Okay. I wanted her to tell me that she’d never do drugs, drink alcohol, have sex, never leave home, and that she would stay my child forever. But all I could hope for was okay.

29

29

Within the first week of moving into Roundhouse I installed a telephone in a waterproof tin box on the roof. That way I could commune with my roses and talk business in a place that was private.

There I made a call.

The phone rang twelve times before I hung up. I waited a minute or two, then dialed the number again. Still no answer.

There was a new number folded on a slip of paper in my wallet. I hadn’t thought that I’d ever use it, but now that Feather was safe my mind was back on the case. I felt a sense of urgency because looking for Donata Delphine felt like sitting at the bottom of a deep hole that was threatening to cave in.

“Hello,” she said in her sexy, throaty, act right or I might kill you voice.

“Hey, Lihn.”

“Easy. Where’d you get . . . Oh, sure.” She shouted, “Raymond!” Then in a normal tone, “He’ll be here in a minute, Easy.”

It was an odd interchange. Lihn felt like an old friend from down home, someone who, with just a few words, you understood and who understood you.

“Hey, Easy,” Mouse said before that feeling about Lihn could adapt into understanding. “What’s happenin’?”

“I called your house first, but nobody was home.”

“Etta gone to take care’a her cousin Jillian. You know Jill up north in Richmond workin’ for the post office. But she got the pneumonia and is laid up.”

“So you moved in with Lihn?”

“We went to a magic show last night, man. Brothah, that shit was crazy.”

Raymond Alexander only gave simple answers out of the muzzle of a gun or off the edge of a knife.

“I think I might need a little help, Ray.”

“That’s a happy coincidence,” he said. “I might need a little sumpin’ from you too.”

“Hold tight and I’ll call back soon.” I cradled the receiver and for maybe eleven seconds I wondered about the term happy coincidence. Then I dragged my daughter down to my borrowed car and drove.

“Where we goin’, Daddy?”

“Jackson’s house.”

“Why can’t I stay at home?”

“I might not get home on time and then all I’d do is worry.”

Little Anzio wasn’t very crowded at that time of day. Only the bartender and three men sitting at a far table inhabited the down-at-heel saloon. The men were speaking loudly but their words were incoherent, suffering from alcohol, three lifetimes of cigarette smoke, and the fact that each one was trying to outtalk the other.

The skinny lad named Meanie was still bartending, but due to a lack of active customers he was sitting on a barstool reading the LA Times.