"I'm not relaxed. Who's the girl?" I asked.

"Do I look like a girl to you?" she said. Her eyes were green, the whites tinged red from the reefer hits.

"Who is she?" I said to Fontenot.

"This is Kim. She's a friend, a nice person," he said.

"I'm not fond of standing out here in the rain. You want to step outside, please," Lionel said. He spoke with his face turned at an angle from me, as though he were addressing a lamppost.

"What's she doing here?" I said.

"Certain people like her. She goes where she wants. Let's get on with the business at hand, sir," Fontenot said.

"Boy, talk about a personality problem. Who's he been doing business with?" Kim said. Her red hair was looped over one ear. When she saw me looking at her, she pointed her chin up in the air and lifted her hair off the back of her neck.

"He's just a careful man. He doesn't mean anything by it," Fontenot said. "But let's not delay any longer, Mr. Robicheaux."

I stepped outside and let Lionel work his hands up and down my body. He pulled my shirt out of my trousers, patted under my arms, slipped his hand down my spine, felt my pockets and along my legs.

"You think you're going to need all that firepower?" he asked.

"It's an old habit," I said.

Fontenot was looking at Lionel's face.

"He's cool," Lionel said.

"Time to open the candy store," Fontenot said.

Lionel got back in the Buick and backed it up to where my truck was parked. I glanced again at the girl. She wore no makeup, and her face was hard and shiny. Pretty but hard. She looked like she had a hard body. Her hands were big and knuckled like those on a cannery worker.

"You got something on your mind?" she asked.

"Not a thing," I said.

"Good, because I'm not into eye fucking," she said.

"Eye fucking?" I said.

Fontenot was grinning from the front seat. He was always grinning, his teeth set like pieces of corn in his gums.

"I have to end our fun now," he said. "I'll hop in your truck with you, Mr. Robicheaux, and we'll be on our way."

He headed south of the city into St. Charles Parish. Gray clouds tumbled across the sky in the fading light, and white streaks of lightning trembled on the horizon beyond Lake Salvador. The Buick was a quarter mile ahead of us on the tar-surfaced road.

"I need to take a leak," Fontenot said.

I stopped next to an irrigation ditch between two dry rice fields, and he got out and urinated into the weeds. I could hear him passing gas softly. His beige sports jacket, with brown suede pockets, was spotted with rain. He smiled at me in the wind as he zipped up his pants, then got back in the truck, took a woman's compact from his coat pocket, and gingerly scraped some white powder from it with the blade of his penknife. He lifted the knife to one nostril, then the other, snorting as though he were clearing his nasal passages, widening his eyes, crimping his lips as though they were chapped. Then he licked the flat of the blade with his tongue.

"You want a taste?" he said.

"I never took it up."

"You think you could take up Kim?"

"I just wonder what she's doing here, that's all."

"She works in one of Tony's clubs. I suspect he probes her recesses. I know that's what Lionel would like to do."

"You know Tony now?"

"You're in the business now, my friend. It's a nice one to be in. Lots of good things to be had. You want to meet him?"

"It doesn't matter to me, as long as I get what I want."

"What is it you want?" There were tiny saliva bubbles between his teeth when he grinned.

"One big score, then maybe I piece off the action and buy a couple of businesses in Lafayette and Lake Charles."

"Ah, you're a Rotary man at heart. But in the meantime, how about all the broads you want, your own plane to fly down to the islands in, lobster and steak every night at the track? You don't think about those things?"

"I have simple tastes."

"How about squaring a debt?" he asked.

"With who?"

"Everybody's got a debt to square. Winning's a lot more fun when you get to watch somebody else lose."

"I never gave it much thought."

"Oh, I bet."

"Fontenot, that's the second time you've given me the impression you know something about me that I don't."

"You used to be a cop. That's not the best recommendation. We had to do some homework, stick our finger into a nasty place or two."

"Okay…"

"I'd be mad at somebody who put a hole in me and left me to die in a ditch."

"You're right. Do you know where he is?"

"I stay away from some people."

"Then you don't need to be worrying about it anymore."

"Of course."

We crossed a bayou on a wooden bridge and drove across a flooded area of saw grass and dead cypress. Blue herons stood in the shallows, and mud hens were nesting up against the reeds out of the wind. In the distance I could see the hard tin outline of a sugar mill. Fontenot opened the compact, balanced some coke on the tip of his knife blade, and took another hit. His face was an oval pie of satisfaction.

"Are you interested in politics?" he asked.

"Not particularly."

"Tony is. He writes letters to newspapers. He's a patriot." He smiled to himself, and his eyes were bright as he looked out at the rain through the front window.

"I thought the mustaches stayed out of politics," I said.

"Bad word for our friends."

"Why does he write letters?"

"He was a Marine in Vietnam. He likes to talk about 'nape.'" Then Fontenot changed his voice, his eyes glittering happily. "'Five acres of fucking nape climbing up a hill. They smelled like cats burned up in an incinerator. Fucking nape, man.'" He started giggling.

"I think you'd better not put any more shit up your nose."

"Indeed you are a Rotary man."

We passed a gray, paintless general store under a spreading oak tree at a four-corners, then drove through a harvested sugarcane field that was covered with stubble and followed a bayou through a wooded area. The bayou was dented with rain, and I could see lights in fishing shacks set back on stilts in the trees. We came out into open fields, and it began to rain harder. It was almost completely dark now.

"There." Fontenot pointed at a small wood house with a gallery at the end of a dirt road in the middle of a field.

"This is it?"

"This is it."

"You guys can really pick them."

"You should be impressed. It's a historic place. You remember when a union man from up north tried to organize the plantation workers around here back in the fifties? He was crucified on the barn wall behind that little house. The barn's not there anymore, but that's where it happened. For some reason the state chamber of commerce hasn't put that on any of its brochures."

"Look, I want to get my goods and get out of here. How much longer is this going to take?"

"Kim'll fix some sandwiches. We'll have some supper."

"Forget the supper, Fontenot. I'm tired."

"You're an intense man."

"You're making things too complicated."

"It's your first time out. We make the rules."

"Fuck your rules. On any kind of score, you get in and out of it as fast as you can. The more people in on it, the more chance you take a fall. You went out on a score holding. That's affected my confidence level here."

"If you'll look around you, you'll notice that you can see for a mile in any direction. You can hear a car or a plane long before they get here. I think we'll keep doing things our way. Kim's sandwiches are a treat. Kim's a treat. Think about it. You didn't see her flex her stuff when you looked at her? Maybe she'd like you to probe her recesses."

His lips were purple and moist in the glow of the dashboard.

I followed the Buick down the dirt road to the house.

We all went inside, and Lionel turned on the lights. Kim carried a grocery bag into the kitchen, and Lionel started a fire of sticks and wadded-up newspaper in the fireplace.