Rodney conducted tours, gave directions around the city, walked tourists to their hotels so they wouldn't be mugged by what he called "local undesirables we're fixing to get rid of."

A buddy, a guy he'd celled with at Sugarland, asked him what he got out of it.

"Nothing. That's the point, boy. They got nothing I want."

Which wasn't true. But how did you explain to a pipehead that walking normals around, making them apprehensive one moment, relieving their fears another, watching them hang on his words about the cremation of the Texan dead on the banks of the river (an account he had memorized from a brochure) gave him a rush like a freight train loaded with Colombian pink roaring through the center of his head?

Or popping a cap on a slobbering fat man who thought he could bribe Rodney Loudermilk.

It was dusk when Rodney came back from showing two elderly nuns where Davy Crockett had been either bayoneted to death or captured against the barracks wall and later tortured. They both had seemed a little pale at the details he used to describe the event. In fact, they had the ingratitude to tell him they didn't need an escort back to their hotel, like he had BO or something. Oh, well. He had more important things on his mind. Like this deal over in Louisiana. He'd told his buddy, the pipehead, he didn't get into a new career so he could go back to strong-arm and B amp;E bullshit. That whole scene on the bayou had made him depressed in ways he couldn't explain, like somebody had stolen something from him.

She hadn't been afraid. When they're afraid, it proves they got it coming. When they're not afraid, it's like they're spitting in your face. Yeah, that was it. You can't pop them unless they're afraid, or they take part of you with them. Now he was renting space in his head to a hide (that's what he called women) he shouldn't even be thinking about. He had given her power, and he wanted to go back and correct the images that had left him confused and irritable and not the person he was when he gave guided tours in his western clothes.

He looked at the slip of paper he had made a note on when this crazy deal started. It read: Meet H.S. in New Iberia. Educate a commonist? A commonist? Republicans live in rich houses, not commonists. Any dumb shit knows that. Why had he gotten into this? He crumpled up the note in his palm and bounced it off the rim of the wastebasket and called the grill for a steak and baked potato, heavy on the cream and melted butter, and a green salad and a bottle of champale.

It was dusk and a purple haze hung on the rooftops when a man stepped out of a hallway window onto a fire escape, then eased one foot out on a ledge and worked his way across the brick side of the building, oblivious to the stares of two winos down in the alley eight floors below. When the ledge ended, he paused for only a moment, then with the agility of a cat, he hopped across empty space onto another ledge and entered another window.

Rodney Loudermilk had just forked a piece of steak into his mouth when the visitor seized him from behind and dragged him out of his chair, locking arms and wrists under Rodney's rib cage, lifting him into the air and simultaneously carrying him to the window, whose curtains swelled with the evening breeze. Rodney probably tried to scream and strike out with the fork that was in his hand, but a piece of meat was lodged like a stone in his throat and the arms of his visitor seemed to be cracking his ribs like sticks.

Then there was a rush of air and noise and he was out above the city, among clouds and rooftops and faces inside windows that blurred past him. He concentrated his vision on the dusky purple stretch of sky that was racing away from him, just like things had always raced away from him. It was funny how one gig led to another, then in seconds the rounded, cast-iron, lug-bolted dome of an ancient fire hydrant rose out of the cement and came at your head faster than a BB traveling toward the eye.

THE ACCOUNT OF RODNEY Loudermilk's death was given us over the phone by a San Antonio homicide investigator named Cecil Hardin, who had found the crumpled piece of notepaper by the wastebasket in Loudermilk's hotel room. He also read us the statements he had taken from the two witnesses in the alley and played a taped recording of an interview with Loudermilk's pipehead friend.

"You got any idea who H.S. is?" Hardin asked.

"We've had trouble around here with an ex-cop by the name of Harpo Scruggs," I said.

"You think he's connected to Loudermilk's death?" he asked.

"The killer was an aerialist? My vote would go to another local, Swede Boxleiter. He's a suspect in a murder in Lafayette Parish."

"What are y'all running over there, a school for criminals? Forget I said that. Spell the name, please." Then he said, "What's the deal on this guy Boxleiter?"

"He's a psychopath with loyalties," I said.

"You a comedian, sir?"

I DROVE UP THE Loreauville road to Cisco's house.

Megan was reading a book in a rocking chair on the gallery.

"Do you know where Swede was on Sunday?" I asked.

"He was here, at least in the morning. Why?"

"Just a little research. Does the name Rodney Loudermilk mean anything to you?"

"No. Who is he?"

"A guy with sideburns, blind in one eye?"

She shook her head.

"Did you tell Swede anything about your attackers, how they looked, what they said?"

"Nothing I didn't tell you. I was asleep when they broke in. They wound tape around my eyes."

I scratched the back of my neck. "Maybe Swede's not our man."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Dave."

"Sunday evening somebody canceled out a contract killer in a San Antonio hotel. He was probably one of the men who broke into your house."

She closed the book in her lap and looked out into the yard. "I told Swede about the blue stars on a man's wrist," she said.

"What?"

"One of them had a string of stars tattooed on his wrist. I told that to one of your deputies. He wrote it down."

"If he did, the sheriff and I never saw it."

"What difference does it make?"

"The guy in San Antonio, he was thrown out an eighth-floor window by somebody who knows how to leap across window ledges. He had a chain of blue stars tattooed around his left wrist."

She tried to hide the knowledge in her eyes. She took her glasses off and put them back on again.

"Swede was here that morning. He ate breakfast with us. I mean, everything about him was normal," she said, then turned her face toward me.

"Normal? You're talking about Boxleiter? Good try, Meg."

HELEN AND I DROVE to the movie set on the Terrebonne lawn.

"Sunday? I was at Cisco's. Then I was home. Then I went to a movie," Swede said. He dropped down from the back of a flatbed truck, his tool belt clattering on his hips. His gaze went up and down Helen's body. "We're not getting into that blackjack routine again, are we?"

"Which movie?" I asked.

"Sense and Sensibility. Ask at the theater. The guy'll remember me 'cause he says I plugged up the toilet."

"Sounds good to me. What about you, Helen?" I said.

"Yeah, I always figured him for a fan of British novels," she said.

"What am I supposed to have done?"

"Tossed a guy out a window in San Antonio. His head hit a fire hydrant at a hundred twenty miles per. Big mess," I said.

"Yeah? Who is this fucking guy I supposedly killed?"

"Would you try not to use profanity?" I said.

"Sorry. I forgot, Louisiana is an open-air church. I got a question for you. Why is it guys like me are always getting rousted whenever some barf bag gets marched off with the Hallelujah Chorus? Does Ricky the Mouse do time? Is Harpo Scruggs sitting in your jail? Of course not. You turned him loose. If guys like me weren't around, you'd be out of a job." He pulled a screwdriver from his belt and began tapping it across his palm, rolling his eyes, chewing gum, rotating his head on his neck. "Is this over? I got to get to work."