There was a commotion in Darren’s side-view mirror; a man with thick grayish-blond hair pomaded into a wide curl that sat like a question mark on his head was pulling on the arm of a younger woman. She wasn’t white or black but some dusky in-between that Darren couldn’t ascertain at a distance. They were walking from the direction of Rosemary’s mansion, the man with the booze-fueled swagger of a lothario who’d left a party with his prize. But she was pulling away from him, nearly stumbling as she tried to step onto the curb a few feet from the entrance to the hotel, her voice shrieking what Darren heard as a sharp no. Thinking the man was taking liberties or worse, Darren put his hand on the door handle, ready to rescue a woman who appeared to have been overserved, when suddenly she laughed and fell back into the man’s arms, almost like a dance move. The older gentleman helped steady her on the concrete pavement in front of the hotel, then gently escorted her to the front doors. He looked at the truck as he passed, his and Darren’s eyes meeting in the Chevy’s side-view mirror. The man gave Darren a nod. “Evening, Ranger.”

Later, Darren would curse himself for the two things he’d missed that night: first, the impossibility of the man being able to see his badge in the small side-view mirror, and second, the deft way the man turned the woman’s body as they walked past the truck so Darren never saw the true expression on her face.

In the moment, he was too distracted by the mess with Mack.

“I thought they couldn’t try me on this thing again,” Mack said. “Double jeopardy or something like that. They can’t make you stand on murder twice.”

“That was just the grand jury, Mack. Vaughn can keep going for an indictment for the next twenty, thirty years if he feels like it.”

“Aw, man, no,” Mack said, as if he’d just been shown the fine print on this deal. “Naw, this ain’t right, Darren. I was cleared. The jury said I didn’t do it.”

“The grand jury,” Darren said, feeling suddenly tired. And thirsty. He didn’t have anything in his truck, and there were no liquor stores in the town square, yet another way Jefferson played the redheaded stepchild to New Orleans, sitting sourly in family photographs, chafing beneath a rococo Victorian collar.

“Mack, listen to me, call that lawyer you had.”

“I can’t afford that kind of help ’less Clayton’s willing to pay again.”