"You should have reported him, Kim."
"Great. I work in a skin joint run by the Mafia, my brother's a druggie in custody, and I'm going to report a Vice lieutenant? Look, it doesn't matter what he said. I did what he wanted. I told him everything Tony was doing, I told him about you, I'm to blame for what happened down at Cocodrie."
"You tried to warn me. Give yourself a little credit."
"Are you going to tell Tony?"
"No. But as of tonight you're out of the life, Kim. You don't go back to that job, or back to your apartment, or out to Tony's. I also advise you to stay away from Nate Baxter. He's a liar and a coward and a bully. Also, he doesn't have the power to upgrade your brother's charges. That comes out of the prosecutor's office. Believe me, your brother will be better off taking his own chances."
She took a Kleenex out of her robe and touched one nostril with it. Her face had no makeup on it, and it looked shiny and white where it wasn't bruised.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "I only have a little money. I have to have a job."
"Somebody's going to take care of you. I guarantee it."
She put the Kleenex away and played with her fingernails.
"I have to ask you something," she said.
"Yes?"
"It's not a very appropriate question, I guess, but there's no chance, is there? Not now."
"Of what?" I said, although I already knew the answer.
"What I mean is, it's like when people do something to one another, or maybe to themselves, something shameful, it kills what might have been between them, doesn't it?"
"I don't know, Kim."
"Yes, you do. It's why my brother Albert is the way he is. Years ago he had a wife and a little girl. Then one night he got drunk at a party and slept with another woman. So he had all this Catholic guilt about what he'd done, and rather than blow it off, he got his wife drunk and talked her into getting into the sack with another guy. All he got out of it was the knowledge that he couldn't love himself anymore, and so he doesn't think anybody else can, either."
"I wouldn't try to figure it all out now, Kim."
"Tony's right. We're the cluster fuck. The human race is."
"Cynics and nihilists are two bits a bagful," I said. "Don't let them sell you that same old tired shuck. Listen, a man named Minos Dautrieve is going to contact you. He's an old friend with the DEA, so trust him. We're going to take care of you."
"I was right, then. You're still a cop."
"Who cares? The only thing that matters here is that you're out of the life. We're clear on that, aren't we?"
"Yes."
I put my hand on her forearm.
"Kim, you stood up for your brother," I said. "Everything you did took courage. Most people aren't that brave. I think you're one special lady."
She looked up at me. Her unswollen eye glimmered softly.
"Really?" she said.
"You bet. I've had some good people cover my back, like Cletus out there, but I'd put my money on you anytime."
She smiled, and her free hand touched the backs of my fingers.
It was still raining when we left the apartment building and got back inside my truck.
"Your face looks like a thunderstorm," Clete said.
"Nate Baxter," I said.
"She was working for him?"
"Yep."
"He's the guy mommies warned them about. I always had the feeling that if we ever had a Third Reich here, you might see Nate manning the ovens."
"There's a bar up here on the corner. I want to stop and use the phone."
"You're not going after Baxter?"
"Not now. But he's not going to get away with this."
"Hmm," Clete said, grinning in the dashboard light, his eyebrows flipping up and down like Groucho Marx's.
We went inside the corner bar, and Clete ordered a drink while I called Minos at his guesthouse from a phone booth next to a pinball machine. I told him about Kim, the beating she had taken from Jimmie Lee Boggs, the fact that she was an informant for Nate Baxter.
"Can you get her into a safe house?" I said.
"If she wants it."
"Tomorrow morning."
"No problem."
"But I've got one. Why did you guys cut Cletus from the payroll?"
"I was going to tell you about it. It just happened today. I didn't have any say in it."
"We had a deal."
"I don't control everything here."
"He saved my life out on the salt. I didn't see any DEA guys out there."
"I'm sorry about it, Dave. I'm a federal employee. I'm one guy among several in this office. You need to understand that."
"I think it's a rotten fucking way to treat somebody."
"Maybe it is."
"I think that's a facile answer, too."
"I can't do anything about it."
"Tell your office mates Clete has more integrity in the parings of his fingernails than a lot of federal agents have in their whole careers."
"Drop by and tell them yourself. I'm not up to a harangue tonight. It's always easy to throw baboon shit through the fan when somebody else has to clean it up. We'll pick up the girl in the morning, and we'll get the tape recorder to you at your doctor's office. Good night, Dave."
He hung up the receiver, and I could hear the pinball machine pinging through the plywood wall of the phone booth. Outside the window, the mist and blowing rain looked like cotton candy in the pink glow of the neon bar sign.
CHAPTER 13
The next morning was bright and clear, and I went to the doctor's office off Jefferson Avenue and had the stitches snipped out of my head and mouth. When I touched the scar tissue above my right eyebrow, the skin around my eye twitched involuntarily. I opened my mouth and worked my jaw several times, touching the rubbery stiffness where the stitches had been removed.
"How does it feel?" the doctor asked. He was a thick-bodied, good-natured man who wore his sleeves rolled up on his big arms.
"Good."
"You heal beautifully, Mr. Robicheaux. But it looks like you've acquired quite a bit of scar tissue over the years. Maybe you should consider giving it up for Lent."
"That's a good idea, Doctor."
"You were lucky on this one. I think if you'd spent another hour or so in the water, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"I think you're right. Well, thank you for your time."
"You bet. Stay out of hospitals."
I went outside into the sunlight and walked toward my truck, which was parked under an oak tree. A man in khaki clothes with a land surveyor's plumb bob on his belt was leaning against my fender, eating a sandwich out of a paper bag.
"How about a lift up to the park?" he asked.
"Who are you?"
"I have a little item here for you. Are you going to give me a ride?"
"Hop in," I said, and we drove up a side street toward Audubon Park and stopped in front of an enormous Victorian house with a wraparound gallery. Out in the park, under the heavy drift of leaves from the oaks, college kids from Tulane and Loyola were playing touch football. The man reached down into the bottom of his lunch sack and removed a miniaturized tape recorder inside a sealed plastic bag. He was thin and wore rimless glasses and work boots, and he had a deep tan and liver spots on his hands.
"It's light and it's flat," he said. He reached back in the sack and took out a roll of adhesive tape. "You can carry it in a coat pocket, or you can tape it anywhere on your body where it feels comfortable. It's quiet and dependable, and it activates with this little button here. Actually, it's a very nice little piece of engineering. When you wear it, try to be natural, try to forget it's on your person. Trust it. It'll pick up whatever it needs to. Don't feel that you have to 'point' it at somebody. That's when a guy invites problems."
"Okay."
"Each cassette has sixty minutes' recording time on it. If you run out of tape and your situation doesn't allow you to change cassettes, don't worry about it. Never overextend yourself, never feel that you have to record more than the situation will allow you. If they don't get dirty on the tape one time, it'll happen the next time. Don't think of yourself as a controller."