He looked up at my face. The skin around his left eye was puckered with thought.
"You can beat up on yourself the rest of your life if you want to. But no matter how you cut it, you're no coward. I'll give you something else to think about, too. On your worst day over there, you probably proved yourself in ways that an average person couldn't even imagine. It was our war, Tony. People who weren't there don't understand it. Most of them never wanted to understand it. But you ask yourself this question: would any grunt who was, in the meat grinder judge you harshly? In fact, is there anyone at all who can say you didn't do your share?"
He widened his eyes and looked between his legs at the concrete floor. He pinched the bridge of his nose and made a snuffling sound. He started to speak, then cleared his throat and looked at the floor again.
"Better get some clothes on," I said. "You'll catch cold down here."
"Yeah, I'll do that."
"I guess I'll see you at the house," I said.
"I lied about something. I don't use this place for Paul and me to camp. You see that AR-15? I used to come down here and sit in the dark with it and think about doing myself. When you turn off the light it's just like a black box, like the inside of a grave. I'd put the front sight under my teeth and let it touch the roof of my mouth and my mind would go completely empty. It felt good."
I pushed on the trapdoor, which was made of steel and overlaid with concrete and swung up and down on thick black springs, and walked up the steps into the balmy November afternoon. The moss-hung oaks by the back wall were loud with blue jays and mockingbirds. I looked back down into the shelter and saw Tony still seated on the side of the bunk, his face pointed downward, the skin of his back as tight as a lampshade, bright with sweat.
I went up to the shopping center and called Minos at his office to find out about Kim, but he still hadn't returned. When I got back to Tony's house, the school bus had just dropped off Paul, and Jess was wheeling him inside.
"How you doing, Paul?" I said.
"Great. Special class got to go on the Amtrak train today." He wore a striped trainman's hat, a checked shirt, and blue jeans with a cowboy belt.
"I bet that was fun, wasn't it? Where's your old man?"
"Getting dressed." He grinned broadly. "Dad was exercising on the lawn in his underwear."
"Why not? It's good weather for it," I said, and winked at him.
"You got a phone message," Jess said. "From that friend of yours who runs the bar, what's his name?"
"Clete?"
"Yeah, he says to call him at the bar."
"Thank you."
"Dad said we all might go to a movie tonight," Paul said.
"Well, I'm supposed to have dinner with a friend tonight."
"Oh."
"How about tomorrow night, maybe?" I said.
"Sure," he said, but I could see the disappointment in his face.
Jess wheeled him up the ramp into the house, and I used the phone in the kitchen to call Clete.
"Where are you?" Clete said.
"At Tony's."
"Can you talk, or do you want to call me back from somewhere else?"
"What is it?"
"Nate Baxter's in the bar."
"I see."
"He says he's here if you want to talk to him."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know Nate. Always looking inside his pants to make sure of his gender."
"If it makes him happy, tell him I'll be looking him up one of these days."
"He said one thing, though, that's a little bothersome. He said, 'Tell Robicheaux I know he's got the broad stashed.'"
The house was quiet except for the sound of shower water in the bathroom that adjoined Tony's bedroom.
"You there, Dave?" Clete said.
"Yes."
"It sounds like our man knows a little more than he should."
"What's he doing now?"
"Drinking at the bar."
"I'll be there in a half hour."
I told Tony that I had to run a couple of errands downtown, then I was going to Bootsie's for supper.
"Was that Bootsie on the phone?" he asked. He stood in his bedroom door, with a towel wrapped around his waist, raking the water out of his hair with a comb.
"No, it was Clete. He knows a guy who might give me a good deal on a boat."
"I feel a lot better after a shower." He stopped combing his hair. "Hey, tell me straight about something. Down there in the shelter, you weren't just playing with my head? I mean… we're not talking about a loss of respect here?"
"No."
"Because I don't push myself on people."
"You didn't push yourself on me."
"You wanted to know what happened, I told you."
I nodded without replying.
"But if a guy thinks less of me because of it, I don't hold it against him. We're clear on this?" he said.
"You're not the only guy who brought back a problem from there, Tony. I've got my own. Maybe they're worse than yours."
"Yeah?"
"I got four of my men killed on a trail because I did something reckless and stupid. Everybody has his own basket of snakes to deal with."
"Your voice has a little edge to it, Dave."
"I think pride's a pile of shit."
He laughed. "You sure don't hide your thoughts, do you?" he said. "How about bringing Bootsie out here for supper, then we'll all go to a movie."
"It's kind of a private evening, Tony."
"Paul was looking forward to it."
"Then you should have told me earlier, podna,"
He nodded silently, then began dressing in front of a full-length mirror as though I were not there.
I didn't have time to worry any more about Tony's mood changes and his addict's propensity for trying to control everyone and everything in his environment. In fact, maybe we were too much alike in that regard, and for that reason I not only got along better with him than I should have as a policeman, I also saw my own menagerie of snapping dogs at work inside him. When I got to Clete's Club, Nate Baxter was by himself at the far end of the bar, one shined brown loafer propped on the brass footrail. He wore sharply creased tan slacks, an open-necked yellow shirt, and a herringbone sports coat. His gold watch and gold identification bracelet gleamed softly in the light.
"You're looking sharp, Nate," I said.
He tipped his cigarette ashes neatly into an ashtray and took a sip from his highball glass, his eyes looking at me in the bar mirror.
"You know a DEA agent by the name of Minos Dautrieve?" he asked.
"He's out of Lafayette. Yeah, I know him."
"He's in New Orleans now. He's running a sting."
"Why tell the family secrets to me?"
"I underestimated you," he said.
"I have to be somewhere in a few minutes. What did you want to say to me, Nate?"
"She's my snitch. You shouldn't have messed with her."
"What are we talking about here?"
"You know what I'm talking about. You were in her place out in Metairie. You got her stashed. But it's not going to do you any good. She's our witness, and she's going to testify for us. You can tell that to Dautrieve for me if you want to."
"You're going a little fast for me."
"The girl she was staying with works in the same club out on the Airline Highway. She told us you and Purcel were in her place. She said later some feds picked up the Dollinger broad. So I underestimated you. You've still got your badge, haven't you? But that doesn't mean you get to screw up our operation."
"This is what you had to tell me?"
He tipped his cigarette ashes into the ashtray again. He still had not looked directly at me. He took a puff off his cigarette, then scratched his beard with one fingernail.
"You can tell Kim Dollinger she either comes in or we send her brother up the road," he said. "Don't let that broad jerk you around, Robicheaux. I could have charged her when we busted her brother. She was as dirty as he was."
"Do you know that Jimmie Lee Boggs almost killed her?"
"You got a vested interest or something? We're talking about a snitch who was setting Tony C. up for a fall while she was banging him cross-eyed over in a beach house in Biloxi."