As with most of her kind, Pearly Blue's toughness was a sad illusion, and her breaking point was always right beneath the skin.

'You want to tell me what happened with Nate Baxter?' I said.

She looked down at the end of the alley, where a clump of untrimmed banana trees grew by a rack of garbage cans and traffic was passing on the street. She took another hit on her cigarette.

'Pearly Blue, as far as I'm concerned, we're still inside the meeting. Which means anything you tell me doesn't go any farther.'

'I went down to the store to buy some eggs to make his breakfast,' she said. She had a peckerwood accent and a peculiar way of moving her lips silently before she spoke. 'He always wants an omelette when he gets up in the morning. When I came back, fire was popping the glass out of all the windows.'

'Who handcuffed the doors together?'

'I don't know. I didn't.' She looked up at the telephone wires, an attempted pout on her mouth, like a put-upon adolescent girl.

'Why are you still hanging around with a guy like Baxter, Pearly Blue?'

'I wrote a couple of bad checks. He said he'll tell my P.O.'

'I see.'

'I wasn't hanging paper. It was just an overdraft. But with the jacket I already got-'

She made a clicking sound with her tongue and tried to look self-possessed and cool, but the color had risen in her throat, and her pulse was fluttering like an injured moth.

'Who torched the place?' I said.

'I don't know, Streak. Everything I owned was burned up. What am I supposed to tell you?' Her eyes were wet now. She opened and closed them and looked emptily at the graffiti-scrolled wall of a garage apartment.

'Were the Calucci brothers behind it?'

'Don't be telling people that. Don't be using my name when you go talking about them kind of people,'

'I won't let you get hurt, Pearly Blue. Just tell me what happened.'

'Some guy called, it was like he knew everything about me, about my kid getting taken away from me, about where I work, about some stuff, you know, not very good stuff, I did at the massage parlour, he said, "Get out of your place by six, have yourself a nice walk, when you come back you won't have to be this guy's fuck no more."'

'You don't know who it was?'

'You think I want to know something like that? You remember what happened to my roommate in the Quarter when she told a vice cop she'd testify against one of the Giacano family? They soaked her in gasoline. They-'

'You're out of it, Pearly Blue. Forget about Baxter, forget about the Calucci brothers. Where are you living now?'

'At my sister's. I just want to go to meetings, work at my job, and get my little boy back. My P.O.' s a hard ass, he hears about the checks, calls from the wise guys, stuff like that, I'm going down again. It's full of bull dykes in there, Streak. I just can't do no more time.'

'You won't, not if I have anything to do with it.'

'Baxter's gonna find me. He's gonna make me ball him again. It's sickening.'

I took a business card out of my wallet, pressed it into her palm, and closed her fingers on it. Her hand was small and moist in mine.

'Believe me when I tell you this,' I said. 'If Nate Baxter ever bothers you again, call me, and he'll wish his parents had taken up celibacy.'

Her face became confused.

'He'll wish his father'd had his equipment sawed off,' I said.

The corner of her mouth wrinkled with a smile, exposing a line of tiny, silver-capped teeth.

Nate Baxter's room was as utilitarian and plain and devoid of cheer as his life. It contained no flowers, greeting cards, clusters of balloons, and certainly no visitors, unless you counted the uniformed cop on duty at the door.

'You don't look too bad, Nate,' I said. Which wasn't true. His face was wan, the reddish gold beard along his jawline was matted with some kind of salve, and stubble had grown out on his cheeks.

He didn't speak; his eyes regarded me carefully.

'I talked with an arson inspector. He said somebody put a fire-bomb under your bed, probably gasoline and paraffin,' I said.

'You're making that your business, along with everything else in Orleans Parish?'

'I've got a special interest in Max and Bobo Calucci. I think you do, too, Nate.'

'What's that mean?'

'You're on a pad.'

'I remember once when you smelled like an unflushed toilet with whiskey poured in it. Maybe that's why IA busted you out of the department. Maybe that's why you can't ever get that hard out of your pants. But I'm not up to trading insults with you. Do me a favor today, go back home.'

He turned his head on the pillow to reach a drinking glass filled with Coca-Cola. I could see a tubular, raw-edged lump behind his right ear.

'I think you tried to up the juice on the Caluccis, Nate. Then they decided to factor you out of the overhead.'

'It's always the same problem with you, Robicheaux. It's not what you don't know, it's what you think you know that makes you a fuckup. No matter where you go, you leave shit prints on the walls.'

'You were asleep, maybe you still had a half a bag on, Pearly Blue went to the store, somebody sapped you across the head, then he really lit up your morning.'

'I was in her apartment because she's still my snitch. You want to give it some other interpretation, nobody's going to be listening. Why? Because you don't work here anymore. For some reason, you can't seem to accept that simple fact.' His hand moved toward the cord and call button that would bring a nurse or the guard at the door.

'You know what denial is, Nate?'

'I breathed a lot of smoke yesterday. I'm not interested in wetbrain vocabulary right now. Every one of you AA guys thinks you deserve the Audie Murphy award because you got sober. Here's the news flash on that. The rest of us have been sober all along. It's not a big deal in the normal world.'

'A heroin mule in Baton Rouge custody knew about the hit. So did some greaseballs in Mobile. So did Tommy Lonighan. They're talking about you like you're already off the board.'

'Get out of here before I place you under arrest.' His hand went toward the call button again. I moved it out of his reach.

'You're a bad cop, Nate. Somebody should have clicked off your switch a long time ago.'

I pushed back my seersucker coat and removed my.45 from my belt holster. His eyes were riveted on mine now.

'You're bad not because you're on a pad; you're bad because you don't understand that we're supposed to protect the weak,' I said. 'Instead, when you sense weakness in people, you exploit it, you bully and humiliate them, you've even sodomized and raped them.'

'You've got a terminal case of assholeitis, Robicheaux, but you're not crazy. So get off it.' He tried to keep the conviction in his voice, his eyes from dropping to the pistol in my hand.

'I know an AA bunch called the Work the Steps or Die, Motherfucker group. Some of them are bad dudes, guys who've been on Camp J up at Angola. They say you've been hitting on Pearly Blue for a long time. They wanted to do something about it.' I pulled back the slide on the.45 and eased a round from the magazine into the chamber. 'But I told them I'd take care of it.'

'That gun-threat bullshit is an old ruse of yours. You're firing in the well. Get out of my room.'

I sat on the edge of his bed.

'You're right, it is,' I said. 'That's why I was going to shove it down your mouth and let you work toward that conclusion while you swallowed some of your own blood, Nate… But there's no need.'

'What are you-'

I released the magazine, ejected the round from the chamber, and dropped it clinking into his drinking glass.

'She found out this week she's HIV positive,' I said. 'I'd get some tests as long as I was already in the hospital. But no matter how you cut it, Nate, Pearly Blue is out of your life. We're clear on that, aren't we?'