Then in the north, where the sky was still blue and not sealed by storm clouds, I saw bursts of black smoke, like birds with ragged wings, and I heard thunder echoing in the trees and between the wooden buildings across the street.

"What's that?" I asked him.

"You've never heard that sound, the electric snap, before? "

"They're air bursts, aren't they?"

"It's General Banks's artillery firing from down the Teche. He's targeted the wrong area, though. There's a community of darkies under those shells. Did you see things like that in your war?"

"Yes, up the Mekong. Some villagers tried to run away from a barrage. They got caught out in the rice field. When we buried them, their faces all looked like they had been inside a terrible wind."

"Then you know it's the innocent about whom we need to be most concerned?"

Before I could answer I saw Cholo and the man without a shirt staring down at my body, their faces beaded with rain. Julie pulled the drawstring tight on the ball bag and heaved it over his shoulder.

"Get in the Caddy, you guys," he said.

"What happened, Julie?" Cholo said. He wore tennis shoes without socks, a tie-dyed undershirt, and a urine-yellow bikini knotted up tightly around his scrotum. Hair grew around the edges of his bikini like tiny pieces of copper wire.

"He got in the way of the ball," Julie said.

"The guy's got a real goose egg in his hair," the shirtless man said. "Maybe we ought to take him to a hospital or something."

"Leave him alone," Julie said.

"We just gonna leave him here?" Cholo said.

"Unless you want to sit around out here in the rain," Julie said.

"Hey, come on, Feet," Cholo said.

"What's the problem?" Julie said.

"He's not a bad guy for a cop. Y'all go back, right?"

"He's got diarrhea of the mouth. Maybe he learned a lesson this time," Julie said.

"Yeah, but that don't mean we can't drop the guy off at the hospital. I mean, it ain't right to leave him in the fucking rain, Julie."

"You want to start signing your own paychecks? Is that what you're telling me, Cholo?"

"No, I didn't say that. I was just trying to act reasonable. Ain't that what you're always saying? Why piss off the locals?"

"We're not pissing off anybody. Even his own department thinks he's a drunk and a pain in the ass. He got what he deserved. Are you guys coming or not?" Julie said.

He opened the trunk of the purple Cadillac limousine and threw the ball bag clattering inside. The porn actor followed him, wiping his chest and handsome face with his balled-up shirt. Cholo hesitated, stared after them, then pulled the first-base pad loose from its anchor pins and rested it across the side of my face to protect it from the rain. Then he ran after the others.

The blue strip of sky in the north was now filled with torn pieces of smoke. I could hear a loud snap each time a shell burst over the distant line of trees.

"What were you going to tell me?" I said to the general.

"That it's the innocent we need to worry about. And when it comes to their protection, we shouldn't hesitate to do it under a black flag."

"I don't understand."

"I feel perhaps I've deceived you."

"How?"

"Perhaps I gave you the indication that you had been chosen as part of some chivalric cause."

"I didn't think that, general."

His face was troubled, as though his vocabulary was inadequate to explain what he was thinking. Then he looked out into the rain and his eyes became melancholy.

"My real loss wasn't in the war," he said. "It came later." He turned slowly and looked into my face. "Yellowjack took not only my life but also the lives of my wife and daughter, Mr. Robicheaux."

He waited. The rain felt like confetti blowing against my skin. I searched his eyes, and my heart began to beat against my ribs.

"My family?" I said.

"If you're brave and honorable and your enemies can't destroy you personally, they'll seek to destroy what you love."

He gestured with his crutch to a sergeant, who led a saddled white gelding around the side of the bleachers.

"Wait a minute, general. That's not good enough," I said.

"It's all I have," he answered, now seated in the saddle, his back erect, the reins wrapped around his gloved fist.

"Who would try to hurt them? What would they have to gain?"

"I don't know. Keep the Sykes boy with you, though. He's a good one. You remember what Robert Lee once said: 'Texans move them every time.' Good day to you, lieutenant. It's time we go give Bonnie Nate Banks his welcome to southwestern Louisiana." Then he cut the spur on his left boot into his horse's flank, galloped to the head of his infantry, and hollered out brightly, "Hideeho, boys! It's a fine day for it! Let's make religious fellows of them all!"

Sometime later, I sat up on the ground in the rain, my clothes soaked, the base pad in my lap, a knot as hard and round as a half-dollar throbbing three inches behind my ear. An elderly black yardman bent over me, his face filled with concern. Down the street I could see an ambulance coming toward me through the rain.

"You okay, mister?" the black man said.

"Yes, I think so."

"I seen you there and t'ought you was drunk. But it look like somebody done gone upside yo' head."

"Would you help me up, please?"

"Sho. You all right?"

"Why, yes, I'm sure I am. Did you see a man on horseback?"

"The Popsicle man gone by. His li'l cart got a horse. That's what you talkin' about?"

The black man eased me down on the bottom plank of the bleachers. It was starting to rain hard now, but right next to me, where the general had been sitting, was a pale, dry area in the wood that was as warm to the touch as living tissue.

Chapter 15

The sky was clear when I woke in the morning, and I could hear gray squirrels racing across the bark of the trees outside the window. The icebag I had put on the lump behind my ear fell to the floor when I got out of bed to answer the phone.

"I called your office and found out you're still suspended," Lou Girard said. "What's going on over there?"

"Just that. I'm still suspended."

"It sounds like somebody's got a serious bone on for you, Dave. Anyway, I talked to this FBI agent, what's her name, Gomez, as well as your boss. We vacuumed the Buick. Guess what we found?"

"I don't know."

"Paper wadding. The kind that's used to seal blank cartridges. It looks like somebody fired a starter's gun at you. He probably leaned down through the passenger window, let off a couple of rounds, then bagged out."

"What'd the sheriff have to say when you told him?"

"Not much. I got the feeling that maybe he was a little uncomfortable. He doesn't look too good, right, when one of his own men has to be cleared by a cop and a pathologist in another parish? I thought I could hear a little Pontius Pilate tap water running in the background."

"He's always been an okay guy. He just got too close to a couple of the oil cans in the Chamber of Commerce."

"Your friends don't stand around playing pocket pool while civilians kick a two-by-four up your butt, either."

"Anyway, that's real good news, Lou. I owe you a red-fishing trip out to Pecan Island."

"Wait a minute, I'm not finished. That Gomez woman has some interesting theories about serial killers. She said these guys want control and power over people. So I got to thinking about the LeBlanc girl. If your FBI friend is right and the guy who killed her is from around here, what kind of work would he be in?"

"He may be just a pimp, Lou."

"Yeah, but she got nailed on a prostitution charge when she was sixteen, right? That means the court gave somebody a lot of control over her life. What if a probation or parole officer had her selling out of her pants?"