“Hey, Esther, she’s not answering her phone.”

“She’s gone, Easy. Said that you knew where to.”

“That I do. How much I owe you?”

“Nothing this time, darling. Lola took me out drinking every night. She showed me more about this area than I could guess and I’ve lived here fourteen years.”

“Thanks for making room.”

“I hope she’s okay.”

“Me too.”

With that thought in mind I dialed yet another number and asked a question. After that I cleaned and oiled my .22, washed my face and hands, then decided to take a walk around the block.

The front lawn of the urban farmers’ house wasn’t cut, but they kept it watered. In among the long blades of grass were tiny yellow flowers teeming with the insects that loved them. The big front window used American flags for curtains. A few houses down the dark sedan had not moved.

I went to a Winchell’s doughnut shop and got a bear claw and a large cup of coffee, black.

He was standing out in front of our outside office door by the time I returned.

“Easy,” he said.

My friend wore a tan-and-brown tweed jacket and dark brown trousers. His checkered white, lime, and dark green shirt was open at the collar. Thinner than I and an inch or two taller, Fearless Jones had a friendly smile, a slight limp, and a right hook that Sonny Liston would be cautious of.

We shook hands and slapped shoulders.

“What you into, brother?” he asked me.

“You must be gettin’ old, Fearless.”

“Why you say that?”

“Because the man I knew down Texas never looked before he leaped.”

“You’ont have to tell me,” he said on a grin.

“Let me put it like this,” I said. “It’s so bad that I needed to call on you.”

“All right, then. You ret to go?”

“What you drivin’?”

“That Ford Edsel you gimme. I had it painted purple, though. That’s my favorite color.”

Back in those days the ride through the desert was both bleak and beautiful. We had to pass through Claremont and Redlands first, but once we were past those cityscapes there was just buff-colored ground and a Joshua tree here and there.

“So you sayin’ the man hired you is dead?” Fearless asked from behind the wheel of his purple Ford.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“Then why don’t you just walk away?”

“Mainly because of the gangster, that Brock. But even if it wasn’t for him I’d want to see this thing through.”

“Is that smart, Brother Easy?”

“Is it smart to stand up against four men because they insulted a woman in your presence?”

Fearless laughed and said, “But I knew I could beat them.”