"Jesus Christ, Tony," I heard the gateman say, his breath rushing out of his chest.
Tony put an unlit cigarette in his mouth, opened the cylinder again, and fitted the five rounds from his pocket back into the chambers.
"It wasn't even close, two chambers away from the firing pin," he said. "Don't ever let me see pity in your face when you look at me and my little boy again."
A solitary drop of water fell out of his hair and spotted the unlit cigarette in his mouth.
CHAPTER 7
The next morning the streets in the Quarter were thick with mist, and I could hear the foghorns of tugs and oil barges out on the river. I had coffee and beignets at a table inside the Café du Monde; then the sun broke out of the clouds and Jackson Square looked bright and wet and green after the night's rain. I walked over to Ray Fontenot's T-shirt shop on Bourbon and found him practicing his trombone in a small weed-grown, rubble-strewn courtyard in back. He wore a purple turtleneck sweater, gray slacks, and shades, even though there was little sunlight in the enclosure. He was not a gelatinous man. The rings of fat across his stomach looked hard, the kind your fist would do little harm to.
My conversation with him did not go well.
"So we're agreed on everything," he said. "You'll bring your boat over from Morgan City, and we'll take a little tarpon-fishing trip out on the salt. By the way, what's your boat doing in Morgan City if you live in New Iberia?"
"I just had the engine overhauled."
"That's good. And you'll have all the money?"
"That's right."
"Because we want lots of product for all the little boys and girls. It's what keeps everybody's genitalia humming. Like little nests of bees."
"Day after tomorrow, two a.m. at Cocodrie. Dress warm. It'll be cold out there," I said, and started to leave.
"Thank you, kind sir. But there's one change."
He drained the spittle out of his trombone slide onto the weeds at his feet.
"What's that?" I said.
"Your friend Purcel is not going with us."
"He's my business partner. He's in."
"Not on this trip."
"Why not?"
"He hasn't quite learned how to behave. Besides, we don't need him."
"Listen, Fontenot, if Clete gave you a bad time over Tony's phone number, that's a personal beef you work out on your own. This is business."
"He no play-a, he no go-a."
"What does Tony say?"
"I make the deals for Tony, I make the terms. When you talk to me, it's just like you're talking to Tony."
"You mind if I make a call?"
"I wouldn't have it any other way, good sir." He took off his sunglasses and smiled. His eyes were flat and dead and looked as if they belonged in another face.
I used the telephone in Fontenot's office. I could hear him blowing into his trombone.
"Hey, good morning. How you doing today?" Tony Cardo said.
"I'm fine."
"Sure?"
"I'm just fine, Tony."
"You don't have a hard-on about last night?"
"You've got your own point of view about things. I don't want to intrude upon it."
"I got strong emotions. About family stuff. I get a little weird sometimes. You got to bear with me."
"I respect your feelings, Tony."
"You don't rattle, do you?"
"Morning and night, podna. I've got a problem here. Ray doesn't want my friend along on the tarpon trip."
"That's too bad."
"I think my friend should be able to go."
"I can't interfere, Dave. It's Ray's call."
"He's got his nose bent out of joint over a personal affront. It's not the way a pro does things."
"Indulge the man."
"He's a fat shit, Tony."
"Hey, catch a big fish for me. And I want you out to dinner this weekend. Bring your buddy, too. I like him."
He hung up the phone. Ray Fontenot stood in the doorway to the courtyard, his eyes filled with merriment, his tongue thick and pink on his teeth.
At noon I went to Clete's to pick him up for lunch. We drove in his car to a Fat Albert's off St. Charles and ordered paper plates of red beans and dirty rice with lengths of sausage. It was warm enough to eat outside, and we sat at a green-painted picnic table under a live oak whose roots had lifted up the slabs of sidewalk and cracked the edge of the parking lot. Out on St. Charles I saw the old iron streetcar rattle past the palm trees on the esplanade.
I told Clete about my conversation that morning with Fontenot. He chewed quietly without speaking, his green eyes thoughtful. I waited for him to say something. He didn't.
"Anyway, he says you're out, and Cardo backed him up."
He wiped the juice from his sausage off his mouth with a paper napkin, then sucked on the corner of his lip.
"I'd be careful," he said.
"What are you thinking?"
"He's up to something."
"I think he just doesn't like you. What did you do to him to get Cardo's phone number?"
"Nothing."
"Clete?"
"I told him I wasn't leaving till I got the number. I made a little noise in front of his customers. I didn't touch him."
"It surprises you he doesn't want to see you again?"
"What if I have another talk with him?"
"That's out. The deal has to go through."
"I'm worried about you, mon. You're not seeing things straight. You're doing the grunt work for the DEA, they take the glory. There's something else to think about, too. How's a drug buy out on the salt going to put Cardo away?"
"I've got to get next to him with a wire."
"Why not get a Pap smear while you're at it?" He lit a cigarette and blew smoke off into the dappled sunlight. "We used to call the FBI 'Fart, Barf, and Itch,' remember? Why do you think these DEA cocksuckers are any different? If you ask me, this deal down at Cocodrie stinks."
There was no point in arguing. I also felt that he was more disappointed in being cut out of the sting than anything else. But his eyes continued to wander over my face while he smoked.
"For God's sakes, what is it?" I said.
"I don't know if you need this right now, but a colored kid was in the bar looking for you this morning. He wouldn't give his name, but I have an idea who he is."
"Oh?"
"That kid from New Iberia you were taking up to Angola with Jimmie Lee Boggs."
"What did he say?"
"'Tell Mr. Dave I seen Jimmie Lee yesterday on Bourbon.'" Clete continued to look at my face. "I'm right, that's the kid who got loose from you?"
"Yes."
"You're in contact with him?"
"More or less."
"Are you out of your mind?"
"Does he look like a dangerous and violent man to you? You think I ought to send him to the chair?"
"I think you ought to watch out for your own butt once in a while."
"What else did he say?"
"Nothing. A weird kid. If a black ant wore a pizza uniform, that's what it'd look like. You really think he saw Boggs?"
"I don't know."
"Why would Boggs be walking around on Bourbon?"
"I don't know, Clete."
"Come on, don't look so disturbed. The kid's probably imaginative." Then he pressed his lips together in a tight line. "Listen, Dave, keep your attitudes simple about this guy. You see him, you smoke him. No warning, no talk, you just blow his fucking head off. Case closed."
I didn't finish my plate. I rolled it up, dropped it in a trash barrel, then sat back down at the wood table under the tree. Clete kept pushing a ring around on his index finger while his eyes studied me.
"You think you lost your guts?" he said.
"No."
"Like Boggs has got the Indian sign on you or something?"
"I'm cool. Don't worry about it."
"You bothered because you want to do this guy?"
"No."
"You listen to me. It's a perk when you get a chance to grease a guy like that. You take him off at the neck and the world applauds." But he saw his words were having no effect. "What happened in that coulee?"