"You ripped them off, Billy. I'm not taking the fall," Cisco said.
"This fine house, this fantasy you got about being a southern gentleman, where you think it all comes from? You made your money off of me."
"So I'm supposed to give it back because you burned the wrong guys? That's the way they do business in the garment district?"
Then I heard their feet shuffling, a piece of iron furniture scrape on brick, a slap, like a hand hitting a body, and Cisco's voice saying, "Don't embarrass yourself on top of it, Billy."
A moment later Holtzner came around the back corner of the house, walking fast, his face heated, his stare twisted with his own thoughts. I held up the composite drawing in front of him.
"You know this guy?" I asked.
"No."
"The FBI thinks he's a contract assassin."
Holtzner's eyes were dilated, red along the rims, his skin filmed with an iridescent shine, a faint body odor emanating from his clothes, like a man who feels he's about to slide down a razor blade.
"So you bring it out to Cisco Flynn's house? Who you think is the target for these assholes?" he said.
"I see. You are."
"You got me made for a coward. It doesn't bother me. I don't care what happens to me anymore. But my daughter never harmed anybody except herself. All pinhead back there has to do is mortgage his house and we can make a down payment on our debt. I'm talking about my daughter's life here. Am I getting through to you?"
"You have a very unpleasant way of talking to people, Mr. Holtzner," I said.
"Go fuck yourself," he said, and walked across the lawn to his automobile, which he had parked under a shade tree.
I followed him and propped both my hands on the edge of his open window just as he turned the ignition.
He looked up abruptly into my face. His leaded eyelids made me think of a frog's.
"Your daughter's been threatened? Explicitly?" I said.
"Explicitly? I can always spot a thinker," he said. He dropped the car into reverse and spun two black tracks across the grass to the driveway.
I went back up on the gallery and knocked again. But Megan came to the door instead of Cisco. She stepped outside without inviting me in, a brown paper bag in her hand.
"I'm returning your pistol," she said.
"I think you should hang on to it for a while."
"Why'd you show Cisco those photos of my father?"
"He came to my office. He asked to see them."
"Take the gun. It's unloaded," she said. She pushed the bag into my hands.
"You're worried he might go after Archer Terrebonne?"
"You shouldn't have shown him those photos. Sometimes you're unaware of the influence you have over others, Dave."
"I tell you what. I'm going to get all the distance I can between me and you and Cisco. How's that?"
She stepped closer to me, her face tilted up into mine. I could feel her breath on my skin. For a moment I thought she was being flirtatious, deliberately confrontational. Then I saw the moisture in her eyes.
"You've never read the weather right with me. Not on anything. It's not Cisco who might do something to Archer Terrebonne," she said. She continued to stare into my face. There were broken veins in the whites of her eyes, like pieces of red thread.
THAT EVENING I SAW Clete's chartreuse convertible coming down the dirt road toward the dock, with Geraldine Holtzner behind the wheel, almost unrecognizable in a scarf and dark glasses, and Clete padding along behind the car, in scarlet trunks, rotted T-shirt, and tennis shoes that looked like pancakes on his feet.