"Why was Hipolyte always deviling you?" I said.

He didn't answer.

"What it because he wanted you to pimp for him? Or make Dorothea get on the bus when he drove the girls out to the camp?"

"Yes suh."

"But Dorothea said Gros Mama Goula wouldn't let men bother her."

"Yes suh, that's right."

"That Hipolyte was afraid of Gros Mama, that she could put a gris-gris on him."

"Yes suh."

"Then Dorothea was safe, really?"

"What you saying, Mr. Dave?"

"Dorothea wasn't your main problem with Hipolyte."

He looked out at the shadows of the palm fronds on the pavement.

"It was something else," I said. "Maybe not just the pimping. Maybe something even worse than that, Tee Beau."

I could not see his eyes behind the dark glasses, but I saw him swallow.

"What was it?" I said.

"For why you want to study on that?" he said. "It gonna get me a new trial? It gonna make all them white people believe I ain't knock that bus on top of Hipolyte, I ain't stuff a dirty rag down his mouth? I ain't talking about it no mo', Mr. Dave."

"You'll need to at some point."

He looked small inside his white delivery uniform. The sleeves almost covered his folded hands.

"Hipolyte was selling dope for Jimmie Lee Boggs. That ain't all they was doing, either. They send some of them girls to Florida, to Arizona, anywhere Hipolyte take the bus. Them girls never come back. They families ain't ever find out where they at. All I ever done was taken Mr. Dore car, taken an old junk fan out his yard, but people be wanting to kill me. I tired of it, Mr. Dave. I tired of feeling bad about myself all the time, too."

I took a piece of paper from my wallet and wrote on it.

"Here's my address and phone number, Tee Beau," I said. "Here's the address and number of a bar where you can leave messages, too. Call me if I can help you with anything. Do you have enough money?"

"Yes suh."

"Don't look for Boggs anymore. You've done enough. Okay?"

"Yes suh. You want to know where I'm staying at?"

"I don't want to know. Give me your word you won't borrow any more cars."

He didn't bother to reply. He looked down between his knees and tapped the soles of his shoes on the pavement. Then he said, "You think I ever gonna get out of this?"

"I don't know."

"Gros Mama tell Dorothea that Jimmie Lee Boggs gonna die in a black box full of sparks. She say you go in there with him, you gonna die, too."

"Gros Mama's a juju con woman."

"She put the gris-gris on Hipolyte. When he in the coffin, his mouth snap open and a black worm thick as my thumb crawl out on his chin. It ain't not lie, Mr. Dave."

I had breakfast at the Café du Monde, then walked back to the apartment to call Minos at the DEA office. Before I could, the phone rang. It was Ray Fontenot.

"Your offer's accepted," he said.

"Ten thou a key, no cut?"

"What I just said, Mr. Robicheaux." Then he told me to meet him that afternoon in the parking lot of a bar just the other side of the Huey Long Bridge.

"You want me to make the buy in the parking lot of a bar?" I asked.

"We start it from there. Quit sweating it. You're gonna be rich," he said, and hung up.

I called Minos.

"It's on at five today," I said.

"Where?"

I told him about the bar.

"We'll have somebody inside, somebody outside taking pictures with a telephoto lens," he said. "But you won't know who they are, so you won't need to look at them. This is what's going to happen, Dave. They'll take you somewhere in their car, or you'll follow them in your truck. At some point they'll probably check you for a wire. We'll have a loose tail on you, but we're not going to get too close and blow it. So when you make the buy, you're pretty much on your own. Are you nervous?"

"A little."

"Carry your piece. They'll expect that. Look, you've handled it fine so far. The deal's not going to sour. They want you in."

"This morning I heard that Jimmie Lee Boggs is in town."

"Where?"

"Somebody saw him around the Pontabla Apartments two nights ago. It makes sense. Tony Cardo's girlfriend lives there. The same night, he was at a full-contact karate place out on the Airline."

"Who told you all this?"

"A guy I know."

"Which guy?"

"Just a guy in the street."

"What are you hiding here, Dave?"

"Are you going to check out the karate club, or do you want me to do it?"

"We'll handle it."

"His hair's dyed black and cut short now, and he may be wearing glasses."

"Who's the guy in the street?"

"Forget it, Minos."

"You never change."

"What if the deal goes sour today?"

"Then get the fuck out of there."

"You don't want me to bust them?"

"You walk out of it. We don't borrow people from other agencies to get them hurt."

"One other thing I didn't mention to you. This guy Fontenot knows I've got a grudge against Boggs. I get the feeling he'd like to see me go up against him."

"You know what a yard bitch is in the joint? That's Uncle Ray Fontenot, a fat dipshit who gets off watching the swinging dicks carve on each other. Call me after the score and we'll take the dope off you."

I was nervous. My palms were moist, I walked about aimlessly in the apartment, I burned a pan on the stove. Finally I put on my gym shorts, running shoes, and a sweatshirt, jogged along the levee by the river, and circled back on Esplanade. I showered, changed into a fresh pair of khakis and a long-sleeved denim shirt. Then I fastened the holster of the Beretta to my ankle, dropped the.45 automatic in the right-hand pocket of my army field jacket, slipped the brown envelope with the fifty one-thousand bills in it into the left pocket, buttoned the flap, and backed my pickup out of the garage. The sky had turned a solid gray from horizon to horizon, the wind was blowing hard off the Gulf, and I could smell rain in the air. My palms left damp prints on the steering wheel.

Rain began to tumble out of the dome of sky through the girders when I crossed the Mississippi on the Huey Long. The river was wide and yellow far below, and froth was blowing off the bows of the oil barges. The willows along the banks were bent in the wind. As my tires whirred down the long metal-grid incline on the far side, I saw the low, flat-topped brick nightclub set back among oak trees on the left-hand side of old Highway 90. Jax and Dixie neon signs glowed in the rain-streaked windows, and when I crunched onto the oyster shells in the parking lot I saw Ray Fontenot, Lionel Comeaux, and a redheaded woman in a new blue Buick.

The woman was in back, and Fontenot was in the passenger seat and had the door partly open and one leg extended out on the shells in the light rain.

"Park your truck and get in," he said.

"Where we going?"

"Not far. You'll see. Get in."

I turned off the ignition, locked my truck, and got into the backseat next to the woman. She wore Levi's, an open leather jacket, and a yellow T-shirt without a bra, so that you could see her nipples against the cloth. The air inside the car was heavy and close with the drowsy smell of reefer.

"Great place to be toking up," I said.

"What do you care?" Lionel said.

"I care when I'm in your car," I said.

"Don't worry about it. You won't be long," he said.

"What?"

He started the engine, drove the Buick behind the nightclub, and parked it under a spreading oak.

"What's the game?" I said.

"Show-and-tell," he said, got out of the car, walked around, and opened my door. "Step outside, please."

"We do the same thing with everybody. Then everybody's comfortable, everybody's relaxed with everybody else," Fontenot said.