"Yeah… I'll try to call you back tonight or tomorrow. Talk to you later, Minos."
I hung up the phone and wondered if Minos would tell the lion tamer that he could put down his whip and chair and walk out of the lions' cage whenever he wished. I went inside the drugstore, bought a package of razor blades, and came out just as Tony and Jess pulled to the curb in the maroon Lincoln convertible.
* * *
CHAPTER 10
Tony was in the passenger's seat. He reached over the backseat and popped open the back door for me. He had changed into loafers, a rust-colored sports shirt, pleated tan slacks, a cardigan, and a yellow Panama hat.
"You could have taken the car, Dave. You didn't have to walk," he said.
"It's a good day for it."
"How do you like my hat?"
"It looks sharp."
"I got a collection of them. Hey, Jess, go inside and get me a copy of Harper's," he said.
"What?" Jess said.
"Get me a copy of Life."
"Sure, Tony," Jess said, cut the engine, and went inside the drugstore.
Tony smiled at me across the back of the seat. The Lincoln had a rolled leather interior, a fold-out bar, a wooden dashboard with black instrument panels.
"Jess has an IQ of minus eight, but he'd eat thumbtacks with a spoon if I told him to," he said. Then the smile went out of his face. "I'm sorry you had to hear that stuff between me and Clara. In particular I'm sorry you had to hear that about me being a war hero. Because I never told anybody I was a hero. I knew some guys who were, but I wasn't one of them."
"Who was, Tony? Did you ever read a story by Ernest Hemingway called 'A Soldier's Home'? It's about a World War I Marine who comes back home and discovers that people only want to hear stories about German women chained to machine guns. The truth is that he was afraid all the time he was over there and it took everything in him just to get by. However, he learns that's not a story anyone is interested in."
"Yeah. Ernest Hemingway. I like his books. I read a bunch of them in college."
"Look, on another subject, Tony. I'm not sure your wife is ready for houseguests right now."
He puffed out his cheeks.
"I invite people to my home. I tell them if they should leave," he said. "You're my guest. You don't want to stay, that's your business."
"I appreciate your hospitality, Tony."
"So we're going back home now and get you changed, then we're taking Kim out to the yacht club for a little lunch and some golf. How's that grab you?"
"Fine."
"You like Kim?"
"Sure."
"How much?"
"She's a pretty girl."
"She ain't pretty, man. She's fucking beautiful." His eyes were dancing with light. "She told me she got drunk and came on to you."
"She told you that?"
"What's the big deal? She's human. You're a good-looking guy. But you don't look too comfortable right now." He laughed out loud.
"What can I say?"
"Nothing. You're too serious. It's all comedy, man. The bottom line is we all get to be dead for a real long time. It's a cluster fuck no matter how you cut it."
We drove back to his house, and I changed into a pair of gray slacks, a charcoal shirt, and a candy-striped necktie, loaded two bags of golf clubs into the Lincoln, and with a white stretch Caddy limousine full of Tony's hoods behind us, we picked up Kim Dollinger and headed for the country club out by the lake.
We filled two tables in the dining room. I couldn't tell if the attention we drew was because of my bandaged head, Tony's hoods, whose dead eyes and toneless voices made the waiters' heads nod rapidly, or the way Kim filled out her gray knit dress. But each time I took a bite from my shrimp cocktail and tried to chew on the side of my mouth that wasn't injured, I saw the furtive glances from the other tables, the curiosity, the titillation of being next to people who suddenly step off a movie screen.
And Tony must have read my thoughts.
"Watch this," he said, and motioned the maître d' over. "Give everybody in the bar and dining room a glass of champagne, Michel."
"It's not necessary, Mr. Cardo."
"Yeah, it is."
"Some of our members don't drink, Mr. Cardo."
"Then give them a dessert. Put it on my bill."
Tony wiped his small mouth with a napkin. The maître d' was a tall, pale man who looked as if he were about to be pushed out an airplane door.
"Hey, they don't want it, that's okay," Tony said. "Lighten up, Michel."
"Very good, sir." The maître d' assembled his waiters and sent them to the bar for trays of glasses and towel-wrapped bottles of champagne.
"That was mean," Kim said.
"I didn't come here to be treated like a bug," Tony said.
We finished lunch and walked outside into the cool afternoon sunlight and the rattle of the palms in the wind off the lake. The lake was murky green and capping, and the few sailboats that were out were tacking hard in the wind, the canvas popping, their glistening bows slapping into the water. Tony and most of his entourage loaded themselves into golf carts for nine holes, and Kim and I sat on a wood bench by the practice green while Jess made long putts back and forth across the clipped grass without ever hitting the cup.
She wore a gray pillbox hat with a net veil folded back on top of it. She didn't look at me and instead gazed off at the rolling fairways, the sand traps and greens, the moss-hung oaks by the trees. The wind was strong enough to make her eyes tear, but in profile she looked as cool and regal and unperturbed as a sculptor's model. Behind her, the long, rambling club building, with its glass-domed porches, was achingly white against the blue of the sky.
"Maybe we should go inside," I said.
"It's fine, thanks."
"Do you think it's smart to jerk a guy like Tony around?"
She crossed her legs and raised her chin.
"He's got a burner turned on in his head. I wouldn't mess with his male pride," I said.
"Is there something wrong with the way I look? I wish you'd stop staring at me."
"I think you've got a guilty conscience, Kim."
"Oh you do?"
"Did you drop the dime on us?"
She watched Jess putt across the green. The red flag on the pin flapped above his head in the distance. Finally the ball clunked into the cup. My eyes never left the side of her face. She pulled her dress tight over her knee. Her hips and stomach looked as smooth as water going over stone.
"Somebody told the Man. It wasn't Lionel or Fontenot," I said.
"Do you think Tony would be taking me out for lunch if he thought I was a snitch?"
"I think only Tony knows what goes on in Tony's head. I think he likes to live on the outer edge of his envelope. Eating black speed is like sliding down the edge of a barber's razor."
"Why do you keep saying these things to me? I have nothing to tell you."
"Do you know a Vice cop named Nate Baxter?"
I could see the color in her cheeks.
"Why should I know—," she began.
"He was following you the day you were in Clete's place. This guy's a lieutenant. Why's he interested in you, Kim?"
Her eyes were wet, and her lip began to tremble.
"All right, come on now," I said.
"You're a shit."
Jess had stopped putting and was looking at us. The gray hair on his chest grew like wire out of his golf shirt.
"Maybe I'm just a little worried about you," I said.
"Leave me alone. Please do that for me."
"I'll buy you a drink inside."
"No, you stay away from me."
"Listen to me, Kim—"
She picked up her purse and walked in her high heels across the lawn toward the club. Her calves looked hard and waxed below the hem of her knit dress. Jess walked off the green with the putter hanging loosely at his side.
"What's wrong with her?" he said.
"I guess I don't know how to talk to younge
r women very well."
"She's a weird broad. I don't trust her."
"Why not?"
"She don't ask for anything. A broad who don't ask you for anything has got a different kind of hustle going. Tony don't see it." He twirled the putter like a baton in his fingers.
I found her sitting on a tall chair-backed stool in the bar. The bar was done in mahogany and teakwood, with brass-framed round mirrors and barometers on the walls and copper kettles full of ferns hung in the windows that looked out over the yacht basin. Her eyes were clear now, and her hands lay quietly on the polished black surface of the bar, her fingers touching the sides of a Manhattan glass. She nibbled at the orange slice; then her face tightened when she saw me walk into the periphery of her vision. I ordered a cup of coffee from the bartender.
"What do I have to say? Don't you know how to let someone alone?" she said.
"I think you need a friend."
"And you're it? What a laugh."
"I know Baxter. If you've got a deal going with him, he'll burn you."
I saw her swallow, either with anger or fear.
"What is the matter with you? Are you trying to get me killed?" she said.
"Get on a plane, Kim. L.A.'s great this time of year. I'll get some money for you."
She looked straight ahead and breathed hard, way down in her chest.
"You're a cop," she said.
"Ex."
"Now."
"You'd better check out my record. Cops with my kind of mileage are the kind they shove out the side door."
"I can't afford you. I'm going to ask you one more time, get away from me."
"You're a nice girl. You don't deserve the fall you're headed for."
She started to speak again, but her words caught in her throat as though she had swallowed a large bubble of air. Then she sipped from her Manhattan, straightened her back, and signaled the bartender.
"This man is annoying me," she said.
He was young, and his eyes glanced nervously at me and then back at her.
"Did you hear me?" she said.
"Yes."
"Would you tell him to leave, please?" she said.
"Sir, this lady is making a request," the bartender said.
He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a black bow tie, and his hair was blond and oiled.
"Yeah, I heard her, podna. I don't know where else I should go, though."
"Would you tell him to get the fuck out of the bar?" she said.
"Miss, please don't use that language."
"I ordered a drink. I didn't ask to have a dildo sit next to me while I drank it. Tell him to get out."
"Miss, please."
"What does it take to get through to you?" she said.
Other people had stopped eating and drinking and were looking at us.
"Sir, would you mind—," the bartender said.
"No, I don't mind," I said. "Where should I go?"
"Try Bumfuck, Kansas," she said.
"Miss, I'll have to ask you to leave, too."
"Is that right?" she said. "Would you page Mr. Cardo out on the golf course and tell him that? I would appreciate it if you would tell him that."
"You're Mr. Cardo's guest?" the bartender said. His face was bloodless.
"Don't sweat it, partner. We're leaving," I said.
"Is that what we're doing? Is that what you think we're doing? I don't think we're doing that at all," she said, and shattered her highball glass on the liquor bottles behind the bar.
The bar area and dining room were silent. Her gray pillbox hat was askew on top of her forehead, and a lock of her red hair hung down in one eye. The bartender stood on the duckboards and stared wide-eyed at Jess, who had just thrust open the outer glass doors to the bar, the putter still in his hand, his face pushed out of shape like white rubber.
We were driving away from the lakefront, on Orleans Avenue, past City Park. Tony had the window down and was turned in his seat, looking back at me and Kim, and his black and gray hair blew like tiny springs in the wind.
"What were you guys doing?" he said. He tried to hold a grin on his face.
"I was trying to have a drink," Kim said.
"Some fucking way to get the bartender's attention," Jess said.
"I'm sorry about that back there," I said to Tony.
"I can't believe it, eighty-sixed out of my own club," he said. "You know what it took for me to get a membership in that place?"
"You want me to go back and talk with somebody about it later?" Jess said.
"What's the matter with you? It's a country club. You can't come crashing into the bar with a golf club in your hand," Tony said.
"I thought they were in trouble," Jess said.
"So you had to knock a waiter down?"
"I didn't see him. What the fuck, Tony. Why you reaming me? I didn't start that stuff."
"I think you ought to consider who you invite out to lunch," Kim said.
"I think I ought to get a new life. Am I the only person that's sane in this car?" Tony said.
"It's my fault. I'm sorry about it," I said.
"How gallant," Kim said.
"All right, all right. I'll try to square it. It's just a club, anyway, right? Jesus Christ," Tony said, and blew out his breath.
We could see golfers out on the fairways in City Park and children on horseback beyond a grove of oak trees. Jess looked in the rearview mirror and changed lanes. Then he looked in the rearview mirror again, accelerated, and passed two cars. I saw his eyes go back into the mirror.
"We've got some guys behind us," he said.
"What guys?" Tony said.
"Two guys in a Plymouth. Behind the limo."
"Can you make 'em?" Tony said.
"No."
"They look like talent?"
"I don't know. What d'you want to do, Tony?"
"Pull into the park and stop."
"You want to do that?" Jess said, looking sideways at him.
"They'll cut and run. Watch. Come on, the day's starting to improve."
"Bad place if it goes down, Tony. Everybody gets pissed when it goes down in a public place," Jess said.
"Hey, is it our fault? Now, turn in here. Let's have some fun with these guys."
Kim was looking backward out the window. Tony reached over the seat and touched her on the knee, then winked at her and grinned.
"Tony, I don't need this shit," she said.
"Will you guys mellow out? Why is everybody trying to drive me nuts today?" he said. Then he slapped open the glove box and took out a chrome-plated .45 automatic.
The white limo followed us into the park. We drove along the side of a grassy lake and stopped under a spreading oak tree. The dry leaves under it blew in the wind and clicked and tumbled across the grass. Jess reached under the seat and took out a double-barrel .410 shotgun pistol wrapped inside a paper bag. He rolled down his window and held the shotgun pistol below the level of the window jamb.
When the Plymouth turned in after us, Tony put the .45 in his right-hand coat pocket and stepped out on the cement, smiling across the top of the car as though he were welcoming guests.
"What a day," Kim said.
"Hey, give it a break," Jess said, without turning his head.
The Plymouth followed along the grassy lake, passed the limo, and stopped abreast of us. The man in the passenger's seat hung his badge out the window, then stepped out in the sunlight.
Nate Baxter had changed little since I had last seen him. He still wore two-tone shoes and sports clothes, but as his styled blond hair had receded he had grown a narrow line of reddish beard along his jawbones and chin. He had worked for CID in the army, and as an investigator for Internal Affairs in the New Orleans Police Department he had combined a love of military stupidity with a talent for dismembering the wounded and the vulnerable.
Jess looked straight ahead, lowered the shotgun pistol between his legs, and pushed it back under the seat.
"Put your ha
nds on top of the car, Tony," Baxter said.
"You're kidding?" Tony said.
"You see me smiling?" Baxter said.
"I don't think this is cool, Lieutenant," Tony said, his hands now resting casually on the waxed maroon hood of the Lincoln. "We've been out for some golf. We're not looking to complicate anybody's day."
"Go tell that limo full of meatballs to get out of here," Baxter said to his partner, who was now standing behind him. Then he turned back toward Jess and said, "Get out of the car, Ornella."
"Why the roust, Lieutenant?" Tony said.
"Close your mouth, Tony. Did you hear what I said, Ornella?"
Jess got out of the car with his palms turned outward, his brow furrowed above his close-set eyes. He set his hands on the convertible roof.
The white limo made a U-turn behind us and drove slowly out of the park, its black-tinted windows hot with sunlight. Baxter's partner came back and stood next to him. He was a muscular, crew-cut man, with a grained, red complexion, who wore shades and a pale blond mustache. Like Baxter, he carried a revolver under his tweed sports jacket in a clip-on belt holster. But in his face, even with his shades on, I could see a question mark about what Baxter was doing.
"Shake them down," Baxter said.
"Come on, Lieutenant, give it a rest. This is bullshit," Tony said.
"I look like bullshit to you?" Baxter said.
"We don't make trouble for you guys. It's a chickenshit roust. You know it is."
Baxter nodded impatiently to his partner.
"I got a piece in my coat pocket. You want the sonofabitch, take it. What the fuck's with you, Baxter?" Tony said.
"Easy, Tony. We don't have a big problem here," Baxter's partner said, his hands gentle on Tony's back and sides. "No, no, look straight ahead. Come on, man, you're a pro."
Then, like a dentist who had just pulled a tooth, he held up Tony's chrome-plated automatic in the sunlight.
"I got a permit for it," Tony said.
"You want to produce it?" Baxter said.
"It's at home. But I got one. You know I got one."
"Good. Your lawyer can bring it down to your arraignment," Baxter said.
His partner pulled Tony's arms behind him, cuffed his wrists, and sat him down on the curb. Then he ran his hands down Jess's sides, back, stomach, and legs. He rose up and shook his head at Baxter.