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"You want me to get your wife?"
"No. It's going to pass."
I picked up his sweater and blotted his hair and the back of his neck with it, then draped it over his shoulders. He began to breathe more regularly; then he pinched the bridge of his nose and held his head back in the cool air as though he had a nosebleed.
"I think you need to talk to somebody," I said. "I think you're dealing with something that's going to eat your lunch."
He folded his arm on top of his perpendicular racket and rested his head on his arm.
"What are you gonna do, a kid needs a mother. It's all a pile of shit, man," he said. "All of it."
When I went back to my room, which gave onto a side yard that contained a swing set and a solitary moss-hung oak tree, my clothes from my apartment were laid out neatly on the tester bed. Even my .45, with the spare clip and a box of shells, lay on top of a folded flannel shirt. I went to look for Tony, but he was in the shower. I walked out the front door and down the long, tree-lined drive to the front gate, where Jess sat in a chair, wearing a blue jumpsuit. It was zippered only halfway up his chest, and I could see the leather straps of his shoulder holster against his T-shirt.
"Where's the closest drugstore?" I said.
"What do you need?"
"Some razor blades."
"It's five blocks, down by the lake. We'll send a car."
"I need the walk. I still feel like I've got rapture of the deep."
"What?"
"How about opening up?" I said.
He unlocked the chain and slid back the gate wide enough so that I could step out on the street. I walked past the rows of banked lawns and oleander-lined piked fences to a thoroughfare and a tan stucco and red-tiled shopping center that looked as if it had been torn out of the ground in southern California and dropped in the middle of New Orleans. I used a pay phone outside a drugstore to call Minos.
"You pulled it off, Dave. You're across the moat and inside the castle," he said before I explained.
"How'd you know where I was?"
"Everybody who goes in that gate is on videotape. How do you like it with the spaghetti-and-meatball crowd?"
"I'm not sure."
"I told you, didn't I
, Cardo's head was in the blender too long."
"Minos, you guys are all turning the screws on this guy, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure why."
"What are you talking about?"
"He's just one guy. What about these guys in Miami and Houston who've got a contract out on him? The odds are Tony's going to lose."
"Let us worry about Houston and Miami. You want in or out, Dave?"
"I haven't made up my mind."
"You'd damn well better."
"I want Boggs."
"You're in the right place, then. He'll be back. He's not a guy who leaves loose ends. Besides, we hear it's an open contract. It's the perfect opportunity for him."
"Did you find out who dropped the dime on the buy?"
