"How did New Orleans Vice get in on it?"
"I don't know. I talked to this character Nate Baxter. He's a nasty sonofabitch, isn't he?"
"You got it."
"He stonewalled me, said he couldn't talk to me without clearance, said he wasn't even sure who I was."
"Did you mention my name?"
"Of course not."
"Don't tell him anything about our operation. He'll divulge it or use it in some way for his own ends. In the meantime call his superiors."
"I already have a call in. But I appreciate you telling me how to do these things."
"You sound a little irritable this afternoon."
"Your busted head and the loss of your boat weren't the only problems that developed out there."
"Wait a minute. They got Boggs, didn't they?"
"No."
"What?"
"Boggs got away. With fifty keys of pure flake."
"I can't believe it."
"Evidently he went between two sandbars and they went over the top of one. At least that's what the Coast Guard says. Our man Baxter has no comment."
"You got the shrimper, didn't you?"
"We got the shrimper. But no dope. No money, either. They dumped it all overboard." I could almost hear him swallow when he said it.
"It all went for nothing?"
"That's what a few people have been telling me today."
"What about my boat?"
"We'll see what we can do."
"Listen, Minos, it'll take me thirty thousand dollars to replace it."
"People down here are not sympathetic to my point of view right now. A half-million dollars of DEA money is at this moment bouncing along the bottom of the Gulf."
"Your friends have an interesting attitude about personal responsibility."
"Nobody here wants to spend the rest of his career in western Nebraska. But it happens. Give me a little time."
"I mean it, Minos. That's a big part of my livelihood that went down out there. I want it back."
"You made your point."
"One other thing. Boggs said something about Cardo's being history. Is there a whack out on him or something?"
"It's funny you say that. We heard rumors like that from both Houston and Miami in just the last two days."