A Morning for Flamingos

by James Lee Burke

  “An agent’ll pick up the coke about eight-thirty in the morning. He’ll look like a geek, but he’s one of ours.”

  “I don’t want to make this a permanent job. Let’s up the ante now.”

  “It went well tonight. Be patient. Let things take their own course.”

  “Those guys are dipshits and addicts. The mule talked like a pimp. We’re not going to get anywhere dealing with them. Let me take a deal straight to Cardo, something that’ll make him hungry.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can you shake loose five hundred thou?”

  “Maybe. But you may still end up dealing with the dipshits.”

  “No, I’m going to offer him something he doesn’t have. But you’ve got to give me some more help. Get Purcel in on the sting.”

  “No.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “It’s out of the question.”

  “Minos, I’m by myself in this thing. I want somebody covering my back.”

  “What are you going to offer Cardo besides the buy?”

  “Deal Purcel in and we’ll talk about it.”

  “We don’t negotiate at this phase of the operation, Dave.”

  “We do.”

  “I think you’re beat,” he said. “I think you need to get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “It’s not going to change. Clete backs my play or it’s up the spout.”

  “Good night,” he said. His voice was tired. I didn’t answer, and he hung up.

  Sleep. It was the most natural and inevitable condition of the human metabolism, I thought as I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark that night. We can abstain from sex and thrive on the thorns of our desire, deny ourselves water in the desert, keep silent on the torturer’s rack, and fast unto the death; but eventually sleep has its way with us.

  But if you are a drunk, or a recovering drunk, or what some people innocently called a recovered drunk, that most natural of human states seldom comes to you on your terms. And you cannot explain why one night you will sleep until morning without dreaming while the next you will sit alone in a square of moonlight, your palms damp on your thighs, your breath loud in your chest. No more than you can explain why one day you’re anointed with magic. You get high on the weather, you have a lock on the perfecta in the ninth race; then the next morning you’re on a dry drunk that fills the day with monstrous shapes prized out of memory with a dung fork.

  I could hear revelers out in the street, glass breaking, a beer can rolling across the cement. What was my real fear, or theirs? I suspected mortality more than anything else. You do not wish to go gently into that good night. You rage against it, leave your shining bits of anger for a street sweeper to find in the early morning light, kneel by your bed in the moon glow, the scarlet beads of your rosary twisted around your fist.

  But as always, just before dawn, the tiger goes back in his cage and sleeps, and something hot and awful rises from your body and blows away like ash in the wind. And maybe the next day is not so bad after all.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning was Saturday. I got up early and, after the DEA agent picked up the coke, invited Bootsie for breakfast at a restaurant on St. Charles. When I picked her up at her house on Camp, she had on dark slacks, gray pumps, a white silk blouse that hung over her waist, and a pearl necklace. Her face was fresh and cheerful with the morning, and the dark and light swirls and streaks of gray in her thick hair, which she’d had cut since I had visited her, gave her an elegance that you seldom see in maturing Acadian women.

  I opened the door of the pickup and helped her in. The air was balmy, the street full of blowing leaves, the trees in the yards filled with the sounds of blue jays and mockingbirds.

  “I hope you don’t mind riding down St. Charles in a pickup,” I said.

  “Darlin’, I don’t mind riding anywhere with you,” she said, with the innocent flirtatious gaiety that’s characteristic of New Orleans, and that allows you to never feel awkward or embarrassed with a woman.

  “Bootsie, you look absolutely great.”

  “Thank you,” she said, moving her lips without sound, a smile in her eyes.

  The restaurant had a domed, glassed-in porch, but it was warm enough to eat at the tables outside. The sunlight looked like bright smoke in the oak trees overhead; the air smelled of green bamboo, gardenias, the camellias that bloomed in yards all along the street, the occasional hot scorch of the old green streetcar that rattled down the esplanade, or what the people in New Orleans call the neutral ground. We ate hot, fresh-baked bread with honey and marmalade, and the Negro waiter poured the coffee and milk from two long-spouted copper pots.

  I touched Bootsie on the top of the hand.

  “I’m going back to New Iberia for the weekend,” I said. “I have an adopted daughter there.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you ever go home?”

  “Not really. My parents are passed away. Sometimes I feel strange back there. New Iberia never changes. But I have, and it hasn’t all been for the good.”

  “Hey, no beating up on ourselves today, Boots.”

  “It’s funny looking back at the past, isn’t it? That night you asked me to dance under the trees on Spanish Lake, I remember it like a photograph. My back was on fire with sunburn. You brought me a vodka Collins, then a handful of aspirin. I thought how kind you were, but then you wouldn’t go away.”

  “I see. I was the one who put everything in motion.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her eyes were smiling again.

  “You remember what you did with that vodka Collins? You took the cherry out and bit it between your teeth and kept chewing it while you looked into my eyes. You knew I wasn’t going to leave you alone after that.”

  “I did that? It must have been your imagination.”

  “Come back with me today. I still live in my father’s old house,” I said. Then I added, “We have a guest room.”

  “What are you trying to start, hon?”

  “I’m in the one-day-at-a-time club. Tomorrow takes care of itself. I’ve got three tickets to the LSU–Ole Miss game tonight. We’ll take Alafair with us and have crawfish at Mulate’s, then go on up to Baton Rouge.”

  She didn’t answer for a moment; then she said, “I’m flattered you want me to meet your daughter, but do you think maybe you’re trying to fix yesterday’s mistakes?”

  “No,” I said, and felt my throat color.

  “Because if your conscience bothers you, or if you feel that somehow you need to make amends to me, I want you to stop now.”

  “It’s not that way.”

  “Which way is it, then?”

  “It’s a beautiful day. It’s going to be a fine weekend. Why not take a chance on it?”

  “You made a choice for both of us thirty years ago, Dave. I didn’t have a chance to participate in it. Since then, most of my choices have turned out to be bad ones.”

  “Boots, I’ll never intentionally hurt you again.”

  “We get hurt worse by the people whom we care about. And they seldom mean to do it. That’s what makes it so painful, kiddo.”

  “At any point you wish, you just say, ‘Let’s go home, Dave. Let’s not try to be kids again.’ It’ll end right there.”

  “People make lots of promises in the daylight.”

  This time I simply looked back across the table at her. Her hair was so thick and lovely I wanted to reach over and touch it.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” she said finally.

  “I can’t think of anything better in the whole world,” I said.

  I dropped her off at her house, went back to the apartment and packed, left a message for Minos on his answering machine; then two hours later she and I were on our way across the Atchafalaya Basin, on a perfect blue and gold fall day, the wind blowing across the bays and saw grass and dead cypress, the elevated highway like a long white conduit into the past.

  You never forget
an LSU–Ole Miss game: the tiers upon tiers of seats filled with people, the haze around the banks of lights in the sky, the thunder of marching bands on the field, cheerleaders tumbling like acrobats, Confederate flags waving wildly in the crowd, Mike the Tiger in his cage riding stiff-legged around the track, the coeds with mums pinned on their sweaters, their breath sweet with bourbon and Coca-Cola—then, suddenly, one hundred thousand people rising to their feet in one deafening roar as LSU’s team pours onto the field in their gold and purple and white uniforms that shine with light and seem tighter on their bodies than their very muscles.

  Alafair fell asleep between us on the way back home, and I carried her into her bedroom and tucked her in. Then I heated some boudin, and Bootsie and I ate it at the kitchen table. Her face was sleepy with the long day, and she smiled and tried to stay attentive while I talked, but her eyes kept shutting lazily and finally her hand slipped off the side of the table.

  “I think it’s time you went to sleep,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so tired. It’s been a wonderful day, Dave.”

  “It’ll be an even better one tomorrow.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Good night.”

  “Good night. I’m sorry to be so tired.”

  “It’s all right. You’re supposed to be tired. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She went into the back bedroom, and I could see the light for a few minutes under her door. I turned on the television set in the living room and lay down on the couch. Her light went off, and I stared at a late show starring a famous actor who had been deferred from service during the Vietnam War because he had been the sole support of his mother. I didn’t blame the actor for his deferment, but I didn’t have to watch him, either. I turned off the set and lay back down on the couch with my arm over my eyes. I heard the scream of a nutria out in the marsh, the sound of night birds out in the bare sugarcane fields behind my property, the occasional thump of pecans falling to the ground in the front yard.

  It had been a fine day. Why did I always expect more out of the day than perhaps I had earned?

  A few minutes later I heard her click on the bedside lamp; then she opened the door and stood framed against the light. She didn’t speak. Her face was dark with shadow, her body outlined against her white nightgown, her short-cropped hair diffused with light.

  I went into the room with her, and she closed the door as though it were her house rather than mine. She clicked off the lamp, smoothed the pillows, pulled back the covers, then touched my face with her hand, kissing me on the mouth, lightly at first, then her mouth opening and wet, her face changing the angle, her tongue inside me, her eyes opening and shutting but always focusing on mine as though I might somehow elude the moment she was creating for both of us.

  She worked her nightgown over her head and lay down partially on her side with her knees close together, her palm behind her head, and waited for me. When I lay down beside her, she stretched out against me, breathing on my neck and chest, rubbing her hair against my face as though she were a cat. I kissed her eyes and mouth and breasts, and felt the smoothness of her stomach and thighs and the contours of her hips. I brushed her hair with my palm, stroked the stiffness of it where it was tapered at the back of her head, smelled the expensive and delicate perfume behind her ears.

  Then she took me in her hand, her thighs widening, and placed me inside her. Her lips parted, her eyes closed and opened, and she slipped her arms low on my back and tucked her face under my chin. She didn’t speak while she made love. Her concentration and body heat were so intense, the movement of her hands and thighs and stomach so directed and encompassing, the hoarse, regular sounds in my ear so natural and heart-swelling, that I knew she too was back thirty years before on the float cushions in my father’s boathouse, the lavender sky streaked with fire through the cracks, the shrimp boat knocking against the pilings, the raindrops dripping like lead shot out of the cypress into the bay.

  But on Monday Alafair was back with my cousin Tutta, Bootsie was at work at her vending machine company, and I was talking with Minos in his room at the guesthouse on St. Charles about New Orleans flake and people who gave you reason to think that toxic waste had been dumped in the human gene pool.

  He stood at the ceiling-high window with a coffee cup in his hand, looking down on the courtyard behind the guesthouse. Banana trees and bamboo grew along the back brick wall, and on the other side of the wall there were garbage cans in the alley. Minos had on tan slacks and a yellow golf shirt with an alligator on it. As always, his scalp gleamed through his close-cropped hair and his jaws looked as though he had just shaved.

  “I understand, they’re dangerous. You don’t have to convince me of that,” he said. “But it comes with the territory. I don’t think the situation will improve because we make Purcel a player.”

  “You don’t have anybody inside. So we bring him in with me. Give the guy a break. He has a lot of qualities.”

  “He worked for the mob, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I think he took some of them off the board, too.”

  “That’s the last kind of cowboy bullshit we want in this operation.”

  “What’s it going to be, partner?”

  “We did some homework over the weekend. Purcel has some bad debts around town. One of them is to a loan company owned by the greaseballs. He’s also got a reputation for parking his swizzle stick in anything that looks vaguely female.”

  “In or out?” I asked.

  He bit a corner of his lip and continued to look down into the courtyard. He seemed almost as tall as the window.

  “The money comes out of the snitch fund,” he said. “You can tell him whatever you want to. But he’s not an employee of the DEA. Nor its representative.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred a week.”

  “That’s an insult.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Listen, Minos, let’s stop messing around. You give the guy five hundred a week, treat him with some respect, or I’m going to walk out of this.”

  “I’ll talk to somebody about it later.”

  “No, make the call now.”

  I saw him take a breath, his fingers tap on his thigh.

  “All right, you’ve got my word,” he said.

  “He was a good cop till he had marital trouble and got on the sauce. He’ll do fine. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so. Because if he doesn’t, somebody’s going to feed your butt through the paper shredder an inch at a time.”

  “You really know how to say it, Minos.”

  He picked up a towel from the bathroom floor and started buffing one of his loafers on top of a wood chair.

  “Where’d this broad, Kim, the one at the score, tell you she was from?”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What is it?”

  “We checked her out. Her last name’s Dollinger. She’s an assistant manager at one of Cardo’s clubs on the Airline Highway. She hit town about six months ago. She tells people she worked at a lounge in North Houston, some dump on Jensen Drive. We made a couple of calls. They never heard of her.”

  “She said something. About everything down here smelling like mold and leaking sewage. I don’t think she’s from Houston.”

  “Those kinds of broads make up their own dossiers. I’ve got something else on my mind that’s giving me the start of a migraine, Dave.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  “Bootsie Giacano,” he said.

  “I had a feeling you’d say that. Do you have a tail on me?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea, but we don’t.”

  “A tap on her phone?”

  “What do you think? She was married to Ralph Giacano. Her business partners are mainline greaseballs.”

  “She can’t get out from under them.”

  “Always the humanist. Look, Dave, what you do with your private life is your business. But if you compro
mise the operation, it’s ours.” He sat on the wood chair and threw the towel back onto the bathroom floor. “Look, I’m your friend. I got you into this stuff. You think I want to see you hurt?”

  “I won’t get hurt because of her.”

  “You don’t know that. Are you sleeping with her?”

  “I’m going to be on my way now.”

  “She’ll know you’re running a sting. She tips the greaseballs, it doesn’t matter how, in some innocent way, we’re going to pull you out of Lake Pontchartrain.”

  “It’s not going to happen.”

  His eyes were level, unblinking, and they stared straight into mine.

  “It did two years ago,” he said. “To a local narc N.O.P.D. got inside. They threw his body off the causeway. A .22 magnum through the mouth, one under the chin, one through the temple. They didn’t weight him down, either. They wanted to send a floating telegram.”

  “You can get the five hundred thou?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m going to try to set up a meet with Cardo. I’ll call you.”

  “Let some time go by, Dave. Let them feel more confident about you.”

  “You said it yourself, these guys love money. How do they put it, ‘Money talks and bullshit walks’? I’m going to play out the hand. If they buy it, fine. If not, I’m going back home.”

  He pulled on his ear and made a snuffing sound in his nose.

  “What I’m saying is we don’t know everything we’d like to about Cardo. He messes around in politics, sends money to right-wing crazies, stuff like that. He was shooting off his mouth around town about bringing Oliver North to New Orleans. He thinks he’s a big intellectual because he’s got a degree from a junior college in Miami.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s hard to read. We know there’re some guys in Miami and Chicago who think maybe he shouldn’t be running things here, that maybe he’s crazy or he keeps his brains in that schlong he’s so proud of. Figure it out, Dave. What kind of guy would keep Jimmie Lee Boggs around?”

  “You’re worrying too much, Minos.”

  “Because I’ve been doing this stuff a long time. I told you it was a simple sting. That’s what it should be. But you don’t hear me when I say things to you, and I’m bothered by that.”