"Get a cat. They're a lot smarter animals," he said, and went out the door and crossed the board walkway to the levee where his friend sat on the fender of their pickup truck, smoking a cigarette.

"COOL BREEZE RUN OUT OF gas. That's why he didn't come back to the camp," Mout' said.

It was Wednesday afternoon, and Helen and I sat with Mout' in his small living room, listening to his story.

"What'd the Vermilion Parish deputies say?" Helen asked.

"Man wrote on his clipboa'd. Said it was too bad about my dog. Said I could get another one at the shelter. I ax him, 'What about them two men?' He said it didn't make no sense they come into my camp to kill a dog. I said, 'Yeah, it don't make no sense 'cause you wasn't listening to the rest of it.'"

"Where's Cool Breeze, Mout'?"

"Gone."

"Where?"

"To borrow money."

"Come on, Mout'," I said.

"To buy a gun. Cool Breeze full of hate, Mr. Dave. Cool Breeze don't show it, but he don't forgive. What bother me is the one he don't forgive most is himself."

BACK AT MY OFFICE, I called Special Agent Adrien Glazier at the FBI office in New Orleans.

"Two white men, one with the first name of Harpo, tried to clip Willie Broussard at a fish camp in Vermilion Parish," I said.

"When was this?"

"Last night."

"Is there a federal crime involved here?"

"Not that I know of. Maybe crossing a state line to commit a felony."

"You have evidence of that?"

"No."

"Then why are you calling, Mr. Robicheaux?"

"His life's in jeopardy."

"We're not unaware of the risk he's incurred as a federal witness. But I'm busy right now. I'll have to call you back," she said.

"You're busy?"

The line went dead.

A UNIFORMED DEPUTY PICKED up Cool Breeze in front of a pawnshop on the south side of New Iberia and brought him into my office.

"Why the cuffs?" I said.

"Ask him what he called me when I told him to get in the cruiser," the deputy replied.

"Take them off, please."

"By all means. Glad to be of service. You want anything else?" the deputy said, and turned a tiny key in the lock on the cuffs.

"Thanks for bringing him in."

"Oh, yeah, anytime. I always had aspirations to be a bus driver," he said, and went out the door, his eyes flat.

"Who you think is on your side, Breeze?" I said.

"Me."

"I see. Your daddy says you're going to get even. How you going to do that? You know who these guys are, where they live?"

He was sitting in the chair in front of my desk now, looking out the window, his eyes downturned at the corners.

"Did you hear me?" I said.

"You know how come one of them had a raincoat on?" he said.

"He didn't want the splatter on his clothes."

"You know why they left my daddy alive?"

I didn't reply. His gaze was still focused out the window. His hands looked like black starfish on his thighs.

"Long as Mout's alive, I'll probably be staying at his house," he said. "Mout' don't mean no more to them than a piece of nutria meat tied in a crab trap."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Them two men who killed the white boys out in the Basin? They ain't did that in St. Mary Parish without permission. Not to no white boys, they didn't. And it sure didn't have nothing to do with any black girl they raped in New Iberia."

"What are you saying?"

"Them boys was killed 'cause of something they done right there in St. Mary."

"So you think the same guys are trying to do you, and you're going to find them by causing some trouble over in St. Mary Parish? Sounds like a bad plan, Breeze."

His eyes fastened on mine for the first time, his anger unmasked. "I ain't said that. I was telling you how it work round here. Blind hog can find an ear of corn if you t'row it on the ground. But you tell white folks grief comes down from the man wit' the money, they ain't gonna hear that. You done wit' me now, suh?"

LATE THAT SAME AFTERNOON, an elderly priest named Father James Mulcahy called me from St. Peter's Church in town. He used to have a parish made up of poor and black people in the Irish Channel, and had even known Clete Purcel when Clete was a boy, but he had been transferred by the Orleans diocese to New Iberia, where he did little more than say Mass and occasionally hear confessions.

"There's a lady here. I thought she came for reconciliation. But I'm not even sure she's Catholic," he said.

"I don't understand, Father."

"She seems confused, I think in need of counseling. I've done all I can for her."

"You want me to talk to her?"

"I suspect so. She won't leave."

"Who is she?"

"Her name is Lila Terrebonne. She says she lives in Jeanerette."

Helen Soileau got in a cruiser with me and we drove to St. Peter's. The late sun shone through the stained glass and suffused the interior of the church with a peculiar gold-and-blue light. Lila Terrebonne sat in a pew by the confessional boxes, immobile, her hands in her lap, her eyes as unseeing as a blind person's. An enormous replication of Christ on the cross hung on the adjacent wall.

At the vestibule door Father Mulcahy placed his hand on my arm. He was a frail man, his bones as weightless as a bird's inside his skin.

"This lady carries a deep injury. The nature of her problem is complex, but be assured it's of the kind that destroys people," he said.

"She's an alcoholic, Father. Is that what we're talking about here?" Helen said.

"What she told me wasn't in a sacramental situation, but I shouldn't say any more," he replied.

I walked up the aisle and sat in the pew behind Lila.

"You ever have a guy try to pick you up in church before?" I asked.

She turned and stared at me, her face cut by a column of sunshine. The powder and down on her cheeks glowed as though illuminated by klieg lights. Her milky green eyes were wide with expectation that seemed to have no source.

"I was just thinking about you," she said.

"I bet."

"We're all going to die, Dave."

"You're right. But probably not today. Let's take a ride."

"It's strange I'd end up sitting here under the Crucifixion. Do you know the Hanged Man in the Tarot?"

"Sure," I said.

"That's the death card."

"No, it's St. Sebastian, a Roman soldier who was martyred for his faith. It represents self-sacrifice," I said.

"The priest wouldn't give me absolution. I'm sure I was baptized Catholic before I was baptized Protestant. My mother was a Catholic," she said.

Helen stood at the end of Lila's pew, chewing gum, her thumbs hooked in her gunbelt. She rested three fingers on Lila's shoulders.

"How about taking us to dinner?" she said.

AN HOUR LATER WE crossed the parish line into St. Mary. The air was mauve-colored, the bayou dimpled with the feeding of bream, the wind hot and smelling of tar from the highway. We drove up the brick-paved drive of the Terrebonne home. Lila's father stood on the portico, a cigar in his hand, his shoulder propped against a brick pillar.

I pulled the cruiser to a stop and started to get out.

"Stay here, Dave. I'm going to take Lila to the door," Helen said.

"That isn't necessary. I'm feeling much better now. I shouldn't have had a drink with that medication. It always makes me a bit otherworldly," Lila said.

"Your father doesn't like us, Lila. If he wants to say something, he should have the chance," Helen said.

But evidently Archer Terrebonne was not up to confronting Helen Soileau that evening. He took a puff from his cigar, then walked inside and closed the heavy door audibly behind him.