"What you've told me is very helpful, Mr. Lemand," I said.

"Unfortunately, there's more. When she looked out her window, she saw a red pickup truck follow the Bible salesman out of the parking lot. Then she noticed the man driving the truck didn't turn on his lights until he was out on the road. She had seen this man earlier. He had a pair of binoculars. She's quite concerned she put either Mr. Purcel or the salesman in harm's way."

"She and you have done all the right things, Mr. Lemand. Tell her not to worry," I said.

"I think that will be a great relief to her," he said.

I hung up the receiver and tried to think. My own thoughts made my head hurt. Linda Zeroski had been murdered on Bayou Benoit. The nightclub where Baby Huey Lagneaux worked was on Bayou Benoit, as was Legion Guidry's camp. Of all the places Clete could choose for a tryst, it would have to be there.

I went into the bedroom and removed my army-issue.45 automatic from die dresser drawer. I dropped an extra magazine, loaded with hollow-points, and a sap and a pair of handcuffs in me pockets of my raincoat and told Bootsie I did not know when I would be back home, men walked down die slope to my truck and started the engine.

I didn't realize, until I was over a mile down the road, that I had a passenger with me.

CHAPTER 30

I looked into the rearview mirror and saw die face of the ex-soldier staring at me through die back window. I swerved to the side of die road and got out. He climbed out of the camper shell, bare-chested, a crucifix and a G.I. can opener hung around his neck.

"What are you doing in there?" I asked.

"The motor on your refrigerator kept me awake. I got in your camper to sleep," he said.

"Bad night for it, Doc," I said.

"I'll walk back. No big deal," he replied.

He reached inside die shell and retrieved a pillow and his shirt. His face was beaded with raindrops.

"Hop in front. Let's take a ride upcountry," I said.

He thought about it a moment, his mouth screwed into a button, his eyes clear of both dope and madness, his expression almost childlike. "I don't mind," he said.

We drove up Bayou Teche, through Loreauville and waving fields of sugarcane that flickered with lightning. We turned off the state road and passed scattered farmhouses and clumps of trees inside cattle acreage and a bait shop and a filling station that were dark inside. Then I saw the nightclub where Baby Huey bartended, the neon beer signs glowing in the rain, the empty parking lot lit by floodlamps.

I left the ex-soldier in the truck and went inside. The front and back doors of the club were open to air it out. Baby Huey was at the end of the bar, on the phone, his back to me. His hair was wet, his pink shirt spotted with raindrops. When he hung up and saw me standing behind him, he looked back at the phone, as though reviewing the conversation he'd just had.

"You want to tell me something?" I asked.

"Not necessarily," he replied.

"You wouldn't have been talking to Joe Zeroski, would you?" I said.

"You never can tell." He picked up a clean white cloth and began wiping the bar, although there was no water or drink residue on it.

"Lose the routine, Huey. I'm looking for Joe Zeroski's niece and a friend of mine named Clete Purcel. I think you are, too. You lie to me, you're going to be sharing accommodations with Tee Bobby Hulin."

He bit his lip and bunched the bar cloth in his huge hand.

"Use your head, partner. We're on the same side," I said.

"Mr. Joe called earlier. He thought his niece and her boyfriend had probably rented a camp somewhere. He axed me if I knowed who rented camps herebouts. I called a friend of mine runs the bait shop back up the road. He said a guy wit' a Cadillac convertible like the one Mr. Joe described was in there this afternoon. My friend said this guy and the woman wit' him was staying in a camp just the other side of the levee. So I drove on down there."

"So?" I said.

"You ain't gonna want to hear this."

"I don't mean to offend you, Huey, but you're starting to seriously piss me off," I said.

"The guy who lives next door to the cabin where your friend was at? He's been inside twice. He ain't the kind of guy got a real good relationship with the law or dials 911 a lot, know what I mean? He said a big white guy in swim trunks and a Marine Corps cap was cleaning fish on the porch in back when a guy dressed like a cowboy drove into the yard. He said the guy in swim trunks was talking loud and shaking his fish knife at the cowboy, but my friend couldn't see it too good 'cause the house was in the way."

"What happened?" I asked.

Baby Huey raised his eyebrows. "A few minutes later the woman drove away wit' the cowboy. The woman was driving, and the big guy in swim trunks wasn't nowhere around."

"What do you mean he wasn't anywhere around?"

Baby Huey's eyes went away from me, then came back again.

"My friend thought he might have been in the trunk of the car. A red pickup was parked down the road from the camp. It followed the Cadillac over the levee. My friend thought it look just like the pickup Legion drive," he said.

"Your friend didn't bother to tell anyone this until you asked him?" I said.

"That's the way it go sometimes," Baby Huey replied.

I pushed a napkin and my ballpoint pen across the bar to Huey.

"Write down your friend's name so I can thank him personally," I said.

I used the pay phone in the corner and called Helen Soileau at her house. She dropped the receiver when she answered, then scraped it up again. I described all the events that had occurred since I had seen her late that afternoon.

"Marvin was wearing red and green cowboy boots? Same color as the cowboy in the bar where Frankie Dogs got hit?" she said.

"That's right," I replied.

"Why did Legion pick today to go after Clete?"

"He thinks Clete is with Barbara. Barbara stood up to him in the western store. He wants to get them both at one time," I said.

"I'm still asleep. I can't think clearly. What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing right now. Look, when I went to see Perry LaSalle at Sookie Motrie's duck hunting camp down by Pecan Island, I saw an abandoned church that reminded me of the lyrics in a song Marvin Oates is always quoting from. The church has a sign on it that says Twelve Disciples Assembly. Is that just a coincidence?"

"Marvin used to stay with a preacher there when his mother was on a bender. I think the preacher was the only person who ever treated him decent."

"I'm going to head down there," I said.

"You sound a little strung out. Let it go till sunlight. There's a good chance Baby Huey's source is full of shit."

"No, the details are too specific," I said.

There was a pause on the line.

"You're not having the wrong kind of thoughts, are you?" she asked.

"No, everything's copacetic here," I said.

"Streak?"

"I'm telling you the truth. I'm fine," I said.

But when I hung up, my hands were tingling with fatigue, my mouth dry, my hair damp with sweat, as though my old courtship with the malarial mosquito had taken new life in my blood. I turned around and almost collided with Baby Huey, who was mopping down a table five feet behind me.

"What do you think you just heard?" I said.

"I was listening to the jukebox. That's Tee Bobby's new song. Boy got a million-dollar voice. Ain't been nobody like him since Guitar Slim," he said.

I was burning up inside my raincoat, and I took it off before I got back into the truck and put my sap, handcuffs, and extra magazine on the seat, beside my holstered.45. Then I turned the truck around and headed south, toward Pecan Island, down in Vermilion Parish.