"I don't know what Balboni was doing with the broad, but he had some handcuffs. He walked outside, clamped one on El's wrist, the other on a light pole, and said, 'You're a lucky man, Elrod. You're a valuable piece of fruit. But your friend there, he don't have any luck at all.' Then he stomped the shit out of the stunt kid. 'Stomped' is the word, Mr. Robicheaux, I mean with his feet. He busted that kid's nose, stove in his ribs, and ripped his ear loose from his head."

"Why didn't you stop it?"

"I wasn't there. I got all this from the kid at the hospital. That's why I didn't get any sleep last night."

"Is the kid pressing charges?"

"Get real. He was on a flight back to Los Angeles this morning with enough dope in him to tranquilize a rhinoceros."

"What do you want with me?"

"I want you to take care of Elrod. I don't want him hurt."

"Tell me the truth. Do you have any concerns at all except making your pictures?"

"Yeah, human beings. If you don't accept that, I say fuck you."

His tense, protruding eyes reminded me of hard-boiled eggs. I looked away from him, felt my palm close and unclose against my trousers. The sunlight on the bayou was like a yellow flare burning under the water.

"I'm not in the baby-sitting business, Mr. Goldman," I said. "My advice is that you tell all this to the sheriff's department. Right now I'm still suspended. I'm going back and finish my coffee now. We'll see you around."

"It's Dogpatch. I'm in a cartoon. I talk, nobody hears me." He tapped himself on the cheek. "Maybe I'm dead and this is hell."

"What else do you want to say?" I heard the heat rising in my own voice.

"You accuse me of not having any humanity. Then I tell you Elrod's striking matches on Balboni's balls on your account and you blow me off. You want Balboni to put his foot through El's face?"

"He's your business partner. You brought him here. You didn't worry about the origins of his money till you-"

"That's all true. The question is what do we do now?"

"We?"

"Right. I'm getting through. Everybody around here doesn't have meatloaf for brains after all."

"There's no we in this. I'll talk to Elrod, I'll take him to AA meetings, but he's not my charge."

"Good. Tell him that. I'm on my way to work. Dump him in a cab."

"What?"

"He's down there in your bait shop. Drunk. I think you have a serious hearing problem. Get some help."

He stuck a peppermint candy cane in the corner of his mouth and walked back down the slope to his automobile, his shoulders rolling under his polo shirt, his jaws cracking the candy between his teeth, his profile turned into the freshening breeze like a gladiator's.

Chapter 14

"You did what?" Bootsie said. She stared at me open-mouthed across the kitchen table.

I told her again.

"You threw him in the bayou? I don't believe it," she said.

"He's used to it. Don't worry about him."

"Mr. Sykes started fighting with Dave on the dock, Bootsie," Alafair said. "He was drunk and making a lot of noise in front of the customers. He wouldn't come up to the house like Dave told him."

Way to go, Alf, I thought.

"Where is he now?" Bootsie said, wiping her mouth with her napkin and starting to rise from her chair.

"Throwing up on the rose bushes, the last I saw him."

"Dave, that's disgusting," she said, and sat back down.

"Tell Elrod."

"Batist said he drank five beers without paying for them," Alafair said.

"What are you going to do about him?" Bootsie said. Then she turned her head and looked out the back screen. "Dave, he just went across the backyard."

"I think El has pulled his suction cups loose for a while, Boots."

"Suction cups?" Alafair said, her cereal spoon poised in front of her mouth.

"He's crawling around on his hands and knees. Do something," Bootsie said.

"That brings up a question I was going to ask you."

I saw the recognition grow in her eyes.

"The guy went up against Julie Balboni because of me," I said. "Or at least partly because of me."

"You want him to stay here? Dave, this is our home," she said.

"The guy's in bad shape."

"It's still our home. We can't open it up to every person who has a problem."

"The guy needs an AA friend or he's not going to make it. Look at him. He's pitiful. Should I take him down to the jail?"

Bootsie rested her fingers on her temples and stared at the sugar container.

"I'll make him a deal," I said. "The first time he takes a drink, he gets eighty-sixed back to Spanish Lake. He pays his share of the food, he doesn't tie up the telephone, he doesn't come in late."

"Why's he squirting the hose in his mouth?" Alafair said.

"All right, we can try it for a couple of days," Bootsie said. "But, Dave, I don't want this man talking anymore about his visions or whatever it is he thinks he sees out on the lake."

"You think that's where I got it from, huh?" I smiled.

"In a word, yes."

"He's a pretty good guy when he's not wired. He just sees the world a little differently than some."

"Oh, wonderful."

Alafair got up from her chair and peered at an angle through the screen into the backyard.

"Oooops," she said, and put her hand over her mouth.

"What is it?" Bootsie said.

"Mr. Sykes just did the rainbow yawn."

"What?" I said.

"He vomited on the picnic table," Alafair said.

I waited until Bootsie and Alafair had driven off to the grocery store in town, then I went out into the backyard. Elrod's slacks and shirt were pasted to his skin with water from the bayou and grimed with mud and grass stains. He had washed down the top of the picnic table with the garden hose, and he now sat slack-jawed on the bench with his knees splayed, his shoulders stooped, his hands hanging between his thighs. His unshaved face had the gray color of spoiled pork.

I handed him a cup of coffee.

"Thanks," he said.

I winced at his breath.

"If you stay on at our house, do you think you can keep the cork in the jug?" I said.

"I can't promise it. No, sir, I surely can't promise it."

"Can you try?"

He lifted his eyes up to mine. The iris of his right eye had a clot of blood in it as big as my fingernail.

"Nothing I ever tried did any good," he said. "Antabuse, psychiatrists, a dry-out at the navy hospital, two weeks hoeing vegetables on a county P-farm. Sooner or later I always went back to it, Mr. Robicheaux."

"Well, here's the house rules, partner," I said, and I went through them one at a time with him. He kept rubbing his whiskers with the flat of his hand and spitting between his knees.

"I guess I look downright pathetic to you, don't I?" he said.

"Forget what other people think. Don't drink, don't think, and go to meetings. If you do that, and you do it for yourself, you'll get out of all this bullshit."

"I got that kid beat up real bad. It was awful. Balboni kept jumping up in the air, spinning around, and cracking the sole of his foot across the kid's head. You could hear the skin split against the bone."

He placed his palms over his ears, then removed them.

"You stay away from Balboni," I said. "He's not your problem. Let the law deal with him."

"Are you kidding? The guy does whatever he wants. He's even getting his porno dirt bag into the film."

"What porno dirt bag?"

"He brought up some guy of his from New Orleans, some character who thinks he's the new Johnny Wadd. He's worked the guy into a half dozen scenes in the picture. Look, Mr. Robicheaux, I'm getting the shakes. How about cutting me a little slack? Two raw eggs in a beer with a shot on the side. That's all I'll need. Then I won't touch it."

"I'm afraid not, partner."