Then he realized he had no plan. All the time he had been driving from Houma, his mind had been on recovering the.38 and the flake. When that was out of the way, he had immediately started figuring out ways to avoid confronting Kovick. Now he was in front of Kovick’s shop with his pud in his hand and no plan. What was he supposed to do? Go through the front door shooting? What if he missed? What if Kovick had a gun under the counter?

He walked to the end of the block and entered the alleyway that led behind the shop. Garbage cans lay on their sides on the asphalt and clusters of untrimmed banana trees rustled in the wind. The back door to the flower store was ajar. Bertrand could feel his chest constricting, his lungs burning as though someone had poured battery acid in them. He kept his right hand on his shirtfront so the wind wouldn’t expose the.38 and used his other hand to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. He never thought anyone could be this afraid.

He pulled back the metal door and looked into the rear of the shop. A tall woman was standing at a worktable, talking on the phone. She smiled at him and motioned him inside by cupping her fingers at him.

He stared at her, befuddled. She must have thought he was a delivery man. Then another realization started to dawn on him: She was Kovick’s wife. She had been in the photograph with him in the Times-Picayune.

What better way to get even with Kovick than to cap his wife, he thought. That’s what Eddy would say, at least if Eddy had a mind to think with, if Eddy wasn’t just a sack of viscera attached to a feeding tube.

The woman replaced the phone receiver in the cradle. She was wearing a sundress and had broad shoulders that were tanned and strong-looking, like a countrywoman’s. “Are you here to pull the tile in the bathroom?”

“Ma’am?” he said.

“You’re not with the plumber?”

“I was looking for an address. I ain’t sure I got the right one.”

“What’s the address?”

He couldn’t think. The sound of his own blood roared in his ears. “The address where Mr. Kovick is at,” he said.

God, what had he just said?

“He’s out front. I’ll tell him you’re here. What’s your name?”

“You ain’t got to bother him. I’ll get my tools. They’re in the truck.”

“Wait just a minute,” she said. Then she was gone into the front of the shop.

He couldn’t decide whether to flee or to pull the.38 from his belt before Kovick came through the heavy felt curtain that separated the front of the shop from the back. A truck rattled past the back door onto the side street, and he almost jumped out of his skin. Then, like an apparition in a dream, Kovick pulled back the curtain and stared into his face. Kovick looked like the biggest man Bertrand had ever seen. “What’s the problem?” he said.

Bertrand’s mouth was so dry he almost swallowed his tongue when he tried to speak. “Ain’t no problem, suh,” he said, frozen in place, the thumb of his right hand hitched in his trouser pocket.

Kovick wore a beige suit with pale purple stripes in it and a lavender shirt and a tie that was the color of a pomegranate. His eyes contained a dark light, like obsidian, the focus in them unrelenting. “You here about the bathroom? Some of the pipes are right under the tiles, so you got to be careful how you pry them up. They’re old and it won’t take much to bust them.”

“I ain’t here about no bat’room,” Bertrand said.

“Then what do you want?” Sidney looked at him sideways as he lifted an empty vase out of a carton on the floor and partially filled it from a wall tap. He set the vase on the worktable and began sorting through an order book. “Did you hear me? What do you want, kid?”

Nothing, except your life, motherfucker, Bertrand heard a voice inside him say.

“What’d you just say?” Sidney asked.

“Nothing. I ain’t said nothing.”

“You called me a motherfucker?”

“No, suh, I ain’t said that.”

“I think you did.” Sidney ’s eyes dropped to Bertrand’s belt. “What have you got there?”

“Nothing,” Bertrand said, backing away.

“Yeah?” Sidney said. He slapped Bertrand across the face, hard, coming around with his shoulder when he did it. “I asked you a question. What’s down there?”

“Suh, I ain’t did nothing. I’ll go away. You ain’t never gonna see me again. I promise.”

Sidney reached down and jerked the.38 from Bertrand’s belt, the steel sight tearing Bertrand’s skin. “You little shit,” he said. “You came in here packing, with my wife in the store?”

“No, suh. I was just lost.”

“Don’t lie,” Sidney said. He slapped Bertrand full in the face again, knocking spittle from his mouth.

“I thought it was an easy score, man,” Bertrand said, his nose full of needles, his eyes brimming with water.

“I got the reputation as an easy score? I got the reputation as anybody’s punch? That’s what you’re telling me in my own shop?”

Bertrand opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Sidney flipped open the cylinder of the.38 and dumped the shells in his palm. “Where you from?” he asked.

“ Shreveport,” Bertrand said.

Sidney dropped the.38 in his coat pocket and fitted his hand inside Bertrand’s shorts and pulled them and his trousers out from his stomach. He poured the six rounds down into Bertrand’s genitalia, then walked him to the door. “This is what it is, kid. You made a mistake. Come around again and I’ll tear up your whole ticket.”

Sidney pushed him into the alley and kicked him so hard between his buttocks that Bertrand felt like glass had been shoved up his rectum. He limped to the end of the alley, convinced that blood was running down his thighs. When he got out to the street, when he did not think any more humiliation or misery could come into his life, he saw a wrecker hoisting the front end of his Toyota into the air.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, the phone rang on my kitchen counter. “Either you or Purcel are behind this, Dave,” a voice said.

“ Sidney?” I said.

“You surprised I’m alive?”

“You lost me.”

“I’m holding a thirty-eight one-inch in my hand. Guess where it came from? It was stolen from my own house. I just took it off a black kid with breath like somebody broke wind. The black kid came in my shop with my own gun and was going to cap me with it. You think that’s just coincidence?”

“Where’s the black kid now?”

“I don’t know. I kicked his ass down the alley before I realized he was one of the guys who tore my house apart. But if I get my hands on him, I’m going to pull all his parts off and bring them to you.”

“Bad statement to make to a cop, Sidney.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m glad you’re all right.”

He paused, evaluating my response. “You’re saying you didn’t sic that kid on me?”

“No, and neither did Clete Purcel.”

“Don’t give me that crap. Purcel has got a long-standing beef with me. There was a rumble at the bottom of Magazine when we were kids. He thinks I was behind the guy who bashed him across the eye with a pipe. He’s a dumb mick. You know how you can tell a dumb mick? They think and act and look like Purcel.”

“Lay off Clete. He cut you slack when he could have destroyed you in front of your wife.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

I had waded out into deep water, but I figured Sidney had asked for it. “Clete knew you had gotten it on with Natalia Ramos. He could have shown you up for the sorry-ass sack of shit you are, but he’s too much of a gentleman to do something like that.”

“I guess the lesson here is wet-brains hang together. Let me try to line it out for you. I met Natalia Ramos at the video store. She loves movies, like I do. I gave her a job cleaning my office. I also tried to help the junkie priest she was shacked up with. He was a good man, but his cancer kept him on the spike. Tell Purcel he’s even dumber than I thought he was.”