"Elrod and his voice out in the fog? Elrod and skeletons buried in a sandbar? You think I care about stuff like that? You think that's what's on my mind when I'm making a picture?" He stopped and jabbed a thick finger at me. "Hey, try to understand something here. I live with my balls in a skillet. It's a way of life. I got no interest, I got no involvement, in people's problems in a certain locale. Is that supposed to be bad? Is it all right for me to tell my actors what I think? Are we all still working on a First Amendment basis here?"

A group of actors in sweat-streaked gray and blue uniforms, eating hamburgers out of foam containers, walked past us. I turned and suddenly realized that Rosie was no longer with us.

"She probably stepped in a hole," Goldman said.

"I think you are worried about something, Mr. Goldman. I think we both know what it is, too."

He took a deep breath. The sunlight shone through the oak branches over his head and made shifting patterns of shadow on his face.

"Let me try to explain something to you," he said. "Most everything in the film world is an illusion. An actor is somebody who never liked what he was. So he makes up a person and that's what he becomes. You think John Wayne came out of the womb John Wayne? He and a screenwriter created a character that was a cross between Captain Bligh and Saint Francis of Assisi, and the Duke played it till he dropped.

"Elrod's convinced himself he has magic powers. Why? Because he melted his head five years ago and he has days when he can't tie his shoestrings without a diagram. So instead of admitting that maybe he's got baked mush between his ears, he's a mystic, a persecuted clairvoyant."

"Let's cut the dog shit, Mr. Goldman. You're in business with Baby Feet Balboni. That's your problem, not Elrod Sykes."

"Wrong."

"You know what a 'fall partner' is?"

"No."

"A guy who goes down on the same bust with you."

"So?"

"Julie doesn't have fall partners. His hookers do parish time for him, his dealers do it for him in Angola, his accountants do it in Atlanta and Lewisburg. I don't think Julie has ever spent a whole day in the bag."

"Neither have I. Because I don't break the law."

"I think he'll cannibalize you."

He looked away from me, and I saw his hands clench and unclench and the veins pulse in his neck.

"You look here," he said. "I worked nine years on a mini-series about the murder of six million people. I went to Auschwitz and set up cameras on the same spots the S.S. used to photograph the people being pulled out of the boxcars and herded with dogs to the ovens. I've had survivors tell me I'm the only person who ever described on film what they actually went through. I don't give a fuck what any critic says, that series will last a thousand years. You get something straight, Mr. Robicheaux. People might fuck me over as an individual, but they'll never fuck me over as a director. You can take that to the bank."

His pale eyes protruded from his head like marbles.

I looked back at him silently.

"There's something else?" he said.

"No, not really."

"So why the stare? What's going on?"

"Nothing. I think you're probably a sincere man. But as someone once told me, hubris is a character defect better left to the writers of tragedy."

He pressed his fingers on his chest.

"I got a problem with pride, you're saying?"

"I think Jimmy Hoffa was probably the toughest guy the labor movement ever produced," I said. "Then evidently he decided that he and the mob could have a fling at the dirty boogie together. I used to know a button man in New Orleans who told me they cut Hoffa into hundreds of pieces and used him for fish chum. I believe what he said, too."

"Sounds like your friend ought to take it to a grand jury."

"He can't. Three years ago one of Julie's hired lowlifes put a crack in his skull with a cold chisel. Just for kicks. He sells snowballs out of a cart in front of the K amp; B drugstore on St. Charles now. We'll see you around, Mr. Goldman."

I walked away through the dead leaves and over a series of rubber-coated power cables that looked like a tangle of black snakes. When I looked back at Mikey Goldman, his eyes were staring disjointedly into space.

Chapter 6

Rosie was waiting for me by the side of the pickup truck under the live-oak tree. The young sugarcane in the fields was green and bending in the wind. She fanned herself with a manila folder she had picked up off the truck seat.

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"To talk to Hogman Patin."

"Where is he?"

"Over there, with those other black people, under the trees. He's playing a street musician in the film."

"How'd you know to talk to him?"

"You put his name in the case file, and I recognized him from his picture on one of his albums."

"You're quite a cop, Rosie."

"Oh, I see. You didn't expect that from an agent who's short, Chicana, and a woman?"

"It was meant as a compliment. How about saving that stuff for the right people? What did Hogman have to say?"

Her eyes blinked at the abruptness of my tone.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to sound like that. I still have my mind on Goldman. I think he's hiding some serious problems, and I think they're with Julie Balboni. I also think there might be a tie-in between Julie and Cherry LeBlanc."

She looked off at the group of black people under the trees.

"You didn't bother to tell me that earlier," she said.

"I wasn't sure about it. I'm still not."

"Dave, I'll be frank with you. Before I came here I read some of your history. You seem to have a way of doing things on your own. Maybe you've been in situations where you had no other choice. But I can't have a partner who holds out information on me."

"It's a speculation, Rosie, and I just told you about it."

"Where do you think there might be a tie-in?" she said, and her face became clear again.

"I'm not sure. But one of his hoods, a character named Cholo Manelli, told me that he and Julie had been talking about the girl's death. Then ten minutes later Julie told me he hadn't heard or read anything about it. So one of them is lying, and I think it's Julie."

"Why not the hood, what's his name, Cholo?"

"When a guy like Cholo lies or tries to jerk somebody around, he doesn't involve his boss's name. He has no doubt about how dangerous that can be. Anyway, what did you get from Hogman?"

"Not much. He just pointed at you and said, 'Tell that other one yonder ain't every person innocent, ain't every person listen when they ought to, either.' What do you make of that?"

"Hogman likes to be an enigma."

"Those scars on his arms-"

"He had a bunch of knife beefs in Angola. Back in the 1940s he murdered a white burial-insurance collector who was sleeping with his wife. Hogman's a piece of work, believe me. The hacks didn't know how to deal with him. They put him in the sweat box on Camp A for eighteen days one time."

"How'd he kill the white man?"

"With a cane knife on the white man's front gallery. In broad daylight. People around here talked about that one for a long time."

I could see a thought working in her eyes.

"He's not a viable suspect, Rosie," I said.

"Why not?"

"Hogman's not a bad guy. He doesn't trust white people much, and he's a little prideful, but he wouldn't hurt a nineteen-year-old girl."

"That's it? He's not a bad guy? Although he seems to have a lifetime history of violence with knives? Good God."

"Also the nightclub owner says Hogman never left the club that night."

She got in the truck and closed the door. Her shoulders were almost below the level of the window. I got in on the driver's side and started the engine.