He thought about it a moment, then dipped the end of his cigar in his whiskey glass and put it in his mouth.

'It was me or them, I reckon,' he said.

'Beg your pardon?'

'I figured the kind of man I was, one way or another I was gonna be jailing. Better to do it up there on the horse than down there with a bunch of niggers chopping in the cane.'

I didn't tell Bootsie about the Caluccis, nor did I say anything to her about the smell of bourbon that she brought to bed with her that night. I fell asleep with my hand on her back. At about one in the morning I felt her weight leave the mattress. I heard her walk barefooted into the kitchen, open a cabinet without turning on the light, then clink a bottle against a glass. A moment later she was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth.

She seldom drank and had little physical tolerance for alcohol. The following morning she stayed in the shower for almost fifteen minutes, then ate an aspirin with her coffee and talked brightly at the breakfast table for a long time, until finally her face became wan and she put her forehead down on her palm.

I walked around behind her chair and rubbed her neck and shoulders.

'Sometimes it's hard to accept this, Boots, but there's no reason to feel shame when we're overcome by superior physical force,' I said. 'No more than a person should be ashamed of contracting the flu or being undone by the attack of a wild animal.'

'I keep smelling his odor and feeling his tongue in my mouth,' she said. 'I feel somehow that I allowed him to do it.'

'It's what all victims feel. We open our doors to the wrong person, then we think that somehow our expression of trust means we're weak and complicit. You didn't do anything wrong, Boots. You mustn't think that way anymore.'

But that kind of advice, under those kinds of circumstances, is similar to telling a person who has been stricken with a cerebral disease to rise from his sickbed and walk.

I turned off the grits on the stove, washed and put away our coffee cups and saucers, and took Bootsie to a restaurant on the Vermilion River in Lafayette for brunch. When I went to the men's room, she called the waiter back to the table and ordered a vodka collins. After we had eaten, we walked out on the deck that overlooked the water and watched some kids waterskiing. The sun was white and straight up in the sky, the air laced with the smell of diesel smoke from the trucks passing over the concrete bridge. Down below in the muddy current, a dead snow egret floated among an island of twigs and torn camellia leaves. The egret's wing had been broken, and above one eye was the coppery glint of an embedded BB in the feathers.

'Oh,' Bootsie said, and let out her breath. Then she turned away from the deck railing and said, 'Maybe we should go now, Dave. I'm going to listen to you and stay out of the sun. I've been terribly careless about it, I know. It's wrong to make other people worry about you, isn't it? I am not going to allow myself to be a careless person anymore, I promise.'

Her eyes were as bright and intent as if she were putting together a syllogism that in one way or another would solve a particular problem for all time. She walked back through the restaurant and out the front without waiting for me.

When we got home the phone was ringing in the kitchen. Bootsie went into the bedroom, turned on the window fan, and lay down on the bed with her arm across her eyes.

'Hello,' I said into the telephone receiver.

'This Mr. Robicheaux?'

'Yes.'

'How come you ain't he'ped my mama?'

'Excuse me?'

'She he'ped you, ain't she? How come you ain't he'ped her?'

'Who is this?'

'Zoot Bergeron.' But the tone of voice had become less aggressive and certain. 'My mama said Mr. Baxter's gonna get her fired if he can.'

'You're Lucinda's son?'

'Yes, suh.' Then he tried to deepen his voice. 'Yeah, that's right.'

'How old are you, podna?'

'Seventeen. I'm seventeen years old.' In the background I could hear echoes, like people shouting at each other in a public hall, and slapping sounds like leather hitting against leather.

'Does your mother know you're making this call?' I said.

'She tole you some stuff and you tole it back to Mr. Baxter. That ain't right she got to be in trouble 'cause you went and tole what you wasn't supposed to.'

Oh boy, I thought, the business about the other homicide victims being mutilated.

'I'll talk to your mother about it,' I said.

I could almost hear his breath click in his throat.

'That won't do no good. I can tell you who them vigilantes are. Then you and my mama can arrest them.'

'Oh? Why don't you just tell her?'

'Cause she don't believe me.'

'I see.'

'You coming down here?' he said.

'Where would that be?'

'The gym. Mr. Lonighan's Sport Center. You know where that's at?'

'What are you doing around Tommy Lonighan, partner?'

'I box here and I sweep up in the evening. You coming?'

'I'll think about it.'

I heard somebody begin to do a rat-a-tat-tat on a timing bag.

'You gonna tell her I called?'

'What's your name again?'

'Zoot.'

'That's a nifty name, Zoot. No, I'm not going to tell your mama that you called. But you listen to what I tell you, now. Don't be telling other people you know anything about vigilantes. Particularly around that gym. Okay?'

'Yes, suh. I mean, I got it. I'll be expecting you though. A deal's a deal, right? We got us a deal, ain't that right?'

'Wait a minute…'

'My mama said you was a nice man, said for me not to be blaming her trouble with Mr. Baxter on you. She's right, ain't she? I be here this evening, I be here early in the morning.'

He hung up before I could answer.

At three that same afternoon I received a call from the lawyer I had retained to represent Batist. He was the most successful criminal attorney in Lafayette. My five-minute conversation with him was another lesson in how the laws of finance apply to our legal system. The lawyer had confronted the prosecutor's office in New Orleans with the information given me by Lucinda Bergeron about the other murders; he also told them he could present a half dozen depositions to the effect that Batist was nowhere around New Orleans when they were committed. He also mentioned the possibility of civil suit against the city of New Orleans.

The homicide charge against Batist was to be dropped by tomorrow morning. 'That's it?' I said. 'That's it.'

'Did they bother to explain why he was ever charged in the first place?'

'They make mistakes like anybody else.'

'It sounds like they're pretty good at self-absolution.'

'I think we've done pretty well today.'

'How much do I owe you, Mr. Guidry?'

'There're no fees beyond what we originally agreed upon,' he said.

'You're telling me six thousand dollars for making some phone calls?'

'There was some investigative work involved as well.'

'Six thousand dollars without even going to trial?'

'I thought you'd be pleased to hear your friend was out of trouble.'

I was. I was also down eleven thousand dollars in attorney and bondsman's fees, which I would have to pay in monthly installments or with borrowed money.

That evening I took Bootsie and Alafair to a movie in New Iberia. It was raining when we got home, and the air smelled like fish left on the warm planks of a dock and wet trees and moldy pecan husks. Then, just when we were going to bed, Clete called from New Orleans and told me a strange story that had been passed on to him by a friend of his in the Coast Guard.

Two days ago, at sunset, out on the salt south of Cocodrie, a Coast Guard cutter had spotted a twenty-two-foot cabin cruiser anchored in the swells, the bow bouncing against the incoming tide. All week the cutter had been looking for a mother ship, perhaps a Panamanian tanker, that had been dumping air-sealed bales of reefer, with floating marker bottles, overboard for smaller, high-powered boats to fish out of the water and run through the bayous and canals to overland transporters who waited on high ground up in the wetlands.