"Okay, Clete."
"Because you can't depend on these white-collar dickheads."
"I got your drift."
"Did that pencil pusher call you yet?"
"Minos?"
"Yeah."
"About ten minutes ago."
"His sting has turned to shit. He's not too happy. I told him they took a hell of a lot of risk with a guy they recruited from outside their agency. He didn't seem to like that."
"Minos is all right. How do you think New Orleans got in on it?"
"Maybe a wiretap, maybe a snitch. Who cares? They saves your tokus, didn't they?"
"Not intentionally. You remember what it was like when somebody opened up on you with an M-16?"
"Maybe we ought to 'front Nate Baxter about it. Sometimes he comes into my club after work. I've always thought his head would make a good toilet brush."
He continued to study my face.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked.
"It wasn't a tap. The DEA would know about a tap. Somebody dropped the dime on the buy."
"Who knew about it?"
"Cardo… Fontenot… Lionel… obviously Boggs…"
"Why you got that big wrinkle between your eyes, Streak?"
"I'm involved with somebody. She knew about it, too."
"That's great. Why don't you run an ad in the Times-Picayune the next time out?"
"I didn't tell her. She picked up on it somewhere else."
"What's her name?"
"Bootsie Giacano."
"Oh, man, I don't believe it. You're in the sack with one of the Giacanos?"
"She's an old friend from New Iberia. She married into the family."
"Probably like one of Charlie Manson's people, just a casual member of the family."
"Knock it off, Clete."
He grinned and squinted at me.
"The other one that bothers me is Kim Dollinger," I said. "She was trying to tell me something in your club. I thought she was just bombed."
"She is one tough badass broad, isn't she? I'd like to get to know her a lot better."
"I get the feeling you're not too serious about any of this."
"Why should I be? This whole sting was put together by clowns, if you ask me. They almost got you killed out there. I don't like federal farts doing that to my podjo."
"I think you need to broaden your attitudes, Clete."
He opened my can of Dr Pepper, poured it in a glass with ice, set a glass straw in it, and put it in my hand.
"Drink your pop," he said. "Hey, you know who I got the pizza from?"
"Don't tell me."
"You got it, mon. That strange, buglike colored kid. He works in that pizza joint right around the corner from the Pearl. Hey, mon, it's time to get out of this G-man bullshit. Let them clean up their own mess for a while. If you still want to square the beef with Boggs, you and I'll do it together. With no forms to fill out, either. You know what I mean?"
"I'll let you know."
"Something happened out there, didn't it?" he said.
"What do you mean?"
"The dragon went away."
"Something like that."
"It's a rush, isn't it?"
I nodded and looked out the window at the tops of the trees moving in the sunlight.
"Yeah, a real high," he said. "Maybe one a guy doesn't always want to turn loose of. Almost as good as a glass of black Jack on ice with a Tuborg to chase it home. Think about it, Dave. The time to go is right after you hit the daily double."
He folded the pizza box shut and looked directly into my face. His weight made a big dent on the side of the bed. His face was as flat and round as a cake pan.
Later, I phoned New Iberia to check on Alafair, then I called Bootsie to apologize for the things that I had said to her. I hadn't changed my mind about her-if she was involved with the mob in New Orleans, she had become a willing victim-but what right did I have to judge her and wound her again after all these years? It was a difficult conversation because I knew her phone was tapped and I did not want her to compromise herself. But I did apologize.
"It's all right, cher," she said. "I haven't told you everything. Sometime I will."
I was silent.
"You came to some conclusions that most people would," she said.
"Can you come up here?"
"Anytime for you, darlin'."
"Not today, though. Tomorrow morning. I've got the bed spins now. I guess I had a big drop in body temperature out there. I don't look too good, either."
"I'll drop by around nine."
"Boots?" I said.
"What?"
"Boots?" And I wanted to ask her if she knew how it had gone sour out on the salt.
"Yes?"
"I always loved you. All these years. I never forgot that summer of 1957."
"I didn't either, Dave. Who could? You get one like that in a lifetime."
That evening I ate supper from the tray on my bed and watched the light fade above the trees and roofs of houses. Then it was dark, and when people turned on their porch lights I could see the black outlines of the palms and philodendron and stands of bamboo in their front yards, and then the iron streetcar clattering by on the St. Charles esplanade, the closed windows filled with the purple and green neon glow from the Katz and Betzhof drugstore on the corner.
I fell asleep and dreamed that I was sliding down a wave into a great slate-green trough; the horizon was tilted, the sky a dirty veil of gray like incinerator smoke. My ears were filled with the hiss of water and wind humming in a seashell. My legs were atrophied, bloodless with cold, but I knew there were makos and hammerheads turning below me in the depths, and they could find feeling and extract a torrent of color from skin that had puckered as white as a fish's belly.
I felt him at the side of my bed and opened my eyes on the pillow as though someone had clapped his hands close to my face.
"Hey, it's just me," Tony Cardo said, smiling. "I don't want to give you a coronary, too."
I pushed myself up on my arms and licked the dry welt of stitches on my lip.
"You must have some mean dreams," he said.
He wore a striped brown suit, a pale yellow shirt with French cuffs and a dark brown knit necktie, a fedora tilted on his head, wing-tip shoes that were spit-shined to the soft gleam of melted plastic. The man with jailhouse tattoos I had seen waxing Tony's Oldsmobile stood behind Tony, his hands folded patiently in front of him, his expressionless eyes never quite meeting mine, his bristle-flecked cannonball head motionless as though he were listening for something.
"I feel bad about what happened to you out there, Dave," Tony said. "You saw it coming, didn't you, and I didn't listen to you. You're a smart man."
"Not smart enough, Tony. I walked into it. I lost my boat out there, too."
"I know all about it."
"How?"
"The people on the other end. They had to dump a lot of inventory overboard. Your money with it. It was a bad night for business."
"It was a bad night in a lot of ways, Tony."
"You mean Lionel and Ray buying it? I never thought those two would try to rip me off. But you have to deal with a lot of untrustworthy types in this business, Dave."
"You know all about the rip-off, then? You know about Jimmie Lee Boggs?"
"A guy like Boggs has one talent. You probably met one or two like him in ' Nam. He'd take out a water buffalo or spook a farmer out of a rice field so he could drop him. Anything to stay busy. But he's not too bright about anything else. The word's already out, he wants to lay off fifty keys of pure product."
"Where is he?"
"Here, Miami, Houston. It's all Motel Eight to a guy like that."
"Do you know why they tried to take you off?" I said.
He sucked in his cheeks, and his mouth became small and button-shaped. The man behind him flexed his shoulders as though he had a neck ache.
"You're telling me something?" Tony said. His eyes were bright, amused.
"Like you said, you didn't think Lionel or Fontenot had it in them."
"I didn't put it that way, but all right…"
"Boggs is a psychopath, but he's a pro. He doesn't make moves without somebody's permission," I said.