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Behind her I could see Elrod walking down the dock to the shop, where Batist, the black man who worked for me, was drawing back the canvas awning over the tables for the night.
"Look, Ms. Drummond—"
"You don't have to invite us into your house, you don't have to believe the stuff he says about what he sees and hears, but you ought to know that it took guts for him to come out here. He fucks up with Mikey, he fucks up with this film, maybe he blows it for good this time."
"You'll have to excuse me, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department."
She carried a doeskin drawstring bag in her hand. She propped her hand on her hip. She looked up at me and ran her tongue over her bottom lip.
"Are you that dumb?" she asked.
"You're telling me a mob guy, maybe Baby Feet Balboni, is involved with your movie?"
"A mob guy? That's good. I bet y'all really send a lot of them up the road."
"Where are you from, Ms. Drummond?"
"East Kentucky."
"Have you thought about making your next movie there?"
I started toward the house again.
"Wait a minute, Mr. Smart Ass," she said. "Elrod respects you. Did you ever hear of the Chicken Ranch in LaGrange, Texas?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what it was?"
"It was a hot-pillow joint."
"His mother was a prostitute there. That's why he never talks about anyone in his family except his gran'daddy, the Texas ranger. That's why he likes you, and you'd damn well better be aware of it."
She turned on her heel, her doeskin bag hitting her rump, and walked erectly down the slope toward the bait shop, where I could see Elrod opening a beer with his pocket knife under the light bulb above the screen door.
Well, you could do a lot worse than have one like her on your side, Elrod, I thought.
I TOOK A SHOWER, DRIED OFF, AND WAS BUTTONING ON A FRESH shirt in the kitchen when the telephone rang on the counter. Bootsie put down a pan on the stove and answered it.
"It's Batist," she said, and handed it to me:
"Qui t'as pr'estfaire?" I said into the receiver.
"Some drunk white man down here done fell in the bayou," he said.
"What's he doing now?"
"Sittin' in the middle of the shop, drippin' water on my flo'."
"I'll be there in a minute," I said.
"Dave, a lady wit' him was smokin' a cigarette out on the dock didn't smell like no tobacco, no."
"All right, podna. Thanks," I said, and hung up the phone.
Bootsie was looking at me with a question mark in the middle of her face. Her auburn hair, which she had pinned up in swirls on her head, was full of tiny lights.
"A man fell in the bayou. I have to drive him and his girlfriend home," I said.
