The next day NOPD matched the.25-caliber rounds taken from Don Ritter's body to the.25-caliber round that was fired into Zipper Clum's forehead.

That night Alafair went with friends to the McDonald's on East Main. She came home later than we expected her and gave no explanation. I followed her into her bedroom. Tripod was outside the screen on the windowsill, but she had made no effort to let him in. The light was off in the room and Alafair’s face was covered with shadow.

"What happened tonight?" I asked.

"Whenever I tell you the truth about something, it makes you mad."

"I've shown bad judgment, Alafair. I'm just not a good learner sometimes."

"I saw Johnny. I took a ride with him."

I ran my hand along the side of my head. I could feel a tightening in my veins, as though I had a hat on. I took a breath before I spoke.

"With Remeta?" I said.

"Yes."

"He's wanted in another shooting. An execution at point-blank range in a car wash."

"I told him I couldn't see him again. I'm going to sleep now, Dave. I don't want to talk about Johnny anymore," she said.

She sat on the edge of her bed and waited for me to go out of the room. On the shelf above her bedstead I could see the painted ceramic vase Remeta had given to her, the Confederate soldier and his antebellum girlfriend glowing in the moonlight.

The call came at four in the morning.

"You told your daughter not to see me again?" the voice asked.

"Not in so many words," I replied.

"That was a chickenshit thing to do."

"You're too old for her, Johnny."

"People can't be friends because they're apart in years? Run your lies on somebody else."

"Your problems began long before we met. Don't take them out on us."

"What do you know about my problems?"

"I talked with the prison psychologist."

"I'm starting to construct a new image of you, Mr. Robicheaux. It's not a good one."

I didn't reply. The skin of my face felt flaccid and full of needles. Then, to change the subject, I said, "You should have lost the.25 you used on Zipper Clum. NOPD has made you for the Ritter hit."

"Ritter gave up your mother's killers, Mr. Robicheaux. I was gonna give you their names. Maybe even cap them for you. But you act like I'm the stink on shit. Now I say fuck you," he said, and hung up.

At 9 A.M. I sat in the sheriff's office and watched the sheriff core out the inside of his pipe with a penknife.

"So you got to see the other side of Johnny Remeta?" he said, and dropped the black buildup of ash off his knife blade into the wastebasket.

"He pumped Ritter for information, then blew out his light," I said.

"This guy is making us look like a collection of web-toed hicks, Dave. He comes and goes when he feels like it. He takes your daughter for rides. He murders a police officer and calls you up in the middle of the night and tells you about it. Forgive me for what I'm about to say next."

"Sir?"

"Do you want this guy out on the ground? It seems you and he and Purcel have the same enemies."

"I don't think that's a cool speculation to make, Sheriff."

"Let me put it this way. The next time I hear this guy's name, it had better be in conjunction with either his arrest or death. I don't want one of my detectives telling me about his phone conversations with a psychopath or his family's involvement with same. Are we clear?"

"There're pipe ashes on your boot," I said, and left the room.

Ten minutes later I received a phone call from a woman who did not identify herself but just started talking as though I already knew who she was. She had a heavy Cajun accent and her voice was knotted with anger and dismay and a need to injure.

"I t'ought you'd like to know what you done. Not that it makes no difference to somebody who t'inks he got the right to twist a sick man up wit' his words," she said.

"Who is this?" I asked.

But she kept wading in. "You was a lot smarter than him, you. You know how to put t'oughts in somebody's head, make him full of guilt, fix it so he cain't go nowhere in his head except t'rew one door. So it ain't enough leprosy eat him up and turn his hands to nutria feet. Man like you got to come along and push him and push him and push him till he so full of misery he gonna do what you want."

Then I remembered the duck-shaped blind woman who had been hanging wash behind the cabin of Bobby Cale, the ex-constable, down by Point au Fer.

"Did something happen to Bobby?" I said.

She couldn't answer. She started weeping into the phone.

"Ma'am, tell me what it is," I said.

"I smelled it on the wind. Out in the persimmon trees. He was gone t'ree days, then I found him and touched him and he swung in my hands, light as bird shell. You done this, suh. Don't be telling yourself you innocent, no. 'Cause you ain't."

The side of my head felt numb after I hung up, as though a dirty revelation about myself had just been whispered in my ear. But I wasn't sure if my sense of regret was over the possibility that I was a contributing factor in the suicide of Bobby Cale or the fact I had just lost my only tangible lead back to my mother's killers.

THE SHRIMP FESTIVAL was held each year at the end of summer down by the bay. On Friday, when the day cooled and the summer light rilled the evening sky, shrimp boats festooned with pennants and flags blew their horns in the canal and a cleric blessed the fleet while thousands wandered up and down a carnival midway, drinking from beer cups and eating shrimp off paper plates. College students, the working classes, and politicians from all over the state took part. Inside the cacophony of calliopes and the popping of.22 rifles in the shooting galleries and the happy shrieks that cascaded down from a Ferris wheel, the celebrants took on the characteristics of figures in a Brueghel painting, any intimations about mortality they may have possessed now lost in the balm of the season.

Belmont Pugh was there, and Jim Gable and his wife, and by the Tilt-A-Whirl I saw Connie Deshotel in an evening dress, carrying a pair of silver shoes in one hand, her other on her escort's arm for balance, her cleavage deep with shadow.

But the figure who caught my eye was outside the circle of noise and light that rose into the sky from the midway. Micah, Cora Gable's chauffeur, sat beside the Gables' limo on a folding canvas stool, tossing pieces of dirt at a beer can, his jaws slack, like a man who doesn't care what others think of his appearance or state of mind. A rolled comic book protruded from the side pocket of his black coat.

I left Bootsie at the drink pavilion and walked into the parking area and stood no more than three feet in front of him. He raised his eyes, then tinked a dirt clod against the beer can, his face indifferent.

"Looks like you're in the dumps, partner," I said.

He flexed his mouth, as though working a bite of food out of his gums. "I'm finishing out my last week," he replied.

"You're not working for Ms. Gable anymore?"

"She thinks I sassed her. It was a misunderstanding. But I guess it helped her husband."

"Sassed her?"

"We were passing all these shacks where the sugarcane workers used to live. Ms. Perez says to herself, 'The glory that was Rome.'

"So I say, 'It sure wasn't any glory, was it?'

"She says, 'Beg your pardon?'

"I say, 'Rich man got the poor whites to fight with the coloreds so the whole bunch would work for near nothing while the rich man got richer.' It got real quiet in the car."

"Sounds like you got your hand on it, Micah," I said.