A Morning for Flamingos

by James Lee Burke

  In fact, the man I wanted to find ran a T-shirt and souvenir shop, and he was as innocuous in dress and manner as an ice cream salesman. He walked out from behind a curtain in back after his clerk told him I wanted to talk to him, and his oval face was pink and shining, his thin red hair combed back with water, his mouth wide with a grin, his neck powdered with talcum. He wore a white suit and a silver silk shirt, and his appearance gave every indication of a harmless, happy fat man—except that on second glance you noticed that his chest was as broad as his stomach, that he wore gold chains around his neck, that his eyes took your inventory and did not smile with his mouth.

  “I know you,” he said, and shook his finger playfully at me. “You’re a police officer. No, you used to be one, right here in the Quarter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You were a lieutenant.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You probably don’t remember me, but I used to see you and your partner over at the Acme. You used to come in at lunch for oysters. What’s his name? He’s got a club here now.”

  “Cletus Purcel.”

  “Yeah. I was in his place the other day. Real nice. I think he’s going to make it.”

  “Could I talk to you in private?”

  He looked at the ruby-studded gold watch on his wrist.

  “Sure thing,” he said, and held back the curtain for me.

  His office was a small, cluttered room in the back, with a desk, three chairs, and old jazz posters on the brick walls. He sat in the swivel chair behind the desk and tapped the bottom of a poster with his finger.

  “See that name there?” he said. “You got to look close, but that’s me, Uncle Ray Fontenot. I played trombone right down the street at Sharky Bonnano’s Dream Room. You remember him?”

  “Sure.”

  “You remember those two colored guys used to tap-dance on the stage there, Pork Chops and Kidney Beans?”

  “I want to score five kilos of uncut coke. You deliver good stuff at the right price, we’ll be doing more business later.”

  He peeled the cellophane off a package of Picayune cigarettes.

  “Not too many ex-cops come in here with that kind of statement,” he said. He had never stopped smiling.

  “Forget the ex-cop business. It all spends.”

  “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not knocking a man trying to make a little money. But your information’s dated. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “How’s that?”

  He tilted back in the swivel chair, his silver shirt tight across his broad chest and stomach, his eyes bright and squinted with goodwill.

  “I always had problems with weight and high blood pressure,” he said. “I smoked reefer every night to keep my blood pressure down, then I’d go out and eat a whole pizza by myself. I got on prescription diet pills, then I started using some stuff that was a little more serious. Finally I was in the business myself, you know what I mean? So whoever gave you my name wasn’t all wrong. But I bottomed out and went into treatment a year ago. The only problem I’ve got now is I eat all the time.”

  “You’re in a twelve-step program?”

  “What?”

  “You’re out of the business?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Tell me, when you give a guy like Tony C. the deep six, what do you do? Just drop around one day and say, ‘I bottomed out, Tony. I’m out of the business, see you around, you don’t like it, fuck you’?”

  This time the words bit into some nerve endings behind that pink and smiling face. He lit his cigarette and blew smoke at an upward angle into the air.

  “I’ve never met the gentleman,” he said, his eyes crinkling again.

  “I see. Sorry to have wasted your time. I’ll run along now, Mr. Fontenot. Say, the next time you give somebody that treatment shuck, you might find out what a twelve-step program is.”

  He tipped his ashes into an ashtray and looked pleasantly into his cigarette smoke without seeing anything.

  “Tell Tony C. his distribution in southwestern Louisiana is lousy,” I said. “I can double or triple it. But I’ve got nothing to prove. There’re some guys in Texas who want to branch out.”

  “Then maybe that’s who you should deal with.”

  “They’ve got a bad reputation. But maybe you’re right. If I meet Tony C., I’ll tell him what you said.”

  “Now, wait a minute…”

  “I don’t blame you for bullshitting me, Mr. Fontenot, but if you get serious, leave a message for me at Clete’s Club. I’ll be back in touch.”

  I walked back through the T-shirt shop and out into the neon lights and cacophony of jazz and rock bands on Bourbon Street.

  I was tired, unshaved, weary of the people I had been with, my ears thick with the sound of trumpets and trombones and electric guitars, yet I did not want to return to the apartment and be alone. I walked to the Café du Monde for coffee and beignets, but it had already closed. So I sat on an iron bench in front of the cathedral in Jackson Square and watched the moon rise in the sky. The air was heavy with the smell of camellias, and the magnolia and banana trees that grew along the piked fence behind me made shifting patterns of shadow and light on the cement. A wind came up off the river, and it started to mist; then a shower clattered across the banana leaves in the square and blew in a spray under the lighted colonnades. I walked home on a quiet street, away from the noise of the tourists, keeping close under the scrolled iron balconies to avoid the rain.

  It was warm and muggy the next morning, as it can be in southern Louisiana well into the Christmas season, and I had breakfast and read the Times-Picayune at the Café du Monde before the crowds of tourists came in, then walked across the square past the sidewalk artists and went inside the cathedral briefly because it was All Saints’ Day. Later, I found two more of the contacts Minos had given me. One was a bail bondsman who told me to get out of his office, and the other was a woman who ran an occult bookstore that smelled of soiled cat litter. Her face was white with makeup, her eyes stenciled with purple eyeliner, her cigarette breath devastating. For fifteen minutes I pretended to examine her racks of books while she carried on a conversation with her customers about telepathic communication with UFOs and a hole in the dimension that exists in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle and operates like a drain in an enormous sink. Finally I bought a book on cats and left.

  I called New Iberia that night to check on Alafair, and the next morning I walked over to Clete’s Club on Decatur, across from the French Market. For years Clete had been my partner in the First District. He’d learned his law enforcement methods from an uncle who had walked a beat in the Irish Channel—“Bust ’em or smoke ’em,” Clete always said—and had literally terrorized the lowlifes in the First. All you had to do was mention to a pimp or house creep or jackroller that Cletus Purcel would like to interview him, and he would be on the next bus or plane to Miami. Then Clete got into debt to the shylocks, ruined his marriage with whores and his stomach with booze and aspirin, and finally went on a pad and took ten thousand dollars from some drug dealers and right-wing crazies to get rid of a federal witness.

  Later he would run house security at a casino in Nevada and become the bodyguard for a midlevel Mafia character and ex-con by the name of Sally Dio. But eventually what I thought of as Clete’s most essential characteristics—his courage and his loyalty to an old friend—had their way, and he managed to walk away reasonably intact from all the wreckage in his life.

  He was at the back of the bar, loading the stainless steel cooler with bottles of long-necked Jax. He looked up and smiled when he saw me. His body always looked too big for his clothes. He loved pizza, poor-boy sandwiches, deep-fried shrimp and oysters, dirty rice, beignets, ice cream, which he would eat with a tablespoon by the half gallon. He was convinced that he could control his weight by pumping iron every other night in his garage, and limit his ulcer damage by smoking Lucky Strikes through a cigarette filter and drinkin
g his scotch with milk.

  “What’s happening, Streak?” he said. “I had a feeling you’d be by.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m hearing weird stuff about you, mon.”

  “Did somebody leave a message for me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what did you hear?”

  He stood erect from his work, flexed the stiffness out of his back, and grinned at me. His skin was ruddy, his hair sandy and combed straight back on his head, his green eyes intelligent and full of humor. A scar that was the color and texture of a bicycle tire patch ran down through one eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose.

  “How about you spring for some oysters and I’ll fix you a drink?” he said.

  “I don’t have time.”

  “Yeah, you do.” Then he turned to a Negro who was sweeping between the tables by the dance floor. “Emory, go down to Joe Burda’s and get us a couple of dozen on the half shell.”

  The Negro went out, and Clete fixed me a tall glass of shaved ice, 7-Up, Collins mix, candied cherries, and orange slices. He poured a cup of coffee for himself behind the bar, then came around and sat down beside me. The club was empty, the front door open; the light outside was bright under the colonnade.

  “What the fuck are you up to, Streak?” he said.

  “I’ve got an apartment over on Ursulines. I haven’t bounced back too well since that guy put a hole in me.”

  “You like listening to drunks break bottles out in the street all night?”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “I bet. How many queers are in your building?”

  “Lay off it, Clete.”

  “Then tell me why I’m hearing these weird stories.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard.”

  “That an ex-Homicide roach is trying to score five keys of coke. That he got canned from the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department because he was taking juice. That he’s floating Tony C.’s name around town.”

  “Word spreads.”

  “Among some people I’d stay away from, the kind we used to mash into the cement.”

  “The kind you used to mash.”

  “I’m not kidding you, partner. I heard this bullshit from three different guys.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t control who drinks at my bar. There’re some connected guys come in here. They know I used to work for the Dio family out in Vegas and Tahoe, so they’re always inviting me back to their booth. You’ve got to see it, Dave, to appreciate it. About six of them, all guys, cram into the vinyl booth back there on Saturday night. They always sit so all of them can look out at the dance floor and flash their bucks and shake hands with everybody like they’re celebrities. I’m talking about guys who couldn’t put spaghetti on a plate without a diagram.”

  “These are Cardo’s people?”

  “One way or another. He pieces off a lot of his action so all the greaseballs stay happy. You ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  “One of his broads lives in the Pontabla. He brings her in sometimes for a drink. He looks like somebody slammed a door on his head.”

  “When does he come in?”

  “He’s not a regular.”

  “What’s the woman’s name?”

  “Who knows? I got a proposition for you, though.”

  Emory, the black barman, brought in a tin tray loaded with oysters on the half shell, slices of lemon, and a bottle of Tabasco sauce. I gave him six dollars for the restaurant bill and a dollar for himself. He went into the back of the club and began stacking cartons of empty beer bottles in a storage room.

  “Let me in on it,” Clete said. There was a bead of light in his green eyes.

  “On what?”

  “The sting, mon.” He seasoned one of the oysters, squeezed lemon on it, cupped the shell in his hand, and let the muscle slide down his throat. He smiled and the juice ran down the corner of his mouth. “I figure it’s probably a DEA gig. They’ve got the gelt, they can afford another player.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Here’s what you tell them,” he said. “I can cover your back, I know most of the dealers on a first-name basis. I can open doors. Right now you’ve probably got a couple of street snitches doing your p.r.”

  “You don’t buy my cover?”

  “Are you kidding?” He started laughing.

  “I thought it was pretty good.”

  “It is, for anybody who doesn’t know you. But you’re talking to ole Cletus here, so save the shuck for the lowlifes and the meltdowns. I ain’t putting you on, mon, I’d love to get back in it. I’m thinking of opening up a P.I. office in the Quarter. A lot of it is running down bond jumpers and doing bullshit for attorneys, but so what? I can keep my hand in, carry a piece again, make life more interesting for some of the shitbags.”

  “Call up the DEA in Lafayette. Tell them what you told me.”

  “Wouldn’t that be something, me and you working together again? You remember when we blew up Julio Segura’s shit in the back of his Caddy?”

  I looked out at the sunlight under the colonnade.

  “Hey, I don’t feel bad about smoking a pimp and drug dealer,” he said. “I think it’s a mainline perk of the business. There’s nothing like the smell of cordite to clear up your sinuses.”

  “You almost got us killed.”

  “Who’s perfect? But let’s be serious a minute, mon.” He pushed at an oyster with his fork. There were deep acne scars on the back of his red neck. His big shoulders were bent, and his shirt was stretched tight across the wide expanse of his back. “I don’t know what kind of info you’re operating on, but this is what I hear. Cardo’s out for the big score. Florida’s already locked up, so is Texas. So he wants to control the Louisiana coast. He’s got some nasty types working for him, too, guys who paint the ceiling when they do a job on somebody. You don’t want him to think you’re a competitor. Look, Dave, they say he’s different from the other greaseballs. He’s not predictable, he does strange stuff that nobody can figure out.

  “The last time he brought his broad in here, a Marine gunnery sergeant sat on the stool next to him. Cardo says, ‘Give me and the lady another Collins and give the gunny what he wants.’ Then they start talking about Vietnam and Cherry Alley in Tokyo. This is in front of his broad, can you dig it? All the time I’m washing glasses about two feet away, so Cardo stops talking and says to me, ‘You got a question about something?’

  “ ‘What?’ I say.

  “ ‘You look like you’re getting an earful. You got a question?’ he says.

  “ ‘You’re only in the crotch once,’ I say.

  “ ‘You cracking wise or something?’ he says.

  “ ‘I’m not doing anything. It’s a Marine Corps expression. I was in the corps myself,’ I say.

  “He starts grinning and points both fingers to his chest and says, ‘You think you got to tell me what it means?’ and his broad starts making these clicking, no-no sounds with her mouth. ‘Come on, you explaining to me what the fuck that means?’ he says. ‘Somebody appointed you to explain these things to other people?’

  “So I said, ‘No, I’m just telling you to enjoy your drink,’ and I walked back to my office. It was about that time I started thinking about changing my line of work.”

  “Have you heard of a guy named Jimmie Lee Boggs?”

  “A contract man, out of Florida?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s the guy who put a hole in me. Somebody told me he might be back in New Orleans.”

  Clete smiled.

  “That’s the bait they used to get you into the sting, huh?” he said. “They saw you coming, Streak. That guy’s long gone now.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Get me in on it, mon.”

  “I don’t call the shots on this one, Cletus. Here’s my telephone number and address. But don’t give them to anyone, okay? Just keep any messa
ges I get and I’ll check back with you.”

  “You need somebody to watch your back. Don’t trust the feds to do it. You heard it first from ole Clete.”

  “I don’t know if any of this is going anywhere, anyway,” I said. “A few more days of this and I might be back in New Iberia.”

  He put a matchstick in his mouth. His hands were big and square and callused around the edges, the nails chewed back to the quick.

  “Don’t underestimate their potential,” he said. “Most of them wouldn’t make good bars of soap. But turn your back on them and they’ll take your eyes out.”

  That afternoon I talked to another of Minos’s contacts, a Negro bartender on Magazine. His head was bald and waxed, and he wore gray muttonchop sideburns that looked as though they were artificially affixed to his face. He was as passive, docile, and uncurious about me as if I had been selling burial insurance. His eyelids were leaded, and his head kept nodding up and down while I talked. He told me: “See, I ain’t in the bidness no more myself. I had a bunch of trouble ’cause of it, had to go out of town for a little while, know what I mean? But somebody come in want the action, I’ll tell them you in town. You want another 7-Up?”

  “No, this is fine.”

  “How about some hard-boiled eggs?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “I got to go in the kitchen and start my stove now.”

  “Thanks for your time. You were up at Angola?”

  “Where’s that at?” he said. His eyes looked speculatively out into space.

  The next morning I walked over to the Café du Monde again and had coffee at one of the outside tables. Across the street the spires of the cathedral looked brilliant in the sunlight, and the wind off the river ruffled the banana trees and palm fronds along the black iron piked fence that bordered the park inside Jackson Square. I finished reading the paper, then walked back to the apartment and called Clete’s bar for messages. There were none. I called Minos’s office in Lafayette.

  “Don’t be discouraged,” he said.

  “I think maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

  “Why?”

  “I was a Homicide cop. I never worked Vice or Narcotics.”