back on the dirty-boogie again.'
'Let him find his own help, Dave.'
'I think he's harmless.'
'I should have listened to you. I shouldn't have invited them into the house.'
'It's not good to do this, Boots. You're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist.'
'He's too interested in you. There's a reason for it. I know it.'
'I'll invite him to go to a meeting. We'll forget about the fishing trip.'
'Promise me that, Dave.'
'I do.'
'You mean it, no going back on it?'
'You've got my word.'
She cupped my fingers in her hand and put her head under my chin. In the shadowy light I could see her heart tripping against her breast.
I PARKED IN THE LOT BEHIND THE OFFICE AND WALKED TOWARD the back door. Two uniformed deputies had just taken a black man in handcuffs into the building, and four others were drinking coffee out of foam cups and smoking cigarettes in the shade against the wall. I heard one of them use my name, then a couple of them laugh when I walked by.
I stopped and walked back to them.
'How y'all doing today?' I said.
'What's going on, Dave?' Rufus Arceneaux said. He had been a tech sergeant in the Marine Corps and he still wore his sun-bleached hair in a military crewcut. He took off his shades and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
'I'd better get back on it,' one deputy said, flipped away his cigarette, and walked toward his cruiser.
'What's the joke about, Rufus?' I said.
'It's nothing I said, Dave. I was just quoting the boss man,' Rufus said. His green eyes were full of humor as he looked at the other deputies.
'What did the sheriff have to say?'
'Hey, Dave, fair is fair. Don't lay this off on me,' he said.
'Do you want to take the mashed potatoes out of your mouth and tell me what you're talking about?'
'Hey, come on, man,' he said, chuckling.
'What the fuck, it's no big deal. Tell him,' the deputy next to him said.
'The sheriff said if the governor of Lou'sana invited the whole department to dinner, Dave would be the one guy who'd manage to spit in the punch bowl.'
Then the three of them were silent, suppressing their grins, their eyes roving around the parking lot.
'Drop by my office sometime today, Rufus,' I said. 'Anytime before five o'clock. You think you can work it in?'
'It's just a joke, Dave. I'm not the guy who said it, either.'
'That's right. So it's nothing personal. I'd just like to go through your jacket with you.'
'What for?'
'You've been here eight or nine years, haven't you?'
'That's right.'
'Why is it that I always have the feeling you'd like to be an NCO again, that maybe you have some ambitions you're not quite telling us about?'
His lips became a tight, stitched line, and I saw a slit of yellow light in his eye.
'Think about it and I'll talk to you later, Rufus,' I said, and went inside the building, into the air-conditioned odor of cigar butts and tobacco spittle, and closed the door behind me.
Ten minutes later the sheriff walked into my office and sat down in front of my desk with his arms propped stiffly on his thighs. In his red-faced concentration he reminded me of a football coach sitting on the edge of a bench.
'Where do you think we should begin?' he said.
'You got me.'
'From what I hear about that scene in the restaurant, you tried to tear that fellow apart.'
'Those guys think they're in the provinces and they can do what they want. Sometimes you have to turn them around.'
'It looks like you got your message across. Balboni had to take the guy to the hospital. You broke his tooth off inside his gums.'
'It was a bad morning. I let things get out of control. It won't happen again.'
He didn't answer. I could hear him breathing through his nose.
'You want some coffee?' I said.
'No.'
I got up and filled my cup from my coffee maker in the corner.
'I've had two phone calls already about your trip to New Orleans last night,' he said.
'What about it?'
He took a folded-back notebook out of his shirt pocket and looked at the first page.
'Did you ever hear of a black guy named Robert Brown?' he asked.
'Yep, that's Downtown Bobby Brown.'
'He's trying to file charges against you. He says you smashed his face into a men's-room door at the bus depot.'
'I see.'
'What the hell are you doing, Dave?'
'He's a pimp and a convicted child molester. When I found him, he was scamming two girls who couldn't have been over sixteen years old. I wonder if he passed on that information when he filed his complaint.'
'I don't give a damn what this guy did. I'm worried about a member of my department who might have confused himself with Wyatt Earp.'
'This guy's charges aren't going anywhere and you know it.'
'I wish I had your confidence. It looks like you got some people's attention over in Jefferson Parish, too.'
'I don't understand.'
'The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department seems to think we may have a loose cannon crashing around on our deck.'
'What's their problem?'
'You didn't check in with them, you didn't coordinate with anybody, you simply went up and down the Airline Highway on your own, questioning hookers and bartenders about a pimp with no name.'
'So?'
He rubbed the cleft in his round chin, then dropped the flat of his hand on his thigh.
'They say you screwed up a surveillance, that you blew a sting operation of some kind,' he said.
'How?'
'I don't know.'
'It sounds like bullshit to me, sheriff. It sounds like cops on a pad who don't want outsiders walking around on their turf.'
'Maybe that's true, Dave, but I'm worried about you. I think you're overextending yourself and you're not hearing me when I talk to you about it.'
'Did Twinky Lemoyne call?'
'No. Why should he?'
'I went over to Lafayette and questioned him yesterday afternoon.'
He removed his rimless glasses, wiped them with a Kleenex, and put them back on. His eyes came back to meet mine.
'This was after I talked to you about involving people in the investigation who seem to have no central bearing in it?' he asked.
'I'm convinced that somehow Baby Feet was mixed up with Cherry LeBlanc, sheriff. Twinky Lemoyne has
