When I awoke on our houseboat the next morning, my eyes shuddering in the hard light refracting off the lake, I found the note she had left me:

Dear Dave,

I don't know what it is you're looking for, but three years of marriage to you have convinced me I don't want to be there when you find it. Sorry about that. As your pitcher-bartender friend says, Keep it high and hard, podjo.

Niccole

I followed the highway through the eastern end of the Atchafalaya basin. White cranes rose above the dead cypress in the sunlight just as the first drops of rain began to dimple the water below the causeway. I could smell the wet sand, the moss, the four-o'clock flowers, the toadstools, the odor of dead fish and sour mud blowing on the wind out of the marsh. A big willow tree by the water's edge looked like a woman's hair in the wind.

4

THE RAIN WAS falling out of a blue-black sky when I parked the pickup truck in front of the travel agency in New Orleans. I knew the owner, and he let me use his WATS line to call a friend in Key West. Then I bought a one-way ticket there for seventy-nine dollars.

Robin lived in a decrepit Creole-style apartment building off South Rampart. The cracked brick and mortar had been painted purple; the red tiles in the roof were broken; the scrolled iron grillwork on the balconies had burst loose from its fastenings and was tilted at odd angles. The banana and palm trees in the courtyard looked as though they had never been pruned, and the dead leaves and fronds clicked loudly in the rain and wind. Dark-skinned children rode tricycles up and down the second-floor balcony, and all the apartment doors were open and even in the rain you could hear an incredible mixed din of daytime television, Latin music, and people shouting at each other.

I walked up to Robin's apartment, but as I approached her door a middle-aged, overweight man in a rain spotted gray business suit with an American-flag pin in his lapel came toward me, squinting at a small piece of damp paper in his hand. I wanted to think he was a bill collector, a social worker, a process server, but his eyes were too furtive, his face too nervous, his need too obvious. He realised that the apartment number he was looking for was the one I was standing in front of. His face went blank, the way a man's does when he suddenly knows that he's made a commitment for which he has no preparation. I didn't want to be unkind to him.

"She's out of the business, partner," I said.

"Sir?"

"Robin's not available anymore."

"I don't know what you're talking about." His face had grown rounder and more frightened.

"That's her apartment number on that piece of paper, isn't it? You're not a regular, so I suspect somebody sent you here. Who was it?"

He started to walk past me. I put my hand gently on his arm.

"I'm not a policeman. I'm not her husband. I'm just a friend. Who was it, partner?" I said.

"A bartender."

"At Smiling Jack's, on Bourbon?"

"Yes, I think that was it."

"Did you give him money?"

"Yes."

"Don't go back there for it. He won't give it back to you, anyway. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

I took my hand away from his arm, and he walked quickly down the stairs and out into the rain-swept courtyard.

I looked through the screen door into the gloom of Robin's apartment. A toilet flushed in back, and she walked into the living room in a pair of white shorts and a green Tulane T-shirt and saw me framed against the wet light. The index finger of her left hand was wrapped in a splint. She smiled sleepily at me, and I stepped inside. The thick, drowsy odor of marijuana struck at my face. Smoke curled from a roach clip in an ashtray on the coffee table.

"What's happening, Streak?" she said lazily.

"I just ran off a client, I'm afraid."

"What d'you mean?"

"Jerry sent a John over. I told him you were out of the business. Permanently, Robin. We're moving you to Key West, kiddo."

"This is all too weird. Look, Dave, I'm down to seeds and stems, if you know what I mean. I'm going out to buy some beer. Mommy has to get a little mellow before she bounces her stuff for the cantaloupe lovers. You want to come along?"

"No beer, no more hooking, no Smiling Jack's tonight. I've got you a ticket on a nine o'clock flight to Key West."

"Stop talking crazy, will you? What am I going to do in Key West? It's full of faggots."

"You're going to work in a restaurant owned by a friend of mine. It's a nice place, out on the pier at the end of Duval Street. Famous people eat in there. Tennessee Williams used to come there."

"You mean that country singer? Wow, what a gig."

"I'm going to square what those guys did to you and me," I said. "When I do, you won't be able to stay in New Orleans."

"That's what's wrong with your mouth?"

"They told me what they did to your finger. I'm sorry. It's my fault."

"Forget it. It comes with my stage career." She sat down on the stuffed couch and picked up the roach clip, which now held only smoldering ash. She toyed with it, studied it, then dropped it on top of the glass ashtray. "Don't make them come back. The white guy, the one with the cowboy boots, he had some Polaroid pictures. God, I don't want to remember them."

"Do you know who these guys are?"

"No."

"Did you ever see them before?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." She squeezed one hand around the fingers of the other. "In the pictures, some colored people were tied up in a basement or something. They had blood all over them. Dave, some of them were still alive. I can't forget what their faces looked like."

I sat down beside her and picked up her hands. Her eyes were wet, and I could smell the marijuana on her breath.

"If you catch that plane tonight, you can start a new life. I'll check on you and my friend will help you, and you'll put all this stuff behind you. How much money do you have?"

"A couple of hundred dollars maybe."

"I'll give you two hundred more. That'll get you to your first paycheck. But no snorting, no dropping, no shooting. You understand that?"

"Hey, is this guy out there one of your AA pals? Because I told you I don't dig that scene."

"Who's asking you to?"

"I got enough troubles without getting my head shrunk by a bunch of ex-drunks."

"Make your own choice. It's your life, kiddo."

"Yeah, but you're always up to something on the side. You should have been a priest. You still go to Mass?"

"Sure."

"You remember the time you took me to midnight Mass at St. Louis Cathedral? Then we walked across the square and had beignets at the Café du Monde. You know, I thought maybe you were serious about me that night."

"I have to ask you a couple of questions before I go."

"Sure, why not? Most men are interested in my jugs. You come around like a census taker."

"I'm serious, Robin. Do you remember a guy named Victor Romero?"

"Yeah, I guess so. He used to hang around with Johnny Dartez."

"Where's he from?"

"Here."

"What do you know about him?"

"He's a little dark-skinned guy with black curls hanging off his head, and he wears a French beret like he's an artist or something. Except he's bad news. He sold some tainted skag down on Magazine, and I heard a couple of kids were dead before they got the spike out of their arms."

"Was he muling for Bubba Rocque, too?"

"I don't know. I don't care. I haven't seen the guy in months. Why do you care about those dipshits? I thought you were the family man now. Maybe things aren't too good at home."

"Maybe."

"And you're the guy that's going to clean up mommy's act so she can wipe off tables for the tourists. Wow."