And in the distance, glowing like a chemical flame in the fog, was Morgan City, filled with palm-dotted skid-row streets, sawdust bars, hot pillow joints, roustabouts, hookers, rounders, bouree gamblers, and midnight ramblers. Zoot helped me stand erect, and I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and looked again at the two hoboes who had belly flopped onto the floor of the boxcar and were now rolling smokes as the freight creaked and wobbled down the old Southern Pacific railroad bed. Their toothless, seamed faces were lifted into the salt breeze with an expression of optimism and promise that made me think that perhaps the spirits of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, and Jack Kerouac were still riding those pinging rails. But the scene needed no songwriter or poet to make it real. It was a poem by itself, a softly muted, jaded, heartbreakingly beautiful piece of the country that was forever America and that you knew you could never be without.

At home the next day, I sat in the cool shade of the gallery and listened to Clete Purcel talk about his latest encounter with the Calucci brothers. The cane along the bayou's banks looked dry and yellow in the wind, and hawks were gliding high above the marsh against a ceramic blue sky. I had the same peculiar sense of removal that I had experienced after I was wounded seriously in Vietnam. I felt that the world was moving past me at its own pace, with its own design, one that had little to do with me, and that now I was a spectator who listened to interesting stories told by other people.

'You remember how we used to do it when the greaseballs thought they could take us over the hurdles, I mean when they got the mistaken idea they were equal members of the human race and not something that should have run down their mother's leg?' he said. 'We'd show up in the middle of their lawn parties, have their limos towed in, roust them on nickel-and-dime beefs in public, flush their broads out of town, use a snitch to rat-fuck 'em with the Chicago Outfit, hey, you remember the time we blew up Julio Segura's shit in the backseat of his car? They had to wash him out with a hose, what a day that was.'

Clete ripped the tab on a can of beer, drank the foam, and smiled at me. His face was pink with a fresh sunburn, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with white lines.

'So that's what I did, big mon,' he said. 'I started following Max and Bobo all over town. Bars, restaurants, a couple of massage parlors they own, three fuck pads, black slum property, dig this, they've actually got a guy fronting a bail bonds office for them in Metairie, an escort service, a PCB incinerator out on the river. Dave, these two guys get up in the morning and go across Jefferson and Orleans parishes like a disease, it's impressive.

'The problem is, I've got a convertible now, and it's a little hard to be inconspicuous. After a while Max and Bobo are doing big yawns when they see me and I'm starting to feel like part of the scenery while the neighbourhood dogs hose down my tires. So yesterday, when the Caluccis and all their gumballs go to lunch at Mama Lido's, I decide it's time to shift it on up into overdrive and I get a table out on the terrace, three feet behind one of Max's broads.

'It was perfect timing, the ultimate New Orleans lowlife geek-out. Guess who shows up first? Tommy Blue Eyes and his main punch, what's her name, Charlotte, with her ta-tas sticking out of her sundress like a couple of muskmelons, and of course the Caluccis' hired help are winking at each other and squeezing their floppers under the table while Tommy's trying to act big-shit and order Italian dishes like he knows what he's doing, except he sounds like he's got Q-tips shoved up his nose.

'Then Tommy's Indian zombie pulls up in front of the restaurant with Mrs. Lonighan in the passenger's seat. Have you ever seen her? Think of a fire hydrant with bow legs. She charges out onto the terrace, her glasses on crooked, spittle flying from her mouth, shouting about Tommy and the punch leaving a used rubber under her bed, and when the maître d' tries to calm her down, she squirts a bottle of seltzer water in his face.

'Naturally, the Caluccis and the other greaseballs and their broads are loving all this. Tommy's face is getting redder and redder, his punch is using a little brush to powder her ta-tas, and the Indian is standing there like a lobotomy case who needs a spear in his hand and a bone in his nose. Then Mrs. Lonighan storms out of the place, gets in her car without the Indian, and drives across the curb into a bunch of garbage cans down the street.

'So Tommy tries to blow it all off by talking about how the Jews are taking over legalized gambling in Louisiana. Then he starts telling these anti-Semitic jokes that have got people at the other tables staring with their mouths open, you know, stuff like "This Nazi officer told these Jewish concentration camps inmates, 'I got good news and bad news for you guys. The good news is you're going to Paris. The bad news is you're going as soap."'

'Anyway, the greaseballs are roaring at Tommy's jokes, and I'm wondering why I'm letting these guys act like I've used up my potential and I'm not a factor in their day anymore. So I lean over and tap Tommy on the shoulder with a celery stick and say, "Hey, Tommy, too bad you left your peter cheater lying around for Miz Bobalouba to step on. You ought to get you a fuck pad in the Pontalba like Max and Bobo here."

'The whole place goes quiet except for the sound of the Indian slurping up his squids. I'm thinking, Ah, show time. Wrong. Bobo calls the maître d' and has me thrown out. Can you dig it? Here's a collection of people that would turn the stomach of a proctologist, but I get eighty-sixed out on the street, right in front of a busload of Japanese tourists who are on their way back from the battleground at Chalmette.

'I'm thinking. What's wrong with this picture? I was humping it outside Chu Lai while Max and Bobo were boosting cars and doing hundred-buck hits for the Giacano family. Plus I look back at the terrace and the maître d' is picking up my silverware and changing the tablecloth like some guy with herpes on his hands had been eating there.

'I look down the street and some guys are taking a break from pouring a concrete foundation for a house. You remember that story you told me about how this mob guy in Panama City got even with his wife for giving a blow job to a judge behind a nightclub?

'The guy in charge of the cement truck is a union deadbeat and a part-time bouncer in the Quarter I went bail for about two years ago. I say, "Mitch, you mind if I drive your truck around the block, play a joke on a friend?" He says, "Yeah, we were just going to have a beer and a shot across the street if somebody'd stand the first round." I say, "Why don't you let me do that, Mitch? I think I have a tab there." He goes, "I was just telling my friends here you're that kind of guy, Purcel."

'I pull the truck right up to Max's Caddy convertible. It's gleaming with a new wax job, the top's down, the dashboard's made of mahogany, the seats are purple leather and soft as warm butter. I get out of the truck, clank that feeder chute over the driver's door, and let 'er rip. Streak, it was beautiful. The cement splatters all over the dashboard and the windows, covers the floors, oozes up over the seats, and hangs in big gray curtains over the doors. Even with the mixer roaring I could hear people yelling and going crazy out on the terrace. In the meantime, the Japanese have piled back off the bus in these navy blue business suits that look like umpire uniforms, laughing and applauding and snapping their Nikons because they think a movie is being made and this is all part of the tour, and while Max and Bobo are trying to fight their way through the crowd, the springs on the Caddy collapse, the tires pop off the rims, the cement breaks out the front windows and crushes the hood down on the engine. You remember that character called "The Heap" in the comic books? That's what the Caddy looked like, two headlights staring out of this big, gray pile of wet cement-.'