“You can’t find one white face down here anymore,” said Quinn, looking at a man driving a FedEx truck as it passed.

“There’s one,” said Strange, pointing to the sidewalk fronting one of the many liquor stores serving the neighborhood. A cockeyed woman with a head of uncombed blond hair and stretch pants pulled up to her sagging bustline stood there drinking from a brown paper bag. “Looks like they forgot to do their head count this morning up at St. E’s.”

Strange was hoping to bring some humor to the subject. But he knew Terry would not give it up now that he’d been stepped to.

“Bet you there’s some down here, they’d tell you that’s one too many white people on these streets,” said Quinn.

“Here we go.”

“You remember that loud-mouth guy they had in this ward, ran for the city council, Shazam or whatever his name was? The guy who wanted everyone to boycott the Korean grocery stores?”

“Sure, I remember.”

“And?”

“And, nothin’,” said Strange.

“So you agreed with that guy.”

“Look. People down here got a right to be angry about a lot of things. They talk it out among themselves, in the barbershop and at the dinner table, and when they do they talk it out for real, the pros and the cons. But one thing they don’t do is, they don’t go shittin’ on that guy you’re talking about, or our former mayor, or Farrakhan, or Sharpton, or anyone else like that to people like you.”

“People like me, huh?”

“Yeah. Black folks don’t put down their own so they can feed white people what they want to hear.”

“This guy ran his whole election on fear and hate, Derek.”

“But he didn’t win the election, did he?”

“Your point is what?”

“In the end, in their own quiet way, the majority of the people always prove that they know the difference between right and wrong. What I’m saying is, there’s more good people out here than there are bad. Once you get hip to that, that anger you’re carrying around with you, it’s gonna go away.”

“You think I’m angry?”

“Look at the world more positive, man.” Strange reached for the tape deck, looking for some music and some peace. “Trust me, man, it’ll help you get through your day.”

Chapter 5

“I SEE you’re a ’Skins fan,” said Mario Durham, nodding at the plaster figure with the spring-mounted head on Strange’s desk.

“I see you are, too,” said Strange, his eyes passing over the Sanders jersey Durham wore as he sat slumped in the client chair.

“I do like Deion. Boy can play.”

“He couldn’t play for me. Biggest mistake the ’Skins ever made, gettin’ rid of a heart-and-soul player like Brian Mitchell for a showboat like Deion. Mitchell used to get that whole team up, man. That’s what happens when a new owner comes in, doesn’t understand the game.”

“Whateva. You a longtime fan, though, I can see. This right here must go back to Charley Taylor and shit.” Durham reached out and flicked the head of the plaster figure. Greco, lying belly down on the floor, raised his head and growled.

“Watch it,” said Strange. “My stepson painted that, and it’s special. Money can’t replace it.”

“That dog all right? Animals and me don’t get along.”

“You interrupted his beauty sleep,” said Strange.

Durham shifted in his chair. “So anyway, like I was sayin’, I’m lookin’ for this girl.”

“Olivia Elliot,” said Quinn, seated beside the desk.

“Right. I was knowin’ her for, like, two months, and I thought we was gettin’ along pretty good.”

“Where’d you two meet?” said Strange.

“I was tryin’ to hook up with this other girl, see, worked at this nail and braid salon in Southeast. I went in there lookin’ to date this girl, and I see Olivia, got some woman’s hand in her lap, paintin’ it. Y’all know how that is, when you get a look at a certain kind of woman and you say, uh-huh, yeah, that right there is gonna be mine.”

“You had a lot of girlfriends, Mario?”

“I ain’t gonna lie to you; I been a player my whole life,” said Durham. He smiled then, showing Quinn and Strange two long, protruding front teeth surrounded by space. “But this was different right here.”

“And then she left,” said Quinn.

“She just up and left, and I ain’t heard from her since.”

“You two have an argument, something like that?” said Strange.

“We was cool,” said Durham, “far as I know.”

“Where was she staying when she disappeared?”

“She had this apartment, stayed with her son, young boy. They stayed in this place they rented off Good Hope.”

“Her son’s name?”

“Mark.”

“Same last name? Elliot?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he’s in school?”

“Elementary, down in that area they was stayin’ in, I guess, but I don’t know the name.”

“You try her mother, any other family?” said Strange.

“She never spoke of any kin,” said Durham. “Look, fellas, I’m worried about the girl.”

“Why hire private cops?” said Quinn.

“What my partner means is,” said Strange, “you suspect some kind of foul play, what you need to do is, you need to report it to the police.”

“Black girl goes missin’ in Southeast, police ain’t gonna do shit. But it ain’t like that, anyway. Olivia was the kind of girl, it was a cloudy day or somethin’, it would bust on her groove. She’d be, like, cryin’ her eyes out over somethin’ simple like the weather. I’m worried in the sense that she’s sad, or got the depression, sumshit like that. I just want to know where she is. And if we do have some kind of problem between us, then maybe we can work it out.”

“All right, then,” said Strange. “Give Terry here the details on what you just told us. Addresses, phone numbers, all that.”

Strange went out to the reception area while Quinn took the information. He phoned Raymond Ives, Granville Oliver’s attorney, and left a message on his machine informing him that he was making progress on the gathering of countertestimony against Phillip Wood. When Strange returned to his office, Mario Durham was standing out of his chair. He wasn’t but five and a half feet tall, and he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred twenty-five pounds.

“We all set, then,” said Durham.

“Just give my office manager out there your deposit on your way out,” said Strange, “and we’ll get going on this right away.”

“Fifty, right?”

“A hundred, just like Janine told you when you spoke to her on the phone.”

“Damn, y’all about to bankrupt a man.”

“It’s a hundred. But this shouldn’t take too long. Our rate is thirty-five an hour, and if it comes out to be under the hundred, then you’re gonna get what we didn’t earn back.”

“Put a rush on it, hear? I can’t even afford the hundred, seein’ as I’m in between jobs right now. I’m just anxious to see my girl.”

Durham began to walk from the room. Greco got up and followed him, sniffing at the back of his Tommys as he walked. Greco growled some, and Durham quickened his step. Greco stopped walking as Durham passed through the doorway. Quinn shut the office door.

“Animal doesn’t like you,” said Strange, “must be a reason.”

“We don’t usually ask for one-hundred-dollar deposits, Derek.”

“I made an exception for him.”

“It’s because he’s black, right?”

“It’s because he’s a no-account knucklehead. That hundred’s the only money we’re ever gonna see out of him. He’s got no job, wouldn’t even give Janine a fixed address. Said if we needed to get him we could look up a friend of his called Donut in Valley Green.”

“Donut, huh? You can bank that.”

“And his only phone number is a cell.”

“You think there’s something funny about his story?”

“Course there is. Somethin’ funny about half the stories we hear in this place. Maybe she owes him money, or he’s just tryin’ to find out if she’s shackin’ up with someone else.”

“You don’t think a woman would leave a prize like him for another man, do you? That’d be like, I don’t know, driving across town for a Big Mac when you got filet mignon cooking on the grill in your backyard.”