A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"Uh-oh," he said.

"I'd like to see your tennis court. I'll be outside," I said.

"Yeah, we'll hit some balls. Tell Jess to load up the ball machine," he said, but he didn't hide the embarrassment in his face well.

I walked down the wheelchair ramp and across the damp, spongy Saint Augustine grass toward the court. The sun was pale and yellow above the myrtle trees, the canvas windscreens were streaked with water, and the fog blew off the lake in wisps and glistened on the waxy green surface of the citrus leaves. I could hear her voice behind me: "They can stay in the cottage… I don't want them all over my house… Did you see the bathroom this morning… You wouldn't have this trouble if you were reasonable, if you didn't have to be the big war hero… Everyone's tired of it, Tony, they've made allowances for a long time, they're not going to go on doing it forever… Maybe you're not going to like this, but I think they've been fair, I think you're acting crazy… Go ahead, eat some more of that stuff. It's only eight o'clock in the morning. That'll fix 'em in Miami."

They went at it for ten minutes. I didn't find Jess, so I began to load the automatic ball machine myself. When Tony came out of the house with an oversized tennis racket across his shoulder, he was grinning as though he were serenely in charge of the morning, but his eyes had a black, electrical glaze in them, the skin of his face was stretched tight against the bone, and I could see the pulse jumping in his neck as though he had been running wind sprints.

"I love Indian summer in Louisiana. I love the morning," he said.

"It's been a pretty fall."

"Fucking A," he said, clicked on the ball machine with a remote control button, and stationed himself like a gladiator behind the baseline.

I sat on a bench and watched while the machine hummed, then thropped balls across the net, and Tony slammed them back with a fierce energy that left skid marks in the soft green clay.

"It's funny how many people want a piece out of your ass," he said. "Wives, broads, cops, lawyers, these guys I pay to keep me alive. You rent their loyalty by the day. I can name two hundred people in this city I've made rich. Even a psychotic piece of shit like Jimmie Lee Boggs. Can you dig it, when I first met that guy he was doing five-hundred-dollar hits for a couple of Jews out of Miami. Even after he escaped from you, his big score was going to be to blackmail some colored woman in New Iberia. Now he's got a half-million bucks of product."

"What colored woman?" I said.

"I don't know, he was going to move in on a hot-pillow joint or something. That's Jimmie Lee's idea of the big score."

"Wait a minute, Tony. This is important. Do you remember the name of the woman?"

"It was French. It was Mama something." He hit the ball long, into the canvas windscreen. "To tell you the truth, I'm not real interested in talking about colored whorehouses."

"I have to ask you anyway. What'd he have on her?"

"Maybe we're not communicating too well here," he said, and slapped one ball hard against the tape and whanged another off the ball machine itself.

"Maybe he knows something that might keep a kid out of the electric chair."

"It's got something to do with snuffing a redbone. What the fuck do I know about redbones? I got a problem here. I hear you talking about some colored woman, about keeping a kid out of the electric chair, about a cathouse in New Iberia, but I don't hear you talking about the half million your people put up. That bothers me a little bit, Dave."

"There's nothing I can do about what happened out on the salt."

"Yeah? How about the guys who lose their money? Are they cool?"

"They're oil people. They're not in the business. They're not going to do anything about it."

"You must know a different class of people than me, then. Because the people I've known will do anything because of money. But you're telling me these guys are different?"

"It's just something I'll have to handle myself, Tony."

"Yeah, if I was you, I'd handle it. I'd really handle it." He lowered his racket and looked at me, a dark light in his eyes. A ball whizzed past him and bounced off the windscreen behind him. He removed his sweater, wiped the sweat off his face with it, and threw it to the side of the court.

Then a strange transformation took place in him. The tautness of his face, the hard, black shine in his eyes, the rigidity of the muscles in his body, suddenly left him like air rushing out of a balloon. His skin grew ashen, sweat ran out of his hair, he began swallowing deep in his throat, and his lungs labored for air.

"What is it, partner?" I said.

"Nothing."

I took him by the arm and walked him to the bench. His arm felt flaccid and weak in my hand. He propped the racket on the clay and leaned his head down on it. Sweat dripped off the lobes of his tiny ears.

"You want me to take you to a doctor?" I said.

"No."