DR04 - A Morning for Flamingos

by James Lee Burke

  He hung up the phone.

  That night I wanted to take Bootsie out for supper, but she had to work late at her office, and when she finally finished it was after ten o'clock. So I read a book in bed and went to sleep sometime after midnight with the light on and a pillow over my head.

  The twilight is purple and the willow trees along the banks of the Mississippi are filled with fireflies when they take the black kid out of the van and walk him inside the Red Hat House in a waist chain. His hair has been shaved down to the scalp and his ears look abnormally large on the sides of his head. The wind is blowing off the river, ruffling the corn and stalks of sugarcane in the fields, but his face is dripping with sweat as though he's been locked inside an iron box. He smokes an unfiltered cigarette without being able to take it from his lips, because his hands are manacled at his sides. Before they go inside the squat, off-white concrete building, a gun-bull takes the cigarette out of the boy's mouth and flips it into a pool of rainwater, where it is suddenly extinguished.

  Inside, I sit on one of the wood benches with the other witnesses—television and newspaper reporters, a medical examiner, a Negro preacher, and the parents of the girl the convict shot to death in a filling station robbery. They're Cajuns from New Iberia. They sit rigidly and without expression, their eyes never quite focusing on the boy while he is being strapped arm and leg to the electric chair. The woman keeps twisting a handkerchief in her fingers; finally, her husband wipes his hand across his mouth and puts a cigarette between his lips, but he looks at the gun-bull and doesn't light it. Through the barred window the tip of the setting sun is crimson above the green line of willow trees on the river.

  Then suddenly the boy begins fighting. It's the moment that no one wants, that embarrasses and shames. His terror has eaten through the Thorazine he's been fed all day, and he gets afoot loose and kicks wildly at a guard. But the guard is a professional and knows how to grab the ankle and calf and use his weight to press the leg firmly back against the oak chair and buckle the leather strap quickly across the shinbone.

  The heat and humidity inside the room are almost unbearable. I can smell my own odor and the sweat in the clothes of the people around me. The mother of the murdered girl is looking at the floor now with one white knuckle pressed against her teeth. No one speaks, and I hear the boy's breath sucking in and out of his throat. His eyes are bloodshot and wide, his mouth quivering, and his neck so swollen with fear and blood that it looks as rigid as afire hydrant. Before the cloth hood and metal skullcap go down over his head he stares straight into my face. An unanswered expectation bulges from his eyes.

  I nailed him in New Orleans, busted him in a Negro hot-pillow joint off Magazine, took a .32 automatic and a straight razor off him and dropped them in a toilet bowl while a half dozen of his friends watched, threatened, and finally did nothing. Later I escorted him back to Iberia Parish for trial. For some reason he has asked me to be here in the Red Hat House. I think he is a borderline psychotic or retarded, or perhaps he has simply melted down his head with cocaine. But I'm convinced that in these last few moments he believes I can wave a wand over his circle of torment, pop the straps and buckles loose from his body, and lead him back outside into the wind, the ruffling sugarcane, the smell of distant rain.

  When the voltage hits him his body leaps against the straps, stiffens, trembles violently with a life of its own, like that of a man having a seizure. A curl of smoke rises from under the facecloth. They hit him again, and we can hear the leather straining against the oak arms and legs of the chair. The smell is like the electric scorch of a streetcar, like the smell of hair burning in a barbershop trash barrel. A newsman next to me puts his handkerchief in his mouth and begins gagging.

  Later I'm in a bar one mile down the road from Angola Penitentiary. The bar is in a remote and thickly wooded area, and the few people who drink in there either work at the penitentiary or in a piney-woods sawmill nearby. It's a joyless place where personal and economic failure and institutional cruelty are not made embarrassing by comparisons with the outside world. The light in the bar is hard and yellow, the wood floor scorched with cigarette and cigar burns.

  Dry lightning leaps outside the window and turns the oak trees white. I order a schooner of Jax and a shot of Jim Beam. I lower the jigger into the schooner, release it, and watch it slide down the side of the glass to the bottom. The sour mash rises in a cloud and turns the beer from gold to amber, and I cup the schooner with my fingers and drink it empty with one long swallow.

  "You were up at the Red Hat tonight?" the bartender asks. He's a barrel-chested man, with gray hair curling over his shirt lapels. A blue chain is tattooed around his thick neck.

  "Yes."

  "What's a guy think in those last few seconds?"

  "He begs."

  "I wouldn't do that. Would you?"

  I don't answer.

  "Would you?" he says again.

  I tell him to hit me again. He refills my schooner and pours another shot of Beam on the side.

  I empty the jigger into the beer and raise the schooner to my mouth. In the bar mirror the cloud of whiskey floating in beer is the color of blood that has dried in the sun, that has been burned with an electric arc. I can feel the glass begin to boil in my hands. Lightning explodes in the shell parking lot outside, illuminating the battered cars and pickup trucks and racist bumper stickers. The air is filled with a wet sulfurous smell; my ears ring with a sound that is like a scream muffled under a black cloth.

  It was two in the morning when I awoke from the dream and sat listlessly on the side of the bed. What did the dream mean? Was it simply a replay of the electrocution that I had in fact witnessed when I was a newly promoted detective with the New Orleans Police Department? Old timers at AA would probably say it had to do with fear, which they believe is the cause of all the problems of alcoholics. Fear of mortality, fear that we'll drink again, fear of the self's dark potential. And for an alcoholic, fear is the acronym for Fuck Everything And Run. Clete had had his hand on it. I had loved bars and bust-head whiskey with the adoration and simple trust of a man kneeling before a votive shrine. That kind of emotional faith and addiction dies no less easily than one's religion.

  The phone rang at one the next afternoon. It was Kim Dollinger.

  "I want to talk to you," she said.

  "Go ahead."

  "No, come down to your buddy's place. I'll buy you a drink."

  "What is it you want to tell me?"

  "What's the matter, your social calendar all full?"

  "No, I just—"

  "Then come on over, hotshot."

  "I'm not up to nicknames today. My name is Dave. To tell you the truth, Kim, you sound like you got started a little early today."

  "Then buy me a cup of coffee. You have that paternal quality. Are you coming or not?"

  Ten minutes later I was at Clete's Club. Clete and his black helper were filling the beer coolers, and she was at the far end of the bar. She wore black stockings, a denim skirt, and a sleeveless orange sweater, and she had had her hair cut so that it was short and thick on her pale neck.

  "I want to tell you something before you leave," Clete said to me as I passed him.

  "What is it?"

  "Later, noble mon."

  I sat on the stool next to Kim. She had a gin gimlet wrapped in a napkin in front of her.

  "You want one?" she asked.

  "No, thanks."

  "You don't go to a whorehouse to play the jukebox, do you?"

  "I joined the Dr Pepper crowd a few years ago."

  "Too much. You want to be in the candy business, but you don't touch the juice?"

  "How about holding it down?"

  "You sure you're not just a big put-on?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think somebody shook up your puzzle box, that's what I mean."

  "How about I buy you some gumbo?"

  "I think you're weird. Do people in the bayou country grow up weird and thin
k they can make big money in the city dealing with somebody like Ray Fontenot? Are you that dumb?"

  "What is it you want to tell me, Kim?"

  "I don't know what I want to tell you." She looked away into space. The green and purple neon tubing on the bar mirror glowed on her face. "You don't listen to people. Back there where you come from, don't you have something better going than this stuff in New Orleans? You want to risk it for a score with a bunch of dipshits who wouldn't take a leak on you if you were burning?"

  "Why all this concern for me?"

  "Because you didn't try to put moves on me. Because there're things about you that are nice. Also, because I think you're a fish."

  "I look like a fish?"

  "I know you're a fish, hon."

  She finished her gimlet and signaled the black barman for another. He took her glass away and filled a fresh one from the blender. The color in her green eyes deepened when she sipped from the glass.

  "Is there something I should know, Kim?" I asked.

  "You're a big boy. Make up your own mind. Look at the flamingos."

  "What?"

  "Painted on the edge of the mirror. The pink flamingos. When I was a little girl we lived in Miami. My father was the guy who took care of the flamingos at the Hialeah racetrack. Before the seventh race he'd chase them with a broom in the center ground and make them fly high above the stands. That was his job. He thought it was a real important job."

  She drank again from her glass and closed and opened her eyes slowly. Her mouth was bright red.

  "I see," I said.

  "One morning he took me to work with him and told me to sit on this wood bench by the finish line while he picked up paper from the track with a stick that had a nail in it. But I wandered out in the center ground and started feeding the flamingos. There was a bucket of ground-up shrimp by the lake, and I was throwing handfuls of it at these big, beautiful pink birds. I didn't see or hear him come up behind me. My hair was long then, and he twisted it in his hand and jerked it against my scalp like you'd snap a rope. He pulled me back to the bench and told me if I cried any more I'd get it again when I got home.

  "Then this horse trainer walked up and shook his finger at my father and said, 'Don't you hurt that little girl, Bill. She didn't mean no harm.' He picked me up in his arms like my father wasn't there and carried me to his car. 'She don't belong out here. I'm going to take her to the zoo. You go on about your work,' he said. 'I'll bring her back to your trailer later. Don't be giving me any trouble about it, either, Bill.'

  "He drove me down to Crandon Park to see the flamingos. He said my father wouldn't hurt me anymore, not as long as he was around. Then he bought me some ice cream and parked the car in some palmettos and sat me in his lap. Then he unbuttoned my blouse. I've always thought of it as my morning for flamingos."

  "That's a bad story, Kim."

  "You learn early or you learn late. What difference does it make?"

  "Are you really that hard?"

  "No, I just like hanging around people like Ray and Lionel and the raghead for kicks. You'll see. It's a great life."

  She finished her drink, went to the women's room, and came back. I could smell mints on her breath. The Negro barman started to pour her another gimlet from the blender but she shook her head negatively. Somebody had put an old recording of "Please Don't Leave Me" by Fats Domino on the jukebox.

  "Dance with me," she said.

  It was dark and the vinyl booths were empty at the back of the dance floor. She felt light and small in my arms, and her head rested against my chest. I felt her hair touch my cheek.

  "Look, Kim, let me buy you some gumbo at the Golden Star," I said.

  She didn't answer. I could feel her stomach and breasts against me, and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

  "Hey," I said, and looked at her and smiled. "I'm an over-the-hill guy who doesn't deserve the kindness of a pretty young woman."

  "Tony lets me use his beach house in Biloxi. Come with me there today."

  "It sounds like a good way to end up in an oil barrel."

  "He won't hurt you. He likes you. I don't think Tony's going to be around much longer, anyway."

  "Why not?"

  "People in Miami and Houston want him out of the way. He keeps breaking all their rules. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. Will you come with me?"

  "I'm involved, Kim. You're sure a big temptation, though."

  Her feet stopped moving and her hand rested on my arm. She looked out at the light from the opened front door. A lock of her hair hung down on one eyebrow. Her face had the same wan expression on it that I had seen when she had been staring out at Tony Cardo's empty tennis court. Then she touched my throat with her fingers.

  "So long, hotcakes. Don't think too bad of me," she said.

  She left me on the dance floor, picked up her purse from the bar, and walked through the brilliant square of light at the front onto Decatur Street. Clete parted the window blinds with his fingers and squinted out onto the street.

  "Yep, there he goes," he said.

  "Who?"

  "Nate Baxter, my man."

  "Nate Baxter?"

  "Yeah, I didn't think you'd forget him. The one genuine sonofabitch from the First District. I saw him watching her from under the colonnade across the street when she came in. A car just picked him up when she left."

  "Why's a guy from Internal Affairs interested in Kim Dollinger?"

  "He's not in Internal Affairs anymore. He's Vice. The perfect guy for it, too. A prick from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. What's going on, Dave?"

  "I don't know."

  "Some sting. Half the city of New Orleans seems to be in on it. Listen, get out of that gig at Cocodrie. I've got a real bad feeling on this one."

  "Those are the ones you skate through. You buy it when you've got your pot off and you're reading a newspaper. You know that." I winked at him.

  "Save the Little Orphan Annie routine for somebody else, Streak. When my ovaries start tingling, I listen to them. Anytime you see that buttwipe Baxter, it's bad news. You can count on it."

  Back at the apartment I called the commercial dock at Cocodrie to check on my jugboat, then called Minos at his office to confirm the pickup of the half million.

  "Our special-delivery man will be there with your bus locker key in about two hours," he said. "Did you know a half-million dollars in hundred-dollar bills weighs exactly eleven pounds?"

  "No, I didn't know that."

  "Don't drop it overboard. As I mentioned before, some of my colleagues are a little anxious about this one."

  "I'm tired of hearing about your colleagues' problems."

  "Your voice sounds funny."

  "I've been doing push-ups. I'm still out of breath."

  "Yeah?"

  "Sure. I'm all right."

  "When I was undercover I'd wake up with my heart racing. I'd smoke a pack of cigarettes before noon sometimes."

  "My ears keep popping, like I've been on an airplane."

  "Dave, you can throw it in anytime you want, and nobody will think less of you for it."

  "I'm copacetic. Don't sweat it."

  "Remember, we're never going to be too far away."

  Then I told him about Nate Baxter's surveillance of Kim Dollinger.

  "They're interested in Cardo, too," he said. "They're probably keeping some strings on his entourage."

  "Why her? She's no dealer."

  "I'll check. They're supposed to coordinate with us, anyway. Have you got some kind of personal involvement with this guy Baxter?"

  "He tried to get me fired from the department when he was in Internal Affairs."

  "So?"

  "It didn't end there. I split his lip in the squad room, in front of about twenty-five cops."

  "Dave, you never disappoint me," he said.

  I rode the streetcar down St. Charles to Bootsie's house that evening, and the wind through the open window was cool and smelled of old bri
ck, wet moss, and moldy pecan husks. But I couldn't concentrate on anything except my anxieties about the buy out on the salt and my questions, which I could not successfully bury, about Bootsie's involvement with the mob. How did an intelligent and educated woman from a small Bayou Teche town like New Iberia marry a member of the Giacano family? I tried to imagine what he must have looked like. Most of the Giacanos were built like piano movers, notorious for their animal energies, their enormous appetites and bovine behavior in restaurants, their emotionalism and violence. Their weddings and funerals were covered by local television stations with the same sense of mirth and expectation that people might have when visiting an amusement park.

  The image just wouldn't fit.

  But the image of her first husband sure did. He was a helicopter and pontoon plane pilot for Sinclair Oil Company, and I remembered him most for his suntanned, blond good looks and the confident, unblinking light in his blue eyes. In fact, I could never quite forget the night I met him, at a dance at the Frederic Hotel in New Iberia, right after I had been released from an army hospital. I was on a cane then. It was 1965, when the war was just heating up for other people, and it felt funny to go to a dance by myself and to discover that I was alone in more ways than one, that I was already used up and discarded by a war that waited in a vague piece of neocolonial geography for other boys whose French names could have belonged to Legionnaires.

  Then through the potted palm fronds and marble columns, I saw her in a pink organdy dress, dancing with him in her stocking feet. Her face was flushed from the champagne punch, and strands of her hair stuck damply to her skin like wisps of honey. They walked toward the punch table, where I was standing, and I saw her gaze focusing on me as though I had stepped unexpectedly off a bus into the middle of her life. Then I realized she was drunk.

  She started blowing air up into her face to get her hair out of her eyes.

  "Well!" she said.

  "Hello, Boots," I said.

  "Well!" she repeated, and blew a web of hair out of her eyes again. "John, this is Dave Robicheaux. It looks like Dave has come back to visit New Iberia. What a wonderful event. Maybe he can come to our wedding."