"You're a miserable excuse for a man," I said.

"Why's that, Lieutenant? You don't like the way things have gone? You didn't have warning about the rules? People have been unfair to you, have they?"

"It takes a special kind of degenerate to torture a defenseless man."

"People get hurt in wars. Your friend is one of them. You probably don't like that definition, but your sort never does."

"You're a punk, Murphy. You never fought a war in your life. Guys like you take them off the cattle cars and run the ovens."

For a moment I saw a flash in his eyes.

"Would you like to live in a communist country, Lieutenant?" he said. "Would you like Louisiana run by the Sandinistas the way they run things in Nicaragua? You know the Marxists are puritans, don't you? No casinos or horse tracks, no booze or poontang when you want it, no chance for the big fat score that keeps everybody's genitals aglow. Instead, you wait in a sweaty line with a lot of other mediocre people for whatever the government dole is that day. If you lived down there, you'd put a gun in your mouth from boredom."

"So somehow it's acceptable to tie down a kid and take him apart? What nails me about your kind is that you're always willing to sacrifice half the earth to save the other half. But you're never standing in the half that gets blitzed."

"You're a disingenuous man, Lieutenant. You remember what Patton said? You don't win wars by giving your life for your country. You make the other sonofabitch give his. I think you're just a poor loser. Look at Andres here. You see the little gray scars around his mouth? He has a right to be bitter but he's not, at least not excessively. Say something for us, Andres. Qué hora es?".

"Doce menos veinte," the tall man with the mustache replied. His voice was a wheeze, a rasp, as though his lungs were perforated with small holes.

"Andres used to have a regular puta in one of Somoza's whorehouses. Then one day he talked a little too casually in front of her about the work his firing squad did. They'd shot a Sandinista girl named Isabella whom they'd captured in the hills. He thought it was a good story, because she'd confessed before she died and turned a couple of dozen other Sandinistas. What he didn't say was that his whole firing squad had raped her before they shot her, and what he didn't know was that Isabella was his puta's sister. So the next time he dropped in for a little dirty boogie between the sheets, it was hotter than the devil's skillet and she fixed him a tall, cool Cuba libre with ice and lime slices and he swallowed it straightaway like the lusty fellow he is. Except she loaded it with muriatic acid, and poor old Andres has been spitting up his insides like burnt cork ever since."

"You're a piece of shit, Murphy."

"No, you've got it all wrong, Lieutenant. Some of us serve, others like Fitzpatrick here get in the way, and the majority, such as yourself, go about your games and your self-delusion while we take care of things for you. I don't like to pick on you in your situation, but it's not fair of you to start calling people names, either. Now you're an educated man of some experience, and I want you to answer me something truthfully. You've seen the people who are on the other side of the fence in this country-the peace marchers, the nuke freezers, the out-of-Central-America gang. Who are they?" The down-turned corners of his mouth tugged backwards in a slight smile and his eyes wandered over my face with a sense of merriment. "Some of them are lesbians, aren't they? Not all of them but at least some, you've got to admit that. Then there are others that just don't like men. They didn't like their fathers, their brothers, or their husbands, and finally they zero their sights in on any male authority-the President, congressmen, generals, anything with a cock.

"Now we come to the general malcontents," he continued. "These are your professional losers who couldn't tell a history book from a Sears, Roebuck catalog, but they do love a parade. I'm sure you got to see a lot of them on television while you were in Vietnam. My favorite bunch, though, is the pussy-whipped contingent. Their wives drag them around to endless meetings that are going nowhere, and if they're good little fellows, Mommy will give them a piece every week or so.

"I don't think that's your kind of group, Lieutenant, but maybe I'm wrong about you. I guess the bottom line is you wanted to be a player. Too bad, because now we've got to take a couple of players off the board."

"I'll suggest some reading for you," I said. "Go down to the Picayune morgue and read the clippings on what's happened to people who snuffed New Orleans cops. It's not our finest hour, but the lesson's unmistakable."

He smiled in a self-amused way, and began eating his hamburger again while his eyes glanced expectantly at the back door. Five minutes later, Bobby Joe Starkweather burst in out of the rain with a paper sack under his arm. His T-shirt and blue jeans were soaked through, and his muscles stood out against the wet cloth like intertwined serpents.

"I got it. Let's put the biscuit-eater under and get it on the road," he said. "Did you bring me a hamburger?"

"I didn't think you wanted it cold," Murphy said.

"You're a great guy to work with, Murphy," Starkweather said.

"Would you like mine?" Murphy asked quietly.

"I haven't had my rabies shots."

"Suit yourself, then, and spare us your complaining wit."

"Look, Murphy, I went after the booze, which you owe me twelve dollars for, and I got rainwater running out my crotch while you guys are in the dry, licking your greasy fingers. Don't provoke me."

Murphy chewed on his food and looked at nothing.

Starkweather wiped his face and arms slick, lighted a Lucky Strike from his Zippo, snapped the lighter shut and stuck it in his watch pocket with a thick thumb, and inhaled the smoke without removing the cigarette from his mouth while he took a fifth of Seagram's whiskey, a six-pack of Jax, a capped vial of pills, and a brown medicine bottle from the sack and put them on the table. Then he rummaged around on the workbench until he found a rubber funnel and a glass jar filled with rusty nails. He dumped the nails out on the workbench and walked back to the table with the jar and the funnel. His shaved head was shaped like a question mark.

"You should have been here earlier," he said. "We got some real high notes out of your friend. You remember what they used to say in 'Nam. Call up Charlie on the telephone and he always answers."

He filled the glass jar with beer and whiskey and the liquid from the brown bottle, then poured in the pills and screwed on the cap and shook it all together as though he were making a martini. His saliva was wet on the tip of his cigarette, and he breathed with a mean energy.

"It must be terrible to know you're a lush that can't hold his liquor," he said.

"I've spilled more in a week than you've drunk in your lifetime, asshole," I said.

"I'll bet. My first wife was a juicer," he said. "She'd do anything for it. She screwed a cabdriver once for a quart of beer. I found out about it, cut me a switch as thick as my finger, and whipped the dress off her back. I took her money and clothes away and locked her in the bedroom and she'd drink hair tonic. Finally they come and took her off to a crazyhouse in Montgomery."

"No matter what happens here tonight, I've got some friends who are going to cool out your action, Starkweather," I said.

"Maybe so, maybe so. But in the meantime I've got a drunkard's dream for you. When those 'ludes hit you, I can pull your teeth with pliers and you won't twitch. The castor oil is just to round out your evening, bring back those old three-day benders when you used to shit your pants. If you're a good boy, we'll let you sit up and drink it by yourself."