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article carefully, thinking of Mr. J. T. Cum mings and his position on the port commission. Mr. Cummings, Jay knows, is up for reappointment to the commission, and a strike at the port could possibly hurt J.T.’s chances and help Jay in his civil matter. His job on the line, Mr. Cummings and his slick lawyer are likely to want to settle as quickly as possible, before word gets out about the hooker. Jay stores this informa tion about the strike in the back of his mind. He takes a couple of short puffs on his cigarette and turns the page.
    And that’s when he sees it.
    The City Beat, page 2.
    Sunday morning, somebody found a body.
    A white male, shot twice, found in an open field in the 400 block of Clinton, near Lockwood Drive in Fifth Ward, not fifty yards from Buffalo Bayou.
    Police were called to the scene to investigate.
    They talked to a female companion of the deceased, at her home near Memorial. The dead man’s name is not mentioned, nor is hers, only the name of the groundskeeper who found the body, a part-time worker for Quartz Industrial, Inc., a broken concrete wholesaler whose warehouse is on Clinton.
    The whole bit is just five lines, something right out of a police blotter.
    Jay, transfixed, reads it two more times.
    Buffalo Bayou. Fifth Ward.
    White male, shot twice.
    His first thought is of her, the woman from the boat. He remembers the rock and roll of water beneath their feet, the screams and the gunshots, two, one on top of the other. He remembers the taste of the bayou water, bitter and foul.
    They’ve mentioned her only once.
    Sunday morning Bernie lay in bed and told him the dream she’d had the night before. They were on an island somewhere, riding around on a bus. The woman from the bayou asked the driver to stop. And when the driver said he couldn’t, she opened the nearest window and jumped out. They all watched her float out across the water, wave at them, and then dive headfirst into the ocean. Later, two cops came on the bus.
    “One of them was Mr. Hempnill, the one who runs the funeral home down by Daddy’s place. I kept saying, ‘Hi, Mr. Hempnill,’ and he said he didn’t know anybody by that name.” Bernie turned to Jay, as if they were on the bus right then. “I said, ‘Jay,’ ” she whispered. “ ‘That’s Melvin Hempnill if I’ve ever seen him.’ And you shushed me. Well, then the cops turn to you. They looking at you now.” She smiled, enjoying her own story, the clever turns it was taking.
    It was early. Jay was on his side, facing the wall. He had not slept two consecutive hours all night. He slid a hand under his pillow and felt the .22 nestled there. This is his morning ritual, the way he greets the world.
    “So now the police want to know what you got to do with the whole thing,” Bernie said. “This woman jumping out a window like it’s nothing.”
    Jay sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed.
    “ ‘We got some questions need answering,’ something like that.”
    Jay stood and started from the room barefoot.
    “Jay.”
    “I’m listening.”
    There’s only one bathroom in their three-room apartment, in the hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen. Jay left the door open. “So like I said, old Hempnill is looking at you, and everybody else on the bus is staring at you too. So you get up... and this is the crazy part... you get up and go out the same window she did. Only you don’t float at all. You drop like a bag of bricks.”
    He put the toilet seat down and walked back to their bed room.
    “Ain’t that something,” she said. She was sitting up in bed, a paperback resting on her belly. Jay realized she’d been up for a while, that she’d waited before waking him. “You left me on that bus, didn’t wave back or nothing.”
    Jay found that amusing, the idea of him leaving her any where.
    Bernie slid the paperback off her belly. “I told Evelyn about it.”
    Jay hiked his pants on over his shorts, keeping his mouth shut about his