'Batist said he drank five beers without paying for them,' Alafair said.
'What are you going to do about him?' Bootsie said. Then she turned her head and looked out the back screen. 'Dave, he just went across the backyard.'
'I think El has pulled his suction cups loose for a while, Boots.'
'Suction cups?' Alafair said, her cereal spoon poised in front of her mouth.
'He's crawling around on his hands and knees. Do something,' Bootsie said.
'That brings up a question I was going to ask you.'
I saw the recognition grow in her eyes.
'The guy went up against Julie Balboni because of me,' I said. 'Or at least partly because of me.'
'You want him to stay here? Dave, this is our home,' she said.
'The guy's in bad shape.'
'It's still our home. We can't open it up to every person who has a problem.'
'The guy needs an AA friend or he's not going to make it. Look at him. He's pitiful. Should I take him down to the jail?'
Bootsie rested her fingers on her temples and stared at the sugar container.
'I'll make him a deal,' I said. 'The first time he takes a drink, he gets eighty-sixed back to Spanish Lake. He pays his share of the food, he doesn't tie up the telephone, he doesn't come in late.'
'Why's he squirting the hose in his mouth?' Alafair said.
'All right, we can try it for a couple of days,' Bootsie said. 'But, Dave, I don't want this man talking anymore about his visions or whatever it is he thinks he sees out on the lake.'
'You think that's where I got it from, huh?' I smiled.
'In a word, yes.'
'He's a pretty good guy when he's not wired. He just sees the world a little differently than some.'
'Oh, wonderful.'
Alafair got up from her chair and peered at an angle through the screen into the backyard.
'Oooops,' she said, and put her hand over her mouth.
'What is it?' Bootsie said.
'Mr. Sykes just did the rainbow yawn.'
'What?' I said.
'He vomited on the picnic table,' Alafair said.
I waited until Bootsie and Alafair had driven off to the grocery store in town, then I went out into the backyard. Elrod's slacks and shirt were pasted to his skin with water from the bayou and grimed with mud and grass stains. He had washed down the top of the picnic table with the garden hose, and he now sat slack-jawed on the bench with his knees splayed, his shoulders stooped, his hands hanging between his thighs. His unshaved face had the gray color of spoiled pork.
I handed him a cup of coffee.
'Thanks,' he said.
I winced at his breath.
'If you stay on at our house, do you think you can keep the cork in the jug?' I said.
'I can't promise it. No, sir, I surely can't promise it.'
'Can you try?'
He lifted his eyes up to mine. The iris of his right eye had a clot of blood in it as big as my fingernail.
'Nothing I ever tried did any good,' he said. 'Antabuse, psychiatrists, a dry-out at the navy hospital, two weeks hoeing vegetables on a county P-farm. Sooner or later I always went back to it, Mr. Robicheaux.'
'Well, here's the house rules, partner,' I said, and I went through them one at a time with him. He kept rubbing his whiskers with the flat of his hand and spitting between his knees.
'I guess I look downright pathetic to you, don't I?' he said.
'Forget what other people think. Don't drink, don't think, and go to meetings. If you do that, and you do it for yourself, you'll get out of all this bullshit.'
'I got that kid beat up real bad. It was awful. Balboni kept jumping up in the air, spinning around, and cracking the sole of his foot across the kid's head. You could hear the skin split against the bone.'
He placed his palms over his ears, then removed them.
'You stay away from Balboni,' I said. 'He's not your problem. Let the law deal with him.'
'Are you kidding? The guy does whatever he wants. He's even getting his porno dirt bag into the film.'
'What porno dirt bag?'
'He brought up some guy of his from New Orleans, some character who thinks he's the new Johnny Wadd. He's worked the guy into a half dozen scenes in the picture. Look, Mr. Robicheaux, I'm getting the shakes. How about cutting me a little slack? Two raw eggs in a beer with a shot on the side. That's all I'll need. Then I won't touch it.'
'I'm afraid not, partner.'
'Oh man, I'm really sick. I've never been this sick. I'm going into the D.T.s.'
I put my hand on his shoulder. His muscles were as tight and hard as cable wire and quivering with anxiety. Then he covered his eyes and began weeping, his wet hair matted with dirt, his body trembling like that of a man whose soul was being consumed by its own special flame.
I DROVE OUT TO SPANISH LAKE TO FIND JULIE BALBONI. No one was in the security building by the dirt road that led into the movie location, and I dropped the chain into the dirt and parked in the shade, close by the lake, next to a catering truck. The sky was darkening with rain clouds, and the wind off the water blew leaves across the ground under the oak trees. I walked through a group of actors dressed as Confederate infantry. They were smoking cigarettes and lounging around a freshly dug rifle pit and ramparts made out of huge stick-woven baskets filled with dirt. Close by, a wheeled canon faced out at the empty lake. I could smell the drowsy, warm odor of reefer on the breeze.
'Could y'all tell me where to find Julie Balboni?' I said.
None of them answered. Their faces had turned dour. I asked again.
'We're just the hired help,' a man with sergeant's stripes said.
'If you see him, would you tell him Dave Robicheaux is looking for him?'
'You'd better tell him yourself,' another actor said.
'Do you know where Mr. Goldman is?'
'He went into town with some lawyers. He'll be back in a few minutes,' the sergeant said.
'Thank you,' I said.
I walked back to my truck and had just opened the door when I heard someone's feet in the leaves behind me.
'I need a moment of your time, please,' Twinky Lemoyne said. He had been walking fast, holding his ballpoint pens in his shirt pocket with one hand; a strand of hair hung over his rimless glasses and his face was flushed.
'What can I do for you?'
'I'd like to know what your investigation has found out.'
'You would?'
'Yes. What have you learned about these murders?'
I shouldn't have been surprised at the presumption and intrusiveness of his question. Successful businessmen in any small town usually think of policemen as extensions of their mercantile fraternity, dedicated in some ill- defined way to the financial good of the community. But previously he had stonewalled me, had even been self- righteous, and it was hard to accept him now as an innocuous Rotarian.
'Maybe you should call the sheriff's office or the FBI, Mr. Lemoyne. I'm suspended from the department right now.'
'Is this man Balboni connected with the deaths of these women?'
'Did someone tell you he was?'
'I'm asking you an honest question, sir.'
'And I'm asking you one, Mr. Lemoyne, and I advise you to take it quite seriously. Do you have some personal
