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Gunner’s booth.
    “Hey, Gunner. Where you been keepin’ yourself, man?”
    Gaines smothered the investigator’s fist in both hands, lovingly, up among the clouds after a six-pack lunch. He was one of Gunner’s favorite people, despite the annoying fact that getting tipsy only made him more gushingly affectionate than he was ordinarily.
    “Lilly tells me you’re workin’ for Buddy’s sister,” he said, sitting down beside the bartender.
    Gunner nodded. “You know her?”
    “I met her once or twice. At them rallies Buddy was always talkin’ me into goin’ to. Her name’s Verna, right?”
    “Verna Gail, yeah.”
    “Yeah, Verna Gail. She’s got you lookin’ for the fool that killed Buddy and J.T.?”
    Gunner nodded again.
    “Man, good luck. As hot as we’ve made it for white folks around here, that boy might never show his face in daylight again. Not here, not anywhere.”
    Suddenly, the bar’s dark mood made sense. “Is that what all these people are doing? Waiting for him to come back?”
    “It’s as good a place to look for him as any.”
    “Shit,” Lilly said gruffly, “that man ain’t comin’ back here. He got what he came for the last time.” She grinned. “But don’t expect me to tell no payin’ customer that.”
    Her grin broke into laughter, as she bubbled with admiration for her own keen business sense.
    “You mean Buddy,” Gunner said.
    Gaines nodded feverishly, but Lilly snapped, “No! That ain’t what I mean! That’s what everybody thinks, but that’s a lie.”
    “Shit,” Gaines said.
    “I don’t care what anybody says. It was J. that white boy was after, I know it.”
    “You weren’t even in here,” Gaines argued, turning a narrowed eye upon her. “How the hell would you know?”
    He looked at Gunner and said, “The man came in and said he was lookin’ for somebody. Just like that, bold as you please, a white man lookin’ for somebody at the Deuce, with people as hot and things as crazy as they been right now. Buddy asked him who he was lookin’ for, and the white man said, ‘You.’ Next thing you know, he’s got a gun in his hand, and Buddy’s the first to get it. If J.T. hadn’t grabbed that piece from under the bar, he might never’ve got shot at all.”
    “Bullshit,” Lilly said.
    “He never asked for money or nothin’,” Gaines continued, letting her comment pass. “The cops wanted me to say it was robbery, but it wasn’t. I told ’em, shit, I seen a robbery once, I know how they go down. This was murder, man, all the way.”
    “And Buddy was his man.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Bullshit,” Lilly said again.
    Gunner turned to her. “Lilly. Baby. Who in the world would want to kill J.T.?”
    “You don’t wanna hear this,” Gaines moaned.
    Gunner waved him off and Lilly said, “Sweet Lou.”
    Which, true to Gaines’s word, was something Gunner didn’t care to hear.
    What interest could a drug-runner in entrepreneur’s clothing like “Sweet” Lou Jenkins have in the death of a barkeeper on the opposite side of town?
    “Sweet Lou?”
    Lilly nodded. He had been afraid she would.
    “I didn’t think they knew each other,” he said.
    “They didn’t. J. wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with Lou, everybody knows that.”
    “So why should Lou want to kill him?”
    Lilly lifted her huge shoulders up in a ponderous shrug, then let them drop. “I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is J. got a call from that college boy pimp who works for Lou a few days before he died. You know the one I mean?”
    “Price,” Gaines said, if only to speed things along.
    “Price, right. The fashion plate lawyer with the fancy mouth and pretty car. He called J. here at the club and got him all hot and heavy, had him talkin’ about killin’ people, and shit. J. took the call back in the office, and closed the door so I wouldn’t hear what he was sayin’, but he raised enough hell that I got the gist of it anyway, even out here workin’ the bar. It had