The windows of Plato's Adult Theater had been walled up with cinder blocks so no one could see in, and the interior of the small, gold and purple lobby was decorated with erotic art that might have been painted by blind people. We went through the lobby into the office without knocking. A thin man with a pointed, shiny face looked up, startled, from his desk. He wore a powder-blue polyester suit and patent-leather shoes with silver buckles, and his receding, oiled hair glistened in the light from the desk lamp. Cans of movie reels were stacked in a wooden rack against one wall. The surprise and fear went out of the man's face, and he scratched his cheek with one hand and picked up a filter-tipped cigar from the ashtray.

"What do you want, Purcel?" he said indifferently.

"Dave, meet Wesley Potts, our resident bucket of shit," Cletus said.

"I don't have time for your insults, Purcel. You got a warrant or something?"

"That's what they say on television, Pottsie," Cletus said. "You see any TV cameras, Dave?"

"I don't see any TV cameras," I said.

"On television some guy is always saying 'You got a warrant?' or 'You got to read me my rights,'" Cletus said. "But in big-people land we don't do it that way. You ought to know that, Pottsie."

"I thought you didn't work vice anymore," Potts said.

"That's right. I'm in homicide now. My partner here's last name is Robicheaux. Does that make your swizzle stick start to tingle?"

The man behind the desk blew cigar smoke out in front of him and looked into it with his eyes flat, but I saw his fingers crimp together on the desk blotter.

"Your little brother up at Angola says you're blabbing it around that Dave here is going to get snuffed," Cletus said.

"If that's what my brother says, you ought to be talking to him. I don't know anything about it."

"The people up at Angola don't like cops hitting on their convicts. Bad for their image and all that," Cletus said. "But you and us, well, that's a whole different caper, Wes."

Potts's eyes were small and hot and staring straight ahead.

"Lighten up," Cletus said. "You're a businessman, you pay taxes, you're reasonable. You just got diarrhea of the mouth and you been spreading rumors around, and we want to know why you been doing that. It's no big deal. Just straighten us out about this strange stuff we heard, and you can get back to entertaining the perverts. Look at the material you got here. This is classy stuff." Cletus began to bang through the film cans on the wooden rack. He picked up one in both hands and looked at the penciled title with a critical eye. "This one is state-of-the-art porn, Dave. In one scene a guy kills a naked broad with a nail gun. She screams and begs, but the guy chases her around the house and staples pieces of her all over the woodwork." Cletus opened the can, held on to one end of the film, and dropped the reel bouncing on the floor. He held the film strip up to the light. "The funny thing, Wes, is sometimes a John goes apeshit and tears a hooker up, and I get the feeling that maybe the guy just finished eating popcorn out there in your theater. What do you think?"

"I never look at that stuff. I couldn't tell you what's in it. I just manage the place. It's a movie house, with a license, with fire exits, with sanitary bathrooms just like any other movie house. You don't like the place, go talk to the people that give out the permit."

Cletus began opening the other film cans, dropping the reels to the floor, and walking on them as he worked his way down the rack. Thick tangles of film were looped around his ankles and shoes.

"You cut it out, you bastard," Potts said.

"How'd you get into the IRS beef?" Cletus said.

"Fuck off."

"You're fronting points for the spicks, aren't you?" Cletus said. "You probably don't have fifteen people out there right now, but you show profits like you have the patent on the wheel. Why is that?"

"I sell lots of popcorn."

"All that coke and brown scag money finds a ledger to get written down on," Cletus said. "Except the Treasury boys are about to ream your butthole."

"I don't see any Treasury men. All I see is a plainclothes prick that never grew up from high school," Potts said. "Where the fuck you get off with this stuff? You smash up my films, you come down on me because of something my little brother said which I don't even know he said, and you give me some bullshit about Mexican scag, when if I remember right you never busted anybody more serious than a junkie with a couple of balloons in his crotch. Maybe you took a little juice while you were in vice, huh? You're a fucking joke, Purcel."

"Listen to this man carry on," Cletus said. "We're going to have to have privacy. Does this door go into the theater? Thanks, that's what I thought."

He opened a side door that gave onto a small theater that looked like a remodeled garage. In the flickering darkness a dozen or so men stared fixedly at the screen.

"What's happening, geeks?" Cletus said loudly, and began flicking the light switch on and off. "I'm the New Orleans heat. I just wanted to make sure everything was working all right. Enjoy your show."

They rose quickly from their seats and moved as a group up the aisles farthest from Cletus and went through the curtained exit.

"Big deal. The same guys'll be sitting out there tonight," Potts said.

"Could you leave me and Wesley alone a few minutes?" I said.

"I thought you might say that," Cletus said, and crunched again through the tangle of ruined film on the floor and closed the door behind him.

I sat on the corner of Potts's desk and folded my hands on my thigh.

"How do you think this is going to end?" I said.

"What d' you mean?"

"Just what I said. Do you think you can tell people somebody is going to blow me away and I'm just going to walk out of here?"

His sucked in his lips and looked at the wall.

"Tell me what you think is going to happen," I said.

"I don't know. I never saw you before. Why would I go around talking about you?"

"Who wants to drop the hammer on me, Wes?"

"I don't know any such thing."

"Do you think I'm a dumb guy?"

"I don't know what you are."

"Oh, yes you do. I'm the guy you never thought you'd see, just a vague figure in your mind you could laugh about getting snuffed. I've sort of showed up like a bad dream, haven't I?"

"I got nothing against you," he said. "I run a legal business. I don't cause you guys trouble."

"But I'm sitting here on your desk now. It's like waking up with a vulture on your bedpost, isn't it?"

"What are you going to do? Trash the place, knock me around? Big fucking deal."

I took out my five-inch, single-blade Puma pocket knife and opened it. The blade could fillet bass like a barber's razor. It trembled with light.

"Jesus Christ, man, what are you doing?" he said.

I picked up his cigar from the ashtray, sliced off the burning end on the desktop, and put the still-warm stub in Potts' shirt pocket.

"You can smoke the rest of that later," I said.

"What the fuck! Are you crazy, man?" he said. His face had gone white. He swallowed and stared at me, his eyes full of fear and confusion.

"You know who Didi Gee is, don't you?"

"Sure, everybody does. Why you ask about-"

"What's he do?"

"What d'you mean?"

"What's he do? Tell me now."

"Everything. Whores, numbers, unions, y'all know that."

"We're going to have lunch with him and I'm going to tell him what you told me."

"What?"

"He has lunch in Jimmie the Gent 's restaurant every Tuesday at two o'clock. You and I are going to sit at the next table and have a chat with the fat boy himself. Believe me, he'll find you an entertaining guy."

"I ain't going."

"Yes you are. You're under arrest."