I pushed open the door the rest of the way.

When Buford connected with the vein, his eyes closed and opened and then glazed over, his lips parted indolently and a muted sound rose from his throat, as though he were sliding onto the edge of orgasm.

Then he heard me.

"Oh… Dave," he said. He put the needle on the edge of the lavatory and swallowed dryly, his eyes flattening, the pupils constricting with the hit.

"Bad shit, Buford," I said.

He buttoned his trousers and tried to fix his belt.

"Goat glands and vitamins. Not what you think, Dave," he said.

"So that's why you shoot it up in your thighs?"

"John Kennedy did it." He smiled wanly. "Are you going to cuff the governor-elect in his home?"

"It wouldn't stick. Why not talk to somebody you trust about this, before you flame out?"

"It might make an interesting fire."

"I never met a hype who was any different from a drunk. I'm talking about myself, Buford. We're all smart-asses."

"You missed your historical period. You should have sat at the elbow of St. Augustine. You were born for the confessional. Come on, a new day is at hand, sir, if you would just lend me yours for a moment."

I helped him sit down on top of the toilet seat lid, then I watched, almost as a voyeur would, as the color came back in his face, his breathing seemed to regulate itself, his shoulders straightened, his eyes lifted merrily into mine.

"We glide on gilded wings above the abyss," he said. "The revelers wait-"

I shattered his syringe in the toilet bowl.

"Mark one off to bad manners," I said.

Early the next morning the sheriff called me into his office.

"Lafayette P.D. wants us to help with security at the Hotel Acadiana on Pinhook Road," he said.

"Buford again?"

"The guy's turned the governor's office into a rolling party. We're probably going to be stuck with it a little while."

"I want off it, skipper."

"I want my old hairline back."

"He's a hype."

"You're telling me we just elected a junkie?"

I told him what had happened the night before. He blew out his breath.

"You're sure he's not diabetic or something like that?" he asked.

"I think it's speed."

"You didn't want to take him down?"

"Busting a guy in his bathroom with no warrant?"

He rubbed his temple.

"I hate to say this, but I'm still glad he won rather than one of those other shitheads," he said. He waited. "No comment?"

"He's bad news. We'll pay for it down the line."

"God, you're a source of comfort," he said.

I picked up my morning mail and went into my office just as my phone rang. Dock Green must have hit the floor running.

"You tell that Irish prick he wants to get in my face, I'll meet him in the street, in an alley, out on a sandbar in the middle of the Atchafalaya. Somebody should have busted his spokes a long time ago," he said.

"Which Irish prick?" I said.

"Duh," he answered. "He caused a big scene at my casino. Customers were going out the doors like it was a fire drill. He threw a pool ball into a guy's head at my restaurant."

"Tell him yourself."

"I would. Except I can't find him. He's too busy wiping his shit all over the city."

"Clete's a one-on-one-type guy, Dock."

"Yeah? Well, I'm a civilized human being. Jimmy Ray Dixon ain't. Your friend's been down in Cannibal Town, saying they give up this black ape been making threats against him or he's going to staple somebody's dork to the furniture. I hope they cook him in a pot."

"The shooter we want is a guy named Mookie. He's telling people he has permission to take Purcel out. Who'd give him that kind of permission, Dock?"

"Try to fit this into your head, Robicheaux-"

Then I heard a woman's voice and hands scraping on the receiver, as though someone were pulling it from Dock's grasp.

"Mr. Robicheaux?"

"Yes."

"This is Persephone Green. I met you years ago when my name was Giacano."

"Yes, I remember," I said, although I didn't.

"Are you sure? Because you were drunk at the time."

I cleared my throat.

"My husband is trying to say, we don't have anything to do with problems in New Orleans ' black community," she said. "You leave us alone. You tell your friend the same thing."

"Your husband's a pimp."

"And you're an idiot, far out of his depth," she said, and hung up the phone.

Either the feminists had reached into the mob or the New Orleans spaghetti heads had spawned a new generation.

I used my overtime to take the afternoon off and went to Red Lerille's Health and Racquet Club in Lafayette. I did four sets of curls and military and bench presses with free weights, then went into the main workout room, which had a glass wall that gave onto a shady driveway and the adjacent tennis courts and was lined with long rows of exercise machines. Because it was still early in the day, there were few people on the machines. A half dozen off-duty steroid-pumped Lafayette cops were gathered around a pull-down bar, seemingly talking among themselves.

But their eyes kept drifting to the end of the room, where Karyn LaRose lay on a bench at an inverted angle, her calves and ankles hooked inside two cylindrical vinyl cushions while she raised herself toward her knees, her fingers laced behind her head, her brown thighs shiny with sweat, her breasts as swollen as grapefruit against her Harley motorcycle T-shirt.

I sat down on a Nautilus leg-lift machine, set the pin at 140, and raised the bar with the tops of my feet until my ankles were straight out from my knees and I could feel a burn grow in my thighs.

I felt her on the corner of my vision. She flipped her sweat towel against my leg like a wet kiss.

"Our bodyguard isn't speaking these days?" she said.

"Hello, Karyn."

She wiped her neck and the back of her hair. Her black shorts were damp and molded to her body.

"You still mad?" she said.

"I never worry about yesterday's box score."

Her mouth fell open.

"Sorry, bad metaphor," I said.

"If you aren't a handful."

"How about requesting me off y'all's security?" I asked.

"You're stuck, baby love."

"Why?"

"Because you're a cutey, that's why." She propped her forearm on top of the machine. She let her thigh touch mine.

"Sounds like control to me," I said.

"That's what it's all about, sweetie." She bumped me again.

"Stop playing games with people, Karyn. Aaron Crown's out there. He doesn't care about clever rhetoric."

"Then go find him."

"I think he'll find us. It won't be a good moment, either."

She looked down the aisle through the machines. The off-duty Lafayette cops had turned their attention to a dead-lift bar stacked with one-hundred-pound plates. Karyn sucked on her index finger, her eyes fastened on mine, then touched it to my lips.

Later, I drove to Sabelle Crown's bar down by the Lafayette Underpass. Even though the day was bright, the bar's interior was as dark as the inside of a glove. Sabelle was in a back storage shed, her body crisscrossed with the sunlight that fell through the board walls, watching two black men load vinyl bags bursting with beer cans onto a salvage truck.

"I wondered when you'd be around," she said.

"Oh?"

"He wouldn't come here. I don't know where he is, either."

"I don't believe you."

"Suit yourself…" She turned to the black men. "Okay, you guys got it all? Next week I want you back here on time. No more 'My gran'mama been sick, Miz Sabelle' stuff. There're creatures with no eyes living under the garbage I got back here."

She watched the truck, its slatted sides held in place with baling wire, lumber down the alley. "God, what a life," she said. She sat down on a folding chair next to the brick wall and took a sandwich out of a paper bag. A crazy network of wood stairs and rusted fire escapes zigzagged to the upper stories of the building. She pushed another chair toward me with her foot. "Sit down, Dave, you're making me nervous."