“Oh, I lak thet,” said Timmons greedily.

“You goan have a time,” said the manager, a weaselly little rat-man with a pencil-thin mustache.

So Payne and Timmons sat through a couple of more sets, trying to put the Dixie Brewery out of business or at least get it to working nights, as if they were a pair of Navy bosun’s mates on shore leave for the first time since the sixties. Timmons’s elaborate hair, which bent in strange ways as it flowed off his ample, heroic brow, gleamed with mousse; he was set for a big night. Meanwhile Payne just sat there, sinking into himself further.

By the time it was nearly midnight, Timmons was extremely drunk. Payne got up, pointed to his watch, and Timmons lurched obediently to his feet, bulling his fat and sloppy way over.

“All set,” he said hornily.

“Then let’s go, big guy,” said Payne, pulling him down the narrow aisle and out to Bourbon.

The street had filled. It looked like party time in Hell. College kids from Ole Miss, northern tourists, large groups of sailors, a few aristocratic types in blue blazers and khakis with their sallow, nearly fleshless women in tow, all seethed and bucked along the narrow concourse. There was smoke everywhere; up and down the street lines had formed, some to get into the strip joints or the transsexual shows, some to buy T-shirts in the dinky souvenir shops, some to get into the fancy restaurants like Antoine’s or Arnaud’s. A few disconsolate wallflowers peered down from the balconies overhanging the scene.

“Now which way we go?” asked Payne, surveying the turmoil. “I can’t believe I’m skulking around to avoid riling some big nigger.”

“Shoot,” said Timmons, “no sense gittin’ the boy upset when his old lady be handing out the sweets for free. Maybe you wanta little old taste after I finish?”

“How long you be? Maybe twenty seconds?”

“Haw! I can ride a mare like that half the damn night!”

“Well, thanks, I’ll pass. Number Two in the saddle ain’t for me.”

They ambled through the raucous crowd, were jostled by sailors. Payne hated sailors from the Army, where you were supposed to hate sailors. And he sort of felt like a fight. He wanted to drive one of his fat fists into the dumb, girlish face of some aviation candidate over from Pensacola, and watch the boy collapse, spitting blood and teeth. But he just pushed on. The night was blue. The moon was full, over the low pastel buildings of the quarter. It reminded him of a jungle city. Felt like Saigon. No gooks, though. Lots of niggers, lots of fatboys and pretty girls, lots of action; no gooks. He remembered the sense of war and doom and what-the-hell-we-die-tomorrow joy that he had so loved when he was a lean and dangerous young Forces sergeant in the ’Nam, floating on amphetamines, just back from a long crazed month or so in the fuckin’ boonies, taking frontals.

Payne sighed, swept by melancholy. The whole world seemed to be here on Bourbon, coursing down the narrow street, all hot to trot, seething to get fucked, except for him. He stood apart. Jack Payne was different. He did the hard things.

Next to him, Timmons was aquiver with sexual tension. It was said that he could visit any brothel in New Orleans and have himself serviced mightily, so friendly and helpful was he to certain people, but there were always new experiences and sensations. So he was all hotted up.

“She a girl and a half,” he said again.

“She sure is,” said Payne. “Now where the hell we goin’?”

“Up here. Turn right, then behind the restaurant you turn left and we head down the alley. She’ll be in back, where the dancers park.”

“You sure know this town.”

“Know it well, that I do,” said Timmons, almost singing with anticipation. He was a happy man.

The crowd thinned as they turned off Bourbon down Toulouse and then saw the alleyway, a small gap, just the width of a car, between the old brick buildings. They turned into it. It smelled of old garbage and piss.

Up ahead, however, there appeared to be something of an altercation. It was difficult to make out, but it looked as if a large black male was beating on a small white male.

“I do believe,” said Jack Payne, “that that’s a crime, isn’t it?”

“Oh, shit,” said Timmons. He reached under his jacket, and from the high-hip holster withdrew the famous Beretta and advanced at a coplike gait, yelling, “Halt, Police! Goddammit boy, y’all stop that.”

Payne watched him go with something that wasn’t quite sadness, for he truly detested Timmons, but out of some sense of camaraderie. The two had shared a lot, after all, and each had come to recognize the other as a man who walked the same side of the street.

“Goddamn, I say, stop!” shouted Timmons. He fired a shot into the air, and then rushed in harder, a little surprised that the black man hadn’t cut and run, as was customary. He stopped short when he saw that the black man had a pistol of his own, which had come from nowhere.

“Now, wha – ” Timmons began, when the first bullet hit him in the throat and the second, a split second later, under the left eye. They were only.25’s, from some piece of junk that wouldn’t shoot accurately over ten feet; the range was seven.

Timmons died clawing at the small hole in his face, which spurted blood like a broken pipe.

The black man ran by Jack Payne, pausing only to wink. It was Morgan State, as he was called, from the unit, Payne’s second in command, a great shot, a cool hand with a lot of in-country time behind him, good man in a gunfight. Then he was gone.

The tourist was crying and bleeding from the beating but otherwise unhurt, as had been the plan, for an innocent witness was the fulcrum.

The sirens began howling, and in a few minutes the first cop car would be here.

Payne melted into the dark.

She had brought the magazines, all the newspapers, everything that she could find or acquire in Ajo without making a big fuss.

It was ten minutes into the reading that Bob found the mention of Mike’s death. There it was in print. Somehow, that made it official.

Bob put the magazine down slowly, and stared out the window. He could see the bright desert light, the hot flat blue of the sky, an endless cruelty of needles spangling the low rills.

He just sat there most of the morning, mourning Mike and trying to figure who would kill him. Then of course he had it. To get his rifle from the trailer, of course, they’d have to shoot Mike. Mike wouldn’t have let them in, he would have stayed on station come hell or high water; and if they drugged him, that would leave traces.

He read the sentence again.

“Evidently aware that after his deed he couldn’t return to care for the dog, Swagger shot the animal once in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun and buried it in a shallow grave.”

All right, he thought, feel sorry for him later. You have some work to do.

But the pain of it amazed him. He realized in a tiny part of his mind he’d been harboring some kind of illusion until now; he saw himself back at the place, and old Mike come up to nuzzle him, to press his sloppy jowl against him and gaze up with those dumb, adoring eyes.

All right, he thought, you killed my dog. Now I got some work to do, so that I can settle up.

He read slowly, without hurry, each article, from the earliest Julie had been able to find – which meant the most inaccurate – to the very latest. Nothing showed on his face. He sat on his bed and read it all, straight through. Then he read it again.

He saw himself laid bare, penetrated, turned inside out. He was fair game for them all; everybody had a theory, an idea, a notion. He realized he was no longer his own property; his private self had been taken from him forever.

They had it right – but wrong, too, terribly wrong. They were looking at him from such a twisted angle.