"I tole you, Little Face got her own groove. I don't know why she do what she do," he said.

"Wrong answer, shithead," Clete said, and hooked one hand under Zipper's belt and clenched the other tightly on the back of his neck.

Zipper's face twisted toward mine, the rictus of his mouth filled with gold and silver, his breath a fog of funk and decayed shrimp.

"Robicheaux, your mama's name was Mae… Wait, it was Guillory before she married. That was the name she went by… Mae Guillory. But she was your mama," he said.

"What?" I said.

He wet his lips uncertainly.

"She dealt cards and still hooked a little bit. Behind a club in Lafourche Parish. This was maybe 1966 or '67," he said.

Clete's eyes were fixed on my face. "You're in a dangerous area, sperm breath," he said to Zipper.

"They held her down in a mud puddle. They drowned her," Zipper said.

"They drowned my… Say that again," I said, my left hand reaching for his shirt, my right lifting Clete's.38 toward his face.

"These cops were on a pad. For the Giacanos. She saw them kill somebody. They held her down in the mud, then rolled her into the bayou," Zipper said.

Then Clete was between me and Zipper Clum, shoving me in the chest, pushing away the gun in my hand as though it were attached to a spring. "Look at me, Streak! Get out of it! Don't make me clock you, noble mon… Hey, that's it. We're copacetic here, yes in-deedy. Nothing rattles the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide."

3

MY FATHER WAS AN enormous, black-haired, illiterate Cajun whose saloon brawls were not only a terrifying experience for his adversaries but beautiful to watch. He would back against a wall in Provost's or Slick's or Mulate's and take on all comers, his hamlike fists crashing against the heads of his opponents, while cops and bouncers tried to nail him with pool cues and chairs and batons before he destroyed the entire bar. Blood would well out of his scalp and glisten in his beard and wild, curly hair; the more his adversaries hit him, the more he would grin and beckon the brave and incautious into range of his fists.