I drove east on Santa Monica Boulevard for a while and then went south, hooking up with Sixth Street, which I followed downtown. From there I took Hoover Street all the way into the hood.

The LA riots were almost four years gone but the devastation was still apparent. Burned-out businesses and more pedestrians than populated the streets of the rest of the city. Men and women who were the heirs of slavery trod down the avenue looking as if they were still bearing up under the heavy loads of another man’s wealth.

Reynolds Ketch’s apartment complex was right where Mouse had said it would be. The single-story courtyard of eighteen or so small apartments was painted turquoise and maze-like in its construction. A bank of mailboxes in front of the warren told me that the Ketch residence was number nine.

The doorway was flanked by a bushy bougainvillea with its red flowers burning brightly on the left, and on the other side stood a skinny loquat tree crowded with not-quite-ripe fruit.

I knocked on the door but nobody answered. I was wondering how I could break in when a voice called out, “Who you lookin’ for?”

Directly across the concrete path was unit fourteen. Standing in the doorway was a very old, quite emaciated black man wearing jet-black sunglasses. He was leaning against the doorjamb, and his attention was aimed in my direction, if not directly at me. The plants on either side of his front door were big, healthy bird of paradise. There must have been sixty or more orange, blue, and red blossoms, each one of them seeming just about ready to take flight.

“Reynolds Ketch,” I said, amplifying my voice in case his age had made him hard of hearing.

“You’ont have to yell. I’m blind, not deaf.”

“Sorry, sir. I guess your hearing is so good that you heard me knock.” While speaking I crossed the concrete pathway to the old man’s front apartment.

Gauging the magnification of my words, he closed the screen door before I got there.

“What you want with Reynolds?” the old man asked.

“I’m Easy Rawlins. What’s your name?”

“I’m Shep. Shep Williams. Used to be Shep and Zula but she died seven, no, no, eight years back.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. Were you married a long time?”

“Seem like forever. We had forever and now it’s gone.”

His tone of voice was oddly objective, like some celestial being commenting on the inevitability of mortality.

“I’m looking for Reynolds because a friend of mine wanted me to give him something.”

“What’s that?”

“A crate of blood oranges from his tree.”

“I like blood oranges. They more tart than most’a the store-bought ones. I cain’t see orange but I could taste it.”

“Have you, um, heard Reynolds lately?”

“Not for a few days, Mr. Rawlins.”