"I see. Well, I guess I'd better be going."

Through the French doors I saw a man of about fifty walk down the veranda in khaki shorts and slippers with his shirt unbuttoned on his concave chest. He sat down in a reclining chair with a magazine and lit a cigar.

"That's Billy Holtzner. You want to meet him?" Cisco said.

"Who?"

"When the Pope visited the studio about seven years ago, Billy asked him if he had a script. Wait here a minute."

I tried to stop him but it was too late. The rudeness of his having to ask permission for me to be introduced seemed to elude him. I saw him bend down toward the man named Holtzner and speak in a low voice, while Holtzner puffed on his cigar and looked at nothing. Then Cisco raised up and came back inside, turning up his palms awkwardly at his sides, his eyes askance with embarrassment.

"Billy's head is all tied up with a project right now. He's kind of intense when he's in preproduction." He tried to laugh.

"You're looking solid, Cisco."

"Orange juice and wheat germ and three-mile runs along the surf. It's the only life."

"Tell Megan I'm sorry I missed her."

"I apologize about Billy. He's a good guy. He's just eccentric."

"You know anything about movie dubs?"

"Yeah, they cost the industry a lot of money. That's got something to do with this guy Broussard?"

"You got me."

When I walked out the front door the man in the reclining chair had turned off the bug light and was smoking his cigar reflectively, one knee crossed over the other. I could feel his eyes on me, taking my measure. I nodded at him, but he didn't respond. The ash of his cigar glowed like a hot coal in the shadows.

TWO

THE JAILER, ALEX GUIDRY, LIVED outside of town on a ten-acre horse farm devoid of trees or shade. The sun's heat pooled in the tin roofs of his outbuildings, and grit and desiccated manure blew out of his horse lots. His oblong 1960s red-brick house, its central-air-conditioning units roaring outside a back window twenty-four hours a day, looked like a utilitarian fortress constructed for no other purpose than to repel the elements.