A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux 4)

"Look, on another subject, Tony. I'm not sure your wife is ready for houseguests right now."

He puffed out his cheeks.

"I invite people to my home. I tell them if they should leave," he said. "You're my guest. You don't want to stay, that's your business."

"I appreciate your hospitality, Tony."

"So we're going back home now and get you changed, then we're taking Kim out to the yacht club for a little lunch and some golf. How's that grab you?"

"Fine."

"You like Kim?"

"Sure."

"How much?"

"She's a pretty girl."

"She ain't pretty, man. She's fucking beautiful." His eyes were dancing with light. "She told me she got drunk and came on to you."

"She told you that?"

"What's the big deal? She's human. You're a good-looking guy. But you don't look too comfortable right now." He laughed out loud.

"What can I say?"

"Nothing. You're too serious. It's all comedy, man. The bottom line is we all get to be dead for a real long time. It's a cluster fuck no matter how you cut it."

We drove back to his house, and I changed into a pair of gray slacks, a charcoal shirt, and a candy-striped necktie, loaded two bags of golf clubs into the Lincoln, and with a white stretch Caddy limousine full of Tony's hoods behind us, we picked up Kim Dollinger and headed for the country club out by the lake.

We filled two tables in the dining room. I couldn't tell if the attention we drew was because of my bandaged head, Tony's hoods, whose dead eyes and toneless voices made the waiters' heads nod rapidly, or the way Kim filled out her gray knit dress. But each time I took a bite from my shrimp cocktail and tried to chew on the side of my mouth that wasn't injured, I saw the furtive glances from the other tables, the curiosity, the titillation of being next to people who suddenly step off a movie screen.

And Tony must have read my thoughts.

"Watch this," he said, and motioned the maître d' over. "Give everybody in the bar and dining room a glass of champagne, Michel."

"It's not necessary, Mr. Cardo."

"Yeah, it is."

"Some of our members don't drink, Mr. Cardo."

"Then give them a dessert. Put it on my bill."

Tony wiped his small mouth with a napkin. The maître d' was a tall, pale man who looked as if he were about to be pushed out an airplane door.

"Hey, they don't want it, that's okay," Tony said. "Lighten up, Michel."

"Very good, sir." The maître d' assembled his waiters and sent them to the bar for trays of glasses and towel-wrapped bottles of champagne.

"That was mean," Kim said.

"I didn't come here to be treated like a bug," Tony said.

We finished lunch and walked outside into the cool afternoon sunlight and the rattle of the palms in the wind off the lake. The lake was murky green and capping, and the few sailboats that were out were tacking hard in the wind, the canvas popping, their glistening bows slapping into the water. Tony and most of his entourage loaded themselves into golf carts for nine holes, and Kim and I sat on a wood bench by the practice green while Jess made long putts back and forth across the clipped grass without ever hitting the cup.

She wore a gray pillbox hat with a net veil folded back on top of it. She didn't look at me and instead gazed off at the rolling fairways, the sand traps and greens, the moss-hung oaks by the trees. The wind was strong enough to make her eyes tear, but in profile she looked as cool and regal and unperturbed as a sculptor's model. Behind her, the long, rambling club building, with its glass-domed porches, was achingly white against the blue of the sky.