"Yeah. Ernest Hemingway. I like his books. I read a bunch of them in college."
"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.
"Maybe we should go inside," I said.
"It's fine, thanks."
"Do you think it's smart to jerk a guy like Tony around?"
She crossed her legs and raised her chin.
"He's got a burner turned on in his head. I wouldn't mess with his male pride," I said.
"Is there something wrong with the way I look? I wish you'd stop staring at me."
"I think you've got a guilty conscience, Kim."
"Oh you do?"
"Did you drop the dime on us?"
She watched Jess putt across the green. The red flag on the pin flapped above his head in the distance. Finally the ball clunked into the cup. My eyes never left the side of her face. She pulled her dress tight over her knee. Her hips and stomach looked as smooth as water going over stone.
"Somebody told the Man. It wasn't Lionel or Fontenot," I said.
"Do you think Tony would be taking me out for lunch if he thought I was a snitch?"
"I think only Tony knows what goes on in Tony's head. I think he likes to live on the outer edge of his envelope. Eating black speed is like sliding down the edge of a barber's razor."
"Why do you keep saying these things to me? I have nothing to tell you."
"Do you know a Vice cop named Nate Baxter?"
I could see the color in her cheeks.
"Why should I know-," she began.
"He was following you the day you were in Clete's place. This guy's a lieutenant. Why's he interested in you, Kim?"
Her eyes were wet, and her lip began to tremble.
"All right, come on now," I said.
"You're a shit."
Jess had stopped putting and was looking at us. The gray hair on his chest grew like wire out of his golf shirt.
"Maybe I'm just a little worried about you," I said.
"Leave me alone. Please do that for me."
"I'll buy you a drink inside."
"No, you stay away from me."
"Listen to me, Kim-"
She picked up her purse and walked in her high heels across the lawn toward the club. Her calves looked hard and waxed below the hem of her knit dress. Jess walked off the green with the putter hanging loosely at his side.
"What's wrong with her?" he said.
"I guess I don't know how to talk to younger women very well."
"She's a weird broad. I don't trust her."
"Why not?"
"She don't ask for anything. A broad who don't ask you for anything has got a different kind of hustle going. Tony don't see it." He twirled the putter like a baton in his fingers.
I found her sitting on a tall chair-backed stool in the bar. The bar was done in mahogany and teakwood, with brass-framed round mirrors and barometers on the walls and copper kettles full of ferns hung in the windows that looked out over the yacht basin. Her eyes were clear now, and her hands lay quietly on the polished black surface of the bar, her fingers touching the sides of a Manhattan glass. She nibbled at the orange slice; then her face tightened when she saw me walk into the periphery of her vision. I ordered a cup of coffee from the bartender.
"What do I have to say? Don't you know how to let someone alone?" she said.
"I think you need a friend."
"And you're it? What a laugh."
"I know Baxter. If you've got a deal going with him, he'll burn you."
I saw her swallow, either with anger or fear.
"What is the matter with you? Are you trying to get me killed?" she said.
"Get on a plane, Kim. L.A.'s great this time of year. I'll get some money for you."
She looked straight ahead and breathed hard, way down in her chest.
"You're a cop," she said.
"Ex."
"Now."
"You'd better check out my record. Cops with my kind of mileage are the kind they shove out the side door."
"I can't afford you. I'm going to ask you one more time, get away from me."
"You're a nice girl. You don't deserve the fall you're headed for."
She started to speak again, but her words caught in her throat as though she had swallowed a large bubble of air. Then she sipped from her Manhattan, straightened her back, and signaled the bartender.
"This man is annoying me," she said.
He was young, and his eyes glanced nervously at me and then back at her.
"Did you hear me?" she said.
"Yes."
"Would you tell him to leave, please?" she said.