Sam finished his eggs and shoved away his plate. “Some people think a lot about the future and screw up the day they’re walking around in.”

“I hear that.”

Sam did a slow pan of the café and frowned. “You think someone might want to save her from a musician’s life? I got to admit, they bring home about as much as a fry cook. My sergeant in the army sang on some phonograph records. Big labels, too. He was paid ten bucks for two sides of the record and never got a penny royalty.”

Duggs drained his ironware coffee cup and put it down, his head bobbing. “Brother plays in the Orpheum orchestra, and that don’t even pay the food bill for his family. He’s got to do Sunday bandstand work and Elks club dances and all that kind of bullshit.”

Sam tossed his napkin in his plate. “I play a little piano.”

“Pick up some extra scratch that way?”

“People tried to hire me for about a penny a key, so I said the hell with it.”

Charlie threw back his head and laughed.

Captain Stewart walked in and stood in the doorway, which everyone took as a signal to get to work. Before long, the boat was swamped by a special charter for middle-school children. The white band played for the chaperones and a few tourists as the boat eased up along the docks toward the grain elevators, the mates and watch-men keeping the children from walking the rails and swinging from the ceiling fans.

TWO DAYS LATER the boat ran a moonlight trip out of Donaldsonville, and two days after that the Ambassador docked in Baton Rouge to run three trips. The advance man had come up in his little Ford two weeks earlier, placed ads in the paper, put up posters on three hundred telegraph poles and in every store window, and talked a Presbyterian church group into a two p.m. trip. The captain gave the Wellers the morning off to go to the police station and report their daughter’s abduction and provide a description. The morning orchestra wasn’t taken too seriously, so Sam took Ted’s place at the piano and played the guitar parts off the chart, smiling at the few couples choosing to box-step next to the bandstand. He was surprised to remember how good it felt to have someone dance to his music. He studied the customers and after the set stood ashore by the stage plank to watch the morning riders file off the boat, looking carefully into each face.

He was going up the main staircase when the Wellers caught up with him, Elsie racing past, saying she needed aspirin. Ted mopped his face with his handkerchief and leaned against the rail. “The damned cops here aren’t interested in lost children from Cincinnati. They wouldn’t call other jurisdictions unless we paid the charges, and we’re about flat broke.” He pulled off his straw and wiped the hatband mark on his high forehead. “The desk sergeant took our description and threw it in a drawer. We asked him a bunch of questions, if there had been any child stealing that he knew off. You know what he told us? He said he had a few kids of his own he wouldn’t mind someone taking off his hands.”

“Sounds like you ran into a jughead. Probably the chief’s brother-in-law.”

Ted glared at him. “That supposed to make me feel better?”

“Look, I’ll lay off the two o’clock trip if the captain gives me the okay, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Ted cocked his head. “What makes you think you can do better than we did?”

“I know an old boy on the force-that is, if he hasn’t quit by now. We were in the same detachment in France.”

HE CROSSED the railroad tracks in the heat and climbed the long hill into town. At the police station the sergeant told him that Melvin Robicheaux was directing traffic at Florida and North. Sam walked out and half an hour later spotted him standing on a side street under a drugstore awning, smoking. His uniform was wrinkled and greasy, his badge pinned on crookedly. Sam called out his name.

The officer blinked. “Lucky! Where the hell did you come from?”

“The real city.”

They shook hands.

“You get a indoors job like you said you would?”

“Got it and lost it. I’m working on an excursion boat right now.”

“No cop work? Most boys got on the force.” He took a hissing drag on his cigarette.

“No. Not that. Not official, anyway.” He then told him what he was doing and who he was looking for.

Melvin spun his cigarette into the street and laughed. “You really are a lucky son of a bitch.” He looked down and laughed again.

“You want to share the joke?”

“You just walk up and get what you want, just like that.”

“What?” He bumped up his shoulders. Melvin Robicheaux seemed angry that the world was taking it easy on everyone but himself.

“I ought to hit you up for a few bucks like I do the pimps.” He looked up and down the street. “But I’ll take it easy. There’s a bunch of raggedy outlaws live way up on the river, right before the Mississippi state line, I guess. The Skadlocks. The old woman of the clan is Ninga, and she fits your description.”

Sam looked at him and then down the blinding street. “So do a lot of ugly old gals. This one ever steal somebody’s kid?”

Melvin looked over and watched an Oldsmobile run a stop sign. “She or any one of them that lives with her would carve out the pope’s eyeballs and bring ’em to you in a coin purse if you was to pay enough.”

“The world’s got no shortage of cutthroats. Why’d you think of her so fast?”

“Dogs.”

He took a step back toward the street. “Come again?”

“She steals dogs. Prize hounds, bank-guard dogs, yapping nuisance dogs. Don’t know how she makes off with them or who hires her. Last year I found her driving an old Dodge Betsy with three German shepherds in the backseat asleep in sacks. Purebloods from the damned army, no less. The car stunk of chloroform. We took her in and she had bail in her purse. Never seen her since.” Melvin put his tongue in his cheek and rolled his eyes. “Then I heard she got pinched for the same thing down in Orleans Parish. Same results, too.”

Sam put a hand in his pocket and leaned against the plate glass out of the sun. “It’s worth a shot. You can go out with me and we’ll talk to her face-to-face.”

“Lucky, my authority extends about five blocks from where we’re standing. I’m just a city cop.”

“Well, a parish deputy, then.”

“Her place is two parishes away, and that sheriff tolerates the Skadlocks like they was kin. I think they give him his liquor. If you want to talk to her, you’ll have to go into Gasket Landing yourself.”

“Where the hell is this place? Maybe I can take a train up and meet the boat at Bayou Sadie. Our advance man set up a moonlight trip out of there for the townspeople.”

Melvin pulled his watch and wound it, shaking his head. “Gasket Landing isn’t really a place anymore. Long time ago there was a plantation in there, but everything’s mostly fallen apart, I hear. It’s gone back to horse country. A car can’t get back in there through the slop.”

“Can I get there by boat?”

“You gonna sneak up on somebody on an excursion steamer?” He laughed and pulled out the papers for another cigarette. “If you got some wood sense from when you was a kid, there’s still one livery in St. Frank where they’ll rent you a horse.”

“The hell you say.” Sam remembered riding to grammar school with his cousins down in Calcasieu Parish, three of them on one rough-riding plug named Slop Jar. “I haven’t been aboard a horse but once since I left the farm.”

“It’s the only way to get there, Lucky. Bring a cheap compass and ask directions from everybody you see.” He put the cigarette in his mouth and gave Sam a sideways look. “You got a gun?”

He shook his head. “Don’t want one.”