"I have a lot of time on my hands. A guy has to do something for kicks."

"I don't know as I'd want to fire up these babies. A nasty bunch. They're not our crowd."

"You think I ought to get lost for a while?"

"Who knows? I just wouldn't pull on their tallywackers anymore."

"Actually, I called you for a point of information, Clete. In all the shootings you've investigated, how many times have you known the shooter to recover his brass?"

"I don't understand."

"Sure you do."

"I don't guess I ever gave it much thought."

"I've never seen it once," I said. "Except when a cop was the shooter."

"What's the point?"

"It's funny how that can be trained into a guy, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Imagine that."

"If I was the shooter, I'd rather leave the shell casing than my signature."

"Maybe some things aren't worth speculating about, Dave."

"Like I said, I'm idle now. It fills the time. I spent two hours this morning over at the St. Charles sheriff's department answering questions about Bobby Joe Starkweather. Did they contact you all yet?"

"We heard about it." His voice was becoming irritated.

"A truly big mess out there. Another hour or so and I don't think there would have been anything left of Bobby Joe except his belt buckle and his boot nails."

"He's better off as sausage links. A guy finds his proper level after a while. I got to split, partner."

"Do me a favor. How about punching on the computer and seeing if you can turn up a retired two-star general named Abshire?"

"Stay idle, Dave. Adjust. We'll get out of this bullshit eventually. You'll see. Adios."

The phone went dead in my hand, and I looked at the smoky green surface of the water in the summer haze and poured another jigger of Jim Beam. What did they have on him? I wondered. Whores? Juice from narcotics? It seemed sometimes that the best of us became most like the people whom we loathed. And whenever a good cop took a big fall, he could never look back and find that exact moment when he made a hard left turn down a oneway street. I remembered sitting in a courtroom when an ex-major-league baseball pitcher from New Orleans was sentenced to ten years in Angola for extortion and trafficking in cocaine. Seventeen years earlier he had won twenty-five games, had thrown fastballs that could destroy barn doors, and now he weighed three hundred pounds and walked as though a bowling ball were slung between his thighs. When asked if he had anything to say before sentencing, he stared up at the judge, the rings of fat on his neck trembling, and replied, "Your Honor, I have no idea how I got from there to here."

I believed him, too. But as I sat in the warm breeze with the drowsy heat of the whiskey working in my head, my concern was not for Clete or an ex-baseball pitcher. I knew that my own fuse was lit, and it was only a matter of time before my banked fires would roar out of control in my life. I had never felt more alone, and I uttered a prayer that seemed a contradiction of everything I had learned back at the Catholic school: Dear God, my higher power, even though I've abandoned You, don't abandon me.

EIGHT

Late that afternoon I fixed a poor-boy sandwich of oysters, shrimp, lettuce, and a sauce piquante, then drove through the cooling, tree-shaded streets toward the Times-Picayune, where a night editor sometimes let me use their morgue.

But first I wanted to make amends to Annie for deserting her at the houseboat the other night. Afternoon Jim Beam always endowed me with that kind of magical power.

I bought a bottle of Cold Duck and a box of pralines wrapped in orange cellophane and yellow ribbon, kept my freshly pressed seersucker coat on, and strolled up her sidewalk in the dusky light. The air smelled of lilac and spaded flower beds and clipped lawns and water sprinklers clicking across hedges and the trunks of trees.

When she didn't answer the bell, I walked around back and found her barbecuing steaks on a portable grill on a brick patio under a chinaberry tree. She wore white shorts and Mexican straw shoes and a yellow shirt tied under her breasts. Her eyes were watering in the smoke, and she stepped away from the fire and picked up a gin gimlet from a glass tabletop that was set with plates and silverware. The gimlet glass was wrapped in a paper napkin with a rubber band around it. Her eyes lighted briefly when she saw me, then she looked away.

"Oh, hello, Dave," she said.

"I should have called. I caught you at a bad time."

"A little bit."

"I brought these pralines and some Cold Duck," I said.

"That was nice of you."

"I'm sorry I left you the other night. It's something you won't understand very well, I'm afraid."

The light came back in her blue eyes. I could see the red birthmark on the top of her breast.

"The best way to end a conversation is to tell somebody she can't understand something," she said.

"I meant there was no excuse for it."

"There was a reason. Maybe you just don't want to look at it."

"I went after liquor. I was drunk all night. I ended up in a bar on Old 90 with a bunch of sideshow performers. I called up the CIA and cussed out the duty officer."

"I guess that prevented you from finding a telephone for two days."

"I tried to find Bobby Joe Starkweather. Somebody canceled him out in a hog lot."

"I'm not interested, Dave. Did you come by to screw me?"

"You think I'm giving you a shuck?"

"No, I think you're singleminded and you're bent on revenge. I made the overture the other night and complicated things for you. Now you're feeling the gentleman's obligation. Sorry, I'm not in the absolution business. I don't have any regrets. If you do, that's your problem."

She began to poke the meat on the grill with a fork. The fire flared up and her eyes winced in the smoke. She poked at the meat all the harder.

"I'm truly sorry," I said. "But you're right about my being singleminded. There's only one girl I'm interested in."

I wanted to put my arms around her waist and take her out of the smoke, hold her against me and feel her curly hair under my hands.

"You just can't leave a woman alone in the night, Dave."

I looked away from her face.

"I woke up and you were gone and I thought maybe those defective people had come back. I drove up and down the beach looking for you until dawn," she said.

"I didn't know that."

"How could you, if you were with some sideshow people?"

"Annie, I'd like another chance with you. I can't make you many promises, except I won't deliberately hurt you again. That's probably not very adequate, but it's all I have."

She turned her face away from me, and I saw her brush her eye with the back of her wrist.

"Another night. There's someone coming over now," she said.

"All right."

"Are those people out there worth all this?"

"They'll find me if I don't find them. You can bet on it."

"My great-grandparents were part of the Underground Railway. Quantrill's Raiders tore down their sod houses and burned their cornfields. Long after Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson and Jesse James were dead, they were raising children and Russian wheat in a free state.

"But somebody canceled Quantrill and Company's action first, namely, federal cavalry."

I smiled at her, but her face suddenly looked wan in the electric light that was hung in the chinaberry tree. I didn't care about propriety or restraint or the fact that her friend would arrive any minute now; I set the Cold Duck and the pralines on the glass tabletop and put my arms around her and kissed her curly hair. But she didn't respond. Her shoulders were stiff, her eyes turned down, her arms angular and dead.