He knew his audience. He was genteel and erudite, but he was clearly one of them, respectful of the meretricious enterprises they served and the illusions that brought them together. They shook his hand after his speech and touched him warmly on the shoulders, as if they drew power from his legendary football career, the radiant health and good looks that seemed to define his future.

At the head table, behind a crystal bowl filled with floating camellias, I saw Karyn LaRose watching me.

The dining room was almost empty when Buford chose to recognize me.

"Am I under arrest?"

"Just one question: Why did Crown leave his rifle behind?"

"A half dozen reasons."

"I've been through your book with a garden rake. You never deal with it."

"Try he panicked and ran."

"It was the middle of the night. No one else was around."

"People tend to do irrational things when they're killing other people."

The waiters were clearing the tables and the last emissary from the world of Walmart had said his farewell and gone out the door.

"Take a ride up to Angola with me and confront Crown," I said.

He surprised me. I saw him actually think about it. Then the moment went out of his eyes. Karyn got up from her chair and came around the table. She wore a pink suit with a corsage pinned above the breast.

"Crown might get a death sentence for killing those two inmates," I said, looking back at Buford.

"Anything's possible," he replied.

"That's it? A guy you helped put in prison, maybe unjustly, ends up injected, that's just the breaks?"

"Maybe he's a violent, hateful man who's getting just what he deserves."

I started to walk away. Then I turned.

"I'm going to scramble your eggs," I said.

I was so angry I walked the wrong way in the corridor and went outside into the wrong parking lot. When I realized my mistake I went back through the corridor toward the lobby. I passed the dining room, then a short hallway that led back to a service elevator. Buford was leaning against the wall by the elevator door, his face ashen, his wife supporting him by one arm.

"What happened?" I said.

The elevator door opened.

"Help me get him up to our room," Karyn said.

"I think he needs an ambulance."

"No! We have our own physician here. Dave, help me, please. I can't hold him up."

I took his other arm and we entered the elevator. Buford propped the heel of his hand against the support rail on the back wall, pulled his collar loose with his fingers, and took a deep breath.

"I did a five-minute mile this morning. How about that?" he said, a smile breaking on his mouth.

"You better ease up, partner," I said.

"I just need to lie down. One hour's sleep and I'm fine."

I looked at Karyn's face. It was composed now, the agenda, whatever it was, temporarily back in place.

We walked Buford down to a suite on the top floor and put him in bed and closed the door behind us.

"He's talking to a state police convention tonight," Karyn said, as though offering an explanation for the last few minutes. Through the full-glass windows in the living room you could see the capitol building, the parks and boulevards and trees in the center of the city, the wide sweep of the Mississippi River, the wetlands to the west, all the lovely urban and rural ambiance that came with political power in Louisiana.

"Is Buford on uppers?" I asked.

"No. It's… He has a prescription. He gets overwrought sometimes."

"You'd better get him some help, Karyn."

I walked through the foyer to the door.

"You're going?" she said.

She stood inches from me, her face turned up into mine. The exertion of getting Buford into the room had caused her to perspire, and her platinum hair and tanned skin took on a dull sheen in the overhead light. I could smell her perfume in the enclosure, the heat from her body. She leaned her forehead into my chest and placed her hands lightly on my arms.

"Dave, it wasn't just the alcohol, was it? You liked me, didn't you?"

She tapped my hips with her small fists, twisted her forehead back and forth on my chest as though an unspoken conclusion about her life was trying to break from her throat.

I put one hand on her arm, then felt behind me for the elongated door handle. It was locked in place, rigid across the sweating cup of my palm.

A day later Clete Purcel's chartreuse Cadillac convertible, the top down, pulled up in front of the sheriff's department with Mingo Bloomberg in the passenger's seat. Clete and Mingo came up the walk, through the waiting room, and into my office. Mingo stood in front of my desk in white slacks and a lemon yellow shirt with French cuffs. He rotated his neck, as though his collar were too tight, then put a breath mint in his mouth.

"My lawyer's getting me early arraignment and recognizance. I'm here as a friend of the court, so you got questions, let's do it now, okay?" he said. He snapped the mint in his molars.

"Mingo, I don't think that's the way to start out the day here," Clete said.

"What's going on, Clete?" I said.

Clete stepped out into the hall and waited for me. I closed the door behind me.

"Short Boy Jerry gave me two hundred bucks to deliver the freight. Don't let Mingo take you over the hurdles. Jerry Joe and NOPD both got their foot on his chain," he said.

I opened the door and went back in.

"How you feel, Mingo?" I said.

"My car was boosted. I didn't drown a black girl. So I feel okay."

"You a stand-up guy?" I said.

"What's that mean?"

"Jerry Ace is giving us an anchovy so we don't come back for the main meal. You comfortable with that, Mingo? You like being an hors d'oeuvre?" I said.

"What I don't like is being in New Orleans with a target painted on my back. I'm talking about the cops in the First District who maybe stomped a guy's hair all over the cement… I got to use the John. Purcel wouldn't stop the car."

He looked out the glass partition, then saw the face looking back at him.

"Hey, keep her away from me," he said.

"You don't like Detective Soileau?" I said.

"She's a muff-diver. I told her over the phone, she ought to get herself a rubber schlong so she can whip it around and spray trees or whatever she wants till she gets it out of her system."

Helen was coming through the door now. I put my hand on her shoulder and walked her back into the corridor.

"Jerry Joe Plumb made him surrender," I said.

"Why?" she said, her eyes still fastened on Mingo.

"He's tied up somehow with Buford LaRose and doesn't want us in his face. Mingo says he's getting out on his own recognizance. I think he's going to head for our witnesses."

"Like hell he is. Has he been Mirandized?"

"Not yet."

She opened the door so abruptly the glass rattled in the frame.

A half hour later she called me from the jail.

"Guess what? Shithead attacked me. I'll have the paperwork ready for the court in the morning," she said.

"Where is he?"

" Iberia General. He fell down a stairs. He also needed twelve stitches where I hit him with a baton. Forget recognizance, baby cakes. He's going to be with us awhile."

"Helen?"

"The paperwork is going to look fine. I went to Catholic school. I have beautiful penmanship."

Clete and I ate lunch at an outdoor barbecue stand run by a black man in a grove of oak trees. The plank table felt cool in the shade, and you could smell the wet odor of green cordwood stacked under a tarp next to the stand.

"Because I was up early anyway, I happened to turn on the TV and catch 'Breakfast Edition,' you know, the local morning show in New Orleans," he said. His eyes stayed on my face. "What the hell you doing, Streak?"