A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"Turn off your running lights," Lionel said.

"There's a fogbank up there."

"I don't care. Turn off your lights."

"Look, if you're worried about the Coast Guard, it monitors the traffic by radar. You don't become invisible by turning off your lights."

He got up from his chair, walked to my instrument board, and clicked off the two toggle switches that controlled the red and green running lights on the stern and bow. I pulled the throttle back to idle and cut the ignition. Suddenly it was quiet except for the rain against the roof and the glass. The jugboat pinched in one trough and then slid over the top of a black wave into another; the coffeepot crashed on the floor.

"These are the rules, partner. There's one skipper on a boat," I said. "You're looking at him. If that doesn't sit right with you, we'll turn it around here."

"We've made this run a dozen times. You don't advertise," Lionel said.

"What's the matter with you?" I said. "The best way to attract attention is to do something stupid like run without lights."

"It's your first time out. I'm trying to be helpful."

"What's it going to be, Fontenot?"

"Muc

h ado about nothing," he said from his chair. "Let him have his lights, Lionel."

I hit the starter and pushed the throttle open again. We hit a cresting wave in a shower of foam and then flattened out in a long trough. The water was black and rolling and hammered with raindrops. Then the fog-bank slipped over the bow and the pilothouse, as cold and damp on the skin as a gray, wet glove.

"What's Tony going to get out of the score?" I asked Ray Fontenot.

"What do you mean?"

"It's my buy, my stash. What's the profit for him?"

"He gets a cut from the Colombians. The action gets pieced off all the way back to Bogota."

"Where's your piece come in?"

"We're doing it as a favor."

"No kidding?" I said.

"We like you." He smiled from under his yellow rain hood.

Lionel rubbed the moisture off the window glass with his palm.

"There it is," he said.

A shrimp boat with its wheelhouse lighted rose in the swell, then slipped down below a long, sliding wave.

"How do we make the exchange?" I said.

"I'll take the money on board and come back with the stash," Lionel said.

"They're shy?" I said.

"You don't want to meet them," Fontenot said. "They're not a nice group, our garlic-scented friends. They seem to like Lionel, though. The colored woman who cooks for them likes him very much. Lionel had a big change of luck at the track after he met her."

"You ought to get laid more, Ray. You wouldn't have all these cute things to say," Lionel said.

I saw the shrimp boat drift to the top of the swell again. Its white paint was peeling, its scuppers dripping with rust. Lionel had taken off his raincoat and was putting on a life jacket.