His partner leaned into the car, worked his hand around under the seat, and pulled out the shotgun pistol. He snapped open the breech and removed the two slender.410 shells and dropped them in his pocket.
"You're under arrest for possession of an illegal firearm, Ornella," Baxter said.
"You got to have cause to get in the car, Lieutenant," Jess said.
"You took some law courses up at Angola?" Baxter said.
"You got to have cause," Jess said.
Baxter's partner cuffed him and led him over to the curb. Two squad cars, the backup that Baxter had probably called for, turned into the park. Baxter opened the back door of the convertible and told me to step out.
"It looks like you finally found your element," he said.
"It must be a dull day, Nate."
"How do you like working for the greaseballs?"
"You ought to brush up on your procedure. Probably talk a little bit with your partner. He seems to know what he's doing."
"No kidding?"
"Nobody here was serious. Otherwise you might have gotten your hash cooked, Nate."
"I'm probably just lucky you were along to cool things out," he said, put a filter-tipped cigarette between his teeth at an upward angle, and lit it with a Zippo lighter. He snapped the lighter shut and blew smoke out into the sunlight. Then he said, "I like your threads. They're elegant."
"Get to it, Nate. You're wasting a lot of people's time."
"No, I mean it. You're stylish. I remember you when you smelled like an unflushed toilet with booze poured in it." He rubbed his fingers up and down the edge of my coat lapel. Then he touched my tie, put one finger under it, drew it slowly out from my chest and let it drop.
I looked away at the grassy lake and the way the wind made the light break on the water. The golfers on the other side of the lake had stopped their game and were watching us.
"You like the pockets in that shirt?" And his two fingers slid down inside the cloth, so that I could feel them against the nipple.
"Don't do that, Nate."
"It's got a nice feel to it. It pays to buy a quality shirt."
I could see the peppery grain of his skin along the edge of his beard, a piece of yellow mucus in the corner of his eye, the pucker in his mouth that almost made a smile. His fingers felt as thick and obscene as sausages inside my pocket.
I raised my hand and pushed his arm slowly away from me.
"That's not smart," he said quietly, and reached his hand toward me again.
I put the flat of my hand against his forearm and moved it away from me as you would press back a slowly yielding spring. He smiled and took a puff off the filter tip of his cigarette, his lips making a soft popping sound.
"Bust him. Interference with an officer in the performance of his duty," he said to his partner. Then to me, "I'll ask them to process you right into the population so you can eat mainline tonight."
"Fuck you, Baxter. We'll make bail in two hours," Tony said as a uniformed cop raised him to his feet.
"It's Friday afternoon, Tony," Baxter said. "Next arraignment is Monday morning."
"What about the broad?" his partner said.
"Tell her to take a cab. Tow his car in and tear it apart."
"Nate, we might be on shaky ground here," the partner said.
"Not with this bunch," Baxter said.
A few minutes later I sat handcuffed next to Tony behind the wire-mesh screen of a squad car. Through the window I could see Kim walking hurriedly out of the park toward the avenue, her face as white as bone.
Tony, Jess, and I were put in a holding cell a short distance from the drunk tank. Because it was a holding cell, it had no toilet or running water and contained only an iron bench that was bolted to one wall. The bars of the door had been repainted so many times that the layers of white paint formed a shell around the metal. The walls were grimed with handprints and scuff marks from people's shoes, covered with scratched drawings of genitalia and names that had been scorched into the paint with butane cigarette lighters. The heat was turned up and the cell was hot. Someone in the drunk tank began screaming and was taken out by two uniformed cops.
Tony paced up and down, took off his rust-colored sports shirt, then worked his T-shirt over his head and used it to wipe his skin.
"What's the drill with this guy? Somebody tell me what the fucking drill is," he said.
"It's Baxter. He's a bad cop. He can't make his case, so he finds something he can do," I said.
"We ain't sitting in this shithole three days. That's out," he said.
"Your lawyer had better know a judge, then."
"You got it," Tony said.
"I got to use the toilet," Jess said.
"Hey, you hear that?" Tony shouted through the bars. "We got a man in here needs to use the toilet."
His olive skin glistened with perspiration, and he kept biting his lower lip. By the time we were booked and moved up to the general population, on the second floor, his hands trembled and he couldn't drink enough water. I sat next to him on the edge of an iron bunk that hung from wall chains. His back was running with sweat now. He leaned forward on his thighs and ran his hand through his wet hair.
"Lockup is at eight o'clock," I said. "Let's go down to the shower."
"I'm cool," he answered.
"You'll feel better after a shower."
"Don't worry about me. I'm solid, man." He gripped the edge of the bunk and shuddered as though he had malaria. "Did anybody make you?"
"I don't think so. I've been out of New Orleans too long now."
"Anybody make you, get in your face, tell them we're tight."
"All right, Tony."
"There's guys in here who'll do an ex-cop, Dave. That's not a shuck."
"I think you just figured out Nate Baxter."
"Yeah, well, I'm going to square it with that cat. The word is he's getting freebies from French Quarter street whores. I know one who's got AIDS. I'm going to fix it so she gets in the sack with him."
Then he bent over and squeezed his palm across the back of his neck and said, "Oh man, the tiger's got me."
I stood him up and walked him by the arm down to the shower. Inmates lounging in the open doors of their cells or sitting on the big water pipe against the corridor wall looked at him with the curiosity and reverence of their kind-prisoners in a parish or city jail-when they were in the actual proximity of a mainline con or Mafia don. Some rose to their feet, offered to help, made an extravagant show of sympathy.
"He just got hold of some bad food," I said.
"Yeah, it's rotten, Tony," one man said.
"A roach crawled out of the grits one time, man. That's no shit," another said.
"We got a stinger and some canned goods. You're welcome to it, Tony," a third said.
Tony stood naked under the shower with his hands propped against the tiles. The water boiled his scalp white and sluiced over his olive skin and the knotted muscles in his back. In one pale buttock was a puckered red scar just above the colon. He held his face into the rush of hot water and opened and closed his small mouth like a guppy. When he turned off the faucets he breathed deeply through his nose, as though he were inhaling the morning air, and wiped his face slick with his palm.
"That's a little better," he said.
Two men farther down the shower were staring at his phallus.
"You guys got a problem with your gender or something?" he said.
"Sorry, Tony. We don't mean anything," one man said.
"Then act decent," he said.
"Sure, Tony. Everybody's glad to have you here. No, I mean, we're sorry you're busted but-"
"Get out of here," Tony said.
"Sure, anything you want. We-" Then the man lost his words, and he and his friend walked quickly out of the shower with their towels wrapped around their hips.
"That's what nobody understands about a jail. It's full of degenerates," Tony said.
I walked with him back to our cell. Through the corridor windows I could see downtown New Orleans and the glow of the city against the clouds. He put on his slacks and shirt and lay down barefoot on the bunk across from me. He folded his arm behind his head. Water dripped out of his hair onto the striped mattress.