Pike said, "He doesn't have to worry about it any more, does he?"

Sandi Bergeron stared at him, and then had some of her coffee.

I said, "Did Jimmie Ray tell you why Milt was blackmailing the sheriff?"

She shook her head.

"Did he tell you anything about Rossier's business."

"I'm sorry."

"Please try to remember."

She put down the coffee cup and picked at the table. The bubble-gum nails were long and French-tipped and probably false. She made a little shrug. "Jimmie didn't know everything that old man had going, and Jimmie Ray had spent a lot of time trying to find out. He told me so himself. He said that Mr. Rossier was so careful about all these things that he'd never get caught. He said he learned a lot from that old man."

"Like what?"

You could see her work to try to remember. "He said the old man never got involved himself. He had this other guy do that."

"LeRoy Bennett."

"Jimmie Ray called him a stooge. He said that if there was ever any trouble, it would all go back to the stooge."

"What else?"

She chewed at her lips, thinking harder. "He told me about this place called the Bayou Lounge."

"Uh-huh."

"Mr. Rossier owns it. Jimmie Ray said that the old man bought it so he wouldn't have to bring any of his bad business home. Jimmie thought that was just the smartest thing. He said the old man's stooge would go to the Bayou Lounge to take care of business. That way they didn't have to bring it home. You see?"

I glanced at Pike, and Pike nodded. He said, "If we're looking for something, maybe we should look there."

Sandi Bergeron crossed her arms over her middle. She said, "Am I going to get in trouble?"

I looked at her. "Maybe, but not because of us. The cops are going to investigate Jimmie's murder, and they may find you the way we found you, but it won't be because we told them. We won't."

She nodded and looked at her coffee. "I know that what I did was wrong. I'm really sorry."

"Sure."

"I think I'm going home. I don't feel well." We walked to the elevator with her. She pressed the button for up. We pressed for down. The up elevator came first, but she didn't get on right away. She stopped in the door and said, "I know what you're thinking, but it's not so. Jimmie Ray didn't use me. He loved me. We were goin' to get married." She stood straight when she said it, as if she were challenging me to disagree.

I said, "Sandi?"

She stared at me.

"I got to know Jimmie Ray a little bit before he died. You were all he talked about. He did want to marry you. He told me so."

She blinked hard twice and her eyes filled. She stepped backward into the elevator, the doors closed, and she was gone.

We stood in silence for a moment, and then Pike said, "Is that true?"

The down elevator came. We got aboard, and I did not answer.

We drove back to the Riverfront Ho-Jo, checked out, then called Lucy at her office and told her that we were on our way to Ville Platte. She said, "Do you know what you're going to do when you get there?"

"Sit on the Bayou Lounge and establish a pattern for Rossier and his people. It could take a while."

She didn't say anything for a moment. "Yes. I guess it could."

"I'm going to miss you."

"Me, too, Studly. Try not to get shot."

At a little bit before two o'clock that afternoon, Pike and I took the same room I had used before in Ville Platte and unloaded our things. I changed into waterproof Cabela boots and a black T-shirt. Pike stayed in the same clothes, but took a Colt.357 Python out of his duffel and put it under his sweatshirt. I put my Dan Wesson into a clip-on holster, put the clip-on on the inside of my waistband, and left the T-shirt out to cover it. My T-shirt didn't hide the Dan Wesson as well as Pike's sweatshirt hid the Python. People would probably think I was wearing a colostomy bag.

We went down to the Pig Stand for a couple of catfish poboys, then walked across to the little superette, bought a cheap Styrofoam ice chest, ice, and enough Diet Coke, Charrnin, and sandwich stuff to last a couple of days. Pike went for the cheese and peanut butter, I went for the pressed chicken and Spam. Pike shook his head when he saw the Spam. He was shaking his head about the Spam even before he was a vegetarian. The woman at the register thought we must be going fishing, and we said sure. She said the sac-à-lait were biting real good. She said her husband went out just last night and got a couple dozen on the bayou just over there by Chataignier. We thanked her and said we'd give it a try. Walking out, Pike said, "What's a sac-à-lait?"

"I think it's a kind of white perch. Like a crappie."

Pike grunted.

I said, "They eat gar balls down here, too."

Pike gave me a look like, yeah, sure.

Lucy had provided us with a current address for LeRoy Bennett. We got the Bayou Lounge address from Information. Pike and I decided to split our time between LeRoy's and the crawfish farm during the day, then watch the lounge together at night. We went to LeRoy's first.

LeRoy Bennett lived on a narrow residential street on the west side of Ville Platte in a tiny clapboard house that was dusty and dirty and overgrown by weeds. All of the houses on the street were small, but most were well kept with neatly trimmed lawns and edged walkways. The St. Augustine at LeRoy's place had to be a good eight inches tall, the crabgrass and weed sprouts even taller. Twin tire ruts were cut into the yard, with great black dead spots between them where LeRoy had parked the Polara and the engine had dripped. There was a drive, but why use the drive when you can park on the grass? I was hoping that LeRoy and his car would be there so that Pike could see them, but they weren't. Of course, maybe they were hidden behind all the foliage. I said, "That's LeRoy's place."

Pike shook his head. "No self-esteem."

I stopped at the mouth of LeRoy's drive. "He drives a gold Polara widi a lot of sun damage." I looked up and down the street. Cars were parked along both sides of the street. "Best place for a stake would be on the next block, under that oak."

Pike looked and approved. Next door to LeRoy's, a man in his mid-sixties was working Bond-o into the side of a beige '64 Chevelle. His home and his lawn were immaculate, but the weeds from LeRoy's crappy yard hung over onto his property like shaggy hair curling over a collar. He looked at us, taking a break from the Bond-o, and we drove away.

We went to Milt Rossier's crawfish farm. I cruised the front gate to let Pike have a look, then parked the car on a little gravel road maybe a quarter mile away.

We worked our way through the trees to the edge of Milt's property and crouched by a fallen pine. We could see pretty much everything, from the ponds and the processing buildings on our left up to Milt's home on the little knoll to our right. When we were in position and looking, I said, "Well, well. The gang's all here."

LeRoy Bennett was talking to a heavyset woman by the processing buildings and Milt Rossier was driving a little golf cart between the ponds with one of his skinny foremen. LeRoy's Polara was parked up by the house, and René LaBorde was at the house, too, sitting in a white lawn chair, either sleeping or staring at his crotch. Pike squinted when he saw Rend "This is some operation."

"Uh-huh."

We watched as people waded into ponds, scattering what was probably crawfish food and pulling weeds and keeping the bottoms stirred. In other ponds, people used trucks with winches to seine out slick gray catfish or dark red crawfish, emptying filled nets into little trailers with open tops. Some of the people working the ponds were African-American women, but most of them were short, blocky Hispanics. A couple of older, skinny white guys in wide-brimmed straw hats moved between the pools, telling everybody else what to do. Upper management. I said, "Seen enough?"