For years Tee Bobby had skated on the edge of the system, shining people on, getting by on rebop and charm and convincing others he was more trickster than miscreant. Also, Tee Bobby possessed another, more serious gift, one he seemed totally undeserving of, as though the finger of God had pointed at him arbitrarily one day and bestowed on him a musical talent that was like none since the sad, lyrical beauty in the recordings of Guitar Slim.

When Helen and I walked up to Tee Bobby's gas-guzzler that evening at a drive-in restaurant not far from City Park, his accordion was propped up in the backseat, its surfaces like ivory and the speckled insides of a pomegranate.

"Hey, Dave, what it is?" he said.

"Don't call your betters by their first name," Helen said.

"I gots you, Miss Helen. I ain't done nothing wrong, huh?" he said, his eyebrows climbing.

"You tell us," I said.

He feigned a serious concentration. "Nope. I'm a blank. Y'all want part of my crab burger?" he said.

His skin had the dull gold hue of worn saddle leather, his eyes blue-green, his hair lightly oiled and curly and cut short and boxed behind the neck. He continued to look at us with an idiot's grin on his mouth.

"Put your car keys under the seat and get in the cruiser," Helen said.

"This don't sound too good. I think I better call my lawyer," he said.

"I didn't say you were under arrest. We'd just like a little information from you. Is that a problem?" Helen said.

"I gots it again. White folks is just axing for hep. Don't need to read no Miranda rights to nobody. Sho' now, I wants to hep out the po-lice," he said.

"You're a walking charm school, Tee Bobby," Helen said.

Twenty minutes later Tee Bobby sat alone in an interview room at the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department while Helen and I talked in my office. Outside, the sky was ribbed with maroon strips of cloud and the train crossing guards were lowered on the railway tracks and a freight was wobbling down the rails between clumps of trees and shacks where black people lived.