Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

k heap," he said. He wore a pair of rubber boots and oversized swimming trunks, and the hair on his stomach was wet and plastered to his skin.

"Megan thinks the guys who did Ricky Scar might try to hurt Holtzner by going through his daughter. She thinks you shouldn't let her drive your car around," I said.

"When those guys want to pop somebody, they don't do it with car bombs. It's one on one, like Ricky Scar got it."

"Have you ever listened to me once in your life about anything?"

"On the perfecta that time at Hialeah. I lost three hundred bucks."

"Archer Terrebonne killed Cisco Flynn's father. I told Cisco that."

"Yeah, I know. He says he doesn't believe you." Clete moved the sponge slowly back and forth on the car hood, his thoughts sealed behind his face, the water from the garden hose sluicing down on his legs.

"What's bothering you?" I asked.

"Terrebonne's a major investor in Cisco's film. If Cisco walks out, his career's a skid mark on the bowl. I just thought he might have more guts. I bet a lot of wrong horses."

He threw the bucket of soapy water into a drainage ditch. The sun looked like a smoldering fire through the pine trees.

"You want to tell me what's really bothering you?" I said.

"I thought Megan and me might put it back together. That's why I scrambled Ricky Scar's eggs, to look like big shit, that simple, mon. Megan's life is international, I mean, all this local stuff is an asterisk in her career." He blew his breath out. "I got to stop drinking. I've got a buzz like a bad neon sign in my head."

"Let's put a line in the water," I said.

"Dave, those pictures Harpo Scruggs buried in the ground? That dude's got backup material somewhere. Something that can put a thumb in Terrebonne's eye."

"Yeah, but I can't find Scruggs. The guy's a master at going in and out of the woodwork," I said.

"Remember what that retired Texas Ranger in El Paso told you? About looking for him in cathouses and at pigeon shoots and dogfights?"

His skin was pink in the fading light, the hair on his shoulders ruffling in the breeze.

"Dogfights? No, it was something else," I said.

THE COCKFIGHTS WERE HELD in St. Landry Parish, in a huge, rambling wood-frame nightclub, painted bright yellow and set back against a stand of green hardwoods. The shell parking lot could accommodate hundreds of automobiles and pickup trucks, and the patrons (blue-collar people, college students, lawyers, professional gamblers) who came to watch the birds blind and kill each other with metal spurs and slashers did so with glad, seemingly innocent hearts.

The pit was railed, enclosed with chicken wire, the dirt hard-packed and sprinkled with sawdust. The rail, which afforded the best view, was always occupied by the gamblers, who passed thousands of dollars in wagers from hand to hand, with neither elation nor resentment, as though the matter of exchanging currency were impersonal and separate from the blood sport taking place below.

It was all legal. In Louisiana fighting cocks are classified as fowl and hence are not protected by the laws that govern the treatment of most animals. In the glow of the scrolled neon on the lacquered yellow pine walls, under the layers of floating cigarette smoke, in the roar of noise that raided windows, you could smell the raw odor of blood and feces and testosterone and dried sweat and exhaled alcohol that I suspect was very close to the mix of odors that rose on a hot day from the Roman arena.

Clete and I sat at the end of the bar. The bartender, who was a Korean War veteran named Harold who wore black slacks and a short-sleeve white shirt and combed his few strands of black hair across his pate, served Clete a vodka collins and me a Dr Pepper in a glass filled with cracked ice. Harold leaned down toward me and put a napkin under my glass.

"Maybe he's just late. He's always been in by seven-thirty," he said.

"Don't worry about it, Harold," I said.

"We gonna have a public situation here?" he said.

"Not a chance," Clete said.

We didn't have long to wait. Harpo Scruggs came in the side door from the parking lot and walked to the rail around the cockpit. He wore navy blue western-cut pants with his cowboy boots and hat, and a silver shirt that tucked into his Indian-bead belt as tightly as tin. He made a bet with a well-known cockfighter from Lafayette, a man who when younger was both a pimp and a famous barroom dancer.

The cocks rose into the air, their slashers tearing feathers and blood from each other's bodies, while the crowd's roar lifted to the ceiling. A few minutes later one of the cocks was dead and Scruggs gently pulled a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills from between the fingers of the ex-pimp he had made his wager with.

"I think I'm experiencing Delayed Stress Syndrome. There was a place just like this in Saigon. The bar girls were VC whores," Clete said.

"Has he made us?" I asked.