"So No Duh calls up from central lockup and says Nig and Wee Willie are hypocrites because they wrote the bond on some dude who killed a couple of hookers in Seattle and Portland.

"Nig asks No Duh how he knows this and No Duh goes, ' 'Cause one year ago I was sitting in a cell next to this perverted fuck while he was pissing and moaning about how he dumped these broads along riverbanks on the West Coast. This same pervert was also talking about two dumb New Orleans Jews who bought his alias and were writing his bond without running his sheet.'

"But Nig's got scruples and doesn't like the idea he might have put a predator back on the street. So he has me start going over every dirtbag he's written paper on for the last two years. So far I've checked out one hundred twenty or one hundred thirty names and I can't come up with anyone who fits the profile."

"Why believe anything Dolowitz says? One of the Giacanos put dents in his head with a ball peen hammer years ago," I said.

"That's the point. He's got something wrong with his brain. No Duh is a thief who never lies. That's why he's always doing time."

"You're going to take us to Bon Creole?" I asked.

"I said I was, didn't I?"

"I'd really enjoy that," I said.

But I would not be able to free myself that evening from the murder of Amanda Boudreau. I had just showered and changed clothes and was waiting on the gallery for Clete and Bootsie and Alafair to join me when Perry LaSalle's cream-yellow Gazelle, a replica of a 1929 Mercedes, turned off the road into our driveway.

Before he could get out of his automobile, I walked down through the trees to meet him. The top was down on his automobile, and his sun-browned skin looked dark in the shade, his brownish-black hair tousled by the wind, his eyes bright blue, his cheeks pooled with color. He had given up his studies at a Jesuit seminary when he was twenty-one, for no reason he was ever willing to provide. He had lived among street people in the Bowery and wandered the West, working lettuce and beet fields, riding on freight cars with derelicts and fruit tramps, then had returned like the prodigal son to his family and studied law at Tulane.

I liked Perry and the dignified manner and generosity of spirit with which he always conducted himself. He was a big man, at least six feet two, but he was never grandiose or assuming and was always kind to those less fortunate than he. But like many of us I felt Perry's story was infinitely more complex than his benign demeanor would indicate.

"Out for a drive?" I said, knowing better.

"I hear Battering Ram Shanahan thinks you're soft on the Amanda Boudreau investigation. I hear she wants to use a nail gun on your cojones," he-said.

"News to me," I replied.

"Her case sucks and she knows it."

"Seen any good movies lately?" I asked.

"Tee Bobby's innocent. He wasn't even at the murder scene."

"His beer can was."

"Littering isn't a capital crime."

"It was good seeing you, Perry."

"Come out to the island and try my bass pond. Bring Bootsie and Alafair. We'll have dinner."

"I will. After the trial," I said.

He winked at me, then drove down the road, the sunlight through the trees flicking like gold coins across the waxed surfaces of his automobile.

I heard Clete walking through the leaves behind me. His hair was wet and freshly combed, the top buttons of his tropical shirt open on his chest.

"Isn't that the guy who wrote the book about the Death House in Louisiana? The one the movie was based on?" he said.

"That's the guy," I replied.

Clete looked at my expression. "You didn't like the book?" he asked.

"Two kids were murdered in a neckers' area up the Loreauville Road. Perry made the prosecutor's office look bad."

"Why?"

"I guess some people need to feel good about themselves," I answered.

The next morning there was fog in the trees when Alafair and I walked down the slope and opened up the bait shop and hosed down the dock and fired up the barbecue pit on which we prepared links and chicken and sometimes pork chops for our midday customers. I went into the storage room and began slicing open cartons of canned beer and soda to stock the coolers while Alafair made coffee and wiped down the counter. I heard the tiny bell on the screen door ring and someone come into the shop.

He was a young man and wore a white straw hat coned up on the sides, a pale blue sports coat, a wide, plum-colored tie, gray pants, and shined cordovan cowboy boots. His hair was ash-blond, cut short, shaved on the neck, his skin a deep olive. He carried a suitcase whose weight made his face sweat and his wrist cord with veins.

"Howdy do," he said, and sat down on a counter stool, his back to me. "Could I have a glass of water, please?"

Alafair was a senior in high school now, although she looked older than her years. She stood up on her tiptoes and took down a glass from a shelf, her thighs and rump flexing against her shorts. But the young man turned his head and gazed out the screen at the trees on the far side of the bayou.

"You want ice in it?" she asked.

"No, ma'am, I dint want to cause no trouble. Out of the tap is fine," the young man replied.

She filled the glass and put it before him. Her eyes glanced at the suitcase on the floor and the leather belt that was cinched around the weight that bulged against its sides.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked.

He removed a paper napkin from the dispenser and folded it and blotted the perspiration on his brow. He grinned at her.

"There's days I don't think the likes of me is meant to sell sno'balls in Hades. Is there people up at that house?" he said.

"What are you selling?" she asked.

"Encyclopedias, Bibles, family-type magazines. But Bibles is what I like to sell most of. I aim to go into the ministry or law enforcement. I been taking criminal justice courses over at the university. Could I have one of them fried pies?"

She reached up on the shelf again, and this time his gaze wandered over her body, lingering on the backs of her thighs. When I stepped out of the storage room, his head jerked toward me, the skin tightening around his eyes.

"You want to rent a boat?" I asked.

"No, sir. I was just taking a little rest break on my route. My name's Marvin Oates. Actually I'm from here-bouts," he said.

"I know who are you. I'm a detective with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department."

"Well, I reckon that cuts through it," he said.

My memory of him was hazy, an arrest four or five years back on a bad check charge, a P.O.'s recommendation for leniency, Barbara Shanahan acting with the charity that she was occasionally capable of, allowing him to plead out on time served.

"We'll be seeing you," I said.

"Yes, sir, you got it," he replied, cutting his head.

He tipped his hat to Alafair and hefted up his suitcase and labored out the door as though he were carrying a load of bricks.

"Why do you have to be so hard, Dave?" Alafair said.

I started to reply, then thought better of it and went outside and began laying out split chickens on the grill.

Marvin Oates paused at the end of the dock, set his suitcase down, and walked back toward me. He gazed reflectively at an outboard plowing a foamy yellow trough down the bayou.

"Is that your daughter, sir?" he asked.

"Yep."

He nodded. "You saw me looking at her figure when her back was turned. But she's good-looking and the way of the flesh is weak, at least it is with me. You're her father and I offended you. I apologize for that."

He waited for me to speak. When I continued to stare into his face, he cut his head again and walked back to his suitcase and hefted it up and crossed the dirt road and started up my driveway.