“Maybe I like to wear some decent threads once in a while. Will you give it a rest?”

Because my pickup truck was not big enough for the three of us, he followed us in the Caddy to Henderson Swamp. In the rearview mirror, I could see he was sneaking sips from a beer can on the floorboards. I thought about stopping and possibly preventing legal trouble on the road, but reason and caution and even common sense held little sway in the life of Clete Purcel. I was even more convinced of that fact when I saw him upend the can, crush it in his fist, and drop it over his shoulder into the backseat, where any cop who stopped him would be able to see it.

“What are you looking at?” Molly said.

“Clete.”

“What about him?”

“That’s like asking about the flight plan of an asteroid.”

She looked at me quizzically, but I didn’t try to explain further.

I backed the trailer down the concrete ramp at Henderson and we slid the boat into the water. It was a perfect afternoon for fishing. The day was hot, the wind down, the water dead-still in the coves. Out on the vast expanse of bays and channels and islands of willow and gum trees that comprised the swamp, I could see other fishermen anchored hard by the pilings of the interstate highway and the desiccated wood platforms of oil rigs that had long ago been torn down and hauled away. The air contained the bright, clean smell of rain in the south, which meant the barometer was dropping and the bass and bream would begin feeding as soon as one raindrop dented the surface of the water.

Molly and I sat in the boat’s stern and Clete sat up on the bass seat by the bow, flicking his Rapala in the lee of the willows that grew along the entrance to a wide bay. He had spread a paper towel over the seat cushion and I noticed that whenever he took a hit off a can of Budweiser or ate one of the po’boy sandwiches Molly had made, he leaned forward to avoid staining his clothes. At six o’clock he looked at his watch, removed his aviator shades and his porkpie hat, and combed his hair. His face was red from beer and sunburn, the area around his eyes still pale. He grinned happily. “Look at that sky,” he said.

Then a bass that must have weighed eight pounds rolled the surface by a nest of lily pads and took Clete’s Rapala with such force it blew water up into the willows. “Jesus Christ,” Clete said, dropping his beer can in his lap.

I got the net from under the seat and Molly swung the electric trolling motor about to keep Clete’s line at eleven o’clock from the bow so the bass would not tangle it with ours. Clete cranked the handle on his reel and jerked the tip of his rod up at the same time, bowing his rod into a severe arch.

“Ease up,” I said. “I’ll get the net under him.”

The bass broke the surface in a flash of gold and green and a roll of its white belly, then it stripped the monofilament off Clete’s drag and dove for the bottom, sawing the line against the boat.

“Pull your line around the bow and let him run,” I said.

Too late. The line snapped and the tip of Clete’s rod sprang back toward his face. “Wow,” he said, wiping at the beer on his slacks with a paper towel.

“Tie on a Mepps. We’ll try the next island up the channel,” I said.

“No, that’s it for me,” he replied.

“You want to quit?” I said, incredulously.

“It’s been a great day. I don’t always have to catch fish.”

“Right,” I said.

Molly looked at me. “I could go for a red snapper dinner up at the restaurant,” she said.

We had at least an hour of good fishing left and I wanted to stay out, but Molly had obviously chosen to act charitably toward Clete’s mercurial behavior and I didn’t have it in me to go against her wishes. “You bet,” I said.

Molly cranked the engine, and we headed across a long bay toward the landing. The surface of the water was the color of tarnished bronze against the sunset, and the new bloom on the cypress trees lifted like green feathers in the wind. Cars with their lights on streamed across the elevated causeway behind us, and ahead I could see the boat ramp and the levee and a lighted restaurant on pilings, with a walkway that extended out over the water.

We winched the boat back up the trailer, then I saw Clete’s face soften as he glanced up at the railing on the restaurant walkway. “I better head on out. Thanks for the afternoon,” he said.

A solitary woman stood on the walkway, her face turned into the sunset, her hair moving in the wind.

“Who’s your lady friend?” I asked, afraid of the answer I would get.

“I love you, Streak, but at some point in your life, can you give me some space?” he said.

Then I saw the woman’s profile against the sky.

“Just keep it in your pants,” I said.

He lifted his tackle box out of the boat and said good-bye to Molly but not to me. He walked toward the restaurant, his big hand gripped tightly on the disconnected sections of his rod, the back of his neck thick and glowing with heat.

“I can’t believe you said that,” Molly said.

“He’s used to it,” I replied.

A few minutes later, as Molly and I walked up to the restaurant for a meal, Clete and the woman drove past us on the rocks to the levee, the moon rising above his pink convertible. The woman’s face was young and radiant and lovely in the glow from the dashboard. She lifted a highball glass to her mouth, never looking in my direction. May the angels fly with you, Cletus, I said to myself.

“Who was that?” Molly said.

“A grifter by the name of Trish Klein. The kind of gal who knows how to break Clete’s heart.”

I HAD THOUGHT MONARCH might be stand-up, might let the FBI do its worse, even if that meant he had to go down on what recidivists used to call “the bitch,” short for “habitual offender,” which was the old-time term for the Clinton-era equivalent known as the three-strikes-and-you’re-out law.

But on Monday morning Monarch came to the prosecutor’s office with his attorney and filed felony assault charges against Slim Bruxal. It was obvious the previous night had not been an easy one for him. He was raccoon-eyed, morose, and stank of beer sweat and weed. When he tripped on a carpet and knocked his head against a door, two teenage girls snickered.

I suspected Monarch’s life was about to unravel. How badly was up for debate. But there are no secrets in our small city on the Teche. In a short time the word would be on the street that Monarch Little had become a hump for the Feds to avoid taking his own bounce. It wouldn’t be improbable for his peers to conclude that he was not to be trusted and that he might start dimeing the same gangbangers who now hovered around him like candle moths.

In the meantime, he had empowered the Iberia Parish district attorney to go forward with assault charges against Slim Bruxal, by extension giving the FBI enormous leverage they could use against Slim’s father, Whitey Bruxal, in what I guessed was a RICO investigation.

I saw Monarch in the parking lot, on the way to his Firebird.

“You hep set this up, Mr. Dee?” he asked.

“I never jammed you, Monarch. Show a little respect,” I replied.

“Before I come down to the courthouse, I tried to join the army.”

“Really?” I said, my face deliberately empty.

“Guy said I might have a weight problem.”

It was hot and bright in the parking lot, and the crypts in St. Peter’s Cemetery looked white and hard-edged in the light, the weeds wilted and stained yellow by herbicide. Several deputies in uniform walked past us, talking among themselves, their cigarette smoke hanging in the dead air. “I need to talk to you,” I said to Monarch.

“I ain’t feeling so good right now. I’m going home and sleep.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

“Hey, you the man called me a pimp. I sell dope, but I ain’t no pimp. Maybe you the one need a little humbleness.”