“Maybe you’re right, soul brother. But common sense says that if you fall into a hole, either you climb out or you die down there.”

It was unsettling that I had just recently imagined being at the bottom of a pit about to cave in. It felt like the thug was in my head.

“You got a ladder I could use?” I asked him.

“Three hundred twenty-six thousand dollars.”

Melvin Suggs said that the San Bernardino heist was only eighty-six thousand dollars.

“That’s how much this girl stole from you and your friends?”

Brock stared at me so hard I had hope he might bust a blood vessel.

“You can stare until bullets come out your eyes, brother. But I have no idea how you think I know anything about your money.”

The bent businessman hadn’t finished staring yet. I might have been even more afraid if I didn’t know that Mouse was across the street, at the top of the building next to the Stephanopoulos Talent Agency. He had a high-powered rifle and assured me he could hit anything within a fly’s width.

A housefly, Mouse had said. Not no fat old horsefly.

I was craving another cigarette.

“Craig told me that he got into a knife fight with a . . . a big black man out in those woods,” I said. “That man belong to you?”

“What did he look like?” Brock asked.

“I told you. Craig thought he was black but it was night with no light except for the moon through the trees.”

“A knife you said?” Brock asked.

I nodded.

“Our man Alonzo was shot in his own bed.”

“Look, man. I don’t need you to incriminate yourself and then turn around and worry about me tellin’ your secrets.”

“I didn’t shoot him.” Brock actually grinned. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“So the girl you asked me to look for, that Donata Delphine, she’s the one you think stole your money?”

“I don’t think. I know.” He punctuated that claim by downing the last of the whiskey.

“And why is it again that you came to me?” I said. Turnabout is fair play.

“We knew that you were working for Craig and he was a friend of DD’s.”

“So because of that you think they gave me your money?”

“You might know something and not even know that you do.”

“Like what?”

“What did Kilian tell you?”

“Come on, man. I told you what he said. He might’a killed a black man in the woods and that man was beatin’ on a white girl.”

“He didn’t tell you her name?”

“He said he’d never even seen her before he came up on them fighting.”

Brock’s stare had softened—from caveman’s club to a clenched fist.

“You went to the place where he killed the man?”