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get in on this, Mr. Rawlins.” He held his hand out toward me but I left it alone.
    “I’m in the middle of my own business, man. I cain’t do nuthin’.”
    “Yes you can,” Violette said in a guttural voice. I realized that I was wrong about men in that position. If Captain Violette had me alone I’d have been eating teeth about then.
    “They already got a list of suspects, Easy,” Quinten said.
    “What do I care?” I answered him. “Go get ’em, put ’em in jail.”
    He mentioned a couple of names that I knew. But I told him that if he knew who did it there was no need to worry.
    “We’re also looking into Raymond Alexander,” he said.
    I felt every man in the room staring at me.
    “You gotta be kiddin’,” I said. Raymond Alexander, known to his friends as Mouse, was crazy and a killer, no doubt. He was also the closest thing I had to a best friend.
    “No, Easy.” Naylor was gritting his teeth. He was as mad as I was at those men. “Alexander frequents all the bars that the Negro women went to and he is known to go after white women.”
    “Him an’ about thirty thousand other black men under the age of eighty.”
    “Do you think there’s a flaw in the police approach, Mr. Rawlins?” Horace Voss asked.
    “You just makin’ up names, man. Mouse didn’t kill no girls.”
    “Then who did?” Voss’s blunt smile didn’t seem quite human, it was more like the cross of a hungry bear and a happy man.
    “How you expect me to know?”
    “I expect it,” Violette said. “Because if you don’t you’re going to find it very hard living down here among the blues.”
    A policeman with a sense of poetry.
    “Is that a threat?”
    Violette glared at me.
    “Of course it isn’t, Mr. Rawlins,” Bergman said. “No one wants to threaten you. We all want the same thing here. There’s a man killing women and he has to be brought to justice. That’s what we all want.”
    Quinten was at the window peering out at the street. He knew that I had to go along with the program set out there before me. Captain Violette would run me to the ground if I didn’t. And Quinten was fuming because I refused to help when there were only black victims. Now that a white woman was dead I would agree to help. The air we breathed was racist.
    “Lay off Raymond Alexander until I have time to nose around. He ain’t killed no woman an’ arrestin’ him won’t do nobody no good.”
    “If he’s guilty, Rawlins, he’ll fry like anybody else,” Violette growled.
    “I ain’t tryin’ to protect nobody, man,” I said. “Just lemme look if that’s what you want, an’ sit on these arrests for a couple’a days.”
    Bergman stood up straight and tall. “That’s it for me then. I’m sure the police and the mayor can give you all the help you need, Mr. Rawlins.”
    The other men rose.
    Violette wouldn’t even look at me, he just went to the door. Naylor looked but he didn’t say anything. Bergman smiled and shook my hand warmly.
    “Why are you down here, Mr. Bergman?” I asked.
    “Just routine.” His bottom lip jutted out an eighth of an inch. “Just routine.”
    Horace Voss took my hand in both of his.
    “Call me at the Seventy-seventh,” he said. “I’m there until this thing is over.”
    Then they were all gone from my house.
    I hadn’t hit the streets since my wedding. I tried to bury that part of my life. In one way, looking for this killer was like coming back from the dead for me.
     
     
     

— 8 —
     
     
    I FRIED BLOOD SAUSAGES with onions and heated up a saucepan of red beans and rice for lunch. After I ate I mowed the lawn. It really didn’t need it, but I wanted my new job to sink in and working in the garden calmed my nerves.
    I couldn’t seem to think of Bonita Edwards without seeing Regina crying. The dead woman’s tragedy somehow resonated with Regina’s anger.
    I decided that I’d work out my problems with Regina after I’d seen to the job that L.A.’s representatives had given