'Why'd Roseanne hit you? Why'd Morales call you a pimp, Bunny?'

Bunny put the tips of his fingers on his temples.

'You don't know what you're doing. You're setting my life on fire, Mr Holland.'

'Your life? How about the girl who's in the cemetery? How about Lucas Smothers's life?'

Above his left nipple was the tattoo of a small heart.

'I didn't want none of this to happen. People don't plan for stuff like this to happen,' he said.

'Emma Vanzandt called me a fool yesterday. When I asked her why, she used your name. Like you were a key I didn't know how to fit on the ring.'

'Emma done that?' He twisted around on the bench and stared at me, his eyes burning. 'That bitch done that?'

'That doesn't sound like you, Bunny.'

'Yeah, what does? Human dildo?'

He waited for me to comprehend his meaning. I kept my expression flat.

'Rich woman catches her husband milking through the fence, how does she stick it to him? She gets a young guy to put the wood to her.'

'You and Emma?'

'It was a one-time deal. She drove a hundred miles to a motel that was between two oil rigs. The walls was vibrating off the foundation. I think she was whacked out on speed. She wanted to call him up on the phone during a certain moment. I had to talk her out of it.'

He stared out at the river and at the Mexican girl whose body was bladed with the sun's reflection off the water. After a while he said, 'She's a nice girl. Naomi, I mean. She don't know about none of this. She thinks I'm hot shit 'cause I played football at A amp;M.'

'Maybe you're a better guy than you think,' I said.

'No, I know what I am. I blame my trouble on the Vanzandts, but they knew the kind of person they was looking for.'

'You're still a young man. You haven't done anything that can't be undone.' When he didn't answer, I said, 'Have you?'

He looked down at the tops of his feet. His fingers were pressed into his bronze hair like white snakes. When I walked to the car I realized I had forgotten to deliver his father's message, but I felt Bunny didn't need another reminder that day of who or what he was.

I almost didn't recognize her when she got out of a taxi cab in my drive at noon the same day. She wore a powder-blue suit, heels, a white blouse, and a beige shoulder bag. But for some reason, in my mind's eye, I still saw the tall, naturally elegant woman in tan uniform and campaign hat. I opened the side door and stepped out under the porte cochere.

'Wow,' I said.

'Wow, yourself.'

'You sure look different.'

'That's the welcome?'

'Come in.' I opened the screen.

She hesitated. 'I don't want to interrupt your day.'

We seemed to be looking at each other like people who might have just met at a bus stop.

'I don't know what to say, Mary Beth. I got one phone message. My only source of information about you has been Brian Wilcox.'

'Brian?'

'He got a warrant and tossed my house.'

She looked away, her face full of thought.

'I'm not supposed to be here. My people are cutting a deal with the new sheriff,' she said.

'Your people?'

'Yes.'

The wind blew the curls on the back of her neck. I could hear the tin roof on the barn pinging with heat, like wires breaking.

'The locals are trying to jam you up on the shooting?' I said.

'It's their out. I handed it to them on a shovel.'

'Sammy Mace was a cop killer. He got what he had coming,' I said.

'Can we go inside, Billy Bob? We were in Denver this morning. I overdressed.'

She sat down at the kitchen table. I poured her a glass of iced tea. I ran cold water over my hands and dried them, not knowing why I did. Outside, the barn roof shimmered like a heliograph under the sun.

'My office is taking the weight for me. I screwed up, but they're taking the weight, anyway,' she said.

'A stand-up bunch. We're talking about the DEA?' I said.

Her back straightened under her coat. Her hand was crimped on a paper napkin, her gaze pointed out the window.

'I thought coming here was the right thing to do. But I'm all out of words, Billy Bob.'

'Can't we have dinner? Can't we spend some time together without talking about obligations to a government agency? You think you owe guys like Brian Wilcox?'

'This is pointless. Because you hung up your own career doesn't mean other-' She didn't finish. She put both her hands in her lap, then a moment later placed one hand on top of her shoulder bag.

I opened the refrigerator door to take out the iced tea pitcher again. Then closed it and stood stupidly in the center of the room, all of the wrong words already forming in my throat.

'An English writer, what's his name, E. M. Forster, once said if he had to choose between his country and his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to choose his friend,' I said.

'I guess I missed that in my English lit survey course,' she said, rising from her chair. 'Can I use your phone to call a cab? I should have asked him to wait.'

'I apologize. Don't leave like this.'

She shook her head, then walked into the library and used the telephone. I stood in her way when she tried to walk down the hall to the front door.

'You see yourself as a failure. You put yourself through law school. You were a Texas Ranger and an AUSA. You can be a lawman again, anytime you want,' she said.

'Then stay. I'll cancel the cab.'

I put my hand on her arm. I saw the pause in her eyes, the antithetical thoughts she couldn't resolve, the pulse in her neck.

'I'd better go. I'll call later,' she said.

'Mary Beth-'

Then she was out the door, her cheeks glazed with color, her hand feeling behind her for the door handle so she would not have to look back at my face.

But by Monday morning there was no call. Instead, a dinged gas-guzzler stopped out front of my office and a woman in a platinum wig and shades and a flowered sundress got out and looked in both directions, as though by habit, then entered the downstairs foyer.

A minute later my secretary buzzed me.

'A Ms Florence LaVey. No appointment,' she said.

'Who is she?'

'She said you'd know who she was.'

'Nope. But send her in.'

The inner door opened and the woman in the platinum wig stood framed in the doorway, her shades dripping from her fingers, her face expectant, as though at any moment I would recognize her relationship to my life.

'Can I help you?' I asked. Then I noticed that one of her eyes was brown, the other blue.

'The name doesn't turn on your burner, huh? San Antonio? The White Camellia Bar?'

'Maybe I'm a little slow this morning.'

'I know what you mean. I always get boiled on Sunday nights myself. I think it has something to do with being raised Pentecostal… Let me try again… A nasty little fuck by the name of Darl Vanzandt?'

'You're the lady he beat up. You're a waitress?'

'A hostess, honey.' She winked and sat down and crossed her legs. She opened a compact and looked at herself. 'I'd like to slip some pieces of bamboo deep under his fingernails.'

'His father says you and a pimp tried to roll him.'

She wet the ball of one finger and wiped at something on her chin and clicked the compact shut.

'His old man paid me ten thousand dollars so he and his son could tell whatever lies they wanted to. You interested in what really happened?'

'It's not of much value if you took money to drop the charges.'

'I'm not talking about what that little shit did to me. I read about that girl in the paper when she got beaten to death. But I didn't make any connections. Then last night him and this ex-convict named Moon come to this new bar I'm working in. Fart Breath starts talking about a trial, about this girl got gang-raped and her head bashed in, about how some lawyer is trying to make him take somebody else's fall. I'm standing behind the bar. I keep waiting for him to catch on who I am. Forget it.'