Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"Guests?"

"Billy Holtzner's daughter and her boyfriend."

I looked out the French doors again. I saw a glassy reflection between the fingers of the man's right hand.

"Introduce me."

"It's Sunday. They're just getting up."

"Yeah, I can see."

"Hey, wait a minute."

But I opened the French doors and stepped outside. The man with the ponytail, who looked Malaysian or Indonesian, cupped the candle stub melted to the table, popping the waxy base loose, and held it behind his thigh. Holtzner's daughter had eyes that didn't fit her fried hair. They were a soapy blue, mindless, as devoid of reason as a drowsy cat's when small creatures run across its vision.

A flat, partially zippered leather case rested on a metal chair between her and her boyfriend.

"How y'all doing?" I asked.

Their smiles were self-indulgent rather than warm, their faces suffused by a chemical pleasure that was working in their skin like flame inside tallow. The woman lowered her wrist into her lap and the sunlight fell like a spray of yellow coins on the small red swelling inside her forearm.

"The officer from the set," the man said.

"It is," the woman said, leaning sideways in her chair to see behind me. "Is that blond lady here? The one with the blackjack. I mean that guy's head. Yuck."

"We're not in trouble, are we?" the man said. He smiled. The gap in his front teeth was large enough to insert a kitchen match in.

"You from the U.K.?" I said.

"Just the accent. I travel on a French passport," he said, smiling. He removed a pair of dark glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.

"Y'all need any medical attention here?"

"No, not today, I don't think," the man said.

"Sure? Because I can run y'all down to Iberia General. It's no trouble."

"That's very kind of you, but we'll pass," the man said.

"What's he talking about?" the woman said.

"Being helpful, that sort of thing, welcoming us to the neighborhood," the man said.

"Hospital?" She scratched her back by rubbing it against her chair. "Did anybody ever tell you you look like Johnny Wadd?"

"Not really."

"He died of AIDS. He was very underrated as an artist. Because he did porno, if that's what you want to call it." Then her face went out of focus, as though her own words had presented a question inside herself.

"Dave, can I see you?" Cisco said softly behind me.

I left Billy Holtzner's daughter and the man with the ponytail without saying goodbye. But they never noticed, their heads bent toward each other as they laughed over a private joke.

Cisco walked with me through the shade trees to my tru

ck. He had slipped on a golf shirt with his gym shorts, and he kept pulling the cloth away from the dampness of his skin.

"I don't have choices about what people around me do sometimes," he said.