The Neon Rain (Dave Robicheaux 1)

"Where are you going?"

"I've got to set things straight. Don't worry. Things always work out before the ninth race."

"Stay."

She stood up from the table and looked down at me. I got up and put my arms around her, felt her body come against me, felt it become small and close under my hands, felt her head under my chin and her sandaled foot curve around my ankle. I kissed her hair and her eyes, and when she opened them again, all I could see was the electric blueness in them.

"Let's go inside," she said. Her voice was a low, thick whisper in my ear, her fingers like the brush of a bird's wing on my thigh.

Later, in the darkness of her bedroom, the sunset an orange and purple glow beyond the half-closed blinds, she lay a

gainst my chest and rubbed her hand over my skin.

"One day you'll have a quiet heart," she said.

"It's quiet now."

"No, it isn't. You're already thinking about the rest of the night. But one day you'll feel all the heat go out of you."

"Some people aren't made like that."

"Why do you think that?" she asked quietly.

"Because of the years I invested in dismantling myself, I was forced to learn about some things that went on in my head. I don't like the world the way it is, and I miss the past. It's a foolish way to be."

I left Annie's and drove over toward St. Mary's Dominican College, where Captain Guidry lived with his mother in a Victorian house not far from the Mississippi levee. It was a yellow house, in need of paint, and the lawn hadn't been cut and the lower gallery was overgrown with trees and untrimmed shrubs. The windows were all dark, except for the light of a television screen in the living room. I unlatched the picket gate and walked up the cracked walkway to the front porch. The porch swing hung at an angle on rusted chains, and the doorbell was the kind you twisted with a handle. I thought it was about time the captain seriously considered marrying the widow in the water department.

"Dave, what are you doing out here?" he said when he opened the door. He wore a rumpled sports shirt, slippers, and old slacks with paint stains on them. He held a cup with a tea bag in it.

"I'm sorry to bother you at home. I need to talk with you."

"Sure, come in. My mother just went to bed. I was watching the ball game."

The living room was dark, smelled of dust and Mentholatum, and was filled with nineteenth-century furniture. The furniture wasn't antique; it was simply old, like the clutter of clocks, vases, religious pictures, coverless books, tasseled pillows, and stacked magazines that took up every inch of available space in the room. I sat down in a deep, stuffed chair that was threadbare on the arms.

"You want tea or a Dr Pepper?" he said.

"No, thanks."

"You want anything else?" He looked at me carefully.

"Nope."

"Thataboy. Jimmie's still holding his own, isn't he?"

"He's the same."

"Yeah, I checked on him at noon. He's going to make it, Dave. If they get through the first day, they usually make it all the way. It's like something down inside of them catches a second breath."

"I'm in some serious trouble. I thought about just riding it out, then I thought about getting out of town."

He reached over from where he sat on the couch and clicked off the ball game.

"Instead, I figured I better face it now before it gets worse, if that's possible," I said.

"What is it?"

"I had to kill Philip Murphy last night in Biloxi."