People at the other tables turned and stared at us, openmouthed.
"You finished eating, Jess?" Tony said.
"I'm going to get some pecan pie," Jess said.
"How about bringing the car around? I've got to get home," Tony said.
"What'd I do this time?"
"Nothing, Jess. You're fine."
"You make me feel like I ought to be in a plastic bubble or something. I was just telling a story."
"It's okay, Jess. Just get the car," Tony said. Then after Jess was gone, he said to me, "What am I going to do? He's the one loyal guy I got. When it comes down to protecting me, you could bust a chair across his face and he wouldn't blink."
A few minutes later Jess came around the corner in the convertible and waited for us in front of the restaurant. Leaves blew under the wire wheels.
"You guys drop me by my apartment so I can get my truck," I said. "I'll be back out to your house a little later."
Tony grinned. "I bet you're off to see Bootsie. Tell her hello for me," he said.
His presumption that Bootsie should have been uppermost in my mind was right-but she wasn't. After they left me at my apartment on Ursulines I called Minos at the guesthouse.
"I'm sorry you had to spend a night in the bag. How was it?" he said.
"What do you think?" Through the window I could see my neighbor's bluetick dog urinating against a banana tree in the flower bed.
"Look, I've got some news about Boggs, some of which I don't understand. An informant told our Lafayette office that Boggs was in New Iberia two days ago. What would he be doing in New Iberia?"
"Where'd your snitch see him?"
"In a black neighborhood, out in the parish. Why would Boggs be in a black neighborhood?"
"Tony said Boggs told him he was going to blackmail a Negro woman who owned a hot-pillow joint. It had something to do with the murder of a redbone. I think the redbone was a migrant-labor contractor named Hipolyte Broussard. But Boggs told all this to Cardo before he ripped off the coke out on the salt. I don't know why he'd be interested in some minor-league blackmail when he's holding a half-million dollars' worth of cocaine."
"I don't either. Anyway, we have some other information, too. We've got some taps on the greaseballs over in Houston. It's not an open contract on Cardo anymore. Boggs has got the hit. It's fifty grand, a big-money whack even for these guys. But they want it to go down in the next week."
"Why the hurry?"
"They're afraid of him. Tony C. isn't one to take prisoners. One guy on the tape says it might have to be a slop shot. Have you heard that one before?"
"Yes."
"There's no innocent bystanders. His wife, his kid, anybody around him, they're all targets if necessary. Dave, if Boggs was in New Iberia, do you think it has something to do with you?"
"Why?"
"Who has more reason to want you off the board? It's turned around on him. I bet he gets up thinking about you in the morning."
"Maybe."
"Look, I want to push this stuff to a head. Can you get a wire into Cardo's house?"
"I think so."
"Either you can or you can't, Dave."
"I can try, Minos."
"Once again I'm getting a strong impression here of a lack of enthusiasm."
"What do you expect? I'm a hired Judas goat. You want me to tell you I like it?"
He paused a moment; then he said in an even voice, "We hear a big load of coke is going to hit town in three or four days. A lot of it is going to end up as crack in the welfare projects."
I looked out the window into the courtyard, where my neighbor was trying to leash his dog in the flower bed.
"Are you there?"
"Yeah," I said.
"You know the scene. A human life isn't worth a stick of chewing gum in those places. All thanks to Tony C. and his friends."
"How do you want to work it?"
"Find out his connection with the shipment. Then we'll wire you. All we need is a statement that he's in on the buy or the distribution."
"All right."
"You sound like you've got something else on your mind."
"It's Kim Dollinger. I think somebody's got her out there twisting in the wind."
"Why?"
"She was terrified when we got busted yesterday."
"Who's she afraid of?"
"Tony, Nate Baxter, you guys. How should I know?"
"It's not us. You want us to pick her up?"
"She's a hard-nosed girl. She won't cooperate. Baxter let her walk. Why would he let her walk when he rousted the rest of us? It was a good opportunity to squeeze her."
"From what I hear about this guy, he's about as complicated as an empty closet. Save yourself a lot of grief and don't make a mystery out of morons."
"If I only had that clarity of line, Minos."
"Work on it. It'll come with time."
After I hung up, I shaved, showered, and changed into a pair of clean gray slacks, a maroon shirt, combed my hair in the mirror, put a touch of Vaseline on the hard knot of stitches in my lip and head, and buffed my loafers.
I tried to keep my mind blank and not think about the care I was putting into my appearance.
Then I drove down St. Charles to South Carrollton and parked my pickup truck in front of the nineteenth-century building by the levee where Kim Dollinger lived.
Her apartment was on the second floor, and there was a hand-twist bell on the door. I had to ring it twice before she answered, a towel in her hand, her neck spotted with water. She wore jeans, tan sandals, and a white peasant blouse with a pink ribbon threaded through the top. The front of her blouse hung straight down from her breasts.
"Oh boy," she said.
"May I come in?"
She blotted the water on her neck and looked into my face.
"I'm getting ready to go to work," she said.
Her back window was open, and I smelled the draft that blew out into the hall.
"That's not all you've been doing," I said.
"Look-"
"Come on, I just got out of the bag. You can't offer me a cup of coffee?"
She stood back from the door for me to enter. I heard her close it behind me. Through the open window I could see the green of the levee and the wide, flat expanse of the Mississippi and the sandy bank and willow trees on the far side. The living room looked furnished from a secondhand store. Off to one side was a small kitchen with bright yellow linoleum. She sat down at a breakfast table that was located between the kitchen and living room. The legs of the table and chairs were chrome and had rusty scratches on them that looked like dismembered parts of insects.
"Kim, I'm not telling you what to do, but if you've already got the dragons after you, reefer just makes the problem a lot worse," I said.
She crumpled the towel on the tabletop. Her eyes looked out into space.
"What is it that you want?" she said.
"To talk with you on the square, with no bullshit."
"That's it? Nothing else?"
"That's right."
"You wouldn't like to ball me while you're at it, would you?"
"Cut the badass act, Kim. It's a drag."
"I tried to talk with you. You wouldn't hear me."
"I can get you out of this."
"You?"
"That's right."
"A guy with a mouthful of stitches."
"I'm tired of being your dartboard. You'd better listen when a friend is talking to you."
She put the heel of her hand against her forehead. Her skin reddened from the pressure. She crossed her legs and breathed through her mouth. There were patches of color in her throat and cheeks. She made me think of someone who might have been wrapped in invisible rope.
"Have you ever been down?" I said.
"Have I what?" Her mouth hung open.
"Have you ever done time?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"I said no."
"Have you been in custody?"
"You stop talking to me like this. Why are you saying these things to me?" Her voice started to break.
"Because somebody is turning the screws on you. I suspect it's Nate Baxter. He's a sonofabitch, Kim, and I know what he's capable of."