“Nuthin’. Just man talk. Sports and how much they hated their jobs. That was the first time I evah heard a white boy complain about work. I guess we ain’t all that different.”

The young mother looked up at me—minds thinking things that might as well have been in foreign tongues.

While Corrine and I stared, the children slinked through the living room to the screen door and out.

“Is that enough for some’a this money?” she asked.

Maybe it was. It didn’t really matter because I was just as superstitious as Jericho. His money felt like a curse smoldering in my pocket.

I stood up and Corrine quickly followed suit.

I handed the envelope to her. She snatched it and then took out the money to make sure I hadn’t pulled a switch.

Outside the children were playing with a tomato bug. Penny was brave enough to let the little red-horned caterpillar crawl on her skinny arm.

I came over and squatted down between them. From my wallet I took a two-dollar bill and handed it to the boy.

“Sometimes adults lose their temper,” I said. “But they still love you anyway.”

Then I took two one-dollar bills and handed them to his sister.

“Whatever he gets, you get,” I said. “Remember that.”

42

42

Another gas station. Another phone booth.

Melvin Suggs had a secretary named Myra P. Lawless. She was elderly by 1960s standards. Fifty-six years old. Melvin paid Myra top dollar because she knew how to find out anything in one-tenth the time anyone else could. She worked long hours and never complained about men being men. Not that she let anyone walk on her. It was said that one time she slammed a pinching burglar with a folded metal chair.

Myra tolerated my company because she liked Fearless. Sometimes, when Fearless went with me to see Mel, he would sit in the outer office beside Myra’s desk talking about anything from flower gardens to World War II.

“Commander Suggs’s line,” she answered.

“Hey, Myra.”

“Hello, Mr. Rawlins, how are you?”

“Fine. How’s Puggs?” Puggs was her dog. Her pet in lieu of a husband.

“I had to put him on a diet. Doctor said that he needs to lose three pounds.”

“For a dog his size that translates to about forty-five pounds in man-weight.”

“That’s exactly what I tried to tell my sister when she said it wasn’t that much.”

“People don’t even understand their own place in the world,” I said.

“How can I help you, Mr. Rawlins?”

I explained about a construction company owned by a man named Pit-something, maybe Pitman, somewhere in the Valley.

“Let me look into it,” she said. “Are you at a phone where I can reach you?”

“I’m kinda on the move today.”

“Well, call back in half an hour and I should have something.”

The next call was to my home phone.