A Morning for Flamingos

CHAPTER 12

She sat alone in the bedroom while I talked to two uniformed cops who had been called by the apartment owner. A black man from the city health department dipped the dog's remains out of the toilet with a fishnet, while my neighbors stared through the open front door of the apartment. I told the cops a second time that I had no idea who had done it.

One of them wrote on his clipboard. There were red marks on his nose where he had taken off his sunglasses, and his sky-blue shirt was stretched tightly across his muscular chest.

"You think maybe somebody just doesn't like you?" he asked.

"Could be," I said.

"You're not in a cult, are you?" He grinned at the corner of his mouth.

"No, I don't know much about cults."

He put his ballpoint pen in his shirt pocket.

"Well, there're a lot of spaced-out dopers around these days. Maybe that's all there was to it," he said. "I'd get some better locks, though."

"Thank y'all for coming out."

"Mr. Robicheaux, you say you used to be a police officer?"

"That's right."

"You never heard about a nailed-up frog before?"

I cleared my throat and looked away from his eyes.

"Maybe I heard something. It's a little vague."

He smiled to himself, then wrote out a number on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

"Here's the report number in case you or the owner needs it for an insurance claim. Call us if we can help you in any way," he said.

They left and closed the door behind them. There's a cop who won't have to write traffic tickets too long, I thought.

Back in the bedroom Bootsie sat on the side of my bed, her hands folded in her lap. Her cotton dress was covered with gray and pink flowers.

"I'm sorry you had to arrive in the middle of all this," I said.

"Dave, that officer was talking about a cult. Do you know people like that?"

"It wasn't done by cultists. He knew it, too."

"What?"

"I'm supposed to think I've got a gris-gris on me. You remember a Negro woman named Gros Mama Goula in New Iberia?"

"She ran a brothel?"

"That's the one. She'd like to shake up my cookie bag. She either sent some of her people over here to do this, or it was done by a guy named Jimmie Lee Boggs. But my guess is that the two of them are working together."

"I just don't understand."

"These are people who for one reason or another would like me to disappear. So they put on this gris-gris show. But whoever did this has probably spent some time in a southern prison. A frog with a nail through it means a guy had better jump or he's going to have a bad fate."

I saw her face becoming more and more clouded.

"Bootsie, these guys are dimwits. They're always looking for something new or clever to dress up their act. When they do some bullshit like this, it's because they're running scared."

"I've heard that name Boggs," she said. "I get the feeling he's taken very seriously."

"All right, he's got the contract on Tony C. He's also the guy who shot me last summer. But I think Jimmie Lee's scared. It's turned around on him."

"Dave, what in God's name are you doing? Why did you bring me here this morning?"

"I'm not sure, Boots."

"God, you're incredible."

"Maybe I don't think I'm doing right by you."

This time her eyes saw meaning in my face.

"I hurt you real bad a long time ago. I don't want to do it again," I said.

Her eyes kept looking up at me. I pulled up a chair and sat across from her.

"Maybe you have some regrets?" she said softly.

"I didn't say that."

"You love the past, Dave. You love Louisiana the way it used to be. It's changed. Forever. We are, too. Maybe you're discovering that." She smiled.

"I don't know. I don't learn anything very easily."

Her eyes went down in her lap, and she brushed her fingers over the fine hair on the back of her wrist.

"Dave, did you do something that bothers you?" she said.

"No."

"Are we talking about another woman?"

"I'm mixed up with a bunch of people I can't think straight about right now."

She was quiet for a moment; then she said, "Who is she?"

"I haven't been untrue to you." The words sounded hollow, marital, the banal end of something.

"Is she one of Tony's crowd?"

"I'm in a situation where I'm going to have to hurt some people. I don't feel good about it. I got mixed up in it because I was shot by Jimmie Lee Boggs. Now I'm at a place where I don't understand my own feelings."

"You're an undercover cop, aren't you?"

"I've gotten involved with people whom cops sometimes call lowlifes or geeks or greaseballs. Except I don't feel that way about all of them now, and I should. That's what it amounts to, Bootsie."

"Do you want it over between us?"

"I don't think it can ever be over between us."

"You shouldn't count on that," she said, and I felt my heart drop.

"Can you tell me why you were over at Baylor?" I said.

"Not today. No more today."

"You're going to close me out? You're not going to let me be your friend when you need one?"

"Do you love me or the past, Dave? Do you think I'm the past? Do I look like the past? Am I the summer of 'fifty-seven?"

Her eyes and her voice were kind, but I had no answer for her or myself, and the room was so quiet that I could hear the rustle of banana leaves outside the window.

Three hours later I was sitting at a redwood table by the side of Tony's tennis court while he hit balls at Jess Ornella on the opposite side of the net. Jess wore a red sweatsuit and blue boat shoes and clubbed at the balls as though he were under attack. Three dozen balls must have littered the clay court, most of them on his side.

"I tell you what, why don't you get us some iced tea?" Tony said.

"I told you I ain't any good at games," Jess said.

"You're doing good. Keep working at it. Your stroke's getting better all the time," Tony said. He sat down at the table with me, patting his neck and face with a towel, and watched Jess walk toward the house. "He looks like a hog on ice, but you ought to see him fly an airplane."

"Jess?"

"His old man was a crop duster during the Depression. Jess can thread a needle with anything that has wings on it. One time he flew us upside down under a power line."

Unconsciously I touched the stitches in my lip. They felt as tight and hard as wire.

"When are you getting them out?" he said.

"Tomorrow."

"Something on your mind, Dave?"

"I guess I was still thinking about my apartment."

"Don't go back there. Stay with me as long as you're in New Orleans. You don't need an apartment."

"I'm still trying to figure out Boggs, too."

"Why? You like trying to put yourself inside the head of a moron? Look, why do you think a guy like me is successful in this business? I'll tell you. A guy who can walk down the street and chew gum at the same time is king of the block. Take Jess there, and remember he's one of the few I trust, he thinks Peter Pan is the washbasin in a whorehouse."

"Boggs is smarter than you think."

"He's a psychopath. Look, the real badasses are in prison or the graveyard. If they're not there yet, they will be. About every two or three months I hear a rumor somebody's going to whack me out. And once in a while somebody tries. But I'm still hitting tennis balls. And a couple of other guys, guys who somebody wound up in Houston or Miami, Jess has driven down into Lafourche Parish and no telling what happened. So if you want into the life, Dave, you don't worry over it. Hey, come on, man, most people grow old and sit on the porch and listen to their livers rot."

"I've got another problem, too, Tony. My people back in Lafayette want a chance to get their money back. A half million is a lot to lose."

He picked up his racket cover and began pulling it over the head of his racket.

"They're not looking for a major buy," I said. "They just want to recover what they lost."

He zipped up the leather cover and rested the racket across his thighs.

"Clete says there's a major score about to go down in the projects. I'd like to get in on it," I said.

He nodded attentively, his eyes looking off into the trees.

"I hear you talking, Dave, but like I once said to you, I don't do business at my house." Then he glanced into my face.

"I respect that, Tony, but these guys back in Lafayette are turning some dials on me."

"Fuck 'em."

"I've got to live around there."

"Hey, give me a break. Do I take care of you or not?" His small mouth made that strange butterfly shape.

"I'm just telling you about my situation."

"All right, for God's sakes. We'll take a drive. You're worse than my wife."

A few minutes later we were in the Lincoln, driving across the twenty-four-mile causeway that spans Lake Pontchartrain, with Jess and the other bodyguards behind us in the Cadillac. The sun was high in the hard, blue sky, and the waves were green and capping in the wind. Tony drove with his arm on the window, a Marine Corps utility cap pulled down snugly to the level of his sunglasses. His gray and black ringlets whipped on his neck. He looked out at a long barge whose deck was loaded with industrial metal drums of some kind.

"We used to fish and swim in the lake when I was a kid," he said. "Now the lake's so polluted it's against the law to get in the water."

"New Orleans has changed a lot."

"All for the bad, all for the bad," he said.

"Can you tell me where we're going now?"

"A place I bet you've never seen. Maybe I'll show you my plane, too."

"Can we talk now?"

"You can talk, I'll listen," he said, and smiled at me from behind his glasses.

"These guys want to give me another fifty or sixty thou if I can buy into some quick action."

"So?"

"Can I get in on the score?"

"Dave, the score you're talking about is all going right into the projects. It involves a lot of colored dealers and some guys out in Metairie I don't like to mess with too much."

"You don't do business with the projects?"

"It's hot right now. Everybody's pissed because these kids are killing each other all over town and scaring off the tourists. Another thing, I never deliberately sold product to kids. I know they get hold of it, but I didn't sell it to them. Big fucking deal. But if you want me to connect you, I can do it."

"I'd appreciate it, Tony. I figure this is my last score, though. I'm not cut out for it."

"Like I am?" he said. His face was flat and expressionless when he looked at me.

"I didn't mean anything by that."

"Yeah, nobody does. I tell you what, Dave, go into Copeland's up on St. Charles some Wednesday night. Wednesday is yuppie night in New Orleans. These are people who wouldn't spit on an Italian who grew up in a funeral home. But they got crystal bowls full offtake on their coffee tables. They carry it in their compacts, they chop up lines when they ball each other. In my opinion a lot of them are degenerates. But what the fuck do I know? These are people with law degrees and M.B.A.s. I went to a fucking juco in Miami. You know why? Because it had the best mortuary school in the United States. Except I studied English and journalism. I was on the fucking college newspaper, man. Just before I joined the crotch."

"I'm not judging you, Tony."

"The fuck you're not," he said.

I didn't try to answer him again. He drove for almost a mile without speaking, his tan face as flat as a shingle, the wind puffing his flannel shirt, the sunlight clicking on his dark glasses. Then I saw him take a breath through his nose.

"I'm sorry," he said. "When you try to get off crank, it puts boards in your head."

"It's all right."

"Let's stop up here and buy some crabs. If I don't feed those guys behind us, they'll eat the leather out of the seats. You're not pissed?"

"No, of course not."

"You really want me to connect you?"

"It's what my people need."

"Maybe you should let those white-collar cocksuckers make their own score."

I had a feeling Clete would agree with him.

We ate outside Covington, then took a two-lane road toward Mississippi and the Pearl River country. Finally we turned onto a dirt road, crossed the river on a narrow bridge, and snaked along the river's edge through a thick woods. The water in the river was low, and the sides were steep and covered with brush and dried river trash.

"It's weird-looking country, isn't it?" Tony said. "Have you ever been around here before?"

"No, not really. Just on the main highway," I said.

But I could never hear the name of the Pearl River without remembering the lynchings that took place in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s and the bodies that had been dredged out of the Peal with steel grappling hooks. "Why do you keep your plane over here?"

"A beaver's always got a back door," he said. "Besides, nobody over here pays any attention to me."

We wound our way down toward the coast, splashing yellow water out of the puddles in the road. Then the pines thinned and I could see the river again. It was wider here, and the water was higher, and sunk at an angle on the near bank was an old seismographic drill barge. It was orange with rust, and its deck and rails and four hydraulic pilings were strung with gray webs of dried algae.

"What are you looking at?" Tony said.

"I used to work on a drill barge like that. Back in the fifties," I said. "They were called doodlebug rigs because they moved from drill hole to drill hole."

"Huh," he said, not really interested.

I turned and looked at the drill barge again. All the glass was broken out of the iron pilothouse, and leaves drifted from the tree branches through the windows.

"You want to stop and take a look?" Tony said.

"No."

"We got plenty of time."

"No, that's all right."

"It makes you remember your youth or something?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said.

But that wasn't it. The drill barge disturbed me, as though I were looking at something from my future rather than my past.

"You see that hangar and airstrip?" Tony said.

The woods ended, and up ahead was a cow pasture with a mowed area through the center of it, and a solitary tin hangar with closed doors and a wind sock on the roof.

"That's where you keep your plane?" I said.

"No, I keep my plane a mile down the road. Just remember this place."

"What for?"

"Just remember it, that's all."

"All right."

We drove past the pasture and clumps of cows grazing among the egrets, then entered a pine and hack-berry woods again. At the end of the shaded road I could see more sunny pastureland.

"I want to tell you something, something I haven't been honest about. Then I want to ask you a question," Tony said.

"Go ahead."

"I got a bad feeling, the kind you used to get sometimes in 'Nam. You know what I mean? Like maybe it was really going to happen this time, you were riding back on the dustoff in a body bag. I got that feeling now."

"It's the withdrawal from the speed."

"No, this is different. I feel like it's five minutes to twelve and my clock's ticking."

"They didn't get you over there, did they? Blow it off. Guys like us have a long way to run."

"Look, like I told you, the only guy working for me I can trust is Jess. But Jess couldn't think his way through wet Kleenex. So I'm going to ask you, if I get clipped, will you look after Paul, make sure that bitch takes care of him, keeps him in good schools, buys him everything he needs?"

"I appreciate the compliment, but-"

"Fuck the compliment. I want an answer."

"Start thinking about a divorce, Tony, and get these other thoughts out of your head."

"Yes or no?"

He looked at me, one hand tight on the steering wheel, and we bounced through a deep puddle that splashed water across the windshield.

"I'd do my best for him," I said.

"I know you will. You're my main man. Right?" And he pointed one finger at me and cocked his thumb, as though he were aiming a pistol, and popped his mouth with his tongue. Then he laughed loudly.

Late that afternoon I told Tony I was going to have the oil in my truck changed. I drove to a filling station by the shopping center and used the outside pay phone while the attendant put my truck on the rack. I caught Minos at his office and told him of the trip over to Mississippi.

"When do you think this shipment's coming in?" he said:

"Any day."

"All right, we'll get the money in the bus locker for you. Now, let's talk about getting you wired."

"Minos, I think there might be a problem here with entrapment. This isn't Tony's deal. I'm leading him into it."

"Anywhere there's dope in Orleans or Jefferson Parish, he's getting a cut out of it."

"I don't think that's true. He talked about some guys in Metairie running this deal."

"I don't care what he says. Cardo's dirty when he gets up in the morning. Stop pretending otherwise. Look, if somebody hollers later about entrapment, that's our problem, not yours."

"I think we're shaving the dice."

"It's not entrapment if this guy has foreknowledge of a narcotics buy and he takes you into it." He paused to let the exasperation go out of his voice. "You've only got one thing to worry about, Dave-getting close to him with a wire. Now, we can do it two ways, with a microphone or a miniaturized tape recorder."

"He's not going to do business in the house."

"Which do you want to use?"

"How far can the microphone send?"

"Under the best conditions, without electronic interference or buildings in the way, maybe up to a quarter of a mile."

"I think I'll be better off with the recorder. That way we won't have to worry about reception problems with the tail."

"How do you want to pick it up?" he said.

"I have to go to the doctor's at ten tomorrow morning to get my stitches out. Have somebody at his office." I gave him the address.

"Then that's about it for right now," he said.

"Minos, there's one other thing that bothers me. Maybe I imagine it."

"What?"

"Sometimes it's like he knows I'm still a cop. Like maybe he wants to take a fall."

"Who knows? A guy who shoots speed into his arm made a contract to destroy himself a long time ago. They all flame out one way or another. Who cares how they do it? Hang loose," he said, and hung up.

That night I was watching television on sun porch with Tony and Paul when the phone rang in the kitchen and the Negro houseman told me that I had a call. I picked the receiver up off the Formica counter. sat down on a stool, and put it to my ear. The counter gave onto the porch, and I could see Tony's and Paul's faces in the illumination of the television screen.

"Hello," I said.

"Dave, it's Clete. Are you where you can talk?"

"We're watching television."

"I dig you. Just listen, then. That redheaded broad just called me at the club. From what I get, somebody beat the shit out of her. She wants to see you, but she doesn't want Cardo to know about it."

"Uh-huh," I said.

"She wouldn't tell me much. She sounds like one scared broad. She's staying at a friend's place out in Metairie. I've got the address."

"I see."

"Cardo's right there?"

"That's right."

"Look, pick me up at the bar, and we'll drive out there tonight. Tell Tony you're lending me some money, I'm having trouble meeting the vig with one of his shylocks. He'll buy that. I owe those fuckers five large."

"All right, Cletus. I'll see what I can do."

I hung up the receiver and sat back down in front of the television set. I brushed at my pants leg distractedly.

"What's the trouble?" Tony said.

"Oh, nothing, really. Clete's having some money problems. He gets a little strung out sometimes. I guess I'd better go see him. Would it bother you if I came in late?"

"No, here's the house key. Just tell the guys at the gate you'll be back late so they won't think it's somebody else, you know what I mean?"

"I'll be quiet coming in."

"Sure, don't worry about it. Somebody's squeezing your friend?"

"A little problem with the vigorish."

"Tell him to come see me about it. Maybe I can work it out."

"That's good of you, Tony."

It took me a half hour to drive to the bar on Decatur. Clete was waiting for me under the colonnade. It had started to mist, and he wore a brown raincoat over his sports jacket. I pulled to the curb, and he jumped in the truck. He read me the address in Metairie off a folded piece of paper, and I headed out of the Quarter toward Interstate 10.

"Who beat her up?" I said.

"She wouldn't say."

"Why didn't she want Tony to know about it?"

"I didn't ask her. Dave, are you making it with her?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I told you no."

"You didn't have just one flop in the hay with her?"

"You heard what I said, Clete."

"Yeah, well, usually broads like that get remodeled after they let the wrong guy in the bread box. She called for you, not Cardo. What should I conclude on that, Streak? Or am I just full of shit?"

"I didn't talk to her. I don't know what happened. And you're pissing me off."

We were silent in the cab of the truck. It started to rain harder, and I turned on the windshield wipers.

"I'm just trying to help, believe it or not," he said.

"I know that, Clete."

"I'm backing your play, and I don't care if I get paid for it or not."

"What do you mean?" I looked over at him. Rainy patterns of light ran down his face.

"I didn't get any bucks from the DEA this week. I called Dautrieve, and he said I was terminated."

"Are you kidding?"

"Wait a minute, don't get heated up. He said some other guys made the decision. He didn't have any control over it."

"He should have told me."

"Maybe he didn't have a chance to. Fuck it. Look, there's our exit up there. Welcome to Metairie, the only town in the United States to elect a Ku Klux Klansman and American Nazi as its state representative. What a depressing shithole. This place makes you think maybe the white race ought to be picking the cotton."

"I've got to have a talk with Minos."

"Talk all you want to. When you deal with the feds, you're dealing with people whose thought patterns are printed on computer chips. Besides, they all smell like mouthwash. Did you ever trust a guy who smells like mouthwash?"

She opened the apartment door on the night chain. She had on a short-sleeved terry cloth robe. Her right eye was a purple knot, and there was still a crust of dried blood in one nostril. She slipped the chain loose and opened the door wide. Her arms were streaked with yellow and purple bruises, the kind that a man's clenched hand leaves. I could smell the Mentholatum that she had smeared on her skin. She closed the door and locked it again as soon as we were inside.

"I thought maybe you wouldn't come," she said.

"Why?" I said.

"I don't know, it was just what I thought." She talked carefully, as though the inside of her mouth were hurt. "There's some beer and pop in the refrigerator if you want some."

"Who did it, Kim?" I said.

"Jimmie Lee Boggs."

"When?"

"This morning. Just after I got up. I opened the door to get the newspaper and he hit me in the face and knocked me back inside the room. I never had anybody hit me like that. I didn't believe anyone could hit that hard."

I could hear the humiliation in her voice, see the shame in her face. I had seen the same look of debasement in victims of violence many times, and it was almost impossible to convince them that they were not deserving of their fate. I could feel Clete's awkwardness next to me.

"I think I'll take that beer," he said, walking to the refrigerator. "Then I'll just step out here on the balcony and have a cigarette."

He slid open the glass doors that gave onto a small balcony with a barbecue grill on it, then closed them behind him and looked out over a lighted, weed-filled lake that was dented with rain.

She sat on the couch with her hands in her lap and her head bowed.

"Why didn't you think I'd come?" I asked again.

"Because you know I'm a snitch."

"What else?"

Her eyes were averted. She looked small sitting on the couch. I sat down next to her. She turned her face up, then looked away again.

"What else, Kim?"

"Because you know I betrayed you. I told Lieutenant Baxter about the buy down at Cocodrie. That's why Jimmie Lee Boggs came after me. He said he figured it was either you or me who dropped the dime on him. He beat me all over the apartment. Then he twisted a towel in my mouth and filled up the sink and held my head under the water until I almost passed out. He kept saying, 'Gargle time, beautiful. Rinse out your mouth, now. Think about the canary I'm gonna stuff in it.' He would have killed me if the landlady hadn't started banging on the door for the rent."

She glanced sideways at my face.

"Why were you snitching for Nate Baxter?"

"My brother's a groom at the Fairgrounds. Lieutenant Baxter has him in jail for possession. He says he can upgrade the charge to conspiracy to distribute, and Albert-that's my brother-will get fifteen years in Angola."

"Baxter put you inside Tony's crowd?"

"I already had the job at the club. All I had to do was become available."

"Available?" I said.

"I said to Baxter, 'What do you mean, exactly?' He says, 'You've got a piece of equipment that'll get you anything you want.' He looks across his desk, then he goes. "That's big-picture clear, isn't it? Talk it over with your brother. Let me know what you decide. It doesn't matter to me, hon, one way or another.'"

"You should have reported him, Kim."

"Great. I work in a skin joint run by the Mafia, my brother's a druggie in custody, and I'm going to report a Vice lieutenant? Look, it doesn't matter what he said. I did what he wanted. I told him everything Tony was doing, I told him about you, I'm to blame for what happened down at Cocodrie."

"You tried to warn me. Give yourself a little credit."

"Are you going to tell Tony?"

"No. But as of tonight you're out of the life, Kim. You don't go back to that job, or back to your apartment, or out to Tony's. I also advise you to stay away from Nate Baxter. He's a liar and a coward and a bully. Also, he doesn't have the power to upgrade your brother's charges. That comes out of the prosecutor's office. Believe me, your brother will be better off taking his own chances."

She took a Kleenex out of her robe and touched one nostril with it. Her face had no makeup on it, and it looked shiny and white where it wasn't bruised.

"I don't know what to do," she said. "I only have a little money. I have to have a job."

"Somebody's going to take care of you. I guarantee it."

She put the Kleenex away and played with her fingernails.

"I have to ask you something," she said.

"Yes?"

"It's not a very appropriate question, I guess, but there's no chance, is there? Not now."

"Of what?" I said, although I already knew the answer.

"What I mean is, it's like when people do something to one another, or maybe to themselves, something shameful, it kills what might have been between them, doesn't it?"

"I don't know, Kim."

"Yes, you do. It's why my brother Albert is the way he is. Years ago he had a wife and a little girl. Then one night he got drunk at a party and slept with another woman. So he had all this Catholic guilt about what he'd done, and rather than blow it off, he got his wife drunk and talked her into getting into the sack with another guy. All he got out of it was the knowledge that he couldn't love himself anymore, and so he doesn't think anybody else can, either."

"I wouldn't try to figure it all out now, Kim."

"Tony's right. We're the cluster fuck. The human race is."

"Cynics and nihilists are two bits a bagful," I said. "Don't let them sell you that same old tired shuck. Listen, a man named Minos Dautrieve is going to contact you. He's an old friend with the DEA, so trust him. We're going to take care of you."

"I was right, then. You're still a cop."

"Who cares? The only thing that matters here is that you're out of the life. We're clear on that, aren't we?"

"Yes."

I put my hand on her forearm.

"Kim, you stood up for your brother," I said. "Everything you did took courage. Most people aren't that brave. I think you're one special lady."

She looked up at me. Her unswollen eye glimmered softly.

"Really?" she said.

"You bet. I've had some good people cover my back, like Cletus out there, but I'd put my money on you anytime."

She smiled, and her free hand touched the backs of my fingers.

It was still raining when we left the apartment building and got back inside my truck.

"Your face looks like a thunderstorm," Clete said.

"Nate Baxter," I said.

"She was working for him?"

"Yep."

"He's the guy mommies warned them about. I always had the feeling that if we ever had a Third Reich here, you might see Nate manning the ovens."

"There's a bar up here on the corner. I want to stop and use the phone."

"You're not going after Baxter?"

"Not now. But he's not going to get away with this."

"Hmm," Clete said, grinning in the dashboard light, his eyebrows flipping up and down like Groucho Marx's.

We went inside the corner bar, and Clete ordered a drink while I called Minos at his guesthouse from a phone booth next to a pinball machine. I told him about Kim, the beating she had taken from Jimmie Lee Boggs, the fact that she was an informant for Nate Baxter.

"Can you get her into a safe house?" I said.

"If she wants it."

"Tomorrow morning."

"No problem."

"But I've got one. Why did you guys cut Cletus from the payroll?"

"I was going to tell you about it. It just happened today. I didn't have any say in it."

"We had a deal."

"I don't control everything here."

"He saved my life out on the salt. I didn't see any DEA guys out there."

"I'm sorry about it, Dave. I'm a federal employee. I'm one guy among several in this office. You need to understand that."

"I think it's a rotten fucking way to treat somebody."

"Maybe it is."

"I think that's a facile answer, too."

"I can't do anything about it."

"Tell your office mates Clete has more integrity in the parings of his fingernails than a lot of federal agents have in their whole careers."

"Drop by and tell them yourself. I'm not up to a harangue tonight. It's always easy to throw baboon shit through the fan when somebody else has to clean it up. We'll pick up the girl in the morning, and we'll get the tape recorder to you at your doctor's office. Good night, Dave."

He hung up the receiver, and I could hear the pinball machine pinging through the plywood wall of the phone booth. Outside the window, the mist and blowing rain looked like cotton candy in the pink glow of the neon bar sign.