James Burke - A Morning for Flamingos

"Yes."

"It sounds like our man knows a little more than he should."

"What's he doing now?"

"Drinking at the bar."

"I'll be there in a half hour."

I told Tony that I had to run a couple of errands downtown, then I was going to Bootsie's for supper.

"Was that Bootsie on the phone?" he asked. He stood in his bedroom door, with a towel wrapped around his waist, raking the water out of his hair with a comb.

"No, it was Clete. He knows a guy who might give me a good deal on a boat."

"I feel a lot better after a shower." He stopped combing his hair. "Hey, tell me straight about something. Down there in the shelter, you weren't just playing with my head? I mean… we're not talking about a loss of respect here?"

"No."

"Because I don't push myself on people."

"You didn't push yourself on me."

"You wanted to know what happened, I told you."

I nodded without replying.

"But if a guy thinks less of me because of it, I don't hold it against him. We're clear on this?" he said.

"You're not the only guy who brought back a problem from there, Tony. I've got my own. Maybe they're worse than yours."

"Yeah?"

"I got four of my men killed on a trail because I did something reckless and stupid. Everybody has his own basket of snakes to deal with."

"Your voice has a little edge to it, Dave."

"I think pride's a pile of shit."

He laughed. "You sure don't hide your thoughts, do you?" he said. "How about bringing Bootsie out here for supper, then we'll all go to a movie."

"It's kind of a private evening, Tony."

"Paul was looking forward to it."

"Then you should have told me earlier, podna,"

He nodded silently, then began dressing in front of a full-length mirror as though I were not there.

I didn't have time to worry any more about Tony's mood changes and his addict's propensity for trying to control everyone and everything in his environment. In fact, maybe we were too much alike in that regard, and for that reason I not only got along better with him than I should have as a policeman, I also saw my own menagerie of snapping dogs at work inside him. When I got to Clete's Club, Nate Baxter was by himself at the far end of the bar, one shined brown loafer propped on the brass footrail. He wore sharply creased tan slacks, an open-necked yellow shirt, and a herringbone sports coat. His gold watch and gold identification bracelet gleamed softly in the light.

"You're looking sharp, Nate," I said.

He tipped his cigarette ashes neatly into an ashtray and took a sip from his highball glass, his eyes looking at me in the bar mirror.

"You know a DEA agent by the name of Minos Dautrieve?" he asked.

"He's out of Lafayette. Yeah, I know him."

"He's in New Orleans now. He's running a sting."

"Why tell the family secrets to me?"

"I underestimated you," he said.

"I have to be somewhere in a few minutes. What did you want to say to me, Nate?"

"She's my snitch. You shouldn't have messed with her."

"What are we talking about here?"

"You know what I'm talking about. You were in her place out in Metairie. You got her stashed. But it's not going to do you any good. She's our witness, and she's going to testify for us. You can tell that to Dautrieve for me if you want to."

"You're going a little fast for me."

"The girl she was staying with works in the same club out on the Airline Highway. She told us you and Purcel were in her place. She said later some feds picked up the Dollinger broad. So I underestimated you. You've still got your badge, haven't you? But that doesn't mean you get to screw up our operation."

"This is what you had to tell me?"

He tipped his cigarette ashes into the ashtray again. He still had not looked directly at me. He took a puff off his cigarette, then scratched his beard with one fingernail.

"You can tell Kim Dollinger she either comes in or we send her brother up the road," he said. "Don't let that broad jerk you around, Robicheaux. I could have charged her when we busted her brother. She was as dirty as he was."

"Do you know that Jimmie Lee Boggs almost killed her?"

"You got a vested interest or something? We're talking about a snitch who was setting Tony C. up for a fall while she was banging him cross-eyed over in a beach house in Biloxi."

"Listen-"

"No, you've got it wrong. You listen. We've worked on this case eight months. You guys come along and think you're going to wrap up Tony C. in a few weeks. In the meantime you don't inform us that you're working undercover, and then you've got the balls to grab my snitch."

"You coerced her into prostituting herself."

He turned his head and looked at me. The neon bar lights made the neatly trimmed edge of his beard glow with a reddish tinge.

"She was working at Tony C.'s club before she ever came to our attention," he said. "He probably had to tie a board across his ass to keep from falling inside."

I saw Clete walk out of his office in back and begin changing a light bulb over the bandstand. The back of the club was empty.

"You're a bad cop, Baxter. But worse, you don't have any feelings about people," I said. "There's a word for that-pathological."

"Take somebody else's inventory, Robicheaux. I'm not interested. Here's what it comes down to. You fuck up this investigation, you keep getting in my face, causing me problems, I wouldn't count on the department protecting your cover. Anyway, I've had my say. Just stay away from me."

He turned back to his drink and ran his tongue along his gums. I opened and closed my hands at my sides.

"You gonna have something, suh?" the black barman said.

"No, thank you," I said.

I continued to stare at the side of Baxter's face, the grained skin on the back of his neck. I could hear my breath in my nostrils. Then I turned and walked toward the open front door. My body felt wooden, my arms and legs disjointed. The sun reflecting off a windshield outside was like a sliver of glass in the eye. I stopped, looked back, and saw Baxter go into the rest room by the bandstand.

When I pushed open the rest room door he was combing his hair in front of the mirror.

"If you do anything to hurt that girl again, or if you compromise my situation here in New Orleans, I'm going down to your office, in front of people, and give you the worst day in your insignificant life," I said.

He turned from the mirror, slipped his leather comb case out of his shirt pocket, blew in it before he replaced the comb; his breath reflected into my face. He used the back of his left hand to push me aside.

I heard a sound like a Popsicle stick snapping behind my eyes and saw a rush of color in my mind, like amorphous red and black clouds turning in dark water, and as though it had a life of its own my right fist hooked into his face and caught him squarely in the eye socket. His head snapped sideways, and I saw the white imprints of my knuckles on his skin and the watery electric shock in his eye.

But I had stepped into it. His right hand came out of his coat pocket with a leather-covered blackjack, an old-fashioned one that was shaped like a darning egg, with a spring built into the braided grip. I tried to raise my forearm in front of me, but the blackjack whopped across the top of my left shoulder and I felt the blow sink deep into the bone. The muscles in my chest and side quivered and then seemed to collapse, as if someone had run a heated metal rod through the trajectory of Jimmie Lee Boggs's bullet.

I was bent forward, my palm pressed hard against the throbbing pain below my collarbone, my eyes watering uncontrollably, the lip of the washbasin a wet presence across my buttocks. The expression in Baxter's eyes was unmistakable.

"Just one more for the road," he said softly.