His eyes were level with mine – watery, iniquitous, harboring thoughts or memories of a kind you never want to guess at, the skin at the corners as wrinkled as a turtle's.

"What happened to her, Bob?" I said.

"Nothing, as far as I know. People who run cathouses don't kill their whores, if that's what you were thinking."

He pointed for the bartender to refill his shot glass. He seemed to be disconnected from our conversation now, but when I glanced at the bar mirror I saw his eyes looking back at me. "She had sandy hair, nice-looking, tall gal? I remember her. Didn't nothing happen to her. I would have knowed about it," he said.

But Bob's confidence level had slipped and he was talking too fast.

"Her pimp was named Lou Kale. Remember a lowlife by that name?" I said.

"I never worked Vice. I just used to see this little gal around the island, is all."

But I remembered another story connected to Bob and some of his colleagues, one I had always hoped was exaggerated or apocryphal, in the same way you hope that stories about pedophilia among the clergy or financial corruption in your own family are untrue.

A notorious Baton Rouge madam by the name of Vicki Rochon used to run a house specializing in oral sex. A fundamentalist Christian group was about to close her down when the local cops offered her a deal: Vicki and her girls could take a vacation in Panama City, then return to town in a couple of months and their business would not be interrupted again. No money was involved. Vicki became an invaluable snitch and personally provided free ones for the cops. As a bonus, her son, who was doing hard time in Angola's Camp J, was transferred to an honor farm. Bad Texas Bob became one of Vicki's most ardent free patrons.

"Thanks for passing on the information, Bob. But if I were you, I'd let your friend Pitts drown in his own shit. He's on a pad for the Chalons family. Did you know that?" I said.

"I was trying to do you a favor, for old times' sake. Screw Pitts." Bob knocked back his whiskey and drew in on his cigarette, the whites of his eyes threaded with tiny veins.

"Let me buy you a round," I said.

"I'm covered."

"See you around, partner," I said.

"You might think I'm pulling your joint, but I remember a Galveston whore by the name of Ida Whatever. She played a fiddle. No, that wasn't it. She played a mandolin. Played the fire out of it."

"Say that again?"

But he had nothing to add. Bad Texas Bob had outsmarted me. Like all corrupt people, he had wrapped a piece of truth inside a lie. To try to discern the fact from the lie was to empower the agenda of a classical manipulator, I told myself. I left Bob to his booze in Broussard, wondering if I had just revisited my alcoholic past or seen my future.

The coroner, Koko Hebert, was waiting for me when I got to work Thursday morning. He dropped his great weight down ponderously in a chair and fanned his face with his hat. His skin was flushed, his beachball of a stomach rising up and down as he breathed. A package of cigarettes protruded from his shirt pocket. He was probably the most unhealthy-looking human specimen I had ever seen. "How's life, Koko?" I said.

"Burning up out there," he said.

He pulled his tropical shirt off his chest and shook the cloth. I could smell an odor like talcum and stale antiperspirant wafting off his skin. "The contents of the DOA's purse, you got a list in your file?" he said.

"What about it?"

"Were there car keys in there, house keys on a chain, maybe a penlight on a chain, something like that?" he asked.

"Yeah, car keys," I said.

"On a chain?"

"No, as I remember, they were on a ring. They're in an evidence locker," I replied.

He held up a small Ziploc bag. Inside it was a thin piece of brass chain, no more than an inch long, with very tiny links. "Maybe this fell out of her clothes. I'm not sure. One of the paramedics found it in the body bag," he said.

"What are you getting at?"

"You said something about the DOA I couldn't forget. You said a woman who'd swallow her own wedding ring might also figure a way to tell us who killed her. So I wondered about this chain."

It was obvious humility did not come easily to Koko Hebert, and I was reminded of George Orwell's admonition that people are always better than we think they are. Koko fiddled with his Panama hat, then flipped the Ziploc bag and chain on my desk. "Did Mack Bertrand get ahold of you yet?" he asked.

Mack was our forensic chemist out at the lab. I told Koko I had not heard from him.

"The DOA's clothes had small traces of grease and rubber on them," he said.

"She was inside the trunk of a car?" I said.

"That'd be my guess. Give me a call if you need anything else." He stood up from his chair, the bottom of his stomach like a giant watermelon inside his linen slacks.

"There is one other thing, Koko. Why do you always give Helen a bad time? Why not cut her some slack?" I said.

"She's a dyke trying to do a man's job. Get a life, Robicheaux," he replied.

Lesson learned? Don't expect too many miracles in one day.

Five minutes later, Helen buzzed my extension. "I just got a call from Raphael Chalons. Clete Purcel was out at his house. Know anything about that?" she said.

"No," I replied.

"Then why was he out there?"

"Clete's uncontrollable sometimes. I've already talked to him. He doesn't listen."

There was silence on the line. I wanted to bite my tongue off. "Talked to him about what? What's he done, Dave?"

"Made a home call on Billy Joe Pitts."

"And?"

"I think he might have dropped a set of weights on Pitts's chest."

"I just don't believe this."

"That Clete went after Pitts?"

"No, that I'm having this conversation. The next time I rehire you, just put a bullet in my brain. In the meantime, straighten out this shit with Chalons."

"Why not tell Chalons to kiss your ass? He's not even in our jurisdiction."

"Bwana go now. Bwana write report and put it on my desk when he get back."

Clete's P.I. office was on Main, in an old brick building hard by the old jail, the front shaded by a solitary oak tree growing out of the sidewalk. A bell tinkled above the door when I went inside. He was sitting at a metal desk, in the middle of a large room that was bare except for two file cabinets, flipping through the pages of a notebook that he always carried in his shirt pocket. "Glad you dropped by. I did some more checking on Billy Joe Pitts and that casino over in Lake Charles." He looked at the expression on my face and raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Helen Soileau says you fired up Raphael Chalons," I said.

"I don't read it that way."

"So tell me."

"Chalons is backing a couple of casinos in western Louisiana. He's got a religious crusader fronting points for him with some dudes in Washington. The issue is licenses for some Indian tribes who can siphon off the Texas trade before it goes to casinos deeper in the state."

"What's new about that?"

"I got a call this morning from Nig Rosewater about a couple of bail skips. Then Nig says, 'What's this about some peckerwood cop trying to put up a kite on you?' Get this – Nig says a cop went to Jericho Johnny Wineburger and offered five grand to have me clipped. Except Jericho Johnny knows better and told the cop to get fucked."

Jericho Johnny Wineburger was an old-time button man for the Giacano family and was called Jericho because his work product traveled to a dead city and did not return from it.

"You sure it was Pitts?" I said.

"Yeah, because I called up Jericho Johnny and he described Pitts exactly," Clete said.