DR04 - A Morning for Flamingos

by James Lee Burke

  He cut the engine, drifted into me, then reached down and grabbed me by the back of the life jacket. His face was round and flushed red with windburn and the strain of lifting me.

  "What's happening, Streak?" Cletus said.

  I lay in the bottom of his boat, my skin numb and dead to the touch and wrinkled with water-soak. I could see the coastline, the tide breaking across the sandbar, and white cranes rising from a cypress swamp.

  You went out after me in this? I wanted to say. But I was breathless with cold and the words wouldn't come.

  "How you like civil service with the DEA?" he said above the engine's roar. "Those babies really know how to take care of you, don't they? Yes, indeedy, they do."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 9

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

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

  "What happened out there?" he said.

  I told him.

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

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

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

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

  "You got it."

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

  "Did you mention my name?"

  "Of course not."

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

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

  "You sound a little irritable this afternoon."

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

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

  "No."

  "What?"

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

  "I can't believe it."

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

  "You got the shrimper, didn't you?"

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

  "It all went for nothing?"

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

  "What about my boat?"

  "We'll see what we can do."

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

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

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

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

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

  "You made your point."

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

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

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

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

  "Down to the wire."

  "Are you all right?"

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

  "No. I mean are you all right?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "All right."

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

  "Okay, Clete."

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

  "I got your drift."

  "Did that pencil pusher call you yet?"

  "Minos?"

  "Yeah."

  "About ten minutes ago."

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

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

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

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

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

  He continued to study my face.

  "What are you thinking about?" he asked.

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

  "Who knew about it?"

  "Cardo… Fontenot… Lionel… obviously Boggs…"

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

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

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

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

  "What's her name?"

  "Bootsie Giacano."

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

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

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

  "Knock it off, Clete."

  He grinned and squinted at me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Don't tell me."

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

  "I'll let you know."

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

  "What do you mean?"

  "The dragon went away."

  "Something like that."

  "It's a rush, isn't it?"

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

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

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

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

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

  I was silent.

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

  "Can you come up here?"

  "Anytime for you, darlin'."

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

  "I'll drop by around nine."

  "Boots?" I said.

  "What?"

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

  "Yes?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "I know all about it."

  "How?"

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

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

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

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

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

  "Where is he?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Go on, Dave," he said.

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

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

  "I'd watch my back."

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I saw the pause come into his eyes.

  "No, I didn't know that," he said.

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

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

  "Maybe."

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

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

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

  "Yeah."

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

  "What?"

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

  "You can't sign me out."

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

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

  "Now wait a minute, Tony," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "That's right."