A Morning for Flamingos

CHAPTER 9

Through my hospital room windows I could see the tops of oak trees, a pink two-story house with iron grillwork across the street, palm fronds on the esplanade, and, where the side street fed into St. Charles, the big green iron streetcar when it passed. My room was white, and the sunlight was bright above the oak trees outside.

My right eye was crimped partly shut by the tape that covered the stitches in my eyebrow. There were four stitches in my lip, and they felt like a large plastic insect when I moved my tongue across them. I slept through most of the morning, and at noon I ate a lunch of mashed potatoes, baked chicken, early peas, and Jell-O, and fell asleep again. Two hours later I was awakened by Minos's phone call.

"What happened out there?" he said.

I told him.

"How'd you know which hospital I was in?" I asked.

"Your buddy Clete called me. Look, I'm sorry about this, Dave. I really am. There's always risk in undercover work, but we usually do a better job of protecting our people."

"How did New Orleans Vice get in on it?"

"I don't know. I talked to this character Nate Baxter. He's a nasty sonofabitch, isn't he?"

"You got it."

"He stonewalled me, said he couldn't talk to me without clearance, said he wasn't even sure who I was."

"Did you mention my name?"

"Of course not."

"Don't tell him anything about our operation. He'll divulge it or use it in some way for his own ends. In the meantime call his superiors."

"I already have a call in. But I appreciate you telling me how to do these things."

"You sound a little irritable this afternoon."

"Your busted head and the loss of your boat weren't the only problems that developed out there."

"Wait a minute. They got Boggs, didn't they?"

"No."

"What?"

"Boggs got away. With fifty keys of pure flake."

"I can't believe it."

"Evidently he went between two sandbars and they went over the top of one. At least that's what the Coast Guard says. Our man Baxter has no comment."

"You got the shrimper, didn't you?"

"We got the shrimper. But no dope. No money, either. They dumped it all overboard." I could almost hear him swallow when he said it.

"It all went for nothing?"

"That's what a few people have been telling me today."

"What about my boat?"

"We'll see what we can do."

"Listen, Minos, it'll take me thirty thousand dollars to replace it."

"People down here are not sympathetic to my point of view right now. A half-million dollars of DEA money is at this moment bouncing along the bottom of the Gulf."

"Your friends have an interesting attitude about personal responsibility."

"Nobody here wants to spend the rest of his career in western Nebraska. But it happens. Give me a little time."

"I mean it, Minos. That's a big part of my livelihood that went down out there. I want it back."

"You made your point."

"One other thing. Boggs said something about Cardo's being history. Is there a whack out on him or something?"

"It's funny you say that. We heard rumors like that from both Houston and Miami in just the last two days."

A nurse came in to take my temperature, and I started to say good-bye to Minos.

"How close did it get out there, Dave?" he said.

"Down to the wire."

"Are you all right?"

"It's just a few stitches. They're keeping me a day or so because I got some water in my lungs. Sometimes that can cause pneumonia."

"No. I mean are you all right?"

"I'm fine." And I looked out at the sunlight on the trees and realized that I meant it.

"I think we're going to pull you out of the sting. It went out of control. It wasn't anybody's fault, it just happens. But you've done enough. I'll be back with you tonight."

After he hung up and the nurse had taken my temperature, I used the bathroom, then walked to the window and looked down the side street toward St. Charles. The streetcar rattled down the esplanade under the massive canopy of oak trees, the wood seats filled with Negroes and working-class white people. Down below, the gutters were full of pink and blue camellias from the previous night's rain, and the wet stone was streaked with color like dye washed out of paper flowers.

Ten minutes later Clete walked through the door with a pizza in a flat box, a can of Jax in one coat pocket, and a Dr Pepper in the other. His porkpie hat was tilted down on his forehead. He sat on the side of my bed and flipped open the top of the box, his intelligent green eyes smiling at me.

"Hospital food usually tastes like a cross between spit and baby pabulum," he said. "So I brought you a dynamite combo of anchovies, sausage, pepperoni, and double cheese. How do you like it, my noble mon?"

"How about some peanut brittle? It goes great with stitches in the mouth, too."

He ate a huge wedge and popped open the can of Jax, drank it half-empty, then picked up another wedge and started chewing, smiling all the time. There were flecks of pizza sauce on his mouth and shirt.

"The next time, I cover your butt from Jump Street," he said.

"All right."

"The feds don't send out my old partner on any more Lone Ranger jobs."

"Okay, Clete."

"Because you can't depend on these white-collar dickheads."

"I got your drift."

"Did that pencil pusher call you yet?"

"Minos?"

"Yeah."

"About ten minutes ago."

"His sting has turned to shit. He's not too happy. I told him they took a hell of a lot of risk with a guy they recruited from outside their agency. He didn't seem to like that."

"Minos is all right. How do you think New Orleans got in on it?"

"Maybe a wiretap, maybe a snitch. Who cares? They saves your tokus, didn't they?"

"Not intentionally. You remember what it was like when somebody opened up on you with an M-16?"

"Maybe we ought to 'front Nate Baxter about it. Sometimes he comes into my club after work. I've always thought his head would make a good toilet brush."

He continued to study my face.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

"It wasn't a tap. The DEA would know about a tap. Somebody dropped the dime on the buy."

"Who knew about it?"

"Cardo… Fontenot… Lionel… obviously Boggs…"

"Why you got that big wrinkle between your eyes, Streak?"

"I'm involved with somebody. She knew about it, too."

"That's great. Why don't you run an ad in the Times-Picayune the next time out?"

"I didn't tell her. She picked up on it somewhere else."

"What's her name?"

"Bootsie Giacano."

"Oh, man, I don't believe it. You're in the sack with one of the Giacanos?"

"She's an old friend from New Iberia. She married into the family."

"Probably like one of Charlie Manson's people, just a casual member of the family."

"Knock it off, Clete."

He grinned and squinted at me.

"The other one that bothers me is Kim Dollinger," I said. "She was trying to tell me something in your club. I thought she was just bombed."

"She is one tough badass broad, isn't she? I'd like to get to know her a lot better."

"I get the feeling you're not too serious about any of this."

"Why should I be? This whole sting was put together by clowns, if you ask me. They almost got you killed out there. I don't like federal farts doing that to my podjo."

"I think you need to broaden your attitudes, Clete."

He opened my can of Dr Pepper, poured it in a glass with ice, set a glass straw in it, and put it in my hand.

"Drink your pop," he said. "Hey, you know who I got the pizza from?"

"Don't tell me."

"You got it, mon. That strange, buglike colored kid. He works in that pizza joint right around the corner from the Pearl. Hey, mon, it's time to get out of this G-man bullshit. Let them clean up their own mess for a while. If you still want to square the beef with Boggs, you and I'll do it together. With no forms to fill out, either. You know what I mean?"

"I'll let you know."

"Something happened out there, didn't it?" he said.

"What do you mean?"

"The dragon went away."

"Something like that."

"It's a rush, isn't it?"

I nodded and looked out the window at the tops of the trees moving in the sunlight.

"Yeah, a real high," he said. "Maybe one a guy doesn't always want to turn loose of. Almost as good as a glass of black Jack on ice with a Tuborg to chase it home. Think about it, Dave. The time to go is right after you hit the daily double."

He folded the pizza box shut and looked directly into my face. His weight made a big dent on the side of the bed. His face was as flat and round as a cake pan.

Later, I phoned New Iberia to check on Alafair, then I called Bootsie to apologize for the things that I had said to her. I hadn't changed my mind about her-if she was involved with the mob in New Orleans, she had become a willing victim-but what right did I have to judge her and wound her again after all these years? It was a difficult conversation because I knew her phone was tapped and I did not want her to compromise herself. But I did apologize.

"It's all right, cher," she said. "I haven't told you everything. Sometime I will."

I was silent.

"You came to some conclusions that most people would," she said.

"Can you come up here?"

"Anytime for you, darlin'."

"Not today, though. Tomorrow morning. I've got the bed spins now. I guess I had a big drop in body temperature out there. I don't look too good, either."

"I'll drop by around nine."

"Boots?" I said.

"What?"

"Boots?" And I wanted to ask her if she knew how it had gone sour out on the salt.

"Yes?"

"I always loved you. All these years. I never forgot that summer of 1957."

"I didn't either, Dave. Who could? You get one like that in a lifetime."

That evening I ate supper from the tray on my bed and watched the light fade above the trees and roofs of houses. Then it was dark, and when people turned on their porch lights I could see the black outlines of the palms and philodendron and stands of bamboo in their front yards, and then the iron streetcar clattering by on the St. Charles esplanade, the closed windows filled with the purple and green neon glow from the Katz and Betzhof drugstore on the corner.

I fell asleep and dreamed that I was sliding down a wave into a great slate-green trough; the horizon was tilted, the sky a dirty veil of gray like incinerator smoke. My ears were filled with the hiss of water and wind humming in a seashell. My legs were atrophied, bloodless with cold, but I knew there were makos and hammerheads turning below me in the depths, and they could find feeling and extract a torrent of color from skin that had puckered as white as a fish's belly.

I felt him at the side of my bed and opened my eyes on the pillow as though someone had clapped his hands close to my face.

"Hey, it's just me," Tony Cardo said, smiling. "I don't want to give you a coronary, too."

I pushed myself up on my arms and licked the dry welt of stitches on my lip.

"You must have some mean dreams," he said.

He wore a striped brown suit, a pale yellow shirt with French cuffs and a dark brown knit necktie, a fedora tilted on his head, wing-tip shoes that were spit-shined to the soft gleam of melted plastic. The man with jailhouse tattoos I had seen waxing Tony's Oldsmobile stood behind Tony, his hands folded patiently in front of him, his expressionless eyes never quite meeting mine, his bristle-flecked cannonball head motionless as though he were listening for something.

"I feel bad about what happened to you out there, Dave," Tony said. "You saw it coming, didn't you, and I didn't listen to you. You're a smart man."

"Not smart enough, Tony. I walked into it. I lost my boat out there, too."

"I know all about it."

"How?"

"The people on the other end. They had to dump a lot of inventory overboard. Your money with it. It was a bad night for business."

"It was a bad night in a lot of ways, Tony."

"You mean Lionel and Ray buying it? I never thought those two would try to rip me off. But you have to deal with a lot of untrustworthy types in this business, Dave."

"You know all about the rip-off, then? You know about Jimmie Lee Boggs?"

"A guy like Boggs has one talent. You probably met one or two like him in ' Nam. He'd take out a water buffalo or spook a farmer out of a rice field so he could drop him. Anything to stay busy. But he's not too bright about anything else. The word's already out, he wants to lay off fifty keys of pure product."

"Where is he?"

"Here, Miami, Houston. It's all Motel Eight to a guy like that."

"Do you know why they tried to take you off?" I said.

He sucked in his cheeks, and his mouth became small and button-shaped. The man behind him flexed his shoulders as though he had a neck ache.

"You're telling me something?" Tony said. His eyes were bright, amused.

"Like you said, you didn't think Lionel or Fontenot had it in them."

"I didn't put it that way, but all right…"

"Boggs is a psychopath, but he's a pro. He doesn't make moves without somebody's permission," I said.

Tony's eyes were dark and friendly, his lashes as long as a girl's.

"Go on, Dave," he said.

"I'm saying these guys are piranhas. They don't attack until they smell blood in the water."

"I look like I'm bleeding?" he said, and smiled with the corner of his mouth.

"I'd watch my back."

"Listen to this guy. He gets beat up, he almost drowns, he loses his boat and money, and he worries about somebody else."

"Take it for what it's worth, Tony. I think they've got a whack out on you."

"What do you think, Jess?" he said to the man with the cannonball head.

"I think they'd better not fucking try," the man said.

"See," Tony said. "This is New Orleans. We don't worry about some gumballs in Miami or Houston. They want to get ugly, we take it into their backyard."

"Lionel used the shortwave on the shrimper to call Boggs. Did they tell you that?"

I saw the pause come into his eyes.

"No, I didn't know that," he said.

"Maybe they didn't speak English. Or maybe they didn't have any way of knowing he was setting up a rip-off."

"What you're saying, Dave, is they probably didn't care."

"Maybe."

"You're a good guy, Dave, but you're still a newbie. There's two ways to run the business-you don't get greedy, you piece off the action, you treat people fair. Then your conscience is clear, you got respect in your community, people trust you. Then when somebody else breaks the rules, gets greedy, tries to put a lock on your action, you blow up their shit. You don't fuck around when you do it, either. It's like a free-fire zone. Nobody likes it, but the only thing that counts is who walks out of the smoke."

I got up to go to the bathroom. The floor felt as though it were receding under my feet.

"You still got the deck pitching under you, huh?" Tony said.

"Yeah."

"Well, you're coming home with us, anyway. You'll sleep better there. I got a good cook, too, fix you some gumbo and dirty rice. How's that, podna?"

"What?"

"You're staying at my place. I already signed you out and paid your bill."

"You can't sign me out."

"You know how much I donate to this place each year? What's the matter, you like the smell of bedpans?"

Just then one of his gatemen came through the door with two ambulance attendants pushing a gurney.

"Now wait a minute, Tony," I said.

"I got a nice room waiting for you. With cable TV, books, magazines, you want a broad to turn the pages for you, you got that, too. Like I told you before, I'm a sensitive man about friendship. Don't be hurting my feelings."

Then the two attendants and his hired hoods went about packaging me up as though I were a piece of damaged china. I started to protest again as they placed their hands gently on my arms, and gray worms danced before my eyes. But Tony put a finger to his pursed lips and said, almost in a private whisper, "Hey, guys like us already got our tickets punched. It's all a free lunch now. You're in the magic kingdom, Dave."

So that's how to the dark tower I came.

Early the next morning Tony, his little boy, and I had breakfast in the glass-enclosed breakfast room, which had a wonderful view of Tony's myrtle-lined tennis court, oak and lemon and lime trees, and blue lawn wet with mist. The back door gave onto a wheelchair ramp that led down to the driveway.

"The bus picks up Paul right here at the door," Tony said. "They're going on a field trip today, to an ice factory, to learn how ice is made."

"It's the gifted class. We get to go on a field trip every Friday," Paul said. He smiled when he talked. He wore a purple sweater and gray corduroy pants and sat on top of cushions in his wheelchair so he could reach the table adequately. His brown hair had been cut recently, and it was combed with a part that was as exact as a ruler's edge. "My daddy says you were in the war, too."

"That's right."

"You think a war's ever going to come here?" he said.

"No, this is a good place, Paul," I said. "We don't worry about things like that. I bet you're going to have a good time at the ice factory."

"Do you have any little boys or girls?" Paul said.

"A little girl, about your age. Her name's Alafair."

"What's she like to do?"

"She has a horse. She likes to feed him apples and ride him when she comes home from school."

"A horse?" he said.

"Yeah, we call him Tex because we bought him over in Texas."

"Boy."

He had a genuinely sweet face, with no recognition in it of his own limitations.

"Maybe we'll go riding with Dave and his daughter one day," Tony said.

"That'd be fine," I said.

"There's a couple of bridle paths here, or sometimes I take Paul on trips over by Iberia Parish," Tony said. "Maybe we'll drive over, take you guys out to eat, go out for a boat ride, something like that," he said.

"Yeah, that's a good idea, Tony."

"I hear the bus," Paul said.

His father hooked his canvas book bag, which had a lunch kit strapped onto it, on the back of the chair and wheeled him down the ramp to the waiting bus. The driver lowered a special platform from the back of the bus, and he and Tony fixed the wheels of Paul's chair to it. Before the driver raised the platform, Tony leaned down and hugged his son, pressed his head against his chest, and kissed his hair.

He came back in and sat down at the table. He wore white tennis slacks and a thick white sweater with blue piping on it.

"You have a fine little podna there," I said.

"You'd better believe it. How'd you sleep last night?"

"Good."

"You like my home?"

"It's beautiful."

"I wish my mom had lived to see it. We lived in Algiers and the Irish Channel. We had colored people living next door and across the street from us. You know what my mom used to do for a living?"

I shook my head no.

"She washed the hair of corpses. She'd come home, and I could smell it on her. Not just the chemicals. That same smell when you pop a body bag. Not as strong, but that same smell. Man, I used to hate it. I think that's why she always talked about lemon and lime trees back in Sicily. She said on her father's farm there was this old Norman tower made out of rocks, and lemon and lime trees grew all around it. When it was real hot she and her sisters would play inside the rocks where it was cool, and they could smell the lemons and limes on the wind."

Two men walked into the kitchen, their faces full of sleep, and began clattering around in the cabinets.

"Where's the cereal bowls at?" one of them said. He was dark and thin; he wore slippers and his print shirt was unbuttoned and hung half out of his slacks, but he hadn't forgotten to put on his shoulder holster.

"Right-hand side," Tony said. "Look, you guys, there's eggs and bacon in the warmer out in the dining room. There's extra coffee there, too."

They shuffled around in the kitchen and didn't reply. Then they went out into the dining room. These were only two of eight hired men I had seen in the house since the night before. They had slept on couches, in the attic, the television den, and guest cottage, and had taken turns walking around on the grounds and driveway during the night.

"They're good boys, just not too sophisticated," Tony said. "Do they make you uncomfortable?"

"No."

"A couple of them made you."

I looked at him blankly.

"They can spot a cop," he said. "I told them you're all right, though. You're all right, aren't you, Dave?"

His eyes took on that strange, self-amused light again.

"You have to be the judge of that, Tony."

"I think you're a solid guy. You know what a solid con is?"

"Yes."

"You're that kind of guy. You've got character."

"Maybe you don't know everything about me."

"Maybe I know more than you think," he said, and winked.

I didn't know his game, or even if he was playing one, but I didn't like meeting his eyes. I took a bite of my soft-boiled eggs and looked out at the mist in the citrus trees.

"Where's the contract coming from?" I said,

"There's one guy in Houston that wants me out bad. Two or three in Miami. Maybe they got permission from Chicago, maybe they're acting on their own, I don't know. You heard stories about me, Dave, about some stuff I do, waving the flag around, bullshit like that?"

"I guess I have."

"That I been breaking one of the big rules, getting mixed up in politics, focusing attention on the organization?"

"That's what you hear sometimes."

"Let me tell you about a guy used to live in Plantation, Florida. You remember the name Johnny__? This guy went back to the days of Bugsy Siegel, I mean he survived gang wars for forty years. But Johnny and a couple of other guys thought they could jerk the CIA around. They told some CIA people they could whack out Castro for the government, like do a patriotic act and maybe get the casinos open in Havana again. So the CIA buys it, and the word is out that our guys are going to clip Castro. Maybe they even sent a couple of kamikaze gumballs to do it, but the bottom line is that Castro looks pretty healthy today. In other words, it looks like it was a scam to pump juice and influence out of the government. So the commission in Chicago tells these guys that what they're doing is stupid and they'd fucking better knock it off. But Johnny doesn't listen. So one day a couple of guys invite him fishing out in Biscayne Bay, except they put one in his ear, cut his legs off, and stuff him inside an oil barrel.

"They weighted the barrel down with chains, and shoved an ice pick in Johnny's stomach to break the gas bag. Nobody would have ever seen him, but they screwed it up. They missed the wall of his stomach, and he floated the barrel up.

"It makes a good story, doesn't it, about what happens when a guy decides to get political?"

"I've heard it before."

"Then maybe you also know it's bullshit. Johnny got clipped because of money. It's always money, Dave. Those guys in Miami and Houston want to take over the action on the Louisiana coast. There's four or five other guys in New Orleans they'll have to cut in, guys who are anybody's cornhorn, but the word is I'm definitely not going to be a player." He smiled and put a dripping spoonful of cereal in his mouth. "There's supposed to be some real talent in town right now. I hear it's a twenty-five-thou contract."

"Maybe it's a good time to take the family on a vacation to the islands," I said.

"They don't hurt families. We don't do that to each other. Not even these guys, Dave." But I saw the cloud slide across his face. He looked out at the lawn and rubbed his finger against his temple.

"I need to use your phone," I said. "A lady was coming up to see me at the hospital this morning."

"Who is she?" he asked, and smiled again.

"Bootsie Giacano."

"No kidding? You got good taste. She's a class broad, I mean lady. You gotta excuse my vocabulary. I went to college, but most of the time you wouldn't know it."

"You know her?"

"Sure. I own part of her business. She's nice. I like her."

I used the phone in the kitchen and told Bootsie where I was and that I would see her later.

"You're where?" she said.

I cleared my throat and told her again I was at Tony's. I could hear her breathing into the mouthpiece of the receiver.

"I won't ask you any more questions," she said. "I'm sure you know what you're doing, Dave. You know what you're doing, don't you?"

"Sure," I said, then, "I'll call you tonight. Everything's fine, kiddo."

"Yeah, sure it is," she said, and hung up.

I sat back down with Tony just as his wife came into the kitchen in a blue house robe and slippers, her face dull with sleep, her hair in pink foam-rubber curlers. She didn't speak. She filled a coffee cup from the electric pot on the Formica counter, shook two aspirins from a bottle and set them by the side of her saucer, and sat at the kitchen table with her back to us, smoking silently while she drank her coffee. The backs of her hands were coarse and heavily veined, and her nails, long and bright red, made clicking sounds when she picked up her coffee cup.

"Clara, this is Dave Robicheaux. He stayed with us last night," Tony said.

Again she didn't speak. Her blond hair was dark close to her scalp. I could see nicotine stains on her fingers, dried makeup around the corners of her mouth, her thin whitened nostrils when she breathed.

"Dave and I were talking about taking Paul for a horse ride," Tony said.

She blew smoke up against the window glass and flicked her ashes in her saucer.

"I think maybe everybody was making a little too much noise last night," Tony said.

"May I speak to you alone, please?" she said.

"Uh-oh," he said.

"I'd like to see your tennis court. I'll be outside," I said.

"Yeah, we'll hit some balls. Tell Jess to load up the ball machine," he said, but he didn't hide the embarrassment in his face well.

I walked down the wheelchair ramp and across the damp, spongy Saint Augustine grass toward the court. The sun was pale and yellow above the myrtle trees, the canvas windscreens were streaked with water, and the fog blew off the lake in wisps and glistened on the waxy green surface of the citrus leaves. I could hear her voice behind me: "They can stay in the cottage… I don't want them all over my house… Did you see the bathroom this morning… You wouldn't have this trouble if you were reasonable, if you didn't have to be the big war hero… Everyone's tired of it, Tony, they've made allowances for a long time, they're not going to go on doing it forever… Maybe you're not going to like this, but I think they've been fair, I think you're acting crazy… Go ahead, eat some more of that stuff. It's only eight o'clock in the morning. That'll fix ' em in Miami. "

They went at it for ten minutes. I didn't find Jess, so I began to load the automatic ball machine myself. When Tony came out of the house with an oversized tennis racket across his shoulder, he was grinning as though he were serenely in charge of the morning, but his eyes had a black, electrical glaze in them, the skin of his face was stretched tight against the bone, and I could see the pulse jumping in his neck as though he had been running wind sprints.

"I love Indian summer in Louisiana. I love the morning," he said.

"It's been a pretty fall."

"Fucking A," he said, clicked on the ball machine with a remote control button, and stationed himself like a gladiator behind the baseline.

I sat on a bench and watched while the machine hummed, then thropped balls across the net, and Tony slammed them back with a fierce energy that left skid marks in the soft green clay.

"It's funny how many people want a piece out of your ass," he said. "Wives, broads, cops, lawyers, these guys I pay to keep me alive. You rent their loyalty by the day. I can name two hundred people in this city I've made rich. Even a psychotic piece of shit like Jimmie Lee Boggs. Can you dig it, when I first met that guy he was doing five-hundred-dollar hits for a couple of Jews out of Miami. Even after he escaped from you, his big score was going to be to blackmail some colored woman in New Iberia. Now he's got a half-million bucks of product."

"What colored woman?" I said.

"I don't know, he was going to move in on a hot-pillow joint or something. That's Jimmie Lee's idea of the big score."

"Wait a minute, Tony. This is important. Do you remember the name of the woman?"

"It was French. It was Mama something." He hit the ball long, into the canvas windscreen. "To tell you the truth, I'm not real interested in talking about colored whorehouses."

"I have to ask you anyway. What'd he have on her?"

"Maybe we're not communicating too well here," he said, and slapped one ball hard against the tape and whanged another off the ball machine itself.

"Maybe he knows something that might keep a kid out of the electric chair."

"It's got something to do with snuffing a redbone. What the fuck do I know about redbones? I got a problem here. I hear you talking about some colored woman, about keeping a kid out of the electric chair, about a cathouse in New Iberia, but I don't hear you talking about the half million your people put up. That bothers me a little bit, Dave."

"There's nothing I can do about what happened out on the salt."

"Yeah? How about the guys who lose their money? Are they cool?"

"They're oil people. They're not in the business. They're not going to do anything about it."

"You must know a different class of people than me, then. Because the people I've known will do anything because of money. But you're telling me these guys are different?"

"It's just something I'll have to handle myself, Tony."

"Yeah, if I was you, I'd handle it. I'd really handle it." He lowered his racket and looked at me, a dark light in his eyes. A ball whizzed past him and bounced off the windscreen behind him. He removed his sweater, wiped the sweat off his face with it, and threw it to the side of the court.

Then a strange transformation took place in him. The tautness of his face, the hard, black shine in his eyes, the rigidity of the muscles in his body, suddenly left him like air rushing out of a balloon. His skin grew ashen, sweat ran out of his hair, he began swallowing deep in his throat, and his lungs labored for air.

"What is it, partner?" I said.

"Nothing."

I took him by the arm and walked him to the bench. His arm felt flaccid and weak in my hand. He propped the racket on the clay and leaned his head down on it. Sweat dripped off the lobes of his tiny ears.

"You want me to take you to a doctor?" I said.

"No."

"You want me to get your wife?"

"No. It's going to pass."

I picked up his sweater and blotted his hair and the back of his neck with it, then draped it over his shoulders. He began to breathe more regularly; then he pinched the bridge of his nose and held his head back in the cool air as though he had a nosebleed.

"I think you need to talk to somebody," I said. "I think you're dealing with something that's going to eat your lunch."

He folded his arm on top of his perpendicular racket and rested his head on his arm.

"What are you gonna do, a kid needs a mother. It's all a pile of shit, man," he said. "All of it."

When I went back to my room, which gave onto a side yard that contained a swing set and a solitary moss-hung oak tree, my clothes from my apartment were laid out neatly on the tester bed. Even my.45, with the spare clip and a box of shells, lay on top of a folded flannel shirt. I went to look for Tony, but he was in the shower. I walked out the front door and down the long, tree-lined drive to the front gate, where Jess sat in a chair, wearing a blue jumpsuit. It was zippered only halfway up his chest, and I could see the leather straps of his shoulder holster against his T-shirt.

"Where's the closest drugstore?" I said.

"What do you need?"

"Some razor blades."

"It's five blocks, down by the lake. We'll send a car."

"I need the walk. I still feel like I've got rapture of the deep."

"What?"

"How about opening up?" I said.

He unlocked the chain and slid back the gate wide enough so that I could step out on the street. I walked past the rows of banked lawns and oleander-lined piked fences to a thoroughfare and a tan stucco and red-tiled shopping center that looked as if it had been torn out of the ground in southern California and dropped in the middle of New Orleans. I used a pay phone outside a drugstore to call Minos.

"You pulled it off, Dave. You're across the moat and inside the castle," he said before I explained.

"How'd you know where I was?"

"Everybody who goes in that gate is on videotape. How do you like it with the spaghetti-and-meatball crowd?"

"I'm not sure."

"I told you, didn't I, Cardo's head was in the blender too long."

"Minos, you guys are all turning the screws on this guy, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure why."

"What are you talking about?"

"He's just one guy. What about these guys in Miami and Houston who've got a contract out on him? The odds are Tony's going to lose."

"Let us worry about Houston and Miami. You want in or out, Dave?"

"I haven't made up my mind."

"You'd damn well better."

"I want Boggs."

"You're in the right place, then. He'll be back. He's not a guy who leaves loose ends. Besides, we hear it's an open contract. It's the perfect opportunity for him."

"Did you find out who dropped the dime on the buy?"

"Baxter said he couldn't compromise his informant."

"He's not going to share a bust with a federal agency."

"Forget about that guy. Look, Washington called yesterday with some information about Cardo's military record. He got a Silver Star for going after a point man who stepped on a mine."

"He didn't tell me that."

"After he was wounded, he got moved back to Chu Lai for the last four months of his tour."

"Why was he moved back to Chu Lai?"

"How should I know?"

"There's something not right. The Marines were real hard-nosed about keeping a guy in his platoon until he had a million-dollar wound or two Purple Hearts."

"Maybe he had some pull. Listen, Dave, don't get involved with the guy's psychology. Eventually we're going to punch his ticket. You'll probably be there when it happens. Or you'll be in court testifying against him. All this semper fi bullshit won't have anything to do with it. You want a lesson from Vietnam? Don't think about the guy who's in your sights."

"You always cut right to the bone, Minos."

"I didn't invent the rules. By the way, we have that house under twenty-four-hour surveillance. If it turns to shit inside, throw a lamp or a chair through a window. In the meantime, think about how far you want to take it. Nobody'll blame you if you decide to go back to New Iberia."

It was cool under the stucco colonnade, and red leaves were blowing out of a heavily wooded lot across the street.

"Dave, are you still there?" he asked.

"Yeah… I'll try to call you back tonight or tomorrow. Talk to you later, Minos."

I hung up the phone and wondered if Minos would tell the lion tamer that he could put down his whip and chair and walk out of the lions' cage whenever he wished. I went inside the drugstore, bought a package of razor blades, and came out just as Tony and Jess pulled to the curb in the maroon Lincoln convertible.