She asked him one more time to pay. He just got red in the face and started accusing her right back. So the hoods pulled the leash to take him away.

Donny looked at his feet. The boots still fit.

On the TV, Gertie and the others watched the man crawl.

Nassra cut to an exterior shot. Deep swamp, cypress and black water, sounds of birds and bugs. The developer is on a little boat with three of the guards. Still naked. The boat is a shallow-water punt. One of the guards is poling.

Nassra explains how the prisoner tried to bribe his guards.

Now he is just begging.

They have a banker’s bag full of money. Cash and coins. They tie it to his leg with a length of cord.

Then they make him jump into the water.

He is screaming, spazzing, water up to his thighs. You can tell his feet are stuck in the muck of the bottom, weighed down by the money bag, which is stuck even deeper.

The camera reveals other motion in the water.

When you see the gator eyes move, you can also see the skyline of downtown New Orleans in the far background.

The man tries to grab on to the punt, but the poler pushes him back on his ass. And then he starts poling away.

The camera shows a montage of motion in water, bird silhouette, sundown. The sound of night.

They do not show the man being pulled under, but they make you think that is what happened.

Donny looked at his boots. He read once that the holes in brogues were originally made for bogs and swamps, so the water drains off more easily. Maybe time to find out if that’s really true, he thought. It sounded pretty ridiculous to him when he heard it, like the kind of thing the catalog copywriters come up with to make you think you are doing something more adventurous than going to an office.

Donny wished he could just go to his office, but then his ride called.

And while he was telling the guy where to pick him up, he continued to stare at the boots Joyce had given him, and wondered if he’d see her in New Orleans.

Seven Years Earlier

20

It was a five-hour drive from Houston to Brownsville when Donny went to save Joyce, down coastal highways that were getting more coastal every year, especially with the downpours that weird winter was delivering. Donny headed out crazy early, aided by coffee he brewed the night before and the old-school lawyers’ answering service he sometimes used as a wake-up call. His car was driving a little funny since he got it back from the feds who had tried to forfeit it on his last case, so he just drove it harder until the noise of the rain overpowered the noise of the weird knock down in the suspension. Not getting there was not an option.