A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

He started the engine, drove the Buick behind the nightclub, and parked it under a spreading oak.

"What's the game?" I said.

"Show-and-tell," he said, got out of the car, walked around, and opened my door. "Step outside, please."

"We do the same thing with everybody. Then everybody's comfortable, everybody's relaxed with everybody else," Fontenot said.

"I'm not relaxed. Who's the girl?" I asked.

"Do I look like a girl to you?" she said. Her eyes were green, the whites tinged red from the reefer hits.

"Who is she?" I said to Fontenot.

"This is Kim. She's a friend, a nice person," he said.

"I'm not fond of standing out here in the rain. You want to step outside, please," Lionel said. He spoke with his face turned at an angle from me, as though he were addressing a lamppost.

"What's she doing here?" I said.

"Certain people like her. She goes where she wants. Let's get on with the business at hand, sir," Fontenot said.

"Boy, talk about a personality problem. Who's he been doing business with?" Kim said. Her red hair was looped over one ear. When she saw me looking at her, she pointed her chin up in the air and lifted her hair off the back of her neck.

"He's just a careful man. He doesn't mean anything by it," Fontenot said. "But let's not delay any longer, Mr. Robicheaux."

I stepped outside and let Lionel work his hands up and down my body. He pulled my shirt out of my trousers, patted under my arms, slipped his hand down my spine, felt my pockets and along my legs.

"You think you're going to need all that firepower?" he asked.

"It's an old habit," I said.

Fontenot was looking at Lionel's face.

"He's cool," Lionel said.

"Time to open the candy store," Fontenot said.

Lionel got back in the Buick and backed it up to where my truck was parked. I glanced again at the girl. She wore no makeup, and her face was hard and shiny. Pretty but hard. She looked like she had a hard body. Her hands were big and knuckled like those on a cannery worker.

"You got something on your mind?" she asked.

> "Not a thing," I said.

"Good, because I'm not into eye fucking," she said.

"Eye fucking?" I said.

Fontenot was grinning from the front seat. He was always grinning, his teeth set like pieces of corn in his gums.

"I have to end our fun now," he said. "I'll hop in your truck with you, Mr. Robicheaux, and we'll be on our way."

He headed south of the city into St. Charles Parish. Gray clouds tumbled across the sky in the fading light, and white streaks of lightning trembled on the horizon beyond Lake Salvador. The Buick was a quarter mile ahead of us on the tar-surfaced road.

"I need to take a leak," Fontenot said.

I stopped next to an irrigation ditch between two dry rice fields, and he got out and urinated into the weeds. I could hear him passing gas softly. His beige sports jacket, with brown suede pockets, was spotted with rain. He smiled at me in the wind as he zipped up his pants, then got back in the truck, took a woman's compact from his coat pocket, and gingerly scraped some white powder from it with the blade of his penknife. He lifted the knife to one nostril, then the other, snorting as though he were clearing his nasal passages, widening his eyes, crimping his lips as though they were chapped. Then he licked the flat of the blade with his tongue.

"You want a taste?" he said.