James Burke: A Morning for Flamingos

"Hang on," I said, and reset the jack flush against the hull with the other end inserted against the engine's crankshaft. I jacked the handle slowly with both hands, a notch at a time, to try to move the engine's weight back on Boggs's legs so he could sit up higher out of the water.

"Why did she want to kill Hipolyte?" I said.

"She didn't want to split the action. It was a perfect chance to clip the redbone. She knew everybody would blame the kid. Fuck, hurry up, man."

"Why would they blame Tee Beau?"

"The redbone was queer for him. He wanted to make the kid his punk."

I eased the jack up another notch, saw it shift the block perhaps a half inch, and then I clicked it up another notch. It popped loose from the crankshaft with such force that it broke through the water's surface like a spring. Boggs's mouth opened breathlessly.

"You sonofabitch, you're gonna tear my insides out," he said.

"Listen, I've got to find a piece of hose or some pipe."

"What?" His eyes were filled with fright.

"I've got to get you something to breathe through."

"No! You get that jack under the block."

I held it up in my hand.

"It's stripped, Boggs," I said.

"Oh man, don't tell me that."

"Come on, we're not finished yet. I'll be right back."

I hunted through the pilothouse and fore and aft on the deck, but anything of value that could be removed from the barge had long ago been taken by scavengers. Then I recrossed the bridge and tore the radiator hose out of my truck. When I climbed back down into the engine room, Boggs's head was tilted all the way back, so that his ears were underwater and only his face was clear of the surface.

I knelt by him and put my hand under the back of his head.

"Take a breath and lift up your head so you can hear me," I said.

Then I said it again and nudged the back of his head. He straightened his neck and looked at me wide-eyed, his mouth crimped tight, his nostrils shuddering at the waterline.

"We're going to hold his hose as tight as we can around your mouth," I said. "I'll stay with you until the tide goes out. Then I'll get help and we'll pull this block off you. You've got my word, Jimmie Lee. I'm not going anywhere. But we've got to keep the hose sealed against your mouth. Do you understand that?"

He blinked his eyes, then laid his head back in the water again, and I pressed the hard rubber edges of the radiator hose around his mouth.

We held it there together for fifteen minutes while the water climbed higher and covered his face entirely. His hair floated in a dirty aura about his head, and his eyes stared up at me like watery green marbles. Then I felt the rubber slip against his skin, heard him choke down inside the hose, and saw a fine bead of air bubbles rise from the side of his mouth.

I tried to screw the hose tighter into his mouth, but he had swallowed water and was fighting now. At first his hands locked on my wrists, as though I were the source of his suffering; then his fists burst through the surface and flailed the air, and finally caught my shirt and tore it down the front of my chest. I pushed the hose down at him again, but there was no way now he could blow the water out of it and regain his breath.

Then one hand came up from my shirt, and felt my face like a blind man reaching out to discover some fragile and tender human mystery, and a last solitary air bubble floated from his throat to the surface and popped in the dead air.

Tony had walked almost all the way back to his fishing camp when I slowed the truck abreast of him under a row of moss-hung oaks. It had stopped raining now, and out in the pasture the cows had broken out of their clumps and were grazing in the grass again. The hair on the back of Tony's head was singed the color of burnt copper. He glanced sideways at me, indifferently, and kept walking.

"Get in," I said.

He jumped over a puddle in front of him and brushed a wet branch out of his face. I let the truck idle slowly forward in first gear.

"Come on, Tony. Get in," I said.

"Is this a bust? If it is, do it by the numbers. I've got lawyers that'll eat your lunch."

I braked the truck at an angle in front of him and popped open the passenger door.

"Don't act like a sprout, Tony," I said. "I want to tell you something."

He paused, looked out over the fields, pinched his nose, then got in the truck and closed the door. His clothes smelled like smoke and ashes. A volunteer fire truck passed us and splashed a curtain of yellow water across my windshield. Tony watched the fire truck disappear down the road through the back window. Finally he said, "Jimmie Lee got away from you?"

"No."

"You popped him?"

"He drowned."

"Drowned?"

I told him what happened down in the engine room of the drill barge.

"Then I guess it's a red-letter day for you, Dave. You got to watch Jimmie Lee shuffle off with the hallelujah chorus, and you get to be the narc who made the case on Tony C."

"Is that the way you read it?"

"I told you once, everybody cuts a piece out of your ass one way or another. Except don't bank your promotion or your pay raise yet, Dave. What you've got here is entrapment. Also, I don't think you've got enough on that tape to get them real excited at the U.S. Attorney's office. You're DEA, right?"

"Indirectly."

"I'll put in a word for you. I'll tell them you really did your job well."

The road bent close to the river again, and up ahead I could see Tony's fish camp and the Lincoln convertible parked in the back under the trees. Smoke rose from the chimney and flattened in the salt breeze off the Gulf. I pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road and cut the engine.

I took Tony's.45 from the pocket of my fatigue jacket and handed it to him. He looked back at me strangely.

"Here's the lay of the land, Tony," I said. "I think you've got a big Purple Heart nailed up m the middle of your forehead. Everybody is supposed to feel you're the only guy who did bad time in Vietnam. You also give me the impression that somebody else is responsible for your addiction and getting you out of it. But the bottom line is you sell dope to people and they fuck up their lives with it."

"I think maybe it's you who's got the problem with conscience, Dave."

"You're wrong. As of now you're on your own. As far as I know, you died in that fire back there. I don't think a county medical examiner, particularly in a place like this, will ever sort out the bones and teeth in that hangar. If you disappear into Mexico with Paul and stay out of the business, I think the DEA will write you off. I doubt if your wife will be a problem, either, since she'll acquire almost everything you own."

He chewed on his lip and looked up the incline at the camp.

"You've got your plane, you've got Jess to fly it, you've got that fine little boy to take with you," I said. "I think if you make the right choice, Tony, you might be home free."

"They won't believe you."

"Maybe you inflate your importance. Twenty-four hours after you're off the board, somebody else will take your place. In a year nobody will be able to find your file."

He made pockets of air in his cheeks and switched them back and forth as though he were swishing water around in his mouth.

"It's a possibility, isn't it?" he said. He bit a hangnail off his thumb and removed it from his tongue. "Just pop through a hole in the dimension and leave a big question mark behind. That's not bad."

"Like you said to me the other day, it's always about money. Stay away from the money, and the Houston and Miami crowd will probably stay away from you."

"Maybe."

"But any way you cut it, it's adiós , Tony."

"My ranch is outside a little village called Zapopan. Maybe you'll get a postcard from there."