"Hey, I live in a fucking menagerie," Baby Feet said as we went out onto the street. "Don't go walking off from me with your nose bent out of joint. Did I ever treat you with a lack of respect?"

I got in the truck.

"Where we going, Feet?" I said.

"Out by Spanish Lake. Look, I want you to take a message back to the man you work for. I'm not the source of any problems you got around here. The coke you got in this parish has been stepped on so many times it's baby powder. If it was coming from some people I've been associated with in New Orleans, and I'm talking about past associations, you understand, it'd go from your nose to your brain like liquid Drano."

I headed out toward the old two-lane highway that led to the little settlement of Burke and the lake where Spanish colonists had tried to establish plantations in the eighteenth century and had given Iberia Parish its name.

"I don't work narcotics, Julie, and I'm not good at passing on bullshit, either. My main concern right now is the girl we found south of town."

"Oh, yeah? What girl's that?"

"The murdered girl, Cherry LeBlanc."

"I don't guess I heard about it."

I turned and looked at him. He gazed idly out the window at the passing oak trees on the edge of town and a roadside watermelon and strawberry stand.

"You don't read the local papers?" I said.

"I been busy. You saying I talk bullshit, Dave?"

"Put it this way, Feet. If you've got something to tell the sheriff, do it yourself."

He pinched his nose, then blew air through it.

"We used to be friends, Dave. I even maybe did you a little favor once. So I'm going to line it out for you and any of the locals who want to clean the wax out of their ears. The oil business is still in the toilet and your town's flat-ass broke. Frankly, in my opinion, it deserves anything that happens to it.