"Did ya know ya get crazy in here, Hair Ball? If you don't get out, you're crazy as a cat with M4os up its ass. You know that, Hair Ball?"

"Je ne comprends pas, "Jean-Baptiste whispers, a drop of blood running down his chin and disappearing in his baby-fine hair.

He feels for the blood and licks his finger.

"Oh, you comprendez vous, all right. Maybe they stick something up your ass, huh? And kaboom!" Beast softly laughs. "See, once they get you over there in that cage, they can do whatever the fuck they like, and who's gonna know? You snitch and they hurt you more and say you did it to yourself."

"Who's there?"

"I'm so fucking sick of you saying that, knock-knock-shit, Mini-Me Dick! You know damn well who's there. 'Tis me. Your buddy."

Jean-Baptiste hears Beast breathing. His air travels past two cells and Jean-Baptiste smells garlic and red Burgundy, a young Clos des Mouches, what he calls a stupid wine because it has not slept long enough in dark, damp places to become brilliant and wise. In the dark, Jean-Baptiste's death-row cell is his cave.

"But here's the thing, my special pal, your only pal. They gotta transport me in this van to where they do me. Huntsville. What a name. Hunted and a villain, right? Takes an hour, the ride. What if something happens between point A and B?"

At Place Dauphine, chestnut trees, azaleas and roses are blossoming and blooming. Jean-Baptiste does not need to see, only to smell to know where he is: Bar du Caveau and Restaurant Paul, which is a good one. People are disconnected from him, eating and drinking behind glass, smiling and laughing or intensely leaning into candlelight. Some of them will leave and make love, not knowing they are watched. Jean-Baptiste glides through the night to the tip of the Ile St.-Louis, and the lights of Paris are caught in the current of the Seine and shimmer like fine hair. In but a few minutes, he is a mile or so from the morgue.

"Now I ain't got the wherewithal to do nothing. Bet you do, though. You get that van stopped when I'm on my way to the needle, and I'll come back for you, Hair Ball. My time's up. Three days. You hear that? Three goddamn days. I know you can figure out a way. You can arrange it, save my ass and then we'll be partners."

Inside a brasserie on the Ile St.-Louis, he sat in a corner and stared out at a balcony crowded with flowerpots, and a woman stepped out to look, perhaps at the blue sky and the river. She was very beautiful, and her windows were open to the fresh, fall air. He remembered that she smelled like lavender. He thought she did.

"You can have her when I'm done," Jay said as he sipped a Clos de Bиze of the Domaine Prieurй Roch. The wine hinted of smoked almonds.

He slowly swirled the red Burgundy, and it licked around the wide bowl of the glass like a warm tongue slowly licking in circles.

"I know you want some." Jay lifted the glass and laughed at the double entendre. "But you know how you get, monfrиre."

"You listening, Hair Ball? Three fucking days, just a week before you, I'll make sure you got all the bitches you want out there. I'll bring 'em to you, long as you don't mind if I have my piece of 'em first. Since you can't, right? So why shouldn't you share?" A pause, and Beast's voice turns sinister. "You listening to me, Hair Ball? Free as a bird!"

"So here we go," Jay said with a wink.

He set down his wineglass and said he'd be right back. Jean-Baptiste, clean-shaven with a cap pulled low over his face, was not to speak to anyone while Jay… He can't call him Jay. Jean-Paul, Jean-Paul was gone. Through the window, Jean-Baptiste watched his beautiful brother call up to the woman on the balcony. He was motioning, pointing, as if in need of directions, and she smiled and began to laugh at his antics. Instantly, she was overcome by his spell and disappeared back inside her apartment.

Then his blessed brother was magically sitting in the booth again. "Leave," he commanded Jean-Baptiste. "Her apartment is on the third floor." He nodded toward it. "You see where it is. Hide while she and I have a drink. She will be simple enough. You know what to do. Now get out of here and don't frighten anyone."

"You fucking ugly piece of hairy shit." Beasts hideous whisper drifts inside Jean-Baptiste's cell. "You don't want to die, do ya? Nobody wants to die except the people we do, when they can't take no more and start begging, right? Free as a bird. Just think of that. Free as a bird."

Jean-Baptiste envisions the woman doctor named Scarpetta. She will fall asleep in his arms, his eyes never leaving her, and she will be with him always. He strokes the letter she sent him, typed and brief, begging to come see him, asking for his help. He wishes she had written it by hand so he could study every curve and contour of her sensual penmanship. Jean-Baptiste imagines her naked and sucks his tongue.

53

THUNDER SOUNDS LIKE kettledrums in the distance, and clouds roll past the waning moon.

Bev will not head back to Dutch Bayou until the storm passes if it moves this far southeast, and the forecast on the car radio doesn't call for that. But she isn't ready to return to the boat landing. The lamb in the forest-green Ford Explorer has followed an interesting route for the past two hours, and Bev can't figure it out. She-whoever she is-has cruised streets and especially parking lots for no reason that Bev can tell.

Her guess is that the lamb had a fight with her man and refuses to go home right now, probably to worry him sick, one of those little games. Bev has been careful to keep her distance, to turn up side streets, to pull off in gas stations along Highway 19, then speed up. Several times, Bev has passed the Explorer in the left lane, going ahead at least ten miles, pulling off the highway and waiting for her prey to get ahead of her again. Soon enough, they pass through Baker, a tiny town with businesses that have strange names: Raif's Po-Boy, Money Flash Cash, Crawfish Depot.

The town vanishes like a mirage, and the stretch of highway becomes pitch dark. There is nothing out here, no lights, only trees, and a billboard that reads: You Need Jesus.

54

GATOR EYES REMIND BEV OF periscopes fixing her in their sights before vanishing under water the color of weak coffee.

Jay told her gators won't bother her unless she bothers them. He says the same about cottonmouths.

"Did you ask them their opinion? And if it's the truth, then how come cottonmouths come crashing out of the trees, trying to get in the boat? And remember that movie we watched? Oh, what was it called…?"

"Faces of Death," he replied, on this occasion amused instead of annoyed by her questions.

"Remember that game warden who fell in the lake and right there on camera, this huge gator got him?"

"Cottonmouths don't fall into the boat unless you startle them," Jay explained. "And the gator got the game warden because the game warden was trying to get him."

That sounded reasonable enough, and Bev felt slightly reassured until Jay smiled that cruel smile of his and did a complete about-face and explained how she can tell if an animal or reptile is a predator, and therefore an aggressor, and therefore the fearless hunter.

"It's all in the eyes, baby," he said. "The eyes of predators are in front of the head, like mine." He pointed to his beautiful blue eyes. "Like a gators, like a cottonmouth's, like a tiger's. Us predators are going to look straight-on for something to attack. The eyes of non-predators are more on the sides of the head, because how the hell is a rabbit going to defend itself against a gator, right? So the little bunny needs peripheral vision to see what's coming and run like hell."