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then he borrowed money from that man they named aftah a rodent.”
    “Did Pericles tell you that?” I asked.
    “He didn’t have to. Raymond Alexander came here to this house to give it to him,” Meredith said as if she were a preacher quoting from the Bible. “He sat in this very livin’ room.”
    I looked at the couch, which six children had set up as the Alamo or Custer’s last stand. They were shooting and jumping and cutting one another’s throats.
    “Ray Alexander sat there?”
    “In the presence of his own chirren, Perry took the blood money from that evil man. He said he was gonna start a doughnut cart out in front of the Goodyear gate, but the man he gave his money to cheated him and he didn’t have nuthin’ to pay back his debt.”
    “Raymond Alexander came to your house and handed over a loan to Pericles Tarr?” I asked, just to be sure that I heard her right.
    “I swear by God,” she said, raising her left hand because her right was held by Leafa.
    “What happened when Perry couldn’t pay?”
    “He told me that Mouse told him that he had three weeks to come up with the money or he would have to work off the debt. For about two months he spent every night doin’ bad things for the loan shark. And then he come home one night and say that if somethin’ happened to him, he had paid for our security with his life.”
    By this time all of the children had gathered around their mother, blubbering along with her. Everyone but Leafa was crying. The good child kept her calm for the whole family. In my eyes, her ugliness was transforming into beauty.
    “Perry loved us, Mr. Rawlins!” Meredith wailed. “He loved his kids and this house. He haven’t called or written in eight days. I know he’s dead. And I know who killed him too.”
    On cue the little Tarr tribe stopped crying, their eyes now holding a glare of hatred for their father’s killer.
    “Where did he work?” I asked, straining a little from a dry throat.
    “Down at Portman’s Department Store on Central. He was a salesman there.”
    I nodded and tried to smile but failed. Then I thanked Meredith and turned away. The door closed behind me and I took a few steps toward the street. I was surprised when a small hand grabbed my baby finger.
    It was Leafa. She pulled on my hand and I crouched down to hear what she had to say.
    “My daddy’s too smart to be dead, mister. One time he was in a war and the Koreans ambushed him an’ his friends. An’ aftah that they came down to make sure that they was all dead. But my daddy took his friend’s blood and put it on his head, and when the endemy soldiers come to look at him they didn’t shoot him ’cause they thought he was already dead.”
    “So you don’t think that this man Ray killed him?” I asked.
    She shook her head solemnly, and I found it hard to imagine that such intelligence could be wrong.
     
     
     

• 9 •
     
     
    I also found it hard to believe that Mouse would have sat on that ratty sofa amid the screams of all those ugly kids. Raymond didn’t have patience for more than one child at a time, and then he would be the center of attention, not the child. And Ray wasn’t a loan shark either. He might decide that he wanted his money back at any time, even before it was due, and the borrower had better beware.
    Mouse was not a businessman in the conventional sense. He was a special agent, an enforcer, a boss man. Ray Alexander was a force of nature, not a bank.
    But neither could I believe that Leafa’s mother was lying. She had gone to the police to accuse Mouse of a crime. There was not one in a thousand people in Watts brave or stupid enough to do something like that.
    And Mouse had disappeared at the same time Pericles had gone missing. It was a real mystery; almost enough to divert me from Bonnie.
    Almost.
    I was all alone in a car full of phantoms. Bonnie was there next to me with Easter Dawn on her lap. Mouse and Pericles Tarr sat in the backseat, muttering about