A Morning for Flamingos

CHAPTER 15

Tony had walked almost all the way back to his fishing camp when I slowed the truck abreast of him under a row of moss-hung oaks. It had stopped raining now, and out in the pasture the cows had broken out of their clumps and were grazing in the grass again. The hair on the back of Tony's head was singed the color of burnt copper. He glanced sideways at me, indifferently, and kept walking.

"Get in," I said.

He jumped over a puddle in front of him and brushed a wet branch out of his face. I let the truck idle slowly forward in first gear.

"Come on, Tony. Get in," I said.

"Is this a bust? If it is, do it by the numbers. I've got lawyers that'll eat your lunch."

I braked the truck at an angle in front of him and popped open the passenger door.

"Don't act like a sprout, Tony," I said. "I want to tell you something."

He paused, looked out over the fields, pinched his nose, then got in the truck and closed the door. His clothes smelled like smoke and ashes. A volunteer fire truck passed us and splashed a curtain of yellow water across my windshield. Tony watched the fire truck disappear down the road through the back window. Finally he said, "Jimmie Lee got away from you?"

"No."

"You popped him?"

"He drowned."

"Drowned?"

I told him what happened down in the engine room of the drill barge.

"Then I guess it's a red-letter day for you, Dave. You got to watch Jimmie Lee shuffle off with the hallelujah chorus, and you get to be the narc who made the case on Tony C."

"Is that the way you read it?"

"I told you once, everybody cuts a piece out of your ass one way or another. Except don't bank your promotion or your pay raise yet, Dave. What you've got here is entrapment. Also, I don't think you've got enough on that tape to get them real excited at the U.S. Attorney's office. You're DEA, right?"

"Indirectly."

"I'll put in a word for you. I'll tell them you really did your job well."

The road bent close to the river again, and up ahead I could see Tony's fish camp and the Lincoln convertible parked in the back under the trees. Smoke rose from the chimney and flattened in the salt breeze off the Gulf. I pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road and cut the engine.

I took Tony's.45 from the pocket of my fatigue jacket and handed it to him. He looked back at me strangely.

"Here's the lay of the land, Tony," I said. "I think you've got a big Purple Heart nailed up m the middle of your forehead. Everybody is supposed to feel you're the only guy who did bad time in Vietnam. You also give me the impression that somebody else is responsible for your addiction and getting you out of it. But the bottom line is you sell dope to people and they fuck up their lives with it."

"I think maybe it's you who's got the problem with conscience, Dave."

"You're wrong. As of now you're on your own. As far as I know, you died in that fire back there. I don't think a county medical examiner, particularly in a place like this, will ever sort out the bones and teeth in that hangar. If you disappear into Mexico with Paul and stay out of the business, I think the DEA will write you off. I doubt if your wife will be a problem, either, since she'll acquire almost everything you own."

He chewed on his lip and looked up the incline at the camp.

"You've got your plane, you've got Jess to fly it, you've got that fine little boy to take with you," I said. "I think if you make the right choice, Tony, you might be home free."

"They won't believe you."

"Maybe you inflate your importance. Twenty-four hours after you're off the board, somebody else will take your place. In a year nobody will be able to find your file."

He made pockets of air in his cheeks and switched them back and forth as though he were swishing water around in his mouth.

"It's a possibility, isn't it?" he said. He bit a hangnail off his thumb and removed it from his tongue. "Just pop through a hole in the dimension and leave a big question mark behind. That's not bad."

"Like you said to me the other day, it's always about money. Stay away from the money, and the Houston and Miami crowd will probably stay away from you."

"Maybe."

"But any way you cut it, it's adiós, Tony."

"My ranch is outside a little village called Zapopan. Maybe you'll get a postcard from there."

"No, I think your story ends here."

He pulled the clip from the handle of his.45, slid back the receiver, removed the round from the chamber, and inserted it in the top of the clip. He tapped the clip idly against the chrome-plated finish of the pistol, then put his hand on the door handle.

"I don't guess you're big on shaking hands," he said.

I rested my palm on the bottom of the steering wheel and looked straight ahead at the yellow road winding through the trees.

"Say good-bye to Paul for me," I said.

I heard him get out of the truck and close the door.

"Tony?" I said.

He looked back through the window.

"If I ever hear you're dealing dope again, we'll pick it up where we left off."

"No, I don't think so, Dave. I have a feeling your cop days are about over."

"Oh?"

He leaned down on the window jamb.

"Your heart gets in the way of your head," he said. "If you don't know that, the pencil pushers you work for will. They'll get rid of you, too. Maybe you won't accept any thanks from me, and maybe I won't even offer you any, but my little boy up there says thank you. You can wear that in your hat or stick it in your ear. So long, Dave."

He walked up the pine-needle-covered slope toward the back of the camp. He took his Marine Corps utility cap from his back pocket, slapped the soot off it against his trousers, and fitted it at an angle on his head. I drove slowly down the road past the camp, the truck lurching in the flooded potholes, and saw him open the screen door and smile at someone inside.

I came out of the trees and drove through a winter-green field that was filled with snowy egrets and blue herons feeding by a grassy pond. Ahead I could see the coast, the palm fronds whipping in the wind, and the waves cresting and blowing out on Lake Borgne and the Gulf. The air was cool and flecked with sunlight and smelled like salt and distant rain. And I realized that in the west the sun had broken through the gray seal of clouds, and left a rip in the sky like a yellow and purple rose.