I TOOK A SHOWER, DRIED OFF, AND WAS BUTTONING ON A FRESH shirt in the kitchen when the telephone rang on the counter. Bootsie put down a pan on the stove and answered it.
'It's Batist,' she said, and handed it to me:
'Qui t'as pr'estfaire?' I said into the receiver.
'Some drunk white man down here done fell in the bayou,' he said.
'What's he doing now?'
'Sittin' in the middle of the shop, drippin' water on my flo'.'
'I'll be there in a minute,' I said.
'Dave, a lady wit' him was smokin' a cigarette out on the dock didn't smell like no tobacco, no.'
'All right, podna. Thanks,' I said, and hung up the phone.
Bootsie was looking at me with a question mark in the middle of her face. Her auburn hair, which she had pinned up in swirls on her head, was full of tiny lights.
'A man fell in the bayou. I have to drive him and his girlfriend home,' I said.
'Where's their car?'
'They came out in a cab.'
'A cab? Who comes fishing in a cab?'
'He's a weird guy.'
'Dave-' she said, drawing my name out in exasperation.
'He's one of those actors working out at Spanish Lake. I guess he came out here to tell me about something.'
'Which actor?'
'Elrod Sykes.'
'Elrod Sykes is out at the bait shop?'
'Yep.'
'Who's the woman with him?'
'Kelly Drummond.'
'Dave, I don't believe it. You left Kelly Drummond and Elrod Sykes in the bait shop? You didn't invite them in?'
'He's bombed, Boots.'
'I don't care. They came out to see you and you left them in the shop while you took a shower?'
'Bootsie, this guy's head glows in the dark, even when he's not on chemicals.'
She went out the front door and down the slope to the bayou. In the mauve twilight I could see her touching at her hair before she entered the bait shop. Five minutes later Kelly Drummond was sitting at our kitchen table, a cup of coffee balanced in her fingers, a reefer-induced wistfulness on her face, while Elrod Sykes changed into dry clothes in our bedroom. He walked into the kitchen in a pair of my sandals, khaki trousers, and the Ragin' Cajuns T-shirt, with my name ironed on the back, that Alafair had given me for Father's Day.
His face was flushed with gin roses, and his gaze drifted automatically to the icebox.
'Would you like a beer?' Bootsie said.
'Yes, if you wouldn't mind,' he said.
'Boots, I think we're out,' I said.
'Oh, that's all right. I really don't need one,' he said.
Bootsie's eyes were bright with embarrassment. Then I saw her face set.
'I'm sure there's one back in here somewhere,' she said, then slid a long-necked Dixie out of the bottom shelf and opened it for him.
Elrod looked casually out the back door while he sipped from the bottle.
'I have to feed the rabbits. You want to take a walk with me, Elrod?' I said.
'The rice will be ready in a minute,' Bootsie said.
'That's all it'll take,' I said.
Outside, under the pecan trees that were now black-green in the fading light, I could feel Elrod watching the side of my face.
'Boy, I don't know quite what to say, Mr. Robicheaux, I mean Dave.'
'Don't worry about it. Just tell me what it is you had on your mind all day.'
'It's these guys out yonder on that lake. I told you before.'
'Which guys? What are you talking about?'
'Confederate infantry. One guy in particular, with gold epaulets on his coat. He's got a bad arm and he's missing a leg. I think maybe he's a general.'
'I'll be straight with you. I think maybe you're delusional.'
'A lot of people do. I just didn't think I'd get the same kind of bullshit from you.'
'I'd appreciate it if you didn't use profanity around my home.'
'I apologize. But that Confederate officer was saying something. It didn't make sense to me, but I thought it might to you.'
I filled one of the rabbit bowls with alfalfa pellets and latched the screen door on the hutch. I looked at Elrod Sykes. His face was absolutely devoid of guile or any apparent attempt at manipulation; in fact, it reminded me of someone who might have just been struck in the head by a bolt of lightning.
'Look, Elrod, years ago, when I was on the grog, I believed dead people called me up on the telephone. Sometimes my dead wife or members of my platoon would talk to me out of the rain. I was convinced that their voices were real and that maybe I was supposed to join them. It wasn't a good way to be.'
He poured the foam out of his bottle, then flicked the remaining drops reflectively at the bark of a pecan tree.
'I wasn't drunk,' he said. 'This guy with the bad arm and one leg, he said to me, 'You and your friend, the police officer in town, must repel them.' He was standing by the water, in the fog, on a crutch. He looked right in my face when he said it.'
'I see.'
'What do you think he meant?'
'I'm afraid I wouldn't know, partner.'
'I got the notion he thought you would.'
'I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I think you're imagining all this and I'm not going to pursue it any further. Instead, how about your clarifying something Ms. Drummond said earlier?'
'What's that?'
'Why is it a problem to your director, this fellow Mikey, if you come out to my place?'
'She told you that?'
'That's what the lady said.'
'Well, the way he put it was 'Stay out of that cop's face, El. Don't give him reason to be out here causing us trouble. We need to remember that a lot of things happened in this part of the country that are none of our business.' '
'He's worried about the dead black man you found?' I said. 'That doesn't make too much sense.'
'You got another one of these?' he said, and held up his empty bottle.
'Why is he worried about the black man?'
'When Mikey worries, it's about money, Mr. Robicheaux. Or actually about the money he needs to make the kind of pictures he wants. He did a mini-series for television on the Holocaust. It lost ten million dollars for the network. Nobody's lining up to throw money at Mikey's projects right now.'
'Julie Balboni is.'
'You ever heard of a college turning down money from a defense company because it makes napalm?'
He opened and closed his mouth as though he were experiencing cabin pressure in an airplane. The moon was up now, and in the glow of light through the tree branches the skin of his face looked pale and grained, stretched tight against the bone. 'Mr. Robicheaux… Dave… I'm being honest with you, I need a drink.'
'We'd better go inside and get you one, then. I'll make you a deal, though. Maybe you might want to think about going to a meeting with me. I don't necessarily mean that you belong there. But some people think it beats waking up like a chainsaw every morning.'
