one. I felt as I did when my mother abandoned her family. I felt as though I were on the edge of a grave, that the only light in the world was trapped inside my home, inside the fog, and the rest of the earth was disappearing.

I put my arms around her and lifted her against my chest and put my mouth on hers. I felt her feet barely touching the tops of my shoes, her breasts against me, her fingernails digging into my back, her auburn hair warm and clean-smelling in my face, the ache in my loins unbearable.

Then we were in my bed, and I went beneath a harbor off Bimini, the sunlight shattering on the surface, a coral cave inviting me deep into its recesses, its walls covered with pink lichen and the gossamer threads of sea life that had no name. Some believed this was the eastern edge of ancient Atlantis, a suboceanic kingdom where spring was eternal and mermaids wore flowers in their hair and where each morning one could cup water from the fountain of youth.

But I could no longer control the images in my head, and I felt them slipping like confetti from my body into hers, and I buried my face in her hair and bit her shoulder and heard myself saying, “Pen... Pen... Pen,” as though it were the only word I knew.

Friday evening Clete and I headed to Baton Rouge to hear Johnny Shondell and Isolde Balangie play and sing at a club by the LSU campus. The drive on the elevated highway across the Atchafalaya Basin is spectacular, particularly when a yellow moon is rising above the miles of black-water bays and flooded trees draped with Spanish moss. But I could not clear my head of the moral conflict I had brought into my life, namely my relationships with Leslie Rosenberg and Penelope Balangie. I was also worried about the degree of damage Clete had done to Jess Bottoms. Felony assault was felony assault.

“You think Bottoms will file charges?” I said.

“No, he’d have to explain too many things. Prostitutes, money laundering, illegal gambling. Plus, he’s afraid of Gideon. You shouldn’t have stopped me, Dave.”

“From forcing him to play Russian roulette?”

“You turned soft on me. You do that with these guys.”

“You don’t see it, Clete,” I said. “We’re becoming somebody else. It’s like catching a disease.”

He swerved in the middle of the causeway to miss a possum. “Wrong. We’ll never be like these guys. The Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Ted Bundy, that’s the kind of people you’re putting on the same level as us?”

“No,” I said, too tired to argue.

“Look at the books on the backseat I got from the library on the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. I just figured out something.”

He had changed the subject, as he always did when he felt he had hurt me. “Figured out what?”

“Nothing has changed since back then,” he said. “Rich families still use their children to forge alliances. How about the Kennedys auctioning off Jackie to that Greek, the one without a neck. He looked like a frog wearing sunglasses. I heard when he died, it took two months to bury his dong.” He took a hit from his flask, then another. “Dave, I’ve been thinking. As far as Richetti is concerned, I think he’s a defective. What’s the population of any prison like? Most of the inmates were probably beat on with an ugly stick when they were children.”

“Who were the two black kids with blue eyes that I saw with him in Henderson Swamp?”

Clete took another hit from the flask, the cap tinkling against the side. “He probably gave them five bucks to jerk your chain.”

The late sun had turned the trees red in the bays. Herons were standing in the shallows, their long legs as slender as soda straws. Clete was driving with one hand, the whiskey having its way, his face warm and serene in the dashboard’s glow.

“You still here?” he said.

“The blue in their eyes was just like the blue in the eyes of Leslie Rosenberg’s invalid daughter,” I said.

“See? There you go. You let your imagination loose. That’s what these guys want us to do.”

“Which guys?”

“Mark Shondell and the people he’s a hump for. A guy like that doesn’t have the smarts to amass all that money on his own. I bet that money with the dye on it was his.”

“I saw Richetti in a newsreel with Benito Mussolini.”

“You saw a guy who looked like him. Here’s a more serious subject. What about the Balangie woman? You got feelings for her? You had a weak moment and wanted to get your ashes hauled? What are we talking about here?”

“Guess.”

“Okay, so you were on the square. But it’s got to end, noble mon. If she’s done it with you, she’s done it with others. I got a feeling those ‘others’ are in a landfill or a swamp courtesy of her husband. Sorry, I forgot. He’s not her husband.”

I stared out the passenger window at the miles of wetlands slipping past us into the darkness, a solitary ember of sunlight dying on the horizon.

“Come in, Earth,” he said.

“Leslie has dreams about flames crawling on her skin.”

“That’s what nightmares are,” he said. “Falling from cliffs, mountains crashing on our head, getting buried alive, stuff that early man was afraid of.”

“You saw Richetti, Clete. He hung you upside down. That wasn’t a dream. Stop lying to yourself.”

He put both hands on the wheel. I could see him breathing, his knuckles ridging.

“What are you hiding?” I said.

“One of those books talks about an infamous executioner in the sixteenth century. He burned a lot of Jews. His name was used to scare children. It was Gideon Richetti.”

We went back inside and stood at the bar. Clete ordered a lemonade. Johnny and Isolde were singing “The Wild Side of Life.” It wasn’t Swamp Pop, but nonetheless it was the flagship of every honky-tonk ballad ever written.

Clete drank half his lemonade in one long tilt of the glass. I had the feeling he had spiked it with his flask. “Sorry I blew it with Richetti,” he said.

“He’ll be back.”

“Think so?”

“Unto the grave, if he has his way.”

Clete gazed at the bandstand and the multicolored lights playing on Isolde’s sequined dress. “Jesus, I love that song. It’s like a hymn.”

“It was. The melody is from ‘The Great Speckled Bird.’ ”

He finished his drink and this time ordered a whiskey sour; he gazed across the dance floor. “Adonis is pinning us.”

“Let him.”

“I don’t know how I defended that guy,” Clete said. “Maybe because he was in the 173rd. How could he sell out his stepdaughter like that?”

“A fraud is a fraud, a bum is a bum. There’s no mystery about human behavior.”

“I’m going to have a talk with Adonis.”

“I thought you wanted to leave him alone,” I said.

“That was before Richetti called. Something’s about to go down. I think Adonis knows what it is. Otherwise he wouldn’t have those two button men with him.”

“It’s your call,” I said.

I followed him across the dance floor to Adonis’s table. Both his people had the dark, lean faces of men who work in extreme heat; neither one looked directly at us.

“How’s it going, Adonis?” I said.

His hands formed a pyramid; he tapped the ends of his fingers together. I realized his face was heavily made up. I knew that at some point I would pay a price for the beating I had given him.

“Fine, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said. “And you? Seen my wife lately?”

“Cut the cutesy routine, Adonis,” Clete said. “We just had Gideon Richetti on the phone. I think you and him and Mark Shondell and Eddy Firpo are all hooked up. I also think Richetti is just a guy, a world-class creep but flesh and blood, not some evil spirit delivering telegrams from a pizza parlor run by Leonardo da Vinci or whoever.”

The eyes of the two bodyguards took on a muddy, troubled look, as though an element had entered the situation that they were not prepared to deal with. “How about it, fellas?” Clete said. “You capisci who Gideon Richetti is?”

Both men looked at Adonis like sentinels waiting for the go-ahead.

“My employees aren’t part of this, Mr. Purcel,” Adonis said.

“You pimped out your stepdaughter,” Clete said. “Do these guys know that? How do you say ‘pimp’ in greaseball?”

“Time for you to leave our table, sir,” Adonis said.

“You tell Eddy Firpo I’ll be dialing him up,” Clete said.

“I have nothing to do with Firpo, and neither do Isolde and Johnny Shondell,” Adonis said. “They got out of their contract with him.”

“So that puts you in control?” I said.

“I own restaurants and fisheries and an olive oil company in Italy,” Adonis said. “Ta-ta, gentlemen.” He jiggled his fingers at us.

I cupped my hand around Clete’s bicep. It felt like concrete. “I talked with Richetti tonight, Adonis,” I said. “He showed concern for our safety. That means his alliances have changed. I don’t know if that’s of interest to you or not.”

A single strand of oily mahogany-dark hair hung on his forehead. He touched a place on his cheekbone where I had kicked him. “Would you repeat that, please?”

“I like your threads,” I said. “Keep fighting the good fight.” I gave him a thumbs-up and went back to the bar.

Clete joined me seconds later. He was wheezing with laughter. “You pissed in his brain. The guy won’t sleep for a week.” He kept laughing and snorting at the same time.

“You want some gumbo?” I said.

“These guys got gumbo?”

“You bet,” I said.

“Maybe there’s some sunshine in all this.”

That was Clete.

There were no witnesses to the murder. Firpo must have been seated in a stall shooting up when his executioner entered the room. What happened after that was a matter of speculation. The stall door was neither locked nor broken. Would Firpo sit on a commode and shoot up without sliding the bolt? That made no sense. Which meant he probably knew the killer and opened the door of his own volition.

Several people in the nightclub had motivation to punch Firpo’s ticket. Maybe financial need had forced Adonis Balangie to pimp out his stepdaughter to Firpo and Mark Shondell, and Adonis had sent one of his Sicilian gumballs into the stall to even the score. The vicious nature of the killing, the sawed-off pigtail stuffed in the mouth, had the ritualistic overtones of the traditional Black Hand — also known as the Mafia — which had been in New Orleans since 1890, the year they murdered the police commissioner.

Mark Shondell was another candidate. Firpo was a hype. Shondell probably blamed him for getting Johnny on the spike and for Johnny running off with Isolde. Also, Shondell was probably Firpo’s silent business partner, and perhaps Firpo’s company assets would transfer automatically to Shondell, who would have no trouble finding a psychopath with a box cutter.

Then there was Gideon Richetti. There seemed to be no end to his potential. Unfortunately, we had no idea who or even what he was. I wanted to dismiss him as a meltdown. But like all categorizations, that didn’t slide down the pipe. Truth be known, I wondered if I was having a nervous collapse.

As I sorted through all the people who might want to take Firpo off the board, I couldn’t exclude Clete. There had been slips in Clete’s life. He had taken ten grand from the Mob and killed a federal witness, although the shooting was an accident. More significantly, he experienced psychotic episodes that could visit unimaginable levels of rage on a misogynist or predator or an abuser of the elderly or someone who was cruel to animals. Plus, he daily nursed his hatred of neo-Nazis and was convinced they were going to have at one least one more historical grab at the brass ring.

Earlier in the evening he’d said he wanted to blow up someone’s shit. His favorite banzai cocktail was a jigger of Jack lowered into a mug of cold beer. I could imagine Clete throwing a couple in the tank and going after the man who had arranged for him to be tortured to death by Gideon. In fact, I wondered why he hadn’t already done it.

The last name on the list was the one I hated to think about, not because I believed he was guilty but because he was too honest, the kind of man the system can grind into pulp.

Look, this is how the system works. Or, rather, how it doesn’t work. The law is usually enforced only upon the people who are available. The members of the Pool are always close by. The Pool consists of recidivists and dysfunctional people who skipped toilet training and couldn’t discuss the recipe for ice water. The recidivists think their rap sheets have the historical importance of the Magna Carta; their jailhouse tats are the equivalent of military citations. They take pride in their first-name relationship with cops. If they aren’t guests of the gray-bar hotel chain or at the least don’t have a sheet, no one would know they ever existed.

What’s the point? The system was created to handle only certain kinds of people. If you are on the square and wander into it, chances are it will cannibalize you.

Excuse my digression. My real problem was the postage stamps on Firpo’s shoe. I would have to show them to the locals. I would also have to tell them where I thought they came from.

Just as the first homicide detective arrived, I saw Father Julian standing by the front entrance and walked over to him. “Let’s go outside,” I said.

“Why?” he said, looking at the paramedics bringing in the gurney.

“It’s important.”

“Who was hurt?”

“Eddy Firpo. He wasn’t hurt. He was murdered.”

“The lawyer with Mark Shondell?”

“Come outside. Don’t argue. We don’t have much time.”

Naturally, he resisted. I took him by the arm and walked him through the door. The wind was cold and damp and smelled of the chain of lakes north of the campus. “Were you carrying some collectible postage stamps tonight?” I said.

“No.”

“You didn’t buy some in Baton Rouge for your collection?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“There were three stamps stuck to Firpo’s shoe.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“How many people in Baton Rouge bring valuable historical postage stamps into a nightclub?”

“Are you saying I’m involved with this man’s death?”

“My opinion is irrelevant,” I said. “It’s those cops in there we need to worry about. If there’s anything you need to tell me, now’s the time.”

“What did the stamps look like?”

“I saw some Latin or Italian words on them. One stamp was postmarked 1891.”

The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes drained of color. “I didn’t bring any stamps into this club.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay, what?” he said.

“I believe you. If the cops question you, tell them what you just said. Then say nothing else. If they press you, tell them you want a lawyer.”

“I don’t need one,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Why did you react when I mentioned the 1891 stamp?”

He paused. “I have an 1891 Monaco stamp at home.”

“Get in your car and drive back to New Iberia,” I said. “Don’t talk to anyone until I call you.”

“What’s happening here, Dave?”

“Everything will be fine,” I replied. “I promise.”

Want to know what a pompous jerk sounds like? I had just outdone myself.

I told the Baton Rouge homicide detectives what I had seen but left out any mention of Julian. The next morning, which was Saturday, I drove to the hotel where Penelope was staying. I used the lobby phone and asked her to have breakfast with me in the dining room.

“Your voice,” she said.

“What about it?”

“You sound tense.”

“It’s a lovely day,” I said. “Toggle on down.”

“Toggle?” she said.

Fifteen minutes later, she walked into the dining room. She had on a pink sundress and a broad straw hat, the kind Scarlett O’Hara might have worn. “Why the flowers?” she said.

I handed her the bouquet of roses I had just bought at the florist not far from the Shadows. “Let’s order, then talk,” I said.

The waitress came to our table and wrote down our order, then smiled at the roses and left.

“So tell me,” Penelope said.

“Would you like to get married?”

“With whom?”

I looked out the window at the cars entering and leaving the four-lane. “Take a guess.”

“You?”

“I’ve never had to seek humility,” I said. “It always finds me.”

“You’re asking me to marry you?”

I watched the waitress filling our coffeepot at the service counter. She had auburn hair and the strong young body of a working-class Cajun girl.

“Unless you’re thinking of doing something this weekend,” I said.

“Because your conscience bothers you?”

“Good enough for a romance, good enough for a ring,” I said.

“I appreciate what you’re doing, Dave, but we may not be right for each other.”

“It was just a thought.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone like you.”

“You’ve probably been lucky,” I replied. I put a twenty-dollar bill on the tablecloth.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yep, see you around.”

I walked through the revolving glass door and out into the sunshine. But not fast enough.

“You’re not going to just walk away from me like that,” she said at my back.

“No offense intended,” I said.

“No offense? You drop flowers in a woman’s face, then give her five seconds to decide if she wants to live a lifetime with you?”

“Maybe I’ll have a short lifespan.”

“You’re doing this to get rid of me, aren’t you?”

“No, but I wonder why you’ve lived all these years with a Mafia gutter rat. An uptown one, but still a gutter rat.”

“I’ve told you. Others are dependent upon our families.”

“I think that’s pure rot. You’re a grand and charitable woman who befriended a man in a time of need. It was an honor to be part of your life.”

“Don’t go.”

“Got to do it. You deserve a better man than the likes of me.”

But I couldn’t move, and I didn’t know why.

“Second thoughts?”

“You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. I’d like to kill Adonis Balangie. Know why?”

“No.”

“I know he’s had you. I also know you’ve lied about it. It’s not the man, it’s the lie that killed us, Penelope.”

I got in my truck and dropped the keys. I couldn’t put the key in the ignition. When I finally drove away, I looked in the rearview mirror. She was still standing in front of the hotel, the brim of her hat wilted on either side of her face. I don’t think I ever felt worse in my life.

At eleven that night I walked along the edge of the Teche to a live oak that was over two hundred years old, not far from the old Burke home. It was here, on V-J Day in 1945, that I first fished with my father. He was a huge, illiterate man who fought in saloons for fun and racked pipe on the monkey board high above a drilling rig on the Gulf of Mexico, under the stars, the wind in his face, the waves crashing below, fearless unto the day the drill punched into an early pay sand and the casing blew out of the hole and Big Aldous Robicheaux clipped his safety belt onto the Geronimo line and leaped into the dark, never to be seen again.

But I no longer dwelled on the tragedy of my father and mother, and the deprivation and violence and loneliness that defined their lives. Rather than thinking of Big Aldous’s last moments sliding down the guy wire as the rig melted and toppled with him, I thought of this spot on the bayou where he taught me how to fish. He had bought me a cane pole and a balsa-wood bobber and a weight fashioned out of a perforated .36-caliber lead ball he bought from a colored man for twenty cents. It was a fine gift to receive, but I could catch no fish with it, although I baited the hook first with crickets, then night crawlers, and finally red wigglers.

In my disgust, I swung the weight, the hook, and the bobber out in the center of the lily pads and fouled the hook in the roots below. I was ready to throw my pole in the water. Big Aldous was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, blowing the smoke into the wind. He flicked the cigarette in the bayou. “Don’t be getting mad, no,” he said. “You got to outt’ink the fish, you.”

I was lost.

“See, you done put your hands on the bait, Davie,” he said. “The fish can smell you. So you got to change the smell.”

“How do I do that?” I said.

“Spit on your bait. What you t’ink?”

I lifted the poor drowned worm on my hook from the water and spat on it, then swung over the current. The bobber floated downstream about one foot and plunged out of sight. I pulled up the cane pole with such violence that I broke it in half and flung a goggle-eye perch into a limb above my head. My father had to borrow a rake from the Burke home and comb the fish out of the tree.

I don’t mean to tire others with this account. But everyone has a private cathedral that he earns, a special place to which he returns when the world is too much late and soon, and loss and despair come with the rising of the sun. For me it was the little dry mudbank on which I now stood, the tide rippling past me, the ducks murmuring and ruffling their wings among the cattails and flooded bamboo.

Then a giant wobbling soap bubble of incandescence descended on the bayou, bent and distorted, metamorphic, its colors changing from pink to yellow and red and pink again, as though it were swirling with fire that contained no heat. In the center was the galleon Clete and I had seen before, the oars dipping into the Teche, but this time Gideon was standing in the bow, beckoning. “Don’t be afraid,” he called.

“No, I will not board your ship, sir,” I said.

“You must.”

“I came as you asked,” I said. “Please do not act in an authoritarian fashion.”

A boarding hatch opened on the gunwale, and a ramp slid from the deck to the bank. I found myself drawn up the ramp, inside the bubble, the light as tangible as tentacles on my skin.

Gideon was not wearing a cowl. His tiny ears and nose and the reptilian tightness of the skin on his face and skull were frightening.

Down below, between the hull and the deck on both sides of the ship, were row after row of men chained to their benches and oars, some dozing with their heads on their chests, others with the expressions you would associate with infants ripped from their mothers’ grasp.

In the midst of the oarsmen sat Jess Bottoms, his feet bare, chains attached to his wrists and ankles. His hair was barbered and his clothes were clean. His face was stupefied. He was examining his chains as though he could not understand their presence on his body.

“Sometimes decades pass before these fellows know where they are,” Gideon said. “In reality, all of us are outside of time. There is no past, present, or future. The future you and Mr. Purcel have is already taking place. It will just take a little while for you to find your way to it.”

“I don’t wish to talk about the future,” I said. “I don’t want to be on board your ship, either.”

“You’re just a visitor, Mr. Robicheaux. People such as you don’t make the cut.”

“Then why am I here?”

“I need you to help me.”

“Sir?”

“I was used to kill many people. I have no peace. The one I grieve over most is Leslie Rosenberg. She was totally innocent of any crime. I hate what I have done.”

“Any crimes you have committed were done with your own consent. I suggest you lose the ashes-and-sackcloth routine.”

“You won’t help me?”

“I’m not a theologian. Call up Father Julian.”

“Evil people are about to hurt him.”

“Mark Shondell?” I said.

“Don’t speak to me about the Shondells.”

“You were at his house,” I said. “Marcel LaForchette saw you there.”

“I will not discuss this.”

“You worked for him. Why denounce him now?”

“Don’t tempt me, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“Then don’t be a hypocrite.”

“Be gone with you,” he said.

“Did you kill Firpo?”

“I kill no one. They kill themselves.”

“That’s a lie,” I said.

“I can do you great injury.”

“The words of a bully,” I said. “I thought better of you.”

His skin and the scales on it were luminous with an oily sweat. He raised his hand as though to strike me. I knew I was in mortal danger but could not move. Suddenly, Gideon and the galleon and the poor devils on it disappeared, and I was on the bank, deep in the shadow of the live oak, the air dank and cold and throbbing with frogs.

I walked home like a drunk man and woke in the morning facedown on the couch, my clothes on, the soles of my shoes rimmed with mud.

That night the sky was sealed with clouds that resembled the swollen bellies of whales, and when lightning split the heavens, hailstones thundered down all over Iberia Parish, particularly out on the four-lane, where a slender man wearing a tall-crown hat and a three-piece suit and spit-shined pointy-nose cowboy boots entered a truck stop café and sat down in a booth and ordered a piece of pecan pie and a glass of chocolate milk.

The storm was so severe that most truckers traveling the four-lane had parked under the overpasses to protect their windshields and windows. As a consequence, the man in the Stetson was the only customer in the café. The only waitress on duty, Emily Thibodaux, said she never believed that one day a man in a café would cause her to lose control of her bladder and pee a pool of urine around her shoes.

Carroll LeBlanc and I arrived at the café at a quarter past midnight, just after the first ambulance and fire truck had gotten there. The Thibodaux woman was sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, her lipstick smeared on the cigarette butt, her hand shaking as violently as her teeth were chattering. A blanket was wrapped around her. She looked like a frightened Eskimo.

“He had silver hair?” Carroll said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Wit’ yellow in it, like dirty soap was ironed into it. His voice was way down inside himself. I don’t t’ink he’s from around here.”

“He had a foreign accent?” I said.

“No, suh. Maybe Texas or Mississippi.” She looked toward the service window in the kitchen. There was a sorrow in her face that I’ve seen only among civilians in war zones or in the aftermath of fatal accidents or natural catastrophes.

“Start over,” Carroll said.

“He come in and sat down and left his hat on. His eyes didn’t have no color.”

“What do you mean, no color?” Carroll said.

“Like cataracts. I brought him his pie and chocolate milk, and he called me back and said did I know Clete Purcel. I tole him Mr. Clete comes in late at night, but he ain’t come in tonight, maybe ’cause of the storm and all. He axed me what time he comes in when he comes in. I tole him I wasn’t sure.”

“That’s what got him jacked up?” Carroll said.

“No, suh,” she said. “I was walking away and he said, ‘This pie tastes like dog turds.’ I tole him that wasn’t a nice way to talk. He said, ‘Talk to me like that again, you cunt, and I’ll put somet’ing in your mout’ ain’t gonna be pie.’ ”

She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.

“Go on,” I said.

“I went in the kitchen and got a fresh piece of apple pie and give it to him.” She drew in on her cigarette and exhaled slowly, staring into the smoke as though she wanted to hide in it.

“Tell us about the homeless man,” Carroll said.

“He come in off the road dragging a suitcase, wit’ ice in his hair, coughing in his hand somet’ing awful. He wanted a cup of coffee, but he only had fifty cents. I tole him I’d make up the difference, me, but I couldn’t give him no food. Troot’ is, I’d get in trouble for letting him stay inside.”

“Go on,” I said.

“The man in the hat tole me I’d better get that pile of stink away from him. I went into the kitchen and got the homeless man a piece of apple pie and tole Tee Boy, that’s the cook, I knowed I was stealing from the café, but I cain’t let nobody starve. I said, ‘At least I’m serving him pie ain’t got no germs on it.’ Tee Boy axed what I meant, and I tole him I spit in the apple pie I give Mr. White Trash for calling other people names.”

She looked for a place to put her cigarette. Carroll took it from her and got up from his chair and flicked it out the door. I waited for him to come back. “What’s the rest of it, Miss Emily?” I said.

“The service window was open,” she said. She looked into space, as though her words were written on air and she would have to look at them the rest of her life. She started to cry.

“This isn’t your fault, Miss Emily,” I said. “This man who came in here is evil. Don’t let him hurt you any more than he has.”

“Tee Boy got seven children.”

Tee Boy was black and must have been six and a half feet tall. I had not looked at the body yet. And I didn’t want to. Through the window, I could see uniformed deputies stringing crime-scene tape around the parking lot and the building. More emergency vehicles were coming down the four-lane, flashers rippling in the rain.

“What happened then?” Carroll said.

“I went back out and started wiping off the tables, like we do before we close, even though we wasn’t closing. I seen a shadow cover my shoulder and arm and hand and then the table, like the shadow was alive. I turned around and he was standing right behind me.”

“How was he dressed?” Carroll said.

“He had on a blue suit and a gray vest that didn’t look like they belonged together. Everyt’ing about him was like that. He had a funny smell, like bedclothes when a man and woman has been lying on them and doing t’ings.”

“Where was the homeless man all this time?” I said.

“In the bat’room,” she said. “If Mr. Fontenot finds out he was in there, I’m gonna lose my job.”

“I’ll talk to your boss,” Carroll said. “Just tell us what happened, Miss Emily.”

“The man said—”

“Said what?” I asked.

“I don’t like using these words. I know his kind. They beat up on women, yeah.”

“What did he say, Miss Emily?” I asked.

“He said, ‘I want you to sit down and watch this, bitch. Then I’m gonna light you up. Oh, am I gonna light you up.’ That’s when I wet myself. The homeless man come out the bat’room door, and the man in the suit shot him t’rew the face. Then he went after Tee Boy.”

“That’s when you hid in the freeze locker?” I said.

“I couldn’t go out the front ’cause he could see me, so I run down the hallway to go out the back, where my car is at. But the Dumpster guy moved the Dumpster and blocked the door.”

“You could hear from inside the locker?” I said.

“Yes, suh,” she said. “Tee Boy couldn’t understand why the man was mad at him. He kept saying, ‘I ain’t got no truck wit’ you.’ Then there was five or six shots. The man said, ‘How you like that, nigger?’ ”

I saw Helen’s cruiser pull up in front. I patted Emily Thibodaux on the back and went into the kitchen. Tee Boy was lying on his side, his face in the shadow of the stove. The wounds were tightly grouped in the center of his chest. The brass on the floor was probably nine-millimeter. The closest shell to the body was six feet away. I realized Helen was standing behind me. “What’s your witness say?” she asked.

“The shooter was asking about Clete,” I said. “He insulted her. She spat in his pie and bragged to the cook about it. Our guy overheard the conversation and went nuts and started shooting.”

“He shot the surveillance cameras, too,” Helen said. She looked at the grouping of the wounds in Tee Boy’s chest and the distance of the shells from the victim. “Think we have a pro?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “He doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Did you talk to Clete yet?”

“Haven’t had time.”

“This is his late-night hangout when he’s not in the slop chute. That means our guy knows Clete’s routine. Get on it. I’ll do the notification.”

“You know Tee Boy’s family?”

“For twenty years. Tell Clete we want this guy alive.”

The trees were still dripping, but the skies had cleared and the wind was cool and flowers were blooming in the yards along East Main. I showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes and checked in with Helen at the department and ate lunch at Victor’s, then returned home and called Alafair at Reed College in Portland.

It’s hard to tell your child that you’re lonely and the child’s absence is a large part of the problem. In fact, I believe the inculcation of guilt in a child is a terrible thing. So I said nothing about my state of mind or the murders out on the highway, or the likelihood that either Clete or I would pay a price for our involvement in the feud between the Shondell and Balangie families.

I had pulled Alafair from a downed plane out on the salt when she was five years old. Technically, she was an illegal, a refugee flown with her mother out of El Sal by a Maryknoll priest who died with the mother in the crash. I nicknamed her Baby Squanto for the Baby Squanto Indian books she read, and I watched her grow into a beautiful young woman who earned an academic scholarship to Reed but whose dreams still took her back to the day an army patrol came into her village and decided to create an example.

I was about to end our conversation when she said, “Is everything okay, Dave? You sound funny.”

“We had a double homicide out on the four-lane last night,” I said. “The shooter may have been after Clete.”

“You need me there? I can get a flight this afternoon.”

“We’re fine here.”

“No, there’s something else wrong, isn’t there?”

How do you tell your daughter about multiple encounters with a time traveler who was an executioner in the year 1600 and perhaps an adherent of Mussolini in the 1920s?

“Dave, you tell me the truth or I’m coming home,” she said.

“I’ve met someone,” I said to avoid opening a subject I would not be able to shut down.

“Good. Who?”

“It didn’t work out.”

“Who, Dave?”

“The wife of Adonis Balangie, although she says she’s not his wife.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“I asked her to marry me. She didn’t seem in the mood. So I said adios.”

“You’re making this up.”

“You miss Paris?”

“I was only there a week. Don’t change the subject.”

“We’ve got some bad stuff going on here, Alf,” I said. “I think it may involve evil entities. It’s hard to explain. I think Mark Shondell wants to kill Clete. I believe Shondell might be in league with the devil.”

I don’t think I ever heard a longer silence in my life.

Helen Soileau picked me up at my house in a cruiser, and the two of us rolled down Old Jeanerette Road in the rain. Julian had called in the 911. A fire truck and an ambulance and paramedics were already at the scene. A short, square-bodied fireman in a yellow slicker and a fire helmet who wore a handlebar mustache met us by the roadside. “Daigle” was painted in black letters on the back of his slicker. Emergency flares were burning along the edges of the road.

“Is that what I think it is?” Helen said.

“Watch where you step,” Daigle said. “One of the medics puked.”

“Where’s Father Julian?” I said.

“They’re packing him up,” Daigle said.

“What do you mean, pack—” I began.

“Bad choice of words,” Daigle said. “His fingers and privates got worked over pretty bad. There were pliers and a metal file on the floor. The file had scorch marks on it. The burner on the stove was lit. Whoever done that is a real piece of shit.”

“He’s going to make it, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “If somebody can clean what happened out of his head.”

I clicked on my flashlight and walked down the roadside. There were no skid marks on the asphalt or tire indentations by the rain ditches. A human arm lay in the middle of the two-lane, and a leg farther on, the foot sheathed in a pointy-nose Tony Lama. Farther on I saw the torso of a man, most of the clothes gone, one arm and one leg attached, the knee snapped backward. I shined my flashlight on the rain ditch. The head of a man with silver hair bobbed among the cattails.

“Mother of God,” Helen said.

I shone the light up and down the road. Blood was splattered all over the asphalt. But there were no drag marks, no spot that showed impact with a vehicle, no tire print in the blood, no streaks of grease or rust or tissue of the victim.

Helen was breathing audibly through her nose, her hands on her hips. “How do you read this shit?”

“Gideon Richetti.”

“Goddamm it, don’t say that.”

“Let’s talk to Julian.”

“You know what will happen around here if this gets out? ‘Sheriff’s department opens investigation into ghost from the seventeenth century.’ ”

“Gideon is a revelator.”

She stuck her fingers in both ears. “I’m not going to listen to this. This is a hit-and-run, probably by a big truck. The body got snagged in the undercarriage. Does bwana copy?”

“That’s crap and you know it,” I said. I clicked off my light.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she said at my back.

“The medics drove away with Julian while we were jacking off. I’ll be at Iberia General. I’ll bum a ride.”

She grabbed me by the arm and spun me around. “Outside of Clete Purcel, I’m the best friend you ever had, Dave. Don’t talk like that to me again.”

“Wake up, Helen. We’re dealing with the supernatural. We just can’t tell anybody. Sometimes the truth isn’t an easy burden to bear.”

Clete called me on my landline that night. The moon was up, the clouds torn like strips of black cotton, leaves and broken tree limbs floating in the Teche. A tornado had touched down outside Lake Charles. I had brought in the cats and my raccoon, Tripod. All of them were lying down on the throw rug, tails flipping, as though they were observing the events of the evening. When Alafair was home, they got on the furniture, including the breakfast table, which they covered with seat smears. Why do I mention these little guys at this juncture? Because at that moment they were the only aspects of normalcy in my life.

I picked up the phone on the third ring. “What’s the haps, Cletus?”

“I’m on the bottom of Terrebonne Parish. I could use some backup in the next twelve hours or so. I think a pile of shit is about to go down.”

“What kind of shit?”

“Adonis and his old lady are over here. I saw them at a restaurant in Houma. Mark Shondell has a house on stilts south of here. This insider guy I know says Johnny and Isolde got kidnapped by some dickheads, guys who used to run with Delmer Perkins. Guys who carry blowtorches and pliers.”

“Mark Shondell is behind the kidnapping?”

“He wants to control their careers and screw up the Balangies. But the bigger deal is political. All these cocksuckers are. They’ve been with us since the German Bund. They’ve just been waiting for their time in history.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The cocksuckers I was just talking about.”

A conversation with Clete could be the equivalent of driving a nail into your skull. “Where are you staying?”

He gave me the name of a motel in a small settlement on the south end of Terrebonne Parish, almost to the salt water.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said.

“It better not be about Lizard Man.”

“He may be looking for you, Leslie Rosenberg says.”

“If you see him before I do, tell him to get lost.”

“Maybe he wants your forgiveness.”

“Tell him I’ll meet him on Mars in about five hundred years or so. Dave, I still feel like we’re inside a nightmare of some kind.”

“How’s your weather?” I said.

“What’s the name of that song you like by John Fogerty?”

“ ‘Bad Moon Rising’?”

“That’s the weather in Terrebonne Parish.”

By mid-afternoon Clete was out of his funk and concentrated on our objective. He called the airboat pilot who had given him information about Shondell and asked him to meet us in a café ten miles up the road. I told Carroll to keep his eyes on Shondell’s stilt house. The airboat pilot was a Cajun from Houma who had lost a leg in the propeller of his father’s airboat when he was twelve. He had intense brown eyes and a narrow unshaved face that made me think of an unhusked coconut. His name was Dallas Landry. He said he had seen no sign of a young couple matching the description of Johnny and Isolde.

“How about the guys on the tug?” I said. “You talk to them at all?”

“They ain’t the kind of guys you talk to,” he said.

“How many guys are there?” Clete asked.

“Four or five. Lots of ink on both arms. They got women wit’ ’em, too.”

“Hookers?” Clete said.

“They ain’t from the convent.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Dallas,” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“Mr. Mark had a guy there a couple of times. A lawyer, maybe. They was laughing about Adonis Balangie. They said they was gonna take everyt’ing he’s got. I pretended I didn’t hear nothing. He’s got a five-hundred-foot yacht about two miles out in the Gulf. He’s got sailboats on it.”

There was another question I wanted to ask him. He wasn’t the kind of man we euphemistically call a “confidential informant,” many of whom are motivated by aggrandizement or fear or a desire to be accepted or to feel important. He was taking considerable risk, the least of which was loss of his job.

“Why’d you come forward, Dallas?” I said.

He stared at his coffee cup. “Mr. Mark bothers me.”

“In what way?” I said.

“I ain’t got a way of putting it. It’s the way he looks at them young girls. I ain’t seen him put a hand on them. But I seen the way he looks. Somet’ing else, too.” He knotted his fingers.

“Go on,” I said.

“He got somet’ing dark in him, Mr. Robicheaux.”

Just then Carroll LeBlanc came through the café entrance. “What’s going on with you guys?” he said.

“You’re supposed to be watching the stilt house,” Clete said.

“I didn’t know where y’all were,” Carroll said. He glanced at Dallas Landry. “Who are you?”

“I run an airboat service,” Dallas said.

“Oh yeah, Clete told me.”

“Walk outside with me,” Clete said to Carroll.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Carroll said. “What the hell is going on?”

Clete went outside by himself and got in his Caddy.

“See you around, Mr. Robicheaux,” Dallas said.

“You, too,” I said.

Carroll sat down at the table. I wanted to take him apart.

“I saw Johnny Shondell, so cool your jets, Dave,” he said. “I couldn’t get cell service, so I motored on up the road.”

“You’re sure it was Johnny?”

“He was standing on Shondell’s deck, wearing shades and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked pretty relaxed.”

“You’ve got beer on your breath,” I said.

“You want me to bag ass, I’ll understand.”

“Get your act together, Carroll,” I said. “I’ll see you at the motel.”

“You trying to hurt me?” he said.

I went outside and got in the Caddy. The top was up, the hand-waxed pink paint job sprinkled with leaves from the oak tree overhead.

“You don’t look too hot,” Clete said.

“You’re the best guy I’ve ever known, Clete,” I replied.

He started the engine, an unlit Lucky Strike hanging from his mouth. “Sometimes you truly perplex me, noble mon.”

Johnny was frozen at the mantel, his face sick. “Dave, you’re such a fool,” Penelope said. “And damn you to hell for it.”

“Where’s your daughter, Penelope?” I said.

“Don’t address my wife by her first name,” Adonis said.

“Hey, Adonis, time to keep your mouth shut,” Clete said.

“Let’s not have unpleasant words,” Shondell said. “Do you have a warrant of some kind, Dave?”

“We don’t need one,” I said. “We’re not here to arrest anyone or to search your dwelling.”

“Dave, I don’t appreciate your being here,” Shondell said. “You struck me in the face. In an earlier era, you would have been called out. Under the Dueling Oaks. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

“I’m trying to grab a noun or adverb here and there,” I replied.

“Our situation is not a humorous one, sir,” he said. “You are meddling in things you know nothing about. I am going to ask you once, and once only, to leave the premises.”

“Listen to him, Dave,” Penelope said.

“Where’s your daughter?” I said.

“She’ll be here soon,” Penelope said.

“Good. We’ll wait,” Clete said.

“Did y’all see the galleon?” I asked.

“What?” Shondell said.

“I just saw Gideon’s galleon,” I said. I pointed at the window. “Take a look. To the southeast, perhaps fifty yards from where we’re standing.”

Shondell walked to the window. “The wind and the waves have played a trick on you.”

“Dave?” Carroll said behind me.

I did not want to hear any more from Carroll LeBlanc. “What is it?”

“I’ve really messed up.”

“In what way?” I said.

He looked deathly ill. “I didn’t pass on some information I got from Helen.”

“What information?”

“Somebody scooped up Father Julian from the hospital,” he said.

I turned around. “Say that again?”

“People went into Iberia General and grabbed him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because he’s on a pad,” Clete said.

“Dave, I’ve been trying to tell you,” Carroll said. “My daughter was gonna be on the street. I didn’t know Shondell was gonna do all this.”

“You didn’t have a clue, huh?” I said.

“You wouldn’t listen to anyone, Dave,” Adonis said. “You were too busy bedding my wife.”

Clete stuck his finger in Adonis’s face. “You open your mouth one more time, and I’ll paste you all over this room.”

“Apparently, we have a little problem,” Shondell said. “Mr. Bell, would you step out here, please?”

A large man in a fedora and a rumpled suit came out of the kitchen. He had a dissolute, fleshy face, small eyes, and bad teeth. He was holding a pistol-grip AK-47 with a thirty-round banana magazine. He grinned, exposing the gaps in his teeth. “Put your hands on your heads or we’ll have a great deal of mop-and-bucket work to do.”

“Dave, this is the cocksucker who sapped me in Key West,” Clete said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Bell said.

“Take their weapons, Adonis,” Shondell said.

Adonis didn’t move. “Did you hear me?” Shondell said to him.

“You don’t take out cops,” Adonis said.

“Do you want to see black or white sails tonight?” Shondell said.

Clete and I didn’t know the significance of the black sails we had seen, but obviously, Adonis did. He peeled back Clete’s raincoat and pulled the cut-down twelve-gauge from his shoulder, then disarmed both me and Carroll. Penelope’s eyes were shiny with shame.

“How about you, Johnny?” I said. “Whose side are you on? Where is Isolde?”

He stared at the floor. Carroll could not look me in the face.

“People know where we are,” I said.

“Afraid not,” Shondell said. “Your airboat pilot no longer exists. Your colleagues have no idea where you are, courtesy of Detective LeBlanc. You slapped me in public, Mr. Robicheaux. You cannot imagine the ordeal that awaits you and Mr. Purcel.”

“What about LeBlanc?” Clete said.

Shondell studied Carroll’s face. “Maybe we’ll make up some games. A behavioral study of sorts.”

Two men from the tugboat came heavily up the steps and hooked up our wrists behind our backs with plastic ligatures, then pulled black cloth bags with drawstrings over our heads. One of the men soaked our faces with a spray can. I smelled an odor like ether, then my knees caved as though I had been dropped through the trapdoor on a scaffold.

The hoods were removed from our heads, and we were marched down a passageway to a forecastle that had leather-padded bulkheads and blue plastic tarps spread on the deck. There were no portholes, and I had no way to get a bearing. Chains with sheep-lined leather cuffs hung from the bulkheads.

“How do you like my arrangement?” Shondell said. “Roomy, soundproof, and with an array of items that go back perhaps five hundred years.”

At the far end of the compartment were primitive machines and worktables covered with metal instruments. The machines were constructed of brass and iron and oak and heavy bolts and spikes and pulleys and cogged wheels with long wood handles attached to them.

“Anything to say, Mr. Purcel?” Shondell said.

“Eat shit,” Clete said.

“When it’s your turn, the man whose finger you shot off will be here to cheer you along,” Shondell said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“What are you going to tell Johnny about all this?” Clete said.

“He’ll know you went away. He’s a good boy. He’ll stay that way.”

“What about Isolde?” I said.

“Believe me, these are not your concerns. In the next twenty-four hours, you’re going to be extremely preoccupied.” Shondell gazed at the machines and instruments that represented the darkness I had tried to plumb in Marcel LaForchette. How could I have mistaken the torment in poor Marcel for the disease that lived inside Mark Shondell?

“I love the names of these things,” he said. “The scold’s bridle for loquacious housewives, the choke pear for expansion of the mouth and other places, the iron maiden, the scavenger’s daughter for compressing people who need size reduction, the rack, and the thumbscrew. How about my favorite, the brazen bull? The victim is inserted inside and slowly boiled. There’re pipes inside that make his screams sound like the roaring of a bull.”

Carroll LeBlanc was crying.

“Nothing to say, Dave?” Shondell said.

“It looks like a junk pile that your average pervert would probably appreciate,” I said.

“I think you’ll change your tune.” Shondell looked at the brazen bull and grinned. “That’s a hint.”

“Here’s one thing that won’t change, Shondell,” I said. “No matter what happens to us, you’ll remain the same. You’re trash, your family is trash, and your ancestors were trash. I think God keeps a few people like you around to remind the white race we’ve got some serious problems. I heard the Shondells worked as pubic-latrine cleaners for Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. Is that true?”

Maybe it was the light or my imagination, but the creases in his face seemed to deepen, with an effect like soil erosion, the blood leaving his lips. He exuded an odor that smelled like an unchanged bandage. There were whiskers showing above his collar, the way they do when an old man cannot shave adequately.

Then he seemed to collect himself. “A young woman awaits me now,” he said. “After a nap and a shower and a fine breakfast, I’ll return, and we’ll continue our talk. General Mendoza will be accompanying me.”

“Mr. Shondell, you promised you’d get my daughter into a hospital,” Carroll said.

“Oh, yes,” Shondell said. “Thank you for reminding me. A lovely girl.”

Aside from bell, our escorts wore zip-front silver overalls and goggles and plastic covers on their hair and plastic booties on their shoes and latex on their hands; they looked more like space aliens than medieval torturers.

I know the presence of men like these in our tale might test the limits of one’s credulity. But let me tell you of my first visit to Angola Prison. I have never told this to others because my account, if believed at all, would change nothing in the system, do no good for the victims, and depress people of goodwill who want to believe in their government, their media, and their fellow man. Since then I have never doubted that there are people in our midst, significant numbers of them, who would have worked at Auschwitz in the time it took to sign their names on the job application.

Angola was a convict-lease prison founded during Reconstruction by an odious man named Samuel James. Under his tutelage, thousands of convicts, mostly black, died of sickness, malnutrition, and physical abuse. The favorite instrument was the Black Betty. More than one hundred convicts still lie in the levee along the Mississippi River. In the second half of the twentieth century, inmates were put in narrow, perpendicular iron sweatboxes set in concrete in the middle of summer, with no space to sit down, a bucket between their legs. One man was kept there nineteen days. His body was molded to the shape of the box.

While I was a visitor, a convict who fell out on work detail was placed on an anthill. A convict who sassed a gun bull was taken to the hole and whipped with a three-foot chunk of garden hose; the man who beat him called the process “making a Christian out of a nigger.”

What kind of men were these? Uneducated peckerwoods with a jaw full of Red Man? That’s not even close. Sexual nightmares and psychopaths and the cruelest people on earth? Don’t doubt it for a minute.

Just before we reached the compartment where Shondell kept his collectibles, Clete leaned close to Carroll LeBlanc. “It’s never as bad as you think,” he said. “You fucked up, but you did it for your daughter. Streak and I don’t hold it against you.”

That was Clete Purcel.

The hatch was closed. Bell looked at his watch.

“How much is Shondell paying you for this?” I said.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he said.

“What’s to get?” I said. “You have a black soul. I hope you enjoy your shuffleboard retirement in St. Petersburg before you cash in.”

“I’m already on the other side,” he replied.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“I’m already across the Big Divide. You’re sure a dumb son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

I heard feet walking fast behind us. “Sorry I’m late,” Shondell said. He was wearing a suit and tie. “Please forgive me if I don’t stay around for all the festivities. I have some business to do, but I’ll have everything on film and I can look at it later. Ready to get started?”

He opened the hatch. At first I couldn’t see clearly past the hatchway. But obviously, Shondell was stunned. I stepped sideways so I could see past him. The inside of the compartment had been torn apart, the chains and leather padding ripped from the bulkheads, the machines of torment thrown about like toys, the oak levers snapped off, the steel shafts doubled over, the cogged wheels twisted out of shape, the Brazen Bull pulled inside out.

“Must be the maid’s day off,” Clete said.

Shondell’s face looked maniacal. “Secure the yacht,” he said to Bell.

“We’re at sea, sir,” Bell said. “We’re secured already.”

“Get Adonis Balangie down here.”

“Yes, sir. Should I tell him about this?”

“I told you to get him down here. So go do it.”

Shondell’s rage and indignation were feigned. I’ve seen fear in men’s faces when the 105s were coming in short, and I’ve seen the desperation in the eyes of men who knew the dust-off wasn’t coming and the Great Shade was about to pass over their faces; but I had never seen terror greater than I saw in Shondell’s eyes during that moment. It was my belief then, and my belief now, that he saw the future and was terrified and would have traded his soul to avoid it.

Unfortunately for him, he had probably bartered away his soul many years ago.

Clete and I went into the passageway. The yacht pitched again, almost knocking both of us down. The only time I had been in seas this violent was during Hurricane Audrey in 1957, when I was on board a drilling rig. As then, I felt as though we were inside a maelstrom, one in which the physical laws of the universe had been suspended. I heard dishware crashing, furniture turning over. I felt a wave hit the gunwale and the side of a hull with the density and power of wet cement.

Behind me, someone opened the hatch on the cabin and stepped outside. It was Leslie.

“What is it?” I said.

She moved close to me so Clete couldn’t hear. “Maybe I’ll see you in another time.”

I looked up and down the passageway. We were totally vulnerable. “Leslie, this isn’t the time for it.”

“I know.” Paradoxically, she stood on the tops of my shoes and put her arms around me and pressed her chest and head against me. I could feel her heart beating and her breath on my skin.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “So is Clete. No evil can ever destroy you.”

Then she was gone. She didn’t walk away. She was just gone.

“Dave, don’t just stand there,” Clete said. “Haul ass.”

“I was talking to Leslie.”

“Leslie? There’s nobody else here. Come on, big mon. We’ve got to get out of Crazy Town.”

When Johnny was gone, we worked our way back to the storage compartments. We found a case of wine and poured out three bottles and refilled them with gasoline and recorked the necks, then taped cotton pads from a first-aid kit to the bottoms and wet the pads with gas and put the bottles in a duffel bag with four emergency flares.

I suspect our behavior seemed grandiose. We were certainly outnumbered and outgunned. We were also physically exhausted and emotionally burnt out, the way you feel coming off a three-day whiskey drunk, lights flickering behind your eyelids, a bilious taste in your mouth, a clammy smell like a field mortuary on your skin. I tried to keep in mind the admonition of Stonewall Jackson I quoted earlier: Always mystify, mislead, and surprise.

I also believed we had another weapon on our side: Shondell was a bully, and like all bullies, he was probably a coward. The electrical system was still down, and the ship surrounded by fog, which gave us an appreciable degree of cover. The downside: We could not be certain of our environment. We seemed to be in a vortex, one similar to the eye of a storm. Even though the sun had risen, the skies were dark again, the waves filled with the same black luminosity I had seen when I stood on the dock by the amusement pier, wondering if Homer was still with us, his sirens winking at us, lifting their wet hair off their breasts, guiding us onto the rocks.

The truth is, I wanted the world to be enchanted, hung with mysteries and flights of the imagination. Why? Because with that belief, we become subsumed by creation and a participant in it, a living particle inside infinity. We abide in the presence of Charlemagne’s knights jingling up the road to Roncesvalles; we flee mediocrity and predictability, and we delight in the rising and setting of the sun and no longer fear death because indeed the earth abideth forever. I wanted Gideon to be real; I wanted to hear the clash of shields and Arthur pulling his sword from the rock and see Guinevere waiting on the parapet of the castle in the dawn, shrouded with a golden nimbus.

Why not? It beats dining out at Chuck E. Cheese.

Clete pulled me aside. He had taken Carroll’s butcher knife from him. He put a fresh magazine in the semi-auto and pulled and released the slide and clicked on the safety and placed the gun in my hand. “I got to get to Bell. You keep him busy until I can get behind him.”

“That’s a bad idea,” I said.

“No arguments, big mon.”

“Where’s Adonis?” I said.

“Who cares?”

“He’s a survivor,” I said. “He’ll cut a deal. Maybe he can get us some serious weapons.”

“Adonis may also be rallying the troops. I can’t believe I ever stood up for that guy. Come on, we got to put it in gear. Hey, I got one for you.”

“What?”

“Know what Ambrose Bierce called a pacifist?”

“Wrong time for it, Cletus.”

“A dead Quaker.” He hit me on the arm. “Stomp ass and take names, noble mon. The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are forever.”

Then he was gone.

The only other time I had ever been in such close proximity to a murderous enemy was in Vietnam. We got into night-trail firefights when Sir Charles was no more than five feet from us. Oddly, we had come to respect Sir Charles and his ability to live inside the greenery of a rain forest and suddenly materialize out of the mists, his uniform little more than black pajamas, his sandals cut from an automobile tire, his day’s ration a rice ball tied inside a sash around his hips.

Sir Charles could be incredibly cruel, as the VC demonstrated in the capture of Hué when they buried alive both civilians and prisoners of war. But Sir Charles was brave and had a cause, one that he saw as noble. Mark Shondell could lay no such claim. He sought revenge on others for his own failure, and helped inculcate racial hatred and fear in the electorate to divide us against ourselves. I had known his kind all my life. Except Shondell was not an ordinary man. Marcel LaForchette believed Shondell may have been in league with diabolical powers. I don’t know if there is any such thing. But I do believe there are people in our midst who wish to make a graveyard of the world, and their motivation may be no more complex than that of an angry child flinging scat because he was left with regularity in a dirty diaper.

The ribbon of green light on the southern horizon was creeping higher into the sky, the waves subsiding, the sailboat rising and falling with the rhythm of a rocking horse. I felt a drop of rain on the back of my neck, like a reminder of the earth’s resilience. Then I looked at Father Julian and felt the same sense about him. There are those among us who can walk through cannon smoke and grin about it while everyone else is going insane. That was Father Julian Hebert.

We were in the lee of the superstructure of which the bridge was part, but not at an angle where Bell could fire upon us. “How you doin’, Julian?” I said.

“Not bad,” he replied.

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“I’ll practice.”

“I’ve got to entertain Bell,” I said. “I hope to come back. If I don’t, try to get on board a lifeboat. Penelope is on the bridge. Maybe she can go with you.”

“You still have feelings for her?”

“None that are good.”

“Who’s the liar?” he said. But at least he smiled.

Here’s the minutiae of the situation, although Clete and Father Julian and I don’t wish to visit it anymore, and when we go out for dinner, we talk about the world that others see and live in and pretend their vision of things is the correct one.

Johnny fired up the pontoon plane anchored at the stilt house and flew himself and Isolde into Mexico, and for many years their music was a doorway into the past for those of us who wanted to hold on to what was best in our youthful days. Penelope and Adonis grew prematurely old, as though they had outlived their time. I saw her on occasion at the racetrack in New Orleans or in a restaurant in the Quarter, and she was always polite and demure, but for just a second her eyes would linger on mine and her face would become warm and contemplative, and whether imaginary or not, I would smell her perfume, even feel it wrapping around me, like the heavy odor of magnolia on a cool spring night, and I would hear a warning bell at a train crossing and make an excuse and get out of New Orleans as quickly as I could.

But this is not what I wanted to tell you about. I have learned little in life, acquired no wisdom, and given up dealing with the great mysteries. Stonewall Jackson talked about mystifying the enemy. I’ve got news for the general. You don’t need to mystify anyone. On balance, our best thinking has been a disaster from birth to the grave.

What happened to Shondell’s yacht? We don’t know. It disappeared, with his body and the bodies of his employees. I saw it go under from the deck of the sailboat, the keel rolling out of the waves, black smoke gushing from the portholes and open hatches. Maybe it slipped off the continental shelf. Why not? There’s a German submarine down there, its crew still on board. Maybe Mark Shondell found the company he deserved.

But let’s look again at the larger story. Leslie and her daughter also disappeared, probably forever, at least in tangible form. However, I see her and Elizabeth with Gideon in my sleep. I even feel her fingers touch my brow, and I know I’m not alone. Clete says he saw them inside a white fog off Key West. He takes the tale a step farther. He says Gideon has come twice in the early A.M to his apartment on St. Ann Street, like a brother-in-arms who cannot let go of shared memories.

Clete has always been a closet bibliophile. For years, in a small room overlooking his courtyard, he stored hundreds of paperback books he bought in secondhand stores and yard sales, most of them about American history and the War Between the States. He read and reread James Street’s Tap Roots and By Valour and Arms, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville, Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox, and all the works of Shelby Foote.

He also loved to visit Civil War battlefields. Not long ago Clete was visiting a site near the place where Grant had begun his Wilderness Campaign, which would eventually culminate at Appomattox Courthouse. Coincidentally, that same weekend, a collection of neo-Nazis and Klansmen had assembled in a city park, supposedly to oppose the removal of Confederate statuary. In a torchlight march, they chanted an anti-Semitic mantra of hatred and paranoia and carried the battle flag of Robert Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia next to Hitler’s swastika. The next day one of their members plowed his car into a crowd, injuring many and killing a young woman.

Clete left town, sickened by what he saw.

Late at night, back in New Orleans in the midst of an electric storm, Clete said Gideon sat down with him at the back of a poolroom. But he no longer resembled the reptilian figure who had haunted our lives. He was clean-shaven and clear-skinned and dressed in a corduroy coat and work pants and suspenders and a floppy hat an Italian vineyard owner might wear.

“The man Shondell served is in your midst, Mr. Purcel,” Gideon said. “But you should not worry about him. He will be destroyed by his own machinations.”

“Who’s the guy?” Clete asked.

“You already know.”

“I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want to hear it, either.”

Gideon squeezed Clete’s arm. “Arrivederci.”

I didn’t want to hear any more of the story. I had already put aside the unhappiness of the past and no longer wanted to probe the shadows of the heart or the evil that men do. It was time to lay down my sword and shield and study war no more. It’s odd, but just at dawn the other day, I saw a narrow boat with a hand-carved dragon’s head on the bow floating down Bayou Teche. On the boat I saw a woman reclining on her side, smiling at me, her lips parting, pulling me once again into the mists of ancient Avalon. Her hair was golden, her skin as pale as milk, a necklace of flowers hung on her breasts, and this is what she said:

A writer’s life can be a grand one, but the success she or he experiences involves many other people, most of whom receive little or no credit for their contributions to the work of the writer. In my case, I owe a debt to large numbers of people who have been at my side in one fashion or another for the many years I have been a published writer.

The meek and humble reference librarians are at the top of the list. I’m convinced that if Western civilization collapses, the reference librarian will be there to save us from ourselves. Book vendors are in the same category. So are the book reps at the publishing company. So are the publicists and editors and copyreaders who go beyond duty and call to get it right. If a writer can say his or her life has been a grand one, as mine has, the debt is enormous, and it would take hours to thank all the people who have been so loyal to both me and my work.

I wish to thank my daughter Pamala and my wife, Pearl, for their encouragement and editorial suggestions, and for all the marketing help given to me by Erin Mitchell. My thanks go also to my publishers, Carolyn Reidy and Jonathan Karp, and also Richard Rhorer and Stephen Bedford and Elizabeth Breeden and Sarah Lieberman and Jonathan Evans and all the other fine people at Simon & Schuster, particularly my editor, Sean Manning, and his team, Lake Bunkley and Tzipora Baitch, and also Jackie Seow, whose book jackets are always engaging and in some lovely way encapsulating of the book, and artworks in themselves.

A special thanks to E. Beth Thomas, who is one of the best copy and literary editors I’ve ever worked with.

Also, my undying appreciation to Philip and Mary and Anne-Lise Spitzer and Kim Lombardini and Lukas Ortiz and the Spitzer Agency.

Thanks to my children, Jim, Andree, Pamala, and Alafair, for being there.

And lastly, thanks to all my readers. You’re a grand bunch, and it’s an honor to be among you.