But the real rush is in the discretionary power we sometimes exercise over individuals. I'm talking about the kind of people no one likes-the lowlifes, the aberrant, the obscene and ugly-about whom no one will complain if you leave them in lockdown the rest of their lives with a goodhumored wink at the Constitution, or if you're really in earnest, you create a situation where you simply saw loose their fastenings and throw down a toy gun for someone to find when the smoke clears.

It happens, with some regularity.

I saw Bootsie and Alafair setting out picnic food on a table by the baseball diamond and I walked over to join them.

Alafair streaked past me, her face already flushed with expectation.

"Hey, where you going, little guy?" I said.

"To play kickball."

"Don't blind anyone."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Then she turned and plunged into the midst of the game, knocking another child to the ground. I sat down in the shade with Bootsie and ate a piece of fried chicken and two or three bites of dirty rice before my attention wandered.

"Did something happen this morning?" Bootsie asked.

"No, not really. Joey Gouza's probably having his day in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I guess that's the breaks."

"Do you feel bad about him for some reason?"

"I don't know what I feel. I suppose he deserves anything that happens to him."

"Then what is it?"

"I think he's in jail for the wrong reasons. I think Drew Sonnier is lying. I also think nobody cares whether Drew is lying or not."

"That doesn't make sense, Dave. If he didn't do it to her, who did?"

Out on the field the kids had torn loose a base pad from its fastening in the sand, where it served as the home base for one side. Alafair had the volleyball under one arm and was trying to replace the wooden peg in the sand without anyone else taking the ball from her.

"I don't know who did it," I said. "Maybe Gouza ordered it done as a warning to Weldon, then Drew lied to put him at the scene. But a guy like Gouza doesn't go out on a job himself."

"It's the city's case. It's not your responsibility."

"I twisted him. I made Bobby Earl think Gouza was going to drop the dime on him, then I told Gouza about it. The guy's experiencing some real psychological pain. He thinks a hit's out on him."

"Is there?"

"Maybe. And if there is, I might be responsible."

"Dave, a man like that is a human garbage truck. Whatever happens to him is the result of choices he made years ago… Are you listening?"

"Sure," I said. But I was watching Alafair. She couldn't hold the wooden peg with one hand and tamp it down in the sand without releasing the volleyball with the other, so she balanced the peg against her folded knee, then knocked it down with the heel of her free hand.

"What is it?" Bootsie said.

"Nothing," I said. "You're right about Joey Gouza. It would be impossible to be more than a footnote in that guy's life."

"Do you want another piece of chicken?"

"No, I'd better get back to the office."

"Let the city people handle it."

"Yeah, why not?" I said. "That's the best idea."

She squinted one eye at me, and I averted my gaze.

Ten minutes after I was back at the office, my phone rang.

"Dave?" His voice was cautious, almost deferential, as though he were afraid I'd hang up.

"Yeah, what is it, Weldon?"

He waited a moment to reply. In the background I could hear "La Jolie Blonde" on a jukebox and the rattle of pool balls.

"You want to have a bowl of gumbo down at Tee Neg's?" he asked.

"I've already eaten, thanks."

"You shoot pool?"

"Once in a while. What's up?"

"Come down and shoot some nine-ball with me."

"I'm a little busy right now."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"About what?"

"For taking a punch at you. I'm sorry I did it. I wanted to tell you that."

"Okay."

"That's all 'okay'?"

"I pushed you into a hard corner, Weldon."

"You're not still heated up about it?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Because I wouldn't want you mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you."

"So come down and shoot some nine-ball."

"No more games, podna. What's on your mind?"

"I've got to get out of this situation. I need some help. I don't know anybody else to ask."

After I hung up I drove over to Tee Neg's pool hall on Main Street. The interior had changed little since the 1940s.

A long mahogany bar with a brass rail and cuspidors ran the length of the room, and on it were gallon jars of cracklings (which are called graton in southern Louisiana), hard-boiled eggs, and pickled hogs' feet. Wood-bladed fans hun from the ceiling; green sawdust was scattered on the floor; and the pool tables were lighted by tin-shaded lamps. In the back, under the blackboards that gave ball scores from all around the country, old men played dominoes and bourse at the felt tables, and a black man in a porter's apron shined shoes on a scrolled-iron elevated stand. The air was thick and close with the smell of gumbo, boiled crawfish, draft beer, whiskey, dirty-rice dressing, chewing tobacco, cigarette smoke, and talcum from the pool tables. During football season illegal betting cards littered the mahogany bar and the floor, and on Saturday night, after all the scores were in, Tee Neg (which means "Little Negro" in Cajun French) put oilcloth over the pool tables and served free robin gumbo and dirty rice.

I saw Weldon shooting pool by himself at a table in back.

He wore a pair of work boots, clean khakis, and a denim shirt with the sleeves folded in neat cuffs on his tan biceps.

He rifled the nine ball into the side pocket.

"You shouldn't ever hit a side-pocket shot hard," I said.

"Scared money never wins," he said, sat at a table with his cue balanced against his thigh, knocked back a jigger of neat whiskey, and chased it with draft beer. He wiped at the corner of his mouth with his wrist. "You want a beer or a cold drink or something?"

"No thanks. What can I do to help you, Weldon?"

He scratched at his brow.

"I want to give it up, but I don't want to do any time," he said.

"Not many people do."

"What I mean is, I can't do time. I've got a problem with tight places. Like if I get in one, I hear popsickle sticks snapping inside my head."

He motioned his empty jigger at the bar.

"Maybe your fears are getting ahead of you," I said.

"You don't understand. I had some trouble over there."

"here?"

"In Laos." He waited until the barman had brought him another shot and a fresh draft chaser. He tipped the whiskey into the beer and watched it balloon in a brown cloud off the bottom of the glass. "We operated a kind of flying taxi service for some of the local warlords. We were also transporting some of their home-grown organic. Eventually it got processed into heroin in Hong Kong. For all I know, GIs in Saigon ended up shooting it in their arms. Not too good, huh?"

"Go on."

"I got sick of it. On one trip I told this colonel, this halfChinese character named Liu, that I wasn't going to load his dope. I pushed him off the plane and took off down the runway. Big mistake. They shot the shit out of us, killed my copilot and two of my kickers. I got out of the wreck with another guy, and we ran through jungle for two hours. Then the other guy, this Vietnamese kid, said he was going to head for a village on the border. I told him I thought NVA were there, but he took off anyway. I never found out what happened to him, but Liu's lice heads caught me an hour later. They marched me on a rope for three days to a camp in the mountains, and I spent the next eighty-three days in a bamboo cage just big enough to crawl around in.

"I lived in my own stink, I ate rice with worms in it, and I wedged my head through the bamboo to lick rainwater out of the mud. At night the lice heads would get drunk -on hot beer and break the bottles against my cage. Then one morning I smelled this funny odor. It was blowing in the smoke from the campfire. It smelled like burned hair or cowhide then, when the wind flattened out the smoke, I saw a dozen human heads on pikes around the fire. I don't want to tell you what their faces looked like.