A Morning for Flamingos

  “Boy, talk about a personality problem. Who’s he been doing business with?” Kim said. Her red hair was looped over one ear. When she saw me looking at her, she pointed her chin up in the air and lifted her hair off the back of her neck.

  “He’s just a careful man. He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Fontenot said. “But let’s not delay any longer, Mr. Robicheaux.”

  I stepped outside and let Lionel work his hands up and down my body. He pulled my shirt out of my trousers, patted under my arms, slipped his hand down my spine, felt my pockets and along my legs.

  “You think you’re going to need all that firepower?” he asked.

  “It’s an old habit,” I said.

  Fontenot was looking at Lionel’s face.

  “He’s cool,” Lionel said.

  “Time to open the candy store,” Fontenot said.

  Lionel got back in the Buick and backed it up to where my truck was parked. I glanced again at the girl. She wore no makeup, and her face was hard and shiny. Pretty but hard. She looked like she had a hard body. Her hands were big and knuckled like those on a cannery worker.

  “You got something on your mind?” she asked.

  “Not a thing,” I said.

  “Good, because I’m not into eye fucking,” she said.

  “Eye fucking?” I said.

  Fontenot was grinning from the front seat. He was always grinning, his teeth set like pieces of corn in his gums.

  “I have to end our fun now,” he said. “I’ll hop in your truck with you, Mr. Robicheaux, and we’ll be on our way.”

  We headed south of the city into St. Charles Parish. Gray clouds tumbled across the sky in the fading light, and white streaks of lightning trembled on the horizon beyond Lake Salvador. The Buick was a quarter mile ahead of us on the tar-surfaced road.

  “I need to take a leak,” Fontenot said.

  I stopped next to an irrigation ditch between two dry rice fields, and he got out and urinated into the weeds. I could hear him passing gas softly. His beige sports jacket, with brown suede pockets, was spotted with rain. He smiled at me in the wind as he zipped up his pants, then got back in the truck, took a woman’s compact from his coat pocket, and gingerly scraped some white powder from it with the blade of his penknife. He lifted the knife to one nostril, then the other, snorting as though he were clearing his nasal passages, widening his eyes, crimping his lips as though they were chapped. Then he licked the flat of the blade with his tongue.

  “You want a taste?” he said.

  “I never took it up.”

  “You think you could take up Kim?”

  “I just wonder what she’s doing here, that’s all.”

  “She works in one of Tony’s clubs. I suspect he probes her recesses. I know that’s what Lionel would like to do.”

  “You know Tony now?”

  “You’re in the business now, my friend. It’s a nice one to be in. Lots of good things to be had. You want to meet him?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me, as long as I get what I want.”

  “What is it you want?” There were tiny saliva bubbles between his teeth when he grinned.

  “One big score, then maybe I piece off the action and buy a couple of businesses in Lafayette and Lake Charles.”

  “Ah, you’re a Rotary man at heart. But in the meantime, how about all the broads you want, your own plane to fly down to the islands in, lobster and steak every night at the track? You don’t think about those things?”

  “I have simple tastes.”

  “How about squaring a debt?” he asked.

  “With who?”

  “Everybody’s got a debt to square. Winning’s a lot more fun when you get to watch somebody else lose.”

  “I never gave it much thought.”

  “Oh, I bet.”

  “Fontenot, that’s the second time you’ve given me the impression you know something about me that I don’t.”

  “You used to be a cop. That’s not the best recommendation. We had to do some homework, stick our finger into a nasty place or two.”

  “Okay…”

  “I’d be mad at somebody who put a hole in me and left me to die in a ditch.”

  “You’re right. Do you know where he is?”

  “I stay away from some people.”

  “Then you don’t need to be worrying about it anymore.”

  “Of course.”

  We crossed a bayou on a wooden bridge and drove across a flooded area of saw grass and dead cypress. Blue herons stood in the shallows, and mud hens were nesting up against the reeds out of the wind. In the distance I could see the hard tin outline of a sugar mill. Fontenot opened the compact, balanced some coke on the tip of his knife blade, and took another hit. His face was an oval pie of satisfaction.

  “Are you interested in politics?” he asked.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Tony is. He writes letters to newspapers. He’s a patriot.” He smiled to himself, and his eyes were bright as he looked out at the rain through the front window.

  “I thought the mustaches stayed out of politics,” I said.

  “Bad word for our friends.”

  “Why does he write letters?”

  “He was a Marine in Vietnam. He likes to talk about ‘nape.’ ” Then Fontenot changed his voice, his eyes glittering happily. “ ‘Five acres of fucking nape climbing up a hill. They smelled like cats burned up in an incinerator. Fucking nape, man.’ ” He started giggling.

  “I think you’d better not put any more shit up your nose.”

  “Indeed you are a Rotary man.”

  We passed a gray, paintless general store under a spreading oak tree at a four-corners, then drove through a harvested sugarcane field that was covered with stubble and followed a bayou through a wooded area. The bayou was dented with rain, and I could see lights in fishing shacks set back on stilts in the trees. We came out into open fields, and it began to rain harder. It was almost completely dark now.

  “There.” Fontenot pointed at a small wood house with a gallery at the end of a dirt road in the middle of a field.

  “This is it?”

  “This is it.”

  “You guys can really pick them.”

  “You should be impressed. It’s a historic place. You remember when a union man from up north tried to organize the plantation workers around here back in the fifties? He was crucified on the barn wall behind that little house. The barn’s not there anymore, but that’s where it happened. For some reason the state chamber of commerce hasn’t put that on any of its brochures.”

  “Look, I want to get my goods and get out of here. How much longer is this going to take?”

  “Kim’ll fix some sandwiches. We’ll have some supper.”

  “Forget the supper, Fontenot. I’m tired.”

  “You’re an intense man.”

  “You’re making things too complicated.”

  “It’s your first time out. We make the rules.”

  “Fuck your rules. On any kind of score, you get in and out of it as fast as you can. The more people in on it, the more chance you take a fall. You went out on a score holding. That’s affected my confidence level here.”

  “If you’ll look around you, you’ll notice that you can see for a mile in any direction. You can hear a car or a plane long before they get here. I think we’ll keep doing things our way. Kim’s sandwiches are a treat. Kim’s a treat. Think about it. You didn’t see her flex her stuff when you looked at her? Maybe she’d like you to probe her recesses.”

  His lips were purple and moist in the glow of the dashboard.

  I followed the Buick down the dirt road to the house. We all went inside, and Lionel turned on the lights. Kim carried a grocery bag into the kitchen, and Lionel started a fire of sticks and wadded-up newspaper in the fireplace.

  “Where are my goods?” I said.

  “They’re being delivered. Be patient,” Fontenot said.

  “Delivered? What is this?” I s
aid.

  “A guy can always find another store if he doesn’t like the way we do it,” Lionel said. He was squatted down in front of the fireplace, and he waved a newspaper back and forth on the flames.

  “You’ve got too many people involved in this,” I said.

  “He’s an expert all right,” Lionel said without turning his head.

  “When’s the delivery going to be here?” I said.

  “In minutes, in minutes,” Fontenot said.

  I sat by myself at the window while the three of them ate ham and cheese sandwiches at a table in the center of the room. The house had no insulation, except the water-streaked and cracked wallpaper, and the yellow flames crawling up the stone chimney did little to break the chill in the room. The sky was black outside, and the rain slanted across the window. When they finished eating, Kim cleaned up the table and Lionel went into the back of the house. Fontenot opened the compact and took another hit on the blade of his penknife.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” I said.

  He wet his lips and smiled at me.

  I walked down a short hallway, opened a closet door, passed a bedroom that was stacked with hay bales, and opened the last door in the hall. Lionel sat on the side of a brass bed, his left arm tied off with his belt, the syringe mounted on a thick purple vein. A lighted candle and a cook spoon with a curled handle lay on a nightstand next to the bed. He had just taken the hit, and his head was tilted back, his mouth open, his jaws slack as though he were in the midst of orgasm. The flame from the candle flickered on the muscular contours of his body. His breath went in and out with the rush, his eyes trying to focus on me and gain control of his situation again.

  He set the syringe down, popped loose the belt on his arm, and straightened his back.

  “What the fuck you want, man?” he said hoarsely.

  “I was looking for the bathroom.”

  “It’s a privy. Out back, where a privy is.”

  I closed the door on him, went out into the rain, then walked back through the kitchen. Kim was leaning against the drainboard, looking down at the floor. She had taken off her leather jacket to make the sandwiches, and her breasts were stiff against her T-shirt.

  “Is it always this much fun?” I said.

  “Always,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later came in the form of a Latin man with a black bandanna tied down on his head, beige zoot pants, a canary-yellow shirt unbuttoned to his navel, a soft pad of chest hair on which a gold St. Christopher’s medal rested, a leather sports coat that folded and creased as smoothly as warm tallow. He carried a cardboard box wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. He set the box on the table and removed five individual packages wrapped in butcher paper, opened a single-bladed knife, and handed it to me. I cut through the butcher paper on one of the packages and punched through the clear plastic bag inside. I rubbed the white granules between my fingers, then wiped my fingers clean on the paper.

  “You don’t want a taste?” he said.

  “I trust you.”

  “You trust me?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at Fontenot.

  “Mr. Robicheaux doesn’t have certain vices,” Fontenot said.

  “It’s good shit, man. Like Ray ordered, no cut,” the Latin man said. The hollows of both his cheeks were sprayed with tiny acne scars like needle marks. “Where’s Lionel at?”

  “He’s a little noddy right now. Must be the weather,” Fontenot said.

  I took the brown envelope with the money out of my left pocket and put it in Fontenot’s hand. He counted the bills out on his thigh.

  “All stiff and green. It can make the ashes in an old man’s furnace glow anew,” he said.

  The Latin man looked furtively toward the kitchen, where Kim sat at the table, a cup of coffee balanced on her fingers, her eyes staring listlessly out the window into the darkness.

  “Jennifer and Carmen are at the bar on the blacktop,” he said.

  “I don’t see why they should be left alone,” Fontenot said.

  The Latin nodded his head at the kitchen, his face a question mark.

  “She’s an understanding girl. Maybe she can ride back with Mr. Robicheaux,” Fontenot said.

  I put the five kilos of cocaine back in the cardboard box and wrapped the black garbage bag tightly around it. I lifted it onto my shoulder.

  “The next time you guys cut a deal, why not do it in the Greyhound bus depot?” I said.

  “Oh, that’s good,” Fontenot said.

  I walked outside to my truck, set the box on the floor, and started the engine. The Latin man came out the front door, got in a TransAm, turned around in a circle, his headlights bouncing up into my face, and headed down the dirt road in the rain. Through the living room window I could see the girl speaking heatedly to Fontenot.

  I went back up on the gallery and opened the door.

  “You want to go with me, Red?” I said.

  “Red?” she said.

  “Kim.”

  “Why not?” she said.

  She was quiet for a long time in the truck. The rain slackened, and the moon rose among the strips of black cloud. When we crossed the flooded section of saw grass and dead cypress the light reflected off the canals and small bays like quicksilver. I cracked my window, and the wind smelled of rain and moss and wet leaves.

  “You were really a cop?” she said.

  “Off and on.”

  “Why’d you give it up?”

  “It gave me up.”

  “They say you were taking juice.”

  “Sometimes you get some bad press.”

  “What do you think about that back there?” she said.

  “I think they’re going to do time.”

  “Have you?”

  “What?”

  “Done time.”

  “I was in the bag a little while in Lafayette,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “Murder.”

  She turned her head and looked at me directly for the first time since she had gotten in the truck.

  “I was cleared. I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said.

  “You don’t add up.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They could have taken you off tonight. You should have known that.”

  “I don’t figure them for it.”

  “What a laugh. You sure you were a cop?”

  “They work for Tony Cardo, right? They’re not going to burn his customers. Are they?”

  I could feel her eyes roving on the side of my face.

  “The raghead who brought your kilos…”

  “Yes?”

  “He and Lionel did a guy with a piece of piano wire. Stop up there at the filling station. I have to pee.”

  I parked under a dripping oak tree while she went inside. She came back out and got in the truck, and I drove back onto the blacktop. It had stopped raining completely now; the moon was bright in the sky, and when the wind blew through the flooded saw grass and cypress, the light clicked on the water like silvery dimes.

  “Why does everything down here smell like mold and leaking sewage?” she said.

  “Maybe because there’s a lot of mold and leaking sewage here.”

  For the first time she smiled.

  “Who’d they do?” I said.

  “Did I say that? I talk funny when my bladder’s full.”

  She tied up her hair with a bandanna and looked out the window.

  “You know Jimmie Lee Boggs?” I asked.

  “The television minister in Baton Rouge?”

  “A guy like Lionel doesn’t bother me, but Boggs is special.”

  “What’s it to me?”

  “Nothing. I gave you a ride.”

  “Expensive ride.”

  “You’re a tough lady.”

  “You look like a nice guy. I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing dealing dope, but you’re an amateur. Do you know where South Carrollton runs into the levee?
”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where I live. If that’s out of your way, I can take the streetcar.”

  “I’ll drive you home. Do you live with someone?”

  “You mean do I live with a guy. Sure, Tony C. is interested in broads who live with guys. You’re something else.”

  She closed her eyes and went to sleep with the nape of her neck against the back of the seat, her calves resting across the box of cocaine. Her nose had a bump on the bridge like a Roman’s. Her face shone with the luminescence of bone in the moon glow.

  Later, I drove down South Carrollton to the river and woke her up at the end of the street.

  “You’re home,” I said.

  She rubbed her face with her hand and opened and closed her mouth.

  “I’d invite you in for a drink, but I have to be at the club at seven in the morning. The liquor man comes tomorrow. He screws Tony on the bottle count if I’m not there.”

  “It’s all right.”

  She popped open the door and put one leg out on the street. She was poised against the streetlight, her bandanna tied across the crown of her head as in a photograph of a 1940s aircraft worker.

  “Watch your buns, hotshot. Or go back on the bayou where you belong,” she said.

  Then she was gone.

  When I got back to the apartment I called Minos at the guesthouse on St. Charles. I told him the buy had gone all right.

  “We were only about a mile away. You didn’t see us?” he said.

  “No.”

  “You stopped at a filling station on the way back. You had a girl with you.”

  “You guys are pretty good. You know anything about the girl? Her first name is Kim.”

  “No. What about her?”

  “She seems too smart for the company she keeps.”

  “If she’s with Tony C.’s crowd, she’s somebody’s punch.”

  “I don’t read her like that.”

  “A broad’s a broad to those guys. They don’t keep them around because they have Phi Beta Kappa keys.”

  “She said Lionel and the Latin guy who made the delivery killed somebody with a piece of piano wire.”

  “I haven’t heard that one. But Lionel’s got the potential. He was on the boxing team in Angola. They say he did some real damage to a couple of guys.”

  “Thanks for telling me, Minos.”