"I can't come down there now. Maybe later. Lois is going apeshit on me," he said. "She took all the beer bottles out of the icebox and busted them all over the fucking driveway. On Sunday morning. The neighbors are watering their lawns and going to church while beer foam and glass are sliding down my drive into the street."

"Sounds bad."

"It's our ongoing soap opera. Drop around sometime and bring your own popcorn."

"Clete?"

"What is it?"

"Get down here."

I led the Nicaraguan through the traffic squad room, which was filled with uniformed cops doing paperwork, into my office, where Nate Baxter sat on the corner of my desk. His sports clothes and two-toned shoes and styled hair gave you the impression of a Nevada real-estate salesman who would sell you a house lot located on an abandoned atomic test site.

I threw the tape cassette into his lap.

"What's this?" he asked.

"His confession. Also some information about gun smuggling."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Listen to it. I've got an interpreter on the tape, but you can get your own."

"You taking coerced statements from suspects?"

"He had his options."

"What the hell are you doing, Robicheaux? You know this isn't acceptable as evidence."

"Not in a courtroom. But you have to consider it in an IA investigation. Right?"

"I can tell you now it's got about as much value as toilet paper."

"Look, you're supposed to be an impartial investigator. There's a murder confession on that tape. What's the matter with you?"

"All right, I'll listen to it during working hours tomorrow. Then I'll tell you the same thing I told you today. But let's look at your real problem a minute. An unverifiable tape-recorded statement brought in by a suspended cop is worthless in any kind of investigation. You've been here fourteen years and you know that. Secondly, while you were on suspension you got yourself busted with a concealed weapon. I didn't do that to you. Nobody else around here did, either. So why not quit pretending I'm the bad actor that kicked all this trouble up your butt? You got to deal with your own fall, Robicheaux. That's real. Your rap sheet is real, and so is your drinking history."

"How about Andres here? Does he look like something I made up?"

My office enclosure was half glass, and the door was open and our voices carried out into the squad room.

"Is he going to make a statement?" Baxter asked.

"Is he go-"

"That's right. You got a tape. You got a guy. Now the tape's no good, so is the guy going to talk to us?"

I didn't answer. The backs of my legs were trembling.

"Come on, tell me," Baxter said.

"He did it. He tortured a Treasury agent with a telephone crank, then burned him to death in my automobile."

"And he's going to waive his rights and tell us all that? Then he's going to put his signature on it?"

"I'm still signing the complaint."

"Glad to hear it."

"Baxter, you're a sonofabitch."

"You want to call names, be my guest."

"Ease off, Lieutenant," the desk sergeant said quietly in the doorway behind me.

I took my handcuff key from my pocket and unlocked one of the Nicaraguan's wrists, then hooked the loose end to the radiator pipe on the wall.

"Your trouble is you been making love to your fist so long you think you're the only guy around here with any integrity," Baxter said.

I swung from my side, hard, with my feet set solidly, and caught him square on the mouth. His head snapped back, his tie flew in the air, and I saw blood in his teeth. His eyes were wild. Uniformed cops were standing up all over the squad room. I wanted to hit him again.

"You want to pull your piece?" I said.

"You've finished yourself this time," he said, holding his hand to his mouth.

"Maybe so. But that doesn't get you off the hook. You want to do something?"

He lowered his hands to his sides. There was a deep, purple cut, the shape of a tooth, in his lower lip and it was starting to swell. His eyes watched me carefully. My fist was still clenched at my side.

"Don't you hear well?" I said.

His eyes broke, and he looked at the uniformed cops watching him from the squad room.

"Use some judgment," he said almost in a whisper, the threat and insult gone from his tone.

"Go on home, Lieutenant. It's no good for you here," the sergeant said behind me. He was a big man, built like a hogshead, with a florid face and a clipped, blond mustache.

I opened my hand and wiped the perspiration off my palm on my slacks.

"Put my cuffs in my desk drawer for me," I said.

"Sure," the sergeant said.

"Look, tell Purcel-"

"Go home, Lieutenant," he said gently. "It's a nice day out. We can handle it."

"I'm signing the complaint against this guy," I said. "Get ahold of Captain Guidry. Don't let anybody kick this guy loose."

"It's no problem, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.

I walked woodenly through the squad room, the skin of my face tight and dead against the collective stare of the uniformed officers. My hand was still shaking when I filled out the formal complaint of assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, and homicide against the Nicaraguan.

Outside, the glare of the sun was like a slap across the eyes. I stepped into the shade to let my eyes adjust to the light and saw Clete walking toward me in a yellow and purple LSU T-shirt cut off at the armpits and a pair of red and white Budweiser shorts. The shadow of the building fell across his face and made him look like he was composed of disjointed parts.

"What's happening, Dave?" His eyes squinted at me out of the glare, but they didn't actually meet mine. He looked as though he were focusing on a thought just beyond my right ear.

"I brought in the Nicaraguan. Didi Gee's people dumped him on my dock."

"The fat boy is rat-fucking the competition, huh?"

"I thought you might want to check him out."

"What for?"

"Maybe you've seen him before."

He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out into the sunlight.

"You know you got blood on your right hand?" he said.

I took out my handkerchief and wiped my knuckles with it.

"What went on?" he said.

"Nate Baxter had an accident."

"You punched out Nate Baxter? Jesus Christ, Dave, what are you doing?"

"Why'd you do it, Clete?"

"A lowlife is off the board. What do you care?"

"A bad cop would have used a throwaway. He would have just said Starkweather came up in his face with it and he had to smoke him. At least you didn't hide behind your badge."

"You once told me yesterday is a decaying memory. So I got no memory for yesterday. I don't care about it, either."

"Confront it or you'll never get rid of it, Clete."

"You think all this bullshit is political and involves principles and national integrity or something. What you're talking about is a bunch of perverts and heroin mules. How you take them out is irrelevant. Bust 'em or smoke 'em, all anybody cares about is they're not around anymore. My uncle used to walk patrol in the Irish Channel back in the forties. When they caught some guys creeping a place, they broke their arms and legs with baseball bats and left one guy to drive the rest of them out of town. Nobody complained then. Nobody would complain if we did it now."

"These guys don't hire part-time help."

"Yeah? Well, I'll worry about that when I have the chance. Right now my home life is like living inside an Excedrin ad. I got a little heat rash and Lois thinks it's the gon."

"Don't you think you've been working that domestic scam a long time?"

"Sorry to tire you with it, Streak."

"I'm going to take those guys down. I hope you're not there when I do."

He flipped his cigarette off the back of a passing truck. A sign showing a woman in a bathing suit was on the side.