I set my empty glass on a table. The wafer of sun was low in the sky now, the air cooler, the leaves in the goldfish pond dark and sodden. A neighbor was barbecuing, and smoke drifted over the garden wall into the yard. I leaned forward in the chair, one hand pinched around my wrist.
"I think your concern is misplaced," I said. "When I got hurt the second time in Vietnam, it was a million-dollar wound. I was out of it. I didn't have to prove anything, because there was no place to prove it. This one's different. It's ongoing, and I don't know if I'll measure up. I don't know if you have the right man."
I saw his eyes move over my face.
"You're going to do fine," he said.
I didn't answer.
"Like I said, it's not much more complicated than a simple sting," he continued. "We take it a step at a time and see where it leads. If it starts to get nasty, we pull you out. That has nothing to do with you. We don't want any of our people hurt. It's not worth it. We figure the shitbags all take a fall sooner or later.
"Look, this is the way it's going to work. We've got an apartment for you on Ursulines in the Quarter, and the word's going to be out on the street that you're fired and dirty. There are five or six dealers around there you can approach to make a buy. Nothing real big right now, four or five keys, maybe a fifty-thousand-dollar buy. They're not going to trust you. They'll jerk you around, give you a lot of bullshit probably, maybe test you in some way. But these are low-level, greedy guys who are also dumb, and they get a hard-on when they see money. You set up the score, we let it go through, then we move up to bigger things."
"Where's all this money coming from?"
"It's confiscated from drug deals. Don't worry, we'll get it back. Anyway, once these guys are convinced you're the real article, you tell them you want to rein-vest your profits. Then we offer them some serious gelt. They don't want the action, you tell them you can make the score in Houston. Tony Cardo hates the guy who runs the action out of Houston. The word is he screwed Tony's wife in a bathroom stall at the Castaways in Miami. We're talking about a real class bunch here. The goal, though, is to get Cardo involved in the deal. He's a weird fucking guy."
I had to laugh.
"What's your idea of normal?" I asked.
"No, this guy's special. He not only looks weird, he's deeply fucked up in the head. Maybe it's his background. His mother used to shampoo corpses for funeral homes."
"What?"
"That's how she made her money. She washed the hair of corpses for a mortician. Finally she bought her own funeral parlor in Algiers. Tony C. must not have liked it, though, because he put it up for sale two days after he inherited it."
"What if I run across Jimmie Lee Boggs?"
"You let us handle him. We'll figure out a way to have him picked up without compromising you."
"There's one other thing. Tee Beau Latiolais, the black kid who escaped with Boggs, he's in New Orleans. He told his girlfriend he's going to try to find Boggs for me."
"Why does he want to do that?"
"I sent word to him that I'd help him if he'd help me. I didn't mean for him to go looking for Boggs, though."
"You worry too much. It's just a sting. Hey, you're going back to New Orleans."
* * *
CHAPTER 4
I took Alafair to stay at the home of my cousin Tutta, a retired schoolteacher in New Iberia. It wasn't easy. I carried her suitcase and her paper bag of Curious George and Baby Squanto books and coloring materials up onto the gingerbread porch and sat down with her in the swing. The sun was bright on the lawn. Bumblebees hummed over the hibiscus and the pale blue hydrangeas in the flower beds.
"It's not going to be for long, little guy," I said. "I'm going to call you almost every night, and Tutta will take you out to feed your horse. If I can, I'll come back on a weekend."
She looked out blankly at the dew shining on the grass.
"It's a business trip, Alafair. It's just something I have to do."
"You said we wouldn't leave New Iberia again. You said you didn't like New Orleans anymore, that it was full of dope and bad people."
"That doesn't mean we have to be afraid of those things, does it? Come on, we're not going to let a short trip get us down, are we? Guys like us are too tough for that."
Her face was sullen. I took off her Astros cap and set it sideways on her head, then looked down into her face.
"Trust me on this one, Alf," I said. My cousin came out on the porch. I squeezed Alafair against me. Her body felt hard and unyielding. "Okay, little guy?"