James Burke - Sunset Limited

"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.

Geraldine Holtzner braked to a stop by the boat ramp and Clete opened the passenger door and took a bottle of diet Pepsi out of the cooler and wiped the ice off with his palm. He breathed through his mouth, sweat streaming out of his hair and down his chest.

"You trying to have a heart attack?" I said.

"I haven't had a drink or a cigarette in two days. I feel great. You want some fried chicken?" he said.

"They pulled your license altogether?" I said.

"Big time," he said.

"Clete-" I said.

"So beautiful women drive me around now. Right, Geri?"

She didn't respond. Instead, she stared at me from behind her dark glasses, her mouth pursed into a button. "Why are you so hard on my father?" she said.

I looked at Clete, then down the road, in the shadows, where a man in a ribbed undershirt was taking a fishing rod and tackle box out of his car trunk.

"I'd better get back to work," I said.

"I'll take a shower in the back of the bait shop and we'll go to a movie or something. How about it, Geri?" Clete said.

"Why not?" she said.

"I'd better pass," I said.

"I've got a case of 12-Step PMS today, you know, piss, moan, and snivel. Don't be a sorehead," Geraldine said.

"Come back later. We'll take a boat ride," I said.

"I can't figure what Megan sees in you," Geraldine said.

I went back down the dock to the bait shop, then turned and watched Clete padding along behind the convertible, like a trained bear, the dust puffing around his dirty tennis shoes.

A FEW MINUTES LATER I walked up to the house and ate supper in the kitchen with Alafair and Bootsie. The phone rang on the counter. I picked it up.

"Dave, this probably don't mean nothing, but a man was axing about Clete right after you went up to eat," Batist said.

"Which man?"

"He was fishing on the bank, then he come in the shop and bought a candy bar and started talking French. Then he ax in English who own that convertible that was going down the road. I tole him the only convertible I seen out there was for Clete Purcel. Then he ax if the woman driving it wasn't in the movies.

"I tole him I couldn't see through walls, no, so I didn't have no idea who was driving it. He give me a dol'ar tip and gone back out and drove away in a blue car."

"What kind of French did he speak?" I asked.

"I didn't t'ink about it. It didn't sound no different from us."

"I'll mention it to Clete. But don't worry about it."

"One other t'ing. He only had an undershirt on. He had a red-and-green tattoo on his shoulder. It look like a, what you call them t'ings, they got them down in Mexico, it ain't a crawfish, it's a-"

"Scorpion?" I said.

I CALLED CLETE AT his cottage outside Jeanerette.

"The Scarlotti shooter may be following you. Watch for a blond guy, maybe a French Canadian-" I began.

"Guy with a tattoo on his shoulder, driving a blue Ford?" Clete said.

"That's the guy."

"Geri and I stopped at a convenience store and I saw him do a U-turn down the street and park in some trees. I strolled on down toward a pay phone, but he knew I'd made him."

"You get his tag number?" I asked.

"No, there was mud on it."

"Can you get hold of Holtzner?"

"If I have to. The guy's wiring is starting to spark. I smelled crack in his trailer today."

"Where's Geraldine?"

"Where's any hype? In her own universe. That broad's crazy, Dave. After I told her we were being followed by the guy with the tattoo, she accused me of setting her up. Every woman I meet is either unattainable or nuts… Anyway, I'll try to find Holtzner for you."

An hour later he called me back.

"Holtzner just fired me," he said.

"Why?"

"I got him on his cell phone and told him the Canadian dude was in town. He went into a rage. He asked me why I didn't take down this guy when I had the chance. I go, 'Take down, like cap the guy?'

"He goes, ' What , an ex-cop kicked off the police force for killing a federal witness has got qualms?'

"I say, 'Yeah, as a matter of fact I do.'

"He goes, 'Then sign your own paychecks, Rhino Boy.'

" Rhino Boy ? How'd I ever get mixed up with these guys, Dave?"

"Lots of people ask themselves that question," I said.

THE EX-PROSTITUTE NAMED JESSIE Rideau, who claimed to have been present when Jack Flynn was kidnapped, called Helen Soileau's extension the next day. Helen had the call transferred to my office.

"Come talk to us, Ms. Rideau," I said.

"You giving out free coffee in lockup?" she said.

"We want to put Harpo Scruggs away. You help us, we help you."

"Gee, where I heard that before?" I could hear her breath flattening on the receiver, as though she were trying to blow the heat out of a burn. "You ain't gonna say nothing?"

"I'll meet you somewhere else."

"St. Peter's Cemetery in ten minutes."

"How will I recognize you?" I asked.

"I'm the one that's not dead."

I parked my truck behind the cathedral and walked over to the old cemetery, which was filled with brick-and-plaster crypts that had settled at broken angles into the earth. She sat on the seat of her paint-blistered gas-guzzler, the door open, her feet splayed on the curb, her head hanging out in the sunlight as I approached her. She had coppery hair that looked like it had been waved with an iron, and brown skin and freckles like a spray of dull pennies on her face and neck. Her shoulders were wide, her breasts like watermelons inside her blue cotton shirt, her turquoise eyes fastened on me, as though she had no means of defending herself against the world once it escaped her vision.

"Ms. Rideau?"

She didn't reply. A fire truck passed and she never took her eyes off my face.

"Give us a formal statement on Scruggs, enough to get a warrant for his arrest. That's when your problems start to end," I said.

"I need money to go out West, somewhere he cain't find me," she said.

"We don't run a flea market. If you conceal evidence in a criminal investigation, you become an accomplice after the fact. You ever do time?"

"You a real charmer."

I looked at my watch.

"Maybe I'd better go," I said.

"Harpo Scruggs gonna kill me. I had that box hid all them years for him. Now he gonna kill me over it. That's what y'all ain't hearing."

"Why does he want the lockbox now?" I asked.

"Him and me run a house toget'er. Fo' years ago I found out he killed Lavern Viator in Texas. Lavern was the other girl that was in Morgan City when they beat that man wit' chains. So I moved the box to a different place, one he ain't t'ought about."