I told him about an orange grove, a cabin, and not one shred of evidence.

“I believe you, Easy,” he lied. “But my partners won’t be so understanding as me. If you worked for Craig they will want you to answer for it.”

“So the only way I can get out of it is by finding the woman you call Delphine.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“How long you givin’ me?”

Holding out a hand as if offering to pull me out of that hole he said, “Forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours or the same thing happened to Craig happens to you.”

“Something happened to him?”

“He tripped on a pistol and shot himself in the eye.”

Once again there was murder in my heart.

33

33

A few blocks south of Sunset, Mouse and I stopped at a block-wide supermarket. He was buying groceries for Lihn.

Groceries for Lihn. In my experience Mouse wouldn’t so much as boil water for coffee, but here he was in full domestic mode looking for skim milk and natural cornflakes.

While we cruised the fruit and vegetable section I said, “Tell me sumpin’, Ray.”

“What’s that, Ease?”

“Did your boy Alonzo have anything to do with a big black man with straight hair who was good with a knife?”

“You see any coconuts around here?”

“They probably up there with the citrus fruit.”

“You mean the lemons and oranges?”

“Uh-huh.”

Mouse drove that shopping cart like he was in the Daytona 500.

I caught up to him at a small bin of about a dozen coconuts. He was holding one in his hand looking at it with great concentration.

“How you tell if this bitch is ripe?” he asked. “Usually if sumpin’ hard it ain’t ready.”

“Hand it here,” I said.

He gave me the coconut. I tapped it with a finger and got that hollow sound.

Passing it back to my friend I said, “This one’ll do.”

“Ketch,” he said but I thought he said, Catch.

“You gonna throw it?”

He looked at the palm fruit and smiled.

“Naw, man,” he said, dropping the thing into the shopping basket. “Reynolds Ketch. Ketch with a K. He live over on Hoover.”

“Where?”

“You know the Hoover Car Wash down near Eighty-Third?”

“No. But I could find it.”

“He live across the street in a group of bungalows. They painted not blue and not green.”

“Thanks, Ray.”

“What you think is a bettah meat, Easy? Pig or sheep?”

“In my line’a business I prefer to sup on snake.”

So far I had been to two domiciles that contained dead men, their mortal clay waiting at that one last station on the way to hell. I didn’t want to go to one more makeshift mausoleum, but there was a breaking point coming and the best arsenal to have backing me up was information.