"I'm taking a lady to the track tonight."

"Another time."

"No, not another time. And let's stop this business of Uncle Sam talking in his omniscience to the uninformed local flatfoot. If the shit's burning on the stove, I suspect it's yours and it's because you federal boys have screwed things up again."

He stopped grinning. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then wet his lips. He suddenly seemed older.

"You have to have faith in what I tell you, Lieutenant," he said. "You're a good man, you've got courage, you've never been on a pad, you go to Mass on Sundays, you treat the street people decently, and you put away a lot of the bad guys. We know these things about you because we don't want you hurt. But believe me, it's dumb for the two of us to be out here in the open talking to each other."

"Who's this 'we' you're talking about?"

"Uh, actually the 'we' is more or less just me, at least right now. Come on, I'll explain it. Trust me. Somebody who looks like Howdy Doody has got to be a straight shooter. Besides, I'll buy you a poor-boy sandwich on my expense account."

So this was the state of the art down at the Federal Building, I thought. We didn't see much of the federal boys, primarily because they operated on their own as a rule, and even though they said otherwise, they looked down upon us as inept and uneducated. On the other hand, we didn't have much liking for them, either. Any number of television serials portray the feds as manicured, dapper altruists dressed in Botany 500 suits, who dispassionately hunt down the oily representatives of the Mafia and weld the cell door shut on them. The reality is otherwise. As Didi Gee would probably point out, syndicate gangsters have little fear of any police agency or court system. They own judges, cops, and prosecutors, and they can always get to a witness or a juror.

The Treasury Department is another matter. Law enforcement people everywhere, as well as criminals, consider Treasury agents incorruptible. Within the federal government they are to law enforcement what Smokey the Bear and the U. S. Forest Service are to environmental integrity. Even Joe Valachi, the Brooklyn mob's celebrity snitch, had nothing but admiration for the T-men.

Fitzpatrick drove us across town to a Latin American restaurant on Louisiana Avenue. We sat at an outdoor table in the small courtyard under the oak and willow trees. There were electric lights in the trees and we could see the traffic on the avenue through the scrolled iron gate. The banana trees along the stone wall rattled in the wind. He ordered shrimp and oyster poor-boy sandwiches for us and poured himself a glass of Jax while I sipped my iced tea.

"You don't drink, do you?" he said.

"Not anymore."

"Heavy sauce problem?"

"You not only look like a kid, you're as subtle as a shithouse, aren't you?" I said.

"Why do you think I brought us to this restaurant?"

"I don't know."

"Almost everybody working here is a product of our fun-in-the-sun policies south of the border. Some of them are legals, some bought their papers from coyotes."

"That's only true of about five thousand restaurants in Orleans and Jefferson parishes."

"You see the owner over by the cash register? If his face looks out of round, it's because Somoza's national guardsmen broke all the bones in it."

He waited, but I didn't say anything.

"The man running the bar is an interesting guy too," he said. "He's from a little village in Guatemala. One day the army came to the village and without provocation killed sixteen Indians and an American priest from Oklahoma named Father Stan Rother. For kicks they put the bodies of the Indians in a U.S. Army helicopter and threw them out at high altitudes."

He watched my face. His eyes were a washed-out blue. I'd never seen a grown man with so many freckles.

"I'm not big on causes anymore," I said.

"I guess that's why you went out to Julio Segura's and put a hot plate under his nuts."

"This dinner is getting expensive."

"I'm sorry I've been boring you," he said, and broke up a bread stick in three pieces and stood each piece upright. "Let's talk about your immediate concerns. Let's talk about the three guys who gave you gargling lessons in the bathtub last night. I bet that'll hold your interest."

"You don't hide hostility well."

"I get a little emotional on certain subjects. You'll have to excuse me. I went to Jesuit schools. They always taught us to be up front about everything. They're the Catholic equivalent of the jarheads, you know. Get in there and kick butt and take names and all that stuff. I just think you're a lousy actor, Lieutenant."

"Look, Fitzpatrick-"

"Fuck off, man. I'm going to give you the scam and you can work out your own options. I'm surrounded by indifferent people and I don't need any more of them. I just don't want you on my conscience. Also, as a matter of principle I don't like another guy taking the heat for me, particularly when he blunders into something he doesn't know anything about. You're damn lucky they didn't blow out your light last night. The girl's, too."

He stopped talking while the waiter put down our plates of oyster and shrimp sandwiches, then he took a bite out of his sandwich as though he hadn't eaten for weeks.

"You don't like the food?" he said, his mouth still full.

"I lost my appetite."

"Ah, you're a sensitive fellow after all."

"Tell me, do all you guys have the same manners?"

"You want it straight, Lieutenant? We've got some firemen and pyromaniacs on the same side of the street."

"Who was that bunch last night?" I said.

"That's the easy part. The one named Erik is an Israeli. He's somebody's little brother back in Haifa and they keep him around to clean up their mess, change toilet-paper rolls, stuff like that. The one you called Bobby Joe in your report is a real cut-up. That's Robert J. Starkweather of Shady Grove, Alabama. The state took away his kid from him and his wife for the kid's own protection. They think he fragged an NCO in Vietnam but they couldn't prove it, so they eased him out on a BCD. How do you like that tattoo about killing them all and letting God sort them out? He's sincere about it, too."

"How about the guy in charge?"

"He's a little more complex. His name is Philip Murphy, at least we think it is. We've run this guy all kinds of ways and we come up with some blank spots-no addresses, no record of earnings, no tax returns for a couple of years here and there. Or he shows up owning a shoe store in Des Moines. With this kind of guy it usually means protected witness or CIA. He's probably one of those that bounces in and out of the Agency or freelances around. I suspect he's off their leash right now. But it's hard to tell sometimes."

I picked up my poor-boy sandwich and started to eat. The shrimp, oysters, lettuce, onions, tomato, and sauce piquante tasted wonderful. The shadows of the oak and willow leaves moved in etched, shifting patterns across our table.

"I still don't understand the connections. What have these guys got to do with Segura's whores and dope?" I said.

"Nothing directly." Then he started grinning again. "Come on, you're a detective. Give me your opinion."

"Are you sure these guys aren't after you because of what you fancy is a sense of humor?"

"Maybe. Come on, give me your opinion."

"I have a hard time believing you're a Treasury agent."

"Sometimes my supervisor does too. Come on."

"You're with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."

"Good."

"Are we talking about guns?" I said.

"Excellento."

"Nope, not excellento. I still don't see it, and I already told you this meal has gotten expensive."

"It's simple. I think Segura is putting his dope money back into military equipment for the Contras in Nicaragua. It explains these other guys. The Israelis supplied arms to Somoza for years and they still sell to right-wing guys like Pinochet in Chile. From what we know about Buffalo Bob, who almost pinched your head off at the shoulders, he's cowboyed for the CIA down on the Honduran border when he wasn't mixing up his phallus with an M-16, and I'll bet Philip Murphy is the tie-in to some arms contractors and military people here in the States. There's nothing new or unusual about it. It's the same kind of unholy trinity we had working for us down in Cuba. Look, why do you think the CIA tried to use some Chicago wiseguys to whack Castro? The mob had a vested interest. They got along very well with Batista, then Castro shut down all their casinos."