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"You need somebody to watch your back. Don't trust the feds to do it. You heard it first from ole Clete."
"I don't know if any of this is going anywhere, anyway," I said. "A few more days of this and I might be back in New Iberia."
He put a matchstick in his mouth. His hands were big and square and callused around the edges, the nails chewed back to the quick.
"Don't underestimate their potential," he said. "Most of them wouldn't make good bars of soap. But turn your back on them and they'll take your eyes out."
That afternoon I talked to another of Minos's contacts, a Negro bartender on Magazine. His head was bald and waxed, and he wore gray muttonchop sideburns that looked as though they were artificially affixed to his face. He was as passive, docile, and uncurious about me as if I had been selling burial insurance. His eyelids were leaded, and his head kept nodding up and down while I talked. He told me: "See, I ain't in the bidness no more myself. I had a bunch of trouble 'cause of it, had to go out of town for a little while, know what I mean? But somebody come in want the action, I'll tell them you in town. You want another 7-Up?"
"No, this is fine."
"How about some hard-boiled eggs?"
"No, I'm fine."
"I got to go in the kitchen and start my stove now."
"Thanks for your time. You were up at Angola?"
"Where's that at?" he said. His eyes looked speculatively out into space.
The next morning I walked over to the Café du Monde again and had coffee at one of the outside tables. Across the street the spires of the cathedral looked brilliant in the sunlight, and the wind off the river ruffled the banana trees and palm fronds along the black iron piked fence that bordered the park inside Jackson Square. I finished reading the paper, then walked back to the apartment and called Clete's bar for messages. There were none. I called Minos's office in Lafayette.
"Don't be discouraged," he said.
"I think maybe I'm not cut out for this."
"Why?"
"I was a Homicide cop. I never worked Vice or Narcotics."
"It's a different kind of
gig, isn't it?"
"Look, busting them is one thing. Pretending to be like them is another."
"Have a few laughs with it."
"It's not funny, Minos. You got me into this stuff, and it's not paying off. I've got another problem, too—the reliability of your information."
"Oh?"
"I find out that people are either dead, or in jail, or they're crazy and run bookstores that smell like cat shit."
"If our information was perfect, these guys wouldn't be on the street. We get it from snitches and cons cutting deals and wiretaps on pathological liars. You know that."
"I struck out."
"You don't think any of these people are dealing now?"
"Maybe a couple of them. But they didn't buy my act."
"It's like throwing chum overboard to a school of barracuda. They just have to smell the blood."
"How about another metaphor?"
"Just hang in there. It takes time."
