"I have to use the bathroom," I said.
He wet his lips and smiled at me.
I walked down a short hallway, opened a closet door, passed a bedroom that was stacked with hay bales, and opened the last door in the hall. Lionel sat on the side of a brass bed, his left arm tied off with his belt, the syringe mounted on a thick purple vein. A lighted candle and a cook spoon with a curled handle lay on a nightstand next to the bed. He had just taken the hit, and his head was tilted back, his mouth open, his jaws slack as though he were in the midst of orgasm. The flame from the candle flickered on the muscular contours of his body. His breath went in and out with the rush, his eyes trying to focus on me and gain control of his situation again.
He set the syringe down, popped loose the belt on his arm, and straightened his back.
"What the fuck you want, man?" he said hoarsely.
"I was looking for the bathroom."
"It's a privy. Out back, where a privy is."
I closed the door on him, went out into the rain, then walked back through the kitchen. Kim was leaning against the drainboard, looking down at the floor. She had taken off her leather jacket to make the sandwiches, and her breasts were stiff against her T-shirt.
"Is it always this much fun?" I said.
"Always," she said.
Fifteen minutes later came in the form of a Latin man with a black bandanna tied down on his head, beige zoot pants, a canary-yellow shirt unbuttoned to his navel, a soft pad of chest hair on which a gold St. Christopher's medal rested, a leather sports coat that folded and creased as smoothly as warm tallow. He carried a cardboard box wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. He set the box on the table and removed five individual packages wrapped in butcher paper, opened a single-bladed knife, and handed it to me. I cut through the butcher paper on one of the packages and punched through the clear plastic bag inside. I rubbed the white granules between my fingers, then wiped my fingers clean on the paper.
"You don't want a taste?" he said.
"I trust you."
"You trust me?" he said.
"Yeah."
He looked at Fontenot.
"Mr. Robicheaux doesn't have certain vices," Fontenot said.
"It's good shit, man. Like Ray ordered, no cut," the Latin man said. The hollows of both his cheeks were sprayed with tiny acne scars like needle marks. "Where's Lionel at?"
"He's a little noddy right now. Must be the weather," Fontenot said.
I took the brown envelope with the money out of my left pocket and put it in Fontenot's hand. He counted the bills out on his thigh.
"All stiff and green. It can make the ashes in an old man's furnace glow anew," he said.
The Latin man looked furtively toward the kitchen, where Kim sat at the table, a cup of coffee balanced on her fingers, her eyes staring listlessly out the window into the darkness.
"Jennifer and Carmen are at the bar on the blacktop," he said.
"I don't see why they should be left alone," Fontenot said.
The Latin nodded his head at the kitchen, his face a question mark.
"She's an understanding girl. Maybe she can ride back with Mr. Robicheaux," Fontenot said.
I put the five kilos of cocaine back in the cardboard box and wrapped the black garbage bag tightly around it. I lifted it onto my shoulder.
"The next time you guys cut a deal, why not do it in the Greyhound bus depot?" I said.
"Oh, that's good," Fontenot said.
I walked outside to my truck, set the box on the floor, and started the engine. The Latin man came out the front door, got in a TransAm, turned around in a circle, his headlights bouncing up into my face, and headed down the dirt road in the rain. Through the living room window I could see the girl speaking heatedly to Fontenot.
I went back up on the gallery and opened the door.
"You want to go with me, Red?" I said.
"Red?" she said.
"Kim."
"Why not?" she said.
She was quiet for a long time in the truck. The rain slackened, and the moon rose among the strips of black cloud. When we crossed the flooded section of saw grass and dead cypress the light reflected off the canals and small bays like quicksilver. I cracked my window, and the wind smelled of rain and moss and wet leaves.
"You were really a cop?" she said.
"Off and on."
"Why'd you give it up?"
"It gave me up."
"They say you were taking juice."
"Sometimes you get some bad press."
"What do you think about that back there?" she said.
"I think they're going to do time."
"Have you?"
"What?"
"Done time."
"I was in the bag a little while in Lafayette," I said.
"What for?"
"Murder."
She turned her head and looked at me directly for the first time since she had gotten in the truck.
"I was cleared. I didn't have anything to do with it," I said.
"You don't add up."
"Why's that?"
"They could have taken you off tonight. You should have known that."
"I don't figure them for it."
"What a laugh. You sure you were a cop?"
"They work for Tony Cardo, right? They're not going to burn his customers. Are they?"
I could feel her eyes roving on the side of my face.
"The raghead who brought your kilos…"
"Yes?"
"He and Lionel did a guy with a piece of piano wire. Stop up there at the filling station. I have to pee."
I parked under a dripping oak tree while she went inside. She came back out and got in the truck, and I drove back onto the blacktop. It had stopped raining completely now; the moon was bright in the sky, and when the wind blew through the flooded saw grass and cypress, the light clicked on the water like silvery dimes.
"Why does everything down here smell like mold and leaking sewage?"
"Maybe because there's a lot of mold and leaking sewage here."
For the first time she smiled.
"Who'd they do?" I said.
"Did I say that? I talk funny when my bladder's full."
She tied up her hair with a bandanna and looked out the window.
"You know Jimmie Lee Boggs?" I asked.
"The television minister in Baton Rouge?"
"A guy like Lionel doesn't bother me, but Boggs is special."
"What's it to me?"
"Nothing. I gave you a ride."
"Expensive ride."
"You're a tough lady."
"You look like a nice guy. I don't know what the fuck you're doing dealing dope, but you're an amateur. Do you know where South Carrollton runs into the levee?"
"Yes."
"That's where I live. If that's out of your way, I can take the streetcar."
"I'll drive you home. Do you live with someone?"
"You mean do I live with a guy. Sure, Tony C. is interested in broads who live with guys. You're something else."
She closed her eyes and went to sleep with the nape of her neck against the back of the seat, her calves resting across the box of cocaine. Her nose had a bump on the bridge like a Roman's. Her face shone with the luminescence of bone in the moon glow.
Later, I drove down South Carrollton to the river and woke her up at the end of the street.
"You're home," I said.
She rubbed her face with her hand and opened and closed her mouth.
"I'd invite you in for a drink, but I have to be at the club at seven in the morning. The liquor man comes tomorrow. He screws Tony on the bottle count if I'm not there."
"It's all right."
She popped open the door and put one leg out on the street. She was poised against the streetlight, her bandanna tied across the crown of her head as in a photograph of a 1940s aircraft worker.
"Watch your buns, hotshot. Or go back on the bayou where you belong," she said.
Then she was gone.
When I got back to the apartment I called Minos at the guesthouse on St. Charles. I told him the buy had gone all right.
"We were only about a mile away. You didn't see us?" he said.
"No."
"You stopped at a filling station on the way back. You had a girl with you."