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Then she took me in her hand, her thighs widening, and placed me inside her. Her lips parted, her eyes closed and opened, and she slipped her arms low on my back and tucked her face under my chin. She didn't speak while she made love. Her concentration and body heat were so intense, the movement of her hands and thighs and stomach so directed and encompassing, the hoarse, regular sounds in my ear so natural and heart-swelling, that I knew she too was back thirty years before on the float cushions in my father's boat-house, the lavender sky streaked with fire through the cracks, the shrimp boat knocking against the pilings, the raindrops dripping like lead shot out of the cypress into the bay.
But on Monday Alafair was back with my cousin Tutta, Bootsie was at work at her vending machine company, and I was talking with Minos in his room at the guesthouse on St. Charles about New Orleans flake and people who gave you reason to think that toxic waste had been dumped in the human gene pool.
He stood at the ceiling-high window with a coffee cup in his hand, looking down on the courtyard behind the guesthouse. Banana trees and bamboo grew along the back brick wall, and on the other side of the wall there were garbage cans in the alley. Minos had on tan slacks and a yellow golf shirt with an alligator on it. As always, his scalp gleamed through his close-cropped hair and his jaws looked as though he had just shaved.
"I understand, they're dangerous. You don't have to convince me of that," he said. "But it comes with the territory. I don't think the situation will improve because we make Purcel a player."
"You don't have anybody inside
. So we bring him in with me. Give the guy a break. He has a lot of qualities."
"He worked for the mob, for Christ's sake."
"I think he took some of them off the board, too."
"That's the last kind of cowboy bullshit we want in this operation."
"What's it going to be, partner?"
"We did some homework over the weekend. Purcel has some bad debts around town. One of them is to a loan company owned by the greaseballs. He's also got a reputation for parking his swizzle stick in anything that looks vaguely female."
"In or out?" I asked.
He bit a corner of his lip and continued to look down into the courtyard. He seemed almost as tall as the window.
"The money comes out of the snitch fund," he said. "You can tell him whatever you want to. But he's not an employee of the DEA. Nor its representative."
"How much?"
"Two hundred a week."
"That's an insult."
"Too bad."
"Listen, Minos, let's stop messing around. You give the guy five hundred a week, treat him with some respect, or I'm going to walk out of this."
"I'll talk to somebody about it later."
"No, make the call now."
I saw him take a breath, his fingers tap on his thigh.
"All right, you've got my word," he said.
"He was a good cop till he had marital trouble and got on the sauce. He'll do fine. You'll see."
"I hope so. Because if he doesn't, somebody's going to feed your butt through the paper shredder an inch at a time."
"You really know how to say it, Minos."
He picked up a towel from the bathroom floor and started buffing one of his loafers on top of a wood chair.
"Where'd this broad, Kim, the one at the score, tell you she was from?"
"She didn't."
"Hmmm."
