"You knew him?" I said into the receiver.

"At a distance. Which was as close as I wanted to get."

"Why's that?"

"He was a pimp. He run Mexican girls up from Chihuahua."

"How'd he die?"

"They say he was in a hot pillow joint acrost the river. A girl put one in his ear, then set fire to the place and done herself."

"They say?"

"He was wanted down there. Why would he go back into Juarez to get laid? That story never did quite wash for me."

"If he's alive, where would I look for him?"

"Cockfights, cathouses, pigeon shoots. He's the meanest bucket of shit with a badge I ever run acrost… Mr. Robicheaux?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I hope he's dead. He rope-drug a Mexican behind his Jeep, out through the rocks and cactus. You get in a situation with him… Oh, hell, I'm too damn old to tell another lawman his business."

IT RAINED THAT EVENING, and from my lighted gallery I watched it fall on the trees and the dock and the tin roof of the bait shop and on the wide, yellow, dimpled surface of the bayou itself.

I could not shake the images of Cool Breeze's recurring dream from my mind. I stepped out into the rain and cut a half dozen roses from the bushes in the front garden and walked down the slope with them to the end of the dock.

Batist had pulled the tarp out on the guy wires and turned on the string of electric lights. I stood at the railing, watching the current drift southward toward West Cote Blanche Bay and eventually the Gulf, where many years ago my father's drilling rig had punched into an early pay sand, blowing the casing out of the hole. When the gas ignited, a black-red inferno ballooned up through the tower, all the way to the monkey board where my father worked as a derrick man. The heat was so great the steel spars burned and collapsed like matchsticks.

He and my murdered wife Annie and the dead men from my platoon used to speak to me through the rain. I found saloons by the water, always by the water, where I could trap and control light and all meaning inside three inches of Beam, with a Jax on the side, while the rain ran down the windows and rippled the walls with neon shadows that had no color.

Now, Annie and my father and dead soldiers no longer called me up on the phone. But I never underestimated the power of the rain or the potential of the dead, or denied them their presence in the world.

And for that reason I dropped the roses into the water and watched them float toward the south, the green leaves beaded with water as bright as crystal, the petals as darkly red as a woman's mouth turned toward you on the pillow for the final time.

ON THE WAY BACK up to the house I saw Clete Purcel's chartreuse Cadillac come down the dirt road and turn into the drive. The windows were streaked with mud, the convertible top as ragged as a layer of chicken feathers. He rolled down the window and grinned, in the same way that a mask grins.

"Got a minute?" he said.

I opened the passenger door and sat in the cracked leather seat beside him.

"You doing okay, Cletus?" I asked.

"Sure. Thanks for calling the bondsman." He rubbed his face. "Megan came by?"

"Yeah. Early this morning." I kept my eyes focused on the rain blowing out of the trees onto my lighted gallery.

"She told you we were quits?"

"Not exactly."

"I got no bad feelings about it. That's how it shakes out sometimes." He widened his eyes. "I need to take a shower and get some sleep. I'll be okay with some sleep."

"Come in and eat with us."

"I'm keeping the security gig at the set. If you see this guy Broussard, tell him not to set any more fires… Don't look at me like that, Streak. The trailer he burned had propane tanks on it. What if somebody had been in there?"

"He thinks the Terrebonnes are trying to have him killed."

"I hope they work it out. In the meantime, tell him to keep his ass off the set."

"You don't want to eat?"

"No. I'm not feeling too good." He looked out into the shadows and the water dripping out of the trees. "I got in over my head. It's my fault. I'm not used to this crap."

"She's got strong feelings for you, Clete."

"Yeah, my temp loves her cat. See you tomorrow, Dave."

I watched him back out into the road, then shift into low, his big head bent forward over the wheel, his expression as meaningless as a jack-o'-lantern's.

AFTER BOOTSIE AND ALAFAIR and I ate dinner, I drove up the Loreauville road to Cisco Flynn's house. When no one answered the bell, I walked the length of the gallery, past the baskets of hanging ferns, and looked through the side yard. In back, inside a screened pavilion, Cisco and Megan were eating steaks at a linen-covered table with Swede Boxleiter. I walked across the grass toward the yellow circle of light made by an outside bug lamp. Their faces were warm, animated with their conversation, their movements automatic when one or the other wanted a dish passed or his silver wine goblet refilled. My loafer cracked a small twig.

"Sorry to interrupt," I said.

"Is that you, Dave? Join us. We have plenty," Cisco said.

"I wanted to see Megan a minute. I'll wait out in my truck," I said.

The three of them were looking out into the darkness, the tossed salad and pink slices of steak on their plates like part of a nineteenth-century French still life. In that instant I knew that whatever differences defined them today, the three of them were held together by a mutual experience that an outsider would never understand. Then Boxleiter broke the moment by picking up a decanter and pouring wine into his goblet, spilling it like drops of blood on the linen.

Ten minutes later Megan found me in the front yard.

"This morning you told me I had Boxleiter all wrong," I said.

"That's right. He's not what he seems."

"He's a criminal."

"To some."

"I saw pictures of the dude he shanked in the Canon City pen."

"Probably courtesy of Adrien Glazier. By the way, the guy you think he did? He was in the Mexican Mafia. He had Swede's cell partner drowned in a toilet… This is why you came out here?"

"No, I wanted to tell you I'm going to leave y'all alone. Y'all take your own fall, Megan."

"Who asked you to intercede on our behalf anyway? You're still pissed off about Clete, aren't you?" she said.

I walked across the lawn toward my truck. The wind was loud in the trees and made shadows on the grass. She caught up with me just as I opened the door to the truck.

"The problem is you don't understand your own thinking," she said. "You were raised in the church. You see my father's death as St. Sebastian's martyrdom or something. You believe in forgiving people for what's not yours to forgive. I'd like to take their eyes out."

"Their eyes. Who is their, Megan?"

"Every hypocrite in this-" She stopped, stepping back as though retreating from her own words.

"Ah, we finally got to it," I said.

I got in the truck and closed the door. I could hear her heated breathing in the dark, see her chest rise and fall against her shirt. Swede Boxleiter walked out of the side yard into the glow of light from the front gallery, an empty plate in one hand, a meat fork in the other.