A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"I don't see the percentage," Fontenot said. "Right now we're simply transferring some product. Why complicate it?"

"I ain't telling you what to think, Jimmie Lee," Lionel said, "but the guy's not going to do anything. He's a fired cop, a drunk. He tries to make any trouble later, you can have him hit for five hundred bucks."

"I don't pay to clip a guy. Besides, you did a guy with a piano wire, Lionel. Why you giving me this bullshit?"

"I got out of it, too. I don't want to go that route anymore," Lionel said. "Look, he's an amateur. You let the amateurs slide, Jimmie Lee. You whack out an amateur, their families make a lot of trouble."

Lionel blew out his breath. The fog was white and so thick you could lose your hand in it as it rolled off the water and across the deck.

"I don't want to have to lose my piece. I just bought it," he said.

"Get the coke on board and bring me the shotgun. It's clipped under the forward hatch," Boggs said.

"You guys got to deal with Tony," I said to Lionel and Fontenot.

"Good try, prick, but Tony's history. He just don't know it yet," Boggs said.

"Sorry, Mr. Robicheaux," Fontenot said. Then he looked at Lionel and said, "See no evil."

The two of them started up the deck toward the forward gear box, where the two crates of cocaine were stowed. I was sweating heavily inside my clothes, and my breath was coming irregularly in my chest. The jugboat dipped in the ground swell, and the barrel of the automatic touched the side of my head like a kiss.

"I'll say it once, and you guys can believe it or not," I said. The front glass of the pilothouse was pushed ajar, and they could hear me out on the deck. "I'm still a cop. I'm undercover for the DEA. We're on Coast Guard radar right now."

I saw Lionel and Fontenot stop and turn around. The fog drifted across their bodies like strips of torn cotton. They started back toward the pilothouse.

"It's all a sting," I said. "Minos Dautrieve's been running it from the start. You know who Minos Dautrieve is, right?"

Boggs's fingers laced in my hair; then he slammed my head forward on the instrument panel. I felt the skin split above my right eye, and the blood and the salt water leaked down across my eyelid.

"Hold on, listen to him," Fontenot said.

"You guys rattle too easy," Boggs said.

"Dautrieve's a narc out of Lafayette," Lionel said.

"So he knows that," Boggs said.

"Clete Purcel is DEA undercover, too," I said. "You clip me, he'll even the score. Ask anybody in New Orleans. Check out what he did to Julio Segura."

Boggs held the automatic by the barrel and raked it across my mouth as though he were wielding a hammer. My bottom lip burst against my teeth, and a socket of pain raced deep into my throat and up into my nose. I leaned forward on the wheel with my mouth open, as though my jaws had become unhinged, while a long string of blood and saliva dripped between my legs.

"This deal's going sour," Lionel said.

"There's nothing wrong with the deal. Stop acting like a cunt," Boggs said.

"I ain't going back to Angola," Lionel said. "I ain't going down for snuffing a cop, either."

"This guy's shark food. Count on it. He don't have to be the only one to go over the gunwale, either. You getting my drift?" Boggs said.

"You got nothing to lose, Jimmie Lee. We do," Lionel said.

"You got a lot to lose, man. It's important you understand that," Boggs said. He had shifted the barrel of the automatic so that it now hovered between me and Lionel.

"We just wanted to hear a little more of what Mr. Robicheaux had to say," Fontenot said.

"I'll show you what he's going to say," Boggs said, and he knotted my shirt in his fist at the back of my neck, pulled me erect, and pushed the barrel of the automatic hard into my spine. "He's gonna say 'please,' and he's gonna say, 'I'll pay you money,' and he's gonna say, 'Mr. Boggs, I'll do anything you want if you don't hurt me.'"

He pushed me ahead of him on the deck, his clenched hand trembling with energy, then stomped on my leg just above the calf, as though he were breaking a slat, and knocked me to my knees. He let the automatic swing loosely over