Instead, he knotted my shirt in his fist. “It was that nigger, wasn’t it? Tell me the troot, or I’ll knock your fucking head into the driveway,” he said.

“You’ll release me or go to jail,” I said.

But he twisted the fabric of my shirt tighter in his hand, at the same time pushing me out into the darkness. “That nigger killed my boy. You motherfuckers wouldn’t do anything about him, and now he’s killed my boy,” he said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Helen gesture at the two uniformed deputies. They were both big men who had been roughnecks on offshore oil rigs before they became police officers. But it took all of us, including Helen, to cuff Bello and get him in the backseat of a cruiser. When we closed the door on him, he broke out the window with his head and spit on me.

Helen took a section of paper towel from a roll on the seat of her cruiser and cleaned the spittle off my sleeve and wrist and back. She crumpled the towel and threw it in Bello ’s face. Then she stared down at him through the broken window, her hands on her hips, her fingers touching her slapjack. “We all grieve for your loss, Mr. Lujan, but everybody here is fed up with your abuse. You either act like a sensible human being or I’ll pull the cuffs off you myself and beat the living shit out of you. Look into my face and tell me I won’t do it.”

He glared up at her, rheumy-eyed, his jaws unshaved, his face aged by ten years in the last ten minutes. “Y’all ain’t understood me. The nigger called. He set my boy up.”

“What?” Helen said.

“Ax Lydia up there on the porch. The nigger talked to her. He drove away to meet him.”

“Who drove away?” I said.

“Tony. My son drove away to meet that nigger, Monarch Little.”

Helen and I looked at each other. I walked back under the porch light. “You’re Lydia?” I said to the girl standing there.

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Let’s go inside.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“I didn’t say you had. Who else is here?”

“Mrs. Lujan. She’s upstairs.”

I left the door slightly ajar, so it wouldn’t lock Helen out. Although I had been in the Lujan home briefly once before, I hadn’t taken adequate note of its design and decor and the contradictions they suggested. The floors were maple that glowed with a honeylike radiance, the molding and window frames done with fine-grained recovered cypress that was probably two hundred years old. The rugs were an immaculate white, the couches made of soft leather that was the color of elephant hide. A lighted crystal chandelier hung over a mahogany table in the dining room, a silver bowl filled with water and floating camellias in the center. It was hard to believe that this was the home of Bello Lujan.

“A black guy called here earlier?” I said.

“Yes, sir, he said he was Monarch Little.”

“You talked to him? You, yourself?”

“Yeah, I mean yes, sir. I was talking with him when Tony came home from UL. Tony was, like, a little drunk and maybe a little stoned, too. Then he drove off.”

“Let’s have a seat,” I said, and took a notebook and pen from my shirt pocket. “What’s your last name, Lydia?”

“ Thibodaux. My father runs the restaurant at the new casino. I go to UL with Tony.”

“Do you know Monarch Little personally? You know his voice when you hear it, Lydia?”

“I’ve seen him around.” Her eyes became uncertain. She glanced at the closed front door, then up the stairs. “He sells dope. Like, if you want to score weed or Ex, everybody says he’s the guy to see.”

“What did Monarch say to you?”

“First, there’s, like, all this rap music blaring in the background. I could hardly hear. I told him Tony wasn’t home and he should call back later. He goes, ‘Tell him I can prove the cops planted blood on his daddy’s broken headlight. Tell him to call me back on this phone.’ I go, ‘Which phone?,’ like, I’m supposed to know where he’s calling from. Just then Tony comes in the door, blowing fumes all over the place.”

“Tony talked to Monarch?”

“Yeah. No. He just listened. Then he took the phone away from his ear and looked at it, like Monarch had hung up on him or something.”

“What did Tony say to you?”

“He went upstairs and got a bunch of cash out of his drawer. He said he’d be back in an hour. He said he was going to get Mr. Bello out of trouble. We were supposed to see The Kingdom of Heaven. If we had just gone to supper and the show, none of this would have happened. It’s like bad things keep happening for no reason.”

“Which bad things?”

“All the bad things that have happened to Tony and Mr. Bello.” Her gaze was averted now, neutral in expression, as though she were distancing herself from her own statement.

I looked at my notes and the sequence of events she had described. I believed that Lydia Thibodaux was telling me elements of the truth about the events of that evening, but obviously not all of them. “Did you ever buy dope from Monarch, Lydia? Did you ever hear his voice up close?”

“I was with some people once who bought some from him on Ann Street, like where all those gangbangers hang out. Like maybe a year ago.”

“You think Monarch is a dangerous dude?”

“That’s what some people say.”

“Then why would you and Mr. Bello not call the cops?”

“Sir?”

“You told Mr. Bello that Monarch had arranged to meet his son. You also knew Tony was stoned. Why would you and Mr. Bello let Tony walk into the lion’s mouth with a wallet full of cash?”

She sucked in her cheeks and looked straight ahead, her hands folded demurely in her lap.

“Y’all were willing to let Tony suborn perjury?” I said.

“Do what?” she said, making a face.

“Bribe a man to lie.”

She was disarmed and afraid now, confused about terminology and unsure about the implications of her own rhetoric. It was the kind of moment in an interview when you ask a question the subject is not expecting. “Did you date Tony?” I said.

“Sometimes we went out,” she replied, momentarily relieved. Then her face clouded again. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘date.’”

“Yvonne Darbonne was about the same age as you. She had everything to live for. Can you tell me why she ended up shot to death, Lydia? Can you help us with that question? Why’d that young girl have to die?”

But Lydia Thibodaux’s reply surprised me. “I don’t know why. Tony didn’t talk about her. He said they only went out a couple of times. I think it was more than that, though. I think Tony wasn’t honest with me. I don’t think I ever had a real chance with him. I loved Tony and-”

The events of the evening and her memories about Tony Lujan, whatever they were, seemed to take their toll all at once. I studied her face and the fatigue in it and the look of theft in her eyes and felt for the first time that night she was speaking the complete truth. I heard a board creak at the top of the stairs.

A woman in a wheelchair had pushed herself precariously close to the edge of the landing and was trying to see beyond the angle into the living room. Her skin was as white as milk, as though the blood had been drained from her veins or her skin denied exposure to sunlight. Her legs were wasted, her arms marked with the bruises of someone who has had long-term intravenous injections. She kept peering around the edge of the banister, like a person rarely allowed a glimpse of the larger world.

“Who’s down there, please?” she said. “I saw the emergency lights outside. Has Tony been hurt?”

WE FOUND TONY LUJAN’S silver Lexus in the morning, parked inside a cluster of persimmon trees and water oaks a hundred yards from the crime scene. We also found impressions of multiple vehicles in the Johnson grass behind the tractor shed where Tony died. Early Tuesday morning Mack Bertrand went to work on the crime scene, the two discharged shotgun shells I had picked up by Tony’s body, and the cut-down double-barrel the firemen had found inside Monarch’s burned-out automobile.