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Vren.”
    “That’s an awful thing. Shoot yourself in the head and end up paralyzed for life.”
    I took a deep breath.
    “What does this book have to do with the fire?” Andre asked.
    “He’s the one set the smoke bomb.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Read the book.”
     
     
    THAT NIGHT Feather sang us a song she’d learned in school. It was about a sailor lost at sea. He fought sea serpents and snake people and terrible storms. But at the end of the journey, he found a sunny land. And to his surprise, that sunny shore was the home he’d left long long ago.
    “I learned it for Juice, Daddy,” she said. “’Cause’a when he’s in that boat he can sing it and then he could find his way back here.”
    “Me too, baby,” I said. “Me too.”
     
     
     

Crimson Stain
     
     
    E THELINE,” SHE SAID, repeating the name I’d asked for.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Etheline Teaman. I heard from my friend that she works here.”
    “Who is your friend?” the short, nearly bald black woman asked. She was wearing a stained, pink satin robe that I barely glimpsed through the crack of the door.
    “Jackson Blue,” I said.
    “Jackson.” She smiled, surprising me with a mouthful of healthy teeth. “You his friend? What’s your name?”
    “Easy.”
    “Easy Rawlins?” she exclaimed, throwing the door open wide and spreading her arms to embrace me. “Hey, baby. It’s good to meet you.”
    I put one hand on her shoulder and looked around to the street, making sure that no one saw me hugging a woman, no matter how short and bald, in the doorway of Piney’s brothel.
    “Come on in, baby,” the woman said. “My name is Moms. I bet Jackson told you ’bout me.”
    She backed away from the entrance, offering me entrée. I didn’t want to be seen entering that doorway either, but I had no choice. Etheline Teaman had a story to tell and I needed to hear it.
    The front door opened on a large room that was furnished with seven couches and at least the same number of stuffed chairs. It reminded me of a place I’d been twenty-five years earlier, in the now defunct town of Pariah, Texas. That was the home of a pious white woman—no prostitutes or whiskey there.
    “Have a seat, baby,” Moms said, waving her hand toward the empty sofas.
    It was a plush waiting room where, at night, women waited for men instead of trains.
    “Whiskey?” Moms asked.
    “No,” I said, but I almost said yes.
    “Beer?”
    “So, Moms. Is Etheline here?”
    “Don’t be in such a rush, baby,” she said. “Sit’own, sit’own.”
    I staked out a perch on a faded blue sofa. Moms settled across from me on a bright yellow chair. She smiled and shook her head with real pleasure.
    “Jackson talk about you so much I feel like we’re old friends,” she said. “You and that crazy friend’a yours—that Mouse.”
    Just the mention of his name caused a pang of guilt in my intestines. I shifted in my chair, remembering his bloody corpse lying across the front lawn of EttaMae Harris’s home. It was this image that brought me to the Compton brothel.
    I cleared my throat and said, “Yeah, I been knowin’ Jackson since he was a boy down in Fifth Ward in Houston.”
    “Oh, honey,” Moms sang. “I remember Fifth Ward. The cops would leave down there on Saturday sunset and come back Sunday mornin’ to count the dead.”
    “That’s the truth,” I replied, falling into the rhythm of her speech. “The only law down there back then was survival of the fittest.”
    “An’ the way Jackson tells it,” Moms added, “the fittest was that man Mouse and you was the fittest’s friend.”
    It was my turn to throw in a line but I didn’t.
    Moms picked up on my reluctance and nodded. “Jackson said you was all broke up when your friend died last year. When you lose somebody from when you were comin’ up it’s always hard.”
    I didn’t even know the madam’s Christian name but still she had me ready to cry.
    “That’s why I’m here,” I