James Burke - A Morning for Flamingos

He winked at me and walked duck-footed to the door, with his drink in his hand, his red trunks askew on his hips, lighting a cigarette.

"You think he's got any broads around?" he said.

I took the copy of the Atlantic out of my coat pocket and followed him to the pool.

Tony Cardo hit the water in a long, flat dive and swam with deep strokes to the diving board, blowing water out his nose, then made an underwater turn and pushed off the tiled side and swam into the shallow end. He raked the water out of his eyes and curly hair and spit into the trough that surrounded the pool.

"That's a nasty scar on your chest, Dave," he said.

"A nasty guy put it there."

"Yeah, I heard about that."

"He works for you."

"That's not exactly true, Dave. He used to work for some people I do business with. He doesn't now. I don't know where he is. I heard Florida."

"I wouldn't want a guy like that to blindside me, Tony."

"You're an up-front guy. But you got no worries on that. Not in this town."

"The people I represent like the quality of your product, they like the way you do business. They've given me a half million to work with. I want the same quality goods, same price on the key. Can we do some business today?"

"You cut right to it, don't you?"

"You're a serious man, you have a serious reputation."

"You're talking a big score."

"That's why I'm dealing with you. The word is that the Houston people are undependable."

"The problem I got sometimes is access, Dave. Or what you might call transportation. The product's out there, but there're a lot of nautical factors involved here, you know what I mean? Something happens to the product out on the salt, a lot of people lose money, a lot of people get real mad."

"That's the other thing I want to talk to you about. I grew up in the wetlands. I know every bayou and channel from Sabine Pass over to Barataria. I can get it through for you, and on a regular basis."

"I bet you can," he said.

But his attention was no longer on me. His arms were folded on top of the trough, and he was looking across the blue-green expanse of lawn and trees at the front porch of his house, where a blond woman in a red dress and a hat was counting the suitcases the houseman was bringing outside. A moment later one of the gatemen walked up the drive and backed a restored 1940s Lincoln Continental convertible out of the garage. It had wire wheels, a deep maroon finish, and an immaculate white top. The gateman and the Negro put the woman's luggage in the trunk. She never glanced in our direction.

"What do you think of my car?" he said finally.

"It looks great."

"Yeah. That's what I think." But his eyes were still concentrated on the woman. "You married?"

"Not now."

He continued to stare as she got into the Lincoln and the gateman drove her down the long driveway toward the street. Then his eyes clicked back onto mine.

"Hey, let me ask you something else. Because I like you. I like the way you talk," he said. "What's your attitude about dealing in the product?"

"I don't understand."

"You're an educated man. I want to know what an educated man thinks about dealing in the product."

"I never saw anybody chop up lines because somebody forced him to."

"I think that's an intelligent attitude. But I want you to understand something else, Dave. I got lots of businesses. Vending and video machines, a restaurant, nightclubs, half of a trucking company, real estate development out by Chalmette, some investments in Miami. This other stuff comes and goes. Five years from now the in thing might be huffing used cat litter. There's always a bunch of bozos around with money. Why fight the fashion?"

His eyes looked at the empty drive and the front gate that was closed once again.

"Excuse me," he said, and raised himself out of the pool, walked dripping to the redwood table, and punched one button on the phone. He put his little finger in one of his tiny ears and shook water out of it. At the end of the drive I saw the other gateman walk to a box that was inset in the stucco wall.

"Tommy, get some people over here, call up the catering service," he said. "I got some guests here, I want to entertain them right… Don't ask me who, I don't give a shit, get them over here."

He hung up the phone and looked at me.

"I live in a place that costs a million bucks, and half the time it's like being the only guy in the fucking Superdome," he said.

"Before your friends get here, can we agree on a deal of some kind, Tony?" I said.

"There's some people I bring out here like I order lawn furniture. There's other people I invite because I respect their experience and what's in their heads. Don't hurt my feelings," he said.

His guests arrived like actors who played only one role, their smiles welded in place, their eyes aglitter with the moment. They were people without accents or origins, as though they had lived on the edge of a party all their lives. But besides their good looks and their late-season suntans, their most singular common denominator was their carefree trust in the walled-in tropical opulence that surrounded them. They smoked dope by the pool, snorted lines off a mirror in the guest cottage, ate chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches from the caterer's tray, with never a sideways glance at gatemen who wore shoulder holsters or a thick-bodied, silent man in cutoffs who waxed an Oldsmobile in the driveway with such a mean energy that his jailhouse tattoos danced like snakes on his naked back.

Even Clete quickly fell into the ambience, his arms spread out on the tile trough in the deep end, his pale blue canvas hat low on his brow, a twenty-year-old girl hovering within the crook of his arm. Her mouth was red and cold from the whiskey sour she sipped from a glass in one hand, and she laughed at everything he said and balanced herself by cupping his shoulder whenever she started to float away from the pool's edge. I could see her knee rake against his thigh.

The air was becoming cooler now, and I treaded water to stay warm. It was impossible to get Cardo alone. He sat at the redwood table in a white terry cloth robe, one leg crossed on his knee, smoking a Pall Mall in a gold cigarette holder, while four of his guests sat around him and smiled brightly into his words. I hung from the diving board by one arm and began to think it was better to mark the day off.

"How do you like being in the life?" a voice said behind me.

She sat on the diving board that in a light green dress covered with tiny pink flowers. She had tucked her red hair up into a green beret, but one side of it had fallen down on her neck. Her lipstick was bright red, and she wore too much of it, but when she parted her mouth and looked directly at me, she disturbed me and made me keenly aware that there is no safety for the male in either age or pride.

"What's happening, Kim?" I said.

"What's happening with you, hotshot?"

"Like you say, enjoying the life. You don't want to swim?"

"I think I'll pass. Two nights ago they were screwing in here."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. On a rubber raft, with the lights on. What a bunch."

I lifted myself out of the pool and walked to the guest cottage to shower and dress. I heard her laugh behind me. When I came back out she was sitting on a cushioned, scrolled iron chair with her legs crossed. I sat down on the dry mat on the back edge of the diving board.

"You're a case," she said.

"How's that?" I said, looking toward the shallow end, where Tony was tapping a beach ball back and forth with two girls.

"You make me think of a cat that's trying to like sitting on a hot stove," she said.

"Where did you say you're from?"

"I didn't."

"I need to talk to Tony alone. It's hard to do."