'Oh God, I can't take this, Dave,' she said.

'Take it easy. He's gone now.'

'He was here. Watching us sleep.' She sat up and pressed her hands to her stomach. 'I think I'm going to be sick.'

'Use the other bathroom.'

'What?'

'Don't go in our bathroom.'

'Why? Wh-'

'He might have left evidence in there, Boots, that's all.'

When she was gone, I clicked off the light in our bathroom, closed the door, and turned the lock, but not before having to look again at the words that he had lipsticked brightly across the wall: DAVE, YOU MUST BECOME ONE WITH THE SWORD. I'LL LOVE YOU IN A WAY THAT NO WOMAN CAN, W.B.

The next morning I tried to concentrate on the daily routine at the office. But it was no use. I stared out the window at the rain.

What drove the engines of a man like Will Buchalter?

The conclusion I came to wasn't a pleasant one. He was a sadist, pure and simple, and, like all sadists, he developed erotic fixations about the people and animals he planned to hurt in a methodical way. The pain he imposed upon his victim was intended to humiliate and degrade and was always administered personally, by his hand, only a breath away from the victim's face. As with all of his kind he had found an ideological purpose that justified his perversity, but in reality the cries with which he could fill a room made his back teeth grind softly together while his loins tingled like a swarm of bees.

The phone on my desk rang. It was Lucinda Bergeron.

'Your friend over here is becoming a pain in the ass to a lot of people,' she said.

'Who?'

'Cletus Purcel.'

'What's wrong with Clete?'

'What's right with him?'

'Give it a break, Lucinda.'

'He tried to turn somebody into a human bell clapper. Do you know a character by the name of Dogshit Dolowitz?'

'No Duh Dolowitz, the merry prankster?'

'Yeah, I guess he's called that, too. Your friend crammed a garbage can over his head, then pounded the can all over an alley with a baseball bat.'

'What for?'

'Ask him… Wait a minute.' She set the phone down and closed a door. 'Listen, Detective, Nate Baxter would like to put your buddy's ham hocks in a skillet. I'd have a serious talk with him.'

'Is Zoot back home yet?'

'I don't believe you. I think you must come from outer space.'

'You're telling me he should be living over at Tommy Lonighan's?'

'I thought I was doing a favor for your friend.'

'I appreciate it.'

I heard her make a sound like she was digesting a thumbtack.

'Take it easy,' I said.

'God, I hate talking to you!' Then she caught her breath and started again. 'Listen, your buddy hasn't been arraigned yet, but my guess is his bond will be around two thousand dollars. You want me to give him a message?'

'No Duh pressed charges?'

'No, Nate Baxter did. Disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. Good-bye, Detective Robicheaux. In all honesty I don't think I'm up to many more conversations with you.'

She hung up the phone.

I called her back.

'Look, I can't take off work just to bail a friend out of the slam. Why'd Clete knock Dolowitz around?'

'It has something to do with the Calucci brothers.'

'What about them?'

'I don't know,' she said, the exasperation rising in her voice. 'Nate Baxter's handling it. What's that tell you, Robicheaux, besides the fact he's got a major hard-on for Purcel?'

'I'm not sure.'

'He's on a pad.'

'For the Calucci brothers?'

'Who else?'

'You can prove that?'

'Who to? Who cares? The city's broke. That's what's on people's minds.'

'I'll try to get over there. It's a bad day, though.'

'What's wrong?'

I told her about Buchalter's visit of the night before.

'Why didn't you tell me that?' she said.

'You've got your own problems.'

She paused a moment. 'You saw Zoot over at Tommy Lonighan's?' she said.

'Yeah, for just a few minutes.'

'Did he say-' She let out her breath in the receiver and didn't finish.

'I think you mean a lot to him, Lucinda. I'd bring him back home. I'm sorry if I sound intrusive sometimes.'

I called Bootsie at the house, then signed out of the office. It was still raining when I got to NOPD headquarters in the Garden District. Lucinda Bergeron was out of the office, but Benjamin Motley told me that the Reverend Oswald Flat had gotten Clete released in his custody without having to post bail and they were waiting for me at a café up on St. Charles by the Pontchartrain Hotel.

It was a working man's place that served rib-eye steaks, deep-fried catfish, and biscuits with sausage gravy that you could stoke boilers with. It was also the café where the Calucci brothers ate lunch every day.

I parked my truck around the corner, then ran back in the rain under the dripping overhang of the oak trees on St. Charles. The inside of the restaurant was warm and crowded and loud. Clete and the preacher were at a checker-cloth-covered table in front. In the center of the table was a solitary, green-stemmed purple rose set in a dime-store glass vase. Between the preacher's feet I could see a worn-edged, black guitar case with the words The Great Speckled Bird hand-lettered on the side.

I let my eyes rove over the people at the tables; then I saw Max and Bobo Calucci and a half dozen of their entourage eating at a long table against the back wall, three feet from an old jukebox, whose maroon and orange plastic casing rippled with light.

I sat down with Clete and the preacher.

'You ought to get you an umbrella, son. You look like a hedgehog somebody drowned in a rain barrel,' Oswald Flat said.

'Thank you, Reverend,' I said.

'Sorry to get you down here for no reason, Streak,' Clete said. 'I tried to catch you after Brother Oswald here got me out of the bag, but you were already down the road.' He grinned while he chewed on a bread stick.

'What are you doing beating up on a guy like No Duh Dolowitz?' I said.

'Yeah, I always dug ole No Duh myself,' Clete said, then turned to the preacher. 'You see, this guy No Duh-sometimes they call him Dogshit because that's what he put in some sandwiches once at a Teamsters convention in Miami-he used to be a second-story creep till a night watchman bonged a big dent in his forehead with a ball peen hammer. But instead of turning into a mush brain, he developed a genius for playing pranks. The mob knows talent when it sees it.

'If they want to take over an apartment building or a bunch of duplexes at fire-sale prices, they send in Dolowitz. He pours cement mix down all the drains, puts Limburger cheese in the air vents, tapes bait fish under the furniture, maybe has a landscape service pour a dump truck load of cow manure in the swimming pool. This contractor built some real class condos in Jefferson Parish, then he finds out too late that he doesn't have clear title to the land and that part of it is owned by the Giacano family. So while he's trying to hold off the Giacanos in court, they send in No Duh, who makes keys to all the doors, stops up the toilets, stocks the cabinets with Thunderbird and Boone's Farm, then buses in about twenty winos from skid row and tells them to have a good time. I heard the cleaning crews had to scrape the carpets up with shovels.'

He laughed, pushed his porkpie hat up on his head, and put a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His hand looked huge on his Zippo lighter. I noticed that his eyes never looked in the Caluccis' direction.

'Why the beef with a guy like that, Clete?' I said.

The humor drained out of his face, and his eyes drifted toward the rear of the restaurant.

'I gave Martina the two grand to pay off the Caluccis. Guess what? They told her that's just the back payment on the vig. She still owes another two large. Last night we came back from the show and there's Dolowitz hiding in the shrubs by the side of Martina's garage. So I ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing there.