"Then maybe that's who you should deal with."

"They've got a bad reputation. But maybe you're right. If I meet Tony C, I'll tell him what you said."

"Now, wait a minute…"

"I don't blame you for bullshitting me, Mr. Fontenot, but if you get serious, leave a message for me at Clete's Club. I'll be back in touch."

I walked back through the T-shirt shop and out into the neon lights and cacophony of jazz and rock bands on Bourbon Street.

I was tired, unshaved, weary of the people I had been with, my ears thick with the sound of trumpets and trombones and electric guitars, yet I did not want to return to the apartment and be alone. I walked to the Café du Monde for coffee and beignets, but it had already closed. So I sat on an iron bench in front of the cathedral in Jackson Square and watched the moon rise in the sky. The air was heavy with the smell of camellias, and the magnolia and banana trees that grew along the piked fence behind me made shifting patterns of shadow and light on the cement. A wind came up off the river, and it started to mist; then a shower clattered across the banana leaves in the square and blew in a spray under the lighted colonnades. I walked home on a quiet street, away from the noise of the tourists, keeping close under the scrolled iron balconies to avoid the rain.

It was warm and muggy the next morning, as it can be in southern Louisiana well into the Christmas season, and I had breakfast and read the Times-Picayune at the Café du Monde before the crowds of tourists came in, then walked across the square past the sidewalk artists and went inside the cathedral briefly because it was All Saints' Day. Later, I found two more of the contacts Minos had given me. One was a bail bondsman who told me to get out of his office, and the other was a woman who ran an occult bookstore that smelled of soiled cat litter. Her face was white with makeup, her eyes stenciled with purple eyeliner, her cigarette breath devastating. For fifteen minutes I pretended to examine her racks of books while she carried on a conversation with her customers about telepathic communication with UFOs and a hole in the dimension that exists in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle and operates like a drain in an enormous sink. Finally I bought a book on cats and left.

I called New Iberia that night to check on Alafair, and the next morning I walked over to Clete's Club on Decatur, across from the French Market. For years Clete had been my partner in the First District. He'd learned his law enforcement methods from an uncle who had walked a beat in the Irish Channel-"Bust 'em or smoke 'em," Clete always said-and had literally terrorized the lowlifes in the First. All you had to do was mention to a pimp or house creep or jackroller that Cletus Purcel would like to interview him, and he would be on the next bus or plane to Miami. Then Clete got into debt to the shylocks, ruined his marriage with whores and his stomach with booze and aspirin, and finally went on a pad and took ten thousand dollars from some drug dealers and right-wing crazies to get rid of a federal witness.

Later he would run house security at a casino in Nevada and become the bodyguard for a midlevel Mafia character and ex-con by the name of Sally Dio. But eventually what I thought of as Clete's most essential characteristics-his courage and his loyalty to an old friend-had their way, and he managed to walk away reasonably intact from all the wreckage in his life.

He was at the back of the bar, loading the stainless steel cooler with bottles of long-necked Jax. He looked up and smiled when he saw me. His body always looked too big for his clothes. He loved pizza, poor-boy sandwiches, deep-fried shrimp and oysters, dirty rice, beignets, ice cream, which he would eat with a tablespoon by the half gallon. He was convinced that he could control his weight by pumping iron every other night in his garage, and limit his ulcer damage by smoking Lucky Strikes through a cigarette filter and drinking his scotch with milk.

"What's happening, Streak?" he said. "I had a feeling you'd be by."

"How's that?"

"I'm hearing weird stuff about you, mon."

"Did somebody leave a message for me?"

"Nope."

"Then what did you hear?"

He stood erect from his work, flexed the stiffness out of his back, and grinned at me. His skin was ruddy, his hair sandy and combed straight back on his head, his green eyes intelligent and full of humor. A scar that was the color and texture of a bicycle tire patch ran down through one eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose.

"How about you spring for some oysters and I'll fix you a drink?" he said.

"I don't have time."

"Yeah, you do." Then he turned to a Negro who was sweeping between the tables by the dance floor. "Emory, go down to Joe Burda's and get us a couple of dozen on the half shell."

The Negro went out, and Clete fixed me a tall glass of shaved ice, 7-Up, Collins mix, candied cherries, and orange slices. He poured a cup of coffee for himself behind the bar, then came around and sat down beside me. The club was empty, the front door open; the light outside was bright under the colonnade.

"What the fuck are you up to, Streak?" he said.

"I've got an apartment over on Ursulines. I haven't bounced back too well since that guy put a hole in me."

"You like listening to drunks break bottles out in the street all night?"

"It's not bad."

"I bet. How many queers are in your building?"

"Lay off it,Clete."

"Then tell me why I'm hearing these weird stories."

"I don't know what you've heard."

"That an ex-Homicide roach is trying to score five keys of coke. That he got canned from the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department because he was taking juice. That he's floating Tony C.'s name around town."

"Word spreads."

"Among some people I'd stay away from, the kind we used to mash into the cement."

"The kind you used to mash."

"I'm not kidding you, partner. I heard this bullshit from three different guys."

"Who?"

"I can't control who drinks at my bar. There're some connected guys come in here. They know I used to work for the Dio family out in Vegas and Tahoe, so they're always inviting me back to their booth. You've got to see it, Dave, to appreciate it. About six of them, all guys, cram into the vinyl booth back there on Saturday night. They always sit so all of them can look out at the dance floor and flash their bucks and shake hands with everybody like they're celebrities. I'm talking about guys who couldn't put spaghetti on a plate without a diagram."

"These are Cardo's people?"

"One way or another. He pieces off a lot of his action so all the greaseballs stay happy. You ever meet him?"

"No."

"One of his broads lives in the Pontabla. He brings her in sometimes for a drink. He looks like somebody slammed a door on his head."

"When does he come in?"

"He's not a regular."

"What's the woman's name?"

"Who knows? I got a proposition for you, though."

Emory, the black barman, brought in a tin tray loaded with oysters on the half shell, slices of lemon, and a bottle of Tabasco sauce. I gave him six dollars for the restaurant bill and a dollar for himself. He went into the back of the club and began stacking cartons of empty beer bottles in a storage room.

"Let me in on it," Clete said. There was a bead of light in his green eyes.

"On what?"

"The sting, mon." He seasoned one of the oysters, squeezed lemon on it, cupped the shell in his hand, and let the muscle slide down his throat. He smiled and the juice ran down the corner of his mouth. "I figure it's probably a DEA gig. They've got the gelt, they can afford another player."

I didn't say anything.

"Here's what you tell them," he said. "I can cover your back, I know most of the dealers on a first-name basis. I can open doors. Right now you've probably got a couple of street snitches doing your p.r."