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saw you before.’
    He was a terrible liar. He had known me on sight.
    ‘Then you don’t mind telling me about Jo-Jo,’ I said.
    It confused him. His fists began to clench again. I guess that every problem that ever faced Swede Olsen had been met with his only argument – clenched fists. This time even he seemed to sense that he was not reacting very consistently.
    ‘What about Jo-Jo,’ he said cautiously.
    ‘Where is he, Swede?’
    It was too much for him. ‘I told you to lay off!’
    ‘I thought you never saw me before?’
    He blinked like a moth in a sudden light. His confusion was complete. I had a good chance of getting something out of him. The woman who spoke behind me must have thought the same.
    ‘Get out of here, mister.’
    She looked like one of those Okie women you see in the pictures of the Dust Bowl in the Depression standing beside a grey and battered flivver piled with the junk that was all she owned. Her face looked like a ploughed field that had baked as hard and dry as stone in the sun. Her hair had started out blonde, and her eyes were washed-out blue. The eyes were now glacier blue, and the hair was grey and hung like limp string. Her hands were cracked like a dried-out mud puddle. But her clothes had cost a fair bundle, and the hands were clean. Her black sheath dress even had some style and taste, except that on her it looked like the shroud of a scarecrow. On her the triple strand of real pearls looked like rope. The years had left her nothing to hang clothes on but a bag of old bones and a leather skin.
    ‘I’ll handle it, Magda,’ Swede said.
    His voice would not have convinced even me. The woman ignored him. I knew who was the real muscle in this house. Magda Olsen. The wife. She looked like Swede’s mother, but she was his wife, the mother of Jo-Jo. Magda had not had a rosy youth. She looked at me as if I were a cockroach she knew too well.
    ‘Forget my boy, you hear?’ Magda Olsen said.
    ‘What’s his trouble, Magda? Maybe he needs help.’
    ‘Get lost.’
    ‘You don’t want him found?’
    ‘Who says he’s lost,’ the woman said.
    ‘I say he’s lost,’ I said. ‘What I can’t say is if it’s voluntary or with some persuasion.’
    ‘Beat it,’ Magda Olsen said. She had a one-track mind, and she was brighter and quicker than her man. She knew that I knew nothing. She was not about to tell me anything. I decided to shoot in the dark. One thing was sure: if they knew anything, they knew more than I did. The dark was all I had to shoot in. But I knew now that something was not right with Jo-Jo. I thought about the most probable reason for Jo-Jo to run – that he had seen who mugged Stettin. In which case, someone else would be after him.
    ‘The other guy looking for Jo-Jo will play a lot rougher,’ I said. ‘If I found him, I could help.’
    It was at this exact moment that I knew I had a real case on my hands. I was not just wasting time on a boy’s bad hunch, and Jo-Jo Olsen was not sunning himself on a cosy beach. My wild shot hit home.
    Swede looked like he’d been kicked in a tender place. Magda Olsen froze into stone. Swede sweated through the fresh suit jacket. Swede was worried wet. Magda was worried, too, but she was also determined. She was determined to follow the course of action they were on, whatever that was. And I had a strange feeling about Magda and Swede Olsen. Call it a sensation. Call it an opinion. They were worried, yes. But they were not worried about Jo-Jo. They were worried about themselves.
    ‘Tell me about the other guy,’ I said.
    ‘Beat it,’ Magda Olsen said.
    ‘Did Jo-Jo see that cop mugged?’
    ‘Get lost, mister!’ Magda said.
    If I had had Swede alone, I think I could have made some progress. As it was, I was ready to go on with the dance. I did not have the chance. Two men entered from some other room, and the music stopped. They were boys, not men, but they were big boys. They looked enough like Swede to tell me that I