James Burke - A Morning for Flamingos

"You always cut right to the bone, Minos."

"I didn't invent the rules. By the way, we have that house under twenty-four-hour surveillance. If it turns to shit inside, throw a lamp or a chair through a window. In the meantime, think about how far you want to take it. Nobody'll blame you if you decide to go back to New Iberia."

It was cool under the stucco colonnade, and red leaves were blowing out of a heavily wooded lot across the street.

"Dave, are you still there?" he asked.

"Yeah… I'll try to call you back tonight or tomorrow. Talk to you later, Minos."

I hung up the phone and wondered if Minos would tell the lion tamer that he could put down his whip and chair and walk out of the lions' cage whenever he wished. I went inside the drugstore, bought a package of razor blades, and came out just as Tony and Jess pulled to the curb in the maroon Lincoln convertible.

Tony was in the passenger's seat. He reached over the backseat and popped open the back door for me. He had changed into loafers, a rust-colored sports shirt, pleated tan slacks, a cardigan, and a yellow Panama hat.

"You could have taken the car, Dave. You didn't have to walk," he said.

"It's a good day for it."

"How do you like my hat?"

"It looks sharp."

"I got a collection of them. Hey, Jess, go inside and get me a copy of Harper's ," he said.

"What?" Jess said.

"Get me a copy of Life ."

"Sure, Tony," Jess said, cut the engine, and went inside the drugstore.

Tony smiled at me across the back of the seat. The Lincoln had a rolled leather interior, a fold-out bar, a wooden dashboard with black instrument panels.

"Jess has an IQ of minus eight, but he'd eat thumbtacks with a spoon if I told him to," he said. Then the smile went out of his face. "I'm sorry you had to hear that stuff between me and Clara. In particular I'm sorry you had to hear that about me being a war hero. Because I never told anybody I was a hero. I knew some guys who were, but I wasn't one of them."

"Who was, Tony? Did you ever read a story by Ernest Hemingway called 'A Soldier's Home'? It's about a World War I Marine who comes back home and discovers that people only want to hear stories about German women chained to machine guns. The truth is that he was afraid all the time he was over there and it took everything in him just to get by. However, he learns that's not a story anyone is interested in."

"Yeah. Ernest Hemingway. I like his books. I read a bunch of them in college."

"Look, on another subject, Tony. I'm not sure your wife is ready for houseguests right now."

He puffed out his cheeks.

"I invite people to my home. I tell them if they should leave," he said. "You're my guest. You don't want to stay, that's your business."

"I appreciate your hospitality, Tony."

"So we're going back home now and get you changed, then we're taking Kim out to the yacht club for a little lunch and some golf. How's that grab you?"

"Fine."

"You like Kim?"

"Sure."

"How much?"

"She's a pretty girl."

"She ain't pretty, man. She's fucking beautiful." His eyes were dancing with light. "She told me she got drunk and came on to you."

"She told you that?"

"What's the big deal? She's human. You're a good-looking guy. But you don't look too comfortable right now." He laughed out loud.

"What can I say?"

"Nothing. You're too serious. It's all comedy, man. The bottom line is we all get to be dead for a real long time. It's a cluster fuck no matter how you cut it."

We drove back to his house, and I changed into a pair of gray slacks, a charcoal shirt, and a candy-striped necktie, loaded two bags of golf clubs into the Lincoln, and with a white stretch Caddy limousine full of Tony's hoods behind us, we picked up Kim Dollinger and headed for the country club out by the lake.

We filled two tables in the dining room. I couldn't tell if the attention we drew was because of my bandaged head, Tony's hoods, whose dead eyes and toneless voices made the waiters' heads nod rapidly, or the way Kim filled out her gray knit dress. But each time I took a bite from my shrimp cocktail and tried to chew on the side of my mouth that wasn't injured, I saw the furtive glances from the other tables, the curiosity, the titillation of being next to people who suddenly step off a movie screen.

And Tony must have read my thoughts.

"Watch this," he said, and motioned the maître d' over. "Give everybody in the bar and dining room a glass of champagne, Michel."

"It's not necessary, Mr. Cardo."

"Yeah, it is."

"Some of our members don't drink, Mr. Cardo."

"Then give them a dessert. Put it on my bill."

Tony wiped his small mouth with a napkin. The maître d' was a tall, pale man who looked as if he were about to be pushed out an airplane door.

"Hey, they don't want it, that's okay," Tony said. "Lighten up, Michel."

"Very good, sir." The maître d' assembled his waiters and sent them to the bar for trays of glasses and towel-wrapped bottles of champagne.

"That was mean," Kim said.

"I didn't come here to be treated like a bug," Tony said.

We finished lunch and walked outside into the cool afternoon sunlight and the rattle of the palms in the wind off the lake. The lake was murky green and capping, and the few sailboats that were out were tacking hard in the wind, the canvas popping, their glistening bows slapping into the water. Tony and most of his entourage loaded themselves into golf carts for nine holes, and Kim and I sat on a wood bench by the practice green while Jess made long putts back and forth across the clipped grass without ever hitting the cup.

She wore a gray pillbox hat with a net veil folded back on top of it. She didn't look at me and instead gazed off at the rolling fairways, the sand traps and greens, the moss-hung oaks by the trees. The wind was strong enough to make her eyes tear, but in profile she looked as cool and regal and unperturbed as a sculptor's model. Behind her, the long, rambling club building, with its glass-domed porches, was achingly white against the blue of the sky.

"Maybe we should go inside," I said.

"It's fine, thanks."

"Do you think it's smart to jerk a guy like Tony around?"

She crossed her legs and raised her chin.

"He's got a burner turned on in his head. I wouldn't mess with his male pride," I said.

"Is there something wrong with the way I look? I wish you'd stop staring at me."

"I think you've got a guilty conscience, Kim."

"Oh you do?"

"Did you drop the dime on us?"

She watched Jess putt across the green. The red flag on the pin flapped above his head in the distance. Finally the ball clunked into the cup. My eyes never left the side of her face. She pulled her dress tight over her knee. Her hips and stomach looked as smooth as water going over stone.

"Somebody told the Man. It wasn't Lionel or Fontenot," I said.

"Do you think Tony would be taking me out for lunch if he thought I was a snitch?"

"I think only Tony knows what goes on in Tony's head. I think he likes to live on the outer edge of his envelope. Eating black speed is like sliding down the edge of a barber's razor."

"Why do you keep saying these things to me? I have nothing to tell you."

"Do you know a Vice cop named Nate Baxter?"

I could see the color in her cheeks.

"Why should I know-," she began.

"He was following you the day you were in Clete's place. This guy's a lieutenant. Why's he interested in you, Kim?"

Her eyes were wet, and her lip began to tremble.

"All right, come on now," I said.

"You're a shit."

Jess had stopped putting and was looking at us. The gray hair on his chest grew like wire out of his golf shirt.