"Jim Gable wants him out of town?"

"The driver had just delivered a petition for Letty to Belmont Pugh. Maybe the message is for Cora."

"What's Gable's interest in Letty Labiche?"

"I don't know. You going to tell me why you called me down here?"

The affair had started casually enough. Clete had gone to her house at evening time and had found her working in back, carrying buckets of water in both hands from the house faucet to her garden. "Where's your hose?" he asked.

"The boy who cuts the grass ran the lawn mower over it," she replied.

They carried the water together, sloshing it on their clothes, pouring it along the rows of watermelons and strawberries, the sky aflame behind them. Her face was hot with her work, her dress blowing loosely on her body as she stooped over in the row. He walked back to the house and filled a glass of water for her and carried it to her in the garden.

She watched his face over the top of the glass as she drank. Her skin was dusty, the tops of her breasts golden and filmed with perspiration in the dying light. She lifted her hair off her neck and pulled it on top of her head.

He touched the roundness of her upper arm with his fingertips.

"You're a strong "woman," he said.

"Overweight."

"Not to me," he replied.

She kept brushing her hair back from the corner of her mouth, not speaking, letting her eyes meet his as though she knew his thoughts.

"I drink too much. I lost my badge in a bad shooting. I did security for Sally Dio in Reno," he said.

"I don't care."

She tilted up her face and looked sideways with her eyes, the wind blowing her hair back from her face.

"My ex said she could have done better at the Humane Society," he said.

"What somebody else say got nothing to do wit' me."

"You smell like strawberries."

"That's 'cause we standing in them, Clete."

She pushed the soft curve of her sandal across the hardness of his shoe.

They went upstairs to the third story of the house and made love in an oversized brass bed that was surrounded by three electric fans. She came before he did, then mounted him and came a second time, her hands caressing his face simultaneously. Later she lay close to him and traced his body with her fingertips, touching his sex as though it were a source of power, in a way that almost embarrassed him and made him look at her quizzically.

She wanted to hear stories about the Marine Corps and Vietnam, about his pouring a container of liquid soap down a hood's mouth in the men's room of the Greyhound bus depot, about growing up in the Irish Channel, how he smashed a woman's greenhouse with rocks after he found out her invitation for ice cream had been an act of charity she extended at her back door to raggedy street children.

"I'm a professional screwup, Passion. That's not humility, it's fact. Dave's the guy with the history," he said.

She pulled him against her and kissed his chest. He stayed away for two days, then returned to her house at sunrise, his heart beating with anticipation before she opened the door. She made love with him as though her need were insatiable, her thighs fastened hard around him, the small cry she made in his ear like a moment of exorcism.

Two weeks later he sat in her kitchen, a blue and white coffeepot by his empty plate, while Passion rinsed a steak tray under the faucet.

He ran his nails through his hair.

"I think you're looking for an answer in a guy who doesn't have any," he said.

When she didn't reply, he smiled wanly. "I'm lucky to have a P.I. license, Passion. New Orleans cops cross the street rather than talk to me. I've had the kind of jobs people do when they're turned down by the foreign legion."

She stood behind him, kneading his shoulders with her large hands, her breasts touching the back of his head.

"I have to go to the doctor in the morning. Then I want to visit my sister," she said.

Clete drank out of his julep and stirred the ice in the bottom of the glass.

"She told me all the details about what Carmouche did to her and Letty. Somebody should dig that guy up and chain-drag the corpse through Baton Rouge," he said. Then he seemed to look at a thought inside his head and his face went out of focus. "Passion would let him exhaust himself on her so he'd go easier on her sister."

"Get this stuff out of your mind, Clete."

"You think she's playing me?"

"I don't know."

"Give me another julep," he said to the bartender.

Bootsie WAS waiting for me in the parking lot after work.

"How about I buy you dinner, big boy?" she said.

"What's going on?"

"I just like to see if I can pick up a cop once in a while."

We drove to Lerosier, across from the Shadows, and ate in the back room. Behind us was a courtyard full of roses and bamboo, and in the shade mint grew between the bricks.

"Something happen today?" I said.

"Two messages on the machine from Connie Deshotel. I'm not sure I like other women calling you up."

"She probably has my number mixed up with her Orkin man's."

"She says she's sorry she offended you. What's she talking about?"

"This vice cop, Ritter, taped an interview with a perpetrator by the name of Steve Andropolis. The tape contained a bunch of lies about my mother."

Bootsie put a small piece of food in her mouth and chewed it slowly, the light hardening in her eyes.

"Why would she do that?" she said.

"Ask her."

"Count on it," she said.

I started to reply, then looked at her face and thought better of it.

But Connie Deshotel was a willful and determined woman and was not easily discouraged from revising a situation that was somehow detrimental to her interests. The next evening Belmont Pugh's black Chrysler, followed by a caravan of political sycophants and revelers, parked by the boat ramp. They got out and stood in the road, blinking at the summer light in the sky, the dust from their cars drifting over them. All of them had been drinking, except apparently Belmont. While his friends wandered down toward the bait shop for food and beer, Belmont walked up the slope, among the oaks, where I was raking leaves, his face composed and somber, his pinstripe suit and gray Stetson checkered with broken sunlight.

"Why won't you accept that woman's apology?" he asked.

"You're talking about Connie Deshotel?"

"She didn't mean to cast an aspersion on your mother. She thought she was doing her job. Give her a little credit, son."

"All right, I accept her apology. Make sure you tell her that for me, will you? She actually got the governor of the state to drive out here and deliver a message for her?"

He removed his hat and wiped the liner out with a handkerchief. His back was straight, his profile etched against the glare off the bayou. His hair had grown out on his neck, and it gave him a distinguished, rustic look. For some reason he reminded me of the idealistic young man I had known years ago, the one who daily did a good deed and learned a new word from his thesaurus.

"You're a hard man, Dave. I wish I had your toughness. I wouldn't be fretting my mind from morning to night about that woman on death row," he said.

I rested the rake and popped my palms on the handle's end. It was cool in the shade and the wind was blowing the tree limbs above our heads.

"I remember when a guy offered you ten dollars to take a math test for him, Belmont. You really needed the money. But you chased him out of your room," I said.

"The cafeteria didn't serve on weekends. You and me could make a can of Vienna sausage and a jar of peanut butter and a box of crackers go from Friday noon to Sunday night," he said.