He was grinning, with a crazy light in his eyes. There was a red smear, like lipstick, on his teeth.

"Brasse ma chu, Dave," he said.

"You going to cuss me because you lost a fight?" I said. "You've got more class than that, Bubba. Do you want to go to the hospital or not?"

"Hey, Tee Neg," he said to the owner. "Give everybody a round. Put it on my tab."

"You ain't got a tab," Tee Neg said. "You ain't getting one, either."

Cecil walked Bubba out to the car and locked him in behind the wire screen. Green flecks of sawdust from the poolroom floor were stuck to the butch wax in his hair. Through the car window he looked like a caged animal. Cecil started the engine.

"Drive over into the park for a minute," I said.

"What for?" Cecil asked.

"We're in no hurry. It's a nice day. Let's have a spearmint snowcone."

We crossed the drawbridge over Bayou Teche. The water was brown and high, and dragonflies flicked over the lily pads in the sunlight. Close along the banks I could see the armored backs of cars turning in the shade of the cypress trees. We drove through the oak-lined streets into the park, passed the swimming pool, and stopped behind the baseball bleachers. I gave Cecil two one-dollar bills.

"How about getting us three cones?" I said.

"Dave, that man belong in jail, not eating snowcones in the park, no," he said.

"It's something personal between me and Bubba, Cecil. I'm going to ask you to respect that."

"He's a pimp. He don't deserve no slack."

"Maybe not, partner. But it's my collar." I winked at him and grinned.

He didn't like it, but he walked away through the trees toward the concession stand by the swimming pool. I could see kids springing off the diving board into the sunlit blue water.

"Do you really think I was messing around with your wife?" I asked Bubba through the wire-mesh screen.

"What the fuck do you call it?"

"Clean the shit out of your mouth and answer me straight."

"She knows how to get a guy on the bone."

"You're talking about your wife."

"So? She's human."

"Don't you know when you're being jerked around? You're supposed to be a smart man."

"You thought about it when she was in your truck, though, didn't you?" he said, and smiled. His teeth were still pink with his blood. His arms were pulled behind him by the handcuffs, and his chest looked as round and hard as a small barrel. "She just likes to flash her bread around sometimes. They all do. That doesn't mean you get to unzip your pants.

"Hey, tell me the truth, I really shook your peaches with that first shot, didn't I?"

"I'm going to tell you something, Bubba. I don't want you to take it the wrong way, either. Go to a psychiatrist. You're a rich man, you can afford it. You'll understand people better, you'll learn about yourself."

"I bet I pay my gardener more than you make. Does that say something?"

"You're not a good listener. You never were. That's why one day you're going to take a big fall."

I got out of the car and opened his door.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Step out."

I put one hand under his arm and helped him off the seat.

"Turn around," I said.

"What's the game?"

"No game. I'm cutting you loose."

I unlocked the cuffs. He rubbed his wrists with his hands. In the shade, the pupils of his gray-blue eyes stared at me like burnt cinders.

"I figure what happened at Tee Neg's was personal. So this time you walk. If you come at me again, you're going up the road."

"Sounds like a Dick Tracy routine to me."

"I don't know why, but I have a strong feeling you're a man without a future."

"Yeah?"

"They're going to eat your lunch."

"Who's this 'they' you're talking about?"

"The feds, us, your own kind. It'll happen one day when you never expect it. Just like when Eddie Keats set one of your hookers on fire. She was probably thinking about a vacation in the Islands when he knocked on her door with a smile on his face."

"I've had cops give me that shuck before. It always comes from the same kind of guys. They got no case, no evidence, no witness, so they make a lot of noise that's supposed to scare everybody. But you know what their real problem is? They wear J. C. Higgins suits, they drive shit machines, they live in little boxes out by an airport. Then they see a guy that's got all the things they want and can't have because most of them are so dumb they'd fuck up a wet dream, so they get a big hard-on for this guy and talk a lot of trash about somebody cooling out his action. So I'll tell you what I tell these other guys. I'll be around to drink a beer and piss it on your grave."

He took a stick of gum out of his pocket, peeled off the foil, dropped it on the ground, and fed the gum into his mouth while he looked me in the eyes.

"You through with me?" he asked.

"Yep."

"By the way, I got drunk last night, so don't buy yourself any boxing trophies yet."

"I gave up keeping score a long time ago. It comes with maturity."

"Yeah? Tell yourself that the next time you look at your bank account. I owe you one for cutting me loose. Buy yourself something nice and send me the bill. I'll see you around."

"Don't misunderstand the gesture. If I find out you're connected to my wife's death, God help you, Bubba."

He chewed his gum, looked off at the swimming pool as though he were preparing to answer, but instead walked away through the oak trees, the soles of his loafers loud on the crisp, dead leaves. Then he stopped and turned around.

"Hey, Dave, when I straighten out a problem, the person gets to see this face. You give that some thought."

He walked on farther, then turned again, his spiked hair and tan face mottled with sun and shadow.

"Hey, you remember when we used to play ball here and yell at each other, 'I got your Dreamsicle hanging'?" he said, grinning, and grabbed his phallus through his slacks. "Those were the days, podna."

I bought a small bag of crushed ice, took it back to the office with me, and let it melt in a cleanplastic bucket. Every fifteen minutes I soaked a towel in the cold water and kept it pressed to my face while I counted to sixty. It wasn't the most pleasant way to spend the afternoon, but it beat waking up the next day with a face that looked like a lopsided plum.

Then, just before quitting time, I sat at my desk in my small office, while the late sun beat down on the sugarcane filds across the road, and looked once again at the file the New Orleans police department had sent us on Victor Romero. In his front and side mug shots his black curls hung down on his forehead and ears. As in all police station photography, the black-and-white contrast was severe. His hair glistened as though it were oiled; his skin was the color of bone; his unshaved cheeks and chin looked touched with soot.

His criminal career wasn't a distinguished one. He had four misdemeanor arrests, including one for contributing to prostitution; he had done one hundred eighty days in the parish jail for possession of burglar tools; he had an outstanding bench warrant for failing to appear on a DWI charge. But contrary to popular belief, a rap sheet often tells little about a suspect. It records only the crimes he was charged with, not the hundreds he may have committed. It also offers no explanation of what goes on in the mind of a man like Victor Romero.

His eyes had no expression in the photographs. He could have been waiting for a bus when the camera lens clicked. Was this the man who had murdered Annie with a shotgun, who had fired point-blank at her with buckshot while she creamed and tried to hide her face behind her arms? Was he made up of the same corpuscle, sinew, and marrow as I? Or was his brain taken hot from a furnace, his parts hammered together in a shower of sparks on a devil's anvil?