But those are simply images born of my dreams. Maybe the contractor was innocent. Or maybe in the murder house he began to enact a fantasy, tried to lure one of the girls into a seduction, and found himself involved in a kaleidoscopic nightmare whose consequences filled him with terror and from which he couldn't extricate himself.

I don't know. Ten months on the firing line in Vietnam, twenty years in law enforcement, and a long excursion into a nocturnal world of neon-streaked rain and whiskey-soaked roses have made me no wiser about human nature than I had been at age eighteen.

But Brother Oswald had made another remark that forced me to reexamine a basic syllogism that I had been operating on: 'You think the real problem is y'all don't have no idea of what you're dealing with?'

I had not been able to find any record anywhere on a man named Will Buchalter.

Why? Perhaps because that was not his name.

I had assumed from the beginning that Buchalter was not an alias, that the man who had violated my wife and home was a relative of Jon Matthew Buchalter, a founder of the Silver Shirts. It was a natural assumption to make. Would someone choose the name of Hitler or Mussolini as an alias if he wished to avoid drawing attention to himself?

Maybe the man who called himself Will Buchalter had thrown me a real slider and I had swung on it.

It was time to have a talk with Hippo Bimstine again.

But I didn't get the chance. At seven the next morning I went to an Al-Anon meeting to get some help for Bootsie that I wasn't capable of providing myself, then two minutes after I walked into my office Lucinda Bergeron called from New Orleans.

'Hey, Lucinda. What's up?' I said.

'The East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Department just nailed a mule with a suitcase full of Mexican tar in his trunk. This'll be his fourth time down. He says he'll do anybody he can for some slack.'

'So?'

'The dope drop's in New Orleans. That's why Baton Rouge called us. This guy says the tar's going into the projects.'

'I'm still not with you.'

'He says the Calucci brothers are dealing the tar. It looks like they're making a move on the projects. Anyway, the guy says he can do them.'

'I doubt it.'

'Why?'

'Max and Bobo always have three or four intermediaries between themselves and whatever they're in.'

'I had the impression you thought they were connected with Lonighan and that Lonighan was mixed up with this psychopath who keeps coming around your house.'

'That's right.'

'So do you have a better lead?'

'Not really.'

'Good. I'll meet you at the jail in two hours. Also, I'm a little pissed, with you this morning, Mr. Robicheaux.'

'Oh?'

'You can't seem to stay out of other people's business.'

'What is it now?'

'I'll tell you when I see you,' she said, and hung up.

Lucinda really knew how to set the hook. All the way across the Atchafalaya Basin, on a beautiful, wind-kissed fall day when I should have been looking at the bays and canals and flooded cypress and willow trees along I-10, I kept wondering what new bagful of spiders she would like to fit over my head.

She met me in the parking lot at the lockup. She wore a pair of white slacks and a purple-flowered blouse, and her hair was brushed out full on her shoulders. She had one hand on her hip and a pout on her face. She looked at the tiny gold watch on her wrist.

'Did you stop for a late breakfast?' she said.

'No, I didn't. I came straight from the office. Get off it, Lucinda.'

'Get off it?'

'Yeah, I'm not up to being somebody's pincushion today.'

'My son is back home. He told me you made some inquiries about the company I keep.'

'No, I didn't.'

'He said you seemed to take an interest in the fact that I had a white man at my house.'

'Kids get things turned around. He volunteered that information on his own.'

'Do you think it should be of some concern to you, sir?'

'No. But one troubling thought did occur to me.'

'Yes?'

'Was it Nate Baxter?'

She looked like a wave of nausea had just swept through her system.

'Do you stay up all night thinking of things like this to say to people?' she said.

'I've known him for twenty years. He'll try to coerce a woman in any way he can. If he hasn't done it to you yet, he will later. He's a sonofabitch and you know it.'

'That doesn't mean I'd allow him in my house.'

'Okay, Lucinda, I apologize. But I know what he did to some women in the First District.'

'I'll buy you a cup of coffee later and tell you about Nate Baxter. In the meantime, our man is waiting on us.'

His name was Waylon Rhodes, from Mount Olive, Alabama; he had skin the color of putty, hands dotted with jailhouse art, a narrow, misshapen head, and a wide slit of a mouth, whose lips on one side looked like they had been pressed flat by a hot iron. His premature gray hair was grizzled and brushed back into faint ducktails; his eyes jittered like a speed addict's. Inside his left arm was a long, blue tattoo of a bayonet or perhaps a sword.

Lucinda and I sat across the wood table from him in the interrogation room. He smoked one cigarette after another, crumpling up an empty pack, ripping the cellophane off a fresh one. The backs of his fingers were yellow with nicotine; his breath was like an ashtray.

'There's no reason to be nervous, partner,' I said.

'Y'all want me to do the Caluccis. That ain't reason to be nervous?' he said.

'You don't have to do anybody. Not for us, anyway. Your beef's with the locals,' I said.

'Don't tell me that, man. Y'all got a two-by-four up my ass.'

'Watch your language, please,' I said.

He smoked with his elbow propped on the table, taking one puff after another, like he was hitting on a reefer, sometimes pressing a yellow thumb anxiously against his bottom lip and teeth.

'They're dangerous people, man,' he said. 'They tied a guy down on a table once and cut thirty pounds of meat out of him while he was still alive.'

'Here's the only deal you're getting today,' Lucinda said. 'We can pull the plug on this interview any time you want. You say the word and we're gone. Then you can have visitors from two to four every Sunday afternoon.'

'What she means, Waylon, is we made a special effort to see you. If this is all a waste of time, tell us now.'

He mashed out his cigarette and began clenching one hand on top of the other. Make him talk about something else, I thought.

'Where'd you get the tattoo of the sword?' I said.

'It's a bayonet. I was in the Airborne. Hunnerd and first.'

'Your jacket says you were in the Navy and did time at Portsmouth brig.'

'Then it's wrong.'

'What can you give us on Max and Bobo?' Lucinda said.

'They're dealing.'

'They're going to be at the drop?' I said.

'Are you kidding?' he said.

'Then how are you going to do them, Waylon?' I said.

He began to chew on the flattened corner of his mouth. His eyes jittered as if they were being fed by an electrical current.

'A whack's going down. A big one,' he said.

'Yeah?' I said.

'Yeah.'

'Who's getting clipped, Waylon?'

'A couple of guineas were talking in Mobile when I picked up the dope.'

'You're not being helpful, Waylon,' Lucinda said.

'There's nig… There's black people mixed up in it. New Orleans is a weird fucking town. What do I know?'

'You'd better know something, partner, or your next jolt's going to be in the decades,' I said.

'They're going to clip some guy that ain't supposed to be clipped. That's what these dagos were saying. That's all I know, man.'

'When you think of something else, give us a call,' I said.

He ran his hand through his grizzled hair. His palm was shiny with sweat.