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"Tony, pull the plug on this before it goes any further. It's not worth it," I said.
He set the hammer on half cock, spun the cylinder twice, then brought the hammer all the way back with his thumb and fitted the barrel's opening under his chin. The skin of his face became as stiff and gray as cardboard, his eyes focused on a distant thought somewhere behind my ear. Then he pulled the trigger.
"Jesus Christ, Tony," I heard the gateman say, his breath rushing out of his chest.
Tony put an unlit cigarette in his mouth, opened the cylinder again, and fitted the five rounds from his pocket back into the chambers.
"It wasn't even close, two chambers away from the firing pin," he said. "Don't ever let me see pity in your face when you look at me and my little boy again."
A solitary drop of water fell out of his hair and spotted the unlit cigarette in his mouth.
* * *
CHAPTER 7
The next morning the streets in the Quarter were thick with mist, and I could hear the foghorns of tugs and oil barges out on the river. I had coffee and beignets at a table inside the Café du Monde; then the sun broke out of the clouds and Jackson Square looked bright and wet and green after the night's rain. I walked over to Ray Fontenot's T-shirt sh
op on Bourbon and found him practicing his trombone in a small weed-grown, rubble-strewn courtyard in back. He wore a purple turtleneck sweater, gray slacks, and shades, even though there was little sunlight in the enclosure. He was not a gelatinous man. The rings of fat across his stomach looked hard, the kind your fist would do little harm to.
My conversation with him did not go well.
"So we're agreed on everything," he said. "You'll bring your boat over from Morgan City, and we'll take a little tarpon-fishing trip out on the salt. By the way, what's your boat doing in Morgan City if you live in New Iberia?"
"I just had the engine overhauled."
"That's good. And you'll have all the money?"
"That's right."
"Because we want lots of product for all the little boys and girls. It's what keeps everybody's genitalia humming. Like little nests of bees."
"Day after tomorrow, two a.m. at Cocodrie. Dress warm. It'll be cold out there," I said, and started to leave.
"Thank you, kind sir. But there's one change."
He drained the spittle out of his trombone slide onto the weeds at his feet.
"What's that?" I said.
"Your friend Purcel is not going with us."
"He's my business partner. He's in."
"Not on this trip."
"Why not?"
"He hasn't quite learned how to behave. Besides, we don't need him."
"Listen, Fontenot, if Clete gave you a bad time over Tony's phone number, that's a personal beef you work out on your own. This is business."
"He no play-a, he no go-a."
"What does Tony say?"
"I make the deals for Tony, I make the terms. When you talk to me, it's just like you're talking to Tony."
"You mind if I make a call?"
