CHAPTER 10

Tony was in the passenger's seat. He reached over the backseat and popped open the back door for me. He had changed into loafers, a rust-colored sports shirt, pleated tan slacks, a cardigan, and a yellow Panama hat.

"You could have taken the car, Dave. You didn't have to walk," he said.

"It's a good day for it."

"How do you like my hat?"

"It looks sharp."

"I got a collection of them. Hey, Jess, go inside and get me a copy of Harper's," he said.

"What?" Jess said.

"Get me a copy of Life."

"Sure, Tony," Jess said, cut the engine, and went inside the drugstore.

Tony smiled at me across the back of the seat. The Lincoln had a rolled leather interior, a fold-out bar, a wooden dashboard with black instrument panels.

"Jess has an IQ of minus eight, but he'd eat thumbtacks with a spoon if I told him to," he said. Then the smile went out of his face. "I'm sorry you had to hear that stuff between me and Clara. In particular I'm sorry you had to hear that about me being a war hero. Because I never told anybody I was a hero. I knew some guys who were, but I wasn't one of them."

"Who was, Tony? Did you ever read a story by Ernest Hemingway called 'A Soldier's Home'? It's about a World War I Marine who comes back home and discovers that people only want to hear stories about German women chained to machine guns. The truth is that he was afraid all the time he was over there and it took everything in him just to get by. However, he learns that's not a story anyone is interested in."

"Yeah. Ernest Hemingway. I like his books. I read a bunch of them in college."

"Look, on another subject, Tony. I'm not sure your wife is ready for houseguests right now."

He puffed out his cheeks.

"I invite people to my home. I tell them if they should leave," he said. "You're my guest. You don't want to stay, that's your business."

"I appreciate your hospitality, Tony."

"So we're going back home now and get you changed, then we're taking Kim out to the yacht club for a little lunch and some golf. How's that grab you?"

"Fine."

"You like Kim?"

"Sure."

"How much?"

"She's a pretty girl."

"She ain't pretty, man. She's fucking beautiful." His eyes were dancing with light. "She told me she got drunk and came on to you."

"She told you that?"

"What's the big deal? She's human. You're a good-looking guy. But you don't look too comfortable right now." He laughed out loud.

"What can I say?"

"Nothing. You're too serious. It's all comedy, man. The bottom line is we all get to be dead for a real long time. It's a cluster fuck no matter how you cut it."

We drove back to his house, and I changed into a pair of gray slacks, a charcoal shirt, and a candy-striped necktie, loaded two bags of golf clubs into the Lincoln, and with a white stretch Caddy limousine full of Tony's hoods behind us, we picked up Kim Dollinger and headed for the country club out by the lake.

We filled two tables in the dining room. I couldn't tell if the attention we drew was because of my bandaged head, Tony's hoods, whose dead eyes and toneless voices made the waiters' heads nod rapidly, or the way Kim filled out her gray knit dress. But each time I took a bite from my shrimp cocktail and tried to chew on the side of my mouth that wasn't injured, I saw the furtive glances from the other tables, the curiosity, the titillation of being next to people who suddenly step off a movie screen.

And Tony must have read my thoughts.

"Watch this," he said, and motioned the maître d' over. "Give everybody in the bar and dining room a glass of champagne, Michel."

"It's not necessary, Mr. Cardo."

"Yeah, it is."

"Some of our members don't drink, Mr. Cardo."

"Then give them a dessert. Put it on my bill."

Tony wiped his small mouth with a napkin. The maître d' was a tall, pale man who looked as if he were about to be pushed out an airplane door.

"Hey, they don't want it, that's okay," Tony said. "Lighten up, Michel."

"Very good, sir." The maître d' assembled his waiters and sent them to the bar for trays of glasses and towel-wrapped bottles of champagne.

"That was mean," Kim said.

"I didn't come here to be treated like a bug," Tony said.

We finished lunch and walked outside into the cool afternoon sunlight and the rattle of the palms in the wind off the lake. The lake was murky green and capping, and the few sailboats that were out were tacking hard in the wind, the canvas popping, their glistening bows slapping into the water. Tony and most of his entourage loaded themselves into golf carts for nine holes, and Kim and I sat on a wood bench by the practice green while Jess made long putts back and forth across the clipped grass without ever hitting the cup.

She wore a gray pillbox hat with a net veil folded back on top of it. She didn't look at me and instead gazed off at the rolling fairways, the sand traps and greens, the moss-hung oaks by the trees. The wind was strong enough to make her eyes tear, but in profile she looked as cool and regal and unperturbed as a sculptor's model. Behind her, the long, rambling club building, with its glass-domed porches, was achingly white against the blue of the sky.

"Maybe we should go inside," I said.

"It's fine, thanks."

"Do you think it's smart to jerk a guy like Tony around?"

She crossed her legs and raised her chin.

"He's got a burner turned on in his head. I wouldn't mess with his male pride," I said.

"Is there something wrong with the way I look? I wish you'd stop staring at me."

"I think you've got a guilty conscience, Kim."

"Oh you do?"

"Did you drop the dime on us?"

She watched Jess putt across the green. The red flag on the pin flapped above his head in the distance. Finally the ball clunked into the cup. My eyes never left the side of her face. She pulled her dress tight over her knee. Her hips and stomach looked as smooth as water going over stone.

"Somebody told the Man. It wasn't Lionel or Fontenot," I said.

"Do you think Tony would be taking me out for lunch if he thought I was a snitch?"

"I think only Tony knows what goes on in Tony's head. I think he likes to live on the outer edge of his envelope. Eating black speed is like sliding down the edge of a barber's razor."

"Why do you keep saying these things to me? I have nothing to tell you."

"Do you know a Vice cop named Nate Baxter?"

I could see the color in her cheeks.

"Why should I know-," she began.

"He was following you the day you were in Clete's place. This guy's a lieutenant. Why's he interested in you, Kim?"

Her eyes were wet, and her lip began to tremble.

"All right, come on now," I said.

"You're a shit."

Jess had stopped putting and was looking at us. The gray hair on his chest grew like wire out of his golf shirt.

"Maybe I'm just a little worried about you," I said.

"Leave me alone. Please do that for me."

"I'll buy you a drink inside."

"No, you stay away from me."

"Listen to me, Kim-"

She picked up her purse and walked in her high heels across the lawn toward the club. Her calves looked hard and waxed below the hem of her knit dress. Jess walked off the green with the putter hanging loosely at his side.

"What's wrong with her?" he said.

"I guess I don't know how to talk to younger women very well."

"She's a weird broad. I don't trust her."

"Why not?"

"She don't ask for anything. A broad who don't ask you for anything has got a different kind of hustle going. Tony don't see it." He twirled the putter like a baton in his fingers.


I found her sitting on a tall chair-backed stool in the bar. The bar was done in mahogany and teakwood, with brass-framed round mirrors and barometers on the walls and copper kettles full of ferns hung in the windows that looked out over the yacht basin. Her eyes were clear now, and her hands lay quietly on the polished black surface of the bar, her fingers touching the sides of a Manhattan glass. She nibbled at the orange slice; then her face tightened when she saw me walk into the periphery of her vision. I ordered a cup of coffee from the bartender.

"What do I have to say? Don't you know how to let someone alone?" she said.

"I think you need a friend."

"And you're it? What a laugh."

"I know Baxter. If you've got a deal going with him, he'll burn you."

I saw her swallow, either with anger or fear.

"What is the matter with you? Are you trying to get me killed?" she said.

"Get on a plane, Kim. L.A.'s great this time of year. I'll get some money for you."

She looked straight ahead and breathed hard, way down in her chest.

"You're a cop," she said.

"Ex."

"Now."

"You'd better check out my record. Cops with my kind of mileage are the kind they shove out the side door."

"I can't afford you. I'm going to ask you one more time, get away from me."

"You're a nice girl. You don't deserve the fall you're headed for."

She started to speak again, but her words caught in her throat as though she had swallowed a large bubble of air. Then she sipped from her Manhattan, straightened her back, and signaled the bartender.

"This man is annoying me," she said.

He was young, and his eyes glanced nervously at me and then back at her.

"Did you hear me?" she said.

"Yes."

"Would you tell him to leave, please?" she said.

"Sir, this lady is making a request," the bartender said.

He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a black bow tie, and his hair was blond and oiled.

"Yeah, I heard her, podna. I don't know where else I should go, though."

"Would you tell him to get the fuck out of the bar?" she said.

"Miss, please don't use that language."

"I ordered a drink. I didn't ask to have a dildo sit next to me while I drank it. Tell him to get out."

"Miss, please."

"What does it take to get through to you?" she said.

Other people had stopped eating and drinking and were looking at us.

"Sir, would you mind-," the bartender said.

"No, I don't mind," I said. "Where should I go?"

"Try Bumfuck, Kansas," she said.

"Miss, I'll have to ask you to leave, too."

"Is that right?" she said. "Would you page Mr. Cardo out on the golf course and tell him that? I would appreciate it if you would tell him that."

"You're Mr. Cardo's guest?" the bartender said. His face was bloodless.

"Don't sweat it, partner. We're leaving," I said.

"Is that what we're doing? Is that what you think we're doing? I don't think we're doing that at all," she said, and shattered her highball glass on the liquor bottles behind the bar.

The bar area and dining room were silent. Her gray pillbox hat was askew on top of her forehead, and a lock of her red hair hung down in one eye. The bartender stood on the duckboards and stared wide-eyed at Jess, who had just thrust open the outer glass doors to the bar, the putter still in his hand, his face pushed out of shape like white rubber.


We were driving away from the lakefront, on Orleans Avenue, past City Park. Tony had the window down and was turned in his seat, looking back at me and Kim, and his black and gray hair blew like tiny springs in the wind.

"What were you guys doing?" he said. He tried to hold a grin on his face.

"I was trying to have a drink," Kim said.

"Some fucking way to get the bartender's attention," Jess said.

"I'm sorry about that back there," I said to Tony.

"I can't believe it, eighty-sixed out of my own club," he said. "You know what it took for me to get a membership in that place?"

"You want me to go back and talk with somebody about it later?" Jess said.

"What's the matter with you? It's a country club. You can't come crashing into the bar with a golf club in your hand," Tony said.

"I thought they were in trouble," Jess said.

"So you had to knock a waiter down?"

"I didn't see him. What the fuck, Tony. Why you reaming me? I didn't start that stuff."

"I think you ought to consider who you invite out to lunch," Kim said.

"I think I ought to get a new life. Am I the only person that's sane in this car?" Tony said.

"It's my fault. I'm sorry about it," I said.

"How gallant," Kim said.

"All right, all right. I'll try to square it. It's just a club, anyway, right? Jesus Christ," Tony said, and blew out his breath.

We could see golfers out on the fairways in City Park and children on horseback beyond a grove of oak trees. Jess looked in the rearview mirror and changed lanes. Then he looked in the rearview mirror again, accelerated, and passed two cars. I saw his eyes go back into the mirror.

"We've got some guys behind us," he said.

"What guys?" Tony said.

"Two guys in a Plymouth. Behind the limo."

"Can you make 'em?" Tony said.

"No."

"They look like talent?"

"I don't know. What d'you want to do, Tony?"

"Pull into the park and stop."

"You want to do that?" Jess said, looking sideways at him.

"They'll cut and run. Watch. Come on, the day's starting to improve."

"Bad place if it goes down, Tony. Everybody gets pissed when it goes down in a public place," Jess said.

"Hey, is it our fault? Now, turn in here. Let's have some fun with these guys."

Kim was looking backward out the window. Tony reached over the seat and touched her on the knee, then winked at her and grinned.

"Tony, I don't need this shit," she said.

"Will you guys mellow out? Why is everybody trying to drive me nuts today?" he said. Then he slapped open the glove box and took out a chrome-plated.45 automatic.

The white limo followed us into the park. We drove along the side of a grassy lake and stopped under a spreading oak tree. The dry leaves under it blew in the wind and clicked and tumbled across the grass. Jess reached under the seat and took out a double-barrel.410 shotgun pistol wrapped inside a paper bag. He rolled down his window and held the shotgun pistol below the level of the window jamb.

When the Plymouth turned in after us, Tony put the.45 in his right-hand coat pocket and stepped out on the cement, smiling across the top of the car as though he were welcoming guests.

"What a day," Kim said.

"Hey, give it a break," Jess said, without turning his head.

The Plymouth followed along the grassy lake, passed the limo, and stopped abreast of us. The man in the passenger's seat hung his badge out the window, then stepped out in the sunlight.

Nate Baxter had changed little since I had last seen him. He still wore two-tone shoes and sports clothes, but as his styled blond hair had receded he had grown a narrow line of reddish beard along his jawbones and chin. He had worked for CID in the army, and as an investigator for Internal Affairs in the New Orleans Police Department he had combined a love of military stupidity with a talent for dismembering the wounded and the vulnerable.

Jess looked straight ahead, lowered the shotgun pistol between his legs, and pushed it back under the seat.

"Put your hands on top of the car, Tony," Baxter said.

"You're kidding?" Tony said.

"You see me smiling?" Baxter said.

"I don't think this is cool, Lieutenant," Tony said, his hands now resting casually on the waxed maroon hood of the Lincoln. "We've been out for some golf. We're not looking to complicate anybody's day."

"Go tell that limo full of meatballs to get out of here," Baxter said to his partner, who was now standing behind him. Then he turned back toward Jess and said, "Get out of the car, Ornella."

"Why the roust, Lieutenant?" Tony said.

"Close your mouth, Tony. Did you hear what I said, Ornella?"

Jess got out of the car with his palms turned outward, his brow furrowed above his close-set eyes. He set his hands on the convertible roof.

The white limo made a U-turn behind us and drove slowly out of the park, its black-tinted windows hot with sunlight. Baxter's partner came back and stood next to him. He was a muscular, crew-cut man, with a grained, red complexion, who wore shades and a pale blond mustache. Like Baxter, he carried a revolver under his tweed sports jacket in a clip-on belt holster. But in his face, even with his shades on, I could see a question mark about what Baxter was doing.

"Shake them down," Baxter said.

"Come on, Lieutenant, give it a rest. This is bullshit," Tony said.

"I look like bullshit to you?" Baxter said.

"We don't make trouble for you guys. It's a chickenshit roust. You know it is."

Baxter nodded impatiently to his partner.

"I got a piece in my coat pocket. You want the sonofabitch, take it. What the fuck's with you, Baxter?" Tony said.

"Easy, Tony. We don't have a big problem here," Baxter's partner said, his hands gentle on Tony's back and sides. "No, no, look straight ahead. Come on, man, you're a pro."

Then, like a dentist who had just pulled a tooth, he held up Tony's chrome-plated automatic in the sunlight.

"I got a permit for it," Tony said.

"You want to produce it?" Baxter said.

"It's at home. But I got one. You know I got one."

"Good. Your lawyer can bring it down to your arraignment," Baxter said.

His partner pulled Tony's arms behind him, cuffed his wrists, and sat him down on the curb. Then he ran his hands down Jess's sides, back, stomach, and legs. He rose up and shook his head at Baxter.

"Under the seat," Baxter said.

His partner leaned into the car, worked his hand around under the seat, and pulled out the shotgun pistol. He snapped open the breech and removed the two slender.410 shells and dropped them in his pocket.

"You're under arrest for possession of an illegal firearm, Ornella," Baxter said.

"You got to have cause to get in the car, Lieutenant," Jess said.

"You took some law courses up at Angola?" Baxter said.

"You got to have cause," Jess said.

Baxter's partner cuffed him and led him over to the curb. Two squad cars, the backup that Baxter had probably called for, turned into the park. Baxter opened the back door of the convertible and told me to step out.

"It looks like you finally found your element," he said.

"It must be a dull day, Nate."

"How do you like working for the greaseballs?"

"You ought to brush up on your procedure. Probably talk a little bit with your partner. He seems to know what he's doing."

"No kidding?"

"Nobody here was serious. Otherwise you might have gotten your hash cooked, Nate."

"I'm probably just lucky you were along to cool things out," he said, put a filter-tipped cigarette between his teeth at an upward angle, and lit it with a Zippo lighter. He snapped the lighter shut and blew smoke out into the sunlight. Then he said, "I like your threads. They're elegant."

"Get to it, Nate. You're wasting a lot of people's time."

"No, I mean it. You're stylish. I remember you when you smelled like an unflushed toilet with booze poured in it." He rubbed his fingers up and down the edge of my coat lapel. Then he touched my tie, put one finger under it, drew it slowly out from my chest and let it drop.

I looked away at the grassy lake and the way the wind made the light break on the water. The golfers on the other side of the lake had stopped their game and were watching us.

"You like the pockets in that shirt?" And his two fingers slid down inside the cloth, so that I could feel them against the nipple.

"Don't do that, Nate."

"It's got a nice feel to it. It pays to buy a quality shirt."

I could see the peppery grain of his skin along the edge of his beard, a piece of yellow mucus in the corner of his eye, the pucker in his mouth that almost made a smile. His fingers felt as thick and obscene as sausages inside my pocket.

I raised my hand and pushed his arm slowly away from me.

"That's not smart," he said quietly, and reached his hand toward me again.

I put the flat of my hand against his forearm and moved it away from me as you would press back a slowly yielding spring. He smiled and took a puff off the filter tip of his cigarette, his lips making a soft popping sound.

"Bust him. Interference with an officer in the performance of his duty," he said to his partner. Then to me, "I'll ask them to process you right into the population so you can eat mainline tonight."

"Fuck you, Baxter. We'll make bail in two hours," Tony said as a uniformed cop raised him to his feet.

"It's Friday afternoon, Tony," Baxter said. "Next arraignment is Monday morning."

"What about the broad?" his partner said.

"Tell her to take a cab. Tow his car in and tear it apart."

"Nate, we might be on shaky ground here," the partner said.

"Not with this bunch," Baxter said.

A few minutes later I sat handcuffed next to Tony behind the wire-mesh screen of a squad car. Through the window I could see Kim walking hurriedly out of the park toward the avenue, her face as white as bone.


Tony, Jess, and I were put in a holding cell a short distance from the drunk tank. Because it was a holding cell, it had no toilet or running water and contained only an iron bench that was bolted to one wall. The bars of the door had been repainted so many times that the layers of white paint formed a shell around the metal. The walls were grimed with handprints and scuff marks from people's shoes, covered with scratched drawings of genitalia and names that had been scorched into the paint with butane cigarette lighters. The heat was turned up and the cell was hot. Someone in the drunk tank began screaming and was taken out by two uniformed cops.

Tony paced up and down, took off his rust-colored sports shirt, then worked his T-shirt over his head and used it to wipe his skin.

"What's the drill with this guy? Somebody tell me what the fucking drill is," he said.

"It's Baxter. He's a bad cop. He can't make his case, so he finds something he can do," I said.

"We ain't sitting in this shithole three days. That's out," he said.

"Your lawyer had better know a judge, then."

"You got it," Tony said.

"I got to use the toilet," Jess said.

"Hey, you hear that?" Tony shouted through the bars. "We got a man in here needs to use the toilet."

His olive skin glistened with perspiration, and he kept biting his lower lip. By the time we were booked and moved up to the general population, on the second floor, his hands trembled and he couldn't drink enough water. I sat next to him on the edge of an iron bunk that hung from wall chains. His back was running with sweat now. He leaned forward on his thighs and ran his hand through his wet hair.

"Lockup is at eight o'clock," I said. "Let's go down to the shower."

"I'm cool," he answered.

"You'll feel better after a shower."

"Don't worry about me. I'm solid, man." He gripped the edge of the bunk and shuddered as though he had malaria. "Did anybody make you?"

"I don't think so. I've been out of New Orleans too long now."

"Anybody make you, get in your face, tell them we're tight."

"All right, Tony."

"There's guys in here who'll do an ex-cop, Dave. That's not a shuck."

"I think you just figured out Nate Baxter."

"Yeah, well, I'm going to square it with that cat. The word is he's getting freebies from French Quarter street whores. I know one who's got AIDS. I'm going to fix it so she gets in the sack with him."

Then he bent over and squeezed his palm across the back of his neck and said, "Oh man, the tiger's got me."

I stood him up and walked him by the arm down to the shower. Inmates lounging in the open doors of their cells or sitting on the big water pipe against the corridor wall looked at him with the curiosity and reverence of their kind-prisoners in a parish or city jail-when they were in the actual proximity of a mainline con or Mafia don. Some rose to their feet, offered to help, made an extravagant show of sympathy.

"He just got hold of some bad food," I said.

"Yeah, it's rotten, Tony," one man said.

"A roach crawled out of the grits one time, man. That's no shit," another said.

"We got a stinger and some canned goods. You're welcome to it, Tony," a third said.

Tony stood naked under the shower with his hands propped against the tiles. The water boiled his scalp white and sluiced over his olive skin and the knotted muscles in his back. In one pale buttock was a puckered red scar just above the colon. He held his face into the rush of hot water and opened and closed his small mouth like a guppy. When he turned off the faucets he breathed deeply through his nose, as though he were inhaling the morning air, and wiped his face slick with his palm.

"That's a little better," he said.

Two men farther down the shower were staring at his phallus.

"You guys got a problem with your gender or something?" he said.

"Sorry, Tony. We don't mean anything," one man said.

"Then act decent," he said.

"Sure, Tony. Everybody's glad to have you here. No, I mean, we're sorry you're busted but-"

"Get out of here," Tony said.

"Sure, anything you want. We-" Then the man lost his words, and he and his friend walked quickly out of the shower with their towels wrapped around their hips.

"That's what nobody understands about a jail. It's full of degenerates," Tony said.

I walked with him back to our cell. Through the corridor windows I could see downtown New Orleans and the glow of the city against the clouds. He put on his slacks and shirt and lay down barefoot on the bunk across from me. He folded his arm behind his head. Water dripped out of his hair onto the striped mattress.

"I'm supposed to take Paul to a soccer game tomorrow afternoon," he said.

"He'll understand," I said.

"That's not the way it works with kids. You're either there for them or you're not there."

He let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling. Somebody down the corridor shouted, "Lockup, five minutes."

"How do I get out of it, man?" he said.

"What?"

"I'm addicted. Big-time. On the spike. I got blood pressure you could cook an egg with."

"Maybe you should think about a treatment program."

"One of those thirty-day hospital jobs? What about Paul? What about my fucking wife?"

"What about her?"

"She never dresses him or plays with him. She won't take him shopping with her or to a show. But I kick her out, she'll sue for custody. That's her big edge. And, man, does she work it. I should have used that psycho Boggs to whack her out. Her and that prick over in Houston."

"Who?"

"She makes it with one of the Dio crowd from Houston. They meet in Miami. That's why she's always flying over there. Come on, man. You read a lot of books. What would you do?"

"You're trying to deal with all the monsters at the same time. Start with the addiction."

"I tried. Out at the V.A. I think I'm in it for the whole ride."

"There're ways out, Tony."

"Yeah, and you can scrub the stink out of shit, too. You came home okay, Dave. I blew it."

He turned on his side and faced the wall. When I spoke to him again, he did not answer.


The daytime noise level in any jail is grinding and ceaseless, particularly on a Saturday morning. I woke to the clanging of cell doors, shoes thudding on spiral metal stairs, cleaning crews scraping buckets across the cement floors, shower water drumming on the tile walls, radios tuned to a dozen different stations, someone cracking wind into a toilet bowl or roaring out a belch from the bottom of his bowels, inmates shouting from the windows to friends on the other side of the razor wire that bordered the street-a dirty, iron-tinged, cacophonous mix that echoed down the long concrete corridor with such an ear-numbing intensity that the individual voice was lost in it.

We lined up when the trusties wheeled in the steam carts loaded with grits, sausage, black coffee, and white bread, and later Tony and I played checkers on a homemade board in our cell. Then, because we had nothing else to do, we followed Jess down to the weight room at the end of the corridor. The weather was warm and sunny, so the solitary barred window high up on the wall was open, but the room reeked of the men clanking barbells up and down on the cement. They were stripped to the waist, or wore only their Jockey undershorts or cutoff sweatpants, their bodies laced with rivulets of sweat. They had bulging scrotums, necks like tree stumps, shoulders you could break a two-by-four across. Some of the Negroes were as black as paint, the Caucasians so white their skin had a shine to it. And they all seemed to contain a reservoir of rut and power and ruthless energy that made you shudder when you considered the fact that soon they would be back on the street.

Their tattoos were a marvel: spiders in purple webs stretched across the shoulder blades, serpents twined around biceps and forearms, beret-capped skulls, hearts impaled on knives, swastikas clutched in eagle claws, green dragons blowing fire across the loins, Confederate flags, lily-wrapped crucifixes, and the face of Christ with beads of blood upon his tortured brow.

For a moment we almost had trouble. A tall white man with a black goatee, wearing only a jockstrap and tennis shoes, sat against the wall and wiped his chest and stomach with a tattered gray towel. His eyes focused on my face and stayed there; then he said, "I know that guy. He's a cop."

The clanking of the barbells stopped. The room was absolutely quiet.

Then a big black man, with a nylon stocking crimped on his head, set down his weights and said to me, "What about it, Home?"

"I look like heat? Take a look at my charge sheet," I said.

"No, we don't look at nothing. This guy came in with me," Tony said. He looked down at the tall white man sitting on the floor with his knees splayed open. "You saying I brought a cop in with me?"

The man's eyes met Tony's, then became close-set and focused on nothing.

"He looked like a guy I used to see around," he said. "Some other guy."

The room remained quiet. I could hear traffic out on the street. Everyone was watching Tony.

"So don't worry about it," he said. He laughed, pulled the towel from the man's hand, and rubbed the man's head with it. "Hey, what's with this crazy guy? Y'all made him weird or is that the way they come in from Jump Street these days?"

The man grinned sheepishly; then everyone was laughing, clanging the barbells again, grabbing themselves, nodding to one another in admiration of Tony's intelligence and wit or whatever quality it was that allowed him to charm a snake back into a basket.

Tony walked past me out the door, his smile welded on his face, and nudged me in the side with his thumb. We walked side by side back toward our cell. He kept his face straight ahead. He whistled a disjointed tune and then said, "Do you know who that guy was?"

"No, I don't remember him."

"He did a snitch with an ice pick in Angola for twenty bucks. Let's play a lot of checkers today, hang around the cell, talk about books, you get my drift?"

"You're a piece of work, Tony."

"What I am is too old for this shit."


But our worries about the group in the weight room were unnecessary. Tony's lawyer had us sprung by noon, all charges dropped. Nate Baxter had not had probable cause to stop and search us, Tony's lawyer produced the permit for Tony's pistol, and the charge against me-interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty-was a manufactured one that the prosecutor's office wouldn't waste time on. The only loser was Jess, who had his.410 shotgun pistol confiscated.

We picked up the Lincoln at the car pound and Tony treated us to lunch at an outdoor café on St. Charles. It was a lovely fall day, seventy-five degrees, perhaps, with a soft wind out of the south that lifted the moss in the oak trees along the avenue. A Negro was selling snow cones, which people in New Orleans call snowballs, out of a white cart, with a canvas umbrella over it, on the esplanade. The dry fronds of a thick-trunked palm tree covered his white uniform with shifting patterns of etched lines. I heard the streetcar tracks begin to hum, then farther up the avenue I saw the street car wobbling down the esplanade in a smoky cone of light and shadow created by the canopy of oaks.

"When we were kids we used to put pennies on the tracks and flatten them out to the size of half-dollars," Tony said, wiping the tomato sauce from his shrimp off his mouth with a napkin. "They'd still be hot in your hand when you picked them up."

"That's not all you done when you were a kid," Jess said. "You remember when you and your cousins found them arms behind the Tulane medical school?" Jess looked at me. "That's right. They got this whole pile of arms that was supposed to be burned in the incinerator. Except Tony and his cousins put them on crushed ice in a beer cooler and got on the streetcar with them when all the coloreds were just getting off work. They waited until it was wall-to-wall people, then they hung a half dozen of these arms from the hand straps. People were streaming all over the car, trampling each other to get out the door, climbing out the windows at thirty miles an hour. One big fat guy crashed right on top of the snowball stand."

"Hey, don't tell Dave that stuff. He's going to think I'm a ghoul or something," Tony said.

"Tony used to flush M-80s down the commode at the Catholic school," Jess said. "See, the fire would burn down through the center of the fuse. They'd get way back in the plumbing before they'd explode, then anybody taking a dump would get douched with pot water."

People at the other tables turned and stared at us, openmouthed.

"You finished eating, Jess?" Tony said.

"I'm going to get some pecan pie," Jess said.

"How about bringing the car around? I've got to get home," Tony said.

"What'd I do this time?"

"Nothing, Jess. You're fine."

"You make me feel like I ought to be in a plastic bubble or something. I was just telling a story."

"It's okay, Jess. Just get the car," Tony said. Then after Jess was gone, he said to me, "What am I going to do? He's the one loyal guy I got. When it comes down to protecting me, you could bust a chair across his face and he wouldn't blink."

A few minutes later Jess came around the corner in the convertible and waited for us in front of the restaurant. Leaves blew under the wire wheels.

"You guys drop me by my apartment so I can get my truck," I said. "I'll be back out to your house a little later."

Tony grinned. "I bet you're off to see Bootsie. Tell her hello for me," he said.

His presumption that Bootsie should have been uppermost in my mind was right-but she wasn't. After they left me at my apartment on Ursulines I called Minos at the guesthouse.


"I'm sorry you had to spend a night in the bag. How was it?" he said.

"What do you think?" Through the window I could see my neighbor's bluetick dog urinating against a banana tree in the flower bed.

"Look, I've got some news about Boggs, some of which I don't understand. An informant told our Lafayette office that Boggs was in New Iberia two days ago. What would he be doing in New Iberia?"

"Where'd your snitch see him?"

"In a black neighborhood, out in the parish. Why would Boggs be in a black neighborhood?"

"Tony said Boggs told him he was going to blackmail a Negro woman who owned a hot-pillow joint. It had something to do with the murder of a redbone. I think the redbone was a migrant-labor contractor named Hipolyte Broussard. But Boggs told all this to Cardo before he ripped off the coke out on the salt. I don't know why he'd be interested in some minor-league blackmail when he's holding a half-million dollars' worth of cocaine."

"I don't either. Anyway, we have some other information, too. We've got some taps on the greaseballs over in Houston. It's not an open contract on Cardo anymore. Boggs has got the hit. It's fifty grand, a big-money whack even for these guys. But they want it to go down in the next week."

"Why the hurry?"

"They're afraid of him. Tony C. isn't one to take prisoners. One guy on the tape says it might have to be a slop shot. Have you heard that one before?"

"Yes."

"There's no innocent bystanders. His wife, his kid, anybody around him, they're all targets if necessary. Dave, if Boggs was in New Iberia, do you think it has something to do with you?"

"Why?"

"Who has more reason to want you off the board? It's turned around on him. I bet he gets up thinking about you in the morning."

"Maybe."

"Look, I want to push this stuff to a head. Can you get a wire into Cardo's house?"

"I think so."

"Either you can or you can't, Dave."

"I can try, Minos."

"Once again I'm getting a strong impression here of a lack of enthusiasm."

"What do you expect? I'm a hired Judas goat. You want me to tell you I like it?"

He paused a moment; then he said in an even voice, "We hear a big load of coke is going to hit town in three or four days. A lot of it is going to end up as crack in the welfare projects."

I looked out the window into the courtyard, where my neighbor was trying to leash his dog in the flower bed.

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said.

"You know the scene. A human life isn't worth a stick of chewing gum in those places. All thanks to Tony C. and his friends."

"How do you want to work it?"

"Find out his connection with the shipment. Then we'll wire you. All we need is a statement that he's in on the buy or the distribution."

"All right."

"You sound like you've got something else on your mind."

"It's Kim Dollinger. I think somebody's got her out there twisting in the wind."

"Why?"

"She was terrified when we got busted yesterday."

"Who's she afraid of?"

"Tony, Nate Baxter, you guys. How should I know?"

"It's not us. You want us to pick her up?"

"She's a hard-nosed girl. She won't cooperate. Baxter let her walk. Why would he let her walk when he rousted the rest of us? It was a good opportunity to squeeze her."

"From what I hear about this guy, he's about as complicated as an empty closet. Save yourself a lot of grief and don't make a mystery out of morons."

"If I only had that clarity of line, Minos."

"Work on it. It'll come with time."

After I hung up, I shaved, showered, and changed into a pair of clean gray slacks, a maroon shirt, combed my hair in the mirror, put a touch of Vaseline on the hard knot of stitches in my lip and head, and buffed my loafers.

I tried to keep my mind blank and not think about the care I was putting into my appearance.

Then I drove down St. Charles to South Carrollton and parked my pickup truck in front of the nineteenth-century building by the levee where Kim Dollinger lived.


Her apartment was on the second floor, and there was a hand-twist bell on the door. I had to ring it twice before she answered, a towel in her hand, her neck spotted with water. She wore jeans, tan sandals, and a white peasant blouse with a pink ribbon threaded through the top. The front of her blouse hung straight down from her breasts.

"Oh boy," she said.

"May I come in?"

She blotted the water on her neck and looked into my face.

"I'm getting ready to go to work," she said.

Her back window was open, and I smelled the draft that blew out into the hall.

"That's not all you've been doing," I said.

"Look-"

"Come on, I just got out of the bag. You can't offer me a cup of coffee?"

She stood back from the door for me to enter. I heard her close it behind me. Through the open window I could see the green of the levee and the wide, flat expanse of the Mississippi and the sandy bank and willow trees on the far side. The living room looked furnished from a secondhand store. Off to one side was a small kitchen with bright yellow linoleum. She sat down at a breakfast table that was located between the kitchen and living room. The legs of the table and chairs were chrome and had rusty scratches on them that looked like dismembered parts of insects.

"Kim, I'm not telling you what to do, but if you've already got the dragons after you, reefer just makes the problem a lot worse," I said.

She crumpled the towel on the tabletop. Her eyes looked out into space.

"What is it that you want?" she said.

"To talk with you on the square, with no bullshit."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"That's right."

"You wouldn't like to ball me while you're at it, would you?"

"Cut the badass act, Kim. It's a drag."

"I tried to talk with you. You wouldn't hear me."

"I can get you out of this."

"You?"

"That's right."

"A guy with a mouthful of stitches."

"I'm tired of being your dartboard. You'd better listen when a friend is talking to you."

She put the heel of her hand against her forehead. Her skin reddened from the pressure. She crossed her legs and breathed through her mouth. There were patches of color in her throat and cheeks. She made me think of someone who might have been wrapped in invisible rope.

"Have you ever been down?" I said.

"Have I what?" Her mouth hung open.

"Have you ever done time?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I said no."

"Have you been in custody?"

"You stop talking to me like this. Why are you saying these things to me?" Her voice started to break.

"Because somebody is turning the screws on you. I suspect it's Nate Baxter. He's a sonofabitch, Kim, and I know what he's capable of."

She pushed the heel of her hand along her hairline.

"What does Tony know?" she said.

"I couldn't guess. Do you sleep with him?" My eyes shifted away from her face, and I didn't want to hear her answer.

"I used to. When he wanted me to, anyway. He doesn't want to anymore. It's the speed. It's messed him up."

I glanced back at her face again. Her eyes met mine, then they looked away. There was a tingling in my throat, like a heated wire trembling against a nerve.

"Did somebody make you sleep with him?" I said.

"You don't have the right to ask me these things."

"If Nate Baxter is behind this, he's going to have the worst experience of his life."

"There's nothing you can do. It involves somebody else. Oh God, where's my stash?" she said.

She got up from the table, took a clear, sealed plastic bag of reefer from a kitchen drawer, sat back down, and began to roll a joint from a sheaf of ZigZag cigarette papers. Her eyes were narrowed with concentration, but her fingers began to shake and strands of reefer fell from both sides of the paper. Then she gave it up, rested her elbows on the table, and pressed a knuckle from each hand against her temples.

I picked up the plastic bag, splayed it open, dropped the papers inside, raked the loose strands of reefer into it, and walked down a short hallway to the bathroom.

"What are you doing?" she said.

I emptied the bag into the toilet and flushed it. Then I dropped the bag into a kitchen garbage sack. When I turned around she was standing a foot from me. Her hair hung on her forehead, and she had accidentally smeared her lipstick.

"Why did you do that?" she said.

"You don't need it."

"I don't need it?"

"No."

"Tony says it's all a cluster fuck."

"He's wrong."

Her eyes were green and moist and they looked directly into mine. I could hear the wetness in her throat when she swallowed. The top of her pink-ribboned peasant blouse was crooked on her shoulders.

"There's always a way out of trouble," I said. "You just have to trust your friends once in a while."

I touched her on the upper arm with my palm. I meant it in a protective and friendly way. Yes, I know that was the way I meant it. I could see the freckles on her shoulders, feel her breath on my face. She stepped close to me, and my arms were on her back, my hands lightly touching the coolness of her skin, the thickness of her hair. She rubbed her face under my chin, and I felt a shudder go through her body like tension leaving a metal spring.

Then she remained motionless in my arms, her breath small and regular against my chest. In the distance, I could see the hard, stiff outline of the Huey Long Bridge against a bank of purple rain clouds.

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