When he was back inside I got out of the truck with my.45 in my hand, crossed the levee, and moved through the darkness toward the shack. The willows were motionless, etched against a yellow moon, and I saw a moccasin as thick as my wrist uncoil off a log, drop into the water, and swim in a silvery V toward a dead neutria who had been hit by a boat propeller. The man moved in silhouette across the window, and I slid back the receiver on the.45, eased a hollow-point into the chamber, and walked quickly up the mud-bank to the back steps. I heard train cars jolt together, then a locomotive backing along the tracks on the far side of the levee.

Now, I thought, and I cleared the three steps in, one jump, burst into the shack, into a reek of stale sweat that was as close and gray as a damp cotton glove. His head looked up from the comic book that was spread on his knees. I aimed the.45 straight into the face of Eddy Raintree.

"Hands behind your neck, down on the floor! Do it, do it, do it!" I shouted.

The skin around his right eye was puckered with white sores. I shoved him off the chair amid a litter of newspapers, beer cans, and fast-food containers. His weight bowed the floor planks. I put the.45 behind his ear.

"All the way down on your face, Eddy," I said, and began to pull the handcuffs from the back of my belt.

That should have been the end of it. But I got careless.

Maybe my alcoholic dreams and sleeplessness of the previous night were to blame, or the eye-watering body odor that filled the room, or the sudden slamming of freight cars out in the darkness. But in the time it took the handcuffs to drop from my fingers, my vision to slip off the back of his head, he spun around like an animal turning in a box, grabbed the.45 with both hands, and locked his teeth on the knuckle of my right thumb.

His eyes were close-set like a pig's in the lamplight, his jaws knotted with cartilage, trembling with exertion. Blood spurted across the back of my hand; I could feel his teeth biting into the bone. I clubbed desperately at the back of his thick neck. His coarse, oily skin felt like rubber under my knuckles.

I was almost ready to drop the gun when he rammed his shoulder into my chest and dove headlong through the front window curtain.

My right hand quivered uncontrollably. I picked up the.45 with my left and went out the front door after him. He was running along the levee next to a stopped freight that must have been a mile long. The locomotive was haloed with white light and wisps of vapor, and in front of it gandy walkers were repairing track in the red glare of burning flares.

Eddy Raintree must have received his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps before a DI could teach him to stay off the crests of hills and embankments and never run in a straight line when someone is making a study of you through iron sights.

It felt strange to fire the.45 with my left hand. It leaped upward in my grasp as though it had a life of its own. Both rounds whanged and sparked off the sides of a gondola, and Eddy Raintree kept running, his head hunched into his shoulders. I knelt in the weeds, sighted low to allow for the recoil, let out my breath slowly, and squeezed off another round. His right leg went out from under him as though it had been struck with a baseball bat, and he toppled down the far side of the levee to the railroad bed.

When I slid down the embankment and got to him he had his palm pressed tightly against his thigh and was trying to pull himself erect on a metal rung at the end of a boxcar.

His hand was shining and wet, and his face had already gone white with shock. A sweet, fetid odor came from the car, and then I saw that it was actually built of slats and contained cages.

"Sit down, Eddy," I said.

He breathed hard through his mouth. His eyes were bright and mean, the whites flecked with blood.

"It's over, partner. Don't have any wrong thoughts about that. Now sit down and give me your wrist," I said.

He tried not to grimace as he eased himself down on the gravel. I cuffed one wrist, looped the chain through the iron rung on the car, and cuffed the other wrist. Then I patted him down.

"What the fuck's this train carrying?" he said.

I split open his pants leg with my Puma knife. The entry hole in the skin was black and no bigger than the ball of my index finger. But it took my wadded handkerchief to cover the exit wound. I slipped my belt around his thigh and tightened it with a stick.

"What the fuck is in that car?" he said. His long hair hung from his head like string on a pumpkin.

"I'm going to give you the lay of the land, Eddy. You're leaking pretty bad. I'm going to run up ahead and ask those train guys to radio for an ambulance. But if we can't get one out here right away, I think we should dump you into my truck and head into Baton Rouge."

The side of his face twitched.

"What's the game?" he said.

"No game. You've got a big hole in you. You're going to need some blood."

"That's it? I'm suppose to get scared now? I had a nigger gunbull sweat me with a cattle prod till he ran out of batteries. Go fuck yourself."

"Read it like you want. I'm going to the head of the train, then I'll be back and we'll load you in my truck."

He twisted his head around at a sound inside the railroad car.

"There's fucking lions or tigers in there, man," he said.

"It's part of a circus. They're in cages. They can't hurt YOU."

"What if they back up the fucking train while you're taking a walk?"

"You dealt the play, Eddy. Live with it. Keep that belt tight and don't move your leg around."

"Hey, man, come here. Cuff me to that light over there."

"It's too far to move you."

"What the fuck's with you? You enjoy people's pain or something?"

"I'll be back, Eddy."

"All right, man, I'll trade. Jewel smoked the cop in the basement. But I didn't have any part in it. We were just there to creep the joint. You saw me, I didn't have a piece."

"That's not much of a trade."

He waited a moment, then he said, "There's a whack out On Sonnier and the broad, both."

"Which broad?"

"His sister." He wet his lips. "I can't swear it, but I think the whack's out on you, too. You're a hair in the wrong guy's nose."

"Which guy?"

"That's all you get, motherfucker. I cut a deal, it's in custody, with a lawyer and the prosecutor there."

"I think you're a gasbag, Eddy, but I don't want to see you die of fright." I uncuffed one wrist, then locked both of his arms behind him. "Lie quietly. I'm going to ask a couple of those gandy walkers to help me put you in the truck."

"Hey, man, those animals smell my blood. Hey, man, come back here!"

He lay on his side in the gravel and weeds, his face sallow and slick with sweat in the humid air. His manacled arms were ropy with muscle, as though he were being hung from a great height, as though his tattoos were about to pop from his skin. A breeze blew across the levee, and I could smell the moist odor of animal dung and almost taste Eddy Raintree's fear of his own kind.

I walked three hundred yards to the head of the train, showed my badge to the engineer, and told him to radio to Baton Rouge for an ambulance. Then I asked two black gandy walkers to help me with Eddy Raintree. They wore din-streaked undershirts, and their black skin was beaded with sweat in the red light of the track flares. They looked at their crew foreman, who was white.

"Go ahead, boys," he said.

They walked behind me, back toward where Eddy Raintree lay on his side in the weeds and gravel. I heard the deep-throated sound of a tiger or lion in the wind. I turned to say something light to the black men, when one of them pointed into the distance.

"You got somebody coming yonder on a motorcycle," he said.