"Maybe."

"Look, I want to push this stuff to a head. Can you get a wire into Cardo's house?"

"I think so."

"Either you can or you can't, Dave."

"I can try, Minos."

"Once again I'm getting a strong impression here of a lack of enthusiasm."

"What do you expect? I'm a hired Judas goat. You want me to tell you I like it?"

He paused a moment; then he said in an even voice, "We hear a big load of coke is going to hit town in three or four days. A lot of it is going to end up as crack in the welfare projects."

I looked out the window into the courtyard, where my neighbor was trying to leash his dog in the flower bed.

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said.

"You know the scene. A human life isn't worth a stick of chewing gum in those places. All thanks to Tony C. and his friends."

"How do you want to work it?"

"Find out his connection with the shipment. Then we'll wire you. All we need is a statement that he's in on the buy or the distribution."

"All right."

"You sound like you've got something else on your mind."

"It's Kim Dollinger. I think somebody's got her out there twisting in the wind."

"Why?"

"She was terrified when we got busted yesterday."

"Who's she afraid of?"

"Tony, Nate Baxter, you guys. How should I know?"

"It's not us. You want us to pick her up?"

"She's a hard-nosed girl. She won't cooperate. Baxter let her walk. Why would he let her walk when he rousted the rest of us? It was a good opportunity to squeeze her."

"From what I hear about this guy, he's about as complicated as an empty closet. Save yourself a lot of grief and don't make a mystery out of morons."

"If I only had that clarity of line, Minos."

"Work on it. It'll come with time."

After I hung up, I shaved, showered, and changed into a pair of clean gray slacks, a maroon shirt, combed my hair in the mirror, put a touch of Vaseline on the hard knot of stitches in my lip and head, and buffed my loafers.

I tried to keep my mind blank and not think about the care I was putting into my appearance.

Then I drove down St. Charles to South Carrollton and parked my pickup truck in front of the nineteenth-century building by the levee where Kim Dollinger lived.

Her apartment was on the second floor, and there was a hand-twist bell on the door. I had to ring it twice before she answered, a towel in her hand, her neck spotted with water. She wore jeans, tan sandals, and a white peasant blouse with a pink ribbon threaded through the top. The front of her blouse hung straight down from her breasts.

"Oh boy," she said.

"May I come in?"

She blotted the water on her neck and looked into my face.

"I'm getting ready to go to work," she said.

Her back window was open, and I smelled the draft that blew out into the hall.

"That's not all you've been doing," I said.

"Look-"

"Come on, I just got out of the bag. You can't offer me a cup of coffee?"

She stood back from the door for me to enter. I heard her close it behind me. Through the open window I could see the green of the levee and the wide, flat expanse of the Mississippi and the sandy bank and willow trees on the far side. The living room looked furnished from a secondhand store. Off to one side was a small kitchen with bright yellow linoleum. She sat down at a breakfast table that was located between the kitchen and living room. The legs of the table and chairs were chrome and had rusty scratches on them that looked like dismembered parts of insects.

"Kim, I'm not telling you what to do, but if you've already got the dragons after you, reefer just makes the problem a lot worse," I said.

She crumpled the towel on the tabletop. Her eyes looked out into space.

"What is it that you want?" she said.

"To talk with you on the square, with no bullshit."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"That's right."

"You wouldn't like to ball me while you're at it, would you?"

"Cut the badass act, Kim. It's a drag."

"I tried to talk with you. You wouldn't hear me."

"I can get you out of this."

"You?"

"That's right."

"A guy with a mouthful of stitches."

"I'm tired of being your dartboard. You'd better listen when a friend is talking to you."

She put the heel of her hand against her forehead. Her skin reddened from the pressure. She crossed her legs and breathed through her mouth. There were patches of color in her throat and cheeks. She made me think of someone who might have been wrapped in invisible rope.

"Have you ever been down?" I said.

"Have I what?" Her mouth hung open.

"Have you ever done time?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I said no."

"Have you been in custody?"

"You stop talking to me like this. Why are you saying these things to me?" Her voice started to break.

"Because somebody is turning the screws on you. I suspect it's Nate Baxter. He's a sonofabitch, Kim, and I know what he's capable of."

She pushed the heel of her hand along her hairline.

"What does Tony know?" she said.

"I couldn't guess. Do you sleep with him?" My eyes shifted away from her face, and I didn't want to hear her answer.

"I used to. When he wanted me to, anyway. He doesn't want to anymore. It's the speed. It's messed him up."

I glanced back at her face again. Her eyes met mine, then they looked away. There was a tingling in my throat, like a heated wire trembling against a nerve.

"Did somebody make you sleep with him?" I said.

"You don't have the right to ask me these things."

"If Nate Baxter is behind this, he's going to have the worst experience of his life."

"There's nothing you can do. It involves somebody else. Oh God, where's my stash?" she said.

She got up from the table, took a clear, sealed plastic bag of reefer from a kitchen drawer, sat back down, and began to roll a joint from a sheaf of ZigZag cigarette papers. Her eyes were narrowed with concentration, but her fingers began to shake and strands of reefer fell from both sides of the paper. Then she gave it up, rested her elbows on the table, and pressed a knuckle from each hand against her temples.

I picked up the plastic bag, splayed it open, dropped the papers inside, raked the loose strands of reefer into it, and walked down a short hallway to the bathroom.

"What are you doing?" she said.

I emptied the bag into the toilet and flushed it. Then I dropped the bag into a kitchen garbage sack. When I turned around she was standing a foot from me. Her hair hung on her forehead, and she had accidentally smeared her lipstick.

"Why did you do that?" she said.

"You don't need it."

"I don't need it?"

"No."

"Tony says it's all a cluster fuck."

"He's wrong."

Her eyes were green and moist and they looked directly into mine. I could hear the wetness in her throat when she swallowed. The top of her pink-ribboned peasant blouse was crooked on her shoulders.

"There's always a way out of trouble," I said. "You just have to trust your friends once in a while."

I touched her on the upper arm with my palm. I meant it in a protective and friendly way. Yes, I know that was the way I meant it. I could see the freckles on her shoulders, feel her breath on my face. She stepped close to me, and my arms were on her back, my hands lightly touching the coolness of her skin, the thickness of her hair. She rubbed her face under my chin, and I felt a shudder go through her body like tension leaving a metal spring.

Then she remained motionless in my arms, her breath small and regular against my chest. In the distance, I could see the hard, stiff outline of the Huey Long Bridge against a bank of purple rain clouds.