necessarily pay for their crimes. See how well I learn my lessons, Marcotte?
'It looks cold, Donnie-you trying to swing this deal,' he went on. 'Hell, that business ain't even yours to sell yet, technically speaking. This looks like something my friends in the sheriff's office would want to go over with a fine- tooth comb. They'll wanna dig through all your records and whatnot. You been wheeling and dealing for a while now. Who knows what else they might come up with?
'Folks catch wind of that kind of thing, they start thinking maybe you cheated them, and then they wanna sue. And, hey, you got all that money what Duval Marcotte paid you, so why shouldn't they try to get themselves a piece of it? Meanwhile, the Davidsons are talking to a lawyer about custody of your daughter.
'You see where this is going, Donnie?' he asked, still looking at Marcotte. 'Donnie, he doesn't always see the big picture. He fails to recognize the potential for disaster.'
'And you, Nick my boy, see that train coming and throw yourself in front of it anyway,' Marcotte said, shaking his head. 'You were born out of time, Fourcade. Chivalry went out a while back. It's called foolhardiness now.'
'Really?' The picture of disinterest, Nick crushed his smoke out and dropped the butt in Donnie's whiskey. 'I don't keep up with trends.'
'I have to go to the bathroom,' Donnie muttered, turning gray around the gills.
Nick slid out of the banquette. 'Take your time, Tulane. Do some thinking while you're in there.'
Donnie shuffled away from the table with one hand pressed to his stomach. Nick sat back down and stared at Marcotte. Marcotte sat back against the padded seat and crossed his arms. His dark eyes shone like polished stones.
'I believe you may have succeeded in ruining my chances for a deal, Nick.'
'I sincerely hope so. It's the least I can do, all things considered.'
'Yes, I suppose it is. And the least I can do is be gracious in defeat. For the moment.'
'You're giving up easily.'
Marcotte gave a shrug, pursing his lips.
Nick said nothing. He had thought he'd cut Marcotte out of his life like a cancer. But just enough of the old obsession had remained to pull him back across that line, and now Marcotte would be drooling at the edge of his sanctuary like a wolf biding his time.
The waitress edged toward the table, looking at Nick with suspicion. 'Can I get you a drink, sir?'
'No, thank you,' he said, easing himself up. 'I won't be staying. The company here turns my stomach.'
Donnie was bent over the sink, crying and gagging when Nick entered the men's room.
'You fit to drive home, Tulane?'
'I'm ruined, you son of a bitch!' he sobbed. 'I'm fucking broke! Marcotte would have advanced me money.'
'And you'd still be ruined-for all the reasons I just told you out there. You don't listen so good, Donnie,' Nick said, washing his hands. Every encounter with Marcotte left him feeling as if he'd been handling snakes. 'There's better ways out of trouble than selling your soul.'
'You don't understand. Pam's life insurance isn't coming through. I've lost two big jobs and I've got a loan coming due. I need money.'
'Quit your whining and be a man for once,' Nick snapped. 'You don't have your wife here to bail your ass out anymore. It's time to grow up, Donnie.'
He cranked a paper towel out of the machine on the wall, dried his hands carefully. 'Listen-you don't know it, but me, I'm the best friend you've got tonight, Tulane. But I'm telling you,
Donnie leaned his head against the mirror, too weak to stand unaided. 'I been wishing that for days now, Fourcade.'
Behind him, Nick heard the men's room door swish open. He could see the reflection of Brutus in a wedge of mirror. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and remained still.
'Everything all right in here, Mr. Bichon?' the thug asked.
'Hardly,' Donnie moaned.
'Everything's fine, Brutus,' Nick said. 'Mr. Bichon, he's just having some growing pains, that's all.'
'I didn't ask you, coonass.' Reaching inside his black jacket, Brutus pulled out a set of brass knuckles and slipped them over the thick fingers of his right hand. Nick watched in the mirror.
'I wouldn't go knocking family trees, King Kong,' he said. 'You're about to fall out of yours.'
He spun and kicked as Brutus stepped toward him, catching the big man on the side of the head. Brutus hit the paper towel machine face-first with a crash that reverberated off the tile walls. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and he dropped to the floor, out cold.
Nick shook his head as the manager rushed into the room to stare in horror, first at his broken towel dispenser, then at the mass of bleeding humanity lying on the tile.
'Floor's wet,' Nick said, moving casually for the door. 'He slipped.'
44
Big Dick Dugas and the Iota Playboys cranked up the volume on their battle-scarred guitars and launched into a fast and frantic rendition of 'C'est Chaud.' A cheer went up from the crowd and bodies began to move-young, old, drunk, sober, black, white, poor, and planter class.
There were easily a thousand people in the five-block length of La Rue France cordoned off for the annual event, all of them moving some part of their anatomy to the beat. Mouths smiling, faces shiny with the uncommon heat of the evening and the joy of liberation. The workweek was over, the five-day party was just starting, and the source of a collective fear had been obliterated from the planet.
The party atmosphere struck Annie as grotesque, a reaction she resented mightily. She had always loved the Mardi Gras festivities in Bayou Breaux. Unfettered pagan fun and frivolity before the dour days of Lent. The street dance, the food stands, the vendors selling balloons and cheap trinkets, the pageants and parade. It was a rite of spring and a thread of continuity that had run through her life from her earliest memories.
She remembered coming to the dance as a child, running around with her Doucet cousins while her mother stood off just to the side of the crowd, enjoying the music in her own quiet way, but never a part of the mass joy.
The memory brought an extra pang tonight. Annie felt she was in her own way apart from the rest of the revelers here. Not because of the uniform she was wearing, but because of the things she had experienced in the last ten days.
A burly bearded man tricked out in a pink dress and pearls, a cigar jammed into the corner of his mouth, tried to grab hold of her hand and drag her off the sidewalk into a two-step. Annie waved him off.
'I'm not that kind of girl!' she called, grinning.
'Neither am I, darlin'!' He flipped his skirt up, flashing a glimpse of baggy heart-covered boxer shorts.
The crowd around him roared and hooted. A woman dressed as a male construction worker gave a wolf whistle and tried to pinch his ass. He howled, grabbed her, and they danced off.
Annie managed a chuckle at the scene. As she started to turn away, she was detained by another costumed partyer, this one dressed in black with a white painted smiling mask, the classic theatrical portrayal of comedy. He held out a single rose to her and bowed stiffly when she accepted it.
'Thank you.' She tucked the stem of the rose through her duty belt, next to her baton as she walked away.
She loved the street dance less as a cop than as a civilian. Personnel from both the Bayou Breaux PD and the sheriff's office worked the Carnival events. A united front against hooliganism. The standing rule was to break up
