"Because this broad had ears and a memory like flypaper. All the time she was poking plastic straws up her nose or balling the geek, she was also getting onto some heavy shit, and I'm talking government, military shit, Lieutenant, that the geek and the other spicks are playing around with."

"What do you mean 'government'?" I said.

"I'm repeating the gossip, I don't analyze. It don't interest me. I think Immigration ought to take these people to a factory and turn them into bars of soap. The girl tried to put his tit through a wringer. That got her out of the parlor, all right. They took her fishing out on the bayou and let her shoot up until her eyes crossed. When she didn't pull it off on her own, they loaded her a hotshot that blew her heart out her mouth."

"I appreciate the story you've told me, Didi, but I'd be offended if I thought you believed we were in the business of running your competition out of town."

"You hurt my feelings," he answered.

"Because we already knew just about everything you told me, except the mention about the government and the military. You're very vague on that. I think we're being selective here. I don't believe that's good for a man of your background who enjoys the respect of many people in the department."

"I have been candid, Lieutenant. I do not pretend to understand the meaning of everything I hear from people that sometimes lie."

"You're a mature man, Didi. You shouldn't treat me as less."

He blew smoke out his nose and mashed out his cigarette in his plate. His black eyes became temporarily unmasked.

"I don't know what he's into. It's not like the regular business around the city," he said. He paused before he spoke again. "A guy said the girl was giggling about elephants before they dumped her in the water. You figure that one out."

A few minutes later Didi Gee picked up his check and the two hoods who waited for him at the bar, and left. The red leather upholstery he had sat on looked like it had been crushed with a wrecking ball.

"He tips everybody in the place on his way out. Under it all he's a bit insecure," Jimmie said.

"He's a psychopath," I said.

"There's worse people around."

"You think it's cute to mess around with characters like that? You better give it some serious thought if you're fronting points for him. Guys like Didi Gee don't have fall partners. Somebody else always takes the whole jolt for them."

He grinned at me.

"You're a good brother," he said. "But you worry too much about me. Remember, it was always me that got us out of trouble."

"That's because you always got us into it."

"I'm not the one that almost got drowned in a bathtub last night. You threw a bucket of shit into a cage full of hyenas, bro."

"How'd you hear about last night?"

"Forget about how I hear things or what I'm doing with Didi Gee. You worry about your own butt for a change, or those greasers are going to hang it out to dry."

"What do you think this elephant stuff is?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"You ever hear of a guy named Fitzpatrick?"

"No. What about him?"

"Nothing. Thanks for the lunch. By the way, Johnny Massina told me about you smashing up Didi's rubber machines. The old man would have enjoyed that one."

"Like they say, you hear a lot of bullshit in the street, Dave."

I sat out on the deck of my houseboat that evening in the green-yellow twilight with a glass of iced tea and mint leaves, and disassembled my three pistols-my departmental.38 revolver, a hideaway Beretta.25, and a U.S. Army-issue.45 automatic. As I reamed out the barrel of the.45 with a bore brush, I thought about some of the mythology that Southern boys of my generation had grown up with. And like all myth, it was a more or less accurate metaphorical reflection of what was actually going on inside us, namely our dark fascination with man's iniquity. In moments like these I suspected that John Calvin was much more the inventor of our Southern homeland than Sir Walter Scott.

Southern Myths to Contemplate While Cleaning One's Guns-Substitute Other Biographical Names or Geographical Designations to Suit the Particular State in the Old Confederacy in Which You Grew Up:

1. A town in east Texas used to have a sign on the main street that read, "Nigger, don't let the sun go down on your head in this county."

2. Johnny Cash did time in Folsom Prison.

3. Warren Harding was part Negro.

4. Spanish fly and Coca-Cola will turn a girl into an instant drive-in-movie nymphomaniac.

5. The crushed hull of a Nazi submarine, depth-charged off Grand Island in 1942, still drifts up and down the continental shelf. At a certain spot on a calm night, shrimpers out of Morgan City can hear the cries of drowning men in the fog.

6. A Negro rapist was lynched outside of Lafayette and his body put inside a red wooden box and nailed up in a pecan tree as a warning to others. The desiccated wood, the strips of rag, the rat's nest of bones hang there to this day.

7. The.45 automatic was designed as a result of a Filipino insurrection. The insurrectionists would bind up their genitals with leather thongs, which would send them into a maniacal agony that would allow them to charge through the American wire while the bullets from our Springfields and.30-40 Kraigs passed through their bodies with no more effect than hot needles. The.45, however, blew holes in people the size of croquet balls.

There is usually a vague element of truth in all mythology, and the basic objective truth about the.45 automatic is simply that it is an absolutely murderous weapon. I had bought mine in Saigon's Bring-Cash Alley, out by the airport. I kept it loaded with steel-jacketed ammunition that could blow up a car engine, reduce a cinder-block wall to rubble, or, at rapid fire, shred an armored vest off someone's chest.

The darkness of my own meditation disturbed me. My years of drinking had taught me not to trust my unconscious, because it planned things for me in a cunning fashion that was usually a disaster for me, or for the people around me, or for all of us. But by this time I also knew that I was involved with players who were far more intelligent, brutal, and politically connected than the kind of psychotics and losers I usually dealt with.

If I had any doubts about my last conclusion, they were dispelled when a gray, U. S. government motor-pool car stopped on the dock and a redheaded, freckle-faced man in a seersucker suit who could have been anywhere from fifteen to thirty years old walked down the gangplank onto my houseboat.

He flipped open his identification and smiled.

"Sam Fitzpatrick, U. S. Treasury," he said. "You expecting a war or something?"

FOUR

"It doesn't look like you believe me," he said. "Do you think I boosted the ID and a government car, too?" He wouldn't stop grinning.

"No, I believe you. It's just that you look like you might have escaped from 'The Howdy Doody Show.'"

"I get lots of compliments like that. You New Orleans people are full of fun. I hear you've been taking a little heat for me."

"You tell me."

"Are you going to offer me some iced tea?"

"You want some?"

"Not here. You're too hot, Lieutenant. In fact, almost on fire. We need to get you back on the sidelines somehow. I'm afraid it's not going to be easy. The other team is unteachable in some ways."

"What are you talking about?"

"They have fixations. Something's wrong with their operation and they target some schmoe that's wandered into the middle of it. It usually doesn't do them any good, but they think it does."

"I'm the schmoe?"

"No, you're a bright guy with stainless steel balls, evidently. But we don't want to see you a casualty. Let's take a ride."