"He drove me down to Crandon Park to see the flamingos. He said my father wouldn't hurt me anymore, not as long as he was around. Then he bought me some ice cream and parked the car in some palmettos and sat me in his lap. Then he unbuttoned my blouse. I've always thought of it as my morning for flamingos."

"That's a bad story, Kim."

"You learn early or you learn late. What difference does it make?"

"Are you really that hard?"

"No, I just like hanging around people like Ray and Lionel and the raghead for kicks. You'll see. It's a great life."

She finished her drink, went to the women's room, and came back. I could smell mints on her breath. The Negro barman started to pour her another gimlet from the blender but she shook her head negatively. Somebody had put an old recording of "Please Don't Leave Me" by Fats Domino on the jukebox.

"Dance with me," she said.

It was dark and the vinyl booths were empty at the back of the dance floor. She felt light and small in my arms, and her head rested against my chest. I felt her hair touch my cheek.

"Look, Kim, let me buy you some gumbo at the Golden Star," I said.

She didn't answer. I could feel her stomach and breasts against me, and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

"Hey," I said, and looked at her and smiled. "I'm an over-the-hill guy who doesn't deserve the kindness of a pretty young woman."

"Tony lets me use his beach house in Biloxi. Come with me there today."

"It sounds like a good way to end up in an oil barrel."

"He won't hurt you. He likes you. I don't think Tony's going to be around much longer, anyway."

"Why not?"

"People in Miami and Houston want him out of the way. He keeps breaking all their rules. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. Will you come with me?"

"I'm involved, Kim. You're sure a big temptation, though."

Her feet stopped moving and her hand rested on my arm. She looked out at the light from the opened front door. A lock of her hair hung down on one eyebrow. Her face had the same wan expression on it that I had seen when she had been staring out at Tony Cardo's empty tennis court. Then she touched my throat with her fingers.

"So long, hotcakes. Don't think too bad of me," she said.

She left me on the dance floor, picked up her purse from the bar, and walked through the brilliant square of light at the front onto Decatur Street. Clete parted the window blinds with his fingers and squinted out onto the street.

"Yep, there he goes," he said.

"Who?"

"Nate Baxter, my man."

"Nate Baxter?"

"Yeah, I didn't think you'd forget him. The one genuine sonofabitch from the First District. I saw him watching her from under the colonnade across the street when she came in. A car just picked him up when she left."

"Why's a guy from Internal Affairs interested in Kim Dollinger?"

"He's not in Internal Affairs anymore. He's Vice. The perfect guy for it, too. A prick from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. What's going on, Dave?"

"I don't know."

"Some sting. Half the city of New Orleans seems to be in on it. Listen, get out of that gig at Cocodrie. I've got a real bad feeling on this one."

"Those are the ones you skate through. You buy it when you've got your pot off and you're reading a newspaper. You know that." I winked at him.

"Save the Little Orphan Annie routine for somebody else, Streak. When my ovaries start tingling, I listen to them. Anytime you see that buttwipe Baxter, it's bad news. You can count on it."

Back at the apartment I called the commercial dock at Cocodrie to check on my jugboat, then called Minos at his office to confirm the pickup of the half million.

"Our special-delivery man will be there with your bus locker key in about two hours," he said. "Did you know a half-million dollars in hundred-dollar bills weighs exactly eleven pounds?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"Don't drop it overboard. As I mentioned before, some of my colleagues are a little anxious about this one."

"I'm tired of hearing about your colleagues' problems."

"Your voice sounds funny."

"I've been doing push-ups. I'm still out of breath."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. I'm all right."

"When I was undercover I'd wake up with my heart racing. I'd smoke a pack of cigarettes before noon sometimes."

"My ears keep popping, like I've been on an airplane."

"Dave, you can throw it in anytime you want, and nobody will think less of you for it."

"I'm copacetic. Don't sweat it."

"Remember, we're never going to be too far away."

Then I told him about Nate Baxter's surveillance of Kim Dollinger.

"They're interested in Cardo, too," he said. "They're probably keeping some strings on his entourage."

"Why her? She's no dealer."

"I'll check. They're supposed to coordinate with us, anyway. Have you got some kind of personal involvement with this guy Baxter?"

"He tried to get me fired from the department when he was in Internal Affairs."

"So?"

"It didn't end there. I split his lip in the squad room, in front of about twenty-five cops."

"Dave, you never disappoint me," he said.

I rode the streetcar down St. Charles to Bootsie's house that evening, and the wind through the open window was cool and smelled of old brick, wet moss, and moldy pecan husks. But I couldn't concentrate on anything except my anxieties about the buy out on the salt and my questions, which I could not successfully bury, about Bootsie's involvement with the mob. How did an intelligent and educated woman from a small Bayou Teche town like New Iberia marry a member of the Giacano family? I tried to imagine what he must have looked like. Most of the Giacanos were built like piano movers, notorious for their animal energies, their enormous appetites and bovine behavior in restaurants, their emotionalism and violence. Their weddings and funerals were covered by local television stations with the same sense of mirth and expectation that people might have when visiting an amusement park.

The image just wouldn't fit.

But the image of her first husband sure did. He was a helicopter and pontoon plane pilot for Sinclair Oil Company, and I remembered him most for his suntanned, blond good looks and the confident, unblinking light in his blue eyes. In fact, I could never quite forget the night I met him, at a dance at the Frederic Hotel in New Iberia, right after I had been released from an army hospital. I was on a cane then. It was 1965, when the war was just heating up for other people, and it felt funny to go to a dance by myself and to discover that I was alone in more ways than one, that I was already used up and discarded by a war that waited in a vague piece of neocolonial geography for other boys whose French names could have belonged to Legionnaires.

Then through the potted palm fronds and marble columns, I saw her in a pink organdy dress, dancing with him in her stocking feet. Her face was flushed from the champagne punch, and strands of her hair stuck damply to her skin like wisps of honey. They walked toward the punch table, where I was standing, and I saw her gaze focusing on me as though I had stepped unexpectedly off a bus into the middle of her life. Then I realized she was drunk.

She started blowing air up into her face to get her hair out of her eyes.

"Well!" she said.

"Hello, Boots," I said.

"Well!" she repeated, and blew a web of hair out of her eyes again. "John, this is Dave Robicheaux. It looks like Dave has come back to visit New Iberia. What a wonderful event. Maybe he can come to our wedding."

He smiled with his white teeth when he shook hands. His eyes went back and forth between us, and I could see the recognition grow in them.