Early the next morning I sent two uniformed deputies to check the missions and the shelters in Iberia and Lafayette parishes for a man who had been disfigured in a fire. I also told them to check the old hobo jungles along the S.P. tracks.

"What do we do when we find him?" one deputy said.

"Ask him to ride down with you."

"What if he don't want to come?"

"Call me and I'll come out."

"Half the guys in that hobo camp look like their mothers beat on them with a baseball bat."

"This guy's face looks like red rubber."

"Can we take him out to lunch?" He was grinning.

"How about getting on it?"

"Yes, sir."

Then I called Clete's hospital room in New Orleans, but was told by a nurse that he was in X-ray. I asked her to have him call me collect when he got back to his room. Fifteen minutes later I was drinking coffee, eating a doughnut, and looking out the window at a black man who was selling rattlesnake watermelons and strawberries off the back of his pickup truck, when my phone extension rang. It was Weldon Sonnier.

"What's the idea of leaning on my sister?" he said.

"I think you've got it turned around."

"What did you say to her?"

I set my doughnut down on a napkin.

"I think that's none of your business," I said.

"You'd damn well better believe it is."

"Then why don't you stop dumping your garbage in her life?"

"Listen, Dave-"

"I got a bribe offer from an anonymous letter writer. This guy mentioned your name. He also said you're a prick and a welsher."

He was silent.

"Then I talked with Joey Gouza. He also called you a welsher."

"Consider the source."

"The interesting question is why I keep seeing or hearing the word 'welsher' when your name is mentioned."

"When did you see Gouza?"

"None of your business."

"He's a candidate for a lobotomy. I wouldn't mash on his oysters."

"Why are you mixed up with Gouza?"

"Who says I know him? The guy's notorious. Gouza is to New Orleans what monkey flop is to a zoo."

"Weldon, the real problem is you've tracked through your own shit and you're laying it off on other people. I think you've put your sister in jeopardy. In my opinion that's a lousy thing to do."

"Yeah? Is that right? Maybe if you ever get your nose out of the air long enough, I'll clue you in on the facts of life down in the tropics."

"I think you've sought out the trouble in your life. Nobody forced you to fly for Air America. You were dirty in Indo-China, I think you're dirty now."

"I wish I had the patent on righteousness. I guess you never called in any 105s on a ville. Stay the fuck away from my sister if you can't handle it any better than you did yesterday."

He hung up. This time I was the one whose words and anger were caught in my throat like a tangle of fish hooks.

Unconsciously I wadded up a sheet of paper on top of my desk and threw it toward the wastebasket, then realized it was my time log for my paycheck.

It was just after one o'clock and it had started to rain again when Clete returned my call. I had opened my windows, and the wind blew a fine spray through the screens.

"Can you come to New Orleans this evening?" he asked.

"I was coming tomorrow."

"How about today?"

"What's up?"

"I got some information on Bobby Earl that might lead us to those farts who worked me over."

"Wait a minute, where are you?"

"At home."

"The hospital cut you loose?"

"I cut myself loose. Somehow the smell of bedpans just doesn't go together with mashed potatoes and boiled carrots. Forget about the hospital. Look, you remember Willie Bimstine and Nig Rosewater?"

"The bondsmen?"

"That's right. I chase down jumpers for them sometimes. So I called them this morning to see if they might have some work for me, since I don't have any medical insurance and my hospital bill is a nightmare. But these guys are also a gold mine of information on the lowlifes of New Orleans. So when I had Nig on the phone I asked him what he knew about the buttwipes who put stitches all over my head. No help there, though. In fact, he said he thought Raintree and Fluck weren't around the city anymore, because when they're in town you hear about it. Fluck in particular. Evidently he likes beating the shit out of people.

"So I asked Nig what kind of action Bobby Earl might be involved in, and he told me this interesting story. Nig went a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond for this broad over in Algiers. The broad got nailed with four kees of pure Colombian nose candy. But Nig's not worried about her. She's got a high-priced lawyer, it's her first bust, and she knows she can cut a deal and not do any time, so Nig's money is safe. It's her two brothers who are the problem. Nig put up big bucks to get them out on a robbery beef, and they both skipped on him.

"Smart businessman that he is, Nig tells the broad that she either delivers up her brothers or he yanks her bond and she waits for her trial in the parish jail. Which is not what she envisioned for herself, because this broad is one beautiful hot-assed piece of equipment who the bull dykes will cannibalize. So Nig thinks he's got her and she'll have both her brothers in his office in twenty-four hours. But the broad pulls one on Nig that he doesn't expect.

"She says if he messes with her bond, threatens her again, or gets in her face about anything, she'll have a bed time chat with Bobby Earl, and Willie and Nig's state license is going to be hanging out in the breeze. Nig checked it out. She's Bobby Earl's regular punch across the river. Once a week he's at her pad like clockwork. She brags it around among the lowlifes that she fucks him cross-eyed on the ceiling."

"I'm not following you, Clete. Who cares? This doesn't get us any closer to Fluck, Gates, or Raintree. Tell Nig to give his story to the Picayune about election time."

"Here's the rest of it. Nig says the broad's brothers are bikers and they were both in the AB in Angola and Huntsville."

"I don't know if that's a big lead."

"You got anything else? It's Thursday. Nig says Thursday is poontang night for Bobby in Algiers. We tail him over there and see what happens. Come on, Bobby Earl's an amateur. We'll make drops of blood pop on his forehead."

I looked out at the rain denting the trees and thought for a moment. The rain was blowing across the truck awning of the black man selling strawberries and watermelons, and in the south, against a black sky, lightning was striking against the Gulf.

"All right," I said.

"Why all the thought?"

"No reason. I'll be at your apartment in about three hours."

Clete had enough problems of his own and didn't need to know everything about a police investigation, I told myself.

I called Bootsie and told her that I had to go to New Orleans, but I promised to be back that night, no matter how late it was. I meant it, too.

We used Clete's battered Plymouth for the tail. It was 7:30, and we were parked a block down the street from Bobby Earl's driveway; the sky was still black with clouds and rainwater ran high and dark in the gutters. Out on Lake Pontchartrain I could see the lighted cabins of a yacht rocking in the swell. Clete smoked a cigarette and blew the smoke out his window into the rain-flecked air. He wore his porkpie hat over the scalped divots and stitches in his head, and a purple-and-white-striped shirt and seersucker trousers that rode up high on his ankles. He kept rubbing the back of his thick neck and craning his head.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"Yeah, there is. I hurt from head to foot. Man, I must be getting old to let punks like that take me down."

"Sometimes you lose."

"You're always quoting Hemingway to me. Do you know what he told his kid when his kid asked something about the importance of being a good loser? He said, 'Son, being a good loser requires one thing-practice.' "