Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux 10)

"Is something troubling you, Dave?" she asked.

"You know Lila Terrebonne?"

"The senator's granddaughter?"

"She comes to our attention on occasion. The other day we had to pick her up at the church, sitting by herself under a crucifix. Out of nowhere she asked me about the Hanged Man in the Tarot."

I slipped the card out of my shirt pocket and placed it on the tablecloth by Megan's plate.

"Why tell me?" she said.

"Does it mean something to you?"

I saw Clete lower his fork into his plate, felt his eyes fix on the side of my face.

"A man hanging upside down from a tree. The tree forms a cross," Megan said.

"The figure becomes Peter the Apostle, as well as Christ and St. Sebastian. Sebastian was tied to a tree and shot with darts by his fellow Roman soldiers. Peter asked to be executed upside down. You notice, the figure makes a cross with his legs in the act of dying?" I said.

Megan had stopped eating. Her cheeks were freckled with discoloration, as though an invisible pool of frigid air had burned her face.

"What is this, Dave?" Clete said.

"Maybe nothing," I said.

"Just lunch conversation?" he said.

"The Terrebonnes have had their thumbs in lots of pies," I said.

"Will you excuse me, please?" Megan said.

She walked between the tables to the rest room, her purse under her arm, her funny straw hat crimped across the back of her red hair.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" Clete said.

THAT EVENING I DROVE to Red Lerille's Health & Racquet Club in Lafayette and worked out with free weights and on the Hammer-Strength machines, then ran two miles on the second-story track that overlooked the basketball courts.

I hung my towel around my neck and did leg stretches on the handrail. Down below, some men were playing a pickup basketball game, thudding into one another clumsily, slapping one another's shoulders when they made a shot. But an Indonesian or Malaysian man at the end of the court, where the speed and heavy bags were hung, was involved in a much more intense and solitary activity. He wore sweats and tight red leather gloves, the kind with a metal dowel across the palm, and he ripped his fists into the heavy bag and sent it spinning on the chain, then speared it with his feet, hard enough to almost knock down a kid who was walking by.

He grinned at the boy by way of apology, then moved over to the speed bag and began whacking it against the rebound board, without rhythm or timing, slashing it for the effect alone.

"You were at Cisco's house. You're Mr. Robicheaux," a woman's voice said behind me.

It was Billy Holtzner's daughter. But her soapy blue eyes were focused now, actually pleasant, like a person who has stepped out of one identity into another.

"You remember me?" she asked.

"Sure."

"We didn't introduce ourselves the other day. I'm Geraldine Holtzner. The boxer down there is Anthony. He's an accountant for the studio. I'm sorry for our rudeness."

"You weren't rude."

"I know you don't like my father. Not many people do. We're not problem visitors here. If you h

ave one, it's Cisco Flynn," she said.

"Cisco?"