I got out of the cruiser and stood behind the opened door, my right hand on the butt of my.45. "It's Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department. I need somebody to come down here and talk to me," I called up at the shack.

A dark-haired man with a ragged beard appeared in the back doorway, just above the wood steps that led down to dry ground. "Holy shit, you're a cop?" he said.

"Keep your hands where I can see them, please," I said. "Who else is in the camp?"

"Nobody. They went to run the trot line."

"Come down here, please," I said.

His body was so thin it looked skeletal. His jeans and T-shirt were filthy, his neck beaded with dirt rings. He walked slowly down the steps, as though his connective tissue barely held his bones together. It was impossible to tell his age or estimate his potential. He seemed ageless, without cultural reference, painted on the air. He had teeth on one side of his mouth and none on the other. There was a black glaze in his eyes, a long, tapered skinning knife in a scabbard on his belt. His odor was like scrapings from an animal hide that have burned in a fire.

"I sure didn't make you for no lawman," he said.

"What's your name, podna?"

"Same name it was when we met you 'cross the lake at the bar – Vassar Twitty."

"I'm not here to bother you guys about game regulations, Vassar. I don't care what kind of history you might have in other places, either. But I've got a personal problem I think you might be able to help me with. I went on a bender and don't know what I did."

It felt easier saying it than I had thought. He sat down on a step, his knees splayed, and looked about the ground with an idiotic grin on his face.

"Want to let me in on the joke?" I asked.

"You was pretty pissed off. We kept telling you to just have another drink and come coon hunting with us. But you was set on getting even with some guy."

"Which guy?" I said.

"Some TV newsman you said was jamming you up. We tried to get your keys away from you, but there wasn't nothing for it."

"For what?" I said, swallowing.

"When a man wants to rip somebody from his liver to his lights, you leave him alone. We left you alone. I reckon nothing bad happened or you wouldn't be driving a cruiser. Right? Boy, you was sure stewed," he said.

The wind gusted off the lake. It must have been ninety in the shade, but my face felt as cold and bright as if I had bathed it in ice water.

I wasn't in a good state of mind when I got back to the department. Could I have gone to Valentine Chalons's guesthouse and in a bloodlust attacked his sister? How do you reach memories that are locked inside a black box?

I had another problem, too, one I had kept pushing to the edges of my consciousness. I went into Helen's office and closed the door behind me. "You don't look too hot," she said.

"I found a guy in the Basin I was drinking with the night Honoria Chalons was murdered. He said I talked about ripping up Val Chalons. He said he and his friends tried to stop me but I took off in my truck."

"I think we know all that, don't we?"

"You've been protecting me, Helen."

"No," she said.

"I gave you that CD with a blood smear on it. You didn't turn it over to Doogie Dugas."

"Because it didn't come from the crime scene. Because Doogie is an incompetent idiot."

"I know that's Honoria's blood on it."

"No, you don't. Listen, Dave, Val Chalons has done everything in his power to put your head on a stick. But luminol doesn't lie. There were no blood traces in your truck, your clothes, or in your house. Now stop building a case against yourself."

"Raphael Chalons came to my house yesterday and tried to put me on his payroll," I said.

"That's interesting," she said, looking at the tops of her nails.

"One other item. Molly Boyle and I got married Saturday night."

Her elbow was propped on her desk. She rested her chin on her knuckles, her face softening. She seemed to think a long time before she spoke. "You did it."

"Did what?"

"Figured out a way to marry your own church. No, don't say anything. Just quietly disappear. Bwana say 'bye' now."

Jimmie's resourcefulness rarely let him down. His friendship with police officers, private investigators, and people in the life extended from Key Biscayne, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas, which was the long, sickle-shaped rim of America's sexual playground long before the invention of Vegas or Atlantic City. Three hours after his flight had arrived in Miami, he obtained the home address of the man who now called himself Lou Coyne. He also obtained the name of his wife, a woman who called herself Connie Coyne and who lived three houses down from her husband on a canal in Miami Beach.

Jimmie stayed that night in a hotel that fronted the ocean. In the morning, he dressed in a linen suit and lavender silk shirt, had his shoes shined in the hotel lobby, then took a cab to a two-story white stucco house, one with a faded red tile roof, scrolled iron balconies, heavy, brass-ringed oak doors, and gated walls that towered over the grounds. Each house on the street was similar in ambiance, a fortress unto itself, the name of its security service prominently displayed. But even though it was Saturday, there were no people on this dead-end street, no sounds of children playing on a ficus-shaded lawn.

A Hispanic gardener came to the gate after Jimmie pushed the buzzer. The St. Augustine grass was closely clipped and thick, the bluish-green of a Caribbean lagoon. The flower beds bloomed with every tropical plant imaginable, and royal palms touched the eaves of the second story. Off to one side of the yard Jimmie could see a lime-colored swimming pool coated with leaves, the cracked dome of a 1950s underground atomic-bomb shelter protruding from the sod, like the top of a giant toadstool, and a boat dock that offered a sweeping view of the ocean.

"Is Ms. Coyne at home?" Jimmie asked.

"Si,"the gardener replied.

"Would you tell her Jimmie Robicheaux would like to speak to her?"

"Si," the gardener replied, staring into Jimmie's face.

"Would you go get her, please?"

"Si," the gardener replied, obviously not comprehending a word.

"Quien es?" a woman said from inside the fronds of a giant philodendron, where she was pulling weeds on her knees and dropping them in a bucket.

"My name is Jimmie Robicheaux, Ms. Coyne. I'm looking for an old friend and thought you might be able to help me," Jimmie said.

The woman stood up, brushing grains of dirt off a pair of cotton work gloves. She was slender, her hair a silvery-red. She wore a straw hat on the back of her head and a halter and Capri pants, and her shoulders were sprinkled with freckles. She walked to the gate, her eyes examining Jimmie's face.

"How can I help you, Mr. Robicheaux?" she said.

But the formality of her speech couldn't hide her regional inflection, nor disguise the fact she had correctly pronounced Jimmie's last name, after hearing it only once, which most people outside Louisiana are not able to do easily.

"Ida Durbin is the name of the lady I need to find," he said.

She looked at her watch and rubbed the glass with her thumb, more as an idle distraction from her own thoughts than as an effort to know the time.

"How's your friend, the private investigator?" she said.

"Clete Purcel? He's doing all right. I think he'd like to have a talk with your husband, though."

She stepped near the gate and closed her hand around one of the twisted iron spikes inside the grillework. "And yourself? You been doin' okay, Jimmie?"

"Life's a breeze. How's it with you, Ida?"

She reached into the bugle vine growing on the wall and pushed a button, buzzing the gate open. "Come on in, sailor, and let me tell you a story of hearts and flowers," she said.