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somethin’ to do with Lou wanting a piece of the Deuce, I think. J. must’ve said, ‘Stay the fuck away from my place’ about fifty times before he hung up.”
    “You ask him about it afterward?” Gunner asked.
    “Of course. And I still got the marks to prove it.”
    “He wouldn’t talk about it.”
    “No. He said it was just Deuce business, nothin’ for me to worry about. He was gonna handle it, he said.”
    “You ever actually hear him mention Sweet Lou by name?”
    “No.”
    “Or Price?”
    “No. But I was the one answered the phone. The boy says, ‘Let me speak to J.T.,’ right to the point, no hello or nothin’. I asked him, ‘Who should I say is callin’?’ and he just says, ‘Tell him it’s in regards to our recent dialogue at the Kitchen.’ Now how many niggers you know use the word ‘dialogue’ like that?”
    It was Gunner’s turn to shrug. “A few. You read something other than Jet once a month, that’ll happen to you.”
    “Not to nobody callin’ here, it don’t.”
    “Okay. So it was Lou’s man Price on the phone. Go on.”
    The big woman stared at him. “Go on, what?”
    Gunner stared back. “So where does Sweet Lou come in?”
    “He don’t,” Gaines said, shaking his head skeptically.
    Lilly glared at him and said, “Who owns the Kitchen, Howard? And who else around here works hand-in-hand with white people every day?”
    “Lilly, I keep tellin’ you, the boy that shot J.T. and Buddy didn’t work for Sweet Lou! He was poor white trash, probably a bigger ‘literate than anybody you know, and that ain’t Sweet Lou’s speed. Lou uses class people, white, black, and otherwise, and nothin’ else but. Ain’t that right, Gunner?”
    “So they say.”
    “He could’ve worked for Sweet Lou,” Lilly insisted stubbornly.
    “Not the man I saw,” Gaines argued, his patience wearing thin. “The man I saw, Lou wouldn’t’ve hired to change a flat.”
    “Describe the guy,” Gunner said, pulling a small notebook from his shirt pocket. He borrowed a pen from Lilly and turned to one side to use the backrest of the booth for support as he took notes. Gaines painted a surprisingly complete portrait of someone he had seen only once for a man whose own vocabulary was nothing to brag about.
    “You ever see him before?” Gunner asked, almost rhetorically. “Or since?”
    “No,” Gaines said, “but …” He had a pained expression on his face.
    “But what?”
    “This ain’t gonna help you any, ’cause it don’t exactly come from a reliable source. But Sheila said she had. Seen him before, that is.” His eyes were on Lilly, expecting the news to get a rise out of her.
    Lilly only laughed.
    “Like I said. It don’t come from a reliable source,” Gaines said.
    Gunner wasn’t laughing. “She say where she thought she’d seen him before?”
    Gaines shook his head. “Not to me. And I heard what she told the cops that night, and she didn’t tell them shit. She played dumb and went home soon as they let us all go. I seen her a few days after that, in Ralph’s market, and that’s when she told me. She was all messed up about it, scared to be seen anywhere. She figured the boy had recognized her, too, and was lookin’ to shut her up. You should’ve seen her rushin’ to get in and out of that market.”
    “Have you spoken to her since?”
    “No.”
    “Who else knows about this? Anybody?”
    “Nobody. Who’m I gonna tell that believes anything Sheila’s got to say? I don’t believe it myself.”
    “You don’t.”
    “No. But I believe she believes it. Ain’t that what those shrinks on TV always say?”
    Gunner looked at Lilly. She said, “Hey, I told you, she ain’t been in here. And if she had, she’d have known better than to tell me she’d seen that funny-eyed motherfucker before. I’d have found out where, or killed her tryin’.”
    Gunner asked Gaines if he knew the full name of Sheila’s partner the night of J.T. and Buddy’s murder.
    “Ray