Handing him paper and pencil, I said, “Write it down. Tell her I’ll be by later today. Gimme her phone number too. I’ll call but just to tell her when I’m coming. While you’re at it you might as well give me directions to that campsite too—just in case I decide to look.”

“We could go see my mother right now.”

“I got other business now.”

“You’re not going to the cops, are you?” Kilian tensed in his chair and I doubted if my self-defense training would be enough to handle him.

“And what would I say to them?” I asked. “That some white-boy Vietnam vet says he stabbed somebody named Alonzo in another county, got knocked out, and then, when he came to, the man he stabbed was gone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Write down the directions and your mother’s name, phone number, and address. Tell her I’ll be by later on.”

Craig’s face said that he wanted to argue. Once again he was that eight-year-old boy intent on getting his way.

“Take it or leave it,” I said.

After a moment or two he began to write.

The entrance to our offices opened onto a separate staircase that led up from the street. I walked Craig Kilian to the top of the stairs and watched his descent. Through the small window opposite the front door I kept watching as he crossed the street and climbed into an eggshell-colored Studebaker. Three minutes passed before the engine turned over and the car drove off.

After he was gone I went back inside, making sure the front door was locked. Then I washed Tinsford’s glasses and returned them to their drawer. In the little toilet I did my business, then cleaned up. In the mirror there were the faces of many men: a middle-aged black man in fair shape but worn; a veteran not unlike Craig Kilian; a free agent who only took orders out of love, duty, or, far too often, as a consequence of guilt.

Maybe twelve minutes after my potential client had left I was walking south to Pico and then eastward. Upon reaching La Cienega I headed south again.

The whole time I was wondering about why I didn’t turn down the vet’s request. It would be nothing but trouble to go out looking for a man who got stabbed in the middle of an orange grove. A black man and a white woman that might have been hallucinations but, considering my luck, probably weren’t.

I would have turned him down out of hand if it weren’t for my understanding of the America I both love and loathe.