"Let's take a ride," I said.

I left Batist in charge of the shop, and Minos and I rode down the dirt lane in my pickup. The sunlight seemed to click through the thick green leaves overhead.

"I called you up for a specific reason this morning," I said. "If you don't like the way I do things, I'm sorry. You're not in the hotbox, partner. I didn't invite any of this bullshit into my life, but I got it just the same. So I don't think it's too cool when you start making your observations in the middle of my shop, in front of my help and my customers."

"Okay. You've got your point."

"I never busted up a guy like that before. I don't feel good about it."

"It's always dumb to play on the wiseguys' terms. But if you needed to scramble somebody's eggs, Keats was a fine selection. But believe it or not, we have a couple of things in his file that are even worse. The kid of a federal witness disappeared a year ago. We found him in a-"

"Then why don't you put the fucker away?"

He didn't answer. He turned the wind vane in his face and looked out at the Negro families fishing in the shade of the cypress trees.

"Is he feeding you guys?" I said.

"We don't use hit men as informants."

"Don't jerk me around, Minos. You use whatever works."

"Not hit men. Never. Not in my office." He turned and looked me directly in the face. There was color in his cheeks.

"Then give him a priority and weld the door shut on him."

"You think you're twisting in the wind while we play pocket pool. But maybe we're doing things you don't know about. Look, we never go for just one guy. You know that. We throw a net over a whole bunch of these shitheads at once. That's the only way we get them to testify against each other. Try learning some patience."

"You want Bubba Rocque. You've got a file on everybody around him. In the meantime his clowns are running loose with baseball bats."

"I think you're unteachable. Why did you call me up, anyway?"

"About Immigration."

"I didn't eat breakfast this morning. Stop up here somewhere."

"You know this guy Monroe that was sniffing around New Iberia?"

"Yeah, I know him. Are you worried about the little girl you have in your house?"

I looked at him.

"You have a way of constantly earning our attention," he said. "Stop there. I'm really hungry. You can pay for it, too. I left my wallet on the dresser this morning."

I stopped at a small wooden lunch stand run by a Negro, set back in a grove of oak trees. We sat at one of the tables in the shade and ordered pork chop sandwiches and dirty rice. The smoke from the stove hung in the sunlit branches of the trees.

"What's this about Immigration?" Minos said.

"I heard they busted both Johnny Dartez and Victor Romero."

"Where'd you get that?" He watched some black children playing pitch-and-catch next to the lunch stand. But I could see that his eyes were troubled.

"From a bartender in New Orleans."

"Sounds like a crummy source."

"No games. You knew that a government agency of some kind had a connection with Dartez or his body wouldn't have disappeared. You just weren't sure about Victor Romero."

"So?"

"I think Immigration was using these guys to infiltrate the sanctuary movement."

He put his hand on his chin and watched the children throwing the baseball.

"What does your bartender friend know about Romero now?" he said.

"Nothing."

"What's this guy's name? We'd like to chat with him."

"So would Bubba Rocque. That means that Jerry-that's his name, and he works at Smiling Jack's on Bourbon-is probably looking for a summer home in Afghanistan."

"You never disappoint me. So you've managed to help scare an informant out of town. Just out of curiosity, how is it that people tell you these things they don't care to share with us?"

"I stuck a cocked.45 up his nose."

"That's right, I forgot. You learned a lot of constitutional procedure from the New Orleans police department."

"I'm correct, though, aren't I? Somehow Immigration got these two characters into the underground railway, or whatever the sanctuary people call it."

"That's what they call it. And no matter what you might have figured out, it's still not your business. Of course, that doesn't make any difference to you. So I'll put it another way. We're nice guys at the DEA. We try to lodge as many lowlifes as we can in our gray-bar hotel chain. And we respect guys like you who are well intended but who have their brains encased in cement. But my advice to you is not to fuck with Immigration, particularly when you have an illegal in your home."

"You don't like them."

"I don't think about them. But you should. I once met a regional INS commissioner, an important man wired right into the White House. He said, 'If you catch 'em, you ought to clean 'em yourself.' I wouldn't want somebody like that on my case."

"It sounds like folksy bullshit to me," I said.

"You're a delight, Robicheaux."

"I don't want to mess up your lunch, but aren't you bothered by the fact that maybe a bomb sent that plane down at Southwest Pass, that somebody murdered a Catholic priest and two women who were fleeing a butcher shop we helped create in El Salvador?"

"Are you an expert on Central American politics?"

"No."

"Have you been down there?"

"No."

"But you give me that impression just the same. Like you've got the franchise on empathy."

"I think you need a whiff of a ville that's been worked over with Zippo-tracks."

"Don't give me that righteous dogshit. I was there, too, podna." The bread in the side of his mouth made an angry lump along his jaw.

"Then don't let those farts at Immigration jerk you around."

He put his sandwich in his plate, drank from his iced tea, and looked away reflectively at the children playing under the trees.

"Have you ever thought that maybe you'd be better off drunk than sober?" he said. "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean that. What I meant to say is I just remembered that I have a check in my shirt pocket. I'll pay for my own lunch today. No, don't argue. It's just been a real pleasure being out with you."

The inside of the church was cool and dark and smelled of stone, burning candles, water, and incense. Through the side door I could see the enclosed garden where, as a child, I used to line up with the other children before we made the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. It was sunny in the garden, and the St. Augustine grass was green and clipped, and the flower beds were full of yellow and purple roses. At the head of the garden, shaded by a rain tree with bloodred blooms on it, was a rock grotto with a waterfall at the bottom and a stone statue of the crucified Christ set back in the recess.

I walked into the confessional and waited for the priest to slide back the small wooden door in the partition. I had known him for twenty-five years, and I trusted his working-class instincts and forgave him his excess of charity and lack of admonition, just as he forgave me my sins. He slid back the door, and I looked through the wire screen at the round head, the bull neck, the big shoulders in silhouette. He had a small, rubber-bladed fan in the box with him, and his crewcut gray hair moved slightly in the breeze.

I told him about Eddie Keats. Everything. The beating I took, the humiliation, the pool cue shattered across his face, the blood stringing from the fingers cupped over his nose.

The priest was quiet a moment.

"Did you want to kill this man?" he said.

"No."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes."

"Do you plan to hurt him again?"

"Not if he leaves me alone."

"Then put it behind you."

I didn't reply. We were both quiet in the gloom of the box.