A Morning for Flamingos

  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 the 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 you 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 whis
per, “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.”

  “You think a war’s ever going to come here?” he said.

  “No, this is a good place, Paul,” I said. “We don’t worry about things like that. I bet you’re going to have a good time at the ice factory.”

  “Do you have any little boys or girls?” Paul said.

  “A little girl, about your age. Her name’s Alafair.”

  “What’s she like to do?”

  “She has a horse. She likes to feed him apples and ride him when she comes home from school.”

  “A horse?” he said.

  “Yeah, we call him Tex because we bought him over in Texas.”

  “Boy.”

  He had a genuinely sweet face, with no recognition in it of his own limitations.

  “Maybe we’ll go riding with Dave and his daughter one day,” Tony said.

  “That’d be fine,” I said.

  “There’s a couple of bridle paths here, or sometimes I take Paul on trips over by Iberia Parish,” Tony said. “Maybe we’ll drive over, take you guys out to eat, go out for a boat ride, something like that,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea, Tony.”

  “I hear the bus,” Paul said.

  His father hooked his canvas book bag, which had a lunch kit strapped onto it, on the back of the chair and wheeled him down the ramp to the waiting bus. The driver lowered a special platform from the back of the bus, and he and Tony fixed the wheels of Paul’s chair to it. Before the driver raised the platform, Tony leaned down and hugged his son, pressed his head against his chest, and kissed his hair.

  He came back in and sat down at the table. He wore white tennis slacks and a thick white sweater with blue piping on it.

  “You have a fine little podna there,” I said.

  “You’d better believe it. How’d you sleep last night?”

  “Good.”

  “You like my home?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “I wish my mom had lived to see it. We lived in Algiers and the Irish Channel. We had colored people living next door and across the street from us. You know what my mom used to do for a living?”

  I shook my head no.

  “She washed the hair of corpses. She’d come home, and I could smell it on her. Not just the chemicals. That same smell when you pop a body bag. Not as strong, but that same smell. Man, I used to hate it. I think that’s why she always talked about lemon and lime trees back in Sicily. She said on her father’s farm there was this old Norman tower made out of rocks, and lemon and lime trees grew all around it. When it was real hot she and her sisters would play inside the rocks where it was cool, and they could smell the lemons and limes on the wind.”

  Two men walked into the kitchen, their faces full of sleep, and began clattering around in the cabinets.

  “Where’s the cereal bowls at?” one of them said. He was dark and thin; he wore slippers and his print shirt was unbuttoned and hung half out of his slacks, but he hadn’t forgotten to put on his shoulder holster.

  “Right-hand side,” Tony said. “Look, you guys, there’s eggs and bacon in the warmer out in the dining room. There’s extra coffee there, too.”

  They shuffled around in the kitchen and didn’t reply. Then they went out into the dining room. These were only two of eight hired men I had seen in the house since the night before. They had slept on couches, in the attic, the television den, and guest cottage, and had taken turns walking around on the grounds and driveway during the night.

  “They’re good boys, just not too sophisticated,” Tony said. “Do they make you uncomfortable?”

  “No.”

  “A couple of them made you.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “They can spot a cop,” he said. “I told them you’re all right, though. You’re all right, aren’t you, Dave?”

  His eyes took on that strange, self-amused light again.

  “You have to be the judge of that, Tony.”

  “I think you’re a solid guy. You know what a solid con is?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re that kind of guy. You’ve got character.”

  “Maybe you don’t know everything about me.”

  “Maybe I know more than you think,” he said, and winked.

  I didn’t know his game, or even if he was playing one, but I didn’t like meeting his eyes. I took a bite of my soft-boiled eggs and looked out at the mist in the citrus trees.

  “Where’s the contract coming from?” I said.

  “There’s one guy in Houston that wants me out bad. Two or three in Miami. Maybe they got permission from Chicago, maybe they’re acting on their own, I don’t know. You heard stories about me, Dave, about some stuff I do, waving the flag around, bullshit like that?”

  “I guess I have.”

  “That I been breaking one of the big rules, getting mixed up in politics, focusing attention on the organization?”

  “That’s what you hear sometimes.”

  “Let me tell you about a guy used to live in Plantation, Florida. You remember the name Johnny ____? This guy went back to the days of Bugsy Siegel, I mean he survived gang wars for forty years. But Johnny and a couple of other guys thought they could jerk the CIA around. They told some CIA people they could whack out Castro for the government, like do a patriotic act and maybe get the casinos open in Havana again. So the CIA buys it, and the word is out that our guys are going to clip Castro. Maybe they even sent a couple of kamikaze gumballs to do it, but the bottom line is that Castro looks pretty healthy today. In other words, it looks like it was a scam to pump juice and influence out of the government. So the commission in Chicago tells these guys that what they’re doing is stupid and they’d fucking better knock it off. But Johnny doesn’t listen. So one day a couple of guys invite him fishing out in Biscayne Bay, except they put one in his ear, cut his legs off, and stuff him inside an oil barrel.

  “They weighted the barrel down with chains, and shoved an ice pick in Johnny’s stomach to break the gas bag. Nobody would have ever seen him again, but they screwed it up. They missed the wall of his stomach, and he floated the barrel up.

  “It makes a good story, doesn’t it, about what happens when a guy decides to get political?”

  “I’ve heard it before.”

  “Then maybe you also know it’s bullshit. Johnny got clipped because of money. It’s always money, Dave. Those guys in Miami and Houston want to take over the action on the Louisiana coast. There’s four or five other guys in New Orleans they’ll have to cut in, guys who are anybody’s cornhorn, but the word is I’m definitely not going to be a player.” He smiled and put a dripping spoonful of cereal in his mouth. “There’s supposed to be some real talent in town right now. I hear it’s a twenty-five-thou contract.”

  “Maybe it’s a good time to take the family on a vacation to the islands,” I said.

  “They don’t hurt families. We don’t do that to each other. Not even these guys, Dave.” But I saw the cloud slide acro
ss his face. He looked out at the lawn and rubbed his finger against his temple.

  “I need to use your phone,” I said. “A lady was coming up to see me at the hospital this morning.”

  “Who is she?” he asked, and smiled again.

  “Bootsie Giacano.”

  “No kidding? You got good taste. She’s a class broad, I mean lady. You gotta excuse my vocabulary. I went to college, but most of the time you wouldn’t know it.”

  “You know her?”

  “Sure. I own part of her business. She’s nice. I like her.”

  I used the phone in the kitchen and told Bootsie where I was and that I would see her later.

  “You’re where?” she said.

  I cleared my throat and told her again I was at Tony’s. I could hear her breathing into the mouthpiece of the receiver.

  “I won’t ask you any more questions,” she said. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Dave. You know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said, then, “I’ll call you tonight. Everything’s fine, kiddo.”

  “Yeah, sure it is,” she said, and hung up.

  I sat back down with Tony just as his wife came into the kitchen in a blue house robe and slippers, her face dull with sleep, her hair in pink foam-rubber curlers. She didn’t speak. She filled a coffee cup from the electric pot on the Formica counter, shook two aspirins from a bottle and set them by the side of her saucer, and sat at the kitchen table with her back to us, smoking silently while she drank her coffee. The backs of her hands were coarse and heavily veined, and her nails, long and bright red, made clicking sounds when she picked up her coffee cup.

  “Clara, this is Dave Robicheaux. He stayed with us last night,” Tony said.

  Again she didn’t speak. Her blond hair was dark close to her scalp. I could see nicotine stains on her fingers, dried makeup around the corners of her mouth, her thin whitened nostrils when she breathed.

  “Dave and I were talking about taking Paul for a horse ride,” Tony said.

  She blew smoke up against the window glass and flicked her ashes in her saucer.

  “I think maybe everybody was making a little too much noise last night,” Tony said.

  “May I speak to you alone, please?” she said.