A Morning for Flamingos

by James Lee Burke

  “Better ease up on the fluids.”

  “This stuff’s like Kool-Aid compared to what my system’s used to. What you’re looking at, Dave, is a piece of cracked ceramic. Those guys are weirding me out, too. We’re in my real estate office out by Chalmette, and I’m talking to my salespeople at a meet while the guys are milling around out there by the front desks. These salespeople are mostly middle-class broads who pretend they don’t know what other kinds of businesses I’m in. So we end the meet and walk out to the front door and everybody is bouncy and laughing until they see the guys comparing different kinds of rubbers they bought at some sex shop. It’s like my life is part of a Marx Brothers comedy. Except it ain’t funny.”

  He put his head down on the bar. “Oh man, I ain’t fucking gonna make it.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  “Have you ever seen a wet-brain ward at the V.A.? They wear Pampers, they drool on themselves, they eat mush with their hands. I’ve been there, man, and this is worse.”

  “I’ve had dead people call me up long-distance. Do you think it gets any worse than that?” I said.

  “You think that’s a big deal? I’ll tell you about a smell—” He stopped and drank out of his glass. The ice clinked against the sides. His eyes were dilated. “Come outside, I want to show you something.”

  He picked up the decanter and walked out the side door onto the lawn. Jess looked up from dipping leaves out of the pool.

  “Hey, Tony, you forgot your pants,” he said, then saw the expression on Tony’s face and said, “So it’s a good day to get some sun.”

  I followed Tony across the lawn, through the trees, and past the goldfish ponds and birdbaths and tennis court to the back wall of his property. A hooded air vent protruded from the ground close to the base of the wall.

  “Find it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The trapdoor.”

  “I don’t see one.”

  He bent over and pulled on an iron ring set next to a sprinkler head, and a door covered with grass sod raised up out of the lawn and exposed a short, subterranean stairwell.

  “It’s an atom bomb shelter,” he said. “But I heard the guy who built it used to pump the maid down here.”

  We went down inside, and he clicked on a light and pulled the door shut with a hanging rope. The walls and floor were concrete, the roof steel plate. There were two bunk beds inside the room, a pile of moldy K rations in one corner, and a stack of paperback novels and a disassembled AR-15 rifle on top of a bridge table.

  “I come down here when things are bugging me,” he said. “Sometimes I make up a picnic basket and Paul and me spend the night down here, like we’re camping. It’s got a chemical toilet, I can hook up a portable TV, nobody knows where I am unless I want them to know.”

  He sat down on the bunk bed and leaned back against the concrete wall. A dark line of hair grew up the center of his stomach from the elastic band of his underwear. He stirred the ice in his drink with his finger. Then he was quiet for what seemed a long time.

  “After I got hit they didn’t send me back to my old platoon,” he said. “Instead I got reassigned to a bunch of losers. Or maybe they’d just been out too long. One guy had a scalp lock from a woman on his rifle, another guy gave a little boy a heat tab and told him it was candy. Anyway, I didn’t like any of them. Which was all right, because they didn’t like me, either, and they kept treating me like a newbie.

  “So one night the lieutenant tells us to set up an ambush about four klicks up this trail, so we pass a real small ville by a stream after one klick and we go on another klick, and finally everybody says, ‘Fuck it, we sandbag it, let the loot set his own ambush.’

  “But while we’re sitting out there in the dark it’s like everybody’s got something else on his mind. It’s hot and quiet, and water’s dripping out of the trees and we’re slapping mosquitoes and smelling ourselves and looking at our watches and thinking we got six more hours out here. Then the guy with the scalp lock on his rifle—his name was Elvis Doolittle, that’s right, I’m not making it up—Elvis rubs his whiskers with his hand and keeps looking back down the trail and finally he puts a cigarette in his mouth. The doc says, ‘What the fuck you doing, Elvis?’

  “He says, ‘I’m going back to the ville.’

  “Then nobody says anything. But everybody had seen these two teenage sisters with their mama-san in front of the hooch. And they know what Elvis is thinking. Then he says, ‘We’ll leave Mouse and the new guy. Nobody’ll know. That ville’s got something coming anyway. That booby trap that got Brown. They set it.’

  “ ‘You don’t know that,’ Mouse says.

  “ ‘If they didn’t set it, they know who did,’ Elvis says.

  “Then they all talked it over and my heart started beating. Not because of what they were going to do, either, but because I was afraid to be left out on the trail with just one guy.

  “Elvis turns to me and says, ‘You ever say anything about this, you ain’t getting back home, man.’ Then they were gone. The trees were so thick all those guys just melted away into the blackness. You could hear monkeys clattering around in the canopy and night birds and sounds like sticks breaking out there in the jungle. Sweat was running out of my pot and my breath started catching in my throat. Then we hear something clank.

  “Mouse whispers, ‘It’s up the trail. It’s up the fucking trail.’

  “I tell him to be quiet and listen, and he says, ‘It’s NVA, man.’

  “I tell him to shut up again, but he says, ‘They dideed out on us, man. It ain’t right. I ain’t staying.’

  “His eyes look big as half-dollars under his pot, and I’m trying to act cool, like I got it under control, but the sweat keeps burning my eyes and my hands are shaking so bad it’s like I got malaria. Then I hear something up the trail again.

  “ ‘That’s it,’ Mouse says. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  “I put my hand on his arm. ‘All right, man, we go back to the ville,’ I say. ‘But what are you gonna do with what you see back there?’

  “ ‘I ain’t gonna see nothing,’ he says. ‘It ain’t my business. I got eighteen more days, then it’s back to the world. I ain’t gonna get pulled into no court-martial, either. You do what you want to, Cardo.’

  “He takes off, and a minute later I follow him, tagging along like a punk to something I don’t even want to know about, all because I’m scared.

  “When we get back to the ville, Elvis has put all the zips in their hooches and has sent the doc with a flashlight into the hooch that’s got the two teenage sisters. The doc comes out and says, ‘They’re clean,’ and then Elvis and this big black dude go in. About ten minutes later Elvis comes out fixing his fly and sees me and Mouse squatting by the trail.

  “ ‘You dumb shits,’ he says. ‘You get the fuck back up that trail.’

  “ ‘I ain’t gonna do it, Elvis,’ Mouse says.

  “He grabs Mouse by the back of his shirt and pulls him up out of the dirt, just like you pick up a dirty clothes bag.

  “ ‘Fuck you, man. We’re not going back up there by ourselves,’ I say. ‘We heard something clank up there. You dideed out on us. They get through, your ass is in a sling.’

  “He’s frozen there, with Mouse hanging from his fist. He says, ‘What d’you mean, something clanked?’

  “Before I can answer an old man runs across the clearing out of nowhere and tries to get in the hooch, where a couple of other guys are taking their turn inside. He’s yelling in gook, and the big black dude is holding him by the wrists, and everybody’s laughing. Then one of the sisters starts screaming inside, and more zips are coming out of their hooches, and it’s all starting to deteriorate in a hurry. Elvis lets loose of Mouse and walks fast across the clearing just as the two guys come back out of the hooch.

  “One of them is the guy who gave the kid a heat tab. He and Elvis look at each other, then the guy says, ‘The shit’s already in the fire, man.’

>   “The old man goes in the hooch, and there’s more yelling inside, and Elvis says, ‘What’d you do to her?’

  “The guy, the heat-tab guy, says, ‘Nothing you didn’t.’

  “But the guy who was in there with him says, ‘He told her he’d kill her baby if she didn’t blow him.’

  “By that time I just wanted to get out of there, so I don’t know who threw the grenade. I was already headed down the trail when I heard it go off. But somebody threw it right in the door of the hooch, with the two sisters and the old man and maybe a baby inside. Then I started running. When I looked back I could see the sparks above the trees from the burning hooch. I don’t know if they killed anybody else there or not. I never asked, and I never told anybody about it. The next day I volunteered to work in the mortuary at Chu Lai.”

  “The mortuary?” I said.

  “That’s right, man. I peeled them out of the body bags, cleaned the jelly out of their mouths and ears, washed them down, embalmed them, and boxed them. Because I’d had it with the war. And I’d lost my guts, too. I just wasn’t going out again. I didn’t care if I was a public coward or not.”

  He drank from the bourbon, then leaned forward on his thighs. He rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck and looked at his hand.

  “Maybe it took courage to do that, Tony,” I said.

  “No, I was afraid. There’s no way around that fact.” His voice was tired.

  “You could have gotten out of the bush in other ways. You could have given yourself a minor wound. A second Heart would have put you in a safe area. You think maybe it’s possible you volunteered for the mortuary to punish yourself?”

  He looked up at my face. The skin around his left eye was puckered with thought.

  “You can beat up on yourself the rest of your life if you want to. But no matter how you cut it, you’re no coward. I’ll give you something else to think about, too. On your worst day over there, you probably proved yourself in ways that an average person couldn’t even imagine. It was our war, Tony. People who weren’t there don’t understand it. Most of them never wanted to understand it. But you ask yourself this question: would any grunt who was in the meat grinder judge you harshly? In fact, is there anyone at all who can say you didn’t do your share?”

  He widened his eyes and looked between his legs at the concrete floor. He pinched the bridge of his nose and made a snuffling sound. He started to speak, then cleared his throat and looked at the floor again.

  “Better get some clothes on,” I said. “You’ll catch cold down here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “I guess I’ll see you at the house,” I said.

  “I lied about something. I don’t use this place for Paul and me to camp. You see that AR-15? I used to come down here and sit in the dark with it and think about doing myself. When you turn off the light it’s just like a black box, like the inside of a grave. I’d put the front sight under my teeth and let it touch the roof of my mouth and my mind would go completely empty. It felt good.”

  I pushed on the trapdoor, which was made of steel and overlaid with concrete and swung up and down on thick black springs, and walked up the steps into the balmy November afternoon. The moss-hung oaks by the back wall were loud with blue jays and mockingbirds. I looked back down into the shelter and saw Tony still seated on the side of the bunk, his face pointed downward, the skin of his back as tight as a lampshade, bright with sweat.

  I went up to the shopping center and called Minos at his office to find out about Kim, but he still hadn’t returned. When I got back to Tony’s house, the school bus had just dropped off Paul, and Jess was wheeling him inside.

  “How you doing, Paul?” I said.

  “Great. Special class got to go on the Amtrak train today.” He wore a striped trainman’s hat, a checkered shirt, and blue jeans with a cowboy belt.

  “I bet that was fun, wasn’t it? Where’s your old man?”

  “Getting dressed.” He grinned broadly. “Dad was exercising on the lawn in his underwear.”

  “Why not? It’s good weather for it,” I said, and winked at him.

  “You got a phone message,” Jess said. “From that friend of yours that runs the bar, what’s his name?”

  “Clete?”

  “Yeah, he says to call him at the bar.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Dad said we all might go to a movie tonight,” Paul said.

  “Well, I’m supposed to have dinner with a friend tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  “How about tomorrow night, maybe?” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, but I could see the disappointment in his face.

  Jess wheeled him up the ramp into the house, and I used the phone in the kitchen to call Clete.

  “Where are you?” Clete said.

  “At Tony’s.”

  “Can you talk, or do you want to call me back from somewhere else?”

  “What is it?”

  “Nate Baxter’s in the bar.”

  “I see.”

  “He says he’s here if you want to talk to him.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know Nate. Always looking inside his pants to make sure of his gender.”

  “If it makes him happy, tell him I’ll be looking him up one of these days.”

  “He said one thing, though, that’s a little bothersome. He said, ‘Tell Robicheaux I know he’s got the broad stashed.’ ”

  The house was quiet except for the sound of shower water in the bathroom that adjoined Tony’s bedroom.

  “You there, Dave?” Clete said.

  “Yes.”

  “It sounds like our man knows a little more than he should.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Drinking at the bar.”

  “I’ll be there in a half hour.”

  I told Tony that I had to run a couple of errands downtown, then I was going to Bootsie’s for supper.

  “Was that Bootsie on the phone?” he asked. He stood in his bedroom door, with a towel wrapped around his waist, raking the water out of his hair with a comb.

  “No, it was Clete. He knows a guy who might give me a good deal on a boat.”

  “I feel a lot better after a shower.” He stopped combing his hair. “Hey, tell me straight about something. Down there in the shelter, you weren’t just playing with my head? I mean… we’re not talking about a loss of respect here?”

  “No.”

  “Because I don’t push myself on people.”

  “You didn’t push yourself on me.”

  “You wanted to know what happened, I told you.”

  I nodded without replying.

  “But if a guy thinks less of me because of it, I don’t hold it against him. We’re clear on this?” he said.

  “You’re not the only guy who brought back a problem from there, Tony. I’ve got my own. Maybe they’re worse than yours.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got four of my men killed on a trail because I did something reckless and stupid. Everybody has his own basket of snakes to deal with.”

  “Your voice has a little edge to it, Dave.”

  “I think pride’s a pile of shit.”

  He laughed. “You sure don’t hide your thoughts, do you?” he said. “How about bringing Bootsie out here for supper, then we’ll all go to a movie.”

  “It’s kind of a private evening, Tony.”

  “Paul was looking forward to it.”

  “Then you should have told me earlier, podna.”

  He nodded silently, then began dressing in front of a full-length mirror as though I were not there.

  I didn’t have time to worry any more about Tony’s mood changes and his addict’s propensity for trying to control everyone and everything in his environment. In fact, maybe we were too much alike in that regard, and for that reason I not only got along better with him than I should have as a policeman, I also saw my own menagerie of snapping dogs at work i
nside him. When I got to Clete’s Club, Nate Baxter was by himself at the far end of the bar, one shined brown loafer propped on the brass footrail. He wore sharply creased tan slacks, an open-necked yellow shirt, and a herringbone sports coat. His gold watch and gold identification bracelet gleamed softly in the light.

  “You’re looking sharp, Nate,” I said.

  He tipped his cigarette ashes neatly into an ashtray and took a sip from his highball glass, his eyes looking at me in the bar mirror.

  “You know a DEA agent by the name of Minos Dautrieve?” he asked.

  “He’s out of Lafayette. Yeah, I know him.”

  “He’s in New Orleans now. He’s running a sting.”

  “Why tell the family secrets to me?”

  “I underestimated you,” he said.

  “I have to be somewhere in a few minutes. What did you want to say to me, Nate?”

  “She’s my snitch. You shouldn’t have messed with her.”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You were in her place out in Metairie. You got her stashed. But it’s not going to do you any good. She’s our witness, and she’s going to testify for us. You can tell that to Dautrieve for me if you want to.”

  “You’re going a little fast for me.”

  “The girl she was staying with works in the same club out on the Airline Highway. She told us you and Purcel were in her place. She said later some feds picked up the Dollinger broad. So I underestimated you. You’ve still got your badge, haven’t you? But that doesn’t mean you get to screw up our operation.”

  “This is what you had to tell me?”

  He tipped his cigarette ashes into the ashtray again. He still had not looked directly at me. He took a puff off his cigarette, then scratched his beard with one fingernail.

  “You can tell Kim Dollinger she either comes in or we send her brother up the road,” he said. “Don’t let that broad jerk you around, Robicheaux. I could have charged her when we busted her brother. She was as dirty as he was.”

  “Do you know that Jimmie Lee Boggs almost killed her?”

  “You got a vested interest or something? We’re talking about a snitch who was setting Tony C. up for a fall while she was banging him cross-eyed over in a beach house in Biloxi.”