I opened the door and stepped out on the road. They looked at me without speaking.

"All right, I'll bite. What have you got me for?" I said.

"Sixty in a fifty-five," the other deputy said. He chewed gum, and his eyes were humorless and intent.

"I didn't think I ever got over fifty," I said.

"'Fraid it creeped up on you," the older man said. "On a pretty morning like this you get to looking around, maybe looking at the water and the trees, maybe thinking about a piece of a.s.s, and before you know it you got lead in your p.e.c.k.e.r and foot, both."

"I don't guess we're going to have an instance of professional courtesy here, are we?" I said.

"The judge don't allow us to let too many slide," the older man said.

"So write me a ticket and I'll talk to the judge about it."

"Lot of people from outside the parish don't show up in court," the older deputy said. "Makes him madder than a hornet with s.h.i.t on its nose. So we got to take them down to the court."

"You guys didn't get completely dressed this morning," I said.

"How's that?" the other deputy said.

"You forgot to put on your name tags. Now, why would you do that?"

"Don't worry about any G.o.dd.a.m.n name tags. You're coming back to the courthouse with us," the younger deputy said. He had stopped chewing his gum, and his jawbone was rigid against his cheek.

"You got a flat tire, anyway, Lieutenant," the older man said. "I figure that's kind of our fault, so while you ride in with us I'll radio the tow to come and change it for you."

"Facts-of-life time," I said. "You don't roust a City of New Orleans detective."

"Our territory, our rules, Lieutenant."

"f.u.c.k you," I said.

They were both silent. The sun was shimmering brilliantly on the flat expanse of water behind them. The light was so bright I had to force myself not to blink. I could hear both of them breathing, see their eyes flick at each other uncertainly, almost smell the thin sweat on their skin.

The younger man's shoe shifted in the gravel and his thumb fluttered toward the strap on the holster that held his chrome-plated .357 Magnum revolver. I tore my .38 out of the clip holster on my belt, squatted, and aimed with two hands into their faces.

"Big mistake, podjo! Hands on your head and down on your knees!" I shouted.

"Look-" the older deputy began.

"Don't think, do it! I win, you lose!" My breath was coming hard in my throat.

They looked at each other, laced their hands on their heads, and knelt in front of their car. I went behind them, pulled their heavy revolvers from their holsters, and pitched them sideways into the lake.

"Take out your cuffs and lock up to the b.u.mper," I said.

"You're in over your head," the older deputy said. The back of his suntanned neck was beaded with sweat.

"That's not the way I read it," I said. "You guys thought you'd be cowboys and you got your faces shoved into the sheepdip. What was it going to be, a day or so in the tank, or maybe some serious patty-cake in the backseat on the way to the jail?"

They didn't reply. Their faces were hot and angry and pained by the rocks that cut their knees.

"Put the cuffs through the b.u.mper and lock your wrists," I said. "You didn't answer me, which makes me wonder if I was going to make the jail. Are you guys into it that big?"

"Kiss my a.s.s," the younger deputy said.

"Tell me, are y'all that dumb? You think you can pop a New Orleans cop and walk out of it?"

"We'll see who walks out of what," the older deputy said. He had to twist sideways on his knees and squint up into the sun to talk to me.

"The sheriff is letting you clean up his s.h.i.t for him, isn't he?" I said. "It looks like lousy work to me. You ought to get him to spread the juice around a little more. You guys probably rip off a little change now and then, maybe get some free action in the local hot-pillow joint, but he drives a Cadillac and raises Arabians."

"For a homicide cop you're a stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d," the older deputy said. "What makes you think you're so important you got to be popped? You're just a hair in somebody's nose."

"I'm afraid you boys have limited careers ahead of you."

"Start figuring how you're going to get out of here," the younger deputy said.

"You mean my fiat tire? That is a problem," I said thoughtfully. "What if I just drive your car down the road a little ways with you guys still cuffed to it?"

For the first time their faces showed the beginnings of genuine fear.

"Relax. We have our standards in New Orleans. We don't pick on the mentally handicapped," I said.

In the distance I saw a maroon car approaching. The two deputies heard it and looked at each other expectantly.

"Sorry, no cavalry today," I said, then squatted down at eye level with them. "Now look, you pair of clowns, I don't know how far you want to take this, but if you really want to get it on, you remember this: I've got more juice than you do, more people, more brains, more everything that counts. So give it some thought. In the meantime I'm going to send somebody back for my car, and it had better be here. Also, tell that character you work for that our conversation was ongoing. He'll get my drift."

I flagged down the maroon car with my badge and got in the pa.s.senger's seat before the driver, a blond woman in her late twenties with windblown hair and wide eyes, could speak or concentrate on the two manacled deputies. Her tape player was blaring out Tchaikovsky's First Concerto, and the backseat was an incredible litter of papers, notebooks, and government forms.

"I'm a New Orleans police officer. I need you to take me to the next town," I shouted above the music.

Her eyes were blue and as round as a doll's with surprise and fear. She began to accelerate slowly, her eyes sliding past the handcuffed cops but then riveting on them again in the rearview mirror.

"Are those men locked to the car b.u.mper?" she said.

"Yes. They were bad boys," I yelled back. "Can I turn this down?"

"I'm sorry, but I have to do this. You can go ahead and shoot if you want to."

And with that she slammed on the brakes, dropped the transmission into reverse, and floorboarded the car backwards in a screech of rubber and a cloud of black smoke. My head hit the windshield, then I saw my old Chevrolet coming up fast. "Watch it!" I shouted.

But it was too late. Her b.u.mper caught my front fender and raked both doors. Then she careened to a stop, flipped off the stereo, leaned across me, and yelled at the deputies, "This man says he's a police officer. Is that true?"

"Call the Cataouatche sheriff's office, lady," the older deputy said. He was squatting on one knee, and his face was strained with discomfort.

"Who is this man in my car?"

"He's a piece of s.h.i.t that's going to get ground into the concrete," the younger deputy said.

The woman yanked the car into low, pushed the accelerator to the floor, and roared past my car again. I felt her back b.u.mper carom off my front fender. She drove like a wild person, papers blowing in the backseat, the lake and flooded woods streaking past us.

"I'm sorry about your car. I have insurance. I think I still do, anyway," she said.

"That's all right. I've always wanted to see the country from inside a hurricane. Are you still afraid, or do you always drive like this?"

"Like what?" Her hair was blowing in the wind and her round blue eyes were intent over the wheel.

"Do you still think I'm an escaped criminal?" I said.

"I don't know what you are, but I recognized one of those deputies. He's a s.a.d.i.s.t who rubbed his p.e.n.i.s all over one of my clients."

"Your clients?"

"I work for the state handicapped services."

"You can put him away."

"She's scared to death. He told her he'd do it to her again, and then put her in jail as a prost.i.tute."

"G.o.d, lady, look out. Listen, there's a restaurant on stilts just across the parish line. You pull in there, then we're going to make a phone call and I'm going to buy you lunch."

"Why?"

"Because you're wired and you don't believe who I am. By the way, what you did back there took courage."

"No, it didn't. I just don't give rides to weird people. There's a lot of weirdness around these days. If you're a police detective, why are you driving a wreck of an automobile?"

"A few minutes ago it wasn't entirely a wreck."

"That's what I mean by weirdness. Maybe I saved your life, and you criticize my driving."

Don't argue with G.o.d's design on a sun-spangled morning in a corridor of oak trees, Robicheaux, I thought. Also, don't argue with somebody who's doing eighty-five miles an hour and showering rocks like birdshot against the tree trunks.

The restaurant was a ramshackle board place with screen windows, built up on posts over the lake. Metal Dixie 45 and Jax beer signs were nailed all over the outer walls. Crawfish were out of season, so I ordered fried catfish and small bowls of shrimp gumbo. While we waited for the food, I bought her a drink at the bar and used the phone to call my extension at First District headquarters in New Orleans. I put the receiver to her ear so she could hear Clete answer, then I took the receiver back.

"I'm having lunch with a lady who would like you to describe what I look like," I told him, and gave the phone back to her. I saw her start to smile as she listened, then her eyes crinkled and she laughed out loud.

"That's outrageous," she said.

"What'd he say?"

"That your hair is streaked like a skunk's and that sometimes you try to walk the check."

"Clete's always had satirical ambitions."

"Is this how you all really do things? Chaining up other cops to cars, terrifying people on the highway, playing jokes over the phone?"

"Not exactly. They have a different set of rules in Cataouatche Parish. I sort of strayed off my turf."

"What about those deputies back there? Won't they come after you?"

"I think they'll be more worried about explaining themselves to the man they work for. After we eat, can you take me back to the city?"

"I have to make a home call at a client's house, then I can." She sipped from her Manhattan, then ate the cherry off the toothpick. She saw me watching her, and she looked out the window at the lake, where the wind was blowing the moss in the cypress trees.

"Do you like horse racing?" I said.

"I've never been."

"I have a clubhouse pa.s.s. Would you like to go tomorrow night, provided I have my car back?"

She paused, and her electric blue eyes wandered over my face.

"I play cello with a string quartet. We have practice tomorrow night," she said.

"Oh."

"But we'll probably finish by eight-thirty, if that's not too late. I live by Audubon Park," she said.

See, don't argue with design and things will work out all right after all, I told myself.

But things did not go well back at the District the next day. They never did when I had to deal with the people in vice, or with Sergeant Motley in particular. He was black, an ex-career enlisted man, but he had little sympathy for his own people. One time a black wino in a holding cell was giving Motley a bad time, calling him "the white man's knee-grow, with a white man's badge and a white man's gun," and Motley covered him from head to foot with the contents of a can of Mace before the turnkey slapped it out of his hand.

But there was another memory about Motley that was darker. Before he made sergeant and moved over to vice, he had worked as a bailiff at the court and was in charge of escorting prisoners from the drunk tank to morning arraignment. He had seven of them on a wrist-chain in the elevator when a bas.e.m.e.nt fire blew the electric circuits and stalled the elevator between floors. Motley got out through the escape door in the elevator's roof, but the seven prisoners were asphyxiated by the smoke.

"What do you want to know about her?" he said. He was overweight and had a thick mustache, and his ashtray was full of cigar b.u.t.ts.

"You busted her three times in a month-twice for soliciting, once for holding. You must have had an interest in her," I said.

"She was a ten-dollar chicken, a real loser."

"You're not telling me a lot, Motley."

"What's to tell? She was freebasing and jacking guys off in a ma.s.sage parlor on Decatur. She was the kind a john cuts up or a pimp sets on fire. Like I say, a victim. A country girl that was going to make the big score."

"Who went her bail?"

"Probably her pimp. I don't remember."

"Who was he?"

"I don't remember. There's a new lowlife running that joint every two months."

"You know anybody who'd have reason to give her a hotshot?"

"Ask me her shoe size. When'd she become your case, anyway? I heard you fished her out of the bayou in Cataouatche Parish."