DR04 - A Morning for Flamingos

  "What?"

  "Sometimes it's like he knows I'm still a cop. Like maybe he wants to take a fall."

  "Who knows? A guy who shoots speed into his arm made a contract to destroy himself a long time ago. They all flame out one way or another. Who cares how they do it? Hang loose," he said, and hung up.

  That night I was watching television on sun porch with Tony and Paul when the phone rang in the kitchen and the Negro houseman told me that I had a call. I picked the receiver up off the Formica counter. sat down on a stool, and put it to my ear. The counter gave onto the porch, and I could see Tony's and Paul's faces in the illumination of the television screen.

  "Hello," I said.

  "Dave, it's Clete. Are you where you can talk?"

  "We're watching television."

  "I dig you. Just listen, then. That redheaded broad just called me at the club. From what I get, somebody beat the shit out of her. She wants to see you, but she doesn't want Cardo to know about it."

  "Uh-huh," I said.

  "She wouldn't tell me much. She sounds like one scared broad. She's staying at a friend's place out in Metairie. I've got the address."

  "I see."

  "Cardo's right there?"

  "That's right."

  "Look, pick me up at the bar, and we'll drive out there tonight. Tell Tony you're lending me some money, I'm having trouble meeting the vig with one of his shylocks. He'll buy that. I owe those fuckers five large."

  "All right, Cletus. I'll see what I can do."

  I hung up the receiver and sat back down in front of the television set. I brushed at my pants leg distractedly.

  "What's the trouble?" Tony said.

  "Oh, nothing, really. Clete's having some money problems. He gets a little strung out sometimes. I guess I'd better go see him. Would it bother you if I came in late?"

  "No, here's the house key. Just tell the guys at the gate you'll be back late so they won't think it's somebody else, you know what I mean?"

  "I'll be quiet coming in."

  "Sure, don't worry about it. Somebody's squeezing your friend?"

  "A little problem with the vigorish."

  "Tell him to come see me about it. Maybe I can work it out."

  "That's good of you, Tony."

  It took me a half hour to drive to the bar on Decatur. Clete was waiting for me under the colonnade. It had started to mist, and he wore a brown raincoat over his sports jacket. I pulled to the curb, and he jumped in the truck. He read me the address in Metairie off a folded piece of paper, and I headed out of the Quarter toward Interstate 10.

  "Who beat her up?" I said.

  "She wouldn't say."

  "Why didn't she want Tony to know about it?"

  "I didn't ask her. Dave, are you making it with her?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I told you no."

  "You didn't have just one flop in the hay with her?"

  "You heard what I said, Clete."

  "Yeah, well, usually broads like that get remodeled after they let the wrong guy in the bread box. She called for you, not Cardo. What should I conclude on that, Streak? Or am I just full of shit?"

  "I didn't talk to her. I don't know what happened. And you're pissing me off."

  We were silent in the cab of the truck. It started to rain harder, and I turned on the windshield wipers.

  "I'm just trying to help, believe it or not," he said.

  "I know that, Clete."

  "I'm backing your play, and I don't care if I get paid for it or not."

  "What do you mean?" I looked over at him. Rainy patterns of light ran down his face.

  "I didn't get any bucks from the DEA this week. I called Dautrieve, and he said I was terminated."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "Wait a minute, don't get heated up. He said some other guys made the decision. He didn't have any control over it."

  "He should have told me."

  "Maybe he didn't have a chance to. Fuck it. Look, there's our exit up there. Welcome to Metairie, the only town in the United States to elect a Ku Klux Klansman and American Nazi as its state representative. What a depressing shithole. This place makes you think maybe the white race ought to be picking the cotton."

  "I've got to have a talk with Minos."

  "Talk all you want to. When you deal with the feds, you're dealing with people whose thought patterns are printed on computer chips. Besides, they all smell like mouthwash. Did you ever trust a guy who smells like mouthwash?"

  She opened the apartment door on the night chain. She had on a short-sleeved terry cloth robe. Her right eye was a purple knot, and there was still a crust of dried blood in one nostril. She slipped the chain loose and opened the door wide. Her arms were streaked with yellow and purple bruises, the kind that a man's clenched hand leaves. I could smell the Mentholatum that she had smeared on her skin. She closed the door and locked it again as soon as we were inside.

  "I thought maybe you wouldn't come," she said.

  "Why?" I said.

  "I don't know, it was just what I thought." She talked carefully, as though the inside of her mouth were hurt. "There's some beer and pop in the refrigerator if you want some."

  "Who did it, Kim?" I said.

  "Jimmie Lee Boggs."

  "When?"

  "This morning. Just after I got up. I opened the door to get the newspaper and he hit me in the face and knocked me back inside the room. I never had anybody hit me like that. I didn't believe anyone could hit that hard."

  I could hear the humiliation in her voice, see the shame in her face. I had seen the same look of debasement in victims of violence many times, and it was almost impossible to convince them that they were not deserving of their fate. I could feel Clete's awkwardness next to me.

  "I think I'll take that beer," he said, walking to the refrigerator. "Then I'll just step out here on the balcony and have a cigarette."

  He slid open the glass doors that gave onto a small balcony with a barbecue grill on it, then closed them behind him and looked out over a lighted, weed-filled lake that was dented with rain.

  She sat on the couch with her hands in her lap and her head bowed.

  "Why didn't you think I'd come?" I asked again.

  "Because you know I'm a snitch."

  "What else?"

  Her eyes were averted. She looked small sitting on the couch. I sat down next to her. She turned her face up, then looked away again.

  "What else, Kim?"

  "Because you know I betrayed you. I told Lieutenant Baxter about the buy down at Cocodrie. That's why Jimmie Lee Boggs came after me. He said he figured it was either you or me who dropped the dime on him. He beat me all over the apartment. Then he twisted a towel in my mouth and filled up the sink and held my head under the water until I almost passed out. He kept saying, 'Gargle time, beautiful. Rinse out your mouth, now. Think about the canary I'm gonna stuff in it.' He would have killed me if the landlady hadn't started banging on the door for the rent."

  She glanced sideways at my face.

  "Why were you snitching for Nate Baxter?"

  "My brother's a groom at the Fairgrounds. Lieutenant Baxter has him in jail for possession. He says he can upgrade the charge to conspiracy to distribute, and Albert—that's my brother—will get fifteen years in Angola."

  "Baxter put you inside Tony's crowd?"

  "I already had the job at the club. All I had to do was become available."

  "Available?" I said.

  "I said to Baxter, 'What do you mean, exactly?' He says, 'You've got a piece of equipment that'll get you anything you want.' He looks across his desk, then he goes. "That's big-picture clear, isn't it? Talk it over with your brother. Let me know what you decide. It doesn't matter to me, hon, one way or another.'"

  "You should have reported him, Kim."

  "Great. I work in a skin joint run by the Mafia, my brother's a druggie in custody, and I'm going to report a Vice lieutenant? Look, it doesn't matter what
he said. I did what he wanted. I told him everything Tony was doing, I told him about you, I'm to blame for what happened down at Cocodrie."

  "You tried to warn me. Give yourself a little credit."

  "Are you going to tell Tony?"

  "No. But as of tonight you're out of the life, Kim. You don't go back to that job, or back to your apartment, or out to Tony's. I also advise you to stay away from Nate Baxter. He's a liar and a coward and a bully. Also, he doesn't have the power to upgrade your brother's charges. That comes out of the prosecutor's office. Believe me, your brother will be better off taking his own chances."

  She took a Kleenex out of her robe and touched one nostril with it. Her face had no makeup on it, and it looked shiny and white where it wasn't bruised.

  "I don't know what to do," she said. "I only have a little money. I have to have a job."

  "Somebody's going to take care of you. I guarantee it."

  She put the Kleenex away and played with her fingernails.

  "I have to ask you something," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "It's not a very appropriate question, I guess, but there's no chance, is there? Not now."

  "Of what?" I said, although I already knew the answer.

  "What I mean is, it's like when people do something to one another, or maybe to themselves, something shameful, it kills what might have been between them, doesn't it?"

  "I don't know, Kim."

  "Yes, you do. It's why my brother Albert is the way he is. Years ago he had a wife and a little girl. Then one night he got drunk at a party and slept with another woman. So he had all this Catholic guilt about what he'd done, and rather than blow it off, he got his wife drunk and talked her into getting into the sack with another guy. All he got out of it was the knowledge that he couldn't love himself anymore, and so he doesn't think anybody else can, either."

  "I wouldn't try to figure it all out now, Kim."

  "Tony's right. We're the cluster fuck. The human race is."

  "Cynics and nihilists are two bits a bagful," I said. "Don't let them sell you that same old tired shuck. Listen, a man named Minos Dautrieve is going to contact you. He's an old friend with the DEA, so trust him. We're going to take care of you."

  "I was right, then. You're still a cop."

  "Who cares? The only thing that matters here is that you're out of the life. We're clear on that, aren't we?"

  "Yes."

  I put my hand on her forearm.

  "Kim, you stood up for your brother," I said. "Everything you did took courage. Most people aren't that brave. I think you're one special lady."

  She looked up at me. Her unswollen eye glimmered softly.

  "Really?" she said.

  "You bet. I've had some good people cover my back, like Cletus out there, but I'd put my money on you anytime."

  She smiled, and her free hand touched the backs of my fingers.

  It was still raining when we left the apartment building and got back inside my truck.

  "Your face looks like a thunderstorm," Clete said.

  "Nate Baxter," I said.

  "She was working for him?"

  "Yep."

  "He's the guy mommies warned them about. I always had the feeling that if we ever had a Third Reich here, you might see Nate manning the ovens."

  "There's a bar up here on the corner. I want to stop and use the phone."

  "You're not going after Baxter?"

  "Not now. But he's not going to get away with this."

  "Hmm," Clete said, grinning in the dashboard light, his eyebrows flipping up and down like Groucho Marx's.

  We went inside the corner bar, and Clete ordered a drink while I called Minos at his guesthouse from a phone booth next to a pinball machine. I told him about Kim, the beating she had taken from Jimmie Lee Boggs, the fact that she was an informant for Nate Baxter.

  "Can you get her into a safe house?" I said.

  "If she wants it."

  "Tomorrow morning."

  "No problem."

  "But I've got one. Why did you guys cut Cletus from the payroll?"

  "I was going to tell you about it. It just happened today. I didn't have any say in it."

  "We had a deal."

  "I don't control everything here."

  "He saved my life out on the salt. I didn't see any DEA guys out there."

  "I'm sorry about it, Dave. I'm a federal employee. I'm one guy among several in this office. You need to understand that."

  "I think it's a rotten fucking way to treat somebody."

  "Maybe it is."

  "I think that's a facile answer, too."

  "I can't do anything about it."

  "Tell your office mates Clete has more integrity in the parings of his fingernails than a lot of federal agents have in their whole careers."

  "Drop by and tell them yourself. I'm not up to a harangue tonight. It's always easy to throw baboon shit through the fan when somebody else has to clean it up. We'll pick up the girl in the morning, and we'll get the tape recorder to you at your doctor's office. Good night, Dave."

  He hung up the receiver, and I could hear the pinball machine pinging through the plywood wall of the phone booth. Outside the window, the mist and blowing rain looked like cotton candy in the pink glow of the neon bar sign.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  The next morning was bright and clear, and I went to the doctor's office off Jefferson Avenue and had the stitches snipped out of my head and mouth. When I touched the scar tissue above my right eyebrow, the skin around my eye twitched involuntarily. I opened my mouth and worked my jaw several times, touching the rubbery stiffness where the stitches had been removed.

  "How does it feel?" the doctor asked. He was a thick-bodied, good-natured man who wore his sleeves rolled up on his big arms.

  "Good."

  "You heal beautifully, Mr. Robicheaux. But it looks like you've acquired quite a bit of scar tissue over the years. Maybe you should consider giving it up for Lent."

  "That's a good idea, Doctor."

  "You were lucky on this one. I think if you'd spent another hour or so in the water, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

  "I think you're right. Well, thank you for your time."

  "You bet. Stay out of hospitals."

  I went outside into the sunlight and walked toward my truck, which was parked under an oak tree. A man in khaki clothes with a land surveyor's plumb bob on his belt was leaning against my fender, eating a sandwich out of a paper bag.

  "How about a lift up to the park?" he asked.

  "Who are you?"

  "I have a little item here for you. Are you going to give me a ride?"

  "Hop in," I said, and we drove up a side street toward Audubon Park and stopped in front of an enormous Victorian house with a wraparound gallery. Out in the park, under the heavy drift of leaves from the oaks, college kids from Tulane and Loyola were playing touch football. The man reached down into the bottom of his lunch sack and removed a miniaturized tape recorder inside a sealed plastic bag. He was thin and wore rimless glasses and work boots, and he had a deep tan and liver spots on his hands.

  "It's light and it's flat," he said. He reached back in the sack and took out a roll of adhesive tape. "You can carry it in a coat pocket, or you can tape it anywhere on your body where it feels comfortable. It's quiet and dependable, and it activates with this little button here. Actually, it's a very nice little piece of engineering. When you wear it, try to be natural, try to forget it's on your person. Trust it. It'll pick up whatever it needs to. Don't feel that you have to 'point' it at somebody. That's when a guy invites problems."

  "Okay."

  "Each cassette has sixty minutes' recording time on it. If you run out of tape and your situation doesn't allow you to change cassettes, don't worry about it. Never overextend yourself, never feel that you have to record more than the situation will allow you. If they don't get dirty on the tape one time, it'll happen the next time. Don't think
of yourself as a controller."

  "You seem pretty good at this."

  "It beats being a shoe salesman, I guess. You have any questions?"

  "How many undercover people have been caught with one of these?"

  "Believe it or not, it doesn't happen very often. We put taps on telephone lines, bugs in homes and offices, we wire up informants inside the mob, and they still hang themselves. They're not very smart people."

  "Tony C. is."

  "Yeah, but he's crazy, too."

  "That's where you're wrong, partner. The only reason guys like us think he's crazy is because he doesn't behave like the others. Mistake."

  "Maybe so. But you'd better talk to Minos. He got some stuff on Cardo from the V.A. this morning. Our man was locked up with the wet brains for a while."

  "He's a speed freak."

  "Yeah, maybe because of his last few months' service in Vietnam."

  "What about it?"

  "Talk to Minos," he said, got out of the truck, and looked back at me through the window. "Good luck on this. Remember what I said. Get what you can and let the devil take the rest."

  Then he crossed the street and walked through the park toward St. Charles, his attention already focused on the college kids playing football by the lake. The streetcar clattered loudly down the tracks in front of the Tulane campus across the avenue. I went to a small grocery store a few blocks down St. Charles, where the owner provided tables inside for working people to eat their lunch at, and called Minos at his office to see if he had relocated Kim in a safe house. I also wanted to know what he had learned about Tony's history in Vietnam, besides the fact that as an addict Tony had been locked up in a psychiatric unit rather than treated for addiction.

  Minos wasn't in. But in a few hours I was to learn Tony's story on my own, almost as though he had sawed a piece of forgotten memory out of my own experience and thrust it into my unwilling hands.

  I took Bootsie to lunch at an inexpensive Mexican restaurant on Dauphine before I drove back out to Tony's. She looked wonderful in her white suit, black heels, and lavender blouse, and I think perhaps she had the best posture I had ever seen in a woman. She sat perfectly straight in her chair while she sipped from her wineglass or ate small bites of her seafood enchilada, her chin tilted slightly upward, her face composed and soft.