"Bootsie's sick, little guy. But she'll get better. You just got to do it a day at a time. Hey, hop on my back and let's check up on Batist, then I have to go."

She walked up on the steps and then climbed like a frog onto my shoulders, and we galloped like horse and rider down to the dock. But it was hard to feign joy or confidence in the moment or the day.

The wind changed, and I could smell the scorched, hot reek of burnt cypress in the marsh.

I drove to the office, talked briefly with the sheriff about my visit to New Orleans, my search through biker bars for Eddy Raintree, and my conversation with Joey Gouza.

"You think he's pulling the strings on this one?" the sheriff said.

"He's involved one way or another. I'm just not sure how. He controls all the action in that part of Orleans Parish. The guys who beat up Clete wouldn't have done it without Gouza's orders or permission."

"Dave, I don't want you putting a stick in Gouza's cage again. If we nail him, we'll do it with a warrant and we'll work through New Orleans P.D. He's a dangerous and unpredictable man."

"The New Orleans families don't go after cops, sheriff. It's an old tradition."

"Tell that to Garrett."

"Garrett stumbled into it. In 1890 the Black Hand murdered the New Orleans police chief. A mob broke eleven of them out of the parish prison, hanged two from street lamps, and clubbed and shot the other nine to death. So cops like me get bribe offers and guys like Clete get brass knuckles."

"Don't start a new precedent."

I went to check my mailbox next to the dispatcher's office. It was five-fifteen. All I had to do was glance at my mail and thumb through my telephone messages and make one phone call, and I was sure that when Drew picked up the phone she would be calm, perhaps even apologetic for her distraught behavior of yesterday, and I would be on my way home to dinner.

Wrong.

The dispatcher had written Drew's message in blue ink across the first pink slip on the stack: Dave, don't you give a damn?

Her house was only two blocks from the drawbridge that I would cross on my way home, I told myself. I would give myself fifteen minutes there. Friendship and the past required a certain degree of obligation, even if it was only a ritualistic act of assurance or kindness, and it had nothing to do with marital fidelity. Nothing, I told myself.

She was barbecuing in the backyard. She was barefoot, and she wore white tennis shorts and a striped blue cotton shirt. Her face looked hot in the smoke, and the back of her tan neck was beaded with perspiration. The picnic table was covered with a flowered tablecloth, and in the middle of it was a washtub filled with crushed ice and long-neck bottles of Jax. The oaks and myrtle trees in the yard were full of fireflies, and through the gray trunks of the cypresses along the bank I could see some kids waterskiing behind a motorboat on Bayou Teche.

"Maybe I dropped by at the wrong time," I said.

"No, no, it's fine. I'm glad you're here," she said, waving the smoke away from her face. "Weldon and Bama are coming over at eight. Stay for supper if you like."

"Thanks. I have to be getting on in a minute. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you, but I had to go to New Orleans. Did a uniformed deputy come out yesterday?"

"Yes, he read magazines in my living room for three hours."

She picked up an opened bottle of beer from the table and drank out of it. The bottle was beaded with moisture, and I watched the foam run down inside the neck into her mouth.

"There's some soda in the refrigerator," she said.

"That's all right."

She put the bottle in her mouth again and looked at me.

I glanced away from her, then picked up a fork and flipped one of the chickens on the grill. The sauce piquante flared in the fire and steamed off in the breeze.

"Why didn't you report the break-in, Drew?"

"I don't know who it was. What good would it do?"

"Was it your father?"

"If he's alive, he'd have no interest in me."

"Do you think it was one of Joey Gouza's people?"

"That gangster in New Orleans?"

"That's right. I have a feeling he and Weldon are on a first-name basis."

"If I knew who it was, I'd tell you."

"Cut it out, Drew. You can't get strung out one day, then the next day go back to the deaf-and-dumb routine."

"I don't like you talking to me like that, Dave,"

"You made a point of relaying your feelings through the dispatcher. It's a small department, Drew. It's a small town."

"I don't have those kinds of concerns, thank God. I'm sorry if you do."

She took a bandana from her pocket and wiped the perspiration off the back of her neck. Her face suddenly looked soft and cool in the mauve-colored light off the bayou.

"I wasn't doing very well yesterday," she said. "Maybe I shouldn't have called you. I shouldn't have made it so personal, either."

"Look, when somebody creeps your house, it's for one of two reasons: either to steal from you or do you bodily harm, or perhaps both. When it happens, it frightens you. You feel violated. You want to take everything out of your closets and dresser drawers and wash them."

She unsnapped the cap on another bottle of Jax and sat down on the picnic bench. But she didn't drink from the bottle. She just kept drawing a line down through the moisture with her finger.

"I was in northern Nicaragua," she said. "When the contras 'violated' someone, they cut the person up in pieces."

"I was just trying to say that your reaction was understandable, Drew."

"I bought a pistol this morning. The next time someone breaks into my house, I'm going to kill the sonofabitch."

"That's not going to make the bigger problem go away. You're protecting Weldon from something, and at the same time you know if he doesn't get help, he's going to take a fall. I think you've got another problem, too. Weldon's done something that goes against your conscience, and somehow he's pulled you into it."

"I wish I could be omniscient. It must be wonderful to have that gift."

"Has he been mixed up with the contras?"

"No."

I looked her steadily in the eyes.

"I said no," she repeated.

"I'm going to say something you probably won't like. Weldon worked for the CIA. Air America flew in and out the Golden Triangle. Sometimes they ferried around warlords, who were in reality transporting narcotics. The station chiefs knew it, the pilots knew it. Weldon's been involved in some nasty stuff. Maybe it's time he took his own fall. I think he's a chickenshit for hiding behind his sister."

"Why'd you let everything go between us?"

"Excuse me?"

"You were talking about chickenshit. I thought you were the sun coming up in the morning. That's what I thought you were."

I felt the skin of my face tighten in the humid air.

"I went to Vietnam. Do you remember what you thought about people who went to Vietnam?" I said.

"That wasn't it at all, and you know it. You blew it with Bootsie, and I was 'just passing through. That's what chickenshit means."

"You're wrong."

She took a drink from the bottle and looked away toward the bayou so I couldn't see her face.

"I always respected you," I said. "You got upset yesterday because under it all you have a tender heart, Drew. Nobody is expected to be a soldier every day of his life: I start every other day with a nervous breakdown."

Her face was still turned away from me, but I could see her back shaking under her shirt.

I put my hand lightly on her shoulder. Her fingers came up and covered mine, rested there a moment, then she lifted my hand up and released it.

"It's time for you to go, Dave," she said.

I didn't reply. I walked across the thick Saint Augustine grass, through the shadows and the tracings of fireflies in the trees. When I turned and looked back at her, I didn't see a barefoot woman pushing at her eyes in the smoke but a little Cajun girl of years ago whose bare legs danced in the air while a switch whipped across them.